I’m brand new to calitics; I joined today at the suggestion of a friend who thought the calitics community might be interested in a piece I wrote about SB 1381, a bill that would require genetically engineered foods in California grocery stores to be labeled. I’ll paste the piece here but you can also check it out at biotechsalon

Rebuttal to Statements Against SB 1381, The California GE Labeling Bill

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Belinda

Senator Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa) has introduced a bill, SB 1381, which would require genetically engineered (GE) foods in California’s retail grocery stores to be labeled starting in 2016. I’m in favor of this bill because, as stated in its text, “California consumers have the right to know, through labeling, whether the foods they purchase were produced with genetic engineering, so they can make informed purchasing decisions.” Consumers in 64 other countries can already make such informed purchasing decisions; the food industries in those countries (and in the U.S. when preparing foods for export) already handle the logistics required to label GE foods; doing the same for foods sold in the good ‘ole U. S. of A. should be a slam dunk.

But proponents of GE foods are still fighting against labeling anyway.

Statements made against SB 1381 prior to the bill being approved by the Health Committee of the California State Senate late last month amounted to a defense of genetic engineering technology comprised of definitive-sounding claims of “overwhelming scientific evidence” that GE food products “are completely safe” and mention of multiple, highly regarded scientific organizations “none of which have found any evidence” of problems with these foods [emphases added]. A plant scientist at UC Davis also said claims that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) “does not properly regulate” GE foods are “not true” and that these foods are “fully vetted.”

But, as I’ve been pointing out on this blog, the state of the science and regulation of GE agricultural products is not nearly as black and white as these statements made in opposition to SB 1381 indicate. And for anyone to make truly informed decisions-about GE food purchases or GE labeling or anything else-mention should be made of the shades of grey.

For example, as mentioned in the text of SB 1381, the FDA “does not require safety studies of GE foods. Instead, any consultations are voluntary….” While every GE food on the market today may have gone through this voluntary consultation process with FDA, that need not necessarily be the case for future GE foods and feeds. There have already been cases in which developers of GE crops have refused to provide answers to additional questions asked by FDA; there was also the case of Bt10, a GE corn variety that was accidentally commercialized without having gone through the voluntary consultation process with FDA.

The current system of regulating GE crops and foods in the U.S. uses agencies and laws designed with “traditional” agricultural products in mind; loopholes exist in it through which some GE crops could escape regulation altogether. While others (obviously) disagree, I do not consider the current system in the U.S. to be the “proper” way to regulate the powerful technology of genetic engineering.

As also mentioned in SB 1381:

“Genetic engineering of plants and animals can cause unintended consequences. It has been demonstrated that manipulating genes through genetic engineering and inserting them into organisms is an imprecise process. The results are not always predictable or controllable. United States government scientists have stated that the artificial insertion of genetic material into plants via genetic engineering can increase the levels of known toxicants or allergens in foods and create new toxicants or allergens with consequent health concerns.”

These statements are all true. And in the less than 20 years since GE crops have been commercialized, we’ve already had examples which raised heath concerns. One was StarLink™ corn. Although it has never been established that the Bt protein in StarLink corn-which behaved like a human allergen in multiple pre-market tests-actually caused allergies in humans, the U.S. corn crop was nevertheless monitored for the presence of StarLink’s GE protein for seven years after it was discovered in human food products and taken off the market. (The StarLink incident also gives an idea of how long GE crops can persist in the environment.) Even with no concrete evidence of harm, regulators did not deal with that particular GE corn product as if it was “completely safe.”

Such is the concern over unintended consequences that a “Committee on Identifying and Assessing Unintended Effects of Genetically Engineered Foods on Human Health” was established by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies. The committee’s report promotes “postmarketing studies to further assess both intended and unintended effects” and suggests that “epidemiological studies may be helpful in the postmarketing phase….”

SB 1381 also notes that “mandatory identification of foods produced with genetic engineering can provide a method for detecting, at a large epidemiological scale, the potential health effects of consuming those foods.”

Yet an opponent of SB 1381 stated (in the Health Committee meeting on March 26th) that epidemiological studies would not be helped by “general” labeling of GE ingredients.

I am not an epidemiologist and so will not comment on that claim except to opine that even general labels should make the task of tracking down unintended health effects somewhat easier than no GE labels at all. (I invite any epidemiologists reading this to chime in on this topic.) Instead I’ll ask: what is the alternative? Identifying the specific GE protein or other active GE component that has been added to a food, as was done for the protein conferring kanamycin-resistance in the Flavr Savr™ tomato nearly 20 years ago?

