American food manufacturer General Mills announced on Friday that it will begin labelling all its products in the United States that has genetically modified organisms as ingredients. The move was prompted by a new state law in Vermont, which requires companies to put such information starting July 1.

The U.S. food industry is fighting one of its fiercest regulatory battles in years over labels for ingredients made with genetically modified organisms. And it is losing—to Vermont.

Another skirmish in the global battle over GMOs has broken out — this time at Iowa State University. Recently, a coalition of students delivered a petition with 57,309 signatures to ISU’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences protesting an upcoming human feeding trial of genetically engineered (GE) bananas. The petition, addressed to the college and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was simultaneously delivered to by AGRA Watch to the Gates Foundation headquarters in Seattle. If the experiment takes place, twelve female ISU students will be paid $900 each to eat the bananas in what is billed as one of the first human feeding trials of GE products.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Senate GMO Bill Failure Makes it Clear that Mandatory Labeling is the Answer

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Consumers Union, the policy and advocacy division of Consumer Reports, praised Senators for standing against anti-consumer GMO labeling legislation that would prohibit state labeling laws. The consumer group urged lawmakers to move towards mandatory, national labeling.

Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, said, “Today’s vote, in which the Senate rejected an industry-backed effort to advance a​ bill that would block GMO labeling, was an important victory for consumers. ​Senators from both sides of the aisle balked at shutting down state efforts to address what consumers want–which is to know if their food is genetically engineered.”

“Consumers have a right to know what they are eating. ​As the vote makes clear, meaningful, mandatory labeling that provides consumers with the information they want about whether their food is genetically engineered​ is the only answer.

The nation’s largest food industry group broke the “spirit and letter” of the law when it concealed the backers of a multimillion dollar campaign to kill a food-labeling initiative, a state of Washington Superior Court judge ruled on Friday.

A bill that would “amend the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 to require the Secretary of Agriculture to establish a national voluntary labeling standard for bioengineered foods,” passed the Senate Agricultural Committee by a vote of 14-6.The legislation, introduced by Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) in late February, create a federal voluntary standard for labeling genetically modified or engineered ingredients, and block mandatory labeling efforts by states.

The United States FDA has granted approval for GMO mosquitoes to be released in Florida in order to combat the Zika virus. These genetically modified mosquitoes have had their genes manipulated in such a way that a lethal gene will be passed on to all of the offspring that are made by the GMO mosquito.

GMOs, the latest addition to the industrial “toolbox,” are a short-term and unstable solution to these problems because they change the environment surrounding the organisms they intend to control (Binimelis et al. 2009). Thus, as predicted by a fundamental biological principle, namely the Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection, their use induces resistance (Ceccarelli 2014). It is the same process by which bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics, a phenomenon that is the cause of diseases affecting yearly two million Americans and causing 23,000 deaths in the USA (Frieden 2014; Reardon, 2014). At best, GMOs can only be a short-term solution to any particular problem, but in every case they have created an often more serious problem (resistant weeds, insects or disease) that requires a new GMO and/or more chemical use. They also make a farmer completely dependent on the company producing the GMOs and chemicals (Pechlaner 2010).

Agroecology and Alternative Methods of Plant Breeding

Agroecological models of agriculture, such as organic agriculture, could be solutions to the most important problems affecting the planet, but they are often criticized for not being able to produce enough food for a growing population. We believe, however, that most of the meta-analysis showing lower yields under organic conditions are biased by the use of varieties which were not selected specifically for organic conditions.

This week Bill and I discuss the Trans Pacific Partnership. We also have an interview with Karen Hansen-Kuhn from the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy. Please visit www.iatp.org to learn more about the great work that they do.

A US Senate committee is working on a new ‘Dark Act” legislation that would prevent states from requiring labels on genetically modified foods. Sustainable Pulse has decided to publish a copy of the new Dark Act draft.