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USDA letter on federal GMO labeling law
On 02, Mar 2017 | In Blog, Featured, GMO Labeling | By admin
On July 29, 2016, President Obama signed into law an Act amending the Agricultural Marketing at of 1946 which provides for a national bioengineered food di
Ron Sass: Life is easier with GMO corn and soybeans video – Cornell Alliance for Science
Ron Sass, a corn and soybean farmer from northeast Iowa, discusses how agricultural biotechnology has helped his family farm, and how it would benefit farmers in the developing world.
Learn more about Cornell Alliance for Science here.
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USDA develops government label for GMO-free products
WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department has developed a new government certification and labeling for foods that are free of genetically modified ingredients.
The USDA’s move comes as consumer groups push for mandatory labeling of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Several states, including Vermont, are moving to require labeling of food containing GMOs in the face of industry opposition.
The federal certification is the first of its kind and would be voluntary — and companies would have to pay for it. If approved, the foods would be able to carry a “USDA Process Verified” label along with a statement that they are free of GMOs.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack outlined the department’s plan in a May 1 letter to employees, saying the certification was being done at the request of a “leading global company,” which he did not identify. A copy of the letter was obtained by The Associated Press.
Right now, there are no government labels that only certify a food as GMO-free. Many companies use a private label developed by a nonprofit called the Non-GMO Project. The USDA organic label also certifies that foods are free of genetically modified ingredients, but many non-GMO foods aren’t organic.
Vilsack said the USDA certification is being created through the department’s Agriculture Marketing Service, which works with interested companies to certify the accuracy of the claims they are making on food packages — think “humanely raised” or “no antibiotics ever.” Companies pay the Agricultural Marketing Service to verify a claim, and if approved, they can market the foods with the USDA process verified label.
“Recently, a leading global company asked AMS to help verify that the corn and soybeans it uses in its products are not genetically engineered so that the company could label the products as such,” Vilsack wrote in the letter. “AMS worked with the company to develop testing and verification processes to verify the non-GE claim.”
A USDA spokesman confirmed that Vilsack sent the letter but declined to comment on the certification program. Vilsack said in the letter that the certification “will be announced soon, and other companies are already lining up to take advantage of this service.”
Genetically modified foods come from seeds that are originally engineered in laboratories to have certain traits, like resistance to herbicides. The majority of the country’s corn and soybean crop is now genetically modified, with much of that going to animal feed. GMO corn and soybeans are also made into common processed food ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and soybean oil.
The government says GMOs on the market now are safe and that mandatory labels aren’t needed. Consumer advocates pushing for mandatory labeling say shoppers still have a right to know what is in their food, arguing that not enough is known about the effects of the technology. They have supported several state efforts to require labeling, with the eventual goal of having a federal standard.
The USDA label is similar to what is proposed in a GOP House bill introduced earlier this year that is designed to block those mandatory GMO labeling efforts around the country. The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., provides for USDA certification but would not make it mandatory. The bill also would override any state laws that require the labeling.
The food industry, which backs Pompeo’s bill, has strongly opposed individual state efforts to require labeling, saying labels would be misleading because GMOs are safe.
Vermont became the first state to require the labeling in 2014, and that law will go into effect next year if it survives a legal challenge from the food industry.
A spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the major food industry trade group that challenged the Vermont law, said, “We are interested in this development and look forward to engaging with the department” on the labels.
GMOs feeding a growing world
On 08, Dec 2014 | In Featured, GMO’s and The Environment, Seed Treatments | By admin
In a recent letter to the editor, (“Time to seek out non-GMO foods, Nov. 19) the author states: “The implementation of genetically modified organisms cannot be a permanent solution.”
Nothing could be further from the truth. Genetic modification of crops is critical to providing for the expansive food needs of people around the globe, now and in the future.
Today, the same philosophy of growing the highest quality, most successful crops continues with the added benefit of modern technology. Modifying plants to grow in our changing environment and challenging weather conditions is how we will be able to sustain the food needs of the exploding world population that’s estimated grow from the current 7 billion people to over 9 billion by 2050.
Genetically modified foods are nutritionally equal and safe, some even having more nutritional benefits. As both an agriculture student at Delaware Valley College and a leader in the Manor FFA chapter, I have spent many hours talking about and researching GMOs and can tell you that the food being produced today is no different than the food of 50 years ago.
Thousands of studies here in the U.S. and across the globe have found that GMOs pose no risk to human health.
What is a risk, however, is misinformation that clouds the reality of the need for and the positive effects on the environment, economy and food production that GMO crops provide.
Kaleb Long
Manor Township
03
Oct
2014
In Featured
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Penn State Professor: GMO Crops Benefit People, Farmers, Environment
On 03, Oct 2014 | In Featured, GMO’s and The Environment, Seed Treatments, Weed Management and Pesticides | By admin
The Real Truth about GMOs
Jul 25, 2013 |By Nina Fedoroff
The World Food Prize laureates for 2013 were announced in June. They are Marc van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and Rob Fraley. These scientists played seminal roles, together with the late Jeff Schell, in developing modern plant molecular modification techniques. Fraley is chief technology officer of Monsanto. Chilton is a Distinguished Science Fellow at Syngenta. Montagu founded Plant Genetic Systems (now part of Bayer CropScience) and CropDesign (today owned by BASF).
