BRATTLEBORO — In the midst of Vermont's campaign to require the labeling of genetically modified foods (GMOs), which led up to the state legislature's recent passage of the GMO-labeling bill, the Brattleboro Food Co-op invited Gary Hirshberg, co-founder and chairman of Stonyfield Farms, as its guest of honor at its annual shareholder meeting last year.
“I'm a proud capitalist,” Hirshberg told us, but there was now a call to action beyond duty to his company.
Long the champion of organic causes, Hirshberg is also the chairman of the Just Label It campaign, becoming a public leader in the stand against Monsanto, the most notorious corporation in the GMO business.
At our shareholder meeting, he spoke knowledgeably on the subject, citing, for example, how traces of herbicides and Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) toxin - used in genetically modified plants like potatoes and tobacco - have been discovered in umbilical-cord blood.
These and other issues gave weight to the idea that GMOs ought to be labeled as a warning to consumers.
Along with his compelling narrative, however, were a few phrases with which he peppered his talk: “Don't get involved in a scientific debate on this.” “They have their science, we have ours.” “I wish we could beat their lies with our facts, but....”
Embodied in this presentation were the myriad oversights many are willing to accept in the light of personal ideology: We can accept the words of a “proud capitalist” - if he's condescending to side with us. We can accept the conclusions of science - so long as they reinforce our preconceived notions.
But to step back from how emotionally wrought the issue of GMOs has been made, we should recognize that organic-food manufacturers have a natural incentive to call into question the safety of their competitors' products.
When this truth is coupled with a reticence to engage in factual discussion, the goal of GMO labeling does not appear as an effort to inform, but to disturb the consumer's peace of mind.
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The first problem: the movement's impetus is for the public to reject GMO technology without understanding its benefits.
Crops may be genetically modified for pesticide, blight, or drought resistance - all of which improve crop yield - or for nutritional enhancement, such as golden rice engineered to produce vitamin A. These advances in food technology may soon prove invaluable in feeding our growing world.
To lump products together on the basis of their containing GMOs ignores not just these benefits but how they might have absolutely nothing else in common with one another. Indeed, as the Vermont bill now stands, food labels would say that ingredients are produced with genetic engineering, without the need to mention how this affects the food at all. This already suggests a disinterest in illuminating the public in actual details about GMOs.
Our co-op has been instrumental in promoting the cause of GMO labeling, telling our customers that they ought to have a choice in what they purchase.
But an understated problem is that businesses such as the Brattleboro Food Co-op are supporting the idea that GMO products are potentially dangerous, while continuing to sell both GMO products and more costly non-GMO goods.
The “choice” we are emphasizing is one only wealthier customers can realistically make. The unspoken message to poorer customers: this food might make you sick - we don't know, but good luck.
If the Co-op earnestly believes that GMO products present an actual danger, we have a moral imperative to stop selling them. Who would willingly make the choice to imperil their health? That we stop selling GMO food entirely may well be the idea - affordability be damned.
It's true that issues connected to GMO production - issues such as pesticide runoff, topsoil erosion, corporate control of food production, the tremendous amount of corn and soy used to feed livestock - are concerns worth examining. But the explicit intent of labeling is to tell consumers that not only is there a substantial difference between GMO and non-GMO products, but that there is a safety concern that requires that the difference be highlighted.
The critical legal distinction here is that the labeling can be compelled only if such a safety concern can be demonstrated - customer curiosity is not considered a valid legal threshold.
The movement's supporters are confident that such a connection to safety can be established, and they are willing to wager a significant amount of Vermont's money on this belief. The assistant attorney general has estimated that, if the presumptive law is defeated in court, the cost to the state would be between $5 million and $8 million.
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In seeking the proper legal justification, organizations such as Vermont Right to Know GMOs promote numerous studies that question the safety of the products.
But these and other anti-GMO studies are frequently flawed, arrive at misleading conclusions, or are downright invalid. As they are typically easily debunked under scientific scrutiny, the primary legal basis for Vermont's labeling initiative could be undermined.
Here are several examples of such studies.
