Earlier this month, the California Right to Know initiative announced at various rallies held around the state that it had collected the prerequisite number of signatures to get its proposal on the November ballot. The initiative would require biotech foods (also known as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs) and foods containing GMO ingredients to be labeled.
A number of mainstream media outlets reported on the California activity. Andrea Billups’ piece in the Washington Times and Jack Kaskey’s article for Bloomberg nicely sum up why the broader agriculture and food manufacturing community is opposed to the measure:
The California campaign is the best chance for biotech labeling in the United States after the failure of similar bills in 19 states and the rejection of a petition to the Food and Drug Administration last month.
But the California voter initiative is likely to meet fierce resistance from agricultural and business interests, who predict it will prove costly both for growers and consumers. Opponents warn the measure constitutes a “right to sue” initiative that will undercut sales of numerous food items that have been consumed safely for years.
Monsanto opposes labeling modified ingredients because the move risks “misleading consumers into thinking products are not safe when in fact they are,” said Sara Miller, a Monsanto spokeswoman.
The initiative is a “back door” way to hurt the $13.3 billion biotech crop industry, according to Richard Lobb, managing director for the Council for Biotechnology Information. The Washington-based council represents Monsanto and five other biotech-seed developers. “They basically are trying to scare consumers through labeling,” Lobb said in a telephone interview. “The obvious objective is to push biotechnology out of the market altogether.”
Biotech labeling has never been endorsed by the FDA. The agency says crops engineered to tolerate herbicides or produce insecticide pose no greater health risks than conventional foods.
The California Farm Bureau opposes the ballot initiative, along with the California Chamber of Commerce, the California Seed Association, the California Grain and Feed Association, and California Women for Agriculture.
Jamie Johansson, vice president of the California Farm Bureau and an olive farmer from Oroville, Calif., said the initiative puts an enormous burden on growers and packagers, and it prevents any processed food from being labeled as “natural.”
An apple, for example, wouldn’t require a label, but it would if it were ground into apple sauce. The same for almonds: They are fine picked raw, but ground into almond butter, even without any other ingredients, they would not pass the test under provisions of the proposed label law.
Food labels should be reserved for “critically important food safety and nutritional information,” said Brian Kennedy, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which opposes the California initiative.
The California proposal would mandate a label for foods in which more than 0.5 percent of the product is a genetically modified ingredient. The proposal exempts meat, dairy foods and beer.
The label “would be the equivalent of a skull and crossbones” that would drive away customers and force food producers to stop using engineered ingredients, Joseph Mercola, the labeling initiative’s leading funder with $800,000 in donations, said. Mercola is an osteopath who promotes natural remedies at his clinic in Hoffman Estates, Illinois.
Martina Newell-McGloughlin, director of the University of California Systemwide Biotechnology Research and Education Program, called the labeling proposal “completely blown out of context.”
“To me, the issue with this as a scientist is you are focusing on the labeling of process rather than the labeling of product,” she said. “The issue for safety should be on the product itself if you are going to look at risk-assessment and whether something should be of concern to the consumer.”
“You don’t have a label on sausage telling you how they are made and you probably wouldn’t want one. For biotech products, the issues are an individual’s right to know. If you were going to ask to supply all information made on a processed crop, you’d have a whole encyclopedia attached to everything on your grocery shelf.”
Chris Shaw, a New York-based analyst, said labels identifying genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, won’t change most consumers’ buying decisions. “People who are buying Oreos aren’t going to care if there is GMO soybean oil in there,” Shaw said. “It’s going to be a marginal group of people that will care.”
That’s the consensus of consumers who participated in the IFIC survey. Seventy-six percent of respondents could not think of any additional information (other than what is already required) that they wish to see on food labels. Of the 24 percent who wanted more information, only 3 percent (or about five people and less than 1 percent of all surveyed) wanted more information about biotechnology. In addition, 87 percent of Americans say they have not taken any action out of concern about biotechnology.
IFIC President and CEO David Schmidt said the strength of the methodology used in the IFIC survey sets it apart from other surveys looking at food technology issues.
“In the public landscape, we often see polling that tries to provoke or frighten people into giving a certain desired response,” Schmidt said. “We don’t believe in leading consumers to any conclusion. We believe our open-ended methodology used at the beginning of our survey provides a more accurate view of concerns on Americans’ minds, and the survey is the most objective and long-term publicly available data set on U.S. consumer attitudes toward food and agricultural biotechnology.”
The survey, formerly the “IFIC Survey of Consumer Attitudinal Trends toward Food Biotechnology,” is part of a series that has been conducted since 1997.
As we celebrate Arbor Day 2012, I want to personally chew out any of the “activist” ilk whose agendas are so extreme, it results in destruction. I’m talking about eco-terrorism, agri-terrorism, crop vandalism, etc. – basically, killing trees and plants.
This destruction becomes especially horrific when it kills not only the plants and trees themselves, but holds back research and scientific progress aimed and healing, fueling and feeding the world.
In recent weeks, The New Zealand Herald reported on the senseless destruction of hundreds of genetically-engineered pine trees. Scion, a New Zealand Crown Research Institute (CRI), planted 375 radiata pines last year to test herbicide resistance and study reproductive development.
