Big Food’s GMO battle could affect Britain
Jonathan Lindsell, 17 June 2014
This May Vermont state passed a law requiring labels on foods with genetically modified organism (GMO) ingredients. ‘Big Food’ lobby organisations claim this requirement contradicts the American constitution by forcing speech requirements and restrictions. Producers will be unable to say GMO food is ‘natural’, ‘naturally grown’ or ‘all natural’. Farming associations argue labelling costs will spiral, especially if other states copy Vermont but with different requirements, creating a piecemeal legal framework.
Monsanto, the agro-chemical giant, threatened to sue Vermont before the law passed, and now the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and Monsanto have filed a federal lawsuit in Vermont’s District Court. Vermont’s government established a $1.5 million legal defence fund and grassroots campaigners are crowdsourcing for more, appealing to Oregon campaigners proposing a similar law. Last year DuPont, Monsanto and Kraft Foods spent $28 million on GMO cases in California and Washington. Big Food won. In 1994 Vermont tried to stop firms selling milk from cows fed with Bovine Growth Hormone, which was feared to have an unexamined cancer link. Big Food won.
The new labelling law is “a costly and misguided measure that will set the nation on a path toward a 50-state patchwork of GMO labeling [sic] policies that do nothing to advance health and safety,” GMA said in a statement. The US Food and Drug Administration ruled in 1994 that GMOs aren’t materially different from other food. However labelling supporters say the law provides consumers with more information – the ‘right to know’ measure is popular with Vermont’s 630,000 population and across America.
If Vermont loses the federal case, no other state is likely to press ahead. This could have serious implications for the EU-US trade deal currently under negotiation, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Negotiations are currently secret, but the Commission has made clear that in many product areas, standards and regulations will be ‘harmonised’ across the Atlantic, and US firms will have special court protection from nation-state laws that threaten future profits.
Current European hostility towards GMO foods means the EU requires strict labelling and prohibits most US bioseeds, but barriers are falling. Last week the EU agreed that, if a GM crop is deemed safe by EU experts, then individual states may embrace them. Member states can reject them, though, on grounds other than public health or environmental protection – for example, town planning. This lets GM-hostile countries like France protect their own approach.
Monsanto’s Brussels lobbyist called the EU resolution ‘tragic-comic…a bad signal to the rest of the world that it’s okay to ignore science and ban things for populist purposes.’ RT reports that Germany fears America will be able to sell them GM foods without declaring their origin, and Friends of the Earth called the proposal a ‘poisoned chalice’ that will open a loophole for back-door GM imports.
Britain is cautiously open to regulated GM products, but TTIP will be unpopular if it leads to an unchecked, un-checkable flood.
The anti-science movement is active in all fronts, from vaccines to “chemicals” to genetically modified organisms. There is no health or nutritional reason for labelling GM food; to do so is as idiotic as labelling it with “contains NON-halal ingredients”. In addition to being expensive, labelling generates the wrong impression that this type of disclosure is important for some secret motive. But there is no other motive than pleasing the greens, who can get as fundamentalist as any jihadist.
As the most enlightened country in Europe, Britain should fight the anti-science cult and lead the way in introducing biotechnology. Not only for science’s sake (which may indeed be banal) but because biotechnology increases productivity driving down cost. It is also good for the environment, allowing a reduction in soil erosion and in the use of pesticides and fossil fuels. Let’s not forget that the European anti-GM brigade is part of the same alliance trying to impose the rest of the quackeries (anti-vaccination, anti-chemicals, anti-nuclear but pro-homeopathy and pro stem cells treatments that don’t work, among others).