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Our Best Chance To Stop Vilsack From Leading USDA!
While serving as USDA Secretary under President Obama, Mr. Vilsack supported chemically-dependent industrial agriculture that resulted in millions more pounds of pesticides released into the environment, contaminating our water and soils and harming human health and wildlife
President Joe Biden has nominated former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to return as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). This would be a huge step backwards in our urgent need to support agricultural systems that mitigate the ongoing climate crisis while protecting public health and the environment. But the Senate hasn’t confirmed Vilsack for the role yet, so we still have a chance to stop this regressive appointment by writing our senators.
Tell Biden’s transition team: Oppose Tom Vilsack as USDA Secretary!
While serving as USDA Secretary under President Obama, Mr. Vilsack supported chemically-dependent industrial agriculture that resulted in millions more pounds of pesticides released into the environment, contaminating our water and soils and harming human health and wildlife.
The beef industry supports Vilsack’s nomination and it’s easy to see why. Vilsack put meatpacking profits over worker and food safety when he implemented a new poultry inspection system that led to plants running faster line speeds with fewer independent inspectors. The last time he took on this role, the meat industry grew larger and more concentrated, further exacerbating the climate crisis. We can’t afford to make the same mistake in 2021.
Help us ensure USDA moves forwards, not backwards!
We know that “bigger IS NOT better” when it comes to agriculture! We can grow more food with fewer chemicals by investing in small and medium-sized, diversified farms.
That won’t happen with Vilsack — an avid supporter of the expansion of genetically engineered crops, the majority of which are designed for one purpose: to withstand being sprayed with more pesticides. In fact, Vilsack is such an aggressive supporter of genetic engineering, the Biotechnology Industry Organization named him Governor of the Year twice.
Vilsack’s appointment would also continue the “revolving door” relationship between chemical industry employees and government officials. Since leaving USDA, Vilsack has represented corporate dairies and other major food corporations. To avoid conflict of interest, we cannot continue to put executives of mega-corporations in top government positions — especially when those mega-corporations are also mega-polluters.
We don’t need to wait and see what Vilsack will do as USDA Secretary. We already know. He had eight years to put farmers, workers, and the environment ahead of food industry profits, but he chose not to.
In the midst of our climate crisis, we need a USDA Secretary who will make U.S. agriculture sustainable and resilient. That’s not Tom Vilsack.
Tell Biden’s transition team: Vilsack
is not what our country needs right now!
Thank you for everything you do,
Jaydee Hanson
Policy Director
Center for Food Safety
Should GMOs Be Allowed In Organic Food? USDA Sparks Debate
USDA Undersecretary of Agriculture Greg Ibach testified before the House Agriculture Subcommittee this month that plants grown with the aid of genetically modified organisms and gene editing could be allowed to be certified organic in the future.
AUTHOR Jessi Devenyns
July 29, 2019
Dive Brief:
USDA Undersecretary of Agriculture Greg Ibach testified before the House Agriculture Subcommittee this month that plants grown with the aid of genetically modified organisms and gene editing could be allowed to be certified organic in the future.
"I think there is the opportunity to open the discussion to consider whether it is appropriate for some of these new technologies that include gene-editing to be eligible to be used to enhance organic production and to have drought and disease-resistant varieties, as well as higher-yield varieties available," he said.
Currently, organic standards prohibit genetic engineering and GMOs to be certified under that label. In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that instructed federal agencies to be more lenient on the approvals for genetic crop modifications and other forms of agricultural biotech.
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Dive Insight:
The current organic certification requires that products with the organic label lack antibiotics, artificial colors, genetically modified ingredients and synthetic pesticides. GMOs made the list because they are not naturally occurring, a value which is at the root of the organic movement. However, Ibach's comments show that policymakers are considering GMO as a possible addition to the list of acceptable practices for organic farming.
GMOs have been a touchy subject in recent years. A 2018 study by the Hartman Group found that nearly half the respondents would avoid purchasing products with GMOs. At that same time, 60% of consumers in one study admitted they don't know much about GMOs, according to a presentation at the IFT19 conference by Intertek. Still, with widespread skepticism of so-called "frankenfoods," companies are voluntarily acknowledging or removing GMO ingredients from their products.
While these genetically altered foods are often seen in an unfavorable light by consumers, about 12% of global agricultural land is still planted each year with genetically modified crops. In the U.S., those numbers are even higher for certain crops. The Grocery Manufacturers Association said about 90% of the nation's corn, soybean and sugar beet crops are genetically modified, which translates to up to 75% of the products in a grocery store that are made with ingredients derived from crops that were genetically modified.
The reason for the prevalence of GMOs boils down to practicality. A World Resources Institute report published this month said urgent changes in the global food system are needed to make sure there is enough food for an estimated 10 billion people by 2050. One of the primary solutions the report named was increasing the number of bioengineered crops in both quantity and variety of species. Feeding the planet in the future is a concern for the organic farming community, but there is still hesitation given that consumers have an aversion to GMOs.
Despite the predominant scientific consensus that GMO food is safe and items made with these ingredients are just as nutritious as their counterparts, many still don't trust them. As consumers increasingly value transparency, changing the acceptability of GMO ingredients in organic food production could result in backlash. Although a 2018 study in Agriculture and Human Values showed about two-thirds of consumers didn't notice a GMO label on a product, of those who did, more than half of the consumers said the label influenced them not to buy the product. It may also be difficult for the USDA to keep track of since there are different GE methods.
"The allowance of any GE techniques under the organic label raises legitimate 'slippery slope; concerns," Cornucopia's Director of Domestic Policy Marie Burcham said in a statement. "The USDA would be hard-pressed to find the resources to track allowed GE technologies and products in the organic sector, assuming they could summon the will."
