WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the second of two wrap-ups for Nov. 8.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute
(CEI is a conservative, free-market think tank that supports principles of free enterprise and limited government, opposes government regulation, and actively engages in public policy debate.)
WASHINGTON -- Want a choice on genetically engineered food? Labeling mandates won't give you one
By Gregory Conko
Picture yourself in a grocery store. You've heard a little bit about genetically engineered or "GE" food, but you're not quite sure what to make of it all. Safe or not, you want to be able to choose for your family and yourself. So, how can you know which products to buy?
Earlier this week, Oregonians voted on a ballot initiative that promised to supply that information by requiring GE foods to be labeled. The initiative failed due to public concerns about the substantial costs of compliance and enforcement.
However, supporters promised to introduce the initiative again in the next election cycle, and activists in other states are preparing similar measures.
Costs aside, there are many other reasons why such measures are ill-conceived. So, before supporting labeling in your own state, you may want to ask what kind of information you'd be getting, and whether or not there's a better way to make purchasing decisions.
If what you want is a choice between GE and non-GE foods, rules such as the one in Oregon's Ballot Measure 27 would actually make choosing more difficult.
The measure would have required special labels on any food items produced, sold, or distributed in Oregon, if they contained or were derived from what the initiative called "genetically engineered" material.
That may seem like just the right bit of information consumers need. But the real trouble arises because too few people really understand what genetic engineering is or how the crops and livestock in our food supply have been manipulated at the genetic level for thousands of years.
Given these common misunderstandings, it's almost impossible to design a label requirement that transmits any genuinely useful information. The Oregon labeling initiative, for example, was written so broadly that it would have required many non-genetically engineered foods to be labeled as though they were.
Measure 27 defined the term, "genetically engineered" to mean anything that is "produced or altered with techniques that change the molecular or cell biology of an organism by means or in a manner not possible under natural conditions or processes."
But, not all breeding techniques that are "unnatural" involve genetic engineering.
Even today, plant breeders at Oregon State University, or OSU, and Colorado State University, or CSU, are breeding new wheat varieties for American farmers with a high-tech method that uses chemicals to add new traits to plants. The new traits in these varieties will make controlling weeds easier and help farmers adopt sustainable practices that reduce soil erosion.
They will be a boon for American farmers and better for the environment.
Yet, even though genetic engineering played absolutely no part in how these varieties were produced, labeling rules like Oregon's Measure 27 would actually mislead consumers into believing the wheat, and anything made from it, is "genetically engineered."
Conventional methods, like the ones used in the OSU and CSU varieties, are so commonplace that practically every variety of wheat, rice, tomato, potato, beans and countless other crops grown in the United Sates today have been altered with them. But because Measure 27 called them all genetic engineering, consumers wouldn't have been able to tell any better than they already can whether a product was really GE.
Of course, if you're the kind of person who would just as soon shy away from any of the high-tech methods that breeders use to produce better crops and livestock, Measure 27 wouldn't have helped you make that choice, either.
Some high-tech breeding methods -- including in vitro fertilization and tissue culture -- were specifically exempted from the labeling mandate, although they too are totally "unnatural" and can only take place under careful scientific controls in a laboratory environment.
So, if consumers are really concerned about the safety of novel technologies, why make exceptions for in vitro fertilization and tissue culture? And if giving consumers a choice between GE and non-GE foods is the goal, why include so many things that are not genetically engineered?
The answer to these questions certainly has nothing to do with safety. Dozens of scientific bodies, including the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, and the World Health Organization, have found genetic engineering to be at least as safe as, and probably safer than, other breeding methods.
Instead, the reason for this confusion is that different consumers just want to know different things. But when we rely on one-size-fits-all government rules, the result in cases like this is usually a compromise that satisfies no one.
So, how can consumers exercise real choice between GE and non-GE? The answer is simpler than you might think.
Right under our noses, food packagers and groceries are already voluntarily labeling products as "GE-free" or "organic."
Ben & Jerry's ice cream advertises its GE-free status on the top of every carton. Wild Oats and Whole Foods Markets, the organic grocery chains, even distribute literature in every store about how to buy non-GE foods.
Because they must compete for the loyalty of shoppers, food companies long ago responded to consumer demand for non-GE products. And they did so in ways that are better at providing real consumer choice than labeling mandates.
WASHINGTON -- C:Spin -- Election Day 2002: And the winners are ...
By James V. DeLong
Washington spent a couple of days pondering the impact of the election on the fate of the republic, and is now back to focusing on the usual questions: What's in it for me? For my company? My industry?
Tech was barely mentioned during the campaign, so the industry is not part of the general elbowing to claim that the results were a mandate for its special interests. No one says that the voters rallied to the cause of 100-mbs fiber optic connections, or a computer in every garage. So tech must look at either larger or smaller issues.
