how much would it cost to label GMOs?

Expert response from Jennifer Schmidt

Maryland Farmer and Registered Dietician

Thursday, 06/12/2014 17:39

That's an easy question to ask and a very difficult one to answer. There are some circles that would lead you to believe that it’s a simple matter of putting the acronym "GMO" on a label. For people who haven't followed a corn or soybean seed from the field to the fork, it would seem to be an easy thing to just "put" on a label. For those of us in farming, we know that it’s not so simple and would have a catastrophic impact on our family farms if it passed. There is nothing simple about the food supply chain, from a commodity grain grown in my field to a food ingredient used in a baked good, cereal or other item on your grocery shelf. My blog, The Cost of GMO Labeling, will give you a view of the impact of how grain is handled, from our farm perspective, and the infrastructure that would be required to accurately put the acronym "GMO" on a label. It would mean nothing short of a recapitalization of our entire farming infrastructure system, and conversion from commingled to segregated grain tracking along the entire food supply chain. It would be extremely expensive for farmers to add storage, and that's the perspective from which I wrote my blog.