I-522 ~ Written Interview by DBP

[VBD]

JoB, you and I have found some common ground here. I absolutely agree it should be about informed choice.

I guess it comes down to what a person interprets “informed choice” to mean.

I see the result of this initiative offering us 3 options for choice:

1. Foods labeled as organic or GE-free would remain the same, and give us a good chance of avoiding GE foods.

2. Unlabeled foods probably don’t contain any GE, but they also may be non-compliant, or simply have GE ingredients added unknowingly.

3. GE labeled foods mean there might be GE ingredients, but we can’t know what or how much.

I don’t consider that the makings of an informed choice, with the exception of #1, which is already the way it is now.

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[JoB]

VBD..

have you read the story of the group of farm laborers who came to the realization that the only way to raise their wages was to convince the major purveyors of their product to pay a penny more a pound?

i will cut to the chase.. they succeeded in holding the fast food companies that are the major purchasers of their product to increase their purchase price by a penny a pound which translated directly into wages.

then they used the same tactic to get those same major purchasers to hold the companies that employ them to basic work safety standards.

By your own admission, I522 will have the same affect on consumer choices that that farm workers collective used to increase their wages and working conditions…

using the same basic method..

the power of a free market :)

I agree that I522 isn’t perfect. But it’s a start.

The farm workers collective started with a national boycott of Taco Bell

and now all major fast food franchises except Wendys have signed on.

we are starting with a small notation on a label.

with any luck that one notation will lead the rest of the information you complain won’t be provided.

without the notation we don’t stand a chance of getting the rest of the information, do we?

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[elikapeka]

I very much appreciate the thoughtful information and discussion on this thread.

I can see that this is far from perfect, but it’s a start. I like to know what’s in my food and sometimes the method makes a difference too. I look for meat and eggs that are certified humane. I look for wild, not farm-raised fish. I can’t always afford organic, but I like to have the option.

Like other posters, I can think of long lists of things that were once thought to pose no health hazard, only to find out differently down the road.

But like Wakeflood, my bigger concern is having so much control of our food supply concentrated in big agribusiness, and concerns about the long-term implications. Monsanto in particular has been very aggressive in this regard, suing farmers on a regular basis for patent infringement in a variety of circumstances.

Will this initiative curb those practices, no. But it puts societal pressure on agribusiness and on regulatory bodies to monitor these things.

I’m still undecided on my vote because I can see there are problems with the way this is written. On the other hand, if we let the perfect be the enemy of the good that doesn’t accomplish anything.

Hope to see more discussion – I am learning a lot from this thread.

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[AdmiralJaneway]

I remember seeing this video clip about GMO and engineered proteins.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/cookusinterruptus/2011/03/28/let-go-of-your-eggo/

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[wakeflood]

I realize this is tangential at best to this discussion but it goes to my point of distrusting the hubris that high technology mixed with human nature seems to naturally create…like some nasty precipitant unknowingly yielded from a seemingly innocuous combination of chemicals.

From the NYT. A guy has an undiagnosed disease and spends a lot of time sorting out both his diagnosis and why people make bad decisions regarding their own health options. A quote I thought enlightening:

” I chose a surgeon who wasn’t overly confident. I’d learned in my research that the super-confident, doctor-as-god types did not always perform well. One study of radiologists, for example, reveals that those who perform poorly on diagnostic tests are also those most confident in their diagnostic prowess.”

The rest of the short article was a good read as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/why-we-make-bad-decisions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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[VBD]

AdmiralJaneway, that is a very compelling video, and it makes a strong case for why labeling the specific ingredients in the food is so vital to a successful labeling law. I-522 will not, of course, tell you if corn or soy in foods is GE or not.

I should also add, however, that the video is way off in much of the information presented as fact. The US does not have the highest rates of cancer in the world. For all cancers, and specifically breast cancer, European countries have the highest cancer rates.

http://www.wcrf.org/cancer_statistics/cancer_frequency.php

http://www.wcrf.org/cancer_statistics/data_specific_cancers/breast_cancer_statistics.php

As for allergies, that information is distorted as well. The #1 food, by far, for inducing allergy is nuts. It doesn’t matter if you are in the US or Europe, the rates are about the same. Food allergies are increasing worldwide, not just in the US.

