AUGUSTA – Both sides of the emotionally charged genetic engineering issue have agreed that concentrating on GE-free marketing may damage the state’s already growing organic industry.

In recent discussions, a group representing conventional and organic farmers, GE researchers, seed companies and soil experts also agreed to continue meeting to discuss the evolving GE issue.

“When we looked at the costs versus the benefits, we were looking at only a small number of producers that were not already labeling their food GE-free or organic,” said Mary Ellen Johnston, director of marketing for the state Department of Agriculture and the panel moderator.

“By allocating resources to promote GE-free foods, we are only going to cut into the organic industry.”

Directed by the Legislature last spring, Agriculture Commissioner Robert Spear impaneled a group of nine industry leaders to discuss the pros and cons of marketing Maine as a GE-free state.

This panel met for about three hours recently.

“I came away hopeful,” said Leslie Cummins of Co-Op Voices Unite of Blue Hill, a grass-roots, anti-GE group that had worked for several years for a moratorium. “But the proof will be in the pudding whether we can have more meetings or if our work will just go back in the political hopper, get chewed up and spit out.”

Johnston said, “We don’t have a big problem with GE foods now. We really have a fairly GE-free state. The questions for us were how would becoming GE-free help our state or enhance our producers, and how would it affect our organic industry?”

Spear, who has been supportive of biotechnology in Maine agriculture, agreed. “Maine is such a diverse state. We don’t want to shut out any producers. We feel that we are large enough a state that there is room for everybody.”

Spear said the state already has regulations that allow producers to voluntarily label their food GE-free.

GE crops are created by combining the DNA from two organisms to create a new product.

For example, mixing fish and tomato DNA creates a tomato able to withstand frost. Most genetically engineered foods, however, are intended to reduce the use of pesticides and increase yield.

Although consumers have not made GE crops a major issue, a recent ABC News poll indicated that 58 percent of those polled feel GE foods are unsafe. An equal number believe they have never eaten GE foods, despite that more than 70 percent of the foods on grocery shelves contain a GE ingredient, such as soy, canola or corn.

The panel was convened in the wake of a bill last year that would have placed a three-year moratorium on growing GE crops in Maine. The bill was so substantially changed without a public hearing that its sponsor, Rep. Linda Rogers McKee, D-Wayne, eventually withdrew it. Then committee members agreed to ask the Department of Agriculture for a GE-free study.

“The significance of a GE-free designation is so small,” said Spear last week, “that we felt we should promote all niche markets and encourage all producers to carve out their product identity.”

Johnston said that a lot more work needs to be done, such as defining “GE-free,” researching labeling issues and regulation.

The members of the panel are Johnston; Mario Tiesel, an agriculture economist at the University of Maine; Cummins; Jon Olson of the Maine Farm Bureau; Russell Libby of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association; C.R. Lawn, founder of FEDCO Seeds in Waterville; Kathy Morrill, owner of the State of Maine Cheese Co.; Don Thibodeau, a potato grower from Fryburg; and Lauchlan Titus, a soil specialist.