{"id":22421,"date":"2013-10-06T00:06:15","date_gmt":"2013-10-06T05:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=22421"},"modified":"2013-10-05T09:13:37","modified_gmt":"2013-10-05T14:13:37","slug":"any-gmo-labelling-compromise-is-a-win-for-big-business-and-a-loss-for-everyone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/10\/06\/any-gmo-labelling-compromise-is-a-win-for-big-business-and-a-loss-for-everyone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Any GMO-labelling compromise is a win for big business and a loss for everyone else"},"content":{"rendered":"

Baylen Linnekin<\/a> explains why compromise in the battle over genetically modified food ingredients is likely to be heartily supported by big business — because they can easily cover costs that their smaller competitors will not be able to afford:<\/p>\n

Like it or not \u2014 and I\u2019m in the not camp \u2014 a mandatory, uniform national GMO labeling scheme appears increasingly likely.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Major players on the business side, including Walmart, America\u2019s leading grocer, and General Mills, which bills itself as \u201cone of the world’s largest food companies,\u201d have publicly tipped their hands that they\u2019d support some sort of mandatory labeling.<\/p>\n

As I noted this summer, Walmart held a meeting with FDA officials and others from the food industry earlier this year where, it was alleged, the grocer and other food sellers that have opposed state labeling requirements would push for the federal government to adopt a national GMO labeling standard.<\/p>\n

And just last week, Ken Powell, the CEO of General Mills, announced at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting that the company \u201cstrongly support[s] a national, federal labeling solution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Powell\u2019s comments are a game changer.<\/p>\n

But do they mean that anti-GMO activists and food companies are on the same page? Not by a longshot. Powell made clear in his remarks that the company supports \u201ca national standard that would label foods that don\u2019t have genetically engineered ingredients in them, rather than foods that do<\/em>.\u201d (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n

I suspect that anti-GMO activists would hate that solution because it wouldn’t provide the “information” they want and because all of the significant testing and labeling costs of the mandatory scheme Powell suggests \u2014 along with any liability for not testing GMO-free foods or for mislabeling \u2014 would be borne by the GMO-free farmers and food producers they frequent (and by their customers, in the form of higher prices).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Baylen Linnekin explains why compromise in the battle over genetically modified food ingredients is likely to be heartily supported by big business — because they can easily cover costs that their smaller competitors will not be able to afford: Like it or not \u2014 and I\u2019m in the not camp \u2014 a mandatory, uniform national […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,831,74,13],"tags":[827,661],"class_list":["post-22421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-food","category-usa","tag-genetics","tag-regulation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5PD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22422,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22421\/revisions\/22422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}