That is apparently no longer a viable option at this juncture. After the FDA treated the GE protein in Flavr Savr tomatoes as a food additive, following the laws on the books for regulating food additives, the agency announced that no other GE protein added to a food need go through that process. The food additive door was shut and replaced with the voluntary consultation process.

The bottom line is that the federal government has let Americans down on this issue. That’s why grass roots initiatives and individual state legislatures are taking it up.

Unintended consequences can, and have, happened as a result of using genetic engineering technology to alter crop plants. Until very recently, there had been no long-term studies of individual GE foods and those that have been published have been attacked…and yet not repeated, the usual hallmark of scientific response to technical disagreement. As a scientist, I find that very disappointing.

And yet I am a supporter of the use of genetic engineering for basic science. I was also an early adopter of GE foods, feeding GE Flavr Savr tomatoes to my child back when they first hit the market in 1994; I and other early adopters purchased so many of those tomatoes, despite (because of?) the fact that they were clearly labeled as having been “Grown From Genetically Modified Seeds,” that the company producing them couldn’t keep up with demand.

Based on the Flavr Savr tomato, the only example we have in the U.S. of a labeled GE food, the labels SB 1381 would require will not necessarily “stigmatize” GE foods. Nor is SB 1381 about forgoing the powerful technology of genetic engineering; agricultural problems like citrus greening are still being addressed using genetic engineering despite concerns about the public’s wariness.

What SB 1381 addresses is the downright un-American status quo that denies American citizens the choice to decide for themselves whether to adopt a powerful new technology being applied to their food. That’s it.

In poll after poll, the majority of Americans indicate they want that choice, a choice citizens of 64 other countries already have.

Kudos to Senator Evans for introducing SB 1381 so that Californians might, after the nearly two decades since the GE Flavr Savr tomato was first introduced into commerce, again have that choice.

As a historic vote with profound implications for the future of our food system nears, the question becomes whether a campaign with limitless resources and a disdain for the truth can defeat an overwhelmingly popular idea supported by a grassroots army, and over 3000 public interest organizations: the right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our families.

Poll after poll showed 90% of Americans (and Californians) favored labeling foods that have been genetically engineered (GMOs) and nearly a million signatures were gathered by California volunteers in just 10 weeks – easily qualifying Prop 37 for the ballot. And as of the first week of October, the Yes on 37 campaign enjoyed a 2 to 1 lead in the polls.

This broad statewide (and national) support – across party lines – made perfect sense. Prop 37 posits a simple question: Do we have the right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our children, or is that a decision better left to the pesticide and junk food companies bankrolling the opposition campaign?

Prop 37 isn’t a referendum on genetically modified foods. It’s not a ban, or a warning, it’s a label.



The debate over the efficacy of genetically engineered foods should and will continue. In the meantime, Californians have a right to know, and for good reason.

A growing body of research links GMO foods to potential health risks, increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, the emergence of super bugs  and  “super weeds” and the unintentional contamination of conventional crops.  

Prop 37 simply adds a line of ink to a label — as is currently required for 3,000 other ingredients — so consumers know which products have been altered in a laboratory. 61 other countries have provided their citizens with this right, and choice, it’s time we do the same.  

Corporate Backlash Against Our Right to Know

In response to this growing outcry for food transparency a who’s who of the world’s most notorious corporate bad actors, with long histories of deceiving the public, polluting the environment, and endangering public health, converged on California to convince us we don’t deserve this basic, human right. A right that nearly half the world’s population already enjoys.

The No on 37 campaigns two largest contributors are pesticide giants Monsanto ($8.1 million) and Dupont ($5.4 million) – who for decades assured us Agent Orange, DDT, and Tobacco were safe. At the same time, Monsanto has actively advocated for labeling in Europe

So how do companies like these go about persuading us that we don’t deserve the right to know what they’re doing to our food?

The Only Recourse: An Unprecedented Campaign of Deception



The campaign against the right to know has relied on three essential components: unlimited resources, a willingness to repeatedly lie, and a willingness to double and triple down on those lies-even when they are debunked by independent fact checkers.

Seriously, when was the last time giant, out-of-state pesticide and junk food companies spent $45 million to improve your health, protect the environment or save you money?

