In this particular season of political nuttiness, it’s tough to look around and see anything that offers us hope. But Congress—yes, Congress!—gave us something to cheer about earlier this year: By a razor thin 48-47 margin, the Senate did not pass the Biotechnology Labeling Solutions Act (S2609), also known as the DARK Act (Deny Americans the Right to Know).
It’s a sign of the times that we get excited about something Congress didn’t do rather than something it did, but still, the failure of the DARK Act is important. To put it simply: Passage of this bill would have affected the food you eat every day. Had it passed, states couldn’t have ordered food companies to put labels on packages indicating whether ingredients had been genetically modified. Because the Act failed, states are now free to pass laws mandating “GMO” labels, among others. Vermont has just such a law going into effect on July 1st, and the mid-March failure of the DARK Act was well-timed: it means the Vermont law, the first of its kind in the country, can be enforced by regulators.
What this means in practice is simple: as of July 1st, food companies who distribute in Vermont will have to disclose to their customers whether or not they used genetically-modified foods. This might seem like a small thing—literally, in fact, as the labels are tiny—but the debate it has caused, and the lobbying it has generated, has been staggering. Food companies have spent tens of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of hours fighting against labeling legislation. Why? Because the biggest food companies in the world—Monsanto, to name but one—have a powerful interest in keeping these labels off the food they produce.
Their side of the story goes like this: In order to put these labels on millions of canisters of food, they’d have to spend millions of dollars—costs which they would have to pass onto to American families. No one wants more expensive food, they argue, so let’s forget the labels and keep things the way they are.
Examined closely, this argument doesn’t withstand scrutiny. Set aside the obvious, namely that these companies spend millions fighting labeling, money which, presumably, could go into paying for the labeling. The real irony is this: Most of these companies are multi-nationals, and when they ship food overseas, they’re often required to include labels. In fact, labeling is a fairly standard practice abroad, including in several EU member nations, Japan, and South Korea, along with dozens of countries you wouldn’t expect to have progressive food policies: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, for instance.
That means that big food companies are unwilling to do for Americans what they are willing to do for the Japanese and the Russians. And this in spite of the fact that Americans support GMO labeling by an overwhelming majority. According to Consumer Reports, over 90% of Americans are in favor of straightforward, government-mandated labeling of food containing genetically engineered or modified ingredients.
All of this leads to the natural question: What gives? Why do food companies oppose something Americans want and foreigners already have?
Answer: Because they’re afraid. They’re afraid of what American consumers might think when they see “genetically engineered” on the carton of something they’re about to eat. They’re afraid buyers of food will flock to GMO-free alternatives, and that they’ll permanently abandon the companies that serve up anything but. And those fears lead them to fight for the right to hide this information.
Monsanto and similar food conglomerates have good reason to be afraid: There’s a great deal of attention being paid to genetically modified foods—and whether or not they are damaging people’s health and the country’s environment. It’s tough to get clear, unequivocal answers on what genetic modification does to food, and the overheated politics and rhetoric do nothing to help the research along. Further, because so much of the country’s food is, by this point, genetically modified in some way (estimates here), arguing against it is like trying to push back the ocean.
But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the effects of mass production of genetically modified food. One example: GMOs are engineered to tolerate very high levels of glyphosate, a herbicide first engineered by Monsanto. The high tolerance by GMOs of glyphosate means companies who produce the food can spray massive quantities of it (over 2 billion pounds, by some estimates), without, they claim, ever affecting the crops themselves. Two somewhat self-evident problems emerge. The first is that we aren’t sure what this compound does to the human body, though studies suggest that it could be carcinogenic for humans. The second problem: while the chemicals may not be absorbed by the pesticide-resistant crops, they have to go somewhere—so they leach into the ground and the water supply.
That’s the kind of image—highly potent, potentially carcinogenic substances making their way into the land and into your mouth—that food companies would prefer wasn’t advertised for all to see. Quite understandably: you don’t want your customers to imagine their potato chips or peanut butter include a side dish of pesticide. That’s why their fervent opposition to labeling genetically-modified food is, in some ways, unsurprising. But by trying to hide something, these companies are giving us reason to believe they have something to hide.
Which is why Congress’s failure to pass the DARK Act was a necessary step but not a sufficient one. At the state level, legislatures are beginning to wake up to these issues, passing bills, as in Vermont, that compel food companies to clarify what exactly we’re eating. It may be too much to wish that Congress mandate the same thing at the federal level, but given the failure of the DARK Act in the face of intense and well-funded lobbying, there might still be reason to think that Congress could design laws in favor of transparency. If they did, that would be a win for consumers—and real reason for hope.