All Natural!

On the other hand, I’m with Dean Baker and Ezra Klein on this one:

According to an AP article, Monsanto has been lobbying state legislators to prohibit Ben and Jerry’s and other ice cream makers from labeling their product as free of milk from cows that were given growth hormones.

Monsanto claims that such labeling implies that growth hormones are harmful and that there is no scientific evidence to support that view. This claim should have been sufficient to draw ridicule from expert economists mocking Monsanto’s efforts to use the power of the government to restrict consumer choice in order to increase their profits. However, the derision from economists was absent from the article. What happened?

The basic point here is very simple. It matters not one iota what the science shows about the health impact of growth hormones. (Are Nike shoes better because Michael Jordon endorses them? Has anyone proposed outlawing celebrity product endorsements?) If people don’t want to buy ice cream that comes from cows fed with growth hormones, then they should have that option. Any restriction that prevents people from being able to buy hormone free ice cream imposes costs on consumers and the economy — that is economics 101.

Provided that there’s no outright fraud — that the labels aren’t explicitly untruthful — I don’t see the problem with this. It doesn’t matter what the perception is to consumers; if they want to believe it says something it doesn’t, that’s not something that the government should interfere with. What matters is what the labels actually say; and as far as I can tell, they don’t say anything that ought to be banned.

Monsanto is on the right side of numerous biotech issues (especially in the EU), and they’ve been unfairly villified as purveyors of "frankenfoods" (for a smart look atthe politics surrounding the issue and a thorough debunking of biotech fears , I recommend The Frankenfood Myth, by Henry Miller and Greg Conko).