Proposition 37 and the Faulty Logic of Newspaper Editorial Boards

It’s one thing to have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, but these edi­to­ri­als don’t even get their facts straight. Even more per­plex­ing, most of the papers acknowl­edged that we should have label­ing for foods pro­duced using genetic engi­neer­ing, and yet they went out of their way to find excuses to not endorse a basic con­sumer “right to know” effort. In this light, it seemed log­i­cal to review a few of the argu­ments that raised questions.

The Sacramento Bee edi­to­r­ial board, after say­ing they “don’t oppose label­ing of genet­i­cally mod­i­fied food,” went on to par­rot sev­eral of the opposition’s talk­ing points, but failed to back them up with any actual facts. They claim the ini­tia­tive would result in “count­less law­suits against retail­ers,” a base­less scare tac­tic well-honed by the oppo­si­tion. The vast major­ity of busi­nesses fol­low the law, so law­suits will be rare.

Much has been made by the Bee and other papers about how “pri­vate attor­neys and plain­tiffs would have the power to enforce,” demon­strat­ing a trou­bling igno­rance of the law. Under cur­rent California law, pri­vate attor­neys can already sue food com­pa­nies for decep­tive mar­ket­ing, so this is really no dif­fer­ent. And unlike other laws (such as Prop 65), under Prop 37 there are no finan­cial incen­tives for bring­ing a law­suit. All a per­son can get is a court order for the com­pany to prop­erly label its prod­uct, which is no incen­tive for an attor­ney to bring a law­suit. Again, it’s just scare mon­ger­ing from the oppo­si­tion, and it’s sad to see the edi­to­r­ial pages engage in such shal­low analy­sis and flimsy argumentation.

The Los Angeles Times rea­son­ing for its No endorse­ment was par­tic­u­larly bizarre. The first three para­graphs read like a great Yes argu­ment, including:

In most cases, there is no require­ment to inform con­sumers, via labels, about the use of pes­ti­cides, hor­mones or antibi­otics, or about the inhu­mane con­di­tions in which ani­mals are often kept. But Proposition 37 would make an excep­tion for genet­i­cally engi­neered food, requir­ing that it be labeled before being sold in California.

The board then makes a lengthy and twisted argu­ment summed up as: With so many other things wrong with the food sup­ply, why sin­gle out GMOs? The paper claims we should be more wor­ried about how…

… three-fourths of the antibi­otics in this coun­try are used to fat­ten and pre­vent dis­ease in live­stock, not to treat dis­ease in peo­ple. The rise of antibiotic-resistant bac­te­ria from overuse of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals poses a real threat to pub­lic health. So why label only the bio­engi­neered foods? Because the group that wrote Proposition 37 hap­pened to tar­get them. What’s needed is a con­sis­tent, ratio­nal food pol­icy, not a piece­meal approach based on indi­vid­ual groups’ pet concerns.

Has the L.A. Times missed the decades-long move­ment to halt the overuse of antibi­otics in live­stock? It has been gain­ing more trac­tion lately. You would think they would have heard of it. How exactly do two wrongs make a right? And a “con­sis­tent, ratio­nal food pol­icy” would be nice in a con­sis­tent, ratio­nal world, but that’s not the planet we inhabit. Or the state. Advocates often have to fight these bat­tles one at time because the food indus­try is so pow­er­ful it’s the only way we can get any­thing done.

Finally, the ref­er­ence to “groups’ pet con­cerns” is con­de­scend­ing and igno­rant. More than a mil­lion Americans have signed a peti­tion ask­ing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to label GMOs, a request that one sur­vey showed 91 per­cent of Americans agree with, but that the FDA has so far ignored thanks to pol­i­tics. (This, despite President Obama’s cam­paign promise to label GMOs; see this video from Food Democracy Now.) Moreover, vol­un­teers in California helped gather more than a mil­lion sig­na­tures to get Prop 37 on the bal­lot. Also, most of the groups work­ing to get GMO label­ing have also been work­ing on the other food sys­tem prob­lems the Times men­tions (and many more), so these are hardly “pet con­cerns” to advo­cates, and shame on the L.A. Times for say­ing so.

