Court Finds for Consumers on GMOsΒ
by Jack Kittredge
Organic and healthy food advocates of a mature age will remember the tremendous citizen campaigns fought across America a decade ago to eliminate genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as foods in our diet. Such modification became possible in 1980 when the Supreme Court allowed the patenting of living organisms. By 1996 several major food crops (corn, soy, canola) had been bred to be resistant to the toxic herbicide glyphosate. Farmers planting such crops did not have to weed them; they simply sprayed the whole field with the herbicide. Everything else died, but the resistant crop survived and could be harvested. This vastly eased the work of farmers and soon GMO-based foods were everywhere.
As those foods spread, so did health problems associated with eating them β from leaky gut and chronic inflammation to gastrointestinal issues, organ damage, infertility, and other diseases including cancer. Soon consumer groups were publicizing these dangers, but the USDAβs FDA would not investigate nor label GMOs. As a result, consumers could not easily avoid them and by the twenty-teen years activists had turned to states to require point of purchase identification of GMO foods. Major ballot initiatives were conducted (and defeated by smaller and smaller majorities) in states including California, Oregon, Colorado, Maine and Connecticut. By 2014, to great acclaim by food activists everywhere, Vermont passed such a law.
Seriously threatened now, food and chemical corporations quickly lobbied Congress and won a ban on such state regulations, preempting the Vermont victory. The law, signed by president Obama, also requested the FDA to create future regulations on GMO (now to be called βbioengineeredβ) foods. The rules the federal agency come up with in 2018 were flawed in 2 ways:
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Rather than requiring GMO identification printed on the label, the FDA allowed manufacturers to rely only on indecipherable QR codes which would have to be scanned by cell phone to provide an internet link, and
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Highly processed foods such as corn oils and sugar were exempted from any label if they were, using a certain technology, βundetectableβ in the product
A number of consumer groups challenged this 2018 FDA regulation and finally this year (October 31) the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court has ruled that:
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Use of QR codes for labeling is discriminatory because not all consumers have access to them, and
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Even if an ingredient is βundetectableβ, if it is present it must be disclosed
The whole issue has been remanded to the USDA which will promulgate a new set of rules. We may have to fight those, too, until a real and effective label is used (or the glyphosate technology is banned on safety grounds). But for now, congratulations and thanks for our legal system.
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