gmNO

The New York Times magazine recently published a nice article by Michael Pollan* on why we should care about California's Proposition 37, which will require labeling on all food products containing genetically modified ingredients. Predictably, agribusiness corporations are not best pleased with the proposed California law, and would really love it if the proposition did not pass.

I found the following few paragraphs from the article particularly interesting, and I hope they will entice you to read the whole thing (it's really not that long and it's worth a perusal).

Monsanto and its allies have fought the labeling of genetically modified food so vigorously since 1992, when the industry managed to persuade the Food and Drug Administration — over the objection of its own scientists — that the new crops were “substantially equivalent” to the old and so did not need to be labeled, much less regulated. This represented a breathtaking exercise of both political power (the F.D.A. policy was co-written by a lawyer whose former firm worked for Monsanto) and product positioning: these new crops were revolutionary enough (a “new agricultural paradigm,” Monsanto said) to deserve patent protection and government support, yet at the same time the food made from them was no different than it ever was, so did not need to be labeled. It’s worth noting that ours was one of only a very few governments ever sold on this convenient reasoning: more than 60 other countries have seen fit to label genetically modified food, including those in the European Union, Japan, Russia and China.

To prevent the United States from following suit, Monsanto and DuPont, the two leading merchants of genetically modified seed, have invested more than $12 million to defeat Prop 37. They've been joined in this effort by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, whose president declared at a meeting last July that defeating Prop 37 would be the group’s top priority for 2012. Answering the call, many of America’s biggest food and beverage makers — including PepsiCo, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and General Mills — have together ponied up tens of millions of dollars to, in effect, fight transparency about their products.

Americans have been eating genetically engineered food for 18 years, and as supporters of the technology are quick to point out, we don’t seem to be dropping like flies. But they miss the point. The fight over labeling G.M. food is not foremost about food safety or environmental harm, legitimate though these questions are. The fight is about the power of Big Food. Monsanto has become the symbol of everything people dislike about industrial agriculture: corporate control of the regulatory process; lack of transparency (for consumers) and lack of choice (for farmers); an intensifying rain of pesticides on ever-expanding monocultures; and the monopolization of seeds, which is to say, of the genetic resources on which all of humanity depends.

Now for a quick topical rant:

To all (one) of my California readers out there, my personal preference would be that you VOTE YES on this prop. I'd quite like to make those agribusiness and food companies squirm; wouldn't you? Plus, as a general rule, I'm against genetically modified food. I'm not really sure whether it's "unhealthy" (whatever that means) or not, but I do think the seed patenting process is extremely unhelpful to the sustainability of the food system (and the livelihood of farmers; go watch this and you'll see), and I'm way against the way that GM crops tend to promote the use of pesticides.

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*Stole this link from Christine's post on Facebook. Thanks, Christine!