Interestingly, nut allergies are less common in Asia. There are some studies on allergies and hygiene, that seem very culturally based. It will be fascinating to find out more about this trend.

Regardless, there are no genetically engineered nuts.

A short presentation on allergies:

http://www.worldallergy.org/UserFiles/file/WorldAllergyWeek2013final.pdf

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[JanS]

breast cancer…this has nothing to do with the topic, but…WA state, and specifically Seattle, has the highest rates of breast cancer in the nation….statistics are good, but not always beneficial…

I still want to know what’s in my food. if a company wants to engineer their food product, fine…just tell me. Do any of you grow roses? Corn? Any hybrids among them? It’s not a new thing, and the packaging tells us they’re hybrids…they are engineered. No reason why this can’t happen with our foodstuffs. It’s not a perfect law…show me one that is. But it’s a beginning…isn’t that what we’ve been saying about the ACA?

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[TanDL]

The “short presentation on allergies” was informative and I noticed it calls for better world-wide labeling of foods. It also shows that peanut allergies seem to be quite a problem in children. Via a couple of minutes with Google, I found that there are some recent studies showing a connection between soy consumption and peanut allergies in children. Makes sense since they are both from the legume family. Infants who are fed soy (major GMO, by the way) seem to have a higher chance of developing peanut allergies, but the research is not conclusive yet. Should be interesting to watch for research updates.

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[JoB]

i love it when people respond to a post with “hmmmm, i wonder” and go look it up for themselves:)

context matters

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[DES]

JoB, TanDL and wakeflood you are all making strong cases for labeling individual ingredients. wakeflood, I can totally sympathize with your desire to avoid synthetic chemicals whose use is enabled by GMOs, e.g. Roundup. By the same logic, papayas that produce their own vaccine-like proteins against the papaya ringspot virus, would not be problematic. I do worry that you are not considering all the herbicides and their potential health effects that would be used in place of Roundup/glyphosphate. That is no Rooundup Ready means no Roundup used, but other herbicides and pesticide will still be used probably in increased quantities. I-522 is blind to this reality. JoB, the report you linked to stated exactly what I said, Bt crops have reduced pesticide spraying, Roundup Ready crops (HT for herbicide tolerant in the report) have increased glyphosphate use and led to so called superweeds. Weighing those costs and benfits one might want to avoid Roundup ready and embrace Bt. TanDL, the allergy argument is perfect, if you are allergic to a food it is because your body produces an outsized immune response to a protein (encoded by a gene) in that food. Peanut allergies are against specific peanut proteins, shellfish allergies are against specific shellfish proteins (often a protein named tropomyosin), wheat allergies are against wheat gluten which is a protein, soy allergies are against a protein in soy regardless of whether that soy is GE or not. In the unlikely event one were to develop an allergy against a protein encoded by the gene inserted as a GE trait, one would care about that protein specifically. We don’t have labels saying may contain allergens, the label says contains, soy, wheat, tree nuts, shellfish, milk, etc.

On the one hand you can label everything out of an abundance of caution but thereby end up avoiding acceptable or even beneficial traits, too. Is it the corn (for profit) or papaya (given to farmers for free) that is GMO in the papaya flavored corn chips, further is the corn Bt(by one of 4 corporations), Roundup Ready (by Monsanto), Liberty Link (by Bayer) or some combination. On the other hand labeling everything generically as I-522 does may give you a false sense of security. Pesticides and herbicides are still sprayed on non-GMO crops, water, soil nutrients and ecologically important lands are still consumed by agriculture, Monsanto, Pioneer, Dow, Bayer will still make money from non-GMO seeds. Moreover, according to I-522 and even if you still want to avoid all GMOs, when the restaurant dumps those same papaya corn chips on your plate, they won’t have to tell you that they contain GMOs, let alone which ingredient.

I think labeling is unnecessary at all, but would be OK with it as a consumer tool if individual ingredients were labeled as that is actionable information. Here is a good article advocating labeling as a bad idea:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=labels-for-gmo-foods-are-a-bad-idea

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[DES]

For those who are worried about long term consequences – health or environment, being able to track individual traits is also essential. Tylenol, aspirin and Alieve are all over-the-counter, NSAID pain relievers, but you shouldn’t stop using Tylenol because aspirin gave you a stomach ache.

