Cecilia Garza and James Trimarco report: "Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before."
Organizers with the Yes on 37 campaign drive over the Golden Gate Bridge in a sculpture-topped car. (photo: Lynn Friedman)
Full Speed Ahead for Food Movement, Despite GMO-Labeling Loss
10 November 12
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Although a ballot initiative to label foods containing genetically modified organisms failed in California, the organizers behind the measure say their movement is better organized and larger than ever before.
upporters of California's Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesday's rejection. In fact, they're saying that the organizing around the initiative helped forge a diffuse group of individuals interested in healthy food into a powerful, organized movement.
"The Organic Consumers Association is a million strong," said Ronnie Cummins, the founder and director of that group said on a conference call on November 7. "We have 5 million people on our email list and we're looking forward to continuing this battle."
Proposition 37 would have required the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and banned the use of the word "natural" to market products that contain GMOs. While the initiative won urban coastal counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, it lost in the state's central valleys.
"We just didn't have the funds to compete on the air" in those regions, said Stacy Malkan, media director at California Right to Know. "Many of those voters were getting their news from TV and we couldn't compete with them."
Companies like Monsanto, DuPont, and Pepsi poured nearly $50 million dollars into opposing the measure-about seven times what its supporters were able to raise-and spent most of the money on television and radio ads.
Throughout the campaign, the truthfulness of advertisements opposing the measure came into question. At one point, the No on 37 campaign ran an ad that identified Henry I. Miller, an opponent of the measure, as a professor at Stanford University. The campaign was forced to pull the ad after Stanford announced that Dr. Miller was not a professor there.
Multiple Strategies Going Forward
Despite these frustrations, the mood was bright on Wednesday among supporters of Proposition 37, who were already discussing plans to introduce a similar ballot initiative in Washington state in 2013. Such an measure would need 325,000 signatures in order to significantly exceed the requirements for inclusion on the ballot, and organizers on the ground have already gathered half of that, according to Cummins.
Activists are making preparations for a similar effort in Oregon, although signature gathering there has yet to go into full force. Meanwhile, GMO-labeling bills have been introduced in the state legislatures of Connecticut and Vermont, which do not have a ballot initiative process.
Alongside efforts to implement GMO labeling in individual states, the food movement is putting pressure on the federal government. Dave Murphy, co-chair of the Yes on 37 campaign, explained that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ruled in 1992 that GMO crops are "equivalent" to traditional crops and therefore did not require labeling.
"We believe that there is evidence that GMO crops are not equivalent and now is the time for the FDA to review that policy," Murphy said. He added that the "Just Label It" campaign had collected more than one million signatures on a petition asking the FDA for a review and that the Center for Food Safety has said it is prepared to sue if the administration fails to respond.
Another achievement of the Yes on 37 campaign was the education of consumers, Cummins said. People had previously thought that products marketed as "natural" were "almost organic but cheaper."
The Yes on 37 campaign opened the conversation and changed that, he said. "�Natural' is a marketing term and has nothing to do with health or environmental sustainability."
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He has devoted all of his attention to lobbying for Wall Street.
He needs to lose the title the voters gave him, because he has radically betrayed the office, and disrespected it at every turn.
Quite a few people "waltzed on". For absolute decades, this plan was keep strictly secret by all of the countries involved. Every time the slightest detail was leaked, the entire group went further underground, and changed their name altogether.
By the time they were calling themselves the SPP, only "Democracy Now" dared to report on them. That resulted in the typical "pulling their heads back in the sand", and re-emerging during the latest leaks as the TPP. However you cut it, these clowns are well along in their plans to eliminate National Borders, National Regulations, and National and Local Environmental requirements, etc.
Plans are well in place for turning North America into one country under Corporate Law alone. There are plans to have
shipping routes from Alberta Canada thru the U.S. roughly parallel to the existing U.S I-35, and continuing thru down to the West Coast of Mexico, where the Mexican Oil Refineries and shipping ports are located.
Google away, or, better yet, go to "Democracy Now dot org" for details.