First, an experiment purporting to demonstrate GMO-related tumor growth in rats was retracted due to its small sample size and its use of rats bred to be highly prone to tumor development.
That retracted study was not listed on Vermont Right to Know GMOs' website, and a lead organizer of theirs claims that the study was withdrawn not because it had a huge bias and terrible methodology but because of a “double standard and foul play” on the part of the scientific community.
Second, a study from last year, citing an increased rate of severe stomach inflammation in GMO-fed pigs, was not only conducted on unhealthy pigs, but also ignored the numerous areas in which non-GMO-fed pigs fared worse - about twice as many had liver problems than the GMO-fed pigs, nearly three times as many had heart abnormalities, and even more non-GMO-fed pigs had “mild to moderate” stomach inflammation than the GMO-fed pigs.
Furthermore, the journal that published the paper has no mainstream credibility. This study is cited on Vermont Right to Know GMOs' website.
Third, a study examined Bt toxin's effect on mice, but rather than using the Bt protein found in GMO crops, cultures of the actual Bt-producing bacteria were used at a dosage millions of times higher than a person would be exposed to from consuming a GM food.
In fact, this means the mice were dosed with the same natural pesticide used in a majority of organic farming instead of the food that includes its genetic material.
This study, following its retraction from a reputable scientific journal, was republished in a different journal under the auspices of OMICS Publishing, a group so notorious for its unethical scientific practices and the low quality of its studies that the National Institutes of Health no longer accepts its publications.
Yet this study, too, is cited on Vermont Right to Know GMOs' website.
As for the study Gary Hirshberg referenced on finding a Bt protein in umbilical cord blood, the data was neither useful in either determining the source of the protein (which could have come from organic food) nor in assessing its risk to maternal or fetal health.
These studies, and many others the movement cites, are more invested in fearful conclusions than they are in sound research and methodology.
The anti-GMO movement highlights papers like these not only to raise the specter of a public-health concern but also to claim that such studies indicate that there is no scientific consensus on the subject.
However, the vast majority of studies on GMOs have failed to demonstrate a hazard.
A Critical Reviews in Biotechnology review of 1,783 studies and other literature on GMOs from between 2002 and 2012 concluded that they had “not detected any significant hazards directly connected with the use of [genetically engineered] crops.”
Moreover, over a span of 25 years, the European Union funded (which is to say, the biotechnology industry did not fund) 130 projects by more than 500 independent research groups, and concluded that “biotechnology, and in particular GMOs, are not per se more risky than e.g. conventional plant breeding technologies.”
The anti-GMO movement prefers to cast doubt on prevailing scientific thought in order to influence both consumers and legislators - even if it means misinforming them with discredited studies.
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But while there isn't a danger in consuming GMOs, shouldn't a customer still have a right to know whether a product contains them, if they are either unconvinced by the scientific evidence or have an ethical problem with consuming them?
Putting aside the legality of compelling labels that merely satisfy consumer curiosity, let's say that this is a valid argument. The problem you then encounter is that there are innumerable health or ethical concerns that are not labeled on products.
Do we know if a product contains an ingredient grown near a potentially toxic source? Or an ingredient produced from slave labor, as many chocolates are? Or the practices of all the companies involved in the production of every ingredient? Or every pesticide used? Or whether the manure is supplied from a factory farm? Or how much any selectively bred yet non-GMO ingredient differs from its wild-grown counterpart?
Any one of these factors could be more important to someone's health, ethics, or curiosity than the presence of GMOs, but labeling can be compelled for none of them.
The leaders of the anti-GMO movement target the fruits of genetic engineering with regard only for their own personal ideology. Stampeded in the rush to stigmatize GMOs are the benefits of pursuing GMO production, the science which has failed to find a credible threat in GMOs, and the state's own financial interest in avoiding a dubious legal battle.
But the greatest hypocrisy of the movement is in telling consumers that they have a “right to know,” while supplying them only with the information that will stoke unwarranted fear.
These same consumers must feel as though they have no choice but to put up the money to protect their families and to stand up to a shadowy corporate giant.
For all the demand of knowing what's in our food, as far as the GMO-labeling movement is concerned, the fear of the unknown is as much education as a customer requires.