Josie Sexton

jsexton@coloradoan.com

Two miles west of Interstate 25 on Wellington's Owl Canyon Road, 250 acres of sugar beets are being harvested this week, some the size of your head.

Along the plains north of Fort Collins, Richard Seaworth and his family own 1,000 acres of farmland and rent another 1,000 acres. They grow genetically-modified sugar beets, genetically-modified corn, non-genetically-modified corn, and organic corn, beans and sorghum, among other crops.

The farm is 20 miles from Wyoming, where Seaworth sends his beets to a sugar factory. But this election season, the third-generation farmer feels caught right in the middle of Colorado. If passed, Proposition 105 would mandate package labeling on genetically-modified products sold in the state by July 1, 2016.

Around 70 percent of processed food in U.S. grocery stores is now genetically modified, and only voluntary "organic" or "non-GMO" labels exist to differentiate them.

"I'm a consumer; I want to know what I'm getting," Seaworth said. "That's not the issue."

The issue, he said: "We think we're being unfairly targeted."

By the end of summer, the Right to Know Colorado campaign had gathered 171,000 signatures for a mandatory GMO labeling initiative, enough to put Proposition 105 on the ballot this November.

Ask anyone from the grassroots campaign, such as co-chairman Larry Cooper, and they'll say that the verdict is out on GMOs' long-term safety. In the meantime, Colorado consumers have a right to know what's in their food so they can decide whether to eat it.

"I didn't have a goal of banning GMOs," Cooper, an Arvada resident, said. "But I believe in the U.S. we have personal freedom to make an informed choice about the food we're eating and what we're feeding our children.

"This isn't a ban," he added. "It's a label. And this isn't a warning label, it's for those people who are interested — to not choose blindly."

Impacts of labeling GMOs

In a mid-September poll by USA TODAY of 500 registered Colorado voters, 51.6 percent responded that they would vote yes on Proposition 105, while 26.8 percent said they would vote no and 18.6 percent were undecided.

Polls can underscore a general lack of knowledge around this subject, said Patrick Byrne, a CSU professor of plant breeding and genetics.

"The background is that very few people feel very informed about GMO technology," Byrne said. "Against that background, it's hard to know how much weight to put on a consumer poll."

The American Medical Association, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Health Organization are some of the organizations that support the use of biotechnology to transfer favorable genes between plant species. The scientific community says GMOs are especially useful to increase crop yields in the face of a growing world population.

But Byrne uses the qualifiers "carefully," "potentially" and "responsibly" when he talks about the use of GMOs. When they were released in the mid-1990s, the U.S. government decided not to label them on retail products, unless nutritional or allergen properties had been changed.

Meanwhile, 64 other countries have enacted mandatory labeling laws.

In the U.S., genetically modified products are tested by either the FDA, the USDA or the EPA, depending on the product's end use.

During the past two decades, as U.S. corn, soybean, canola and sugar beet crops have grown to become 90 percent genetically modified, the vast majority of scientific evidence has shown no negative health effects of GMOs on humans. But Cooper and labeling proponents argue that the long-term effects of their consumption remain to be seen, as do environmental impacts.

"The part I don't understand: If GMOs are good for us, why don't they want us to know (which foods contain them)?" Cooper said.

Byrne said the scientific community's concern is that a label would be interpreted as a health warning, "when, in fact, FDA and other health organizations have shown no consistent, reliable evidence of any health concerns (for GMOs).

"If it is interpreted as a warning, it may result in companies avoiding GM products, reducing investment in GM technologies," he added. "In a single state, maybe not, but if it becomes national policy … ."

GMO policies across the nation

Starting with ballot initiatives in 2012 and 2013 in California and Washington, respectively, states are taking the lead on GMO labeling.

While similar initiatives have since been passed by voters in Connecticut, Maine and Vermont, the efforts built by grassroots organizations in California and Washington were defeated, in part due to disproportionate advertising spending by the "no" campaigns.

In Colorado's fight, by the end of September, Right to Know had raised $334,297 in funds while NO on 105 had raised $9.7 million, with $4.7 million donated by the world's largest GMO producer, Monsanto Co.

Labeling laws in Connecticut and Maine were passed with the stipulation that neighboring states pass similar laws as well. In Vermont, just months after the vote for mandatory labeling, the state could now pay up to $8 million defending its new law against grocers and manufacturers associations' lawsuits.

While Oregon has a similar labeling law on its November ballot, no other states around Colorado have adopted the initiative for now, which leaves farmers such as Seaworth worried.

Most Colorado sugar beets, he explained, are sent to a sugar processing plant in Fort Morgan, but Wellington's beets travel to a factory in Wyoming, where no labeling law yet exists.

"Well, how do we do this?" Seaworth wondered.

The Legislative Council of the Colorado General Assembly, which wrote Proposition 105 for the 2014 State Ballot Information Booklet, said that all genetically modified food imports would need to be labeled, while exports remain "ambiguous."

"In a strict reading," one representative said, "(a food item) would have to be labeled up to the point it reaches the border."

Right to Know's Cooper said that any food product processed and sold from another state would not be regulated.

Ultimately it would be up to the state Department of Health, tasked with administering the law, to decide.

Uncertainties

The thing about Seaworth's sugar beets, and all sugar beets, he said, is that they don't end up genetically modified, though they do start out that way.

"The genetically modified part of the sugar beet is in a protein," Seaworth said, "which doesn't show up on the sugar packet, because I took it out in processing, and I sold it as feed to cattle."

While refined sugar has little to none of the original genetically modified beet protein, it would still have to be labeled.

Under Proposition 105, meat and dairy products are exempt from labeling, as are beer, chewing gum, pure honey, restaurant food and school cafeteria food.

Due to Colorado's "single-subject rule," for ballot initiatives, Cooper said the Right to Know campaign could not include any of these other food items on its proposal.

"This is a reasonable first step," Cooper said. "We aren't trying to hurt anybody; all we're trying to do is find out what's in our food."

Cooper started paying more attention to ingredients a few years ago, when he first learned about genetically-modified foods. He said he is among many Coloradans "shocked by what's happening to our food supply."

"This isn't going away," Cooper said. "You go up and down the aisles and everyone's reading labels."

But along the meat and dairy aisles, Seaworth sees unlabled cattle that have eaten GMO feed. He thinks this exception and others will be misleading to consumers.

In the case of the sugar beet, he said: "Why are we being labeled when (the GMO) is not going to the consumer?This really shouldn't be a state deal. It should be a federal deal."

Driving around his Wellington farm, organic crops to the left, GMO to the right, Seaworth thinks the advances in technology that have given him weed-free crops and pest-resistant crops could lead to enhanced nutrition and vitamins in crops.

"I hope 20 years from now (a GMO label) will be on every box," he admitted, "and for a positive reason."

More on GMOs

General information: www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/crops/00710.html

Labeling issues: www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09371.html