Dear Organic Consumer,
At noon today, several of our Maine-based OCA staff joined Maine lawmakers at a press conference in the State House to announce the introduction of a bill to require mandatory labeling of GMOs now—not later.
OCA is leading the grassroots coalition that will work to pass LD 991, a bill that has strong bipartisan support in the Maine state legislature.
Please help us raise $200,000 by March 31 to fund GMO labeling in Maine, and in other New England states, including Massachusetts. Details on how to donate online, by check or by phone here.
If you were wondering if Monsanto had knocked the wind out of our sails, wonder no more. We may have narrowly lost a few ballot initiatives. But we won in Vermont in 2014.
And we can win in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island this year. But only if we pull out all the stops.
You may recall that in 2013, Maine passed a GMO labeling law. But that law contained a trigger clause which requires five Northeast states, including New Hampshire, to also pass mandatory labeling laws before Maine’s law can take effect. Maine’s 2013 law also said that if the five-state threshold isn’t met by December 31, 2018, the bill is dead.
We can’t let that happen.
Please help us raise $200,000 by March 31 to fund GMO labeling in Maine, and in other New England states, including Massachusetts. Details on how to donate online, by check or by phone here.
The bill we introduced today, with broad, bipartisan support, would remove the trigger and make Maine the second state to pass a trigger-free mandatory GMO labeling bill.
Why is Maine important? And why do we also need to raise money to support mandatory GMO labeling in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and other New England states?
Because the race is on in Washington D.C., a race funded by Monsanto and the junk food industry, to pass a federal law that would preempt states’ rights to protect their own citizens by passing state GMO labeling laws.
Right now, only Vermont has passed a trigger-free labeling law. And the state is currently defending that law against a suit filed by the biotech and junk food industries.
It’s one thing for Congress to pass a law that preempts Vermont’s GMO labeling law. But it will be much more difficult for Congress to preempt states’ rights if Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island also pass GMO labeling laws during the 2015 legislative session.
That’s why passing these laws in New England matters to you, no matter where you live.
As more and more research comes to light about the human health risks associated with genetically engineered food and the toxic pesticides and chemicals that accompany them . . . and more and more investigations turn up evidence of how corporations have deceived consumers, and how the FDA and USDA have cooperated in that deceit, the more urgent it is that states act.
As soon as enough states have passed laws requiring the mandatory labeling of GMO foods, Congress will be forced to follow suit—not with a weak, voluntary law that has no teeth, but with a strong, mandatory law that provides consumers with the same basic information that citizens in more than 60 other countries already have the right to know.
As we saw today in Maine, the GMO labeling issue is far from dead. That’s because we refuse to let it die, no matter how many millions of dollars corporations spend to promote their lies and defeat our laws.
More importantly, Maine’s LD 991 proves what we’ve known all along—that GMO labeling is not a Democrat or Republican, left-wing or right-wing issue. LD 991’s sponsors include three Democrats and six Republicans, including long-time state lawmakers and the up-and-coming generation of Maine leaders.
We believe we can win in Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island this year. But only if we commit the resources to counter the inevitable attack we will face in these states by Monsanto and the Junk Food Giants.
Please make a donation here today to help us raise $200,000 by March 31.
Donations made to the Organic Consumers Fund, our 501(c) 4 lobbying arm, are not tax-deductible. If you want to support the grassroots advocacy and education campaigns in these states, you can make a tax-deductible donation to our 501(c)3 here.
Thank you!
Ronnie Cummins
National Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund
P.S. These campaigns in New England are urgent. Plans are afoot to commercialize GMO wheat in the U.S. Millions of products contain wheat. How will you know if it’s GMO wheat without a label? Please make a donation today. Thank you!