What Could You Learn From A GMO Label?

One day while shopping in your local
supermarket in the next few years it's likely you'll run across a
loaf of Arnold
brand 100% Whole Wheat Bread with a label
saying something like “Produced with Genetic Engineering.”

Multiple states are passing or debating
laws that would require most packaged foods to declare whether
genetic modification was used in their production, including Maine,
Vermont, Connecticut, Oregon and Colorado.

Some of the details that vary from
state to state could cause headaches for the food industry. But the
proponents of labeling claim to be more concerned with you, the
consumer. The “right to know” language of labeling campaigns is
geared to appeal to people who purchase these products.

And you, dear consumer, agree: you DO
have a right to know what's in your food.

Of course, being the
scientifically-minded person you are, you don't buy into epithets of
“frankenfoods.” Your concerns are for the legitimate implications
– the direct impact a genetically engineered food might have on
your family's health and the indirect effect that buying this
particular genetically modified food might have on the environment.

You also know that genetic modification
encompasses a wide array of different procedures done to different
crops for different purposes. One GM crop might be unhealthy, while
another might be better for you. One might be growing out of control,
while another might reduce soil erosion or water usage. The details
matter.

So you take a loaf of that Arnold bread
off the shelf and scan the ingredients. There are 20, including whole
wheat flour, sugar, raisin juice concentrate, molasses, soybean oil
and whey.

Which of these ingredients, you ask
yourself, is the GMO?

You can't tell.

Why not? One
thing the labeling laws have in common is a provision that prevents
the identification of GMO ingredients. Oregon's
proposal, which was created by right-to-know
activists, spells it out clearly: “This law shall not be construed
to require either the listing or identification of any ingredient or
ingredients that were genetically engineered.”

Already
you're on your own.

A GMO “right to know” advocate
holds up his protest sign. As written, labeling laws wouldn't allow
him to know anything he can't already find out. Photo by Daniel
Goehring [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.

Even being able to identify the
ingredient, of course, wouldn't tell you exactly what was done to the
food. State definitions of genetic engineering include processes such
as direct injection of nucleic acids into cells or organelles. But
they don't tell you anything about what was introduced into
the organism or how it will change the organism. And no food
company will be required to tell you – such proprietary information
about the processes used would be difficult to legally compel from
any corporation.

What's a consumer to do? Well, you can
search the published literature for any publicly available studies on
the plethora of practices commonly used on various agricultural
products. You can sort through them, evaluating them for their
strengths and weaknesses.

Not that you can be sure any conclusion
you draw from this research applies to your loaf of bread, or even
that the publicly accessible literature contains anything relevant to
your personal quest for information.

Heck, you can't even find out where the
ingredients were sourced from!

Moreover, this is something you could
do before the labeling laws took effect. The labels cannot give you
any better information than you already had.

In an ideal world, what you'd really
like to do be able is to make comparisons with your other food
options. Artificial selection, hybridization, and other plant
breeding programs also modify plant genes, albeit in a more
hit-or-miss fashion. Some of these programs have been highly
successful. Ever compare the taste of a crabapple with its
domesticated,
hybridized counterpart?

But other
efforts have failed miserably. Bananas, which are sterile hybrid
clones, are extremely susceptible to disease because they have so
little genetic variation. In fact, the now-rare Gros Michel cultivar
was predominant until the mid-twentieth century, when Panama disease
killed the entire worldwide crop, and farmers frantically switched to
today's Cavendish - which faces a near-identical disease threat
today.

Some groups are trying to genetically
engineer more
disease-resistant bananas. If it works, several
varieties of bananas – including food staples in some countries -
might be saved. In the meantime, the industry is trying every trick
in the book to save our bananas, with no luck so far.

Is a disease-resistant GM banana better
than an extinct banana? It's a gamble, like any other experiment. But
then, so were the “traditional” breeding practices that
cultivated bananas in the first place. And none of them require
labels.

This isn't an ideal world,
unfortunately. Your GMO label can't tell you anything about these and
other tradeoffs.

In reality, the establishment of your
“right to know” hasn't given you any useful knowledge. So go
ahead and buy the bread already.