Support for GMO Labeling a Left-Wing Phenomenon?

Much has been written about whether aversion to biotechnology and GMOs has ideological dimensions rooted in the left.  I've written about this before, as have many others (this paper in Food Policy extends the discussion to a whole host of food regulations beyond biotechnology).  Most of the studies I've seen (including my own data) suggest only small differences in the left and the right in terms of beliefs about safety of eating GMOs.  However, as I previously argued:

“One distinction, which I think is missing, is the greater willingness of those on the left to regulate on economic issues, such as GMOs, than those on the right. Stated differently, there are questions of science: what are the risks of climate change or eating GMOs. And then there are more normative questions: given said risk, what should we do about it? Even if the left and the right agreed on the level of risk, I don’t think we should expect agreement on political action.”

Perhaps the clearest demonstration of this difference in willingness to regulate comes from a new paper by John Bovay and Julian Alston in the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. They look at precinct-level voting data on the Prop 37 mandatory labeling initiative in California in 2012. One of the best predictors of support for Prop 37?  The share of people in the precinct voting for Obama. Here's a telling graph from their paper.   It's an almost perfect positive, linear relationship. 

The authors went on to use these results to predict what would have happened in other states if they'd had an opportunity to vote on Prop 37 (I should note we did something very similar in a paper on for votes on California's Prop 2 related to animal welfare in 2008).  Bovay and Alston found the following:

“Projections using our estimated model imply that a majority of voters in only three of fifty states (Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Vermont) plus the District of Columbia would have passed Proposition 37 had it been on their ballots in 2012”

What Consumers Don't Know about GMOs

Yesterday the Journal of the Federation for American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) published a paper I co-authored with Brandon McFadden from the University of Florida.  We surveyed a representative sample of over 1,000 US consumers and probed the depth of their knowledge about GMOs.  

We asked questions about the number of genes affected by different plant breeding techniques, prevalence of use of GMOs for different crops and foods, true/false questions about genetics and GMOs, knowledge of the length of time biotech crops have been grown, regulatory approval times for GMOs, views on public policies directed toward GMOs.  Before and after asking these questions, we asked respondents to rate their self-assessed knowledge of GMOs and to indicate their belief that GMOS are unsafe or safe to eat.  

The overall finding is 1) consumers, as a group, are unknowledgeable about GMOs, genetics, and plant breeding and, perhaps more interestingly, 2) simply asking these objective knowledge questions served to lower subjective, self-assessed knowledge of GMOs (i.e., people realize they didn't know as much as they thought they did) and increase the belief that it is safe to eat GM food.  

The implications are two fold: 1) using consumer opinions about GMOs to guide public policy is problematic given the low levels of knowledge, and 2) using something like the Socratic Method may as effective at changing safety beliefs than simply providing information.    

An Unusual Proposal

A reader who read my WSJ editorial on GMO labeling emailed me the following proposal.  

“The arguments in support of mandatory labeling largely fall in the “consumers have a right to know what’s in their food” category, which in theory is hard to argue with. On the flip side, there are no proven scientific based concerns regarding GMOs in the foods we eat and this is the basis (in general) for the position for those who oppose mandatory labeling of GMOs. Therefore, the solution seems very simple: make labeling of non-GMOs mandatory. If those in support of mandatory GMO labeling truly are interested in transparency, then mandatory labeling of non-GMOs provides the same amount of transparency (if you’re only going to mandate labeling for one side of the argument, why not the non-GMO side?). In addition, this should ease the concern of those who fear that mandatory labeling of GMOs will scare the public into thinking they are unsafe. Another great aspect of this solution is the cost to implement is almost zero because the food industry, in general, already labels non-GMO products. ”

Can I get that with an extra GMO?

That's the title the editors of the Wall Street Journal gave to my piece that was published today.  I touched on the issue of GMO labeling, but also tried to elevate the discussion a bit to delve into the broader issues at play.  

Here are a few snippets:

“Lost in the politics is a deeper debate about the future of our food system. At the core of many anti-GMO arguments lies a romantic traditionalism, a desire for food that is purportedly more in line with nature. Perhaps we should eat only the food that God gave us. Yet manna rarely falls from heaven.

The truth is that what we eat today differs radically from the food eaten even a few hundred years ago. Carrots used to be purple. Random mutations and selective breeding led to their signature color during the 16th century in the Netherlands, where it later was claimed the new varieties honored the King William of Orange. Broccoli, kale, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts all emerged from the same wild plant. Potatoes and tomatoes originated in the Americas and were never eaten in Europe and Asia until after the New World was discovered. Today we eat more and better than ever, precisely because we did not accept only what nature provided.”

and, in conclusion, after discussing the host of new biotech innovations coming to market:

“Food manufactures today may be reluctant to label foods made using biotechnology. But one day soon, when the fad against GMOs fades, they might be clamoring to add the tag: proudly produced with genetic engineering.”

Growing Flintstones

That's the title of Chapter 5 of Unnaturally Delicious, which discusses a variety of efforts to combat malnutrition in the developing world by breeding crops with higher vitamin and mineral content.  

“Providing vitamin supplements (think Flintstones Vitamins on a global scale) has indeed produced positive outcomes in many parts of the world. The approach, however, has proved less beneficial than the optimists had predicted. Vitamin supplements present a number of challenges. First, you’ve got to deliver them to where they’re needed—some of the most remote, unpaved, undeveloped places in the world. Then you’ve got to convince people to take them. Regularly. Then you’ve got to do it all over again. Every year. In perpetuity. Supplements are a one-off, partial solution to an ongoing problem. . . .

A more innovative, bottom-up approach is starting to challenge this top-down approach to ending malnutrition. One of the root causes of malnutrition is lack of dietary diversity, caused by both a lack of access and the inability to afford different foodstuffs. . . .

In this conundrum may lie a solution. If the staple crops of these farm families were more nutrient dense, some of the problems of malnutrition could be solved. Biofortification is the science of breeding crops to increase nutritional content.”

I talk about the organization Harvest Plus, and about one of my former students Abdul Naico who's back home in Mozambique working to increase adoption of sweet potatoes that are higher in beta carotene.  Here are a couple pictures he sent me.

While the efforts of Harvest Plus and other organizations have utilized conventional breeding techniques to create, for example, "high iron beans" in Rwanda, others have used biotechnology.  The most famous example is the work of Ingo Potrykus, who graciously answered some questions for me about golden rice, which contains a daffodil gene so that the rice produces beta carotene (which the body converts to vitamin A).  

“The initial varieties of rice createdby Potrykus and colleagues expressed only a small amount of vitamin A. Further iterations of golden rice have resulted in a twenty-threefold increase in the carotene content. Current varieties can produce 55 to 77 percent of recommend daily intake of vitamin A by eating a mere hundred grams of uncooked rice (or about half a cupful), and human research has found it safe and as effective as vitamin A supplements”

The Golden Rice Humanitarian Board shared the following photos with  me.