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Labeling backfires in EU
Posted: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 2:31 pm
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Anti-biotech elements in the European Union, under the guise of representing consumer interests, succeeded in imposing labeling requirements on food containing GM ingredients. Ever since, many have wondered about the true attitudes of European consumers. That's because food manufacturers and retailers feared consumers would shun GM-labeled food, and thus kept most of these foods off the market. This victory for anti-biotech elements has turned against them, as labeling the few GM foods available has helped prove that most EU consumers are unconcerned about GM.

Europe's regulations covering GM foods are so onerous that they nearly amount to a ban, but not entirely. As FarmingUK reports, there are at least 69 grocery products on sale in Europe labeled as containing GM ingredients, mostly soy-based.

A new study, conducted by Dr. Vivian Moses (London), Dr. Victoria Wibeck (Sweden), and Prof. Louis Kemkow (Spain) found that consumers don't actively seek non-GM food, and willingly purchase food labeled GM from grocery stores when it's available.

Now that the opponents of agricultural biotechnology have been shown not to be representing consumers, they will now have to pretend to advocate something else. With the enthusiastic adoption of biotech crops by farmers, opponents cannot plausibly claim to represent agriculture. The environmental benefits of GM crops are so demonstrable that opponents' claims to be 'environmentalists' are clearly vacuous.

This being the situation, opponents will have to rely more heavily on claims that they represent foreign consumers, foreign farmers, or foreign environments -- people and places sufficiently remote that erroneous claims will be less vulnerable to fact-checking.
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