Labeling GMOs
In July of 2016, the United States Congress passed The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law. This amendment to the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 mandated that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) disclose the presence of bioengineered materials in foods. Food manufacturers are now required to label the packaging of foods that contain biotechnology, but they have the option to do it with a text label or a QR code that takes shoppers to a website with the disclosure.
As the topic of my final installment in this Food Labeling Series, labeling genetically modified organisms, better known as GMOs, is probably one of the most controversial issues being discussed right now in the ag industry. Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, who was one of the leading faces of the bill, said, “This is the most important food and agriculture policy debate of the last 20 years.” |
Photo from www.rodalesorganiclife.com
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Films such as Food, Inc. and Fresh drastically expanded the anti-GMO movement. The majority of consumers, especially those in urbanized areas, believe that bioengineered crops are ridden with toxic chemicals and mutated DNA, making them a threat to human health. This has also boosted the sale of organic products which, to many, is just another way of saying “no GMOs present.”
Looking to profit off of this fear, many companies started using the “Non-GMO” label to mark up the prices… often on products that don’t even have a GMO option on the market. Did you know that there’s only 10 crops that even have bioengineered varieties available in America? They are corn, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, canola, papaya, squash, apples, and potatoes. The thing is… food manufacturers know that most Americans don’t realize there aren’t GM options to most products causing shoppers to willingly pay a few extra dollars on food they think is safer but is actually exactly the same.
Many people don’t realize that, for any GM crop to be approved for farmers to grow, researchers must extensively study how changing the DNA of that plant will affect human health and the environment. In May of 2016, the National Academy of Science published a very wide-reaching report that “found no substantiated evidence of a difference in risks to human health between currently commercialized genetically engineered (GE) crops and conventionally bred crops, nor did it find conclusive cause-and-effect evidence of environmental problems from the GE crops.” This is only one of many current data collections that found GMOs cause no harm.
Any who’ve been around Farming Truth for a while have heard me say this before: people have every right to question the safety of their food and put their dollars towards products grown the way they want. However, with so much misinformation, consumers are being misled through food labels into making buying decisions that have the opposite effects they hoped to achieve. What do I mean?
Looking to profit off of this fear, many companies started using the “Non-GMO” label to mark up the prices… often on products that don’t even have a GMO option on the market. Did you know that there’s only 10 crops that even have bioengineered varieties available in America? They are corn, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beets, canola, papaya, squash, apples, and potatoes. The thing is… food manufacturers know that most Americans don’t realize there aren’t GM options to most products causing shoppers to willingly pay a few extra dollars on food they think is safer but is actually exactly the same.
Many people don’t realize that, for any GM crop to be approved for farmers to grow, researchers must extensively study how changing the DNA of that plant will affect human health and the environment. In May of 2016, the National Academy of Science published a very wide-reaching report that “found no substantiated evidence of a difference in risks to human health between currently commercialized genetically engineered (GE) crops and conventionally bred crops, nor did it find conclusive cause-and-effect evidence of environmental problems from the GE crops.” This is only one of many current data collections that found GMOs cause no harm.
Any who’ve been around Farming Truth for a while have heard me say this before: people have every right to question the safety of their food and put their dollars towards products grown the way they want. However, with so much misinformation, consumers are being misled through food labels into making buying decisions that have the opposite effects they hoped to achieve. What do I mean?
There is a wide-spread myth that GMO foods are soaked in pesticides, most notably Round-Up. It is commonly believed that organic crops remedy this. However, plant geneticists have actually made GMO varieties that are naturally resistant to pests, meaning they need much less (if any) pesticides applied to them. Organic crops, although only treated with “natural” pesticides, actually need more chemicals applied to them because the chemicals are slower-acting and the crops have no natural resistance. This brings us to a weird paradox that has engulfed the 21st-century food industry: people are buying organic crops because they think they were treated with less chemicals when GMOs actually fit that bill better.
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Here’s another one: people believe that organic food is more wholesome and nutritious, but extensive research (read the studies here, here, and here) have found that the nutrient profiles of organic foods are not at all different from conventionally grown crops. Also, organic crops have a higher risk of transmitting food-borne illness because of the excessive amount of fertilizers they need and contamination by wildlife.
On the other hand, biotechnology has actually changed the chemical composition of fruits and vegetables, providing them with higher levels of nutrients. Genetic improvements have also allowed them to grow at an accelerated rate, meaning they need less fertilizer to reach their harvest-ready state. Once again, we see people buying organic products to do something that GMOs actually do better. There are definitely benefits of organic produce, however, the majority of people that buy organic have been misled about what those actually are.
This is the argument against labeling GM foods. Advocates for the disclosure believe that people have a right to know what’s in their food. However, using brightly colored “Non-GMO” labels as marketing gimmicks further encourages consumers to steer clear of any package that says its contents contain that dirty little abbreviation. This labeling only widens the gap between the general public’s buying decisions and the truth about GMOs.
In a different world where people actually understood biotechnology, I would be an advocate of labeling products that had GM ingredients. However, as it is, The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law is only driving people to choose products that actually do the opposite (negative effects of both sustainability and human health) of what consumers want.
Certainly there’s much more science that needs to be conducted, but GMOs have a real potential of addressing all of consumers’ concerns, and feeding a growing world at the same time. We can’t let greedy package labelers scare the world into turning a blind eye to that. In fear of sounding like a broken record, that’s really the point of every post in this Food Labeling Series. Well-meaning people are buying into labels that don’t mean at all what they think. We need to broaden the conversation about our food to show people that we’ve already solved the problems they’re worried about… they’re just purchasing the wrong label!
On the other hand, biotechnology has actually changed the chemical composition of fruits and vegetables, providing them with higher levels of nutrients. Genetic improvements have also allowed them to grow at an accelerated rate, meaning they need less fertilizer to reach their harvest-ready state. Once again, we see people buying organic products to do something that GMOs actually do better. There are definitely benefits of organic produce, however, the majority of people that buy organic have been misled about what those actually are.
This is the argument against labeling GM foods. Advocates for the disclosure believe that people have a right to know what’s in their food. However, using brightly colored “Non-GMO” labels as marketing gimmicks further encourages consumers to steer clear of any package that says its contents contain that dirty little abbreviation. This labeling only widens the gap between the general public’s buying decisions and the truth about GMOs.
In a different world where people actually understood biotechnology, I would be an advocate of labeling products that had GM ingredients. However, as it is, The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law is only driving people to choose products that actually do the opposite (negative effects of both sustainability and human health) of what consumers want.
Certainly there’s much more science that needs to be conducted, but GMOs have a real potential of addressing all of consumers’ concerns, and feeding a growing world at the same time. We can’t let greedy package labelers scare the world into turning a blind eye to that. In fear of sounding like a broken record, that’s really the point of every post in this Food Labeling Series. Well-meaning people are buying into labels that don’t mean at all what they think. We need to broaden the conversation about our food to show people that we’ve already solved the problems they’re worried about… they’re just purchasing the wrong label!