Why California Needs GMO Labeling Prop 37

Food label­ing has empow­ered tens of mil­lions of Americans to take con­trol of what we eat and feed our fam­i­lies for health, eco­nomic, envi­ron­men­tal, eth­i­cal or reli­gious rea­sons. However, these free­doms are being denied to the more than 90% of Americans who want to know if their food is pro­duced using genetic engi­neer­ing because these prod­ucts are not required to be labeled in the U.S. Unlike more than 60 other countries—including the European Union mem­ber states, Japan, Brazil, Russia and China—the U.S. has no law requir­ing label­ing of GE foods. As a con­se­quence, U.S. con­sumers are unknow­ingly pur­chas­ing and con­sum­ing GE foods every day, despite the fact that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does no inde­pen­dent test­ing for their safety.

FDA has not acted to require labeling

Twenty years ago, FDA deter­mined that GE foods did not require label­ing because they were not “mate­ri­ally” dif­fer­ent from other foods.  In 1992, at the time the first GE crops were being con­sid­ered for com­mer­cial­iza­tion, FDA restricted what it con­sid­ered “mate­r­ial” to only changes in food that could be noted by taste, smell or other senses. Since the hid­den dif­fer­ences of GE foods can’t be “sensed” in this way, FDA declared them not to have any mate­r­ial dif­fer­ence from non-engineered foods, and, hence, did not require label­ing. This pol­icy was set by then FDA Deputy Commissioner for Policy, Michael Taylor, a for­mer Monsanto employee. It was, and remains, a polit­i­cal deci­sion, not a sci­en­tific one. In fact, as doc­u­ments released later through CFS lit­i­ga­tion showed, sci­en­tists in FDA had sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns with the policy.

In the spring of 2000, FDA announced that label­ing of GE foods would remain vol­un­tary, even though there was no indi­ca­tion that any com­pany would vol­un­tar­ily label GE foods. A dozen years later, none have. Companies that have elim­i­nated GE ingre­di­ents and use “NON-GE” or “NON-GMO” labels on their prod­ucts face strict reg­u­la­tions, while the FDA allows com­pa­nies that do not take this step to con­tinue using GE ingre­di­ents in secret. FDA’s archaic pol­icy based on out­dated sci­ence is unfor­tu­nately still in effect today, even though the 21st cen­tury has brought fun­da­men­tal changes to food that can­not be seen through processes such as genetic engineering.

In response, CFS filed a legal peti­tion with FDA in October 2011 detail­ing the rea­sons why GE foods should be labeled and demand­ing the agency take action to require the label­ing of these foods. To date more than 1.2 mil­lion Americans have sub­mit­ted com­ments to FDA in sup­port of CFS’s legal peti­tion. CFS is still await­ing a response from the agency.

Prop 37 is a rea­son­able response to gov­ern­ment inaction

Since FDA has to-date refused to label GE foods, indi­vid­ual states have the duty and the right to take action and require GE food label­ing to pro­tect cit­i­zen inter­ests, includ­ing pub­lic health, con­sumer right to know, the eco­nomic inter­ests of farm­ers, and our agri­cul­tural lands and sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. Prop 37 was ini­ti­ated from the ground up by indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens in response to the fail­ures of the fed­eral gov­ern­ment and the California leg­is­la­ture to require label­ing of GE foods.

The inten­tion of Prop 37 is sim­ple: it merely requires that foods pro­duced using genetic engi­neer­ing be labeled as such. The ini­tia­tive is intended to pro­vide California con­sumers with infor­ma­tion about the foods they pur­chase, allow­ing them to make informed choices in the marketplace.

Opponents claim Prop 37 is a costly reg­u­la­tion with no ben­e­fits that would impose sig­nif­i­cant costs on California’s food and agri­cul­tural indus­tries and con­sumers. In fact, the ini­tia­tive is 100% for the ben­e­fit of California con­sumers, giv­ing every­one equal access to infor­ma­tion cur­rently hid­den about the foods they pur­chase. Food proces­sors and man­u­fac­tur­ers have 21 months before imple­men­ta­tion – ample time to find non-GE sources of ingre­di­ents such as corn and soy if they do not want to make pub­lic that their prod­ucts con­tain GE ingre­di­ents. Or com­pa­nies can merely choose to label their prod­ucts as “may be par­tially pro­duced with genetic engi­neer­ing” if they do not want to track the ingre­di­ents in their food (a low-cost option). This is also suf­fi­cient time for farm­ers to plant non-GE crops depend­ing on the needs of the proces­sors they sup­ply. More gen­er­ally, as a stan­dard part of pro­duc­tion costs, man­u­fac­tur­ers fre­quently change their labels. And, over­all, there is absolutely no rea­son why Prop 37 would cause an increase in food prices since non-GE prod­ucts are no more expen­sive than prod­ucts con­tain­ing GE ingre­di­ents, with the excep­tion of organic foods which cur­rently make up less than 5 per­cent of the marketplace.

Prop 37 is a healthy solu­tion for California agriculture

Prop 37 also will not result in sig­nif­i­cant costs to farm work­ers and the envi­ron­ment. Instead it will ben­e­fit the envi­ron­ment by allow­ing con­sumers the choice to buy prod­ucts from more sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion sys­tems. Opponents allege that non-GE crops use less her­bi­cides when, in fact, the exact oppo­site is true. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), since the intro­duc­tion of GE crops more than 100 mil­lion pounds of addi­tional her­bi­cides have been used on U.S. farms.

