Obama and Congress Mandate Fraud

President Obama signed a bill mandating food labeling indicating whether the food product contains “genetically modified organisms” (GMOs)—that is, ingredients bioengineered to improve the quality, nutrition, or productivity-enhancing traits. I call it fraud labeling. Why do I call this fraud labeling?

Here is the definition of Fraud: “A false representation of a matter of fact—whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of what should have been disclosed—that deceives and is intended to deceive another so that the individual will act upon it to her or his legal injury.”

What is concealed? The fact that GMO foods have never been proven to carry any more risk to human health or the environment than non-GMO foods. But, thanks to the hysterical and unsupported propaganda claims of the anti-science primitives, GMO’s carry the stigma that non-GMO foods are safer. That’s what the label “non-GMO” implies. It’s a smear of genetically engineered foods or food containing GMOs. The label “non-GMO” is fraudulent for what it implies and is intended to imply.

Of course, supporters of the bill, which passed a heavily Republican Congress, argue for the labeling based on an alleged “right to know.” As Fortune reports:

GMOs are estimated to be in the majority of our food, somewhere between 75% and 80%. The Food and Drug Administration has said that they are safe for consumption, but most consumers argue that, safe or not, they have the right to know exactly what is in their food.

But there is no broad-based “right to know.” There is only the right to know that the product you are buying has been truthfully and fully represented with relevant information. Since GMO technology tells you nothing relevant about the food product—GM technology is just the latest and most precise method of employing the millennium-long practice of genetically modifying crops, which includes selective breeding, ionization radiation, and chemical processes—there is no reason to place GMO labeling on food packages other then to pander to anti-biotech alarmism and ignorance.

The government should not mandate food labeling. It should focus its energies on vigorously prosecuting fraudulent claims in food labeling. It’s bad enough that the FDA allows voluntary food packaging containing the non-GMO label, thus allowing backdoor fraud to go on unrestricted. At the least, the “non-GMO” label should be accompanied by a disclaimer that “The FDA has determined that GMO ingredients are safe for consumption.” It’s worse that GMO labeling will now be mandatory, even if in the watered-down form approved by Congress and signed by Obama. The government is pandering to ignorance and anti-science to the point of contributing to fraud.

Related Reading:

OCA’s Ronnie Cummins’s Rebuttal to USA Today’s Pro-GMO Op-Ed Typifies Anti-GMO ‘Ignorance and Hysteria’

Ignorance Wins in Vermont

107 Nobel laureates sign letter blasting Greenpeace over GMOs—Washington Post

Why ‘GMO-free’ is a marketing ploy you shouldn’t fall for—Washington Post

Are GMO crops safe? Focus on the plant, not the process, scientists say.—Washington Post

OCA’s Ronnie Cummins’s Rebuttal to USA Today’s Pro-GMO Op-Ed Typifies Anti-GMO ‘Ignorance and Hysteria’

USA Today invites opposing viewpoints on its editorials. In a May 2015 editorial, GMO food bans pander to ignorance: Our view - USA Today, USA Today wrote:

[D]espite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, most Americans believe that food altered by genetically modified organisms — GMOs — is harmful. Based on the misinformation, companies are beginning to ban food that contains GMOs.

Burrito chain Chipotle is the latest, following General Mills' decision to take GMO ingredients out of plain Cheerios last year. The companies say they're doing the right thing for consumers. What they're really doing is validating ignorance and hysteria.

Science is losing the battle by a shocking margin. A recent Pew survey found that although 88% of scientists say GMO foods are safe, only 37% of Americans do.

Much of this is a result of anti-GMO crusaders' exploitation of mistrust about how foods are genetically modified.

There’s more, and you should read the entire piece.

