"This gives us hope that you can, with a well-funded, well-organized, well-executed campaign, defeat a ballot initiative and go directly to the voters. We hope we don’€™t have too many of them, because you can’€™t keep doing that over and over again . . .".
– Jennifer Hatcher, Food Marketing Institute, on Big Food and Big Biotech’€™s narrow defeat of Prop 37, the California Right to Know GMO ballot initiative.
Big Food and Big Biotech can hope all they want. But consumers can ‘€“ and will ‘€“ propose state laws and state ballot initiatives as often as we need, in as many states as we must, until we have what 61 other countries have: truth and transparency in the form of mandatory GMO labeling laws.
Today, activists in Washington State are delivering approximately 350,000 signatures to the state legislature to guarantee that a mandatory GMO labeling Initiative, I-522, will be on the ballot in November. Initial polling shows that Washington state voters will likely pass this Ballot Initiative, no matter how much money the biotech industry and large food corporations put into an anti-labeling campaign.
Vermont legislatures will reintroduce a GMO labeling bill early this year and Connecticut plans to introduce one in May. And that’€™s just the beginning.
Read Ronnie’€™s latest essay