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[JoB]

DES..

so your argument against I522 is that the GMO

labeling doesn’t go far enough?

I would agree with that. it doesn’t go far enough. i would love to see some specific ingredient information .. a nice little GMO in parenthesis next to every ingredient listed…

but then you would argue that doesn’t go far enough because without knowing exactly how the ingredient was genetically modified the information is useless..

and if that information was provided you would want every ingredient that was listed to have proven negative health consequences before it could be listed…

Thanks but no thanks.

That would truly be a case of too little too late.

I am willing to deal with a little imperfection now to get that heads up that i might be buying something i really might want to think about whether I want to consume…

Or.. i could just shop at the co-op where they do all that research for me

and boycott most grocers.

because without labeling

that is the only clear choice for consumers who want to avoid eating genetically modified foods…

I can hear your reaction to that one ;->

I think i will duck out before the sputtering begins.

or before the local grocers start throwing expired cans of asparagus at you :)

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[VBD]

JoB, your argument that a law that does not go far enough is better than no law at all has a flaw. The flaw is that it sets a very dangerous precedent.

What we would be allowing is a way for food manufacturers to get around laws requiring them to disclose the contents of the food they are selling. They instead could just say “something” MIGHT be in the food.

I’ve listed before a set of possible “may contain..” examples that we generally would not be accepting of. Imagine the label “may contain allergens”. It tells you noting useful. With the long list of possible allergens, there is no way of knowing what might be the culprit. Such a label could serve only one purpose: to make that food universally undesirable.

The “yes on 522” campaign is completely disingenuous in that regard. They claim the purpose is to inform the consumer, but the truth is they want to stigmatize any food that is not organic. The goal is to remove genetically engineered foods from the market.

That is not “choice”. It’s eradication. Why don’t they just admit it?

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[JanS]

VBD…the claim in your last 3 paragraphs…you know this how?

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[VBD]

JanS, the last 3 paragraphs represent my opinion. I don’t believe a statement saying the food “may be partially produced with genetic engineering” adds any value or real information. In the same way, I don’t feel a label stating a food “may contain allergens” adds any value.

My opinion is that the real motive for the law is to stigmatize non organic foods, since that is the only class of packaged food that is specifically exempted from the labeling law.

My data comes from reading the initiative. Here’s a link (the part making the new law starts at “NEW SECTION. Sec. 3. (1)”):

http://yeson522.com/about/read/

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[JoB]

VBD..

you say “they” want to remove genetically engineered food from the marketplace..

that labeling foods that might contain GMO would in fact “stigmatize” non-organic foods…

i agree that some people won’t choose to purchase foods with the GMO label..

but labeling hasn’t stopped any other category of products that are labeled from being sold… irregardless of the stigma

consumers routinely purchase goods they know to be actually hazardous to their health .. and they pay big bucks to do so.

for those consumers who are price driven no amount of labeling will change their buying habits

organic foods won’t magically become cheaper either…

that would take a drastic change in current consumer habits…

which is unlikely to happen no matter how clearly GMO foods are labeled..

what it will do is make it easier for people like me who will pay more for products that avoid GMOs to patronize our local grocers and purchase those products there..

and that’s a good thing..

as for this insidious plot to take away your food choices ..

it’s strikingly analogous to last year’s insidious plot to do away with your god given free plastic bags..

the world didn’t end.. even after the citywide ban …

in fact, soon after those freebie bags were banned.. small plastic wastebasket liners once again showed up on own supermarket shelves…

with the added bonus that more biologically sound bags are now available…

imagine that.. we got more choice.. not less

and that’s a good thing too

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[VBD]

I said nothing of a plot to take away food choices. My argument is that it is a useless law. You appear to agree with me on several points; labeling won’t significantly change buying habits, and people who prefer organic food will continue to buy organic foods.

I do believe the intent of the initiative is to increase desirability of organic foods, and you seem to agree with me there too. For the reasons above, I’m not convinced that goal will be achieved.

Not sure what plastic bags have to do with this. They were banned in the city. No one is talking about banning GE foods.

The risk in all of this is that some retailers who do not sell a lot of USDA organic food, and especially those who specialize in imported foods, like Husky Deli, will be significantly harmed by this law. For me, that’s reason enough to oppose it.

