Three Scholars to Appear at Conference of State Legislators

WASHINGTON, D.C., Nov. 26, 2012 – Three experts from the Competitive Enterprise Institute will participate Wednesday in the States & Nation Policy Summit.

Greg Conko, executive director of CEI, will present on biotech food labeling. He will make the case biotech foods are at least as safe – and often safer than – conventionally developed foods and that mandatory labeling laws give consumers the false impression this is not the case. The labels proposed “provide little to no useful information,” Conko said. “Labeling something as ‘genetically engineered’ doesn’t even tell consumers what changes have been made.”

Angela Logomasini, a senior fellow at CEI, will present on “green chemistry” laws, which already have passed in California, Maine, Minnesota and Washington and are on the way to state capitals elsewhere.

Logomasini will explain how the laws, designed to make life safer by ensuring all products are designed to be “green,” actually cost consumers without delivering benefits because they undermine consumer freedom, raise costs and imperil health and safety. “Policymakers foolishly assume bureaucrats are better situated than businesses to determine what makes a product safe,” she said.

Policy analyst William Yeatman will speak on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Regional Haze program, which seeks to achieve “improvements” in visibility in national parks. Yeatman says the program is an aesthetic measure with no bearing on public health and that Congress intended states to oversee regional haze, not the federal government. “This is perhaps the most senseless regulation yet promulgated by this administration, and that’s saying a lot,” he said.

The summit, sponsored by the American Legislative Exchange Council, is a forum for state legislators, policy advocates and private sector leaders to exchange ideas and information about pressing public policy matters.

For more information on CEI’s participation in the summit or on these experts’ individual presentations, please contact Brian McNicoll or Nicole Ciandella at 202-331-1010.