Competitive Interests: Competition and Compromise in American Interest Group Politics by Thomas T. Holyoke

Author:Thomas T. Holyoke [Holyoke, Thomas T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781589017795
Google: 4q4TVH6RuWYC
Goodreads: 13157911
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Published: 2011-08-19T00:00:00+00:00

Congressional Pressure and Response

After the negative reaction by members of Congress and state legislators to the bovine hormone, ag-friendly lawmakers and technology groups began trying to organize and change the way biotechnology was viewed. Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) pushed for more federal research and development support to demonstrate how safe GM foods were. Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) requested the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Academy of Sciences to report to Congress on whether more data on GM foods was really needed (Bettelheim 2000). Given that the academy and USDA had already declared GM foods safe and were unlikely to change their conclusions now, the effort was more of a move to strip consumer groups of their most potent weapon, public doubt, and gain the political support of farmers and grocers.

Little evidence exists that this scientific reassurance strategy worked. A survey in December 2000 found that two-thirds of the public did not approve of the idea of GM foods (Brody 2000), numbers that remained largely unchanged in 2006 (Weiss 2006). Reacting to negative public opinion and the persuasive power of farmer and consumer groups, members of Congress of many ideological stripes became increasingly critical of FDA and EPA. At the urging of these groups, forty-seven House members, including Republicans Christopher Shays (R-CT) and Jack Metcalf (R-WA), wrote to the FDA commissioner to express their frustration with the original regulatory scheme and demanded something more stringent. More pointed letters expressing concern over the FDA’s lack of transparency and use of sound science came from the chair and ranking member of the House and Senate Agriculture committees (Pope 2000b) and even soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN).5

An especially good example of the pressure on farmers to ally with consumer groups against the status quo was their support of H.R. 3883 by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) in 2000. His Genetically Engineered Food Safety Act would mandate an extensive regulatory scheme to thoroughly test all genetically modified foods before permitting them to be sold at market. Farmers, their lobbyists told me, did not especially like Kucinich’s proposed regulatory hoops, and they even found some language regarding liability to be frightening. But FDA approval based on testing would, they hoped, be better than the status quo for it might make their products acceptable to US and European consumers. Even Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) mandatory labeling bill, the American Corn Growers Association’s lobbyist explained to me, would be acceptable over FDA’s current policy. FDA tested and labeled so many other things, he said, that his members did not see why there would be a problem with one more test and one more label. The more anti-GM consumer groups in the Alert were also reluctant supporters of the Kucinich bill, said the USPIRG lobbyist (who helped the congressman’s staff write it). They preferred a ban, but that would cost them the support of farm groups and their resources. Kucinich’s bill was a compromise both could live with and was preferred to the status quo.

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