Dwayne

As a follow-up to my previous post on the subject, I decided to read the full text of Init 522. My findings were a little surprising.

The full text is a little over 2 pages (as printed in the State of Washington Voters’ Pamphlet distributed to all registered voters), but it spends the entire first page talking about how bad genetically engineered foods are. I don’t usually read ballot measures, but are all ballot measures so full of fluff?

Section 3.3 is actually pretty interesting. It lists out all the exceptions to labeling. Notable ones include:

• Food made from non-genetically engineered animals don’t need to be labeled, even if the animal is fed genetically engineered foods or injected with genetically engineered drugs. This means corn-fed cows or cows injected with rBST don’t need to be labeled, which is kind of a big deal.
• If the farmer didn’t “knowingly or intentionally” grow genetically engineered foods, he doesn’t have to label them. Now here’s hoping that our farmers know what they’re growing, but in the absurd scenario where the farmer doesn’t know, they can say it’s non-genetically engineered instead of the more logical “might be genetically engineered”. Sure, this clause might be there to provide plausible deniability to farmers when their crops get contaminated. But that doesn’t really inspire confidence in the label.
• Food containing less than 0.9% genetically engineered ingredients don’t need to be labeled. Anyone who’s ever cooked or baked knows (as well as most people who have eaten) that small additives can make a huge difference. Again, this might be a “plausible deniability” clause, but again defaulting to “not genetically engineered” doesn’t inspire confidence.
• Foods labeled “organic” don’t need to be labeled. This is the other big one. It means that the “organic” argument is actually correct. If you buy mostly organic foods and don’t accept the claim that organic foods are all non-genetically engineered, then Init 522 will literally do nothing to help you avoid genetically engineered foods.

So while Init 522 helps you identify foods that are genetically engineered, it does very little to help you identify the foods that are not. I agree that giving consumers information about what they’re eating is a good thing, but Init 522 clearly isn’t the answer.

“But isn’t it better than nothing?” Well, there’s the estimated fiscal cost of $3.3 million over the next 6 years (source: Voters’ Pamphlet), not to mention social cost I mentioned in my previous post.

And yes, the phrase “clearly and conspicuously on the front of the package” does actually appear in the full text.