Full list: GMO News

LISA RATHKE
The Associated Press
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MONTPELIER  — One of the most common questions these days among customers at Vermont’s food cooperatives is whether the food they’re buying contains genetically modified ingredients — but the member-owned cooperatives say they can’t tell their customers for sure.

The state’s 17 co-ops announced their support Tuesday for a bill that would require the labeling of food containing genetically modified organisms, as more customers seek GMO-free food.

“They want education and they want to know what has GMOs and what doesn’t,” Krissy Ruddy, community relations manager for the Hunger Mountain Coop. “Honestly we don’t have that information readily available to give to the people who need it.”

The bill, which excludes dairy products, cleared the House Agriculture Committee last month and is expected to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee this week. But even if the bill becomes law, supporters expect it to be challenged in court by the biotech industry, as the state attorney general’s office has warned.

Last spring, the House Agriculture Committee approved a GMO labeling bill but the action came late enough in the session that the legislation didn’t have time to get a vote in the full House or be acted on in the Senate. Supporters hope the bill will at least make it to House floor this year.

The co-ops, which are owned by a total of more than 30,000 members, see this as an important step toward a national GMO initiative and mandatory labeling, said Ruddy.

The labeling measure has the support of 6,811 Vermonters and 175 farms and businesses, according to Rural Vermont. A survey sent to 8,800 members and customers of City Market Onion River Co-op in Burlington last spring found that 95 percent of the 1,400 who responded favored GMO labeling.

About 18 other states are considering some sort of GMO labeling legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Last month, Whole Foods Market, a national grocery chain, announced a 2018 deadline for suppliers to label GMO-derived food for its stores in the U.S. and Canada.

By Mark Bittman
April 2, 2013
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Genetic engineering in agriculture has disappointed many people who once had hopes for it. Excluding, of course, those who’ve made money from it, appropriately represented in the public’s mind by Monsanto. That corporation, or at least its friends, recently managed to have an outrageous rider slipped into the 587-page funding bill Congress sent to President Obama.[1]

The rider essentially prohibits the Department of Agriculture from stopping production of any genetically engineered crop once it’s in the ground, even if there is evidence that it is harmful.

That’s a pre-emptive Congressional override of the judicial system, since it is the courts that are most likely to ask the U.S.D.A. to halt planting or harvest of a particular crop. President Obama signed the bill last week (he kind of had to, to prevent a government shutdown) without mentioning the offensive rider [2] (he might have), despite the gathering of more than 250,000 signatures protesting the rider by the organization Food Democracy Now!

The override is unnecessary as well as disgraceful, because the U.S.D.A. is already overly supportive of genetically engineered crops. When a court tried to stop the planting of genetically engineered beets a couple of years ago pending adequate study, the U.S.D.A. allowed it. And the secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack – who, in fairness, does not seem happy about the rider but was powerless to stop it – was quoted in this (excellent) Politico piece as saying, “With the seed genetics today that we’re seeing, miracles are occurring every single growing season.”

True enough. But “seed genetics” refers not only to genetically engineered seeds but to seeds whose genetics have been altered by conventional means, like classical breeding. In fact, as I said up top, genetic engineering, or, more properly, transgenic engineering – in which a gene, usually from another species of plant, bacterium or animal, is inserted into a plant in the hope of positively changing its nature – has been disappointing.

In the nearly 20 years of applied use of G.E. in agriculture there have been two notable “successes,” along with a few less notable ones.[3] These are crops resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide (Monsanto develops both the seeds and the herbicide to which they’re resistant) and crops that contain their own insecticide. The first have already failed, as so-called superweeds have developed resistance to Roundup, and the second are showing signs of failing, as insects are able to develop resistance to the inserted Bt toxin — originally a bacterial toxin — faster than new crop variations can be generated.

Nothing else in the world of agricultural genetic engineering even comes close to the “success” of these two not-entirely-successful creations. Furthermore, at least in these cases, their pattern of success (and high profits) followed by failure was inevitable.

Don’t take my word for it. Let me summarize extensive conversations I’ve recently had with Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist and plant pathologist at the Union of Concerned Scientists: Roundup Ready seeds allowed farmers to spend less time and energy controlling weeds. But the temporary nature of the gains was predictable: “There was no better way to create weeds tolerant to glyphosate (Roundup) than to spray all of them intensively for a few years,” Gurian-Sherman told me. “And that’s what was done.”