The entire 'Smaller Government' political effort as sold and foisted since the 80s has since become the biggest Flim Flam ever perpetrated.
That 'Talking point'-- the eternal Republican hue and cry for 'Smaller Government' is the ConJob Umbrella TalkingPoint under which America has been changed into something completely alien to anything envisioned by Our Founders.
My Father went off to Europe to defeat Fascism.
Look where we're at now.
After 3 decades of Corporate Driven Conservatism WE actually have a Smaller Government of, by and for the People.
In its place, we now have a dodgy 'Government by Lobby' brought about by greedy people through corrupted, dodgy Legislation, rampant deregulation schemes, the de-taxation of the Corporate class, and the transformation of all Tax Payers into Corporate Cash Cows through Privatization Schemes.
It is a monumental, ongoing ConJob that has led to the largest transfer of wealth in human history from 99% of everyone to a super wealthy-powerfu l few.
I ask Conservatives who decry so called 'Big Government' to define what constitutes Our Government now-- and how it ACTUALLY works (or does not).
Who and what purposes does it serve?
And while you are at it, Show me the 'Free Press' in America, the one our Founders envisioned to be the watchdogs of OUR Freedom. Where is that Press?
Time to get money out of politics altogether! Sign the petition at MoveToAmend.org NOW, and get on their mailing list! Reform is coming.
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
- Patrick Henry
Must keep their bottomless coffers overflowing, now mustn't the Kochs and their fossil 'fooler' cohorts.
After all, what better way than frack us and Mother Earth to death, while getting their greedy mitts on the getting scarcer and scarcer sources of drinkable water. Lots and lots of $$$$$ for the villainaires, as they charge we the sheeple through through the ceiling for H2O. Hells bells, might even be more profitable for the evil, greedy ones than is fossil 'fool'.
Change the word 'foreign' to 'American,' and this is how many Japanese feel about it. At the moment so many of the chemicals used in American farming, and the food additives allowed by the FDA are forbidden here in Japan, We are scared about what we will be forced to accept without redress. We have been holding out against most GMOs, but i guess those days are over.
It's very sad that Mr. "Change We Can Believe In" Obama is pushing this. What a complete disappointment he is. We already have seen the results of the NAFTA and now they want more!
Canada may stay intact. The US will be carved up along the partisan lines of the last 30 years. Europe and the EU will fall and who knows what that might look like. Malaysia's masses will finally get that that group of islands is a big country and can wield a lot of power in its region. Russia and China may stay intact because their citizens have no concept of being free from the heel of someone.
Pride goeth before a fall.
The main thing for the people of this country is to not give up hope that things will change. They will but not along the lines that were normal in the past. Underground movements, resistance movements, computer movements, those will be the field on which the Oligarchs will fall. We only need to look at history to support the truth of it.
The Japanese have done it. Where is our revolt? Are we not angry enough? Protests and riots can occur because of the Zimmerman result, but no one revolts about the govt destroying our water supplies. Why. What is it worth? When our water supply is destroyed, don't worry there will be bottled water available to purchase thanks to Slim Pickens who is buying up water sources as we speak. Own the supply is the way to go. Wake up people, get some protests organized. Stop the slop with the lips.
Slim Pickens was an American actor who is no longer among the living.
I think you may be referring to T. Boone Pickens, a Texas Oil Billionaire who got out of pumping oil, and *INTO* pumping water, as you mention, out of the Ogallala Aquifer in Texas
many years ago. At one point he was selling that water to buyers in Dallas for use in their swimming pools.
Since the aquifer runs from Wyoming to Texas, his plan raised no eyebrows for awhile, but *now* the Texas portion of that same deep aquifer is GONE. Dry !
So, your point is well-taken. Water WILL be available from a man named Pickens, at, no doubt, *true* Texas-Sized prices !
Americans have been largely dumbed down by conservative policies. Big corporations that now own and run the government figured out they can pacify most Americans with big malls, houses, TVs, computers and fast food. We are a sad shell of where we were headed in the 1970's.