Even if GMOs are allowed in organics, it organic producers may still want to consider keeping GMOs out of their farming practices. While organic food sales increased by an average of 10% per year between 2010 and 2016, that pace has cooled to 6% for the past two years, according to a report from Rabobank. While the growth of the industry is slowing, prices for organic products are also dropping, which could encourage organic shoppers to buy more products. But they might not do so if there are GMOs included in those foods.
The importance of having a guarantee that organic means non-GMO may become even more important when the new labeling laws go into effect next year since not all products containing GMO ingredients fall under the labeling requirements. Having the organic label be synonymous with GMO-free could be one way for some producers to present added value to those consumers who care about keeping modification out of their foods.
Lead Photo: (Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture )
Recommended Reading:
Don’t Let Monsanto Decide If Its GMOs Are “Safe” or Not
t's so important that we submit comments urging USDA not to let chemical companies approve their own genetically engineered plant experiments!
t's so important that we submit comments urging USDA not to let chemical companies approve their own genetically engineered plant experiments!
The Trump administration just released new rules to change how genetically engineered crops (GE crops or GMOs) are regulated. Unfortunately the rules being proposed would make almost every GMO exempt from regulation and instead allow the companies that make GMOs decide the safety of their own products before selling them. If we don’t stop these new rules, the vast majority of GMOs will not be reviewed by the government. Instead chemical and food companies would decide whether or not their own GMOs are harmful. Talk about a conflict of interest!
Stop the Trump Administration from letting chemical companies decide if the GMOs they sell are safe!
With these new rules, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing a radical voluntary review system for GE crops. These new regulations leave it up to chemical companies—like Monsanto/Bayer and Dow—to “self-determine” review; in other words, these chemical companies would make their own determinations as to whether or not their GE plant experiments should even be reported to USDA at all.
If a chemical company has “self-determined” that its GE plant experiment does not need USDA oversight, it would skip being evaluated under the standards of our federal health and environmental laws. It would go straight to farm fields to be planted or to market to be sold. We at Center for Food Safety (CFS) believe that it should not be up to a chemical company—interested in improving its bottom line—to decide what is safe for our health, endangered species, and the environment.
And even in the rare instances when a company will volunteer to have their GE plant experiment regulated by USDA, the agency is proposing such a narrow scope of its review that it will only have a meaningful review processfor a tiny percentage of GMOs. This allows for the illusion of regulation, while actually letting the companies go scot-free.
One of the big problems with GMOs is their ability to cross-contaminate with conventional and organic crops as well as with plants in wildlife refuges. USDA perversely touts that there will be fewer “unauthorized releases” of GMOs with this new system, but that’s only because the vast majority of GE plant experiments will be totally exempt from any regulation in the first place! It’s like saying the crime rate will go down because the government legalized most forms of robbery. In reality, deregulating nearly all GMOs with no oversight will dramatically increase the frequency of contamination—which has already cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars over the past decade. When you go from bad oversight to no oversight, many more incidents of contamination are sure to follow.
Don’t let USDA fool you; self-regulation is no regulation at all!
Under the new proposal, the vast majority of GE plant experiments would not even have to be reported to USDA, much less grown with measures to prevent escape. So rather than increasing its monitoring of open air GE plant experiments, USDA’s new proposal abdicates the agency’s responsibility entirely, and leaves it solely up to chemical companies to self-police their new experiments. This change would exacerbate harm to farmers and the environment from increased contamination, while leaving the public completely in the dark as to where these new experiments are taking place.
USDA’s proposed GE regulations work very hard to make sure as little as possible is regulated. These proposed regulations rely on chemical companies deciding whether or not their GE plant experiments should be reviewed by a government agency at all. They do not address the massive increase in overall pesticide use that GMOs have caused or the continuing epidemic of increasingly pesticide-resistant “superweeds.” They fail to protect endangered species or farm workers. They even leave dangerous new “biopharm” GMOs completely unregulated, making our food system vulnerable to contamination from experimental pharmaceuticals. These rules leave our public health and environment completely at the mercy of chemical companies. USDA could do so much better, but instead it’s just doing the bidding of Monsanto and other chemical companies.
Onwards,
George Kimbrell
Legal Director
Center for Food Safety
Stop The Trump Administration From Letting Chemical Companies Decide if The GMOs They Sell Are Safe!
The Trump administration just released new rules to change how genetically engineered crops (GE crops or GMOs) are regulated
The Trump administration just released new rules to change how genetically engineered crops (GE crops or GMOs) are regulated. Unfortunately the rules being proposed would make almost every GMO exempt from regulation and instead allow the companies that make GMOs decide the safety of their own products before selling them. If we don’t stop these new rules, the vast majority of GMOs will not be reviewed by the government. Instead chemical and food companies would decide whether or not their own GMOs are harmful. Talk about a conflict of interest!
Stop the Trump Administration from letting chemical companies
decide if the GMOs they sell are safe!
With these new rules, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is proposing a radical voluntary review system for GE crops. These new regulations leave it up to chemical companies—like Monsanto/Bayer and Dow—to “self-determine” review; in other words, these chemical companies would make their own determinations as to whether or not their GE plant experiments should even be reported to USDA at all.
If a chemical company has “self-determined” that its GE plant experiment does not need USDA oversight, it would skip being evaluated under the standards of our federal health and environmental laws. It would go straight to farm fields to be planted or to market to be sold. We at Center for Food Safety (CFS) believe that it should not be up to a chemical company—interested in improving its bottom line—to decide what is safe for our health, endangered species, and the environment.
Tell the Trump administration's USDA: Relying on chemical companies to regulate their
own GE plant experiments is no regulation at all! Do your job.
And even in the rare instances when a company will volunteer to have their GE plant experiment regulated by USDA, the agency is proposing such a narrow scope of its review that it will only have a meaningful review processfor a tiny percentage of GMOs. This allows for the illusion of regulation, while actually letting the companies go scot-free.
