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GMO Labeling Becomes ‘Proxy’ For Consumer Preferences

Peggy Lowe, Harvest Public Media
Folks attending a Chipotle Cultivate Festival in Kansas City on July 18 voted on their opinions after seeing an exhibit on genetically modified organisms.

The fight over food containing genetically modified ingredients is at a fever pitch. The U.S. House passed a bill limiting labels for GMO food, but the policy debate is not over. As Harvest Public Media’s Peggy Lowe reports, the battle over GMOs includes a little science, lots of money and a food system under fire.

A classic summertime music festival. An indie pop band on stage. Long lines at the beer booth. Today, on a hot summer Saturday in Kansas City, it’s the Chipotle Cultivate Festival. Sorta like a Grateful Dead concert--with free burritos.

Chipotle, the Mexican chain whose slogan is “food with integrity,” was the first national company to cook solely with ingredients free from genetic-engineering. Lined up at an exhibit on GMOs is Julie Godchaux-Ilineman, wearing a flowered garland in her hair. She supports GMO labels and likens it to a problem from the past, like cigarettes.

“Everyone thought it was good then all of a sudden we realized it was bad and nobody did anything until they started putting the warnings on the packaging and more people became more aware of it,” Godchaux-Ilineman says.

Surveys show the majority of consumers want their food labeled with GMO information – even though the world’s leading scientists say GMOs are safe.

“There is a lot of confusion, and it’s not accidental that there’s confusion,” says Congressman Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Republican on the other side of the GMO debate than those at the Chipotle festival.

Pompeo was the sponsor of the bill recently passed by the House that bars states from requiring GMO labels.

“There is a group of folks out there who have been trying to tell consumers these foods were unsafe for a long time," he says. "They’ve had massive media campaigns to do that. It’s been in their own economic self-interest to do that."

Carmen Bain, an associate sociology professor at Iowa State who has been researching GMOs, points out that genetically-modified food has been around for two decades.

“Both sides, all sides, however you like to think about it, have political and economic interests. They have skin in the game,” Bain says.

Most processed foods contain those ingredients, especially anything with corn, soybeans or sugar beets. Still, Vermont passed a bill requiring a label on all foods containing GMO ingredients. It is the first in the country and set to take effect next July. That’s exactly what Pompeo’s bill is aimed at: trying to pre-empt the state laws and make labeling GMOs voluntary.

“GMO seeds are just one of the many ways Monsanto is helping farmers sustainably grow enough for a growing world," a promotional video for Monsanto says. "But they are, without a doubt, the one we hear the most about.”

Millions from the global biotech giant along with big food and beverage companies like Pepsico and Kraft were behind the anti-labeling bill. They think the labels could keep hurt profits. Those interests also contributed three-and-a-half times more in campaign donations to lawmakers than the other side, according to Maplight, which tracks money in politics. Those opposing the bill included environmental, organic and health interests.

“The issue isn’t even really about GMOs," Bain says. Bain, the sociology professor, says her research shows that GMO labeling has become what social scientists call a “wicked problem,” one that is inherently contradictory and can’t be solved through scientific fact.

“GMOs is really a proxy for many of the broader social and economic and political concerns that they have, in particular about the agri-food system," she says.

Things like corporate control and industrial-sized food production. Laurie Demeritt, CEO of The Hartman Group, which does consumer research for food companies, says GMOs have become a buzzword for what people want, or don’t want.

“When we talk about what’s the No. 1 trend or long-term change in what’s going on in food culture today, we found over the years that consumers are really looking for products that appear or perceive to be fresh, real and less processed," Demeritt says.

Despite what those at the Chipotle festival may want, the Obama administration has remained neutral on the anti-labeling bill, even as it heads for the Senate. The White House also pointed out that there’s already a government-sanctioned program for labeling food as non-GMO. It’s called “organic,” and if you buy anything with that green USDA-stamp, you will be eating GMO-free food.

Peggy Lowe is a reporter with Harvest Public Media.

Peggy Lowe joined Harvest Public Media in 2011, returning to the Midwest after 22 years as a journalist in Denver and Southern California. Most recently she was at The Orange County Register, where she was a multimedia producer and writer. In Denver she worked for The Associated Press, The Denver Post and the late, great Rocky Mountain News. She was on the Denver Post team that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news coverage of Columbine. Peggy was a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2008-09. She is from O'Neill, the Irish Capital of Nebraska, and now lives in Kansas City. Based at KCUR, Peggy is the analyst for The Harvest Network and often reports for Harvest Public Media.