Chemical Biotech Companies Combat GMO Labeling Efforts by Sneaking Riders into the Farm Bill

“Americans want our fed­eral agen­cies to do a thor­ough job of eval­u­at­ing GE crops and GE foods, before they are intro­duced into the mar­ket­place, into our stores, and into our homes,” said Gary Hirshberg, Chairman and a found­ing Partner of JLI, and Chairman and Co-Founder of Stonyfield. “Rushing the approval of GE crops before they can be fully eval­u­ated endan­gers our families.”

The rid­ers attached to the House Farm Bill included pro­vi­sions that would out­law any review of GE crops’ impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Endangered Species Act (ESA), or any other envi­ron­men­tal law, or by any other agency other than USDA. For exam­ple, harm to pro­tected species could occur with­out any input from our expert wildlife agencies.

The new pro­vi­sions would also pro­hibit other agen­cies from offer­ing expert input in the review process, and instead limit review to solely USDA under the Plant Protection Act (PPA). In effect, this would likely elim­i­nate any mean­ing­ful review. In addi­tion, the rid­ers would force the back­door approval of GE crops, even if USDA has not reviewed and approved them. Unreasonably short dead­lines, if not met by the agency, would default to imme­di­ate approval and commercialization.

Further results include the devel­op­ment of a dan­ger­ous national pol­icy allow­ing trans­genic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in crops and foods, risk­ing loss of GE-sensitive domes­tic and export mar­kets, and loss of bio­di­ver­sity. The rid­ers would also limit EPA’s over­sight of biotech crops engi­neered to pro­duce or con­tain a pes­ti­cide by forc­ing the agency to choose the least bur­den­some choice for indus­try, regard­less of envi­ron­men­tal consequences.

“The U.S. has safe­guards in place at numer­ous fed­eral agen­cies to pro­tect pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment. We must not let a few pow­er­ful inter­ests who are push­ing a failed eco­nomic model of coerc­ing farm­ers into buy­ing both their seeds and their chem­i­cals, hijack our fed­eral reg­u­la­tory process for GE crop approval – and ulti­mately steal our right to know about our food,” warned Hirshberg.

JLI is urg­ing sup­port­ers of GE foods label­ing to ask the House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas of Oklahoma and Ranking Member Collin Peterson of Minnesota to remove the rid­ers, and ensure our right to know about
our food.

Click here to let your rep­re­sen­ta­tive know your posi­tion on these riders.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about GE foods, and to sign the peti­tion urg­ing the FDA to approve GE label­ing, visit the Just Label It web­site (www.justlabelit.org).

Source: Just Label It Release