The Stanford Organics Study and Biotech’s Plan to Defeat GMO Labeling Prop 37

If Monsanto or Cargill is pay­ing a researcher at a land-grant uni­ver­sity to look into the nutri­tional value of foods, there’s a temp­ta­tion there to work the data in favor of the com­pany pay­ing the bills, espe­cially if they like your work and order more studies.

So who’s pay­ing for the Stanford study? The Stanford doc­tor who was the prin­ci­pal author, Crystal Smith-Spangler, M.D., writes that there was no fund­ing for the study, which appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine (vol. 157, no. 5 [4 September 2012]: 348–366)—this despite the list­ing of 11 coau­thors includ­ing physi­cians and health spe­cial­ists along with Dr. Smith-Spangler. Since no fund­ing is listed, we can’t know whether Dr. Smith-Spangler and cohorts did the rather exhaus­tive study out of the good­ness of their hearts or if some­one took them to lunch, so to speak. But even that isn’t the point.

The real ques­tion is, why do you think this Stanford study came out now? The title of the study raises a red flag as it asks, “Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier than Conventional Alternatives?” Its con­clu­sion states, “The pub­lished lit­er­a­ture lacks strong evi­dence that organic foods are sig­nif­i­cantly more nutri­tious than con­ven­tional foods. Consumption of organic foods may reduce expo­sure to pes­ti­cide residues and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

So it casts doubt on the value of organic food, even as it admits organic food has fewer toxic residues and path­o­genic microbes. Yet I’m aware of sev­eral strong stud­ies sup­port­ing the nutri­tional supe­ri­or­ity of organic food,* and I looked through all 298 stud­ies cited in the Stanford overview of the sci­en­tific lit­er­a­ture, but they were nowhere to be found. But even that’s not the point.

Remember: This November, Californians will be asked to vote on Proposition 37, which will require foods con­tain­ing genet­i­cally mod­i­fied ingre­di­ents to be so labeled. Remember too that organic food is not allowed by law to con­tain any genet­i­cally mod­i­fied ingredients.

Now think about Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Syngenta, and other cor­po­ra­tions turn­ing out genet­i­cally mod­i­fied farm seed. Why do you think they’re doing that? They say it’s to improve agri­cul­ture, to feed the world, to solve farming’s problems—but there’s another rea­son they sel­dom men­tion. When they make a genet­i­cally mod­i­fied (GMO) seed, they patent it. And those who hold the patents reap the finan­cial rewards.

Click here to read the rest of this arti­cle at Organic Gardening Magazine.