Food Inc.’s stranglehold over the nation’s food and farming system is about to be challenged in a food fight that will largely determine the future of American agriculture. A coalition representing a broad and unprecedented health, environmental and consumer alliance has formed, and last fall filed papers with the California Attorney General’s office to place a citizen’s initiative on the November ballot that would require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered food and food ingredients. If California voters pass the ballot initiative, it could likely be the beginning of the end for companies like Monsanto, and for genetically engineered food in the U.S.
After 20 years of bullying by biotech companies and being fed unlabeled and hazardous genetically modified foods, a critical mass of food and health activists have decided it’s time to go on the offensive. It’s time to move this food fight over labeling genetically engineered food from the unfavorable terrain of Washington, D.C., and Capitol Hill, where companies like Monsanto exercise near-dictatorial control, to California, the heartland of organic food and farming – and anti-genetically modified organism (GMO) sentiment.
Recent polls show that 80 to 85 percent of the body politic supports mandatory labeling.
Why are there no genetically engineered foods or crops anywhere in Europe, while 75 percent of the U.S. supermarket foods – including many labeled as “natural” foods – contain GMOs? The answer is simple: In Europe, genetically engineered foods and ingredients have to be labeled. In the U.S., they don’t.
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