On GMOs and Food Labels

by Gerard Emershaw

Many die hard libertarians cringe at the very idea of mandatory food labels. The idea that government should force businesses to label food strikes these libertarians as being paternalistic at best and tyrannical at worst. These libertarians will also claim that bringing the government in here is unnecessary. If consumers want labels and insist upon them, then the free market will inevitably provide them. As it is, corporations have an incentive not to harm their customers and to provide goods and services that people want. Therefore, if customers want labels which state whether a given food product has genetically modified organisms (GMOs) among their ingredients, then the market will eventually provide it.

While there are good reasons to believe that GMOs are harmful, let us assume that GMOs are neither harmful nor beneficial. What is the harm in allowing consumers to know if there are GMOs among the ingredients in a given food product? Where is the harm in labeling it as a GMO product? If people are frightened of GMOs—whether rationally or irrationally—it is the job of the corporations that produce GMOs to educate the public as to the safety of GMOs. These mega-corporations surely have enough in their advertising budgets to provide this education.

Autonomous human beings have the right to know what is in the food that they are buying. A consumer can only make a fully informed choice about which food product to buy if he or she knows the ingredients. Selling a product without disclosing information about the ingredients disrespects the rationality of consumers and is tantamount to fraud. By not disclosing ingredients and other nutritional information, any sale of food becomes fraudulent. The consumer is not allowed to pay for food using money that may or may not be counterfeit. The consumer is in effect saying “this is legal tender” whereas without food labels, a food producer is not required to make any equivalent statement. In order to reduce the size of government and prevent the nation from becoming a total nanny state, civil suits in courts should be encouraged rather than government overregulation through agencies like the FDA. Mandating labels creates the environment where consumers can pursue redresses of grievances through tort law in civil courts. By mandating that food producing companies label their products, consumers have a legally binding promise on which they can rely. This makes it possible for only companies which cause damages to be forced to pay the cost of harm. Without labels, there is a much greater need for regulating bodies like the FDA and slews of regulations and inspectors. This passes the costs of harms to customers equally onto negligent and non-negligent companies. Therefore, a country that has mandatory food labeling laws is in a better position to ultimately have a smaller government.