One Giant Leap for GMO Labeling

“It was the right fight at the right time,” Murphy (who was also the co-chairman of the Prop 37 cam­paign) told Organic Connections. “It shone a spot­light on what I think is one of the great­est and worst injus­tices of our times. It made the issue of label­ing GMO foods a national issue. It raised aware­ness on a sit­u­a­tion that most Americans had no idea about. Today, peo­ple are clam­or­ing for label­ing genet­i­cally engi­neered food all across the country.”

The voter turnout clearly demon­strated con­sumer con­cern. “The final results on Prop 37 were 48.6 to 51.4 per­cent,” Murphy said. “More than 6 mil­lion Californians voted for Prop 37. Six mil­lion Americans are on record in one state say­ing they believe they have the right to know what’s in their food, and GMOs need to be labeled in the US.”

David and Goliath

The num­ber of votes in favor of the ini­tia­tive is espe­cially remark­able in light of the amount of force the oppo­si­tion (indus­trial agri­cul­ture and biotech com­pa­nies) employed in an attempt to stop it from pass­ing. “It was an impos­si­ble fight,” Murphy pointed out. “We went up against the largest pes­ti­cide and chem­i­cal com­pa­nies on the planet. A total of $46.5 mil­lion was donated by these, along with big food com­pa­nies like Pepsi, Coke and Nestlé.”

Additionally, for the oppo­si­tion, stick­ing to the truth was not a con­straint. “The other side was will­ing to tell any lie to win that race—and they did,” said Murphy. “They trot­ted out a guy called Henry Miller from the Hoover Institute at Stanford, and he was will­ing to mis­lead the California voter in every way. The main­stream media barely reported the fact that he was the orig­i­nal and first direc­tor of biotech­nol­ogy at the Food and Drug Administration.” Some years ago, Miller was also the mem­ber of a PR group backed by Philip Morris to under­mine sci­ence show­ing the ill effects of cig­a­rettes on human health.

Across the Nation

While California re-arms for another round, the state of Washington is cur­rently plac­ing a GMO-labeling ini­tia­tive on its own bal­lot for this year. “Right now there is a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that has filed in Washington State,” Murphy reported. “We turned in over 300,000 sig­na­tures two weeks ago, and they’ll be qual­i­fy­ing for the bal­lot in the next few weeks. Voters in Washington State will be able to vote for it this fall.”

And that is only the begin­ning. “At the same time, there is leg­is­la­tion being crafted in state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try,” Murphy con­tin­ued. “I am work­ing with a lot of grass­roots activists in many of these states, try­ing to get these bills intro­duced into their leg­is­la­tures and passed. Some of them are get­ting intro­duced this week.”

Murphy began his career in the fight for a sus­tain­able food sys­tem in 2006, when he ini­ti­ated a suc­cess­ful bat­tle to keep a fac­tory farm from being built in a sen­si­tive ecosys­tem in his native Iowa. Following that vic­tory, in 2008 he founded Food Democracy Now, a grass­roots community—now 350,000 mem­bers strong—that engages in many online and in-person cam­paigns across the country.

From Murphy’s front-line stand­point, the goal of label­ing GMO foods is most def­i­nitely within reach. “GMO labeling—it’s an idea whose time has come, and it’s going to hap­pen here in the US in the next two years,” he con­cluded. “I don’t think by 2016 the biotech indus­try will be able to ped­dle their prod­ucts here in the US with­out them being labeled.”

For more infor­ma­tion, please visit www.fooddemocracynow.org.