Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives By Ronnie Cummins

 

Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives

Freedom Food News,  April 12, 2012

By Ronnie Cummins


For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products industry.

Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back. [Image: Protesters burn and tear up an experimental crop of genetically modified rapeseed. Photograph: David Hoffman Photo Library/ Al/Alamy]

“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” – Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job.” — Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, quoted in the New York Times, October 25, 1998

This November, in a food fight that will largely determine the future of what we eat and what we grow, Monsanto will face its greatest challenge to date: a statewide citizens’ ballot initiative that will give Californians the opportunity to vote for their right to know whether the food they buy is contaminated with GMOs.

A growing corps of food, health, and environmental activists – supported by the Millions against Monsanto and Occupy Monsanto Movements, and consumers and farmers across the nation – are boldly moving to implement mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods in California through a grassroots-powered citizens ballot initiative process that will bypass the agribusiness-dominated state legislature.  If passed, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients, and outlaw the routine industry practice of labeling GMO-tainted foods as “natural.”

Passage of this initiative on November 6 will radically alter the balance of power in the marketplace, enabling millions of consumers to identify – and boycott – genetically engineered foods for the first time since 1994, when Monsanto’s first unlabeled, genetically-engineered dairy drug, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), was forced on the market.

As Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director for the Organic Consumers Association, pointed out at an Occupy Wall Street teach-in in Washington DC in early April: “The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act ballot initiative is a perfect example of how the grassroots 99% can mobilize to take back American democracy from the corporate bullies, the 1%. By aggressively utilizing one of the last remaining tools of direct democracy, the initiative process (available to voters not only in California and 23 other states, but in thousands of cities and counties across the nation), we can bypass corrupt politicians, make our own laws, and force corporations like Monsanto to bend to the will of the people, in this case granting us our fundamental right to know what’s in our food.”

Moving the Battleground

This is not the first time Monsanto has been challenged by citizens’ initiatives or state and local legislative efforts. But this time, the momentum is in our favor.
In the past, GMO “right-to-know” activists have been outmaneuvered and outgunned by Monsanto and its minions in every state, except Vermont and Connecticut, where passing a labeling bill is still, at least theoretically, a long-shot.  (Monsanto recently threatened to sue the state of Vermont if legislators there pass a GMO labeling bill).

Biotechnology Versus BioDemocracy
Urgent National Action Alert!

OCA has learned that Vermont may not pass the GMO Labeling law now languishing in the state legislature, because Monsanto has threatened to sue the state if they pass the bill. According to informed sources, Vermont Governor Peter Schumlin is probably the only one who can save the bill from dying in this legislature session, which ends May 1. Please get on the phone right now to Governor Schumlin and tell him not to buckle under Monsanto’s biotech bullying. We need a GMO labeling bill and we need one right now. Vermont can and should lead the way! Other states will follow.

Please pick up the phone now and call Governor Schumlin’s office:

Phone: 802 828-3333
TTY: 800 649-6825
Fax: 802 828-3339
Email: GovernorVT@state.vt.us

To read the rest of this article, please click on the link provided below:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/04/12/millions-against-monsanto-the-food-fight-of-our-lives/

Or visit:

http://www.alternet.org/food/154951/millions_against_monsanto%3A_the_food_fight_of_our_lives