GMO : INDUSTRY TRIES TO PREEMPT LABELING LAW

REVEALED: BIG FOOD’S NEW PLAN TO KILL GMO LABELING LAWS (from an article by ronniecummins=organicconsumers.org@mail.salsalabs.net; en nombre de; Organic Consumers Association [ronniecummins@organicconsumers.org]; Jan 9, 2014)

The food industry is going door-to-door on Capitol Hill, seeking lawmakers willing to sponsor a bill to preempt state mandatory GMO labeling laws by substituting a weak federal “solution.” The “solution” Big Food has in mind, revealed on Jan. 7 by POLITICO, would limit the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) power to require mandatory labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It would also wipe out states’ rights to enact mandatory labeling laws, and would guarantee companies the right to use the word “natural” on products that contain GMOs.

TELL THE FDA: DON’T CAVE (ronniecummins=organicconsumers.org@mail.salsalabs.net; en nombre de; Organic Consumers Association [ronniecummins@organicconsumers.org]; Jan 9, 2014)

The FDA made the wrong decision in 1992 when it caved in to Monsanto, and ruled that genetically engineered foods were “substantially equivalent” to non GE foods.

Now the food industry, led by its multi-billion dollar lobbying arm, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), wants the FDA to protect Big Food’s profits by ruling against mandatory GMO labeling laws.

It’s time for the FDA to protect consumers, not corporations.

TAKE ACTION: Tell the FDA: No Watered-Down, Voluntary Federal GMO Labeling Rules!

Comment from the Blog’s Editor:

The “substantially equivalent” concept is what the transgenic industry has been claiming right from the beginning and the US and World food authorities have gladdly swallowed.

But exactly what “substantially equivalent” means? If two substances are “equivalent”, what is the need to add the term “substantially”?  Who defines what is or is not substantial? How do you measure “substantiality”? This is a term similar to others like “practically”, “adequately”, “esentially” and many others that us technical people use when we do not know how to measure a condition. THEY MEAN NOTHING! Even the term “equivalent” is often not enough, and is a sort of compromise when we know we cannot say that two things are  “identical”. The latter concepts –identical and equivalent - are often used in organic standards writing in order to “accept” that the application of two standards under different conditions leads to the same final result. But when we claim that two products are “essentially equivalent” they are not only identical but they are not even plainly equivalent. In the specific case of transgenic foods we cannot say that they are equivalent until it is ascertained that they do not lead to collateral effects in the consumer after a given (and perfectly defined) time which, in this case, must extend to following generations.

Going back to the big food industry’s proposal, they even add another measure of uncertaintly when they want the law to “guarantee companies the right to use the word “natural” on products that contain GMOs”. What exactly is a “natural” product?  

Jorge Casale, Editor.