Spoiler Alert-they never have.    

The No On 37 campaign knows that the less you know about your food, the more money they are likely to make.  Their goal is literally that simple, even though their campaign of deception is far more elaborate.

They’ve set up phony AstroTurf groups, misrepresented spokespeople and embellished their credentials, and misrepresented leading science, government, professional and academic organizations-including (but not limited to) the National Academy of Sciences, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,US Food and Drug Administrationand World Health Organization. They’ve bankrolled demonstrably phony “economic studies,” made repeated false statements in advertisements, deceived voters with mailers sent by obvious front groups, and repeated one falsehood after another—hoping somehow that no one would ever notice.

Well, someone just did. We filed a complaint to the Department of Justice about the potentially fraudulent use of the FDA seal in No on 37 campaign propaganda, and the DOJ has referred the matter to FDA to look into.



The No on 37 Campaign and the “Post Truth Era”



After four weeks of million dollar a day advertising by out of state pesticide and junk food corporations, No on 37 shrunk a 40 point deficit into a lead.  Not because they were right on the facts-because they don’t care about the facts.  

No on 37’s red herring arguments around common sense exemptions, phony lawsuit scares, bogus “big bureaucracy claims”, and “cost increase hysteria”, has been painstakingly documented.

Ultimately, we believe that “No on 37’s” financially motivated corporate “sting operation” constitutes a profound disdain for the democratic process and the citizens of this state.

Why Spend $45 Million To Prevent A Simple Label?



Just follow the money: If we know what’s in our food, and what’s being done to our food, many of us will seek alternatives, and that would reduce the profit margins of companies like Monsanto and DuPont.

Their fears are well founded: since Europe instituted labeling 15 years ago, only 7 percent of its food now contains genetically engineered ingredients – compared to approximately 70% in the United States. Imagine what that would mean to these corporations if a similar shift in purchasing habits took place in California?

Multi-billion dollar pesticide and junk food companies believe there is no greater threat than an informed consumer – and with transparency comes accountability.

Prop 37 threatens their monopoly of our food system – which prevents small farmers, the organics industry, and truly natural food producers from competing on an equal playing field.

Whose Side Are You On?



On Tuesday more than a label is on the ballot. Democracy itself is. Will voters allow out of state, multinational pesticide and junk food corporations tell us what we can and can’t know about the food we eat, and what they’re doing to that food? Are we going to allow television ads based on one demonstrable lie after another convince us that information is somehow a radical concept that we don’t deserve?

This right to know movement began with a farmer, a grandmother, and former midwife, organizing women across the state two years ago toward a 2012 ballot drive.  

Prop. 37 is about one and only one thing– our right to know what’s in our food, and make an informed choice about what we eat and feed our children.  

We can’t allow our democracy to be hijacked by unscrupulous corporate interests willing to say and spend anything to protect their profits at the expense of real people, and our rights as free citizens.

We must ask every voter that will take the time to listen a few simple questions:

• Who do you trust with the health of your family: Pesticide and junk food companies and the $45 million they’ve spent lying to you, or Prop 37 supporters like the California Nurses Association, the Breast Cancer Action Fund, the California Council of Churches, and the American Public Health Association?

• Who do you trust when it comes to protecting our natural environment and food supply: Monsanto and DuPont, or Prop 37 supporters like the Sierra Club, California League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural Resources Defense Council?

• And finally, who do you trust to make decisions about what you know about the food you eat, pesticide and junk food companies or Prop 37 supporters like the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and Public Citizen?

Prop 37 is not just about our health and our environment, and the future of our food supply. It’s also about the health of our democracy, and whether something so simple, so popular, and so “people driven” can be stomped out by giant out of state corporations polluting our state with $45 million of lies to protect their profits, at our expense.

Say yes to democracy. Say yes to your right to know. Vote Yes on Prop 37. And please tell everyone you know to do the same.

Check out our website, or help us get our television ad run a few more times by Contributing here, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

In a heated political battle over a topic that matters to everyone – our food system – is it possible for a grassroots movement for transparency to survive a $40 million hailstorm of lies from the world’s largest pesticide companies?

Just over one week to go until California decides whether to join 61 other countries in requiring labeling for genetically engineered foods, and the pesticide and junk food corporations are in overdrive trying to convince voters that a simple label will cause the sky to fall.

