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Opponents of GMO labeling say it will raise food costs by hundreds of dollars per family when in fact it will likely cause NO cost increase at all!

The California Right to Know 2012 Ballot Initiative, which will be voted upon in November, will tell Californians-and ultimately perhaps other Americans-whether their food contains genetically engineered ingredients. Not surprisingly, the biotech companies are up in arms over the proposal. Their website is NoProp37.com, funding for which comes in part from the Council for Biotechnology Information, whose members include Monsanto, Dow, and other GMO companies. The site, which used to be called StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com (they just recently changed the domain name-could it be because they realized it wasn’t costly after all?) says:

[Labeling genetically engineered foods] would increase food costs paid by California consumers. The higher costs that farmers, food companies and grocers would face because of this proposition would be passed on to California consumers through higher food prices. That would hurt all California families-especially those who can least afford it, such as seniors on fixed incomes and low income families. An economic analysis of a similar measure that was rejected by Oregon voters found that the type of labeling regulations in the California proposition could cost an average family hundreds of dollars per year in higher food costs.

Note that they analyzed a rejected Oregon proposal, not the proposal on which Californians will be voting in November! But Joanna Shepherd-Bailey, PhD, has analyzed the one in California.