One of the big problems with GMOs is their ability to cross-contaminate with conventional and organic crops as well as with plants in wildlife refuges. USDA perversely touts that there will be fewer “unauthorized releases” of GMOs with this new system, but that’s only because the vast majority of GE plant experiments will be totally exempt from any regulation in the first place! It’s like saying the crime rate will go down because the government legalized most forms of robbery. In reality, deregulating nearly all GMOs with no oversight will dramatically increase the frequency of contamination—which has already cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars over the past decade. When you go from bad oversight to no oversight, many more incidents of contamination are sure to follow.
Don’t let USDA fool you; self-regulation is no regulation at all!
Under the new proposal, the vast majority of GE plant experiments would not even have to be reported to USDA, much less grown with measures to prevent escape. So rather than increasing its monitoring of open air GE plant experiments, USDA’s new proposal abdicates the agency’s responsibility entirely, and leaves it solely up to chemical companies to self-police their new experiments. This change would exacerbate harm to farmers and the environment from increased contamination, while leaving the public completely in the dark as to where these new experiments are taking place.
USDA’s proposed GE regulations work very hard to make sure as little as possible is regulated. These proposed regulations rely on chemical companies deciding whether or not their GE plant experiments should be reviewed by a government agency at all. They do not address the massive increase in overall pesticide use that GMOs have caused or the continuing epidemic of increasingly pesticide-resistant “superweeds.” They fail to protect endangered species or farm workers. They even leave dangerous new “biopharm” GMOs completely unregulated, making our food system vulnerable to contamination from experimental pharmaceuticals. These rules leave our public health and environment completely at the mercy of chemical companies. USDA could do so much better, but instead it’s just doing the bidding of Monsanto and other chemical companies.
Tell USDA: These proposed GE regulations would end any oversight of GMOs. Protect our
environment, endangered species, and public health by regulating GE crops responsibly!
Onwards,
George Kimbrell
Legal Director
Center for Food Safety
Keep GMO Salmon Off of Store Shelves!
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just lifted the import ban on GMO salmon. Since FDA doesn’t require GMO salmon to be labeled clearly on the package, it could easily sneak onto your plate without you even realizing what you’re eating!
But because Center for Food Safety members (like you!) wrote to grocery stores across the country, more than 80 food companies—including Kroger, Walmart, Costco, Albertson’s, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and many more —have made commitments never to sell this GMO salmon. Now that GMO salmon is available to be sold in the U.S., their commitments not to sell this dangerous product will be put to the test.
If GMO salmon becomes common on store shelves, we’ll all have to face the environmental and public health consequences of the biotech industry’s gamble in developing it. While corporations continue to engineer fish and push for their commercial use, scientific evidence mounts regarding the extraordinary environmental danger these fish pose, including potential extinction of the wild salmon population.
If we don’t nip this GMO salmon in the bud by giving companies this feedback, it’s only a matter of time before the biotech industry launches other GMO animals for human consumption. AquaBounty Technologies, the company that made GMO salmon, is already working on genetically engineered tilapia and trout for commercial approval, while others are developing other genetically engineered catfish and salmon. There are dozens of other genetically engineered animals in development as well, such as chickens, pigs, and cows, engineered to fit within a factory farming model. And why risk the environmental consequences of GMO salmon, especially when poll after poll shows that consumers don’t want to eat it?
Even though this salmon is the first GMO animal to enter our food system, FDA did not approve GMO salmon responsibly. The flawed process FDA used was intended to evaluate the safety of “animal drugs,” not GMO animals meant for human consumption!
This GMO salmon won’t even be labeled on the package. GMO labeling standards allow companies to hide the fact that a product has GMOs under a “QR code,” which are clunky, time-consuming, and require both a smartphone and a broadband internet connection to access.
Tell the stores that pledged never to sell GMO salmon how important that commitment is to you.
Thanks for all you do,
Center for Food Safety team
Connect with Us
CFS welcomes your questions and comments. Please contact us at office@centerforfoodsafety.org, or at one of our offices.
Washington, D.C. Office
660 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, #402
Washington, DC 20003
phone (202) 547-9359 | fax (202) 547-9429
www.centerforfoodsafety.org
Anti-GMO Groups Petition USDA To Exclude Hydroponic Farming From Organic Certification
Cathy Siegner | Food Dive | February 13, 2019
Organic movement schism? Fight over hydroponics puts $50 billion industry in limbo
The Center for Food Safety filed a petition with the Department of Agriculture Jan. 16 urging the agency to exclude hydroponically grown produce from eligibility for the USDA Organic label. The group wants the USDA to make sure “ecologically integrated organic production practices” are required for organic certification and revoke existing organic certifications previously issued to hydroponic operations.
The petition, endorsed by 13 consumer groups, organic growers and an organic retailer, stated growing food without soil doesn’t meet federal organic standards and violates federal law requiring soil improvement and biodiversity conservation….
[T]he National Organic Standards Board recommended in 2010 that hydroponic not be considered a certified organic growing method….However, board members narrowly voted in November 2017 not to exclude hydroponic crops from organic certification.
Hydroponic growers see themselves as responding to the demand for local organic food. Plenty, a San Francisco-based vertical farming company that grows leafy greens and herbs indoors without soil, wrote to the [USDA’s] NOSB [National Organic Standards Board] in 2017 saying all available innovative solutions must be explored, particularly those that can save resources.
“For example, Plenty’s organic growing system yields up to 350 times that of traditional systems and can be located close to consumers, regardless of climate, geography or economic status….” the company’s testimony said.
Read full, original article: Petition asks USDA to exclude hydroponics from organic certification
Inside The GMO Law: What Needs To Be Labeled And Why It Matters
The regulations state that manufacturers can voluntarily disclose GMOs if a product contains some of these highly refined ingredients or has a lower concentration of biologically engineered material, which GMO advocates cheer and consumer organizations caution
Highly refined ingredients and the "BE" acronym are out, according to regulations issued in December. The food industry and consumer groups are split on how effective the new measure will be.