Opponents of Proposition 37, the California Right to Know genetically engineered food labeling act, are pulling every dirty trick in the book – from inventing a false title for their top science spokesman (who happens to be an anti-science radical), to misrepresenting the entire profession of nutritionists, to making up newspaper endorsements and even fabricating quotes from the U.S. government.

The opposition ads, which are saturating California airwaves at the rate of about $1 million dollars a day, have been called “mostly untrue” and “misleading”  by newspaper fact checkers.

Yet they are having an effect. After months of 67% support in the polls, support dropped to the mid 40s after just three weeks of deceptive television advertising. The most recent poll by Los Angeles Times shows Prop 37 still ahead, though barely – 44% to 42% — as we head into the final stretch.

This is actually good news. Despite their full-court press of deception, the opposition has been unable to pull ahead. The recent infusion of $5 million from the junk food companies to the No on 37 Campaign, and a new $1.5 million donation by Monsanto, make one thing clear: They’re worried.

They know the people’s movement can win this.

Rallying to the cause for the people’s right to know are celebrities like Bill Maher and Danny DeVito, famous chefs led by Alice Waters, faith and religious leaders, the CEOs of leading food companies and more than 3,000 endorsing organizations.  

Prop 37 has one of the most successful web ad campaigns ever, amazing videos arrive daily from supporters around the world (check out these kids), filmmaker Deborah Koons Garcia just announced she  is offering free viewings of her movie The Future of Food from now until the election, and renowned environmental activist Vendana Shiva is heading to California.

And with just over a week left, the Yes on 37 Campaign is finally on the airwaves with a TV ad that goes straight to the heart of the matter.

Ending How We Began: A Message for Everyone Who Cares About Our Food

On Friday, after three dark weeks of unanswered opposition ads, the Yes on 37 Campaign announced a seven-figure television ad buy to promote its message to California voters.  

But how is it possible to answer a blizzard of lies with just one 30-second television spot? In what is bound to be a controversial decision, the Yes on 37 Campaign is going with a simple, values-based, positive message.

“Because food is love. Food is life. Food is family. We all have the right to know what’s in our food,”   says the female narrator in the new “Food is Love” Yes on 37 ad now running in major broadcast markets across the Golden State – see the Food is Love ad here

In polling and focus-group tests, the positive ad outperformed more critical approaches by orders of magnitude, a fact that surprised some campaign veterans. The results could be an indication that voters are fed up with negative political ads.  

More importantly, the Food is Love ad reflects the true roots of the GMO labeling movement in California. Prop 37 was the inspiration of Pamm Larry, a grandmother, former midwife and farmer from Chico, California, who began organizing women across the state two years ago toward a 2012 ballot drive.  

The hugely successful effort – which gathered almost a million signatures in just 10 weeks — was largely due to the volunteer army that Pamm helped organize – many of them moms who just want to know what’s in their food.  As Yes Magazine reported, Prop 37 is a story about Soccer Moms facing off against Monsanto.

It’s all very simple. Food is a sacred part of our lives. We absolutely have the right to know if our food comes from nature, or if it was engineered in a lab by companies like Monsanto and Dow to contain foreign genes that have never before existed in the food supply.

So we are finishing this campaign with the same positive message that we began it with:  We have a right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our families. No one has the right to make that choice for us.

Especially not the pesticide and junk food corporations: Since when have these notorious anti-consumer special interests ever spent $40 million because they want to save us money?

We invite you to join us in aiming our slingshot at Goliath. As Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times, now is the moment when we find out if we have a food movement in this country.  

The $36 million No on 37 campaign, bankrolled by $20 million from the world’s six largest pesticide companies, has been caught in yet another lie, this time possibly criminal.

These companies and their allies in the junk food industry know that their profit margins may suffer if consumers have a choice whether to purchase genetically engineered foods or not.  And that’s why opponents are spending nearly a million dollars per day trying to make Prop 37 complicated. But really it’s simple – we have the right to know what’s in our food.

To date, the No on 37 campaign has been able to repeat one lie after another with near impunity. But has this pattern of deceit finally caught up to it?