The result is that the biggest crisis in monocrop agriculture – something like 90 percent of all soybeans and 70 percent of corn is grown using Roundup Ready seed – lies in glyphosate’s inability to any longer provide total or even predictable control, because around a dozen weed species have developed resistance to it. “Any ecologist would have predicted this, and many did,” Gurian-Sherman said.

In the case of seeds containing the Bt toxin, insect resistance took longer to develop because breeders, knowing that insects evolve faster than new crop species can normally be generated, have deployed several variations of the Bt toxin in an effort to reduce the “selection pressure.” But, says Gurian-Sherman, “We’re starting to see that resistance now.”

Aside from the shame of Congress, there is another important issue here. Many steps could be taken right now to improve yields while diminishing the need for herbicides and pesticides, including sophisticated rotational systems, targeted applications of chemicals and other methods tested and demonstrated in the U.S.D.A./Iowa State University Marsden Farm study (about which I wrote last year). Acknowledging that — and recognizing that, at least for now, classical breeding methods remain superior to genetic engineering for whole crop improvement — is not the same thing as making inflated claims about the hazards of genetic engineering to human health, as some opponents of genetic engineering have taken to doing.

There is far from any scientific consensus on this, because there’s currently little or no reliable evidence that food manufactured with ingredients from genetically engineered plants is directly harmful to humans[4]. That’s not the same thing as saying that the potential isn’t there for novel proteins and other chemicals to generate unexpected problems, which is why we need strict, effective testing and regulatory systems.

It’s also why the pre-emptive “biotech rider” is such an insult: Congress is (again) protecting corporations from the public interest. This is all the more reason that food derived from genetically modified organisms should be so labeled, especially since the vast majority of Americans want them to be.

We should also note that far less expensive – sometimes 100 times less expensive – conventional breeding techniques have outstripped genetic engineering techniques over the last 20 years, during which G.E. techniques have gotten far more publicity. (Conventionally bred drought resistance has raised yields around 30 percent in the last 30 years; Monsanto’s drought-resistant corn, says Gurian-Sherman, promises at most a 6 percent increase, and that only in moderate drought.) We’re using more pesticides than ever (something like 400 million pounds in the last 15 years), and net yields from applied genetic engineering in the United States are only a bit higher (and then only in monocrop systems) than net yields from seeds developed using more conventional techniques.

All of this explains why producers of genetically engineered seeds feel they need protection. (One can only hope that this is temporary, since the rider expires at the end of this fiscal year; though it’s hard to see it going away without a whole lot of noise.) Their technology is not that great (did Polaroid, or Xerox, or Microsoft need protection?) and their research costs are high. They need another home run like Roundup Ready crops – serious drought tolerance would be an example — yet there isn’t one in sight.

Genetic engineering has its problems. Like nuclear power, it may someday become safe and productive or – again like nuclear power – it may become completely unnecessary. Our job as citizens is to support the production of energy and food by the most sustainable and least damaging methods scientists can devise. If that’s genetic engineering, fine. But to date it hasn’t been; in fact, the technology has been little more than an income-generator for a few corporations desperate to see those profits continue regardless of the cost to the rest of us, or to the environment.

1. Incredibly, it was done anonymously. No member of Congress has taken responsibility.

2. Nor did he mention another horrendous House-inserted provision that gives increased market power to our three largest meatpacking corporations at the expense of small farmers and ranchers, and hogties U.S.D.A. attempts to put the brakes on the worst abuses of big meatpackers.

3. This from a technology that its advocates promised would be revolutionary, a technology that some believe is our only hope of increasing yields quickly enough to “feed humanity” later this century. (Not that we need to increase yields to feed humanity, and not that we’re feeding “humanity” now. But that’s another story.)

4. On the other hand, there has been no monitoring of humans for harm, so the very often heard claim by many G.E. advocates that the technology has harmed no one is, says Gurian-Sherman, “flat out wrong scientifically.”

Tucked inside a short-term funding measure that Congress approved Thursday is a provision that critics are denouncing as a “Monsanto Protection Act.”

