GMOs, Industry Involvement, and Preemption - A Word of Caution

Photo via: planetmattersandmore.com

I read an interesting take on possible federal GMO labeling legislation today that cautioned against a potentially dangerous and irreversible situation known as preemption. This comes after a flurry of other articles like this one came out that discuss the possibility of big food supporting GMO labeling.  It might be hard to believe that conventional food retailers would support a federal labeling initiative, but when you look at it from the perspective of money, ease, and stability, it makes more sense.  After all, it's a lot easier for a multinational corporation like Walmart to have one labeling law to deal with in the United States rather than a host of different state laws, and putting an end to grassroots organizing helps their bottom line, reduces the possibility of PR trouble, and generally creates a more stable situation for their business to operate in.  Big food isn't supporting labeling to protect the consumer, however, and big ag isn't about to let the GMO labeling bill of our dreams get written up. That's where compromise and preemption come into play.  An excerpt from the article I first mentioned reads:

[There is an] ominous potential downside of federal GMO labeling: a sneaky legal concept known as preemption. Most advocates don’t find out about it before it’s too late.

Preemption simply means that a higher law trumps a lower law: so federal trumps state, and state trumps local. But in practice, it’s industry’s way of ensuring uniformity and stopping grassroots efforts. How I do know this? From years of experience of seeing it happen in various public health issues. It’s such a huge problem that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funded an entire project called “Preemption and Movement Building in Public Health” to educate advocates about how to handle it.

Here is the pattern: a grassroots effort builds over time to enact local or state laws (such as gun control, indoor-smoking laws, or restricting alcohol sales), and industry fights these efforts for years, until they can no longer win. At that point, industry lobbyists turn around and either get their own weak bill passed, or work with advocates to pass a compromise version. In exchange, this law will preempt or prevent any state or city from passing a different or stronger law. Forever.

So if industry and grassroots efforts come to a compromise sometime in the future and produce a federal GMO labeling bill, preemption could prevent stronger legislation from being passed on the state level.  This effectively transforms the federal initiative from being a foundation for stronger more effective legislation into being a watered down action plan that stifles and oppresses future progressive initiatives.  That's not to say that a federal GMO labeling bill is a bad idea - it's a great idea if accomplished through care and caution.  Let's make sure that when a labeling bill is passed, whether at the state or federal level, it does what we want it to do.

Have a great evening!
-Melissa

Urge Congress to Pass a Farm Bill This Year

From the National Center for Appropriate Technology:

As of this month, our nation’s food and farm policy in the form of the 2008 Farm Bill has officially expired, with no workable replacement moving forward in Congress. This has left critical low-cost but very high-value programs high and dry with no funding— and it means Congress missed the chance to make real reforms and an investment in an equitable, sustainable future for food and farms in America.

With no new farm bill or extension of the 2008 Farm Bill, the programs that address rural and urban job creation, training opportunities for beginning farmers, natural resource conservation, and access to healthy food are in big trouble. These are programs that NCAT has been part of and support our work to assist farmers and ranchers in building a more sustainable future.

Can Congress still finish a farm bill this year? YES!

There is a short window of time for Congress to finish the bill after Election Day. So when Congress returns to Washington, we’ll need YOU and other farmers and advocates across the country to tell them loud and clear: we need an equitable, sustainable 2012 Farm Bill!

Sign your name and tell Congress we need a 2012 Farm Bill that:
• Invests in the future of healthy farms, food, and people
• Protects our precious air, soil, and water
• Reforms farm subsidies and levels the playing field

Without a working Farm Bill, funding for many of the resources CT NOFA promotes to farmers will be in jeopardy.  The farm bill is one of the most important and influential pieces of legislation the United States government is in charge of.  Please sign the petition urging Congress to pass a farm bill by the end of the year.

Click here to sign the petition

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

As the Farm Bill debate goes on and is in sharp contrast with a devastating drought that has affected agricultural yields across the country.  According to David Rogers at Politico, Republicans in the House might not call up the New Farm Bill for a vote before the law expires on September 30.  Rogers reports that no Farm Bill, once out of committee, has ever failed to be called for a vote.  In Rogers' article today, the House's Republican leadership is considering extending the old Farm Bill while Democratic Representatives Debbie Stabenow (Michigan) and Collin Peterson (Minnesota) insist that extension is not an option because the drought requires specific political action and there is agreement that direct cash payments to producers must be ended with the new Farm Bill.

Check out the hidden costs of the Farm Bill that's about to expire - it makes it pretty clear why these laws require replacement and the reasoning behind calls for improvements in the Farm Bill.  And also why the new Farm Bill's deep cuts to the Food Stamp program and nutrition programming are pretty disconcerting.  

Infographic from Takepart.com

Best,
Kristiane