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the information they want the label to provide is how the food product was produced, rather than the compositional effect of the process on the food product.”8 It is understandable that the FDA found the results “striking”; the agency had already decided otherwise. While the focus groups were in progress in May 2000, the FDA proposed a plan to require premarket notification for transgenic foods but to make labeling voluntary. FDA Commissioner Jane Henney said this plan would “show that all bioengineered foods sold here in the United States today are as safe as their non-bioengineered counterparts” and “will provide the public with continued confidence in the safety of these foods.”9 Six months later, after wading through 35,000 public comments on the matter, her agency issued still-interim rules for voluntary labeling. These led the New York Times to begin its account with, “Seeking to calm public anxiety . . .” and to quote Commissioner Henney: “What any product doesn’t need is for there to be suspicion on the behalf of consumers that something is being slipped by them.” Because the revised rules made labeling voluntary and retained restrictions on use of the term GM-free, consumer groups called them “purely public relations.”10 The FDA’s subsequent warnings to companies to stop using “GM-free” labels or to states seeking to enact GM-label laws, also did not reassure consumer groups that the agency was acting in the public interest.11

What seems most surprising is how much the industry’s unyielding opposition to labeling damages its own cause. If public trust is the key to successful marketing, biotechnology companies should freely disclose their methods, economic goals, and products. This idea cannot be news to the industry. In 1992, I was not alone in saying, “The labeling issue is really this simple: consumers are more likely to buy the food products of biotechnology if they think the foods are worth the price and if they trust the producer. Trust requires disclosure. . . . All the evidence suggests that consumers will welcome superior products—those that are cheaper, taste better, and have better nutritional value—no matter how they were produced.”12 This advice made sense at the time. Industry leaders ignored it because they chose to blame public resistance on scientific ignorance; if people knew the foods were safe, they would buy them. Labels might suggest that the foods were not safe. Later events proved the error of this view. People bought the genetically modified tomatoes because they thought they tasted better or were priced competitively. Public views of biotechnology in the United States then depended on perceived benefits and, as such, were logical, consistent, and predictable.

FIGURE 25. These foods bear labels designating their GM status. Those on the left are British or Irish products explicitly labeled either as genetically modified or as “GM-free.” The labels of the American products on the right, all purchased in 2000, state that they do not contain genetically modified ingredients. (Photo by Shimon and Tammar Rothstein, 2000.)

An alternative possibility is to decide the risks and benefits of each new food on a case-by-case basis and allow the marketplace to determine success or failure—as it does for other consumer goods. Under this approach, labeling is essential. If the foods are worth buying, labeling should encourage purchase (as Calgene thought it might do for the tomato). Whether the industry’s unwillingness to subject transgenic foods to marketplace forces was due to fear of rejection, arrogance, or stupidity may never be known, but this position led to results that were hardly in its best interest: public erosion of confidence, questioning of the value of any genetic modification of food, demands that government regulations address the societal—as well as safety—implications of the technology, and a steady increase in the labeling of foods as “GM-free.” By 2000, as shown in figure 25, many food products in Great Britain and the United States bore labels indicating whether or not they were