Scratch the blogosphere and you’ll be dumbfounded by this award. GMOs (genetically modified organisms) produced by big ag-biotech companies are responsible for farmer suicides in India. Monsanto sues farmers who didn’t plant biotech seeds, but had a bit of pollen blown into their fields. U.S. wheat farmers are facing bankruptcy because GM wheat was discovered growing in Oregon. A quick search on YouTube turns up these top hits: “Seeds of death: unveiling the lies of GMOs,” “Horrific new studies in GMOs, you’re eating this stuff!!” and “They are killing us—GMO foods.”
Humans began genetically modifying plants to provide food more than 10,000 years ago. For the past hundred years or so plant breeders have used radiation and chemicals to speed up the production of genetic changes. This was a genetic shotgun, producing lots of bad changes and a very, very occasional good one. That’s the best we could do until the three laureates (and their colleagues) developed molecular techniques for plant genetic modification. We can now use these methods to make precise improvements by adding just a gene (or two or a few) that codes for proteins whose function we know with precision. Yet plants modified by these techniques, the best and safest we’ve ever invented, are the only ones we now call GM. Almost everyone believes we’ve never fiddled with plant genes before, as if beefsteak tomatoes, elephant garlic and corn were somehow products of unfettered nature.
The anti-GM storm gathered in the mid-80s and swept around the world. Most early alarms about new technologies fade away as research accumulates without turning up evidence of deleterious effects. This should be happening now because scientists have amassed more than three decades of research on GM biosafety, none of which has surfaced credible evidence that modifying plants by molecular techniques is dangerous. Instead, the anti-GM storm has intensified. Scientists have done their best to explain things, but they’re rather staid folk for the most part, constitutionally addicted to facts and figures and not terribly good at crafting emotionally gripping narratives. This puts them at a disadvantage. One scare story based on a bogus study suggesting a bad effect of eating GMOs readily trumps myriad studies that show that GM foods are just like non-GM foods.
What are the facts? Monsanto and the other big ag-biotech companies have developed reliable, biologically insect-resistant and herbicide-tolerant commodity crops that benefit people, farmers and the environment, and are nutritionally identical to their non-GM counterparts.
GM insect-resistant crops contain a gene that codes for a bacterial protein that’s toxic to an insect pest, but not animals or people. Insecticides are toxic chemicals that kill insects indiscriminately, both harmful and beneficial. They’re also poisonous to other animals—people included. Insect-resistant crops have reduced insecticide use. Biological solutions for insect pest problems were Rachel Carson’s dream.
Insect-resistant GM corn also decreases human and animal exposure to mycotoxins, highly toxic and carcinogenic compounds made by fungi. The fungi that produce mycotoxins follow insects into plants; insect-resistant plants have no insect holes for fungi to enter and therefore no mycotoxins.
Monsanto developed GM crops that tolerate a nontoxic herbicide called glyphosate, aka Roundup. Herbicide-tolerant crops have made a major contribution to decreasing topsoil loss by facilitating no-till farming. This farming method reduces CO2 emissions from plowing and improves soil quality.
Farmers don’t have to buy Monsanto seed, nor is anyone preventing them from saving and replanting any seed they want, except for patented seed they’ve signed an agreement not to save and plant. Farmers buy seeds from Monsanto and other ag-biotech companies because their costs decrease and their profits increase. If they didn’t, farmers wouldn’t buy them again.
If the popular mythology about farmer suicides, tumors and toxicity had an ounce of truth to it, these companies would long since have gone out of business. Instead, they’re taking more market share every year. There’s a mismatch between mythology and reality. Maybe it’s worth remembering that technology vilification is about as old as technology itself. What’s new is electronic gossip and the proliferation of organizations that peddle such gossip for a living.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Nina Fedoroff is distinguished professor of biosciences at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia and Evan Pugh professor at Penn State University. She has no material interest in Monsanto or its products.
Poorest have most to gain from GMOs, hurt most by GMO scare-mongering
The Grocery Manufacturers Association brought a lawsuit in response to Vermont becoming the first state to require GMO labeling regardless of laws passed in other states. According to GMA, the Vermont law is a “costly and misguided measure.” The concern is that, to the uniformed shopper, these labels might be perceived as warnings, adding to the continued stigmatization of GMO products.
Such stigmatization disproportionately hurts the poor, who happen to have the most to gain from GMOs. Around the world, scientists have found solutions to many ailments through the application of biotechnology. In Southeast Asia, where an enormous vitamin-A deficiency has often resulted in vision impairment, scientists created the “Golden Rice” which contains the much-needed vitamin. But because of misconceptions about GMOs, the product is still being withheld. And there are plenty of other beneficial projects involving bioengineered foods that are suffering this same fate due to an unproven fear. The truth is that cross-breeding different foods is a perfectly natural process that humans have practiced throughout history. Science is only making it better.
Read the full, original article: End the Scare-mongering
Fear vs. data: A surprisingly close call
On 01, Oct 2014 | In Featured, Seed Treatments, Weed Management and Pesticides | By admin
Last Wednesday the New Hampshire House defeated a bill to require the labeling of foods made with genetically modified ingredients. It should have been a crushing defeat. Instead, it was a rather narrow one — only 23 votes. On an issue that is not remotely a close call, 162 House members voted on the side unsupported by any evidence.
One of House Bill 660’s stated goals was to “(e)nable consumers to avoid the potential risks associated with genetically engineered foods…” What risks?
“GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health,” The World Health Organization has concluded. “In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration applies the same safety standards to all foods, whether genetically modified or not. The FDA is so unconcerned about GMO foods that its official position is that labeling is unnecessary. It supports voluntary, not mandatory, labeling.
http://www.unionleader.com/article/20140127/OPINION01/140129434/0/SEARCH
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