Undoubtedly, the sin­gle most dis­turb­ing and out­right false argu­ment made by at least three news­pa­pers (the Sacramento Bee, the San Jose Mercury News, and the San Francisco Chronicle) is how the pro­po­nents of Prop 37 should have gone through the leg­is­la­ture first. The Bee said that “pro­po­nents made no effort to push the con­cept through the Legislature” and the Chronicle claimed that “advo­cates of the label­ing law never attempted that step, despite Democratic majori­ties in both houses.”

What?

In fact, orga­ni­za­tions such as the Center for Food Safety (full dis­clo­sure: this arti­cle is on behalf of CFS) have tried numer­ous times to intro­duce such a bill, and could never even get a leg­is­la­tor to intro­duce a bill. However CFS was able to get a bill to label genet­i­cally engi­neered fish intro­duced in 2011 (AB 88, authored by Assemblymember Jared Huffman), and while it passed through the assem­bly health com­mit­tee, it failed in appropriations.

For these three major California news­pa­pers to base their No on 37 endorse­ments on such patently false claims about the leg­isla­tive process com­pletely bog­gles the mind. This is no small mis­take. Many edi­to­r­ial boards have made it clear that they just don’t like the ini­tia­tive process and are quick to bash it. Fair enough, but at least acknowl­edge that those fight­ing for GMO label­ing in California did try to go through the leg­is­la­ture first. To say oth­er­wise is giv­ing read­ers the false impres­sion that Prop 37 pro­po­nents were too lazy or stu­pid to bother going through that impor­tant first step. Given the mas­sive amount of resources required to engage in the ini­tia­tive process in California (either in vol­un­teer effort or money or both), most advo­cacy groups would only choose this route after fail­ing mul­ti­ple times in the leg­is­la­ture. It’s just too big an under­tak­ing, and extremely risky finan­cially. And yet, these news­pa­pers make it sound like Prop 37 pro­po­nents took the easy way out. Hardly. Running up against the deep, deep pock­ets of No on Prop 37 donors like Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola is not exactly the easy way.

Related to this false state­ment is the notion the leg­is­la­ture would do a bet­ter job draft­ing a bill to label GMOs. The San Jose Mercury News pre­dicted that the leg­isla­tive “give and take would have resulted in a better-drafted law that we might well have sup­ported.” Really? Has any­one on these edi­to­r­ial boards ever been to the state’s cap­i­tal to wit­ness California sausage-making first hand? I have, and it’s not pretty. That both houses have a Democratic major­ity hardly mat­ters, as cor­po­rate lob­by­ists write most of the bills in their favor and then gut the rest to ren­der them toothless.

Even if a GMO label­ing bill for all foods was intro­duced, the result­ing bill would either die in com­mit­tee or come out the other end in favor of Monsanto et al. That’s exactly why Prop 37 pro­po­nents had to resort to the ini­tia­tive process. As flawed as it is; it’s all we have left. Prop 37 may not be per­fect, but it’s the best chance we have of get­ting GMO label­ing right now, so why not sup­port it? According to California’s lead­ing news­pa­pers, GMO label­ing should only hap­pen through a ratio­nal leg­isla­tive process where all stake­hold­ers have their say, result­ing in a bal­anced and per­fect law that would make every­one happy. What world do these edi­to­r­ial board mem­bers live in?

That so many California news­pa­pers failed to under­stand the polit­i­cal real­i­ties that led to Prop 37 in the first place raises trou­bling ques­tions about the rel­e­vance of propo­si­tion endorse­ments in gen­eral. Many Californians rely on their local papers to help them under­stand the numer­ous and com­plex bal­lot ini­tia­tives each elec­tion. But if edi­to­r­ial boards can’t bother to get their facts straight, they have abdi­cated their respon­si­bil­ity and sim­ply can­not be trusted to offer vot­ers fair rec­om­men­da­tions. Maybe it’s time news­pa­pers retired the prac­tice alto­gether. If the deba­cle of Prop 37 edi­to­ri­als is any indi­ca­tion, the vot­ing pub­lic would be bet­ter off doing its own homework.

Paid for by Californians for Truth in Labeling-Yes on 37, spon­sored by the Center for Food Safety Action Fund

Michele Simon

Michele is a pub­lic health lawyer who has been research­ing and writ­ing about the food indus­try and food pol­i­tics since 1996. Visit her site at www.EatDrinkPolitics.com/