Tuesday, April 10, 2007 Sanchez: Staving off GMO invasions By Benedicto Sanchez Nature Speaks
I PLANNED to write an Easter column about the resurrection and the "afterlife" of some former high-ranking Maoist cadres who returned to their childhood Christian faith. But that will have to wait another time. A happy Easter to all!
April 11, 2007 is a heartbeat away when the provincial government holds a second public hearing on the anti-GMO ordinance to protect the island's emerging organic food industry.
Those who will attend should heed a recent TIME article on how American organic farmers were double-crossed when genetically modified (GM) corn cross-pollinated their cattle feed. Their experience should ring warning bells in Negros Island, the organic food bowl of Asia.
Organic food, by globally-accepted standards, must be free of GM materials, and organic crops are required to be isolated from non-organic crops. That might be possible with chemically-cultivated crops, but with GM planting materials, that is fast becoming a tall order.
As the Time article noted, as GM crops become more prevalent, there is little that an organic farmer can do to prevent a speck of GM pollen or a stray GM seed from being blown by the wind onto his land or farm equipment and, eventually, into his products. In 2006, GM crops accounted for 61 percent of all the corn planted in the U.S. and 89 percent of all the soybeans. With the resurgence of corn-based ethanol in the US, we can expect a further percentage increase of GM cornfields.
It noted the experience of Californian Albert Straus, owner of the Straus Family Creamery. He decided to test the feed that he gives his 1,600 cows and was alarmed to find that nearly six percent of the organic corn feed he received from suppliers was "contaminated" by GMOs.
With five other natural food producers, Strauss and organic industry leader Whole Foods announced that they would seek a new certification for their
products, "non-GMO verified," in the hopes that it will become a voluntary industry standard for GM-free goods.
A non-profit group called the Non-GMO Project runs the program, and the testing is conducted by an outside lab called Genetic ID. In a few weeks, Straus expects to become the first food manufacturer in the country to carry the "non-GMO verified" label on top of his "organic" certification. With Whole Foods inside the loop, the rest of the organic industry is expected to follow his footsteps.
If you wonder about the big deal on GM-free certification, well, it IS a big deal. The additional cost for the "non-GMO verified" label is no chicken feed, as Strauss found out.
To stamp out GM corn, Straus plunked $10,000 testing, re-testing and tracing back his products: from his own dairy's milk, to other dairies that supply some of his milk, to the brokers who sell them feed, to their mills that grind the corn, to farmers who grow it. To put the GM-free label on his ice cream, Straus will have to trace the chickens that provided the egg yolks, the grain used in the alcohol that carries his vanilla extract and the soy lecithin used as an emulsifier for his chocolate chips.
Certification labeling is a crucial element in the organic industry. It's a mark of good housekeeping, a seal of trustworthiness that a product is free from growth hormones, antibiotics, poisonous synthetic chemicals and GM contaminants. In the global organic market, an organically-labeled food item translates to premium prices above their non-organic counterpart.
With the growing incidence of cancer which are traced to junk and fast food, the organic industry has rephrased the adage to "an organic apple a day keeps the doctor away." That means that even if a consumer pays more for organic products, the cost still constitute a savings if organic produce can keep the doctor at bay.
Let the bleeding hearts of those who pushed for the second hearing to give the likes of Monsanto and other transnational GM-based companies a fair shake take to heart Albert Strauss's lessons in life. By abetting the GM invasion of our organic island, they would have shown not their spirit of fair play but their bias toward these multinational companies, and their betrayal of the organic industry. Please email comments to bqsanc@yahoo.com.