On the larger side, the obvious immediate beneficiaries include free trade, tax reform, corporate governance and tort reform. But curb your enthusiasm. It still takes 60 votes to get anything through the Senate, which makes drastic action improbable.
One crucial factor remains up in the air: the future leadership of the Democrats. If the party goes left, tech could get caught up in the general corporate bashing. If it goes centrist, then not. But a leftward Democratic tilt might be more conducive to legislation because it could induce moderate Democrats to defect on some issues.
At a micro level, the reversal of Senate committee chairs will affect things. Trading incorrigible regulator Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., for deregulatory-sympathizing John McCain, R-Ariz., at Commerce is the most important switch, but the accessions of Richard Shelby, R-Ala., at Banking and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, at Judiciary could be significant.
In the House, still unsettled is the chairmanship of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the courts, the Internet, and intellectual property -- a key player in the battles over protecting intellectual property.
Beyond these elementary observations, and thinking of the longer term -- well, as Yogi supposedly said, "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future."
But the conventional wisdom that the nation is evenly divided between Reds and Blues is deceptive. The nation is fragmented into more colors than the rainbow.
The Republicans are a melange of free marketers and corporatists, social libertarians and the religious right, sophisticated internationalists and the black helicopter crowd, defenders of property rights and suburban environmentalists, blue-collar patriots and the country club.
The Democrats are equally un-united.
The Republicans assume that if the Democratic leadership moves left, and this is the way that the smart money is betting at the moment, then the more moderate Democrats will move into the Republican camp. It could work that way.
It could also fragment the political system into the equivalent of three parties, not two, with the center occupied by refugees from both parties whose attitudes toward economic issues are less statist and more free market than the remaining Democrats, and whose views on social issues are more secular and libertarian than the views of either the left or the right.
The description of the center group pretty much covers most individual members of the tech world. But it does not necessarily include their corporate employers, which are easily seduced by prospects of corporate welfare and regulatory favoritism and are ambivalent whether to fight rampant statism or try to co-opt it.
Whether the tri-partite division will actually evolve, and how it would work in practice in a polity frozen into its two-party form by inertia, tribal memories, gerrymandering, and campaign finance laws, is incalculable. It may be an interesting ride.
(James V. DeLong is a senior fellow in the Project on Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.)
The Center for Strategic and International Studies
WASHINGTON -- U.N approves Iraq resolution: Terrorism may spike, U.N. gains stature, Iraq to be tested decisively
CSIS analysts made the following statements today regarding the U.N. Security Council's approval of the Iraq resolution:
-- Daniel Benjamin, senior fellow in the CSIS International Security Program.
"The resolution marks a clear step forward toward the (Bush) administration's goal of disarming Saddam Hussein. While jihadists despise Saddam, they also view the United Nations as a lackey of the West, and they will paint this as another step in America's 'crusader' effort to destroy Islam. A spike in terrorist activity in the near future cannot be ruled out as extremists seek to exploit this Security Council move.
Certainly, as the pressure builds on Iraq, that will become more likely, and once Saddam faces an existential threat to his regime, he may find it advantageous to work with terrorists he has hitherto shunned."
-- Rick Barton, senior adviser in the CSIS International Security Program
"In an ironic way, the debate of the past eight weeks has reinforced the value of the Security Council. On the international level, there is a new resolve to make the words of diplomacy mean something; on the domestic front, the potential of a joint U.N.-led action reduced the political profile of an unpopular unilateralism. Kofi Annan has reason to feel good today."
-- Richard Fairbanks, CSIS Counselor
"The Middle East peace process appears effectively frozen, at least until the political changes now under way on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides work themselves through. But the strong vote in the Security Council sends a clear message that the status quo on threats of terror is unacceptable. As the situation regarding Iraq clarifies, the focus will return to the Arab-Israeli situation, as both sides recognize."
-- Robert Einhorn, senior adviser in the CSIS International Security Program.
"For the Bush administration, the new inspection regime is designed to be a prompt, decisive test of whether Iraq has finally made the fundamental decision to give up its illegal WMD (weapons of mass destruction) programs. It wants no part of the pre-1998 approach in which the onion gets peeled back layer by layer, as the Iraqis grudgingly admit what they can no longer deny.
"Administration officials believe that, in the extremely unlikely event that Saddam has made the fundamental decision to comply, then that decision should be reflected in the full cooperation that Iraq will begin giving immediately to the inspectors.
"But if, as they firmly expect, Iraq intends to resume the game of hide and seek, then that intention should also become clear relatively quickly, and it would provide the basis for judging that Iraq remains non-compliant and must face 'serious consequences.' This is a process that the administration thinks can and should play out in a matter of a few months."
CSIS notes that these are the views of the individuals cited, not of CSIS, which does not take policy positions.
