Battle Brewing Over Labeling of Genetically Modified Food
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times
Using her own stickers, Cynthia LaPier surreptitiously labels foods that she knows contain genetically modified organisms. By AMY HARMON and ANDREW POLLACK
Published: May 24, 2012 25 Comments
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — On a recent sunny morning at the Big Y grocery
here, Cynthia LaPier parked her cart in the cereal aisle. With a glance
over her shoulder and a quick check of the ingredients, she plastered
several boxes with hand-designed stickers from a roll in her purse.
“Warning,” they read. “May Contain GMO’s (Genetically Modified
Organisms).”
Labeling GMO Groceries Jim Wilson/The New York Times
In San Francisco, a gathering of supporters of a
California ballot proposition requiring genetically modified foods to be
labeled.
For more than a decade, almost all processed foods in the United States —
cereals, snack foods, salad dressings — have contained ingredients from
plants whose DNA was manipulated in a laboratory. Regulators and many
scientists say these pose no danger.
But as Americans ask more pointed questions about what they are eating,
popular suspicions about the health and environmental effects of
biotechnology are fueling a movement to require that food from genetically modified crops be labeled, if not eliminated.
Labeling bills have been proposed in more than a dozen states over the
last year, and an appeal to the Food and Drug Administration last fall
to mandate labels nationally drew more than a million signatures. There
is an iPhone app: ShopNoGMO.
The most closely watched labeling effort is a proposed ballot initiative
in California that cleared a crucial hurdle this month, setting the
stage for a probable November vote that could influence not just food
packaging but the future of American agriculture.
Tens of millions of dollars are expected to be spent on the election showdown. It pits consumer groups and the organic food
industry, both of which support mandatory labeling, against more
conventional farmers, agricultural biotechnology companies like Monsanto
and many of the nation’s best-known food brands like Kellogg’s and
Kraft.
The heightened stakes have added fuel to a long-simmering debate over the merits of genetically engineered crops, which many scientists and farmers believe could be useful in meeting the world’s rapidly expanding food needs.
Supporters of labeling argue that consumers have a right to know when
food has been modified with genes from another species, which they say
is fundamentally different from the selective breeding process used in
nearly all crops.
Almost all the corn and soybeans grown in the United States now contain
DNA derived from bacteria. The foreign gene makes the soybeans resistant
to an herbicide used in weed control, and causes the corn to produce
its own insecticide.
“It just makes me nervous when you take genetic matter from something
else that wouldn’t have been done in nature and put it into food,” said
Ms. LaPier, 44, a mental health counselor whose guerrilla labeling was inspired by the group Label It Yourself. She worries that her daughter, 5, could one day suffer ill effects like allergies.
The F.D.A. has said that labeling is generally not necessary because the
genetic modification does not materially change the food.
Farmers, food and biotech companies and scientists say that labels might
lead consumers to reject genetically modified food — and the technology
that created it — without understanding its environmental and economic
benefits. A national science advisory organization in 2010 termed those benefits “substantial,”
noting that existing biotech crops have for years let farmers spray
fewer or less harmful chemicals, though the emergence of resistant weeds
and insects threatens to blunt that effect.
In a letter circulating on social networks, one Iowa farmer, Tim Burrack, criticized this month’s O, the Oprah Magazine, which cited research linking genetic engineering to health concerns that many scientists have discredited and proposed “5 Ways to Lessen Your Exposure to GMO’s.” Mr. Burrack urged Ms. Winfrey not to “demonize GM crops.”
But some food experts argue that food manufacturers have an obligation
to label. Consumers “have a right to take genetic modification into
consideration,” said Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition,
food studies and public health at New York University. “And if the
companies think consumer objections are stupid and irrational, they
should explain the benefits of their products.”
Until now, Americans have made little fuss about genetically modified
crops on the market compared with Europeans, who require that such foods
be labeled. Demonstrators in Britain are threatening to destroy some genetically modified wheat being grown in a research trial near London.
The current push for labeling in this country stems in part from a
broadening of the genetically modified menu to include
herbicide-resistant alfalfa and the possible approval this year of a fast-growing salmon, which would be the first genetically engineered animal in the food supply.
Gary Hirshberg, chairman of Stonyfield Farms, the organic yogurt company, has raised more than $1 million for the Just Label It
campaign to influence the F.D.A. after fighting approval of engineered
alfalfa, arguing that cross-pollination would contaminate organic crops
fed to cows.
“This is an issue of transparency, truth and trust in the food system,” Mr. Hirshberg said.
Biotechnology companies say that the California labeling initiative,
while portrayed as promoting consumer choice, is really an effort by
some consumer and environmental groups and organic food growers to drive
genetically modified foods off the market.
“These folks are trying to use politics to do what they can’t accomplish
at the supermarket, which is increase market share,” said Cathleen
Enright, an executive vice president at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which represents Monsanto and DuPont.
Rather than label food with what consumers might regard as a skull and
crossbones, the companies say food producers may ultimately switch to
ingredients that are not genetically modified, as they did in Europe.
If the California initiative passes, “we will be on our way to getting
GE-tainted foods out of our nation’s food supply for good,” Ronnie
Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association,
wrote in an letter in March seeking donations for the California ballot
initiative. “If a company like Kellogg’s has to print a label stating
that their famous Corn Flakes have been genetically engineered, it will
be the kiss of death for their iconic brand in California — the
eighth-largest economy in the world — and everywhere else.”
The Grocery Manufacturers Association,
which represents major food brands, declined to comment on what members
would do if the California measure passed. But Rick Tolman, chief
executive of the National Corn Growers Association,
said after meeting with food executives this month that he had the
“strong impression” that they would rather reformulate their ingredients
than label their products genetically engineered. “They think a label
will undermine their brand,” he said.
When asked if they wanted genetically engineered foods to be labeled,
about 9 in 10 Americans said that they did, according to a 2010 Thomson
Reuters-NPR poll.
The current call for transparency has resonated among some Americans
upset by reports of BPA (a chemical used in plastics) in food packaging
and pink slime (an ammonia-treated additive) in meat. Ms. LaPier has
made an effort to label Kashi cereals, which advertise themselves as
natural, since learning they contain genetically modified soy. Since
discovering the Label It Yourself Facebook page
in March, she has added several of her own pictures to its gallery of
handmade labels on grocery store shelves across the nation.
Depending on the jurisdiction, such labeling could constitute a
trademark violation against the manufacturer or a trespass against the
store. No one has been prosecuted, but also, no one has been caught,
according to a spokesman for the group.
So far, the F.D.A. has said only that it is studying the labeling
petition; none of the state-level labeling bills proposed over the last
year have passed.
For labeling proponents, California, where the Legislature would be bypassed by a direct popular vote, is the big prize.
A decade ago in Oregon, a similar measure that appeared to have the
support of two-thirds of voters was rejected after a last-minute
spending blitz by labeling opponents. With the financial backing of the
organic industry, labeling supporters in California say they will be
better prepared.
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