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Full Speed Ahead for Food Movement, Despite GMO-Labeling Loss
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Yes! Magazine
Posted: November 13th, 2012
http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/full-speed-ahead-foo...
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. Supporters of Californias Proposition 37 are not giving up the fight after Tuesdays rejection. In fact, theyre 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. "We have 5 million people on our email list and were looking forward to continuing this battle. While the initiative won urban coastal counties such as Los Angeles and San Francisco, it lost in the states 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 measureabout seven times what its supporters were able to raiseand 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.
Note: Though polls have shown 90% of Americans want their food labeled if it contains GMOs, huge spending by big industry managed to defeat this California proposition by a narrow margin. Sometimes money does have a hugely disproportionate role in politics. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on elections corruption, click here.
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