Yesterday, the Yes on 37 campaign sent letters to the U.S. Department of Justice requesting a criminal investigation of the No on 37 campaign for possible fraudulent misuse of the official seal of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  

The No on 37 campaign affixed the FDA’s seal to one of the campaign’s mailers. Section 506 of the U.S. Criminal Code states: “Whoever…knowingly uses, affixes, or impresses any such fraudulently made, forged, counterfeited, mutilated, or altered seal or facsimile thereof to or upon any certificate, instrument, commission, document, or paper of any description…shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

The letter also provides evidence that the No on 37 campaign falsely attributed a direct quote to the FDA in the campaign mailer. Alongside the FDA seal, the mailer includes this text in quotes. “The US Food and Drug Administration says a labeling policy like Prop 37 would be ‘inherently misleading.” The quote is entirely fabricated. The FDA did not make this statement and does not take a position on Prop 37.

In addition, the three identified authors of the “Rebuttal to Argument in Favor of Proposition 37” include a Dr. Henry I. Miller, who is identified solely as “Founding Director, Office of Biotechnology of the Food & Drug Administration.” Dr. Miller in fact, does not currently work for the FDA in any capacity – as millions of California voters have been erroneously led to believe.

This is not the first blatant act of deception that the No on 37 campaign has been caught perpetrating on the citizens of California – particularly relating to their “top scientist” Dr. Henry Miller.

Consider Miller’s growing “rap sheet”:

• On Oct. 4 the No on 37 campaign was forced to pull its first ad off the air and re-shoot it after they were caught misrepresenting Miller as a doctor at Stanford University  when he is actually a researcher at the Hoover Institute on Stanford’s campus, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

• Last week, the campaign was reprimanded by Stanford again for misrepresenting the university in a mailer that went out to millions of voters. And this week, the campaign was caught sending out yet another deceptive mailer involving the University.

In addition to allowing his university affiliation to be repeatedly overblown, Miller has a sordid history of parroting the talking points of some of the world’s most notorious corporate bad actors: he’s a founding member of a now defunct tobacco front group that tried to discredit the links between cigarettes and cancer, he’s repeatedly called for the reintroduction of DDT – known to cause premature birth, fronted for an oil industry funded climate change denial group for Exxon, claimed that people exposed to radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster “may have benefited from it”, and attacked the US Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to ensure proper vetting and testing of new drugs safety while urging it to outsource more of its functions to private industries.

This is the man the No on 37 campaign has portrayed to voters as an arbiter of good science and promoted as an expert worthy of our trust. In reality, Miller is nothing more than a corporate shill that will say whatever his paymasters ask him to, be it Exxon, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, or DuPont.

Does the No on 37 campaign stand behind Miller’s fringe views on tobacco, climate change, nuclear radiation and DDT?

But this pattern of deceit doesn’t end with Miller:

• On Oct. 5, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the nation’s largest professional association for nutritionists and dieticians, accused the No on 37 campaign of misrepresenting its position and misleading voters in the official California Voter’s Guide that went to 11 million voters.

• And the anti-Proposition 37 ads that are now blanketing the state have been described as misleading by the San Jose Mercury News, Sacramento Bee, and San Francisco Chronicle.

Perhaps these latest revelations will prompt the mainstream press to begin focusing their attention on the No on 37 campaign’s pattern of deceptions – including a potentially criminal act – rather than on easily discredited pesticide industry Prop 37 “red herrings” like common sense exemptions, phony lawsuit scares, bogus “big bureaucracy claims”, and “cost increase hysteria”.

So who should we trust?

Who should we trust when it comes to our right to know what’s in the food we eat: Monsanto, DuPont, and Henry Miller or the millions of California consumers and leading consumer, health, women’s, faith-based, labor and other groups; 61 countries that already require GMO labeling; and a growing stack of peer-reviewed research linking genetically engineered foods to health and environmental problems?

Who has our best interests at heart, the pesticide and junk food industry, or Prop 37 supporters like Consumers Union, California Nurses Association, California Democratic Party, California Labor Federation, United Farm Workers, American Public Health Association, Consumers Union, Sierra Club, Whole Foods Market, California Council of Churches, Organic Consumers Association, Center for Food Safety, Consumer Federation of America, Public Citizen, and Food Democracy Now!?

To defeat their $1 million a day of discredited falsehoods blanketing California’s airwaves we need your help to fuel our grassroots effort and Contribute here, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The people’s movement for our right to know what’s in our food has hit a critical fork in the road: the moment when it’s time to ask ourselves and each other — how hard are we willing to fight for our basic right to know what’s in the food we’re eating and feeding our families?

Proposition 37 is the  litmus test for whether there is actually a food movement in this country, writes Michael Pollan in an article to appear in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It may also be the litmus test for whether there is democracy left in this country.

