On April 29, Vermont became the first state to pass a bill that would make it mandatory for foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to be labeled as such. On May 9, that bill became law. As you might have expected, the law is being challenged by the food industry, but if that challenge is unsuccessful, the law is expected to take effect in 2016.
If you have been reading this blog for some time, you know that, as a development agricultural economist concerned with food security, I am in favor of GMOs as a means to ensure that people the world over have access to plentiful, nutritious, and safe food. I emphasized the word “safe” in the previous sentence given that the bulk of the opposition to GMOs stems from a mistaken understanding among some and misguided — if not misleading — efforts by others to convince those same people that GMOs are unsafe and have ill effects on human health. For a discussion of that debate that tried to lay out both sides of the debate, see this previous post of mine.
What I wanted to discuss today was the presumed effects of GMO labeling laws on farmers. Specifically, their effects on organic farmers. This post stems from a conversation I had with Per Pinstrup-Andersen when I was at Cornell to give a talk earlier this year. He was the one who convinced me that GMO labeling laws would likely end up hurting organic farmers. Thus, I cannot claim intellectual paternity of the argument I’m laying out below.