I've been following the debate on GMOs ever since watching documentary Food Inc. in my environmental policy class. As part of the job application process, a potential employer asked me to write a response to a contentious issues covered in a news article. I decided to respond to the this weekend's NYT article "Major Grocer to Label Foods with Gene-Modified Content." I'm sharing it here because it's an issue that I'm passionate about. Whether or not you personally prefer eating genetically modified food, I hope you can agree that the consumer has a right to know whether or not their food is genetically altered so that they can make the choice themselves.
Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have become the norm in the American agriculture industry, yet consumers currently have no way to determine if the food they are eating is genetically modified. The public has expressed a range of personal, environmental, health, and economic concerns related to GMOs consumption, but organizations such as the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association claim that they lack warrants for their claims. On March 9, 2013, the New York Times published an article chronicling Whole Foods’decision to label foods that contain GMOs. Whole Foods is a major upscale grocery chain that primarily sells natural and organic food, and their decision illustrates how labelling GMOs can be profitable. Consumers shouldn’t have to wait for individual corporations to label GMOs, however. The government ought to protect the consumer’s right to know by requiring all GMOs to be labelled.
The New York Times article cites a Mellman Group poll that shows 90 percent of respondents support labelling GMOs. Consumers are hesitant to embrace GMOs for a variety of personal, environmental, health, and economic reasons. Some oppose GMOs on religious grounds, as they believe altering genes is akin to “playing God.” Others are worried about the dearth of studies examining the long term impacts of GMOs on human health and the environment. Similarly, GMO opponents point out that GMOs threaten biodiversity. Others merely want to avoid supporting Monsanto, the largest vender of GMO seeds and their associated products, as it maintains an unchecked monopoly on GMOs.
While the Americans public is very much in favor of labelling GMOs, the agriculture and food industry is vehemently opposed. Opponents fear that Americans will chose not to buy GMOs despite any evidence showing that they negatively impact human health. They correctly show that the Food and Drug Administration, American Medical Association, and World Health Organization have no evidence showing that GMOs are unsafe for consumption. However, the absence of evidence on the dangers of GMOs doesn’t mean that they are inherently safe. Perhaps that’s why the European Union requires all GMOs to be labelled and countries as diverse as Peru have banned GMOs entirely. Moreover even if the GMOs aren’t harmful themselves, they encourage farmers to use more harmful pesticides and herbicides on their crops, as GMO crops are resistant to these chemicals. As a result, the chemical runoff from GMO crops poisons soil and water resources.
Since non-GMO products tend to be more expensive than their counterparts, opponents might also argue that other grocery chains won’t be able to afford to make the same choice as Whole Foods, as Whole Foods is an upscale grocery atypical of the rest of the industry. Yet the New York Times article states that more than 20 other corporations that sell food products, including Wal-Mart, met last week to consider labelling GMOs as well. Moreover, some consumers prefer to buy GMOs because they are cheaper, have a longer shelf life, and have other enhancements. Whole Foods isn’t refusing to sell GMOs; it’s giving consumers enough information so they can choose what’s best for them.
Despite studies showing extensive support for labelling GMOs, last November voters narrowly failed to pass a stateballot initiative which would require the labelling of GMOs in California. Corporate interests spent billions of dollars to defeat the cause, which is why the government must intervene at a federal level. Consumers have expressed their right to know what’s in their food, and they’ve cited a variety of valid personal, environmental, health, and economic reasons. The government ought to require the labelling of GMOs so that consumers can be given the product information they need to make the right choice for themselves, otherwise corporations will unfairly make that choice for them by refusing to label their products.
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Visit Just Label It to learn more about the campaign to label GMOs.
