This is basically a rerun of California's Prop. 37 Initiative last year. The YES campaign is supported financially by the same type of folks: Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Organic Consumer Fund Committee to Label GMOs in WA State, Mercola.com Health Resources LLC, Presence Marketing Inc, Nature’s Path Foods USA Inc [top five contributors]. The No campaign is funded only with corporate money. In addition to the junk food maker’s trade group, the Grocery Manufacturers of America, the opposition’s funders are Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, and Dow Chemical. Last year, proponents of GE labeling were outspent by the No campaign 5-1 in California as they will probably be again in Washington this November.
As Allison Kopicki of The New York Times reports, "According to a national telephone poll was conducted from Jan. 24 to 27 2013 for the New York Times, 93 percent of respondents say that foods containing such ingredients should be identified." Nonetheless corporate agriculture, like all corporations, is in business to make their shareholders richer, not wealthier in the long term sense of security and well-being, but richer in the sense of reaping every dime possible in the short term no matter what the long term consequences are including the destruction and pollution of the biosphere that supports their lives or the health and survival of their offspring. Ain't capitalism grand?
The horror stories about the widespread effects of the greed induced GMO industry just keep rolling in. Articles like: 'Unauthorized GM Rice Threatens World Supply' about how strains left over from Bayer field trials are being found in US rice exports in over 30 countries leading to a ban on US rice imports in most of them; and: 'Pesticide Use Spikes as GMO Failure Cripples Corn Belt' about how Midwest farmers must keep increasing the dose of chemicals on their fields as the insects grow more resistant to Bt Corn; make no difference to corporate agriculture's propaganda machine which uses it's money to produce advertising full of lies and fear-mongering.
All eyes will be on Washington State's mandatory GMO labeling Initiative Measure No. 522 on the November 5, 2013 general election ballot. The good people of Washington State showed us last year that they are quite capable of seeing beyond the corporate spin doctors by passing an initiative to legalize the recreational use of marijuana despite the protestations of their own state government and the combined force of the tobacco and alcohol industries. Hopefully they'll step up to the plate again and knock another one outta the park for all the rest of us who are either to afraid [or in the case of us up here in Canuckistan, not allowed to] to vote in favor of our right to know what’s in the food we eat and feed our families.
For more information contact the:
Yes on I-522 Committee
603 Stewart Street #819
Seattle, WA 98101
(206) 351-3323
or visit their website:
http://yeson522.com/
