This article originally ran at Forbes and has been republished here with permission of the author.
Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, some politicians have a hard time setting priorities.
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, in a recent interview called the question of labeling foods with ingredients from genetically engineered organisms “one of the top issues we’ve considered in the last 25 years.”
Even if that is an exaggeration, given the serious problems our country confronts–from terrorism and widespread underemployment to dysfunction in an alphabet soup of federal agencies–that statement should give all taxpayers pause. Senior lawmakers should not be diverting attention from real issues to dithering about non-problems cooked up by anti-technology activists.
On March 15, senators tasked with protecting the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness (to coin a phrase) of all Americans were discussing. . . grocery shopping. They argued heatedly about whether the federal government should require “genetically modified” food to carry an identifying label–a label that would be meaningless and utterly useless, but also misleading.
The senators pondered such weighty issues as whether, in the absence of an identifying label, a shopper would take the time to scan a bar code on a package or call an 800-number and then get “probably some person answering him from India” (that astute comment courtesy of California’s dimwitted Senator Barbara Boxer). One senator pointed to an oversized poster of a dad shopping with his kids and lamented how the poor fellow could possibly juggle his cart and master his smart phone at the same time.
Thus, we we were treated once again to the specter of our government imitating a skit on Saturday Night Live.
In this April 8, 2016 photo, a new disclosure statement is displayed on a package of Peanut M&Ms candy in Montpelier, Vt., saying they are “Partially produced with genetic engineering.” Vermont is set to become the first state in the country to require the labeling of foods made with “genetically modified ingredients”. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)
The requirement would apply if certain techniques have been used on crop plants: “the direct injection of genes into cells, the fusion of cells, or the hybridization of genes that does not occur in nature.” That definition skirts both science and history to achieve nebulous public policy goals. As a result, labels will appear on an illogical hodgepodge of new and old products that will in no way indicate risk, safety, quality or anything else that is meaningful.
But such labels are neither cost-free nor as simple and innocuous as pro-labeling activists would have you believe. In fact, Vermont-style labeling fails every test—scientific, economic, legal and common sense.
The highly-charged debate has been stoked by the organic products industry and environmental groups that feign concern about consumers’ “right to know what’s in their food,” but have other, self-serving motives. As Sen. Roberts said: “This is all about certain advocacy groups who raise problems with [genetically engineered] products, but basically they just want more share of the market.”
Special interests like organic and natural products companies hope to exploit “genetically engineered” labels to disparage those foods as “unnatural,” untested and dangerous, and to scare consumers into buying their own products—so-called “black marketing.” In unusual fits of candor, many leaders of the anti-genetic engineering movement have admitted that their intention is to rid the U.S. food supply of genetically engineered crops entirely.
Much to the delight of activists, some food producers are already reformulating their products, replacing genetically engineered products with non-engineered (and sometimes, inferior) alternatives, in order to avoid what some consumers might consider a stigmatizing label. It is absurd that giants like Hershey’s and Del Monte have announced they will eliminate sugar derived from sugar beets–which are nearly all genetically modified and grown here in the U.S –in favor of imported cane sugar. The sucrose from beet and cane sugar is identical and neither has proteins or DNA left after processing, but in the guise of responding to consumer demand, these companies are caving to anti-technology, Luddite bullies, as other companies like Gerber and Kirin have done in the past.
Capitulations like this hurt U.S. farmers and are fueling rising demand for cane sugar imported from Mexico. Sugar costs are up and will continue to rise as more food companies make the switch. Ironically, the very same environmental groups that oppose genetic engineering are now promoting a very eco-unfriendly crop like sugar cane instead of an environmentally benign one like sugar beets.
These market disruptions are some of the consequences of the mere threat of a mandatory “Made With Genetic Engineering” label. Small businesses, farmers and consumers will lose, while activists and everyone in the organic products supply chain will benefit. (Which presents another irony: the fundamentalunsustainability of organic agriculture.)
Senator Roberts should stand firm and refuse to accept a flawed compromise that will benefit only the very advocacy groups he has criticized. A simple piece of legislation affirming that the FDA’s policies preempt local laws and regulations concerning food labeling would do the trick. But Roberts need not and should not concede anything to activists, whether they are congressional colleagues or ordinary, unelected troglodytes.
Julie Kelly is a food policy writer in Orland Park, Ill; you can reply to her on Twitter @Julie_Kelly2. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; he was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology.
Henry I. Miller, a physician, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy & Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He was the founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Follow him on Twitter @henryimiller.
