Ballot initiatives to require labeling of foods with genetically modified ingredients, or GMOs, failed to pass Tuesday in Colorado and Oregon, after agribusiness giants Monsanto, PepsiCo and Kraft spent millions to help defeat the measures. But in a victory for food safety advocates, Hawaii’s Maui County passed one of the strongest anti-GMO measures ever, despite the opposition outspending supporters by a ratio of 87 to one. The Maui GMO moratorium calls for a complete suspension of the cultivation of GMO crops until studies conclusively prove they are safe. The studies will be paid for by the seed companies but administered by the county.
In the weeks before the election, the anti-moratorium group, billed as “Citizens Against the Maui County Farming Ban,” paid for more than $1.3 million worth of TV ads statewide. In one ad, the group claimed the moratorium would cause the loss of hundreds of jobs and devastate the county’s economy.
Maui is often called “GMO Ground Zero,” and the moratorium that passed Tuesday could have national implications because multinational seed producers, such as Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences, use the county to research and develop new seed varieties. Under the new measure, farmers who knowingly cultivate GMOs could be penalized with a $50,000 fine per day. On Wednesday, Monsanto released a statement saying it plans to ask the Maui court to declare the initiative, “legally flawed” and not enforceable.
Dr. Lorrin Pang talking:
I’ve been watching this issue for the last 12 years. Twelve years ago, we began to win in court. And I guess that raised some eyebrows. And we tried to win legislatively. Over the last 12 years, we’ve been repeatedly not heard. The legislators in charge, whoever’s committee, would send it off to other committees. We could never get a hearing on this. Nonetheless, we had a major victory about five years ago legislatively on the county level. The Big Island County and Maui, we blocked the genetic modification of taro—which is important culturally to the Hawaiians—in the laboratory, in the markets and in the fields. So we tried for this one, but we knew that legislatively legislators would not hear it, so we put it on a petition for a voters’ initiative about three months ago. And looks like we won, barely won, a couple days ago.
I’ve been so used to losing so many times in the Legislature that I guess it’s kind of like an abused kid: You don’t expect anything better. Nonetheless, this issue has moved very well over the last 12 years. Twelve years ago, I could name on two hands all the people in the state who knew what GMO, genetically modified organisms, stood for. Now we have thousands of people. So it really has been a grassroots education effort.
we have the right as a county, the lowest level of government, to be—pass our own rules, to be more precautious, that we are not to be pre-empted, in the name of precaution, by the higher governments, state and federal. Now, we will not do things that violate people’s rights, but the lower-level governments always have the right to be more precautious. We do not feel that the regulators—the EPA, FDA, USDA—nor the state have our best interests and are cautious enough with respect to health and environment.
Jerry Greenfield talking:
the fight for mandatory GMO labeling has been going on for a few years in several different states around the country, and there’s actually activity still going on in 20-some-odd states. In Vermont, we went the legislative route. So, Ben & Jerry’s was actively involved in that, but there’s a great coalition here in Vermont of nonprofit groups, the Vermont Right to Know, that was incredibly active. And it was essentially citizens getting in touch with legislators. The [inaudible] Vermont said it was the most phone calls and contact they got about any issue. People are really passionate about the right to know what’s in their food. And that’s what the issue is here, is simply about the consumers’ right to know. It’s about transparency and being honest, so people have the right to choose what sort of foods they want to buy and eat themselves and feed their families.
It’s simply about being able to know. And what the giant food industry companies—Monsanto, some of the chemical companies—say is that it’s going to add a huge cost to your food bills, which is simply not true. They spend millions of dollars trying to convince people that it’s going to make your food more expensive, whereas, in truth, changing a label on a food package costs essentially nothing. A company like Ben & Jerry’s changes its containers all the time, whether it’s for new ingredients, new marketing claims, whatever. It’s something you simply do in the normal cost of business, and there’s no increased cost at all. There’s no saying that any companies need to change their ingredients or do anything differently. It’s simply about being honest and telling consumers what’s in your food.
Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t really take a position on that. We always say we’re not scientists. You know, there really haven’t been independent studies. But our issue is simply about transparency, having a consumer have the right to know. You know, it’s funny [inaudible]. We are really proud of the ingredients we use, and we’re thrilled to tell people about it. And it’s just so hard to imagine that other food companies wouldn’t want to be talking about what’s in their products.
All of these food companies do business in countries around the world where there’s labeling. There is currently labeling in 64 countries. All these giant multinational food companies do business there, and they are doing just fine. Consumers Union, which puts out consumers reports, did a study for this last election in Oregon and discovered that adding labeling would cost about $3 a year to consumers’ bills. So that’s essentially nothing. And Ben & Jerry’s is right now finishing up its transition to become all non-GMO ingredients. So, we’ll be done with that by the [inaudible] year. And that transition to all non-GMO ingredients is not going to raise the cost of a pint at all to a consumer. So, it can be done. You know, certainly there is work involved. And for Ben & Jerry’s to make this conversion, you need to work with your suppliers, and, you know, you need to actually put some time and energy into it, but it doesn’t need to cost more to the consumer.
Dr. Lorrin Pang talking:
on Maui we deal with—we think it’s experimental GM farming. And we feel that this experimental nature is more aggressive or threatening to us. We are beyond—for us, we are beyond labeling. When they do this genetic modifications farming, open-air farming here, we know, because I’m party to the class-action suit, that their use of pesticides, the amount and the types of use, is enormous. I’ve never seen such combinations used before. They cannot contain it. It’s going off into the water. It’s drifting into the schools, into our environment or into our oceans. And we don’t have the right—we don’t see it. We don’t know when it’s coming. And people get sick. Plus, if they ever were to grow GM food here—now they grow GM seed corn. That’s not even food. We’re supposed to feed ourselves, and we’re growing something to ship somewhere else to grow to feed their animals. So, for us, it’s really more of an environmental health issue, and we cannot seem to control it. It’s going beyond their borders. That is why we’ve taken a more aggressive approach.
Jerry Greenfield talking:
in Oregon, the most recent ballot initiative just last Tuesday, the opponents to GMO labeling spent over $20 million, and the “yes” forces spent less than $8 million. So, the people fighting against consumers’ right to know are spending enormous amounts of money, and they’re just blanketing television and the airwaves with messages that it’s going to cost consumers more money, it’s going to be confusing. They just want to put doubt into consumers’ minds so that they won’t take action. And unfortunately, it seems to be really effective. I mean, even in a state like Washington state, which last year had a ballot initiative that narrowly failed, where once again the spending by the opposition far outweighed the spending for the “for,” the ballot initiative lost by under 2 percentage points. But they did polling after the ballot initiative failed, and it showed that two-thirds of the people still wanted to have labeling. They just were convinced by all this advertising that [inaudible] bill wasn’t right, or seeds of doubt were sown in their minds. But people still favor labeling. They want it. It’s just that there’s enormous advertising—
due to a couple of recent Supreme Court decisions, corporations are now considered to be people. And this GMO labeling is all part of the same thing. You have these unlimited corporate expenditures to try to influence elections, and it’s completely undermining our democracy.
— source democracynow.org
Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The company has campaigned heavily for GMO labeling in its home state, Vermont, as well as in Oregon.
Lorrin Pang, has served as a consultant to the World Health Organization and works for Maui’s Department of Health. He recently retired from being a professor of medicine at Federal University in Brasilia, Brazil. In the capacity of a private citizen, Pang has raised concerns about the possible health and environmental risks posed by GMOs. He was one of the five co-sponsors of Maui’s successful GMO moratorium bill.