After months of sky-high support in the polls, just 10 days of relentless pounding propaganda by the pesticide industry has made a significant dent in support for Proposition 37 and our right to know if our food is genetically engineered.

So worried are the pesticide companies about California consumers having labels on genetically engineered foods that they are spending one million dollars a day flooding the airwaves with a tidal wave of deception about Prop 37.

As proof of the dishonest tactics in play, in just the past week, the anti-consumer No on 37 campaign has been accused of misleading voters by Stanford University (twice), the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and by three major newspapers.

Yet most voters are seeing only one face and hearing only one voice in the debate about Prop 37 – that of notorious pesticide-industry front man Henry Miller. Who is Henry Miller? And can easily discredited pesticide-industry lies really win an election?



Easily Discredited Pesticide-Industry Lies

Hour after hour in every media market across the state, Henry Miller appears on TV to explain his views about Proposition 37. The ad campaign was exposed as dishonest at the outset, when Stanford University forced the anti-Prop 37 campaign to yank the ad because it falsely identified Miller as a doctor at Stanford (he is actually a researcher at the Hoover Institution), and used images of Stanford’s vaulted buildings to push a political position in violation of university policy.

The edited ad was soon back on the air — one viewer in San Francisco reported seeing it 12 times in one day — pounding voters with Henry Miller’s message that Prop 37 “makes no sense.” But a lot of things that make sense to the rest of us don’t make sense to Henry Miller: for example, that DDT was banned for a reason, or that exposure to radioactive elements after a nuclear power plant meltdown is not a health benefit. (Read all about the extreme views of the No on 37 science spokesperson here.)

Henry Miller is the perfect poster guy for the lack of credibility of the pesticide giants’ campaign against our right to know what’s in our food.  Who are they going to trot out next, the president of the Flat Earth Society?

The only honest thing about the No on 37 ads is the disclaimer that tells us who’s funding this campaign of deception — Monsanto and Dupont, the same companies that told us DDT and Agent Orange were safe.

Setting the Record Straight

Yet incredibly, it’s working. Henry Miller’s hypocritical script in a misleading ad campaign that was discredited as soon as it began has taken a bit hit out of the support for Prop 37.

In the ad, Miller claims the exemptions included in Prop 37 are “illogical” and included “for special interests.” As if the companies for which he is working – the biggest special interests of all – would be in favor of Prop 37 if it were even stronger.

They would not. For the record, the exemptions are common sense. They follow the trajectory of labeling bills in the Europe Union and all around the world. Prop 37 will cover the vast majority of genetically engineered foods that consumers are eating – the food on supermarket shelves.

Meat, milk and eggs would be labeled if they came from genetically engineered animals. There are no genetically engineered animals in the human food supply right now, but if there were, they would have to be labeled. Which will come in handy since the first GE animal is on its way to our dinner plates – a salmon genetically engineered with an eel to grow twice as fast. Wouldn’t you want to know if you were eating such a thing?

Because Prop 37 is designed to be simple and business friendly, it does not require labeling for cows that eat genetically engineered feed. It would not be a simple matter to track what cows eat. More to the point, that exemption is common around the world. It didn’t make sense for California to try to leapfrog over the rest of the world with our labeling law, when we have been trying to catch up with the rest of the world for 15 years.

Yes pet food would have to be labeled if it contains genetically engineered crops like corn or soy. That’s because the standard definition of food under the Sherman Act considers pet food to be food – so argue that one with the legislature.

As for other story lines the opposition is shopping — there will be no increased costs to consumers with Prop 37. Doesn’t it seem strange that these companies would spend tens of millions of dollars to convince us that adding a little ink to their labels will force them to raise the cost of groceries? And as for “shakedown lawsuits,” that makes no sense when you consider the fact that there are no incentives for lawyers to sue under Prop 37.

The only shakedown lawsuits related to this issue are the thousands of farmers Monsanto is suing for planting their own seeds to grow food. In case you missed it, consider this chilling sentence from last week’s Washington Post: Monsanto “has filed lawsuits around the country to enforce its policy against saving the seeds for the future.” Policy against the future? Sounds about right.

Pet Food for Thought

While Californians are mired in debate about pet food versus steak, the real question facing voters is this:  Are we going to allow out-of-state pesticide and junk food corporations tell us what we can and can’t know about what’s in the food we eat?

