Bad science busted: New 'study' from UC Davis about costs of GMO labeling funded by biotechnology industry

Tuesday, September 18, 2012 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: GMO labeling, junk science, financial ties

(NaturalNews) Major food and biotechnology corporations like Cargill and Monsanto really do not want to see genetically-modified (GM) food labeling laws passed this fall in California, or anywhere else for that matter, which is why they are continuing to hire corrupt scientists, researchers, and university academics to flesh out phony "studies" that make the implication that GMO labeling will create a type of food apocalypse in which nobody will be able to afford basic food essentials because of their exorbitant costs.

The latest bit of propaganda pushing such nonsense comes out of the University of California, Davis, where two professors recently put out an industry-funded study that claims that California's Proposition 37 ballot measure, which will require labeling of GMOs at the retail level, will cost the food industry more than $1 billion. And this increased cost; they claim, will ultimately lead to higher food costs for consumers.

Entitled A Costly Regulation with No Benefits, the 48-page spin piece uses scare tactics and fear -- but not an ounce of actual science -- to suggest that GMO labeling will hurt both farmers and the food industry. It also makes a number of patently false claims, including that GMO labeling will "not provide any meaningful benefits ... in the form of improved product safety," even though GMOs have been shown to cause allergies, sterility, organ damage, and many other serious problems. (http://responsibletechnology.org/resources/state-of-the-science)

You can read the full UC Davis "study" here:
http://www.noprop37.com/files/Alston-Sumner-Prop-37-review.pdf

Corporations merging with education just like they have done with government

The whole point of the ridiculous UC Davis study, of course, is not to honestly discuss the facts about GMOs or GMO labeling, but rather to play on the fears of an already economically thrashed public in order to persuade as many people as possible to just leave things alone if they want their food to remain "cheap." GMOs are safe, they would have us all believe, so why belabor the issue any further? Case closed.

Or is it? It turns out that the UC Davis study, which reads more like pro-Monsanto marketing material, was actually funded by Monsanto and many other corporations that have contributed millions of dollars to the No on 37 campaign. As we reported on previously, the No on 37 campaign has been almost entirely funded by Monsanto, Cargill, Kellogg's, Nestle, and a number of other corporate giants that for many years have been deliberately hiding unlabeled GMOs in the American food supply. (http://www.naturalnews.com)

It is on the very first page of the UC Davis study where we learn that "work for this project was undertaken with partial funding from No on 37." So much for unbiased, independent research from an institution of higher learning. In essence, this statement shows that the UC Davis study is not even a study at all, but rather a No on 37 campaign marketing piece disguised with academic credentials.

This is how it works. Monsanto et al. hands over tens of millions of dollars to the No on 37 campaign (http://www.naturalnews.com), and the No on 37 campaign hands that money over to universities like UC Davis to churn out anti-GMO labeling propaganda. And the general public is none the wiser as to what has taken place, assuming naively that such opposition to GMO labeling must be scientific and honest because it came from a research university.

This gradual merging of corporations with academia is hardly surprising since corporations have been merging with the government for decades. What UC Davis has done in this situation by capitulating to corporate interests determined to stop California's GMO labeling initiative is the exact same thing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does all the time for drug companies by approving dangerous drugs and opposing natural cures. (https://www.naturalnews.com/035519_Ron_Paul_FDA_Big_Pharma.html)

"What's hard to imagine is that we have a government so corrupt that it allows a corporation (Monsanto) to genetically modify a very common item of produce (corn) so it creates its own Bt insecticide, doesn't make the corporation prove it's safe to eat, and then allows it to be sold to the public," wrote one commenter by the name of "William T." to the Los Angeles Times about the preposterous fact that GMOs are even legal, let alone in use and unlabeled.

"This is one of the most immoral things our government has ever done, and that's saying a lot. This shows us exactly how thoroughly corporations own -- OWN -- our government. This is not paranoia, it's not hyperbole. It's fact. And it's tragic."

To learn more about Prop. 37 and the grassroots efforts to get GMOs labeled, visit:
http://www.carighttoknow.org/

Sources for this article include:

http://www.latimes.com