Citizen Ballot Initiatives Aim to Regulate GM Foods

Citizen Ballot Initiatives Aim to Regulate GM Foods

by Jeff Peckman, BIGG Alliance

Initiative petitions to label GM foods statewide are circulating in Florida, Oregon and Washington.

Citywide petitions to regulate GM food in K-12 schools are circulating in Denver, CO and Portland, OR.

If enacted by voters, the Denver initiative would make it "unlawful for any person to sell or distribute on school premises, including through vending machines, any genetically engineered food, until such food has been confirmed, through a successful food safety testing assessment, safe for consumption by humans under eighteen years of age."

The Non-GMO Source newsletter, beginning with its 12-page July issue, will include information on ballot initiatives that are relevant to non-GMO food.

This information will be placed in the section of "Regulatory News" which already contains information on other governmental acts related to genetic engineering.

The Non-GMO Source newsletter is already being sent to a rapidly increasing number of diverse stakeholders including both non-GMO and GMO seed suppliers, food producers, processors, commercial and government buyers, grower networks and agricultural trade associations, newspapers and others in the U.S. and abroad.

Access the Non-GMO Source newsletter at .

The significance of such initiatives, as stated by Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe Staff, in a June 7 article about the initiative process, "Initiatives are the last resort of desperate citizens, a way to check the power of remote or arrogant lawmakers.

When politicians refuse to heed the public, when special interests block reform, when the governor is disdainful, when the courts offer no relief, voters in 24 states still have some leverage: They can bypass the Legislature and change the statute-book themselves."

The provisions of the proposed Denver ordinance are comprehensive and stringent.

They cover a full range of GM foods, including any food containing genetically modified material that accounts for "at least one tenth of one percent or more of the weight of any ingredient or component of the product…"

The battery of tests required to confirm safety would not be allowed to rely on the concept of "substantial equivalence" and would include long term toxicological feeding tests using the whole transgenic food for a "minimum of three years".

The need for proper safety testing will result in schools buying non-GMO and organic food.

How large is the potentially affected market?

The USDA budget was $5.43 billion this year for free and partially subsidized school meals, which serve only one half of the K-12 students.

The other one half of the students who pay in full for meals or snacks on school premises could add another $5 billion for a total market of over $10 billion annually in the U.S. By comparison, the Wall Street Journal estimated that the total general market for non-GMO foods is currently $7.8 billion a year."