Label GMO's in New York Now! Your Right to Know

If you live in New York State you have a great opportunity to make your state both more informed as well as healthier. There are currently two bills in the New York State Legislature which would require all foods containing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) to be labeled as such. In the Assembly the bill is listed as A03525 and in the Senate S03835-A. There is no downside to this labeling requirement and a lot of upside. While you may still be on the fence about GMOs, there is no doubt that foods containing GMOs should at least be labeled, giving you the option of purchasing or not purchasing these foods.

I wrote a post last year in support of a similar bill in California which was in the form of a state referendum. (That post can be found on my blog archive dated 11/30/13). While you would think that a progressive state like California should easily pass this referendum you would be wrong. To understand why you would need to see the list of chemical and food companies who spent over $37,000,000 to fight the proposition. (They include Monsanto, DuPont, Council for Biotechnology Information, Grocery Manufacturers Association, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods and the Kellogg Company.)

Here in the northeast there is a bit of a “game of chicken” going on. Now is the time to tell your legislative representatives you want the New York State bill passed and this “game” to end. Many of our surrounding states are involved but don’t want to be the first to make this labeling mandatory. You’ll know how close it is to becoming a reality is by how much advertising you see on your TV. As of my writing this post I haven’t seen any. Connecticut was the first state to pass a similar bill earlier this week but with the caveat for implementation being 4 more northeast states must pass similar laws (including one that borders Connecticut) before it becomes mandatory. Other similar bills are being discussed in Massachusetts, where there are hearings this month, Vermont where a similar bill has been pass by a large majority in the houses with no caveat, like Connecticut, thus making it the most likely state to have this labeling requirement become law, although the state senate may not vote until early 2014.  

To understand the battle you need look no further than the results in the other sixty-one countries around the world, including China and all of the European Union, that already require labeling of GMO foods. Ninety three countries in total have passed such labeling requirements. Where these labeling requirements exist, the public has made their preference know, that preference being choosing non-gmo products. Just how big is the issue? Seventy percent of all processed foods now have GMOs in them. Why? Just look at the seven largest crops that are now mainly GMO grow. They include (in order of volume) corn, soy, cottonseed, alfalfa, papaya, canola and sugar beets. (It’s not coincidental that the list includes most of the government subsidized crops.)

As far as the science goes both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Medical Association have confirmed that there are no proven negative health consequences associated with consuming genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The real question is what rights do consumers have. Do you, as a consumer, have the right to know what is in your food? An example: 90 percent of all cereal foods include GMOs. As a devout Cheerios eater, I’m not likely to stop buying this food. But that’s not the point. The point is do I have the right to know.

As I write this post one of the big stories of the week is the disclosure about the data the government is keeping on our cell calls, emails and other communications we thought were private. Just a few years ago this story would be gigantic. Instead, most americans failed to get “outraged.” It turns out that most of us are willing to pay the price of losing some privacy in exchange for security. I believe the same is true about the labeling of GMOs. The food companies are afraid that the public will react poorly to finding out what most of us know already, that much of our food has GMOs in it. Some of us in fact may change their food purchasing habits, but most won’t and while we may give up certain rights, the right to know is not one of them. Take some time to let your legislators know this is a right you want to hold on to.  

Getting the Most out of your Public Servants

As a small business owner I am used to getting threatening letters from the New York State Department of Finance and Taxation. They usually are bills for a form that was not filed with the department. I generally call my accountant and it always turns out that either I did not have to file that form or had filled it and they were incorrect. The bills usually break down into a filing fee of a few hundred dollars and a penalty of a few thousand dollars. It's always an inconvenience but you get used to it and it is always easy to clear up.

A few weeks ago I got a very different letter. This time is was personal, to my wife and I and was a notice of a limited audit of my 2010 tax return. Specifically it related to a tax credit I took for the purchase and installation of a 4.3k photovoltaic array. When I got the letter I was surprised, first because I was sure I had the system installed before 2010 and the second reason was that I had never been personally audited before. (To add to the issue, after calling my accountant I confirmed that the system was actually installed in 2009, which was more than 3 years after filing, making the audit illegal. As it turned out, had I been wealthy and had a NYS tax due of over $5000 it would have been too late to audit me but because my NYS tax due for 2009 was less then $5000, I carried over the tax credit through 2010, making it legal).

I was very concerned for a number of reasons. The first was that when I had my system installed I used a local contractor who wanted to do business with me and gave me a ridiculous price, thousands lower than the next bid. The second concern was that I live in a location in upstate New York where we had two major rainstorms in the past few years and my basement had been flooded. That was where my records were kept.

I panicked. What to do? They had only given me 30 days or they threatened to expand the audit. I had a conversation with my wife and she gave me a suggestion that I didn't expect. "Call your legislative representatives," she suggested. I thought there was no downside to taking her suggestion so I wrote a letter to each of my representatives. (In my case Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk and Assemblyman Peter Lopez). I expected nothing.

Within 2 days I got a call from both their offices and two days after that I received a call from a very pleasant tax investigator for the NYS Department of Taxation. He informed me that they received my letter asking for an extension of time and that it had been granted and that a letter stating so had been sent to me. (As of this post I had still not recieved that extension letter). In addition, he told me about the calls he got from my representatives and wanted to help. We had a very pleasant conversation and he suggested I made an attempt at finding any proof of what the system cost using bills or cancelled check.

I told him that I would try, but asked what the state was doing as these to storms had caused literally millions of dollars of damage and I couldn’t be the only person with damaged papers. (There were two towns that were totally destroyed in one storm). The next day I went down into my basement and found a bill and cancelled check from the company I purchased the equipment from but this represented only $18,000 of the $22,500 credit I took. The balance of my papers were too destroyed to be of any purpose and the account the remaining checks were paid out of had been closed so there was no banking access.

I decided to call back the NYS Dept. of Finance investigator anyway to send him what I had found. He had me fax him the bill and check I had and he called me back later that day to inform me that what I had sent would be all that he needed to “resolve” the case.

I believe that this was not normal procedure and that the calls from my legislative representatives had assisted in making my case a bit easier to resolve. While I had never contacted any of my representatives before this incident, I would not hesitate to do it again. We always think our politicians don’t really have much to do with the ordinary citizen but I’m proof that this is not the case. This is part of what they do when they go back to their districts. They are there for us. Use them.