AUTHOR Megan Poinski@meganpoinski
Now that the final GMO labeling regulations have been rolled out, what is going to bear the new seal that certifies a product is derived from bioengineering?
The answer: Not as many products as advocates for the labeling might have thought. It's been estimated that up to 75% of the products in a grocery store are made with ingredients derived from crops that were genetically modified. According to the regulations, items that contain highly refined ingredients don't have to be labeled.
Additionally, to require a label, a product needs to have at least 5% bioengineered material, which is a higher concentration amount than most other countries that have GMO labels.
The regulations state that manufacturers can voluntarily disclose GMOs if a product contains some of these highly refined ingredients or has a lower concentration of biologically engineered material, which GMO advocates cheer and consumer organizations caution.
The new labeling requirements, which most manufacturers must implement starting in 2020, were viewed by some analysts as fair.
"They balance consumers' request for more information with a labeling approach that is based on facts, practicality and common sense, rather than politics and fear," Sean McBride of DSM Strategic Communication told Food Dive in an email. "No one side got everything it wanted, and there will be special interest skirmishes in the 116th Congress and beyond over this, but for now, we have a clear flight path to providing consumers with the transparency they want and deserve.”
There are many other aspects of the regulations those in the industry appreciate and despise. But the time for changes has passed. Manufacturers now need to work on ensuring that their labels comply with the new guidelines. According to the regulations, manufacturers may put their labels to the test as soon as this month.
Credit: Okanagan Specialty Fruits
What needs to be labeled?
While the new regulations outlined the symbols and terms that will be used, what needs to be labeled did not change during the rulemaking process. Meat, poultry and egg products by themselves are not included in the disclosure, which is stated clearly in the law. Neither are multi-ingredient products that have these items as their first ingredients, such as a canned stew with beef broth.
The final rule lays out a much more nuanced — and consequential — point. Many crops that become food ingredients are GMO, but they go through a refining process to become useful ingredients. That process often destroys the genetic material in the ingredients. One of the largest questions for the final rulemaking was whether these ingredients needed to be labeled as GMOs.
Companies and trade organizations were split on the issue. In its comments on the rule, the Grocery Manufacturers Association said about 90% of the nation's corn, soybean and sugar beet crops are genetically modified. If the products using refined versions of those crops do not have to be labeled as GMO, it estimated 78% fewer products would have to be disclosed under federal law.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture decided not to require the disclosure because the initial law said GMO food needs to contain modified genetic material. If it cannot be detected, it is not there. And because the initial law also does not say anything about classifying some of these ingredients from GMO crops as "highly refined," the final rule does not take on this classification of definition.
Consumer advocates who oppose GMOs were strident in their disapproval of the ruling.
"The USDA has betrayed the public trust by denying Americans the right to know how their food is produce," Andrew Kimbrell, executive director at Center for Food Safety, said in a written statement. "Instead of providing clarity and transparency, they have created large scale confusion and uncertainty for consumers, food producers, and retailers."
The Consumer Federation of America said in a statement that exempting refined products from disclosure is "inadequate."
However, many major food manufacturers — including Campbell Soup, Mars, Danone, Kellogg, Coca-Cola and Unilever — have been voluntarily disclosing GMOs, heavily refined or not, since the mandatory labeling issue was first debated several years ago.
The USDA also will maintain a list of crops that are definitively GMO that are produced anywhere in the world. This list helps food manufacturers know which ingredients they need to disclose, but it is not exhaustive and will be updated periodically. The regulation gives manufacturers 18 months to update their labels after an ingredient is added to the list.
Currently, the following crops are defined as GMO: alfalfa, Arctic apple, canola, corn, cotton, Bt-Begun eggplant, ringspot virus-resistant varieties of papaya, pink pineapple, potato, AquAdvantage salmon, soybean, summer squash and sugarbeet.
The regulation also indicates where and how on-package disclosure is required. It needs to be seen under ordinary shopping conditions, and must be located near other information on the label that features the manufacturer's name and location. The disclosure can be through text, smartphone-scannable digital links, URLs, a telephone number, text messages or the "BE" symbol. If a digital link is used, it needs to have the words "scan here for more food information" next to it.
While there were several options for the BE symbol in the preliminary framework, the final rules set one that has a round picture of a plant growing in a sunny farm field. A green circle around the picture features the word "BIOENGINEERED" or "DERIVED FROM BIOENGINEERING." There is no BE acronym — the regulations say many consumers did not know what it stood for — and an earlier logo with a smiley face was abandoned.
Credit: Flickr, Dave Herholz
Will it be useful for consumers?
Since it's been known that scientists and food companies were working with ingredients from lab-modified plants, many consumers have wanted to know if they are eating them. While the predominant scientific consensus is GMO food is safe and items made with these ingredients are just as nutritious as their counterparts, consumers value transparency.
Are they getting it from this labeling law? Reactions are mixed.
"No one should be surprised that the most anti-consumer, anti-transparency administration in modern times is denying Americans basic information about what’s in their food and how it’s grown," the Environmental Working Group said in a written statement. The organization takes issue with several aspects of the law, mainly the ruling on not having to label highly refined ingredients as GMOs. EWG has added "Certrified GMO-free" — using verifications from the Non-GMO Project — as a category on its food information website.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association focused on the cohesiveness of the labeling regulations. The federal law requiring labeling was quickly passed — partially to preempt a Vermont state law requiring its own labeling scheme for GMO products sold there. With the regulations in place, consumers are closer to getting the information they seek on food products, the trade group said.
"Disclosure is imperative to increasing transparency, educating consumers and building trust of brands, the food industry and government," Karin Moore, GMA's senior vice president and general counsel, said in a written statement. "We are pleased that the USDA has now provided a structure for our companies to share this information voluntarily, building a foundation for government to more quickly respond to innovation in food and agriculture in the future."
Food Marketing Institute President and CEO Leslie Sarasin agreed, hailing the "more precise vocabulary into the public discourse regarding biotechnology in food production" represented by the new labeling requirements.
