Pro-GMO Propaganda in California Dismantled by New Cost Study
August 14, 2012
Opponents
of GMO labeling say it will raise food costs by hundreds of dollars per
family when in fact it will likely cause NO cost increase at all!
The
California Right to Know 2012 Ballot Initiative, which will be voted
upon in November, will tell Californians—and ultimately perhaps other
Americans—whether their food contains genetically engineered
ingredients. Not surprisingly, the biotech companies are up in arms over
the proposal. Their website is NoProp37.com, funding for which comes in part from the Council for Biotechnology Information, whose members
include Monsanto, Dow, and other GMO companies. The site, which used to
be called StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com (they just recently changed the
domain name—could it be because they realized it wasn’t costly after
all?) says:
[Labeling
genetically engineered foods] would increase food costs paid by
California consumers. The higher costs that farmers, food companies and
grocers would face because of this proposition would be passed on to
California consumers through higher food prices. That would hurt all
California families—especially those who can least afford it, such as
seniors on fixed incomes and low income families. An economic analysis
of a similar measure that was rejected by Oregon voters found that the
type of labeling regulations in the California proposition could cost an
average family hundreds of dollars per year in higher food costs.
Note that they analyzed a rejected Oregon proposal, not
the proposal on which Californians will be voting in November! But
Joanna Shepherd-Bailey, PhD, has analyzed the one in California.
She’s
the renowned tenured law professor from Emory who has testified before
the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the
Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academy of Sciences. Her
analysis reveals—in direct contradiction to the propaganda being put
forth by the biotech companies—that GMO labeling will likely cause no increase in consumer costs at all!
In fact, her report refutes the two key fear-mongering arguments being put forth by opponents of GMO labeling.
Kathy Fairbanks, the spokeswoman for the Coalition against the Costly Food Labeling Proposition, claims
that GMO labeling will increase the cost of food by hundreds of dollars
per California family because food producers and grocery store owner
will have to re-label food and put up placards. But Shepherd-Bailey found that the one-time average
per-product cost to manufacturers of redesigning all food labels is
$1,104, which represents only 0.03% of annual per product sales, and
that the one-time average per-store cost of placards disclosing
genetic engineering will be $2,820, or about 0.1% of the annual sales
in the average supermarket.
Because
the increase in cost-per-item of goods is so small, it is most likely
that this increase will not be passed on to the consumer at all.
According to extensive survey research, a primary reason firms don’t
change prices in response to many cost changes is because of the fear of
losing customers. Even if relabeling expenses were substantial enough
to justify the cost of re-pricing, many suppliers will simply refrain from changing prices from fear of losing customers to other products that have not increased prices.
Besides,
manufacturers change their labeling all the time—anytime their product
is “new and improved” or they change a logo or a box design—and those
costs are not passed on to the consumer. When the government required
nutritional information to be posted on each container, prices didn’t go
up because of it. It would actually cost companies more internally to
raise prices than for them to simply absorb the costs. And with an
eighteen-month lead time, it may not cost many companies anything at
all.
In a worst-case scenario, even if all of these costs were passed on to consumers, this translates to a mere $1.27 one-time increase in the total annual food expenditure for the average household in California. And this is an overestimate, since not all products will require GE labeling.
In
other words, these specious allegations about rising food costs is just
the latest attack from the anti-labeling camp—those who don’t want you
to know what you’re eating. Several weeks ago we told you about
their specious charge that Label GMO will become a Prop 65 type “right
to sue” law—that it would “create…frivolous and costly lawsuits” and
would lead to abusive “bounty hunter”–style lawsuits that allow
plaintiffs to keep a “bounty” of 25% of civil penalties collected—when
in fact the initiative does not include the controversial bounty fees
found in other California laws, and their entire campaign is based on
disinformation. They are entitled to their own opinions, of course—just
not their own facts.
Since the law would be enforced through litigation, opponents also claim
that GMO labeling will impose high costs on the state of California as a
result of an increase in litigation. Shepherd-Bailey shows that this is
also false. She estimates that the cost to the state will be
negligible: the annual costs for processing and hearing cases should be
less than $50,000. And while there will be administrative costs to the
state as its Department of Health begins to implement certain provisions
of the law, her analysis found that these administrative costs will be
less than $1 million—that is, less than 1 cent for each person living in the state of California—causing
the department’s expenditures to increase by no more than 0.03% and
total state expenditures to increase by just 0.0008%. That
one cent is all it will cost for critical health information to be made
available to the many consumers who want to know what is in the food
they feed their families.
If you are a California resident, please consider being part of the campaign
to educate your fellow Californians and get them to vote on November 6!
Over 90% of Californians want their foods labeled—but it will never
happen if citizens don’t understand the issues and get to the polls.
Volunteer. Donate. Join a local group. And get the word out!
Being
able to see which foods contain genetically engineered ingredients is
particularly important when you see how dangerous GE crops can be.
Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” crops have been genetically engineered to
permit direct application of the Monsanto herbicide Roundup
(glyphosate), allowing farmers to drench both their crops and crop land
with the herbicide so as to be able to kill nearby weeds—and any other
green thing the herbicide touches—without killing the crops.
According to a recent animal study published in the journal Toxicology in Vitro,
glyphosate, which is frequently present residually in GMO foods, can
affect men’s testosterone and sperm counts. It is toxic to testicle
cells, can even kill them, and significantly lowers testosterone
synthesis. As Jonathan V. Wright, MD, in the July 2012 issue of his Nutrition & Healing newsletter, points out,
synthetic herbicides and pesticides are essentially “environmental
estrogens” in humans, as these molecules mimic estrogen activity. GMO
agriculture has exacerbated this situation.
There are many, many more health issues with GMO foods, as you can read about in our earlier articles.
Source: http://www.anh-usa.org/pro-gmo-propaganda-in-california-dismantled-by-new-cost-study/
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