There’s a recent trend in food advertising, have you noticed? It is not about what is in the food; it’s about what’s not in the food.
Much TV food advertising emphasizes what the product is “free” of. No antibiotics, artificial colors, artificial flavors. Not genetically modified, not packaged with BPA. No high fructose corn syrup. Gluten-free.
It’s even happening with dog food. Food that is not especially good for humans is even worse for our dogs, and the dog food makers are starting to catch up.
This is for food purchased at the grocery store. The trend doesn’t apply to advertising for fast food restaurants, which still tempt us with how many layers of grease and salt they can pack into every item, or to pizza, which has become its own food group.
Nevertheless, it’s a big change. And the theme is echoed in the packaging.
Labels on some foods repeat the message of no artificial this or that. One brand of chicken even boasts its products are made from natural chicken, as if the alternative were artificial chicken.
All those advertisers are echoing back to consumers something powerful about what concerns us. We are worried about all the artificial and chemical-laden ingredients in our food, especially food we serve our children.
Which makes it all the more notable that New Mexico couldn’t pass a GMO labeling bill.
This bill was Senate Bill 18 of the 2013 regular session, sponsored by Senator Peter Wirth, a Santa Fe Democrat, now State Senate Majority Leader. It required labeling for all food and commercial feed containing genetically modified materials. The bill was killed by a procedural vote on the Senate floor.
SB18 was one of several bills studied in an in-depth report by Common Cause New Mexico, a nonprofit organization that advocates for ethics and openness in government.
Labeling would have provided consumers, who are also citizens and taxpayers, with information and choice.
If it had been enacted into law, the bill would have inconvenienced a number of special interest industry groups related to agriculture. The Common Cause report analyzed campaign contributions from those groups compared to how senators voted.
It’s a complicated analysis because it considers a number of factors. For example, the lobbyists who represent the agriculture industry also have other clients. So a campaign contribution from any of those lobbyists did not directly correlate with this particular bill.
However, the report did manage to analyze the sources of those campaign contributions and found that the 23 senators who voted to kill the bill received an average of of $4,341 in campaign contributions from the agriculture industry. This is nearly four and one-half times as much as the $970 average of contributions to the 17 senators who supported the bill.
In 2013 I would have said New Mexico should not take the lead in passing a GMO labeling bill. We are a small market and the effect could be that some food producers who don’t want to do GMO labeling might simply avoid shipping their products here, limiting our choices.
I have changed my mind since noticing all this advertising, which demonstrates that New Mexico consumers do want more information about what’s in their food, that it’s not an esoteric issue limited to health food snobs. But it seems we can’t pass a law in the public interest because political money outweighs the will of the voters.
A law to require labeling of genetically modified food had been tried the previous year in California as a voter initiative, where it was defeated after the industry spent a reported $46 million to kill it.
In New Mexico, we haven’t tried this again. Until we do something about campaign finance, what the citizens want isn’t what gets legislation passed.
Triple Spaced Again, © New Mexico News Services 2017