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The Presidental Election and Food Policy

Over at Reason.com, Balyen Linnekin wrote a column last week where he shared his perspectives on the

ten important federal food-policy issues the presidential candidates should be discussing but have ignored until now.

Yesterday, he put up another post: 

my goal for this week's follow-up column would be to go beyond my own ideas by presenting one idea each from 10 leading food scholars, attorneys, authors, advocates, and others about important food-policy issues they'd  like to see discussed in the presidential campaign and implemented in the future.

Here were my thoughts, which Balyen included in his post (I'm number 6).

The government-funded school lunch program is a bureaucratic nightmare that attempts to do too much: prop up agricultural prices, provide calories to poor under-nourished children, slim the waistlines of the obese, and it forces schools to follow complex rules subject to annual audit. The government subsidizes the price of foods sold from selected distributors and it re-reimburses schools for certain types of students. Why not take these same funds and provide block-grants to schools and let local school boards make their own decisions outside the complex government formula system? We allow charter schools. Why not charter lunchrooms?

Number 7 was also on school lunches.  Check out the other 8 ideas.

Why should you care about California's Prop 37?

That's the title of my my latest article on foxnews.com.  Some of the key paragraphs:

Proposition 37, if passed on November 6th, will require mandatory labeling of certain foods containing genetically engineered ingredients.  Because California is such a large consumer of agricultural products grown in the rest of the US and because food manufacturers work across state lines, the implications (and costs) of Proposition 37 could expand far beyond the Golden State.  

and

Everyone wants to know what’s in their food.  That issue is not at stake.  The real question is how much consumers are willing to pay to know what’s in their food, and whether it makes sense to force companies to provide information.  If consumers really value information about the biotech content of their food, there are plenty of opportunities for enterprising farmers and food manufacturers to provide the feedstuffs consumers want.  And, indeed they have.  

and

Yet, every major scientific authority on the subject – from the American Medical Association to the National Academies of Science to the American Dietetic Association to the World Health Organization – has confirmed the safety of eating currently approved foods made with biotechnology.  
Consumers in a free society have the right to disagree.  But, the rest of us shouldn’t be asked to pay the costs of their skepticism.    

The only thing I'd add is that American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the publisher of the most prestigious academic journal, Science, yesterday released a statement in support of genetically modified food.

Prop 37 Appears to Be Losing Support

A new poll reported in the LA Times suggests support for Prop 37 has fallen substantially since the poll we conducted about a month ago.  Our study showed weakness in support - with people reacting much more to negative than positive ads, but I am surprised support has fallen this far.  We also found acceptance was sensitive to the anticipated costs of the mandatory label.  

Here is the summary from the LA Times:

After a barrage of negative television advertisements financed by a $41-million opposition war chest, a USC Dornsife / Los Angeles Times poll released Thursday showed 44% of surveyed voters backing the initiative and 42% opposing it. A substantial slice of the electorate, 14%, remains undecided or unwilling to take a position.

The critical drumbeat of television advertising is having a big effect, voters said. The anti-Proposition 37 spots "made me start looking more into" the issue of genetically engineered plants, said Josie Prendez, 63, a retired school employee in Fresno. She said she concluded that farmers should not be hit with more regulations.

​and

The opposition advertising is paying off, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and former Republican political strategist. "The challenge for the opposition is to convince voters there are economic consequences involved here. It appears they are in the process of doing that."

​

GMOs Are Back

​You might have noticed that I've been posting quite a bit on biotechnology and GMOs recently.  Part of this is in response to the developments associated with Prop 37, but it's also because it's been in the news a lot lately.  

Apparently it isn't just me.  Here is a graph from google trends​ showing trends in searches for the word "GMO":

GMOgoogletrend.JPG

The trend largely confirms my own interest in the issue (maybe I'm just a trend follower).  I did a lot of work on consumer acceptance of biotechnology in the early 2000s.  Then, it seemed the literature was saturated with academic papers on the topic.  I even wrote a Meta analysis (a summary of previous studies) on consumer acceptance of GMOs because I was getting so many papers to review on the subject.  For a while I lost interest in the topic because it seemed all had been said that was to be said.  But, the topic is back with a vengeance.  It will be interesting to see what new research will be motivated by current events. ​

​On that note, here are two interesting links (here and here) on recent developments in France regarding the rat study claiming to link GMOs with tumor development.  Apparently, other French scientists were none too impressed by the study.  And, the French government is no longer challenging Monsanto's license to sell GM corn in the EU.