Inside D.C.

GM labeling — a simple problem, a complex solution

The issue of whether it’s necessary to label foods containing genetically modified (GM) ingredients is one of those issues where Congress should step in to provide a federal answer to the question.  The food industry can’t operate with two dozen or more different labeling schemes as devised by individual states without jacking up prices to cover the cost of labeling/logistics and confusing consumers.

At the same time, the issue should be straightforward: FDA, USDA or both – depending on which controls which food product label – is given authority by Congress to preempt the states when it comes to what’s on a food label.  However, in classic Washington fashion, a bill wending its way through Congress is anything but a simple straightforward solution.

HR 1599, the Safe & Accurate Food Labeling Act, instead of simply clarifying it’s the federal government which determines what you read on a food label and how that determination will be made, creates a formal albeit voluntary certification system for labeling a food as “non-GM.”  The absence of GM ingredients isn’t enough; USDA will certify the label claim “consistent” with the National Organics Standard Program (NOSP).

The reason for this new formal certification regime is that food companies are scrambling to come out with “non-GM” food products, having discovered the public which seeks “guilt-free” foods doesn’t distinguish between what’s certified organic or “non-GM” – except when it comes to price.    The non-GM product is almost always cheaper, and despite what survey data may tell pundits, when it comes to food buying, even feel-good food buying, price and convenience trump just about any other purchasing factor.  “Big food’s” interest in non-GM is similar to the commercial food industry’s wholesale move into the organic space once there existed a federal definition of organic, and a set of federal rules which could be influenced.

Our friends in the organic industry – who up until HR 1599 started to move made little noise about “non-GM” – have awakened to the fact consumers will pick a non-GM-labeled product over an organic product most of the time. They’ve figured out they should have waded into the non-GM wars long ago, so their apparent strategy is to make food labeling options even more difficult than before.

As HR 1599 was about to go before the House Agriculture Committee this week, organic folks starting making noises that if the voluntary non-GM certification allowed even a hint of a GM ingredient, it “threatens the organic premium,” as one organic dairy pleaded.  No matter the “National List” of non-organic, but permitted ingredients in a certified organic food contains any number of man-made ingredients which have or may have benefitted from the wonders of biotechnology.

Critics now look at the way HR 1599 envisions USDA certifying a non-GM label as “more draconian” than most organic regulation, both here and abroad.  Political drumbeats are being heard.

What every politician involved wants to avoid is a showdown between conventional food production and organic food production.  Five years ago, I would have predicted such a showdown would go to the organic folks. However, now, with new research on price disparity, true environmental impact comparisons, and equivalent health and safety benefits between conventional and organic – and the advent of non-GM – organic may very well lose this battle, if not the entire war over “healthy foods.”  I call this arrogance of organic; now there’s the real threat to the “organic premium.”

So much for the straightforward solution to an obvious problem.