While there has been some voluntary disclosure of GMOs — and certification of non-GMO products — Thomas Gremillion, director of the CFA's Food Policy Institute, mentioned the issue of terminology. Consumers have been using "GMO" and "genetically modified" to talk about these food products — not "bioengineered," which will appear on the label. "Bioengineered" is the term in the law — the acronym "GMO" only appears twice in the text, and each time to say certain products cannot be labeled "non-GMO."
Regardless of terminology, some say that having the law in place doesn't correct fearmongering over GMOs. Transparency group Peel Back the Label said it may actually make it worse.
"While the USDA’s new disclosure rule provides additional clarity for consumers regarding what is and what is not a bioengineered food, it does nothing to reign in the growing use of misleading food labels and meaningless absence claims that are designed to capitalize on consumer fears and confusion in order to boost sales," the group said in a statement emailed to Food Dive. "Consumers deserve both truth and transparency in food labeling, and Peel Back the Label urges the USDA and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review current voluntary disclosure regulations to ensure food labeling is founded in science, not in fear.”
Follow Megan Poinski on Twitter
Filed Under: Ingredients Packaging / Labeling Policy
Top image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture
Here’s A First Look At The Label That Must Appear On All GMO Foods By 2022
On Wednesday night, the United States Department of Agriculture posted its long-awaited GMO label law, which will require food companies to label foods that have been genetically modified, or “bioengineered,” by 2022
Images: USDA, Canva. Graphic: NFE
All GMO foods, that is, with a couple big caveats.
December 20th, 2018
by Sam Bloch
On Wednesday night, the United States Department of Agriculture posted its long-awaited GMO label law, which will require food companies to label foods that have been genetically modified, or “bioengineered,” by 2022. The law will affect a wide range of foods, from mass-market snacks, cereals and freezer meals made with ubiquitous GMO crops like corn, soybeans, and sugarbeets, to new fruits, vegetables and seafood that will soon be sold to consumers directly, like the rosé pineapple, Arctic apple, non-browning potato, and the AquAdvantage salmon.
How widespread will that label be? In the coming years, you’ll start to see the government’s new logo popping up on items in the grocery store. After proposing several potential design options back in May, the government unveiled its final choice on Wednesday: a stylized landscape with an indeterminant crop sprouting under a blue sky, ringed by a green circle and the word “bioengineered.”
This labeling rule won’t apply to gene-edited foods—those containing ingredients modified by techniques like CRISPR, which do not contain DNA from other organisms, and could have otherwise been obtained through conventional breeding
The label will soon be a familiar sight, but the government’s criteria for foods that can evade the label are already causing confusion and controversy.
The new rule, for instance, exempts products that come from animals fed with bioengineered ingredients, like milk, meat and eggs—but not, for example, foods like cheese or yogurt that are made with bioengineered yeasts or rennet. It exempts ingredients that have an “inadvertent or technically unavoidable” amount of bioengineered substances—a threshold that would allow food supply companies to use the same equipment on BE and non-BE crops alike. And it exempts highly refined ingredients, like sugars and oils—but we’ll get to that in a second.
In a move likely to rile some consumer advocates, the rule won’t apply to gene-edited foods—those containing ingredients modified by techniques like CRISPR, which do not contain DNA from other organisms, and could have otherwise been obtained through conventional breeding. Advocates of gene-editing technology say that the process merely speeds up the process of natural gene selection, unlike the first wave of genetically modified products that have genetic material transferred transgenically from other species.
“The message it sends is confusion.”
It’s not just what gets labelled that’s stirred criticism. The question of howlabels will appear has also been a hot topic. Though manufacturers will have several more traditional disclosure options, including a “prominent” disclosure text, the circular, semi-pastoral bioengineered symbol, they have other tools at their disposal: methods that include text messaging, or electronic or digital links, including the QR code that many, including Senator Bernie Sanders, have decried as a confusing method that lacks transparency.
The law was initiated by Congress back in 2016, as an effort to preempt Vermont’s own GMO labeling law that was causing consternation among food companies. Biotechnology experts I contacted, including Greg Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, said the law was never intended to address food safety or nutrition—about 90 percent of scientists say GMO foods are safe—but about giving consumers information about the production process. (As I’ve reported, disclosing that information was shown to increase consumer acceptance.)
But if the law’s truly about production, as Jaffe says, it stops short of covering highly processed ingredients that are derived from genetically engineered crops, such as corn syrup, vegetable oil, and “refined” sugar from sugar beets. Last year, 94 percent of soybeans, and 92 percent of corn grown in the United States were genetically modified; at last count, so were 95 percent of sugar beets. But oil and sugar derived from these crops don’t have to be labeled, because it’s impossible to distinguish them from their conventional counterparts. Despite what the Castrol commercials would have you believe, oils are just oils, and sugar is just sucrose. Neither substance contains DNA. The only way to distinguish the two would be through supply chain verification.
The question of how labels will appear has also been a hot topic.
Instead, the USDA is encouraging companies to voluntarily disclose that information through a nearly-identical symbol that contains the words “derived from bioengineering.” For Jaffe, that doesn’t go far enough. He feels manufacturers should be required to say when they’re using those oils and sugars.
“The message it sends is confusion, because there are many food manufacturers who want to disclose this information, because they believe that there are consumers who want to know this information,” he says. “You could have similar products with similar ingredients, where one discloses, and one doesn’t, and consumers may not understand that those products could be identical.”
The law is not nearly as stringent as the approach in other countries, such as those in the European Union, where most products are sourced to be non-GMO, obviating the need for any kind of label that would support “consumer choice.” Back in America, manufacturers may choose to continue to bear the voluntary Non-GMO Verified label, which is granted by a third-party certifier. Additionally, organic foods, which must be GMO-free in their supply chains to be certified in the first place, are exempt from the disclosure law.
The rule, which will become effective early next year, sets an initial date for manufacturers of January 1, 2020.
