Regulatory Loophole Allows GMO Products to be Marketed as Non-GMO
The government isn’t particularly interested in making sure Americans know what they’re eating. It seems like knowing what is in the food should be a basic right, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, last week Congress passed a federal requirement for labeling products containing genetically modified ingredients that signifies a big win for food companies.
The bill will require labels to be retooled or updated to show whether any ingredients had their natural DNA altered, but it will be years before the new labels are phased in, and food companies won’t be required to list specific information on their products.
GMO labeling proponents had hoped the bill would be more like a state law in Vermont, which requires food companies and grocers selling prepared foods to explicitly label foods that contain GMO ingredients by January.
The more vague bill passed by Congress will supersede these stricter state laws. [1]
The government is only willing to go so far in its definition of genetically modified foods. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says removing DNA from a crop is not the same as adding genes from another organism. This means that corn injected with outside DNA is technically considered a GMO, but canola that can tolerate herbicide because scientists removed a gene is not.
This also means that products created through gene-editing are already on store shelves in the U.S., but because of the USDA loophole, consumers don’t realize it. In fact, this regulatory gap allows American consumers to be duped into purchasing gene-edited products that are actually labeled non-GMO.
Monsanto, DuPont, and Dow Chemical have all struck licensing deals with smaller companies for gene-editing technology. Last year, 8,000 acres of gene-edited canola were harvested by U.S. farmers, and the crops were processed into cooking oil marketed as non-GMO.
Carl Jorgenson, director of wellness strategy at Daymon Worldwide, a retail marketing firm, said:
“There’s a feeling among consumers that they want their food as close as possible to what nature intended. There’s an overall distrust of Big Food and Big Science.”
GMO opponents are often portrayed in the media and many in the scientific community as conspiracy theorists and science-deniers. In light of the USDA’s unwillingness to acknowledge that food products with deleted DNA are just as genetically modified as products injected with genes, it’s not hard to see why that overall distrust exists.
Regardless, an increasing number of Americans are avoiding GMO foods. Some 52% of respondents to a Mintel survey said they deliberately purchase non-GMO products. Many food companies are responding to this push for all-natural products, and nearly 17% of new food products introduced in the U.S. last year carried a non-GMO label, up from less than 3% in 2011. The issue of genetically modifying the food supply was named one of the top stories influencing behavior in Americans under 40 in 2015. [2]
But some of those labels are clearly deceptive, and even though last week Congress passed a fairly loose GMO-labeling bill, it won’t apply to gene-edited crops as regulations now stand.
It is also important to point out that under the bill passed last week by Congress, food companies that don’t want to reveal GMO ingredients on product labels can simply use a “QR code” that must be scanned using a smartphone or tablet. [3]
Sources:
[3] NPR
Both the House and the Senate betrayed us several times on this bill – despite 92% or more of Americans demanding labels equal to or better than those set out by Vermont’s excellent law. Two of the Senate’s most damaging actions on it were carried out – AS USUAL on particularly fascist bills – in the dead of night when no one could see what they were doing and no one could call to protest anyway because the phones aren’t manned then. No one represents us anymore. Had enough yet?
Besides overthrowing States’ rights by negating Vermont’s comprehensive law – plus over 100 existing ‘minor’ laws in other states – this bill from legislators who got thousands of bucks from Big Ag is class war on the non-rich. It requires that financially struggling Americans buy a smartphone (with a yet-to-be-designed app) to scan confusing QR matrix codes and then be directed to a corporation’s confusing site full of ads to eventually learn what Could have been learned from a simple printed label – ASSUMING, of course, that the website hasn’t crashed from millions of access attempts and ASSUMING, of course, that you can get a SIGNAL inside the grocery store that lets you use your expensive phone and access the net. I wonder how much the smartphone industry paid Roberts and Stabenow to require it in their class-war bill. – Had enough yet?
Most seniors, poor, and disproportionately rural folks don’t have a smartphone. – Many can’t afford one and don’t want one due to privacy issues. The app lets marketers spy on your buying habits and ‘share’ (steal and reveal) the information with others for money. – The history of the RFID/chip/spy industry shows that stores ultimately intend to ‘tailor’ prices according to buying habits. Buy expensive stuff? Fine; we’ll up the prices but give you a ‘discount’ to keep you coming back (store ‘courtesy’ card). Too poor to buy much? Fine; we’ll either scam you with a ‘discount’ card and/or up the prices so you’ll go elsewhere. – Been spied on and jerked around enough yet?
The corporate media are being quiet, so I don’t know yet whether Obama has signed this bill that denies us the right to know what’s in our food and thus attacks public health. He promised us in 2007 and 2008 that he”d support that right; but it appears to have worked out like his ‘promise’ to su pport unions. – I don’t know whether egomaniacal imbecile Trump has taken a stand on GMOs; Clinton (like Vilsack) is a darling of the GMO industry (BIO Conference speech, e.g.). If the TransPacific Partnership (TPP) is approved by a Prez Trump or a Prez Clinton (likely in both cases), then the GMO industry will also be able to forbid death/injury lawsuits by citizens regarding GMOs and the carcinogens that they produce nternally and/or are sprayed with.
Had enough yet?
They have to know what’s in our foods. Who want to eat GMO foods if it’s harmful to our health?
Jun 15, 2016 GMOs, “Biggest Fraud In The History Of Science” – Some ‘Questions And Answers’
In an ideal world, glyphosate would be taken off the commercial market due to its obvious adverse effects on human health and the environment. In such a world, the EU would at the same time be facilitating policies that would ensure a major shift towards more sustainable agricultural practices.
July 15, 2016 Legislation in Alaska requiring labeling of GMO salmon will now be reversed by the Senate’s fake labeling bill
Prior to the recent approval of the Monsanto-backed GMO fake labeling bill, Alaskan law required labels on all products containing genetically engineered salmon. As laid out in the Biotechnology Labeling Solutions Act, the new legislation “would allow the Agriculture Department to determine which foods qualify as genetically modified and let companies choose the method of disclosing genetically modified organism (GMO) ingredients to consumers.”
Yes. The Roberts-Stabenow anti-labeling bill overthrew ca. 100 existing laws in other states as well as Vermont’s excellent labeling law – the law we want, need, and had demanded.
That also explains this as well. July 20th, 2016 Russia dominates global wheat market
For the second year running, Russia is the world’s top wheat producer with exports of 22.5 million metric tons of grain this year, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Russia has won contracts to exports 120,000 tons of wheat to Egypt. In the fall, as soon as the new crop is harvested, Russia will start supplying wheat to China, its low-price strategy which has increased its market share.