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No alternative? The politics and history of non-GMO certification

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Abstract

Third-party certification is an increasingly prevalent tactic which agrifood activists use to “help” consumers shop ethically, and also to reorganize commodity markets. While consumers embrace the chance to “vote with their dollar,” academics question the potential for labels to foster widespread political, economic, and agroecological change. Yet, despite widespread critique, a mounting body of work appears resigned to accept that certification may be the only option available to activist groups in the context of neoliberal socio-economic orders. At the extreme, Guthman (Antipode 39(3): 457, 2007) posits that “at this political juncture… ‘there is no alternative.” This paper offers a different assessment of third-party certification, and points to interventions that are potentially more influential that are currently available to activist groups. Exploring the evolution of the Non-GMO Project—a novel certification for foods that are reasonably free of genetically engineered (GE) material—I make two arguments. First, I echo the literature’s critical perspective by illustrating how certification projects become vulnerable to industry capture. Reviewing its history and current context, I suggest that the Non-GMO Project would be better suited to helping companies avoid mounting public criticism than to substantially reorient agrifood production. Second, I explore the “politics of the possible” in the current political economy and argue that while neoliberalization and organizers’ places within the food system initially oriented the group towards the private sector, the choice to pursue certification arose directly from two industry partnerships. Consequently, current trends might favor market mechanisms, but certification is only one possible intervention that has emerged as a result of particular, and perhaps avoidable, circumstances. The article offers tentative delineation of alternatives ways that activists might intervene in agrifood and political economic systems given present constraints.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, GE foods and GMO foods refer to products with constituents derived from seeds with genetic structure that has somehow manipulated (e.g., genes added, deleted or reversed) through recombinant DNA technology. Although GE technology is slowly being applied to livestock, widespread use as meat of such animals has not occurred to date. The paper, and the Non-GMO Project, focus on plant products or livestock raised on plant products. I reserve GMO for specific references to the Non-GMO Project because although GMO is widely recognized to stand for GE, the two terms are not synonymous. GE refers specifically to products created through rDNA processes, while GMO is a more general term used to denote any organism with a genetic structure that has been modified through human intervention (e.g., plant breeding). The distinction is important because the FDA prohibits the use of the term GMO and recommends instead the use of the terms “agricultural biotechnology” or “genetic engineering.” Also, proponents of these technologies have capitalized on the slippage in GMO to argue for that the technology does not represent a significant departure from past practices (Fedoroff and Brown 2004).

  2. I focused only to third-party certification, a type of certification provided by private entities outside the manufacturing industry. It is beyond the scope of this discussion to explore similar trends in first and second-party certification systems, although such a project is worthy of future investigation. For details on the difference between these certification types see Gereffi et al. (2001).

  3. Very broadly, neoliberalization refers to the restructuring of political economies along classical liberal lines. Although the process works differently across space (owing in part from contestation by civil society and their interactions with existing political economic landscape), it is generally characterized by a retraction of state intervention in economic functions, including environmental and social regulation of production, a concomitant faith in the self-regulating market to reach socially optimal forms, a focus on individual choice and responsibility as the determinant of political economic processes, and a reliance on civil society to redress market failures (i.e., environmental and social problems) (Harvey 2005; McCarthy 2006).

  4. The Board of Directors hoped to expand assessment in future to include end-product testing.

  5. In a 2001 ABC poll, 93% of respondents supported mandatory labeling of GE foods. Similarly high levels of support have been reported since (Hallman et al. 2004; PIFB 2005).

  6. Personal interview, 17 August 2006.

  7. Personal interview, 17 August 2006.

  8. While “People Want to Know” officially called participating retailers “signators” no one ever actually signed anything. Rather, stores just agreed to have their names added to a list of supporting firms.

  9. Personal interview, 17 August 2006.

  10. Personal Interview, 17 August 2006.

  11. Personal correspondence, 31 May 2007.

  12. I was given a copy of this pamphlet in August, 2007. While this particular brochure is not electronically available as of 1 October 2007, the same text may be found at: http://www.ghorganics.com/CampaigntoTestNaturalFoodsSupplements.htm.

  13. Since this time the Board of Directors created a Technical Advisory Board; however, the majority of members are major natural food manufacturers and retailers.

  14. Personal interview, 28 October 2006.

  15. Personal Communication, Non GMO Project, 28 May 2007.

  16. Soon after the board of directors was re-populated by industry representatives, the Project’s founder quit the campaign. He continues to mobilize against GE crops and foods, but no longer believes the Project will achieve this goal.

  17. LLRICE is the short-hand given to a series of rice varieties (in this case 601 and 62) developed by BayerCrop Science to resist the company’s herbicide, Liberty Link.

  18. This is the logic behind the high tolerance thresholds for mandatory labeling laws in Europe and elsewhere.

Abbreviations

FDA:

U.S. Food and Drug Administration

GE:

Genetically engineered

GFCA:

Global Food Chain Advisors

GID:

Genetic ID

GMO:

Genetically-modified organism

NGC:

Natural Grocery Company

NGMOP:

Non-GMO Project

UNFI:

United Natural Food Inc.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would particularly like to thank my confidential informants for their time and insights during my field research, and Geoff Mann, Harvey James and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on early drafts of this paper.

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  1. Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6

    Robin Jane Roff

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Roff, R.J. No alternative? The politics and history of non-GMO certification. Agric Hum Values 26, 351–363 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-008-9166-5

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