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[JanS]

I still want to know whats in my food, and I want the choice to buy it or not. Does me no good if I don’t know…and even if the chance of harm is miniscule, it’s still there…and that’s my opinion only…

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[DES]

JoB, you are right, my point is exactly that the law doesn’t go far enough, rendering it useless. But it is not neutral and useless,it causes harm.

I-522 will cost money. Millions of dollars to tax payers for monitoring and enforcement and possible (but not guaranteed) effects at the cash register or to retailers already working on slim margins. I also would be willing to bet that organic food prices will increase significantly if I-522 generates the fear of conventional foods containing GE ingredients and shift towards organic that its corporate supporters (I suspect) are hoping for. Why else would PCC markets support I-522 so strongly? It doesn’t change anything in their store and they are hoping for a bigger market share. I don’t begrudge them their support for I-522 either, it is smart business for them. I also buy organic foods, not because they are GMO-free, but because I want to support local agriculture and that is their market niche. I also care about the environment and organic farming on the whole has less environmental impact. It’ll never happen, but the ideal would be to use GE traits that lessen environmental impact, e.g. varieties that require less water, along with organic practices like no till, crop rotation, etc.

So while I personally don’t see a need for labeling and even question whether government should be able to mandate non-health related info, I can respect that others feel a need for more information and would be willing to accept some financial costs IF those people who want more info actually get it. But the fact is “May contain genetically engineered ingredients” is a hollow statement. So beyond standing on principle regarding good and bad science and government mandated non-health related statements, I oppose I-522 because it costs money for nothing in return.

Its like taking too low a dose of chemotherapy drugs – you pay for the drug, you suffer side effects, but in return you don’t get any therapeutic benefit. Or imagine a racially charged city where a cop gets shot and the perpetrator is on the loose. If the description of the shooter is black male, i.e. to little information, every black male in that city becomes a suspect and is at risk for bodily harm. If the description is black male, 6 feet 2 inches tall, short beard, red jacket, driving Toyota Prius, the other cops and the public have useful information. I am not trying to equate murder, racial profiling etc with GMOs, I’m just pointing out that too little information can cause harm.

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[DES]

JanS,

Why don’t you want to eat foods containing GE ingredients? Or if you are fine with eating them, why do you need to know they are in there? I am honestly curious about why you feel the way you do and if anything would change your position.

And FYI, there are no GE ingredients in organic foods. You can safely assume that any packaged food made in the past 10 years that is not organic and contains corn (cornmeal, corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, corn oil etc), soy (protein, oil etc), and/or canola or cottonseed oils has at least 1 GE ingredient. Ears of sweet corn are less likely to be GE but they might be. You would be pretty hard pressed to find non-organic tofu or soymilk, but non-organic edamame – probably GE, canola oil – probably GE. Papayas from Hawaii – GE.

No other foods on the market other than sugar beets are GE, so there you go, no I-522 needed.

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[TanDL]

Here’s a link to a good Seattle Times article this morning on the accuracy of I-522 claims in ads from both sides:

http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022103454_truthneedlegmoxml.html

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[TanDL]

Hello… I’ll not answer for JanS, but your question is valid and I’ll answer for myself. I would like to have the knowledge to at least limit the amount of GE food I eat until more long term testing proves that it’s safe. There are a plethora of products that were declared safe and placed on the market prior to long term testing that showed they weren’t safe. I can name a couple right off the bat…Thalidomide, hormone replacement therapy,low level radiation soil, tobacco, alchohol for pregnant women…. on and on it goes. My position will change when long term testing proves the safety of GE products. Until then, I want to know what I’m eating and will exercise precaution. I clearly have some trust issues with what’s declared safe. Thanks for your good information on “Organic.”

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[blbl]

I don’t get the organic food exemption when organic food widely uses Bt, which is genetically engineered. When the law exempts food that may contain GMOs (as the yes side admits), then the law is worse than worthless. It gives people a false sense of security when they purchase organic or non-labeled food that’s merely exempt.

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[JanS]

DES..what TanDL said. It boils down to “choice”….I get to choose, given the information. If the information is not given, that choice is taken away.

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[JoB]

Methinks you guys protest too much

What you refuse to see is that labeling will actually create a market for some foods that does not currently exist…

Those like me who won’t buy unless the product is clearly labeled as to source ..

because i check the source before buying.

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