GMO Food Fight: Round Two 2013

By Ronnie Cummins, Organic Consumers Association On November 6, in the wake of one of the most expensive and scurrilous smear campaigns in history, six million voters scared the hell out of Monsanto and Big Food Inc. by coming within a razor's edge of passing the first statewide mandatory labeling law for genetically modified organisms (GMOs). But Jennifer Hatcher, senior vice president of government and public affairs for the Food Marketing Institute, came closer to expressing the real sentiments of the big guns who opposed Prop 37, a measure she had previously said "scared us to death," in her official statement: "This gives us hope that you can, with a well-funded, well-organized, well-executed campaign, defeat a ballot initiative and go directly to the voters. We hope we don't have too many of them, because you can't keep doing that over and over again . . .". Maybe they can't. But we can. Unlike the Food Marketing Institute and its friends at the GMA, consumers can - and will - "keep doing that over and over again." We can - and will - propose state laws and state ballot initiatives as often as we need, in as many states as we must, until we have what 61 other countries have: truth and transparency in the form of mandatory GMO labeling laws. Far from giving up, the alternative food and farming movement that was narrowly defeated in California has evolved into a battle-savvy, seasoned national movement, bigger and stronger than ever. As Zuri Allen, California Field Organizer of the Organic Consumers Association put it, "We may have lost this first major battle in California, but millions of angry and energized consumers across the country are now joining together in a nationwide right to know campaign which will ultimately drive genetically engineered crops and foods off the market."