The rea­son for this is sim­ple: the vast major­ity of GE crops are designed for one pur­pose – to be resis­tant to her­bi­cides, such as Monsanto’s “Roundup.” This resis­tance allows farm­ers to repeat­edly spray more and more her­bi­cide on crops with­out risk of dam­ag­ing or killing them.  With the wide­spread com­mer­cial­iza­tion of GE crops in U.S. agri­cul­ture, Roundup has now become the most applied pes­ti­cide in the world. And the result? Weeds in our agri­cul­tural fields, like antibi­otics, have mutated due to over­re­liance. These Roundup-resistant “super­weeds” are an epi­demic, forc­ing farm­ers to resort to even more toxic her­bi­cides. Accordingly, these pesticide-promoting GE crops only lead to more her­bi­cide use, caus­ing dam­age to our agri­cul­tural areas and to our drink­ing water, and pos­ing health risks to farm work­ers, wildlife and con­sumers. Contrary to the pro-chemical “No on 37” group, CFS believes Californians deserve the choice to avoid pur­chas­ing foods pro­duced in such an unsus­tain­able manner.

GE foods impact our health

Since the FDA does absolutely no inde­pen­dent test­ing and does not make any safety assess­ment of GE foods, Californians have good rea­son to be con­cerned about the poten­tial health effects of these novel foods. And now there is new sci­en­tific sup­port to back up their con­cerns about the health effects of GE foods. A new long-term, peer-reviewed study pub­lished online in the jour­nal Food and Chemical Toxicology shows that con­sum­ing even rel­a­tively low lev­els of the com­mer­cial Roundup-tolerant GE corn or of the her­bi­cide Roundup can result in greatly increased lev­els of mam­mary tumors, kid­ney and liver dam­age, and pre­ma­ture death. As expected, indus­try front groups and pro-chemical inter­ests have imme­di­ately gone to the media in an effort to mar­gin­al­ize the study since its release. Given the valid­ity and mean­ing of the study results, it comes as no sur­prise that false infor­ma­tion, man­u­fac­tured opin­ions and threats to dis­credit have entered the picture.

Prop 37 is fair to farm­ers and consumers

Another fal­lacy being pur­ported about Prop 37 is the alleged high costs of com­pli­ance for farm­ers and food proces­sors. The ini­tia­tive requires an affi­davit from the farmer or proces­sor that the crop or prod­uct was not genet­i­cally engi­neered. This require­ment, how­ever, is far from unusual: farm­ers and sup­pli­ers are required to keep track of all kinds of infor­ma­tion, includ­ing where their seed comes from, what pes­ti­cides are used on their crops and what food safety pro­ce­dures have been used (a much more ardu­ous process). Keeping track of how our food is pro­duced is a stan­dard safety require­ment that should be prac­ticed by all farm­ers and food proces­sors. It’s one of the only ways we have to trace food­borne ill­ness out­breaks, pes­ti­cide use or to recall con­t­a­m­i­nated mate­ri­als. The ques­tion isn’t whether or not to make this a part of a new reg­u­la­tory envi­ron­ment for food in California—it’s why is it not in place already?

Finally, per­haps the most egre­gious lie about Prop 37 is that it will elim­i­nate the use of the term “nat­ural” on all food prod­ucts. Not so. The intent of the ini­tia­tive is clear – only prod­ucts that are GE can­not be labeled nat­ural. It’s as sim­ple as that. Processed foods that are not GE, such as milk, but­ter, dried fruits and nuts are not restricted from using the label “nat­ural.” This myth is being pro­mul­gated in var­i­ous media out­lets and is one of the biggest mis­con­cep­tions about the initiative.

Prop 37 is progress for the future of food, not a retreat

Labeling of GE foods is not an effort to shut down the advance of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy. Rather, Prop 37 rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of an effort aimed at offer­ing the pub­lic full dis­clo­sure, pre­serv­ing the right of free choice in the mar­ket­place and cre­at­ing a bet­ter food indus­try. Requiring GE foods to be labeled should have no adverse impact on a company’s abil­ity to con­duct new, forward-thinking research. In fact, if future GE prod­ucts claim to offer con­sumer ben­e­fits, such as increased nutri­tion, clear and com­plete label­ing offers these com­pa­nies an oppor­tu­nity to dis­tin­guish these prod­ucts from oth­ers in the marketplace.

In America, and espe­cially here in California, we pride our­selves on the fact that we live in a soci­ety that offers us choices and the guar­an­teed right to guide our own lives. Making informed deci­sions about the health and safety of the food we eat and feed our fam­i­lies is one of these rights. Under cur­rent FDA reg­u­la­tion, we don’t have this choice when it comes to GE foods, unlike most of the world. Since the U.S. fed­eral gov­ern­ment has refused to label GE foods, it is up to indi­vid­ual states to lead the way and pro­tect our states’ inter­ests, includ­ing pub­lic health, con­sumer right to know and our farm­ers, envi­ron­ment and agri­cul­tural lands. Prop 37 is a step toward mak­ing these pro­tec­tions a reality.

Source: Center for Food Safety Release