The Trump administration’s new labeling rules for genetically modified foods, going into effect this week, are provoking the ire of environmental groups who say the rules favor agriculture industry interests over environmental concerns about the rising use of toxic chemicals by farmers.
The Department of Agriculture is endorsing the “motto” of the American Farm Bureau and other farm industry groups that “the customer is always wrong,” said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, just one of several environmental groups that had tried to push the administration to endorse a plan for a broader, more transparent national labeling system that favors consumer awareness.
Instead, the labeling rules favor recommendations from industry that make it potentially more confusing for consumers, the groups say.
The new label also doesn’t correspond with other labeling regulations already used in dozens of other countries, Faber said, and will likely cause confusion.
The term Genetically Modified Organisms, or more simply “GMOs,” refers to crops, vegetables, and fruits that have been altered genetically to be, among other things, resistant to chemical herbicides, like Monsanto’s RoundUp.
Environmentalists argue that the increased resistance of these crops to herbicides, some of which are linked to cancer, have resulted in farmers using the chemicals more indiscriminately.
That has in turn raised the public’s concern about the amount of GMO products present in their foods.
A coalition that included the National Corn Growers Association, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the American Soybean Association, and other major agricultural commodity groups voiced alarm with the Trump administration last year, calling an earlier version of the GMO rule a potential threat to the agriculture industry if it were adopted.
Their biggest concern was that by including processed foods like sugar, oil, and flour as GMOs, the rule was too broad, and would place too many burdens on industry and hurt sales. The thinking was that the label might be taken by consumers as indicating an inferior product and therefore put those products at a disadvantage to others without the GMO label.
“[O]ur concerns have always been that any mandated disclosures must not disparage biotechnology, impose undue regulatory burdens or create market discrimination when there are no material differences between conventional foods and foods derived from biotechnology,” the American Farm Bureau said in comments to the Agriculture Department.
One of the definitions that the agency was contemplating for bioengineered food included all refined products, which the industry opposed.
The industry coalition maintained in comments submitted last year to the Agriculture Department’s marketing service that “sound science shows” that refined ingredients derived from crops labeled as “bioengineered” do not contain genetic material.
The final rule is closer to what the industry wanted. Davie Stephens, president of the American Soybean Association, said he is pleased with the final rule, saying it allows transparency for consumers while following the intent of Congress that only food that contains modified genetic material be required to be labeled bioengineered under the law.
Stephens added that individual food manufacturers have the option of providing more information if they so choose.
The industry coalition argues that because the DNA from the altered crops is boiled off in the processing phase, no label is required.
But environmentalists say that that argument doesn’t address the questions of transparency and a consumer’s right to know.
“Consumers are not just interested in whether [genetically engineered] traits are present in the food, they’re interested in how the food was produced,” Faber said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “People want to be part of the conversation about how this technology is used, and want to be trusted to make their own decisions.”
The rule also doesn’t use the ubiquitous “GMO” label that many consumers are more likely to be familiar with, but instead the term “bioengineered,” which environmental groups call confusing and misleading.
If one searches online for “bioengineered,” the results include images of mice with human ears being grown on the their backs as part of human tissue experiments, Faber explained. It’s not the same thing as “genetically modified.”
“We believe there must be clear, on-package labeling which uses well-established terms like GMO or genetic engineering, and neutral symbols,” said Dana Perls of the activist group Friends of the Earth.
Consumers have said they want the GMO label, and this regulation “falls short of helping do that,” she told the Washington Examiner. “It’s really a disaster,” she said, because it only helps to hide what is in the food, which is the opposite of what a good labeling standard is meant to achieve.
The large agriculture groups argue that the intent of Congress, which established the law creating the labels, was to make “BE,” bioengineered, the label standard.
The agriculture agency also gives food producers the option of providing a code readable by a smart phone to disclose information to the consumer, in addition to a phone number to text the consumer the information.
Environmentalists say the problem with that is 30 percent of Americans do not own a smart phone and cellular service is not always reliable in many, mainly rural, parts of the country.
In light of the labeling rule’s problems, environmental groups are urging consumers to seek foods labeled “organic” as the best way to avoid consumption of chemical pesticides and herbicides.
Friends of the Earth issued a study last week that showed that a diet of organically grown products can drastically reduce, or eliminate, most of the pesticides consumed by ingesting foods that aren’t organically grown.