The so-called “biotech rider” was included in legislation that won final approval from the House, avoiding a shutdown of the federal government on March 27, when the current funding was set to expire. The provision was slipped into the legislation anonymously. It explicitly grants the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to override a judicial ruling stopping the planting of a genetically modified crop.

On the face of it, that sounds pretty bad. And when environmental and organic farming groups got wind of it earlier this month, they mounted a campaign urging voters to call and email their senators and voice their outrage over the provision, which they denounced as a “giveaway to genetically engineered seed companies” and even an act of “fascism.” Also dismayed was Montana Democrat Jon Tester, the Senate’s lone active farmer, who had offered an amendment to strike the provision from the funding resolution.

The provision “tells USDA to ignore any judicial ruling regarding the planting of genetically modified crops,” Tester said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor last week.

But a closer look at the language of the provision suggests it may not be granting the USDA any powers it hasn’t already exercised in the past.

If you read the provision closely (it’s on page 78, Sec. 735, of this PDF), you’ll see that it authorizes the USDA to grant “temporary” permission for GMO crops to be planted, even if a judge has ruled that such crops were not properly approved, only while the necessary environmental reviews are completed. That’s an authority that the USDA has, in fact, already exercised in the past.

Back in 2010, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the USDA had approved genetically modified sugar beets for commercial planting without adequately assessing their potential environmental impact. The ruling effectively banned future plantings of GMO sugar beets — which made up most of the country’s crop — and raised the specter of a sugar shortage.

So two giant biotech seed producers — Monsanto and Germany’s KWS — petitioned the USDA to issue a “partial deregulation”: Essentially, farmers got the go-ahead to keep planting the beets until the USDA’s environmental assessment of the crop was complete.

At the time, the USDA’s decision infuriated environmental groups and the organic industry. So it’s easy to see why these same groups now take umbrage at an act of Congress that seems to encourage the USDA to approve first, assess later when it comes to GMO crops involved in a legal dispute.

Says Jaffe: “It clearly is a strong statement from Congress that USDA should exercise those powers, maybe in more situations than they might otherwise do it.”

But unlike controversial biotech language inserted into the farm bill last year that never made it into law, Jaffe notes, the newly enacted provision does not seek to limit the government’s ability to conduct environmental reviews of biotech crops.

And for opponents of the new biotech rider, there’s this silver lining: Like the rest of the stopgap funding legislation, it expires in six months.

By CANDICE CHOI
3/8/13
Full Article

NEW YORK (AP) — Whole Foods says all products in its North American stores will have labels disclosing if they contain genetically modified ingredients by 2018.

The company says it’s the first national grocery chain to set such a deadline for labeling foods that contain genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. A spokeswoman for Whole Foods said organic foods will not have to carry the labels since they do not contain GMOs by definition. Although Whole Foods is known as an organic grocer, it also sells a wide array of non-organic products.

Whole Foods Market Inc. notes that it has been working with suppliers for years to source products that don’t have GMO ingredients. It says it currently sells more than 3,000 products have gone through the non-GMO verification process, more than any other retailer in North America.

The use of GMOs has been a growing issue in recent years, with health advocates pushing for mandatory labeling. Last year, California voters shot down an initiative that would have required such labels. As various efforts continue for GMO labeling, Whole Foods said it would move ahead with its own plans.

A spokeswoman for Whole Foods noted that its stores in the United Kingdom already have GMO labeling, in compliance with national regulations.

Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods, said the issue was about “the consumer’s right to know.”

Patty Lovera of Food and Water Watch, a consumer and environmental advocacy group, called the Whole Foods announcement a “smart move.” Her group and others have been pushing for a federal law requiring labeling on all genetically modified foods.

“We’re continuing to work to make this label mandatory because everyone deserves to have that label, not just Whole Food shoppers,” Lovera said. “But I think it’s smart on their part to start giving consumers what they want, which is more information.”

March 15, 2013
By: Renée Canada
Full Article and Video

Connecticut lawmakers are at the Capitol today considering a bill that would require the labeling of genetically engineered food. A public hearing was being held this morning on House Bill 6519, which would mandate the labeling of all processed foods, animals, fruits and vegetables that have been genetically engineered.