Scion Chief Executive Dr. Warren Parker describes this as a blatant act of vandalism designed to end Scion’s genetic modification research program. The company said damage to the trees, which occurred over the Easter Weekend, will cost around $400,000.
“As a Crown Research Institute, Scion has a responsibility to pursue areas of science and technology that offer opportunities for the forestry sector in New Zealand, including gene technologies. While this is a big blow to us and has set back our work some 12 months, we will not be deterred in carrying out our lawful research,” said Dr. Parker.
“The field trial was approved under one of the strictest regulatory regimes in the world, and our team has fully complied with the containment controls. Despite this, our research opponents were determined to stop us and used criminal means to do so,” Dr. Parker said.
Most of the trees were less than 1m high, and were part of two experiments due to run for two to three years.
Last fall, eco-terrorists targeted Hawaiian papaya farmers. Fortunately, these attacks got some wide- spread attention by Fox News and the Huffington Post.
Anti-biotech activists chopped down hundreds of papaya trees that were genetically engineered to resist the ringspot virus. The ringspot virus all but wiped out Hawaii’s papaya industry in the 1990s, and the genetically modified fruit is credited with saving the state’s $11 million papaya production industry.
“It’s hard to imagine anybody putting that much effort into doing something like that,” said Delan Perry, vice president of the Hawaii Papaya Industry Association. “It means somebody has to have passionate reason.”
Papaya grower Erlinda Bernardo says her family will plant again in another area after 3,000 trees worth tens of thousands of dollars were destroyed. “We’re afraid to plant in that area, so we’re giving up the lease there. When you start all over again, you have to wait a year for the papaya to bear fruit.”
Last summer in Australia, three Greenpeace activists broke into a scientific farm near Canberra and destroyed a crop of genetically modified wheat. The farm belongs to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), the Australian national science agency, and the crop was part of research into developing genetically modified crop plants with enhanced nutritional value.
Suzanne Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Sciences, issued a statement in which she condemned the attack. “For an organization that claims to be dedicated to the protection of the environment, this is an unconscionable act,” she said.
The same week, The Farmers Guardian reported that masked attackers overpowered guards at two GM trial sites in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt, destroyed potato and wheat plants and caused damage worth hundreds of thousands of euros.
Vandalism of biotech crop trials became such a problem in the UK in recent years, that the government mandated that the trials be conducted in secret locations.
In the United States, many state legislatures have passed bills increasing the penalties for destruction of field trials. “In addition to the cost of the property damage itself, state legislatures say the real damage is in the destruction of the research,” says Ab Basu, BIO’s Managing Director of State Governmental Relations.
There’s been a lot written about these types of ag research attacks, and I have to agree with some who liken these efforts to the book burnings of the 1930s. These fanatics say they are following some kind of guiding ideological principle, but what is principled about preventing new information and new science from seeing the light of day?
British professor Anthony Trewavas told The Economistthat today’s global-food problems demand agricultural pragmatism and flexibility, not ideology. “If the crop trashers are so convinced they are right and have public support, they should identify themselves – and face a new trial. There, in front of the world, they can air their complaints and defend the need to destroy a trial that aims to put food in the mouths of hungry people.”
Nature Biotechnology published an editorial in their March edition in which they state that averting a global food crisis will require the deconstruction of several hurdles to the deployment of new strategies in plant breeding.
Last October, just 12 years after the 6 billionth person was born, the United Nations declared that 7 billion people now inhabit the earth. Of these 7 billion, close to a billion are chronically undernourished and another billion are malnourished.
The world’s population will swell to 9 billion in the next 50 years, during which the human race will consume twice as much food as it has since the beginning of agriculture, 10,000 years ago.
As the rate of population growth outstrips the rate of yield growth for crop staples, the world faces a food crisis that will require unprecedented intellectual, financial and material investment. It will also require the full deployment of every plant breeding technology currently available, including the generation of crops via transgenesis.
But even more importantly, it will necessitate a reemphasis on innovation, greater diversification of the agrochemical and agbiotech industry, streamlining and harmonization of regulatory oversight, and an end to the political grandstanding that has characterized the agbiotech debate so far.
Crop improvement will also be key, necessitating the deployment of the best plant breeding technologies currently available.
The video features United States Department of Agriculture research geneticist Margaret Pooler, who says that scientists are now looking for ways to make cherry trees hardier – including breeding and developing trees that are disease resistant and that are well-suited for city environments.
The brief video explains the origin of DC’s cheery trees that line the Tidal Basin and how researchers at the National Arboretum are working to make the trees durable as well as pretty. Plant biotechnology is one tool that can help researchers develop new types of trees that are more resistant to diseases and pests and tolerant to various environment stresses.
Proof positive that biotechnology is enhancing the way we feed, fuel and heal the world – and protect our national monuments!
Earlier this month, the California Right to Know initiative announced at various rallies held around the state that it had collected the prerequisite number of signatures to get its proposal on the November ballot. The initiative would require biotech foods (also known as Genetically Modified Organisms, or GMOs) and foods containing GMO ingredients to be labeled.
