Vermont playing (organic, free-range) chicken with the grocery industry over GMOs.

They shall make a food desert, and call it Vermont: “Vermont residents might have to go hungry — or drive into New Hampshire, upstate New York, or even Boston, for food — because of their state’s new GMO (genetically modified organisms) labeling law that takes effect July 1, 2016.” The basic problem here is that Vermont’s new law will allegedly fine companies for non-labeled products that show up in Vermont stores, even if the manufacturer didn’t put them there*.  Admittedly, that’s what the Grocery Manufacturers Association is claiming; also admittedly, Vermont’s response is effectively ‘label your products nationally.’  That food retailers might instead decide that it makes more sense to stop selling processed food in Vermont has apparently not yet occurred to that state’s officials. And yes, you can make that call when a target market is less than 700,000 people.  And also, yes: you cannot force somebody to engage in commerce**.

All of which may be moot if Congress passes that voluntary federal labeling program thing of Rep. Mike Pompeo’s this year; it would effectively supercede the Vermont law, and the usual suspects are already screaming about Monsanto conspiracies, yadda yadda (I suspect that spending a year in Monsanto’s PR department would burn off a million years in Purgatory, easy). As you might have guessed, I’m not particularly impressed with the anti-GMO people; their particular brand of apocalyptic religious fanaticism rivals only the anti-nuke crowd for sheer scientific illiteracy***.  Watching them scream at the House, scream at the Senate, and then scream at the President – who after all promised to push for GMO labeling laws, all the way back in 2007 – should give me plenty of amusement this summer, albeit not as much as when Barack Obama signs Pompeo’s bill and tells the anti-GMO people that he kept his promise.  I hope that they keep paramedics on hand for that presser, because there’s going to be people stroking out from sheer betrayed rage…

Via Instapundit and/or Ed Driscoll, depending on how you look at it.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Yes, that particular attitude is a lot like the perennial progressive desire to hold firearms manufacturers liable for crimes committed that involve guns.  What, did you think that that particular fetish went away for Vermont progressives, simply because they live in a state that prides itself on its responsible, common-sense open gun laws?

**No, really.  There was a Supreme Court case about that, remember? Halbig v. Burrell. 5-4 ruling establishing that the Commerce Clause does not extend to forcing people into engaging in economic activity.  I’ve always said that the Democrats were going to regret losing that more than they’d enjoy keeping the mandate for a few more years.

***This would be the point where somebody accuses me of being a paid shill for Big Frankenfoods.  To which my response would be Wait, do they actually pay? Do you have a good contact number for somebody who could set that up? – Because I love getting paid to write things that I would have, anyway. After that, I’d offer the accuser a grilled-cheese sandwich and a beer, then laugh when he took it and never tell him why.

10 thoughts on “Vermont playing (organic, free-range) chicken with the grocery industry over GMOs.”

  1. Heck, I’d give him a “normal” (non-roundup ready) ear of corn. Or an apple. Or any type of tomato. And laugh, too. I’d then ask him or her if they know who Norman Borlaug was and what he did.

    1. I’m familiar with Norman, he did simply remarkable things .. but, last I checked, there’s significant space between hybridizing existing strains to optimize yield and splicing genes in from completely different organisms.
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      Let me know when you can show me Borlaug did the latter, and we can talk. Until then, using him to defend turning the entire population into guinea pigs is .. comparing apples and glow-in-the-dark guppies.
      .
      Mew

      1. Bah. The anti-GMOers I’ve talked to seem to think that splicing a gene into a different organism could do anything up to and including causing that movie The Happening to happen: trees spewing out suicide gas. The odds of anything like that seem so low as to not be worth worrying about.

        Most anti-GMO people seem to have the intellectual capacity of anti-vaxxers.

        1. …. and how does their tepid IQ mean they’re wrong?
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          Hell, poison-spewing trees would be a good thing .. It’s an obvious problem with a simple solution, burn it with fire!
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          Something less obvious, like introducing a gene that kills off a whole-number percentage of variants of digestive flora, would slide right past all the trials, but have a significant impact.
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          Not saying that’s *happened*, but I am saying it isn’t impossible, given the current regulatory regime.. Go visit the various “bad drug” sites and see what has slipped through the net … and that’s a tighter net.
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          So, to repeat myself, comparing hybridization to frankenfood is a flat lie – which means it invalidates the tepid-tofu-eaters’ point just as it blows up yours, eh?
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          Mew

          1. Genes do jump species, for reasons we’re unsure of. That we’re doing it deliberately does not make it significantly different from the natural process (whatever it may be) that already obviously exists.
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            That said, it’s certainly a good thing to maintain existent strains as well. Genetic diversity is generally a good thing. Fortunately, we’ve got a nation of gardeners more than happy to pay for the privilege of doing so. Some problems solved themselves.
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            (Corn is a grass, and was already resistant to Round-up. The big Round-up Ready advance was with soybeans.)

          2. Yes .. genes do sometimes “jump”. So what? Doesn’t answer just what ol’ Norman did or did not do, eh?
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            I’m also not real happy with the oligarchic answer Monsanto et al have come up with for the rather obvious intellectual property problems.
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            If you modify an organism that spreads via the wind, you need to *assume* it’s gonna get into the wild.. they appear to regard this as an afterthought.
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            So .. gonna stick with my opinion – and note that unlike the tepid-tofu-eaters, I avoid soy.
            .
            Mew

    1. Bet you real money that, right now, somewhere in Conway, AR, someone is looking at maps and highways ..
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      Mew

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