Washington Insider -- Thursday

By DTN's Washington Insider

Here's a quick monitor of Washington farm and trade policy issues from DTN's well-placed observer.

Disagreement Regarding Likely Results of Proposal to Reduce CO2 Emissions

The Obama administration is soon to unveil a proposal to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, but neither supporters nor opponents of the yet-to-be-released proposal are waiting to begin fighting.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation's biggest business lobby, yesterday released an analysis that finds an ambitious pollution-control effort could force more than a third of the coal-fired power capacity to close by 2030, resulting in economic losses of $50 billion a year and the elimination of 224,000 jobs. The Chamber was careful not to be seen as taking a position on the Environmental Protection Agency's proposal before its release, but the dire economic warnings in its analysis indicate that it is ready for a fight. Whether that fight is aimed at the EPA's proposal or at the Chamber's model analysis remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, supporters predict the plan will create jobs and lower power bills. The Natural Resources Defense Council, for example, says the EPA's pledge to give states wide leeway on enforcing the proposal will limit the costs, which could be offset by lower electric bills for consumers as utilities become more efficient.

Disagreements regarding the administration's climate change proposals can be expected to continue in the economic, employment, environmental and political spheres for the foreseeable future.

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Japan Reportedly Ready to Lower Pork Tariffs, Giving Boost to TPP Talks

Japan is planning to review the tariffs it imposes on pork imported from the United States, a preliminary step in what could result in greater access to Japan's market by U.S. exporters, according to reporting by the Kyodo news service. Japan's decision was make following several rounds of bilateral talks with U.S. trade negotiators.

Japan will likely reduce tariffs across a wide range of prices, but how and to what level remains undecided, sources told Kyodo.

Pork is one of five agricultural products that Japan earlier said it would protect, and has been one of the greatest sticking points in talks with the United States.

If the Kyodo reporting is correct, the decision could be a major breakthrough that would give a boost to concluding a Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement among 12 Pacific Rim nations. Absent an agreement between the United States and Japan on several outstanding issues, the TPP negotiations were likely to have bogged down, perhaps dragging the process well into next year or even into 2016.

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Washington Insider: New GMO Policy: Bans

Well, the fight against ag technology continues to take unusual twists and turns these days and the objectives of the activist groups involved seem increasingly vague.

The debate continues to be almost casually dismissive of institutional responsibility and science. Even those who advocate labeling food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have been perfectly willing to agree that there is no evidence that GMO products carry any significant health or environmental risks. And, they are aware that the Food and Drug Administration determined in 1992 that there is no "material or meaningful" difference between GMO and non-GMO foods.

Nevertheless, numerous advocacy groups feel that it is important that products that include GMOs be labeled even though there is little agreement about what such labels should say. Strangely, most advocates are willing to exclude vast chunks of the food system from labels anyhow, including restaurant meals.

So, what is the concern? Increasingly, the debate has focused on a strange type of logic. If FDA requires disclosure of that one characteristic, this reasoning goes, it also should require labels on GMOs. For example, this week the New York Times writer Roni Rabin played that game in the "Science Times" section, of all places. FDA requires labels on orange juice, she noted, and must inform customers whether it is fresh or made from concentrate, and producers are barred from using the term "juice" if the drink is not 100% juice. The agency even regulates the use of terms like "fresh," "frozen," "fresh frozen," "frozen fresh" and "quickly frozen" on labels for products like peas.

"The FDA decided that the difference between fresh peas and frozen peas was a 'material' difference to the consumer," Rabin quotes Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union as saying. "This stuff is as different as frozen peas and nonfrozen peas, if not more so."

All this with no suggestion of what such differences actually are, or what these activists actually want labels to say.

One suggestion is a label that says the product "may contain GMOs," but it certainly is difficult to see how such a broad approach could be considered helpful to consumers, observers suggest.

Still, the debate continues and efforts by both sides to win such a "label war" are intensifying and a new and far more dangerous approach seems to be emerging in the form of outright bans on GMO crops. Voters in Josephine and Jackson counties in southern Oregon adopted bans on genetically modified crops last week — actions likely to face legal challenges.

These new actions include Oregon among the handful of states that ban GMOs in certain areas, including Hawaii, Washington and California. "This victory represents a turning point in the food movement," said Rebecca Spector, who runs GMO labeling initiatives for the Center for Food Safety.

Voters in Jackson County voted 2-1 in support of the ban, while in Josephine County the margin was narrower. The Josephine County ban seems sure to be challenged because of a state law that prohibits local governments from regulating GMOs. Jackson County may face less legal scrutiny because of an exception in the state law for initiatives already on ballots.

All the action hasn't been anti-GMO, however. The Grocery Manufacturers Association is telling the press that it is moving to challenge Vermont's labeling law in federal court within the next couple of weeks. At least 30 other states are considering labeling laws, as is Congress. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., recently introduced an industry-backed bill intended to preempt states from passing their own labeling laws.

By now, it seems that the labeling issue is almost hopelessly politicized and the imposition of production bans can be expected to lead to even more intense controversy. The level of the debate can be seen in the willingness of the New York Times article to simply attribute the two major labeling defeats in California and Washington to the inflow of "millions of dollars of industry advertising," without mentioning opposition from science and government agencies and the inability of advocates to define a label message that resonated widely — as well as the unwillingness of advocates to address the effects that mandatory labels could have on food costs.

Thus, it seems increasingly likely that the fight will intensify with little hope of better definitions or real objectives any time soon, Washington Insider believes.

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