More than 150 Connecticut-based organizations and businesses have already endorsed this bill along with national organizations including Food Democracy Now!, Organic Consumers Association, and Institute for Responsible Technology. Jerry Greenfield, the Jerry of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, is also in the state for the hearing.

On Wednesday, March 13, the Committee on Children helped set the stage by voting 11 to 1 in favor of HB 6527, an Act Concerning Genetically Engineered Baby Food, which would require the labeling of foods containing GE ingredients fed to infants.

“We are thrilled that the legislative members of the Children’s Committee have overwhelmingly voted to support our right to know what is in our food,” Tara Cook-Littman, leader of GMO Free CT and mother of three, said in an interview. “This is one step toward giving mothers in CT the ability to make informed choices about what they feed their children.”

GMO Free CT is a grass roots organization educating consumers, farmers, and the government of CT about Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOS) and advocating for our right to know what is in our food.

The bill to label genetically engineered baby food was introduced by State Rep. Diana Urban (D-North Stonington), Chair of the Children’s Committee and mother of one.

“More and more we are coming to realize that GMOs represent a possible human health concern for adults and our children. With the real potential threat to human health, we must make sure to provide basic information to mothers trying to make healthy choices for their families,” said State Rep. Kim Fawcett (D-Fairfield), vice chair of the Children’s Committee. “The work we’re doing here in Connecticut is just part of the voice of a national movement that is demanding more information and transparency about what’s in our food.”

The introduction of this bill and HB 6519 comes after Prop. 37 this past November in California narrowly failed to pass. The measure would have required foods made with GE ingredients to be labeled.

Last year, Connecticut’s own labeling bill failed to pass earlier in 2012. “It was disappointing that the bill didn’t pass here in Connecticut, but we knew it would take time,” Littman said in a December interview. “There will be more momentum [in 2013], and we will have more friends on our side in the legislature.”

The sponsor of HB 6519, Representative Phil Miller said prior to Friday’s public hearing, “This is great progress. We are answering the falsehoods being spread by opponents of labeling with a totality, which more than meets the requirement of proving a legitimate state interest in this legislation.”

March 09, 2013
Michael Feiner
Full Article

Open letter to Gov. Shumlin:

I’m sure if I asked you mano a mano how you felt about having products containing genetically engineered ingredients labeled as such, you’d probably be all for it. I’m sure if I doubled down and asked you how you felt about the risks of planting these crops in the first place, you’d say you weren’t really sure it’s a good idea. You’re a guy who likes to have all the facts, and what “facts” there are about GMOs have been engineered by the corporations profiting from their proliferation. I think you’re practical enough to know that just doesn’t fly.

Wenonah Hauter reminds us in her recent book “Foodopoly” that “science has been allowed to run amok; the biotechnology industry has become so powerful that it can literally buy public policy. Scientists have been allowed to move forward without adequate regulation, and they are now manipulating the genomes of all living things — microorganisms, seeds, fish, and animals. This has enabled corporations to gain control over the basic building blocks of life, threatening the integrity of our global genetic commons and our collective food security.”

Now, I may be going out on a limb here, but deep down I think you agree; and not because you’re an activist, or a politician, or a scientist, but because you’re not stupid.

Frankly, labeling these products may do very little to turn back the tide of corporate control of our food supply or the devastation of our environment. That said, Vermonters don’t get into the ring based on the odds of winning, we get into the ring because we’re fighting for what’s right.

There’s a lot of talk about being sued, and legal precedent (although the reality is that in this case, legal precedence is on our side), and probably a lot of back room talk about your political ambitions and your future. Well, here’s a wake-up call: Your political ambitions rest in the hands of Vermont voters, because if we decide you turned your back on us or took the wrong side of any issue because of its political risks or threats from corporations, you can be sure we will let you and the rest of the world know in no uncertain terms as you pander for votes in the next election.

Monsanto wants to sue, bring it on! You want to show what kind of politician you can be, start by showing what kind of man you can be and tell Monsanto exactly what they can do with their GE experiments.

