April 2013
 |
| Photo by MillionsAgainstMonsanto on Flickr |
It seems secret meetings have been
taking place between the food industry and the US Food and Drug
Administration on the subject of GM labelling.
The word is that 20 major food
companies, including giants like Wal-Mart, Pepsi-Frito Lay, Mars,
Coca-Cola, General Mills and others, are lobbying for
mandatory federal GMO labelling.
Put into another
perspective, up until November 2012 these companies were throwing
money at defeating a labelling bill in the State of California: so
much money in fact that the bill was defeated (see NO GM LABELLING FOR AMERICA... YET - November 2012). By 11 January 2013, the same crowd
were pleading for labelling.
What's changed
their minds?
The vision of an
endless train of state-level initiatives, each more expensive to
defeat that the one before no doubt was a prime incentive.
Also, the
inevitable success of the pro-labelling lobby sooner or later, plus
the night-mare scenario for US industry in which each State adopts
different laws which have then to be accommodated, must finally have
dawned on them.
If this sounds like
good news, it may not be.
America
excels at promoting commercial interests. It's equally good at
designing its laws to promote commercial interests: laws which should
protect people, are
sadly no exception.
Since federal laws
will trump all state laws, industry's GM-labelling conundrum can
easily be solved by bringing in over-generalised laws, or by making
laws which set upper limits instead of minimum standards, or by
simply taking forever to draft them. And then, there's the fact that
once food companies have asked for labelling laws, the grassroots
movement insisting on full-disclosure and right-to-know will grind to
a halt.
WHAT YOU CAN DO
Now is the time for the US public to
put their representative's attention on creating GM labelling laws
for the people
not for the convenience of commerce. If you have friends or
relatives in America, suggest they get on the case.
SOURCES:
- Michele Simon, Will a Federal Compromise on GMO Labeling Trump State Law Forever? Nation of Change
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