Ronnie Cummins, the international director of the Organic Consumers Association, responded with Chipotle makes a sound decision: Opposing view. Whereby USA Today cited evidence for the safety of genetically modified foods, Cummins relied on exactly what USA Today said the anti-GMO crusaders rely on; ignorance and hysteria, spiced up with ad hominem. Here are a few excerpts from Cummins rebuttal:

Since when do the mainstream news media, in a country that worships at the altar of

capitalism and the free market, launch a coordinated attack against a company for selling a product consumers want? When that company dares to cross the powerful biotech industry.

How else to explain the unprecedented negative coverage of Chipotle, merely because the successful restaurant chain will eliminate GMO foods?

The biotech industry has a long history of discrediting scientists who challenge the safety of GMOs. That intimidation campaign worked well until consumers connected the dots between GMO foods (and the toxic chemicals used to grow them) and health concerns. Once consumers demanded labels on GMO foods, the biotech industry responded with a multimillion dollar public relations campaign.

Yet despite spending millions to influence the media, and millions more to prevent laws requiring labels on products the industry claims are safe, Monsanto has lost the hearts and minds of consumers. The latest polls show that 93% of Americans support mandatory labeling of GMO foods.

Like all dogmatists, Cummins doesn’t address in what way the biotech industry is engaging in “intimidation.” Anti-GMO activists can attack, attack, attack. But when their victims defend themselves, the activists seek to discredit their victims without even bothering to address the substance of their victims response. People who avoid transparent debate do so for one reason and one reason only: They have no case and they know it.

I left these comments:

Chipotle and others who trumpet “no GMOs” may be employing a marketing ploy. But there is a strong stench of fraud in this type of labeling; the implication that GMOs are unhealthy, or that non-GMO foods are healthier because they are non-GMO. The fact that GMO technology is used in a particular food product tells you nothing about the health, safety, or nutritional value of the food, any more than the use of the term “organic” tells you anything more than that the product is more expensive. In fact, all foods go through the same rigorous testing before being marketed. As the FDA states, “the use or absence of use of bioengineering in the production of a food or ingredient does not, in and of itself, mean that there is a material difference in the food. . . [T]he key factors in reviewing safety concerns should be the characteristics of the food product, rather than the fact that the new methods are used.”

Cummins doesn't mention that non-GMO foods are themselves genetically modified. As the FDA notes: “Most, if not all, cultivated food crops have been genetically modified. Data indicate that consumers do not have a good understanding that essentially all food crops have been genetically modified and that bioengineering technology is only one of a number of technologies used to genetically modify crops.” The anti-GMO movement is fundamentally biased against the modern science and knowledge of genetics, not genetically- bred foods, which it sells plenty of.

Consequently, the FDA warns against the potentially “misleading” nature of labels like “GMO free.” It states: “A statement that a food was not bioengineered or does not contain bioengineered ingredients may be misleading if it implies that the labeled food is superior to foods that are not so labeled. FDA has concluded that the use or absence of use of bioengineering in the production of a food or ingredient does not, in and of itself, mean that there is a material difference in the food. Therefore, a label statement that expresses or implies that a food is superior (e.g., safer or of higher quality) because it is not bioengineered would be misleading.” But misleading the public is exactly the intent of the GMO-labeling movement. The Organic Consumers Association and its ilk is exploiting the public’s ignorance of genetic modification of foods, while at the same time contributing to maintaining that ignorance. The FDA calls it misleading. I call it fraud.

Cummins “opposing view” essentially confirms USA Today’s stand. Cummins’s whole argument amounts to: GMO technology is bad because popular sentiment and a poll showing Americans want labeling says so, backed up by an ad hominem attack on the biotech industry and Monsanto, conspiracy theory, pandering to ignorance, and fear mongering. Cummins provides no evidence against GMO tech. The only thing Cummins proves is that anti-GMO activists have no argument against GMO technology. GMO science is doing for our food what genetic engineering is doing for our healthcare—improving on nature for human benefit.