You can start by sticking it to them on labeling. You deserve to know what’s in the food you eat. If you don’t know, call me, and I’ll take you on a tour of the Statehouse cafeteria and show you all the GMO crap you’ve been consuming over the years; right now you need someone to point it out because Monsanto would very much rather you didn’t know.

So, sure, this is about Monsanto, and it’s about Vermonters, and it’s about me, and farming, and fish, and freedom (if that’s your thing), but mostly, it’s about you.

You may be the governor, but when Monsanto bulldozes its way onto your dinner table and decides what you can, and cannot, know about the food you’re eating, that’s when things get really, really personal.

Michael Feiner
Roxbury

by Andrew Stein
March 1, 2013

Vermont is one step closer to becoming the first state in the nation to enact a labeling law for genetically engineered foods.

The legislation, H.112, would give consumers access to information about what food products have been genetically modified.

The House Committee on Agriculture and Forest Products voted 8-3 in favor of the bill.

Rep. John Bartholomew, D-Hartland, said after three weeks of “annoyingly contradictory” testimony, the committee was unable to determine whether there are “serious health consequences to these products.”

“We are only able to say there were … some unanswered questions about the safety of these foods,” he said. “A consumer needs to know so that he or she can make an informed decision about what products they are going to buy. If they know it’s in there, and they’re going to buy it, OK.”

The proposed bill defines genetically engineered foods as those created from organisms in which the genetic material has been changed via in vitro nucleic acid techniques or cellular fusion. Foods for sale in the retail marketplace that are produced “entirely or partially” using these methods, must be labeled under the proposed legislation.

Raw GE foods would require a label that says: “produced with genetic engineering” or “genetically engineered.” Processed foods that contain one or many GE ingredients would be labeled “partially produced with genetic engineering” or “may be partially produced with genetic engineering.”

Under the legislation, GE foods could not be advertised as: “natural,” “naturally made,” “naturally grown,” “all natural,” or use any similar descriptions that “have a tendency to mislead a consumer.”

The statewide trade organization Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility fully supports the bill.

Dan Barlow, a lobbyist for VBSR, said, “Vermonters have a right to know what’s in their food, and right now GMOs are a threat to the Vermont brand. I think this move can only strengthen the Vermont brand going forward.”

Others have reservations about the bill. Margaret Laggis, who lobbies for the biotech industry, represents the groups Dairy Farmers Working Together and United Dairy Farmers of Vermont.

Many dairy and livestock products, however, would not be subject to GE labeling, as the legislation exempts “food consisting entirely of or derived entirely from an animal which has not itself been produced with genetic engineering.”

The bill exempts a range of other foods, and Laggis questions the bill’s purpose.

“This bill has an ice cream truck size exemption for probably 60 percent to 70 percent of the foods Vermonters eat because meat, dairy, alcohol are not included, no restaurant foods,” she said. “We kind of feel like this is the largest, state-sponsored, consumer-deception bill we’ve ever seen.”

Falko Schilling, an advocate with Vermont Public Interest Research Group, says the exemptions are similar to proposals now under consideration in 20 other states and laws now in effect in dozens of countries around the world.

“What we’re trying to do is play catch-up with the rest of the world,” he said. “Look at Europe: They don’t require labeling of meat or milk from cows that have been fed GE feed. It’s also the language that’s been incorporated in the Washington initiative and in a number of states across the country, so (the committee) is just trying to be as consistent as possible.”

The bill, Schilling said, is based on Proposition 37, the California labeling law that was defeated by voters last November.

The Vermont bill would take effect 18 months after two other states enact similar legislation on July 1, 2015, or whichever date comes first.

But before that day arrives, the legislation is likely to hit a legal hurdle.

That’s why the law includes a severability clause. If any part of the legislation violates the Vermont or U.S. constitutions, “the violation shall not affect other provisions” of the law.

Seven Days reporter Katie Flagg reported earlier this week that leading advocates of the bill and Democratic Rep. Carolyn Partridge, who chairs the Agriculture Committee, anticipate a lawsuit. Partridge is a strong supporter of the legislation.

“I’m not intimidated at all,” she told Flagg.

Vt. would become first state with law if passed
Mar 01, 2013
Full Article and Video

BURLINGTON, Vt. —The House Agriculture committee will vote Friday on whether to move ahead with a bill placing labels on genetically modified food products.