Sam Bloch has written about arts, culture, and real estate for publications including The New York Times, L.A. Weekly, and Artnet. His essay about Los Angeles' "shade deserts" will be published by Places Journal this winter. Reach him by email at: samuel.bloch@newfoodeconomy.org
Tortilla Trouble
Tests show that samples of both white and yellow Maseca brand flours contain traces of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Tests also show that most of the flours are made with GMO corn.
Maseca, the leading global brand of Mexican corn flours, plainly states on its website:
“MASECA is made of 100% natural corn and is vital for the good diet, its high nutritional value and is synonym of health and energy.”
And yet, our tests show that samples of both white and yellow Maseca brand flours contain traces of Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Tests also show that most of the flours are made with GMO corn.
That’s bad news for U.S. consumers. It’s even worse news for consumers in Mexico, who might rightly assume that the Mexican brand of corn flour they use to make tortillas wouldn’t be made from GMO corn—because open-field growing of GMO corn is prohibited in Mexico.
Avoiding GMO Food Might Be Tougher Than You Think
Labels are about to become mandatory, but what does that really mean?
Photo: Scott Warman
By Sara Chodosh
While there’s currently no evidence that genetically modified organisms harm human health, that isn’t to say there aren’t legitimate reasons to avoid them.
Perhaps the most common is a simple preference for that which is natural and a general aversion to that which technology — especially technology developed by Big Ag — has meddled in. Others worry about long-term effects that haven’t appeared in scientific studies yet or ecosystem-level impacts that we haven’t picked up on. A comprehensive 2016 report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine found no evidence that would support those concerns, but it also noted that caution is generally a good idea.
GM experts and proponents also have legitimate concerns that adding a label identifying GMOs gives the impression that there are scientifically proven risks to worry about. Studies on the perception of GM food suggests that the public has a baseline aversion, and a label may increase wariness. Labeling advocates, of course, argue that if Americans want to avoid GMOs, they have a right to do so.
But really, a lot of the research on public opinion of GM food suggests that Americans don’t so much think negatively of it as that they don’t think much about it at all. Yes, there’s a baseline aversion, but the opinion of study subjects seems to vary wildly depending on the information provided. One study following up on that 2016 report found that the entire American public shifted their opinion measurably in the positive, likely because the report was well-publicized in its findings that GMOs are, as far as we can tell, perfectly safe for the human body.
So, it’s unclear how many Americans will actually be looking to avoid GM food in the future. But even if you want to keep your pantry GMO-free, doing so could prove challenging.
“Can people avoid them? The answer is certainly yes. Especially in the last few years, there have been more products on the market that are non-GMO or organic,” says Jayson Lusk, an economist at Purdue University who studies the consumer side of GMOs. “Now, those products are more expensive — no one ever said you can avoid them for free. But they can if they’re willing and able to pay, and one way they’ll pay is in the time to find the products.”
Though very few fruits and vegetables are genetically engineered, he points out that almost anything with corn or soybeans will be difficult to get without a GM component. More than 90 percent of both crops are bioengineered in the U.S., and corn and soy derivatives go into many processed foods. Much of the sugar produced derives from sugar beets, nearly all of which are genetically engineered. Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of processed foods on the market today have a GM ingredient, but many of those foods may not require a label according to the proposed rules.
Highly processed ingredients like high fructose corn syrup have little to no traceable DNA in them, and so the U.S. Department of Agriculture (which regulates food labels) doesn’t require manufacturers to add a label to indicate those bioengineered foods.
And then there’s that word — ”bioengineered.” The USDA only just announced how they would require manufacturers to disclose GM ingredients, though the law was enacted back in 2016, and the new rules don’t use the term “GMO” or even “GM.” Instead, they opt for “BE” or “bioengineered,” perhaps to avoid using loaded terminology. “I’m not sure how much people will know that term,” says Dominique Brossard, a communications professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in life science issues like GMOs. “I don’t think it’s going to be very easy for people to find out [which foods are genetically modified].”
“I think this was actually the intent of the 2016 law,” says Glenn Stone, an environmental anthropologist who studies the GMO debate. “[It] was passed just in time to overrule a state-level law was taking effect requiring that GMO foods have clear labels.” Vermont had previously passed legislation that would have fined companies for failing to label food containing GM ingredients, including highly processed ones like corn syrup (though it excluded cheese, which often relies on a genetically engineered enzyme called chymosin). It also specified that the labels would include the phrase “genetic engineering,” not “bioengineered.”
In contrast, the USDA regulations allow companies to choose between three options: write out the warning (as in “contains a bioengineered food ingredient”), include a BE label, or use a QR code that would link the consumer to a page disclosing all the information.
Stone, along with other labeling proponents, argue that these options will make it harder for people to actually get the information the legislation is supposed to mandate. “This rule claims to label GMO foods, but it exempts the most common GMO food ingredients like soy oil and corn syrup while allowing the use of QR codes,” he says, “knowing perfectly well that few shoppers have the time or inclination to get out their phone, scan a code, and read a website over and over while shopping.”
Unless those regulations change, though, it could be quite hard to figure out exactly which foods contain GM ingredients and which do not. Many of the top GM crops grown for human consumption — maize, soybeans, canola, sugar beet, papaya, squash, eggplant, potato, and apples — get processed first, and wouldn’t require a label. The rest, if sold whole or as part of another food, would necessitate one. A recent overview of attitudes towards GM foods, published in the journal Annual Reviews, commented that “Since soybeans and corn (the most widely planted GE crops) are common ingredients in many food products (corn starch, corn syrup, corn oil, and soybean oil), it is likely that foods in the United States listing soybeans and corn as ingredients contain some GE ingredients unless it is specifically stated that they do not.”
Avoiding GM foods entirely could mean quite a drastic shift away from any processed food at all. Corn syrup and soybean oil are in a surprising number of foods, and they won’t carry a BE label. It’ll be up to you as the consumer to navigate those grocery store aisles on your own.