“What makes you think you have the right to know?” asks Danny DeVito in a a parody video supporting Prop 37. “Knowing if you’re buying or eating genetically engineered food is not your right.”

“Maybe move to Europe or Japan if you want that right,” says Kaitlin Olson. “Or China,” adds Dave Matthews, because, “Here in American you don’t get the right to know if you’re eating genetically modified organisms.”

Unless, unless: We demand that GMOs get labeled. Unless we vote yes on Prop 37. Unless we influence every single California voter we can to do the same.

The Yes on 37 campaign is a true people’s movement for our right to know what’s in our food. We will not be stopped. When California voters go to the polls this November, they will value their right to know what’s in their food, rather than leaving it up to the pesticide industry and Henry Miller to make those choices for us. But in order to win this, every single one of us has to fight like hell to make it happen.

So join us today on FIGHT BACK FRIDAY by taking action right now to make sure we get the right to know what we’re eating and feeding our families.

Three Things You Can Do Today



SHARE THE TRUTH: Make sure every California voter you know understands what’s going on with the deceptive ad campaigns.

Email, Facebook, and Tweet this blog to your friends and family.

SPEAK THE TRUTH: We can’t match our opposition’s $36 million campaign war chest, but we have what they don’t — the power of a grassroots movement.

Sign up to volunteer today. Then we’ll contact you with instructions on how to join our statewide phone bank, how to find your local area leader to get materials and get out on the streets for the campaign, and other activities that will help us win on Election Day.

FUND THE TRUTH: They are spending a million dollars a day. We can’t match that, but every dollar counts! Your donation large or small will help us get us on the air to help us share the truth! Please donate here

Apparently $34.4 million in pesticide and junk food money can’t buy the opponents of Proposition 37 their own set of facts.

Case in point: A new L.A. Times poll shows Prop 37 winning by more than a 2-to-1 margin among registered California voters. And, according to the recent Pepperdine poll, the opposition’s support actually dropped four points over the past two weeks.

So while their treasure trove of special interest money can pay for an endless supply of tired, discredited talking points, it can’t seem to convince consumers we don’t deserve to know what’s in the food we eat.

It’s not hard to understand why. The companies bankrolling the opposition campaign – including pesticide giants Monsanto ($7.2 million) and Dupont ($4.9 million) – will say and spend anything to prevent the kind of transparency that labeling of genetically modified foods (GMO’s) would provide. And without transparency there can be no accountability.  

Here ARE a few facts: A growing body of research links GMO foods to potential health risks, increased pesticide use, the emergence of super bugs and super weeds, biodiversity loss, and the unintentional contamination of conventional crops.

What Prop 37 will do is add a line of ink to a label — as is currently required for 3,000 other ingredients — so consumers know which products have been altered in a laboratory.  That’s why the vast majority of Californians support this common-sense measure, and it’s why 50 other countries already require that GMOs be labeled.

But that’s not all: This summer, Monsanto began selling its first GMO sweet corn product at Walmart. The sweet corn is engineered to withstand the herbicide Roundup and also contains an insecticide (Bt toxin) within the cells of the corn.

Are your children eating Monsanto’s latest concoction? You won’t know because we don’t require labeling. In response to Walmart’s decision to undermine the will of its customers , the Yes on 37 campaign released a new ad highlighting the fact that California children are eating unlabeled GMO sweet corn without their parents knowing it.

And now, the recently published (in the highly regarded journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology), first long-term, peer-reviewed animal study involving GMO corn found massive tumors, organ failure and premature death in rats. The findings have prompted the French government to call for an investigation into GMOs, and Russia to suspend imports of GMO corn.

The study was roundly criticized by Monsanto’s band of scientists, who were out in force trying to discredit the study design – but what they failed to mention is that Monsanto’s own studies that supposedly indicate “safety” are based on the same study design: similar size study, same rats.  The only real differences is that the French study was free of industry influence and pressure, was more comprehensive and stringent, and was long-term rather than short.

The most shocking thing of all about the French study is that it is the first long-term feeding study on genetically engineered corn that has been on the American market for more than 15 years. So where’s the science? The reason we have been denied such critical information is that biotech companies like Monsanto have controlled and suppressed research.

We need, and deserve, more independent research in this area. In the meantime, we have a right to know and to decide for ourselves whether we want to eat Monsanto’s corn. Prop 37 will give us that right.

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