Arizona should be pressing for GMO food labels

People are raising concerns about how their food is produced. Food producers are defending the status quo.

Arizona was on the cutting edge when voters outlawed gestation crates for pregnant sows in 2006. Done? Get lucky. Arizona lawmakers are now pushing a bill to outlaw the kind of undercover investigations that put those crates in the spotlight.

Arizona is part of another effort to say no to a method of food production that agribusiness finds efficient and profitable: genetically modified crops. There is another slap-back from agribusiness.

This time, the practice being targeted is not about cruelty — unless you count the alleged collateral damage to weed-loving butterflies from dousing herbicide-resistant GMO crops with weed killer. The objections to genetically modified organisms are more philosophical.

“I didn’t sign up to be an experiment,” says Tucsonan Jared L. Keen, who is suspicious of studies that suggest GMO foods are safe.

He’s running a “fully grass-roots” effort to get an initiative on November’s ballot that would require labeling food that was developed using bioengineering. Right To Know Arizona (righttoknowarizona.com) needs to gather 172,809 signatures by July 3.

Doing that without paid circulators is a daunting task. What’s more, Keen says he’s been told by two national pro-labeling organizations not to expect any funding help. He says they are focusing their resources on labeling efforts in Oregon, where the chances of success are considered higher.

But wait: Arizona is a proven leader on the “you are what you eat” front. What’s more, it would be nationally significant for GMO labeling to win here in Conservative-ville.

“Passing this in Arizona would send a real message that this is not just a bluestate thing,” Keen says.

In fact, the call for labeling GMO food crosses the political spectrum, and it has agribusiness paying attention. The response? Change the playing field.

More than two dozen crop, food and biotech groups formed the Coalition for Safe Affordable Food to ask Congress to order standards drawn up for a voluntary national labeling program that would — surprise, surprise — preclude states from mandating labels. Nothing prohibits voluntary labeling now, and the Food and Drug Administration has issued “guidance for industry” suggestions for labels.

Arizona’s Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva is cosponsor of an effort introduced last year to mandate standardized federal labeling (HR 1699). Industry objections to mandatory GMO labeling include cost, inconvenience and the fact that labeling might make people think genetically modified food is not safe.

About 70 percent of proc-

See VALDEZ, Page B11