This article originally appeared at Forbes and has been republished here with the author’s permission.
“It is remarkable to see broad and bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate come together to pass this GMO disclosure legislation. Republicans and Democrats found consensus on the common ground that a patchwork of different state labeling laws would be a costly and confusing disaster for the nation’s food supply chain. They also joined together to give consumers more access to consistent and helpful information about genetic engineering.” — Statement from the Grocery Manufacturers Association, July 14, 2016.
Except perhaps in electoral politics, seldom have we seen as much inaccurate, self-serving spin in a mere three sentences—this time, courtesy of the world’s largest trade association for companies making food and beverage products, whose president takes home a cool $2 million a year.
For one thing, the passage of the legislation wasn’t remarkable at all, given the relentless, intense pressure on members of Congress by GMA and other similar food and agriculture trade groups. Their efforts recall the observation of the 18th century philosopher and economist Adam Smith that, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
GMA et al wanted their immediate problem—the prospect of differing state-by-state labeling requirements for genetically engineered foods–to go away, even at the cost of stymied innovation, higher prices, and the institutionalized misleading of consumers. And so in this Faustian bargain, they enthusiastically accepted compulsory labeling, although it fails every test—scientific, economic, legal and common sense. Thus, the information on labels can hardly be said to be “consistent and helpful about genetic engineering.”
A sign hangs at a rally Friday July 1, 2016 in Montpelier, Vt., protesting a proposal by Congress that would allow companies to use computer labels to indicated whether a product has been made with the help of genetic engineering. (AP Photo/Wilson Ring)
The bill did eliminate the food industry’s near-term problem by preempting individual states’ ability to impose disparate labeling requirements–which was the food industry’s primary motivation for demanding legislation in the first place. (Vermont had passed a law requiring labeling of genetically engineered foods which would have begun to be enforced next July.) However, preemption could have been accomplished without instituting mandatory labeling, which is the legislation’s fatal flaw; or food producers could have waited for the courts to decide that mandatory labeling to reveal non-essential, non-“material” information fails the “strict scrutiny” test and is unconstitutional.
Congress’ “solution” to the labeling conundrum, like others’ attempts, became fatally tangled up in terminology. The problem is that there’s no such thing as a “GMO,” except in the fevered imagination of bureaucrats, legislators, and activists. The bipartisan “compromise” on labeling includes a weird, unscientific, politically motivated hodge-podge of products that makes absolutely no sense. For example, corn or soybeans modified with recombinant-DNA(“gene-splicing”) techniques would need to be labeled, while oils from them would not.
And that’s not the only flaw. Genetic engineering is a seamless continuum of techniques that have been used over millennia, including (among others) hybridization, mutagenesis, wide-cross hybridization (movement of genes across “natural breeding barriers”), recombinant DNA technology, and now gene-editing, which has just been used to create a tomato with longer shelf-life.
Inexplicably, however, the new federal legislation requires labeling only if a food “contains genetic material that has been modified through in vitro recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) techniques” and “for which the modification could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature.” Older techniques and also anything modified with the newest gene-editing techniques would be exempt.
This is the proverbial legislative sausage-making at its worst. It simply shifts the skirmish over labeling to a new battleground. Pro-labeling activists are dissatisfied; they wanted much greater scope and prominence of labels. As Gary Hirshberg, the slimy organic-food activist and chairman of Stonyfield Farm, an organic yogurt producer,promised, “[W]e’ve left the legislative period of this battle after seven years and moved into the regulatory and marketplace phase of it, which was where it was always headed anyway.” So now Hirshberg and other moral lepers will be lobbying regulators to indicate the presence of genetically engineered ingredients with skull-and-crossbones, and continuing their “black marketing” to disparage superior technologies and products.
