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Large agribusiness and food companies across the US, including Coca-Cola, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Monsanto and many others have spent more than $45m (£28m) to defeat the Prop 37* California ballot that would require labelling of GM foods. However, according to top experts from across the Globe their spending spree will be in vain:
Ronnie Cummins, CEO/Nat’l Director at the Organic Consumers Association stated last week that “Californians should vote Yes on Prop. 37 because it is their right to know what is in their food and how it is being produced. A recent French study by Gilles-Eric Séralini, has shown that rats fed a lifetime diet of genetically modified corn had drastically increased their chances of tumors, cancer, and liver problems. This study also noted changes in sex hormones.”
“Passing Prop 37 will likely radically reduce the market share for GMO seeds and food ingredients. The point of Prop 37 is to inform consumers what is in their food, and allow them to choose what they buy,” Cummins concluded in his Sustainable Pulse interview.
If tomorrow’s Proposition 37 vote passes, it would require all foodstuffs that contain GMOs in supermarkets in California to be labelled.
“At last Americans have the chance to get the GM labelling that 61 other countries already have. It won’t cost consumers a dime and is no more complicated for the food industry than adding an ingredient to a label. For the sake of consumer and health choice, vote yes on Prop 37,” Claire Robinson, Research Director at Earth Open Source and an Editor at GMWatch, exclusively told Sustainable Pulse on Monday.
David Bancroft, Campaign Director @ Just Label It, even managed to look ahead to a Yes campaign victory: “California consumers will be pleased to have finally won the right to know about the food they eat and serve their families. This will undoubtedly energize the rest of the nation to work to ensure that same right for all US citizens.”
To get involved in deleting GMO ingredients from some of the products produced by Coca-Cola, Kelogg’s, Nestle and other large brands please sign our petition.
*Proposition 37, a Mandatory Labeling of Genetically Engineered Food Initiative, is on the November 6, 2012 ballot in California as an initiated state statute.
If Proposition 37 is approved by voters, it will:
- Require labeling on raw or processed food offered for sale to consumers if the food is made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways.
- Prohibit labeling or advertising such food as “natural.”
- Exempt from this requirement foods that are “certified organic; unintentionally produced with genetically engineered material; made from animals fed or injected with genetically engineered material but not genetically engineered themselves; processed with or containing only small amounts of genetically engineered ingredients; administered for treatment of medical conditions; sold for immediate consumption such as in a restaurant; or alcoholic beverages.”
- James Wheaton, who filed the ballot language for the initiative, refers to it as “The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act”
