The Politics of Keeping Americans in The Dark about GMO Foods

Twenty years ago this week, then-Vice President Dan Quayle announced the FDA’s pol­icy on genet­i­cally engi­neered food as part of his “reg­u­la­tory relief ini­tia­tive.” The pol­icy, Quayle explained, was based on the idea that genetic engi­neer­ing is no dif­fer­ent than tra­di­tional plant breed­ing, and there­fore required no new reg­u­la­tions.

Five years ear­lier, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush vis­ited a Monsanto lab for a photo op with the devel­op­ers of Roundup Ready crops. According to a video report of the meet­ing, when Monsanto exec­u­tives wor­ried about the approval process for their new crops, Bush laughed and told them, “Call me. We’re in the dereg busi­nesses. Maybe we can help.”

And help he did — more than any­one could have ever imag­ined. Today, the polit­i­cally moti­vated pol­icy lives on, even though it con­tra­dicts mod­ern sci­en­tific consensus.

How is it pos­si­ble that the U.S. is mak­ing crit­i­cal deci­sions about our food sys­tem with a decades-old pol­icy that is at odds with global opin­ion? In a word: pol­i­tics. As Quayle explained in the 1992 press con­fer­ence, the American biotech­nol­ogy indus­try would reap huge prof­its “as long as we resist the spread of unnec­es­sary regulations.”

Politics not Science Set the Agenda

Dan Quayle’s 1992 pol­icy announce­ment is premised on the notion that genet­i­cally engi­neered crops are “sub­stan­tially equiv­a­lent” to reg­u­lar crops and thus do not need to be labeled or safety tested. 

The pol­icy was crafted by Michael Taylor, a for­mer Monsanto lawyer who was hired by the Bush FDA to fill the newly cre­ated posi­tion of deputy com­mis­sioner of policy.

In an ironic twist, the Obama admin­is­tra­tion appointed Michael Taylor as the deputy com­mis­sioner of foods in 2009, where he now over­sees food safety pol­icy for the fed­eral gov­ern­ment. Taylor’s appoint­ment was highly con­tro­ver­sial, not only for craft­ing this pseudo-scientific pol­icy, which laid the ground­work for help­ing GMOs avoid rig­or­ous sci­en­tific test­ing and common-sense label­ing, but also for his role in guid­ing the approval of Monsanto’s genet­i­cally engi­neered syn­thetic hor­mone rBGH.

From the start, the pol­icy of “sub­stan­tial equiv­a­lence” had many crit­ics. The con­cerns by the FDA’s own sci­en­tists were summed up in a memo by FDA com­pli­ance offi­cer Dr. Linda Kahl, who protested that the agency was “… try­ing to fit a square peg into a round hole… [by] try­ing to force an ulti­mate con­clu­sion that there is no dif­fer­ence between foods mod­i­fied by genetic engi­neer­ing and foods mod­i­fied by tra­di­tional breed­ing practices.”

As Kahl wrote, “The processes of genetic engi­neer­ing and tra­di­tional breed­ing are dif­fer­ent, and accord­ing to the tech­ni­cal experts in the agency, they lead to dif­fer­ent risks.”

The FDA itself admit­ted as much in 2001, with a pro­posed pol­icy that com­pa­nies should notify the gov­ern­ment at least 120 days before com­mer­cial­iz­ing a trans­genic plant vari­ety and pro­vide data on each sep­a­rate genetic trans­for­ma­tion event — infor­ma­tion they said they did not need for foods derived through tra­di­tional cross breeding.

In other words, the FDA said there is a dif­fer­ence between genetic engi­neer­ing and tra­di­tional plant breed­ing. In spite of this, the FDA is still fol­low­ing the Dan Quayle/Michael Taylor inspired pol­icy instead of its 2001 pol­icy to set the agenda.

Out of Step with World Opinion

Across the world, there is now agree­ment that genet­i­cally engi­neered foods are dif­fer­ent from con­ven­tion­ally bred foods and that all genet­i­cally engi­neered foods should be required to go through safety assess­ments prior to approval.

These posi­tions are spelled out by Codex Alimentarius, the food safety stan­dards orga­ni­za­tion of the United Nations, which the World Trade Organization con­sid­ers to be the global, science-based stan­dards, and thus immune to trade challenges.

But, at present, none of the genet­i­cally engi­neered plants on sale in the United States can meet this global stan­dard, because—unlike all other devel­oped countries—the U.S. does not require safety test­ing of genet­i­cally engi­neered crops.

The U.S. stands nearly alone on the issue of label­ing, too. More than 40 other coun­tries require label­ing of genet­i­cally engi­neered foods, includ­ing European Union mem­ber nations, Japan, Australia, Russia and even China, allow­ing con­sumers in those coun­tries to make informed choices about whether or not to buy these foods. Yet we haven’t been able to get label­ing here in the U.S., thanks to Dan Quayle and Michael Taylor’s decep­tive policy.

Growing Pressure for Change

The FDA posi­tion on GMOs is also out of step with the wishes of the over­whelm­ing major­ity of Americans, 90% of whom want label­ing. The issue is so rea­son­able and makes such com­mon sense that in November 2007, then Senator Barack Obama felt com­pelled to make a promise to Iowa farm­ers that if elected he’d label GMOs, say­ing he’d “let folks know whether their food has been genet­i­cally mod­i­fied because Americans should know what they’re buying.”

But lack­ing the courage or polit­i­cal will to get this done at the fed­eral level, and stymied in the state leg­isla­tive area—nearly 20 states have tried to pass label­ing man­dates and failed due to intense lobby pres­sure by spe­cial interests—all eyes are now on the California bal­lot ini­tia­tive that will take the issue directly to voters.

As the Times reported, “The most closely watched label­ing effort is a pro­posed bal­lot ini­tia­tive in California that cleared a cru­cial hur­dle this month, set­ting the stage for a November vote that could influ­ence not just food pack­ag­ing but the future of American agriculture.

The 20th anniver­sary of Dan Quayle’s announce­ment fell on Memorial Day week­end, a fit­ting sym­bol for the ques­tion before us: Will democ­racy win out and will Americans have the right to know what’s in our food? Or we will con­tinue to let our food pol­icy be ruled by polit­i­cal deci­sions engi­neered last cen­tury in a Monsanto board­room by cor­po­rate lobbyists?

David Murphy is the founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of Food Democracy Now!, a grass­roots move­ment of more than 250,000 American farm­ers and cit­i­zens ded­i­cated to reform­ing our food and agri­cul­ture. For more infor­ma­tion visit www.FoodDemocracyNow.org.