Here's an update as to what's going on with the Calif. Right to Know Ballot initiative:
http://www.anh-usa.org/pro-gmo-propaganda-in-california-dismantled-by-new-cost-study/
"Opponents of GMO labeling say it will raise food
costs by hundreds of dollars per family when in fact it will likely cause NO
cost increase at all!
The
California Right to Know 2012 Ballot Initiative, which will be voted upon in
November, will tell Californians—and ultimately perhaps other Americans—whether
their food contains genetically engineered ingredients. Not surprisingly, the
biotech companies are up in arms over the proposal. Their website is
NoProp37.com, funding for which comes in part from the Council for Biotechnology
Information, whose members include Monsanto,
Dow, and other GMO companies. The site, which used to be called
StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com (they just recently changed the domain name—could it
be because they realized it wasn’t costly after all?) says:
[Labeling genetically engineered foods] would increase food costs
paid by California consumers. The higher costs that farmers, food companies and
grocers would face because of this proposition would be passed on to California
consumers through higher food prices. That would hurt all California
families—especially those who can least afford it, such as seniors on fixed
incomes and low income families. An economic analysis of a similar measure that
was rejected by Oregon voters found that the type of labeling regulations in the
California proposition could cost an average family hundreds of dollars per year
in higher food costs.
Note
that they analyzed a rejected Oregon proposal, not the proposal on which
Californians will be voting in November! But Joanna Shepherd-Bailey, PhD, has
analyzed the one in California.
She’s the renowned tenured law professor from Emory who has testified
before the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and before the
Committee on Law and Justice of the National Academy of Sciences. Her analysis
reveals—in direct contradiction to the propaganda being put forth by the biotech
companies—that GMO labeling will likely cause no increase in consumer
costs at all!
In
fact, her report refutes the two key fear-mongering arguments being put forth by
opponents of GMO labeling.
Kathy
Fairbanks, the spokeswoman for the Coalition against the Costly Food Labeling
Proposition, claims that GMO labeling will increase the cost of food by hundreds of
dollars per California family because food producers and grocery store owner
will have to re-label food and put up placards. But Shepherd-Bailey found that
the one-time average per-product cost to manufacturers of
redesigning all food labels is $1,104, which represents only 0.03% of annual per
product sales, and that the one-time average per-store cost of placards
disclosing genetic engineering will be $2,820, or about 0.1% of the annual sales
in the average supermarket.
Because the increase in cost-per-item of goods is so small,
it is most likely that this increase will not be passed on to the consumer at
all. According to extensive survey research, a primary reason firms
don’t change prices in response to many cost changes is because of the fear of
losing customers. Even if relabeling expenses were substantial enough to justify
the cost of re-pricing, many suppliers will simply refrain from changing
prices from fear of losing customers to other products that have not
increased prices.
Besides, manufacturers change their labeling all the time—anytime
their product is “new and improved” or they change a logo or a box design—and
those costs are not passed on to the consumer. When the government required
nutritional information to be posted on each container, prices didn’t go up
because of it. It would actually cost companies more internally to raise prices
than for them to simply absorb the costs. And with an eighteen-month lead time,
it may not cost many companies anything at all.
In a
worst-case scenario, even if all of these costs were passed on to consumers,
this translates to a mere $1.27 one-time increase in the total annual food
expenditure for the average household in California. And this
is an overestimate, since not all products will require GE
labeling.
In
other words, these specious allegations about rising food costs is just the
latest attack from the anti-labeling camp—those who don’t want you to know what
you’re eating. Several weeks ago we told you about their specious charge that Label GMO will become a Prop 65
type “right to sue” law—that it would “create…frivolous and costly lawsuits” and
would lead to abusive “bounty hunter”–style lawsuits that allow plaintiffs to
keep a “bounty” of 25% of civil penalties collected—when in fact the initiative
does not include the controversial bounty fees found in other California laws,
and their entire campaign is based on disinformation. They are entitled to their
own opinions, of course—just not their own facts.
Since
the law would be enforced through litigation, opponents also claim that GMO labeling will impose high costs on the state of California
as a result of an increase in litigation. Shepherd-Bailey shows that this is
also false. She estimates that the cost to the state will be negligible: the
annual costs for processing and hearing cases should be less than $50,000. And
while there will be administrative costs to the state as its Department of
Health begins to implement certain provisions of the law, her analysis found
that these administrative costs will be less than $1 million—that is,
less than 1 cent for each person living in the state of
California—causing the department’s expenditures to increase by no more
than 0.03% and total state expenditures to increase by just 0.0008%.
That one cent is all it will cost for critical health information to be
made available to the many consumers who want to know what is in the food they
feed their families.
If
you are a California resident, please consider being part of the
campaign to educate your fellow
Californians and get them to vote on November 6! Over 90% of Californians want
their foods labeled—but it will never happen if citizens don’t understand the
issues and get to the polls. Volunteer. Donate. Join a local group. And get the
word out!
Being
able to see which foods contain genetically engineered ingredients is
particularly important when you see how dangerous GE crops can be. Monsanto’s
“Roundup Ready” crops have been genetically engineered to permit direct
application of the Monsanto herbicide Roundup (glyphosate), allowing farmers to
drench both their crops and crop land with the herbicide so as to be able to
kill nearby weeds—and any other green thing the herbicide touches—without
killing the crops.
According to a recent animal study
published in the journal Toxicology in Vitro, glyphosate, which is frequently
present residually in GMO foods, can affect men’s testosterone and sperm counts.
It is toxic to testicle cells, can even kill them, and significantly lowers
testosterone synthesis. As Jonathan V. Wright, MD, in the July 2012 issue of his
Nutrition & Healing newsletter, points out, synthetic herbicides and pesticides are essentially “environmental
estrogens” in humans, as these molecules mimic estrogen activity. GMO
agriculture has exacerbated this situation."