Europe Is Going To Regulate Gene-Edited Organisms As If They Were Alien Plants From Space
That's too bad, because gene editing, for better or worse, is probably going to be one of the techniques that bring us what we need to feed our battered planet.
That's too bad, because gene editing, for better or worse, is probably going to be one of the techniques that bring us what we need to feed our battered planet.
August 21st, 2018
by Patrick Clinton
The world (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) is not perfect. And the legal system is less perfect than the world: Laws are created by people who don’t necessarily understand what they’re trying to legislate and certainly don’t know the zigs and zags the world will start taking before the ink is even dry on them. They do their best, I suppose, but the results are often somewhere between shaky and disastrous.
And then these imperfect laws sit around, getting more and more out of touch with reality. (My children will be happy to inform you that a similar process affects certain family members of theirs.) Eventually, someone will decide to use them to accomplish something that the original legislators hadn’t anticipated or, perhaps, hadn’t intended. And then, well, if you care about truth or justice or even plain common sense, you hold on to your hat and hope for the best.
I was holding onto my hat last week, waiting for the European Court to decide how gene-edited crops should be treated under EU law. Now that the decision has come down, I’m torn. On the one hand, if the EU wants to subject gene-edited crops to intense regulatory review, which is the main result of the court’s ruling, well, it’s their continent. But I have to confess, I can’t stand the process that led to the decision. It was all about the law and not a bit about reality. And we all know how perfect the law is.
Laws are created by people who don’t necessarily understand what they’re trying to legislate.
Here’s the deal: In 2016, several groups in France sued the country to ban gene-edited crops. As near as I can tell (and the record is pretty confusing), they don’t actually care very much about whether the crops themselves are harmful or dangerous. They’re concerned with pesticides, and they seem to be arguing that GMO and gene-edited crops are dangerous because they encourage farmers to use pesticides, and pesticides are dangerous.
That’s already a little squishy—like trying to close the Maserati dealership because it encourages bank robberies, but the plaintiffs faced a bigger problem. French law specifically exempts crops genetically modified by mutagenesis—that is, by altering genes rather than adding genes from other organisms. And gene editing as it’s practiced today certainly seems to fit the definition.
The French kicked the case over to the European Court of Justice, which assigned advocate general Michal Bobek to give a formal opinion of what European law had to say about the matter. Bobek’s opinion, published in January, focused much of its attention on one legal point: Like French law, European law exempts some GMOs from intense regulatory oversight. At one point it says organisms produced via techniques with a long record of safety are exempt. At another point, it exempts organisms produced by mutagenesis as long as “they do not involve the use of GMOs as recipient or parental organisms.”
Okay, is that one exemption or two? When the law was first passed, the two categories were identical. Mutagenesis was something you did using ionizing radiation or mutagenic chemicals. Those were the only techniques, and they had a long track record of safety. But today there are other, newer techniques for changing a gene. They still don’t involve implanting foreign genes into a plant’s genome. They still clearly qualify to be called mutagenesis. But do they qualify for exemption from GMO regulations under European law?
Court of Justice of the European Union / G. Fessy
Photographed here is the building that houses the European Court of Justice, which recently weighed in on the gene-editing debate
Opinions varied, and Bobek summed them up: Greece and the U.K. argued that mutagenesis is mutagenesis, and the new techniques deserved exemption as much as the earlier ones. The Austrians thought the exemption applied only to techniques in use when the law was passed, with the French and Dutch taking a similar position and arguing that mutagenic techniques had to be proven safe before being granted the exemption. The Swedes argued that new techniques are safer than the old. (Remember, most chemical and radiological mutation was completely random. You zapped a plant and then waited to see what might emerge. Random mutation is still used, but the focus of new techniques is targeted mutation—changing a specific stretch of DNA whose function is already known.) They thought gene editing should get the exemption even if technically it didn’t qualify for it.
The advocate general, for his part, thought the case was clear. He argued that the legislation clearly meant to exempt all mutagenesis (with the one qualification we quoted above). “The EU legislature intentionally decided not to distinguish between the techniques to determine the scope of the mutagenesis exemption,” he wrote. “At the same time, it effectively narrowed down the exemption in order to take account of ongoing technological developments by adding the caveat deriving from the use of recombinant nucleic acid molecules. That caveat was considered to sufficiently take into account the emergence of new mutagenesis techniques.”
“What the Applicants are effectively asking for,” he continued, “is not an interpretation of the GMO Directive but a judicial redrafting of it, . . . seeking an insertion through a judicial medium of categories which are clearly not provided for in the legislation itself.”
Clear, right?
Wrong. The court usually takes the recommendations of the advocates general, but this time, it didn’t. In a decision issued on July 25, the court found for the plaintiffs and against gene editing. European courts don’t usually go in for American-style judicial originalism, but this time they did, ruling that the law as written intended to apply only to the technology that applied when it was written. Why the change? It’s pretty clear that the court thought of gene editing as a technique with unfathomable and unpredictable risks.
The advocate general, for his part, thought the case was clear.
Mutagenesis, it argued, “makes it possible to obtain the same effects as the introduction of a foreign gene into that organism.” (Perhaps, but in terms of safety, it’s still not the same as introducing a foreign gene into an organism. In general, gene editing will give you results you could obtain through conventional mutagenesis and selective breeding, if you could just get that infinity of monkeys to set aside their typing and help you pollinate.) Oh, yes, and modern techniques “make it possible to produce genetically modified varieties at a rate and in quantities quite unlike those resulting from the application of conventional method of random mutagenesis.”
Which, I think, translates to: “We’re happy to have you try to develop any fool thing you want to as long as you use a technique that makes it unlikely that you’ll succeed.”
