The fractious organic food industry is deeply divided over the GMO disclosure bill nearing a vote in the Senate, says a blog post by Carey Gillam in Huffington Post, with the influential Organic Trade Association supporting it while opponents include the Rodale and Cornucopia institutes. “The bitterness runs so deep that some players are now pulling out of a two-day summit scheduled for July that is supposed to build consensus around GMO issues, sources said.”
“Here we are, splitting ourselves in two right at the crucial moment,” one industry official told Gillam. “It really is disconcerting what is happening to our community.”
In some quarters, the disagreement is characterized as the “authentic organic” operators and businesses that are independently owned and often smaller in volume vs. the “organic elite” of larger operations, which includes some organic companies owned by large foodmakers that also produce conventional foods. That split also has appeared in the debate over creation of an organic checkoff program, backed strongly by OTA.
The OTA says the disclosure bill helps the organic industry by allowing producers to put a non-GMO label as well as the USDA organic seal on their products — a benefit for marketing — and prevents misuse of non-GMO claims. But a large number of organic groups oppose the bill because it does not satisfy a central point — special wording on food packages that contain GMOs. “In addition to the anger at OTA, some of the finger pointing and accusations of ‘selling out’ have been directed at Gary Hirshberg, chairman of the Just Label It campaign,” Gillam writes.