Cummins responded to USA Today in the hollow fashion typical of anti-GMO activists—without any substance. For example, consider that poll showing 93% of Americans want GMO labeling. Most likely, it’s related to the feeling information is good, not any kind of antipathy to GMOs. Besides, most people, as the FDA notes, are ill-informed about the technology—and much else. As Amanda Maxham observes, a Department of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State poll also found that 80% of Americans want mandatory labelling of foods containing DNA, the building block of life that virtually every food contains, and which our bodies are made of. Cummins’s citation of his poll is pandering to ignorance. As Maxham observes:

[G]roups that push for mandatory GMO labeling use survey results like these to play on consumers’ ignorance of scientific issues in the guise of reporting wide-spread support of their position [that GMO foods are harmful or inferior].

Cummins provides no evidence that the modern science of genetic engineering of food plants is bad for humans. Cummins’s only attempt at “evidence” is to single out glyphosate as a “probable” carcinogen. He writes:

In March, 17 leading cancer researchers concluded that glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, widely used on GMO crops, is a "probable" carcinogen. In 1985, Environmental Protection Agency scientists drew the same conclusion. According to hundreds of scientists worldwide, there is no consensus on the safety of GMO foods.

But a single bad ingredient in one product of GMO technology doesn’t discredit the technology, any more than one defective vaccine discredits the science behind vaccination technology or poison mushrooms invalidate “organic” foods. And even this “proof” falls short, since Cummins doesn’t specify what concentration of glyphosate is present in Roundup. Many chemicals are carcinogenic, but only above certain levels of concentration. The issue is not whether glyphosate is a carcinogen, but whether it’s use in Roundup is at a high enough concentration to harm humans. Context is everything. It can also be said that DNA is a “probable” cause of cancer. Another question: does the glyphosate in Roundup affect the plant it’s used on? Cummins’s unsupported implication is nothing but scare propaganda. It doesn’t even invalidate the product, let alone the science.  “No concensus” is another way of saying “no proof” that GMO technology is in and of itself unsafe.

How would the organic food industry feel if GMO foods were labeled “GMO Improved?” In fact, that would be more accurate and honest labeling than simply labeling food as “contains GMO” or “GMO free”—which, given the smear campaign of fear and ignorance about genetically modified plants, amounts to back-door fraud. As USA Today points out, genetic engineering is merely a more precise way of doing what humans have been doing for tens of centuries—improving food  through genetic alteration based on selective breeding; except with GMO technology, it’s intelligent design—real intelligent design—based on knowledge of genes.

It’s true that GMO technology could result in unintended consequences, including some that are bad. But so does selective breeding. If anything, the advanced knowledge of genetics that is fundamental to GMO tech makes negative side effects less likely, while shortening the time it takes to develop improved plant varieties. Rutgers recently developed a new strawberry variety through traditional breeding techniques, but it took ten years. More importantly, genetic engineering provides precise knowledge of the DNA changes in genetically modified crops, in sharp contrast to the blindness of prior breeding methods. As the Genetic Literacy Project observes:

For thousands of year’s entire plant genomes have been mixed to create new varieties of food crops. Starting in the twentieth century we began using ionizing radiation and chemicals to randomly change the DNA of food crops, a process known as mutagenesis. In all of these “traditional” breeding methods there is little knowledge of what changes have occurred to the DNA of our food crops. However, it is known that the extent of the DNA changes from traditional breeding are far greater than the precise, directed changes that are the result of genetic engineering. GE breeding technology is a refinement of the random uncontrolled DNA modification breeding procedures of the past.   

USA Today gets it right: The GMO debate is basically a battle between science and anti-science. The dirty little secret about the anti-GMO ideologues is this: The anti-GMO movement is not against genetic modification, so long as it is done through primitive methods. The anti-GMO movement is fundamentally biased against the application of human intelligence, knowledge of genetics, and science to the breeding of new plant varieties.

Related Reading:

Ignorance Wins in Vermont

Amanda Maxham on GMOs—Voices for Reason

Not all science created equal: The genetically engineered crops story—The Genetic Literacy Project

Ignorance Wins in Vermont

Vermont became the first state to mandate that genetically modified foods be labeled as such.

