Anti-biotech activists are like zombies in a horror movie: No matter how many times you defeat them, they keep snapping back to life, determined to wreak brand-new havoc.
So a month after suffering a bad loss in California on Election Day, they’re shifting their misconceived movement to Connecticut, Oregon, Vermont, and elsewhere. The next engagement is already well underway in the state of Washington, where the frightening extremism of what they really hope to achieve is also on full display.
Their outrageous goal is nothing less than a complete ban of crops enhanced by biotechnology–and they must be stopped.
Last month, 53 percent of Californians said “No!” on Proposition 37, a fatally flawed ballot initiative that would have mandated warning labels for safe food products that may contain ingredients derived from genetically modified crops.
Prop 37 was a bad idea from the start. It would have driven up grocery-store bills without aiding consumers at all. Farmers, doctors, scientists, and just about every daily newspaper editorial page in the state opposed it. In the end, so did most voters.
Yet anti-biotech activists are preparing to strike again. In Washington, they’re gathering signatures now for a ballot initiative modeled on Prop 37. They even have an official name for it: Initiative 522, or I-522. And they’ve raised almost $200,000 in its behalf, according to Linda Thomas of KIR.
Organizers are well on their way to meeting a goal of collecting 320,000 signatures by December 31. They believe this will give them more than enough to guarantee the 242,000 valid names they will need for certification by the secretary of state. If that happens, their proposal will move to the state legislature. As soon as January, lawmakers could approve the measure or allow I-522 to go on the ballot in November 2013.
Odds are the legislature will defer to voters. That’s what happened earlier this year with I-502, an effort to legalize and regulate marijuana. Supporters had gathered signatures, and lawmakers let it appear on the ballot. Last month, 55 percent of voters approved it.
It remains to be seen how I-502 will affect drug use, as selling or possessing pot remains illegal under federal law. But consider the irony: Shortly after Washington voters decided to relax drug laws, anti-GM activists are asking them to impose a crackdown on one of the safest and common technologies in agriculture.
Reasonable people can disagree on the decriminalization of pot. Yet the idea that voters would take a laissez-faire approach to marijuana and then almost immediately impose draconian restrictions on mainstream food ingredients is just plain bizarre.
The opponents of biotechnology try to present a reasonable face to the public, but their real agenda is radical–and it’s already on full view in the state of Washington.
On Election Day, as Californians were casting their ballots against Prop 37, voters in Washington’s San Juan County considered an even more dangerous measure: a total ban on the growing of GM crops.
San Juan County, home to less than 16,000 people, is tiny compared to California and its population of almost 37 million. So its drastic initiative didn’t generate much attention during the campaign season–and neither did the result, in which 61 percent of the county’s voters decided to outlaw the kinds of plants that farmers in much of the rest of the country take for granted.
This is the true mission of the anti-biotech movement: the utter elimination of genetically modified crops from the United States.
If the “Just Label It” crowd wanted to stop at labeling, its leaders would have condemned the vote in San Juan County. But they did no such thing. For people who love to spew out press releases and shout on blogs, their silence was curious–and also revealing.
The rest of us must speak out against both the effort to push new food-label laws and the even more harmful agenda that lies behind it. We know the truth about modern food and agriculture, and it’s our job once again to make sure voters hear about it as well.
Ted Sheely raises lettuce, cotton, tomatoes, wheat, pistachios, wine grapes and garlic on a family farm in the California San Joaquin Valley. He volunteers as a board member for Truth About Trade &Technology (www.truthabouttrade.org).
“This is the true mission of the anti-biotech movement: the utter elimination of genetically modified crops from the United States.
If the “Just Label It” crowd wanted to stop at labeling, its leaders would have condemned the vote in San Juan County. But they did no such thing. For people who love to spew out press releases and shout on blogs, their silence was curious–and also revealing.
The rest of us must speak out against both the effort to push new food-label laws and the even more harmful agenda that lies behind it. We know the truth about modern food and agriculture, and it’s our job once again to make sure voters hear about it as well.”
