$34.4 Million Can’t Seem To Buy Prop 37 Opponents Their
Own Facts
by Zack Kaldveer
Published on Monday, October 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Published on Monday, October 1, 2012 by Common Dreams
Apparently
$34.4 million in pesticide and junk food money can’t buy the opponents of
Proposition 37 their own set of facts.
Case in point: A new L.A. Times poll
shows Prop 37 winning by more than a 2-to-1 margin among registered California
voters. And, according to the recent Pepperdine poll the opposition's support actually
dropped four points over the past two weeks.
So while their
treasure trove of special interest money can pay for an endless supply of
tired, discredited talking points, it can’t seem to convince
consumers we don’t deserve to know what’s in the food we eat.
It’s not hard
to understand why. The companies bankrolling the opposition campaign –
including pesticide giants Monsanto ($7.2 million) and Dupont ($4.9 million) –
will say and spend anything to prevent the kind of transparency that labeling
of genetically modified foods (GMO’s) would provide. And without transparency
there can be no accountability.
Here ARE a few
facts: A growing body
of research links GMO foods to potential health risks, increased pesticide use, biodiversity loss, the emergence of “super bugs” and “super weeds" and the unintentional contamination of conventional crops.
What Prop 37
will do is add a line of ink to a label -- as is currently required for 3,000
other ingredients -- so consumers know which products have been altered in a
laboratory. That’s why the vast majority of Californians support this
common-sense measure, and it’s why 50 other countries already require that GMOs
be labeled.
But that’s not
all: This summer,
Monsanto began selling its first GMO sweet corn product at Walmart. The sweet corn is engineered to withstand the
herbicide Roundup and also contains an insecticide (Bt toxin) within the cells
of the corn.
Are your
children eating Monsanto's latest concoction? You won’t know because we don’t
require labeling. In response to Walmart’s decision to undermine the will of its customers, the Yes on 37 campaign
released
a new ad highlighting the fact that California children are eating unlabeled
GMO sweet corn without their parents knowing it.
And now, the
recently published (in the highly regarded journal of Food and Chemical
Toxicology), first long-term, peer-reviewed
animal study involving GMO corn found massive tumors, organ failure and
premature death in rats. The findings have prompted the French government to
call for an investigation into GMOs, and Russia to suspend
imports of GMO corn.
The study was
roundly criticized by Monsanto’s band of scientists, who were out in force
trying to discredit the study design – but what they failed to mention is that
Monsanto’s own studies that supposedly indicate “safety” are based on the same
study design: similar size study, same rats. The only real differences are the
French study was free of industry influence and pressure, was more comprehensive and stringent, and was long-term
rather than short.
The most
shocking thing of all about the French study is that it is the first long-term
feeding study on genetically engineered corn that has been on the American
market for more than 15 years. So where’s the science? The reason we have been
denied such critical information is that biotech companies like Monsanto have controlled and suppressed research.
We need, and
deserve, more independent research in this area. In the meantime, we have a
right to know and to decide for ourselves whether we want to eat Monsanto's
corn. Prop 37 will give us that right.
Zack Kaldveer
is the assistant media director for the Yes on Prop 37 campaign.
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