This is the proverbial legislative sausage-making at its worst. It simply shifts the skirmish over labeling to a new battleground. Pro-labeling activists are dissatisfied; they wanted much greater scope and prominence of labels. As Gary Hirshberg, the organic-food activist and chairman of Stonyfield Farm, an organic yogurt producer,promised, “[W]e’ve left the legislative period of this battle after seven years and moved into the regulatory and marketplace phase of it, which was where it was always headed anyway.” So now Hirshberg and other moral lepers will be lobbying regulators to indicate the presence of genetically engineered ingredients with skull-and-crossbones, and continuing their “black marketing” to disparage superior technologies and products.
The latter is nothing new. Academics Review, a reliable, science-oriented nonprofit organization of academic experts, performed an extensive review of hundreds of published academic, industry and government research reports concerned with consumers’ views of organic products. It also looked at more than 1,500 news reports, marketing materials, advocacy propaganda, speeches and so on, generated between 1988 and 2014 about organic foods. Their analysis found that “consumers have spent hundreds of billion dollars purchasing premium-priced organic food products based on false or misleading perceptions about comparative product food safety, nutrition and health attributes,” and that this is due to “a widespread organic and natural products industry pattern of research-informed and intentionally-deceptive marketing and paid advocacy.”
Hirshberg’s fingerprints are all over the organic industry’s black marketing, including the labeling pseudo-controversy. Shrewd in the Bernie Madoff sense, the way he contrived a “consumer” issue, became its face and then hoodwinked others into following him should be taught in business schools.
Hirshberg knows how to manipulate both public sentiment and the levers of political power. He has enlisted naive celebrities to make videos and attend Capitol Hill press conferences to push his agenda. As a major Democratic Party donor, Hirshberg and his wife havecontributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to lawmakers. They were bundlers for President Obama and attended a 2012 State Dinner at the White House as a token of the president’s gratitude. Several weeks before a key Senate vote on labeling, Hirshberg hosted a fundraiser for Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow (D), who then became his water-carrier on mandatory labels.
Over the last several years, Hirshberg has set up pro-labeling front groups to promote his agenda (Just Label It, Only Organic, Conceal or Reveal) and his company partners with other radical non-profits (Environmental Working Group, Center for Food Safety) that oppose genetically engineered crops. The media has unwittingly–or otherwise–referred to these as “consumer advocacy” groups, providing cover to the real agenda.
What is that agenda? The heavyweights of the anti-genetic engineering lobby have made it clear that their goal is not, in fact, consumers’ supposed “right to know” or wider choices in the marketplace, but is nothing less than the elimination from our food supply of foods made with the molecular techniques of genetic engineering. An article published by the Genetic Literacy Project collected some revealing quotes from those reprobates:
We are going to force them to label this food. If we force them to label it, then we can organize people not to buy it. –Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety
Personally, I believe [genetically modified] foods must be banned entirely, but labeling is the most efficient way to achieve this. Since 85 percent of the public will refuse to buy foods they know to be genetically modified, this will effectively eliminate them from the market just the way it was done in Europe. –Joseph Mercola, activist and hawker of various kinds of snake oil
The burning question for us all then becomes how–and how quickly–can we move healthy, organic products from a 4.2% market niche, to the dominant force in American food and farming? The first step is to change our labeling laws. –Ronnie Cummins, Director, Organic Consumers Association
The food and agriculture associations don’t really care about the loss of innovation and subsequent benefits to farmers, consumers and the environment (less use of chemical insecticides and CO2 emissions and conservation of land and water), as long as they don’t have to confront the possibility of a patchwork of state labeling requirements.
But if they think their genetic engineering-related headaches are gone, they’re misguided. Hirshberg is poised to take his movement to the next level and even play the race card: None other than has-been activist Jesse Jackson came in right on cue after the House vote to saythat sophisticated labels–bar codes and the like–raise “serious questions of discrimination and unresolved matters of equal protection of the law.” We can expect a lot more where that came from in the next few years before any rules are finalized by the USDA.
It’s time for everyone who cares about rational regulatory policy that benefits consumers to regroup. The war against manipulation, mendacity, cynical self-interest and faux-consumer advocacy is not over.
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. Julie Kelly is a cooking teacher, food writer and National Review Online contributor. Follow her on Twitter at @julie_kelly2.
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.
