Who
ever, in their right mind, would vote against knowing what is in
their food?!
Monsanto
wins California: GMO labeling law defeated
President
Obama wasn’t the only big winner on Tuesday: the Monsanto Co. and
the billion-dollar business behind genetically modified foods were
victorious in California, where a measure that would've required the
labeling of GMOs lost at the polls.
RT,
7
November, 2012
Proposition
37, a state-wide initiative that aimed to increase consumer awareness
about the food industry’s growing use of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), was defeated by a margin of 53 to 47 percent, with
nearly all of the polls accounted for Wednesday morning.
Had
Prop 37 been approved, foods containing GMOs would have been mandated
to make the fact clear on the product’s label. If passed, the law
would’ve meant most processed foods would be forced to include
notes to consumers that they were "partially produced with
genetic engineering" or "may be partially produced with
genetic engineering" by 2014. Additionally, the words
"genetically engineered" would be required to appear on
packaging as well.
The
Missouri-based Monsanto Company, an international leader in
agricultural biotechnology and a proponent of GMO use, dumped
millions of dollars into a campaign that opposed the ballot measure —
a maneuver that many are saying was singlehandedly responsible for
swinging the vote.
“Vote
No,” a campaign waged against the proposition, was funded with at
least $45 million worth of contributions from some of the biggest
businesses in the industry that feared mandatory labeling would have
cast a dark cloud over their products, pushing consumers away from
purchasing items that have to identify GMO use. Although much
research has found no conclusive proof that GMOs are directly
hazardous to the health of humans, the relatively immature technology
has attracted a fair share of skepticism by activists, scientists and
agricultural experts who fear not enough testing has been done to
show how safe those products are. Despite a grassroots effort from
those behind Prop 37 to push for public awareness, supporters failed
to compete with the grossly funded “Vote No” campaign, coming up
with only $8 million they managed to garner in backing.
The
“Vote No” campaign’s biggest supporter was Monsanto, who threw
more than $8 million themselves into efforts to defeat the measure.
Dupont, Pepsico, Bayer, Dow and Syngenta were also big funders of the
opposition, each contributing at least $2 million apiece.
Just
weeks before Election Day, support for Prop 37 was tremendous,
receiving favor from around 66.9 percent of likely-voters as of a
September 27 poll conducted by California Business
Roundtable/Pepperdine University. In the days since those results
were published, though, “Vote No” launched a pricey advertisement
blitz, blanketing airwaves across the state with calls to shun the
measure.
"Desperate
times have apparently caused them to resort to desperate measures,"
Kathy Fairbanks, a spokeswoman for the No on 37 campaign, told the
Santa Cruz Sentinel earlier this month. Elsewhere in the press, she
said the proposition’s forced labeling was “anti-science” that
would spur millions of dollars in lawsuit and problems for the
consumer over allegedly inflated retail prices expected to occur if
it passed.
Those
favoring the bill said it wasn’t a matter of arguing with science,
but more of fighting for safety.
“Genetically
engineered foods found on market shelves have most commonly been
altered in a lab to either be resistant to being sprayed by large
amounts of toxic herbicides, or to produce, internally, their own
insecticide,” Mark A. Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute said in a
statement this week.
“Corporations that
produce both the genetically engineered crops and their designer
pesticides, in concert with the multi-billion-dollar food
manufacturers that use these ingredients, fought this measure tooth
and nail, throwing $46 million at the effort that would have required
food manufacturers to include informational labeling on GMO content
on their packaging,”
Questioning
that argument, Alexandra Le Tellier of The Los Angeles Times asked
recently, “If the problem is the pesticides, then why isn’t the
Proposition 37 labeling initiative about that?”
By
Wednesday morning, Fairbanks was celebrating the efforts of the
costly campaign and hinted that the high-price advertisements crafted
to persuade voters to opt against Prop 37 was the reason for its
defeat.
"We
said from the beginning that the more voters learned about Prop. 37,
the less they would like it," she said after the election. "We
didn't think they would like the lawsuits, more bureaucracy, higher
costs, loopholes and exemptions. It looks like they don't."
Grant
Lundberg, the chief executive of Lundberg Family Farms, who co-chairs
California Right to Know, issued a statement of his own saying
regardless whether of the measure’s failure to pass, a point was
made nonetheless.
"No
matter what happens, we've raised awareness of a very important
issue," Lundberg says.
"Who ever, in their right mind, would vote against knowing what is in their food?!"
ReplyDeleteExactly!
I've been wondering the same thing. Makes me think, perhaps, people weren't really voting.