First of all, anyone with the willingness to do the necessary research, KNOWS the current roster of Biotech Patents and Products are based on Science and Tech 30+ years old-which is ancient within the confines of Science. It evolves, yet the companies with these products have merely updated their failing product lines by stacking new resistance traits. Hopefully, Monsanto’s Strategic Partnerships with Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, S Dak U and CSIRO in Australia signal a possible shift in Market Strategies to develop the next generation of Biotech, sans the operational issues of the current ones. In addition to new Biotech, Monsanto needs to work with Farmers to analyze and do what’s needed to repair and optimize the soil-even the USDA recently announced that such an initiative was needed-who better to do it? Also, regardless of the new Biotech Developments, they can only be as good as the basic seed identity. The interim dedicated to new development should be used to focus on new Hybrid and Seed Identity Research as the soil is brought back to maximum fertility. I’m often considered an “enemy of Biotech”, but though I’m a tough critic, I want to see it step into the 21st century. 1980′s Science and Tech won’t cut it anymore, nor will lazy research standards. I want to see American Farmers the undisputed leaders in Technological Agriculture-we MUST do BETTER!
The real drivers behind this movement have wanted a biotech crop ban from the beginning. They have succeeded where they could apply enough pressure on dominant companies with consumer brands (McDonalds for potatoes, European buyers for wheat…). The “right to know” strategy is only effective if consumers voting on initiatives don’t see what is actually involved in the initiatives. California was a big enough market for food to be a game changer. If I were a food company faced with labeling requirements that didn’t make sense, I’d definitely write off the Vermont market. Maybe even Washington State.
61 evidently more Politically transparent Countries,(like China, Russia, Cuba, etc. LOL)have GM Labeling, which has not raised prices or banned the Market from GM Food Sources. In many cases, the products sell because they cost as little as half of what non-GM costs. Requesting knowledge of what it is I’m buying should be a given, NOT a “Political Hot Potato.” Besides, if you read my comment above, you’ll know the brouhaha is over antiquated science. I consider the whole silly issue an outgrowth of the “dumbing down of America.” If we had truly Competitive and Creative people manning the research, rather than the current spate of drones, yes men and intellectual zombies, who knows what wonders we’d see come into being.
Do you actually wake up and say, “Mmmm I would like to eat some GMO food injected with pesticides this morning?”
So what if we do want GMO’s banned?
It’s your job, if you are on the side of GMO’s to PROVE why they are good for us…and you haven’t. They do not have any nutritional value, they cause MORE pesticides to be dumped on our food and earth and they don’t work the way the chemical companies claim. NO ONE wants a food that makes animals riddled with inflammation, tumors and renders them sterile. No one wants MORE of a pesticide liek glyphosate that draws the vital nutrients from any living thing it comes in contact with out of it until it dies, or 2-4D, ,a chemical in Agent Orange, on their GMO food. NO one wants untested and unproven GMOs in their children’s food.
We are NEVER going to stop wanting GMOs labeled or banned. Not as long as we have children that we want to be healthy, not as long as we want to have grandchildren and not as long as we are alive. You cannot dupe or stop a Mom. You cannot deprive us of our right to know and freedom of choice.
Keep eating your GMOs if you want, Just Label them so you know what they are so you can eat them.
This post is an excellent example of how emotions have been raised to such a level of animosity by some, that to a large degree basic understandings of science and agriculture are just disregarded.
I didn’t wake up either and say, “Mmmm I would like to eat some Organic food injected with e-coli this morning”, like those poor 31 souls who lost their lives from eating organic bean sprouts in Germany.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/10/e-coli-bean-sprouts-blamed
And you don’t inject GMO’s with anything.
Basic Science…a good way of putting it. If Biotech spends as much money improving the antiquated technology and science of it’s products as it does promoting them often at gunpoint, those new generation of quality high-tech, stable and biologically safe & tested patented products would be either deployed or well on their way, and this discussion would be moot.