Vermont is poised to become the first state to require the labeling of genetically modified organisms in food products. Governor Peter Shumlin said he would sign the pro-GMO-labeling bill as early as this week. The new law would take effect in July 2016 and would also make it illegal to label foods containing GMOs as “all natural” or “natural.” Vermont could prove to be the tipping point in a national movement to inform consumers about whether their food contains GMOs. Twenty-nine other states have proposed bills requiring labeling this year, and two have already passed similar bills. But those measures only take effect when neighboring states also approve the requirements.
David Zuckerman talking:
what this bill means is, in 2016, when the average customer goes into a store, they can look at a package, and on that package somewhere there will be an indicator that the food was partially or completely made with genetic engineering.
in Vermont, we’ve been having discussions around genetic engineering in our food for well over a decade. And I’ve been in politics doing that as a spokesperson, really, for thousands of people across the state. And the momentum has just been building and building. We had a seed labeling and registration law that we passed about a decade ago. We had a bill that was going to require the manufacturers of these seeds to be responsible for them economically and environmentally. That passed but got vetoed by our governor about six years ago—a different governor, I should add. And then, in the last couple years, a real movement has been building for product labeling, as you know, both across the country and here in Vermont.
I think many people would be surprised that there was not the airwave bombardment like there was in California and Washington. And in part, I think that’s because the average Vermonter was so much more aware, that I think those companies felt it was an uphill battle here. They already had a population of people that were much more knowledgeable and wouldn’t succumb to some of the propaganda that were in those kinds of ads, like your food’s going to be 10 percent more, or “this feeds the world,” when really there’s plenty of food in the world; it’s other issues as to why people are hungry. On the other hand, I do think that it’s likely that the Grocery Manufacturers Association or some organization that represents a lot of the food manufacturers will probably sue us. And a lot of our work here in Vermont was working to draft a bill that would withstand such a lawsuit.
–Margaret Laggis, the executive director of United Dairy Farmers of Vermont, also a lobbyist for the trade group Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include seed manufacturer Monsanto. She told the Burlington Free Press that pro-labeling activists use scare tactics such as telling people they were being used as guinea pigs for GMO products. Laggis went on to tell the Burlington Free Press, “Once you scare people about their food, it’s such a personally intimidating thing for people. It’s really unfortunate that people have been scared when there’s no science to support it.”
for a long time, there actually weren’t long-term epidemiological studies on the impacts for humans, and it only just started having reasonable studies, because the seed companies controlled their seed and controlled their product for scientific research. Out of the European Union and some other areas, there are beginnings to—signs of scientific questions around how it impacts our digestive system and potentially even crosses placental barriers into fetuses. So there’s a lot of scientific questions. And so, yes, I do think, as consumers, we are guinea pigs, because we really don’t understand the ramifications of this.
I would also add, as an organic farmer, one of the things that these seed companies have used in their product is a naturally occurring bacteria that they’ve taken the gene from to make those crops resistant to certain pests. Unfortunately, with overuse of those genetic technologies, some of those pests are actually starting to show resistance. There was recently an article in The Wall Street Journal around the corn borer. And over time, what that means is that those naturally occurring tools that folks like myself and other organic farmers use in a very judicious way, by overusing them in the biotech industry, they’re going to make those tools obsolete, which means either more chemical use on conventional farms or certain products not even becoming available as organically produced because eventually those pests would not be—we couldn’t thwart those pests. So there’s some real issues there.
She also mentioned that environmentally this is a good tool. In Tennessee alone, it was reported in a national conventional agricultural magazine, they’re going to have to spend 120 million more dollars this year on added chemicals to their fields because glyphosate is no longer working like it once did. There are so many weeds that are resistant to it because of the overuse of Roundup Ready products, that in fact now stronger and more volumes of chemicals are starting to be used. So those trends are really turning around on the biotech industry, and I don’t think their information is accurate.
— source democracynow.org
David Zuckerman, Vermont state senator and member of the Progressive Party. He is an organic farmer who introduced GMO labeling bills more than a decade ago when he was in the House, and co-owner of Full Moon Farm.