Public DomainLike it or not—and I’m in the
not camp—a mandatory, uniform national GMO labeling scheme
appears increasingly likely.

A number of factors make that so. On the one hand, activists who
support mandatory labeling of GMO crops and foods containing GMO
ingredients have gained a minor toehold in the states. While
Connecticut passed a first-in-the-nation mandatory labeling law
earlier this year that has little more than a snowball’s chance in
hell of ever taking effect, a Washington State
ballot measure appears likely to pass next month.

But hold on a minute. There’s a good
case to make that both the Connecticut law and the looming one
in Washington State are unconstitutional. Meanwhile, President
Obama promised before his first term to push for mandatory GMO
labeling, but has done nothing of the sort while in office. And
there’s also no major push in Congress to pass a federal GMO
labeling law. As recently as June I was also 
quoted as saying that mandatory GMO labeling was hardly
inevitable.

So why am I increasingly confident now that some federal
mandatory GMO labeling law will materialize?

Because of what’s happening on the other side of the debate.
Major players on the business side, including Walmart, America’s
leading grocer, and General Mills, which bills itself as
“one of the world’s largest food companies,” have publicly tipped
their hands that they’d support some sort of mandatory
labeling.

As I noted this summer, Walmart
held a meeting with FDA officials and others from the food
industry earlier this year where, it was alleged, the grocer and
other food sellers that have opposed state labeling requirements
would push for the federal government to adopt a national GMO
labeling standard.

And just last week, Ken Powell, the CEO of General Mills,
announced
at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting that the company
“strongly support[s] a national, federal labeling solution.”

Powell’s comments are a game changer.

But do they mean that anti-GMO activists and food companies are
on the same page? Not by a longshot. Powell made clear in his
remarks that the company supports “a national standard that
would label foods that don’t have genetically engineered
ingredients in them, rather than foods that do.” (emphasis
mine)

I suspect that anti-GMO activists would hate that solution
because it wouldn’t provide the “information” they want and because
all of the significant testing and labeling costs of the mandatory
scheme Powell suggests—along with any liability for not testing
GMO-free foods or for mislabeling—would be borne by the GMO-free
farmers and food producers they frequent (and by their customers,
in the form of higher prices).

But Powell’s plan isn’t likely to take hold. In fact, I suspect
Powell is posturing—at least in part.

He’s doing so to ensure that any national labeling system that
arises will resemble nothing that longtime supporters of mandatory
labeling have been pushing for. Why? It’s all due to the dreaded
“c” word: compromise.

In light of Powell’s comments, here’s what I think a mandatory
federal GMO labeling compromise would look like: Congress will
propose a bill that would require all food to be labeled
either one of two ways—as containing GMOs (what the activists want)
or as free of GMOs (what Powell suggests). In other words,
any and every food product sold in this country would have to
disclose on its label something like either “Contains GMO
Ingredients” or “Contains No GMO Ingredients.”

Anti-GMO activists may consider a compromise like this to be a
victory. But they should take a closer look. The downsides of this
compromise would be enormous for their cause.

For one thing, testing and labeling costs would be substantial
for both sides. But how will a small farmer who has to pay to test
crops she grows and packages stay in business? Or how about the
small canner or grocer that buys her produce? Meanwhile, economies
of scale assure that such a compromise won’t impact large producers
nearly as much.