A lot of food companies are jumping on the transparency bandwagon. Panera, Chipotle, and Pepsi are labeling foods and removing controversial ingredients. Then there’s the commendable push by Perdue, McDonald’s, and Tyson to reduce antibiotic use.
In general, these are good things. But transparency only helps if it shows us something useful, rather than simply functioning as a self-serving act of marketing.
Time asked me to write an op-ed about this. I’d already been thinking about it: trying to understand why so many editorial writers seemed peeved with Chipotle’s decision to go GMO-free.
With Chipotle’s move to non-GMO ingredients you still get the herbicides, and maybe more insecticides.
In the public debate, the term GMO is a symbol that stands in for heavy pesticide use and environmentally dubious farming practices. Chipotle is just changing the symbol, not the things it symbolizes.
However, the changes companies are making on antibiotics really do make a difference. They deserve applause for that, and they deserve scrutiny to insure that they do it right. It’s up to us to differentiate between transparency that actually helps change the world and transparency that’s just public relations in disguise.
It’s a journalist’s mandate to figure out what’s real and what’s not. The movement toward food transparency is maturing; superficial changes are no longer passing muster. If companies want approval from the press, they have to prove their reforms mean actual improvements to public and environmental health.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Removing antibiotics from food makes a difference, removing GMOs doesn’t
