Frank Priestley, President of the Idaho Farm Bureau, notes that some consumers will benefit from GMO labeling laws - if those consumers are organic farmers and have an audience so educated by advertising that they will pay almost any price for 'health'.

No one was as surprised as farmers that a GMO warning label law, almost identical in verbiage to the California version written by the lawyer who got Prop 65 warnings on every product in every business of the state and made himself a multi-millionaire in lawsuits enforcing it, failed in Oregon this month.

If there is any place where pretentious naturalistic fallacies are in vogue, it is Oregon. But voters narrowly struck it down.



When only a homeopath and a magic soap salesman were financing a publicity campaign, organic food advocates insisted that the truth would win. Then when it lost they lamented the voters were bought, just like they did when initiatives failed in California and Washington. Vermont passed a version, but only by exempting cows that ate GMO feed, so Just Label It financier Gary Hirshberg could continue to buy their milk for his $300 million organic yogurt corporate juggernaut. Oh, and they made sure to exempt restaurants and alcohol, because they only want poor people to pay more for food, not the people going out to eat.

Oregon anti-science groups were not wise enough to exempt everything except supermarkets and corporate farms and...wait, does anyone seriously think organic food is a $105 billion industry but not corporate farms? It's Big Ag, they have just found to convince people to demand a competitive advantage using courts and government - lawsuits and centralized control are what progressives prize most, after all - that they can't get in a free market.

I am all for labels, even if I object to the false characterization that organic food is anything but a process, and is in any way materially different from other food. 

I'd love to see labels show what toxic pesticides and fertilizers are used in all organic food, but I would settle for knowing what food does not have GMOs in it.

Maybe they should come up with their own label instead of forcing everyone else to use one. Something like "Contains No GMOs". It's the only way I will buy my rock salt.


Credit and link: MNN and Shea Gunther's friend Jes, who took the picture.

H/T: American Council on Science and Health