Genetically modified foods—or “GMO” or “GM” foods—are foods that are made, in whole or in part, from genetically modified plants through genetic engineering, or biotechnology. Genetically modified plants refers to plants whose genetic structure has been altered to achieve new plant characteristics, such as increased nutrition, resistance to pests, or increased crop yields. Genetic engineering is a new technology applied to a practice that has been going on for thousands of years through a process called “selective breeding,” and more recently through “mutation breeding.” Genetic engineering is basically a more precise, more scientific method of achieving what traditional plant breeding has done for millennia.

Supporters of mandated GMO labeling claim a “right” to know whether the foods on grocery shelves are genetically modified. But there is no right to force food companies to label their products. Consumers only have the right to investigate on their own, such as by consulting private “watchdog” agencies that research foods. Consumers can also contact the food companies directly to gather information they consider relevant, and food companies are generally very forthcoming in providing consumer information, based on the self-interested motive of building trust in the market.

I know this from personal experience. My granddaughter was afflicted with a severe dairy allergy for the first 5 years of her life. My daughter and wife regularly contacted food companies to gather relevant information pertaining to information not available through labeling, such as whether foods labeled as non-dairy were processed on equipment also used to process foods containing dairy products. (My granddaughter could not tolerate even minute traces of dairy, such as might be present in “non-dairy” foods due to “cross-contamination” caused by residual dairy ingredients on the machinery used to process dairy-containing products.) My wife would often call food companies’ consumer information number while standing in the grocery isle, packaged food in hand. We found it exceedingly rare for food companies not to be helpful, and in that rare event, consumers can simply not buy that company’s products.

While the government has no business mandating food labeling, companies are of course free to voluntarily label their foods. In the absence of labeling mandates, consumer demand for information would undoubtedly lead companies to do just that. Of course, we don’t have a free market, and food labeling is mandated. But, even by statist standards, GMO labeling is not necessary. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notes on its website that

the use or absence of use of bioengineering in the production of a food or ingredient does not, in and of itself, mean that there is a material difference in the food.

[F]oods . . . developed by the new methods of genetic modification are regulated within
the existing framework of . . . FDA regulations, and current practice, utilizing an approach identical in principle to that applied to foods developed by traditional plant breeding. The method by which food is produced or developed may in some cases help to understand the safety or nutritional characteristics of the finished food. However, the key factors in reviewing safety concerns should be the characteristics of the food product, rather than the fact that the new methods are used.

Crucially, the FDA notes that “[E]ssentially all food crops have been genetically modified and . . . bioengineering technology is only one of a number of technologies used to genetically modify crops.”

This gets to the heart of the GMO labeling controversy. Although most Americans polled favor GMO labeling, most don’t understand the issues, particularly the threat to their future health and well-being (in terms of foregone benefits of GM foods) that the anti-GMO agenda embodies. The small anti-GMO cabal is motivated by an anti-science agenda, not any concern for safe food, and their rhetoric bears this out.

For example, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) challenged FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg’s statement that “We have not found evidence of [GMO] safety risks,” not by citing any evidence to the contrary, but by

call[ing] on FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to acknowledge the growing body of scientific evidence that GMOs, and the chemicals required to grow GMO crops, are potentially damaging to human health.

What is “evidence” of a potential? It is no evidence at all, as a broad spectrum of scientists have attested. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, notes that

Foods containing ingredients from genetically modified (GM) crops pose no greater risk than the same foods made from crops modified by conventional plant breeding techniques. . . . Legally mandating labels on GM foods could therefore ‘mislead and falsely alarm consumers’. . .

The “could be” “might be” a “potential” risk line permeates anti-GMO arguments.

But University of California @ Davis plant geneticist and professor Pamela Ronald—of whom prominent GMO skeptic Michael Pollan says, “If anyone can make the case for this technology, it’s Pam Ronald”— notes:

There is broad scientific consensus that genetically engineered crops currently on the market are safe to eat. After 14 years of cultivation and a cumulative total of 2 billion acres planted, no adverse health or environmental effects have resulted from commercialization of genetically engineered crops.