This may be good law (though I doubt it). But it doesn’t look like good policy. Gene editing aims to accomplish the same goals as cross-breeding and mutagenesis, but more quickly and accurately. The end products, at least as the technology exists today, should be indistinguishable. If they’re not, that’s a problem. But that sounds like a question we could answer quickly with reasonable certainty. Instead, it sounds like Europe is going to regulate gene-edited organisms as if they were alien plants from space.
The baby, in short, is going out with the bathwater.
That might not matter at another time. But the world is not only imperfect, it’s getting hotter and colder and drier and wetter and a whole lot more populous. Our old plant breeds (none of them natural in any practical sense) will need to be updated. Gene editing, for better or worse, is probably going to be one of the techniques that bring us what we need to feed our battered planet.
Europe, meanwhile, is opting out. With regulatory constraints in place, researchers will likely flock away from gene editing—why develop plants that can’t be commercialized?—and other countries will set the agenda and perhaps in the long run force Europe to accept products it might have had a hand in shaping, but chose not to.
The baby, in short, is going out with the bathwater. We haven’t met the baby yet, we don’t know yet if we’d like him, we have no idea what he might grow into. But out he goes. Certainly governments need to pay attention to the safety of the food supply. Not every idea is a good one. But a decision like this—in effect rewriting a relatively sensible law for no clear reason—is a crummy way to go about it.
Patrick Clinton is a long-time journalist and educator. He edited the Chicago Reader during the politically exciting years that surrounded the election of the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington; University Business during the early days of for-profit universities and online instruction; and Pharmaceutical Executive during a period that saw the Vioxx scandal and the ascendancy of biotech. He has written and worked as a staff editor for a variety of publications, including Chicago, Men’s Journal, and Outside(for which he ran down the answer to everyone’s most burning question about porcupines). For seven years, he taught magazine writing and editing at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.
From Farm to Fork: The Regulatory Status of Non-GMO Plant Innovations Under Current EU Law
A new article on the latest plant breeding methods will be published on the next issue of BIO-SCIENCE LAW REVIEW.
The existing EU regulatory framework, when considered holistically, provides efficient guarantees that every stage of the agri-food supply chain, from lab to fork, is subject to constraints and obligations dictated by harmonized legislation, each providing various degrees of scrutiny, risk management and control, sanctions and remedial action.
Comparisons between the existing non-GMO legal framework with the GMO legislation or with any other authorization regime based on a full pre-market risk assessment are, by definition, of little practical relevance, since such regimes aim to address potentially serious risks, which, as the SAM Note clarifies, have not been identified in the case of Non-GMO NBT Products.
In the absence of any such concrete, identifiable risk induced by (the use of NBTs for) Non-GMO NBT Products and in view of their non-distinguishability from CBT products, the protection of human/animal/plant health and the environment should thus be considered to be adequately ensured and Non-GMO NBT Products should not be treated differently from products resulting from CBT.
The opposite conclusion would not only raise serious concerns under the SPS Agreement but would essentially also mean that all non-GMO plant products on the market today must be considered inadequately regulated. Just as Advocate-General Bobek concluded in his Opinion in Case C–528/16,133 with regard to mutagenesis, that ‘one could hardly assume that a reasonable legislator could ever wish to state, en bloc and for the future, that something is safe to such a degree that it does not need regulating at all’, one can neither assume that all NBT-products should en bloc be considered to only yield products suspect of causing unacceptable risks.
Against that backdrop, it is submitted that both the precautionary principle and the specific safeguard clauses in horizontal and sectoral legislation can justify and sufficiently guarantee the adoption of stricter risk management measures if a previously unidentified risk arises.”
USDA Slams EU’s Decision On Regulating Gene-Edited Products
July 30, 2018
These non-browning mushrooms, which were gene-edited, need no special approval by the USDA in the United States, but if they were sent to European Union countries, they'd face the same regulations as GMOs. ( File photo )
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is calling out a recent ruling in the European Union that puts products from new “gene editing” methods such as CRISPR in the same category of all techniques for genetically modified organisms.
In doing so, newer “mutagenesis” methods that introduce no foreign DNA into a new product will face the same regulatory barriers in European Union countries as GMOs.
“Government policies should encourage scientific innovation without creating unnecessary barriers or unjustifiably stigmatizing new technologies,” Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said in the release. “Unfortunately, this week’s (European Court of Justice) ruling is a setback in this regard in that it narrowly considers newer genome editing methods to be within the scope of the European Union’s regressive and outdated regulations governing genetically modified organisms.”
The USDA must approve of GMOs, such as the Arctic apple varieties available for sale in the U.S.
Fruit and vegetable products are rare with the new gene-edited methods. A CRISPR — clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats — white button mushroom from Pennsylvania State University was engineered to resist browning by researchers deleting genes.
That mushroom was the first CRISPR product considered by the USDA for regulation. The USDA said it would not have to meet the agency’s approval in April 2016, but has not been brought to market yet.
According to the USDA, innovations in precision biotechnology “hold great promise.”
“The global regulatory treatment of genome-edited agricultural products has strategic innovation and trade implications for U.S. agriculture,” Perdue said in the release. “For this reason, USDA has clear science- and risk-based policies that enable needed innovation while continuing to ensure these products are safe. In light of the ECJ ruling, USDA will re-double its efforts to work with partners globally towards science- and risk-based regulatory approaches.”
The University of Florida, through a $466,000 multi-year USDA grant, is undertaking a consumer education program on genetically modified foods, in particular, the difference between CRISPR/other gene-editing methods and transgenic breeding methods, where the foreign genetic material is introduced into an organism.
“This ruling is short-sighted and will affect investment in breeding innovation,” said Brandon McFadden, former University of Florida professor who was working on the project. “The ruling seeks to apply the precautionary principle to breeding techniques, which if applied to all production inputs would result in producers still using walking plows.
“Moreover, this ruling will impact both conventional and organic producers because it is not limited to gene-edited crops. Mutagenesis is also now considered a GMO,” said McFadden, who joins the University of Delaware as a professor Aug. 1.
Related Topics: Produce Tech USDA Europe