Proposition 37 What you need to know.

Have you heard about Prop 37? It will be on the ballot this November and would require that food sold in California have a label on it that tells consumers whether it has been produced through genetic engineering. What is that you may ask? It’s food that is created in a laboratory and cannot occur naturally (its not breeding or cloning). It’s made by an experimental technology that combines DNA from other species, usually bacteria and viruses, so that it can withstand the direct application of herbicides or to produce insecticides in the plant cells (that can’t be washed off). It’s already in more than 80% of our processed foods.

Big Agrichemical companies do not want you to know what is in your food. They have begun a misinformation campaign against the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food because they don’t want you to vote in favor of labeling in November.  The campaign they are waging is an attempt to scare and confuse us into voting against our family’s best interest. They are trying to confuse the central issue of this campaign: Do we have the right to know what's in our food? Of course we do! 

50 other countries require the labeling of GE foods including the European Union, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Brazil, South Africa, Russia and even China.  Why shouldn’t we? The California Medical Association, The American Public Health Association, The American Nurses Association, the American College of Physicians, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the National Association of Nutrition Professionals are all organizations that support the labeling of GE foods. These organizations believe that we have a right to know what is in the food we purchase and feed to our families.

The companies launching this misinformation campaign are the same companies that gave us DDT, PCBs and Agent Orange and told us they were safe, too.  They are the same companies that are about to put 2, 4-D, one of the main toxic ingredients in Agent Orange on the GE crops that we consume. They are the same companies benefiting from the yearly patent fees that farmers have to pay to grow these GE crops, the large amounts of herbicide sprayed on our food and the beneficiaries of our tax dollars to subsidize these GE crops.  Why would they spend tens of millions of dollars to keep us from knowing what is in our food?  If they are so proud of their “creations,” why do they want to hide it from us?

Prop 37 is not trying to stop science – it is trying to give rights to those of us who buy food for our families every week. If you feel you deserve to know what you are feeding your family, I urge you to Vote YES on 37 this November!