And three Kenyan food policy experts noted that, in a survey of 39 biotechnology experts, “Most respondents do not like the idea of labeling GM food.”

Worse, the OCA demands that GMO foods, which have been on the market and consumed regularly for two decades, should be “eliminated from the food supply” until “the FDA can state unequivocally that GMOs are safe for human consumption.” This is tantamount to demanding omniscience from FDA scientists, because genetic modification is only a technological process that tells you nothing about the end products it produces. There is no way to state “unequivocally” that some harmful genetically engineered food product won’t some day find its way onto the market, which is why the FDA says that “the characteristics of the food product, rather than the fact that the new methods are used,” should be the focus. Some risk is inherent in all human activity, and that risk must always be balanced against the benefits and associated risks of not employing a technology. If the OCA’s irrational standards of perfection were adopted throughout mankind’s history, no new technology would have ever been adopted, and man would have never emerged from the cave.

The OCA may simply be trying to rationalize a greedy agenda; to cut out competition GM foods pose for “organic” foods. As AP reports, “Some farmers in Vermont, known for its organic food operations, see the bill's passage as a David-vs.-Goliath victory.” In any event, the organic industry is hypocritical, since all so-called “organic” foods have been genetically modified by older techniques. As the FDA notes, “essentially all food crops have been genetically modified and . . . bioengineering technology is only one of a number of technologies used to genetically modify crops.”

More sinister is the environmentalists and anti-capitalists. Environmentalists simply value the natural “environment” above human well-being, and always oppose technological advance. Environmentalists have actually cited damage to “biodiversity” and “ecosystems” as reasons to forgo alleviation of human malnutrition and related illnesses.

Anti-capitalists have “concerns about the dominance of big agribusiness.” As The New Yorker’s Amanda Little reported without challenge at a GMO debate in front of a university audience dominated by anti-GMO student skeptics:

One ominous metaphor was by far the most prevalent among the students with whom I spoke after Ronald’s lecture: “G.M.O.s have come to represent the corporate control of our food system,” Mikel Shybut, a twenty-five-year-old Ph.D. student in plant and microbial biology, told me. Shybut stressed that he and his peers had little concern about the human-health impacts of G.M.O.s. He said that he believed in “the promise and power of genetic engineering,” but only insofar as they are “used for people, not for profit.”

These students are apparently unaware of the biggest human experiment in food production “used for people, not for profit”—the farm-collectivized Soviet Union, which, despite holding the largest area of fertile land on the planet, could only stave off mass starvation by relying on small, privately owned, for-profit domestic farm plots and generous imports of grain courtesy of profit-seeking businessmen from the capitalist West, particularly the U.S.A.

The bottom line is that the Vermont legislature caved in to ignorance and fear-mongering, and the food industry—if the new mandate is not overturned in the courts—will get stuck paying the price. But the ploy may backfire on the anti-GMO zealots. As the U.K.’s Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine notes:

Opposition to GM crops is perceived to be greater in the EU compared with other countries such as the USA, where food from GM crops has become part of the normal diet. However, the situation is complex and UK public opinion is perhaps not so set against GM crops as is generally believed. Surveys have reported findings in which only 13% of consumers said they actively avoid GM foods, while 74% were not sufficiently concerned to actively avoid it. This seems surprising considering the amount of anti-GM media coverage. From many of these articles it would seem appropriate to assume that the public as a whole are adamantly opposed to GM foods, but this is not substantiated by the surveys conducted.

Once consumers realize that they have been eating GMO foods for years, they may simply brush of the whole controversy, and go on buying the products as they have been. Let’s hope so, because if the technology-hating, capitalism-hating anti-GMO zealots ever get their way, billions of people will pay the price in higher prices, lower quality, and—in the case of many third-world countries—malnutrition and starvation.

Related Reading:

Amanda Maxham on GMOs—Voices for Reason