The GMO Labeling Revolution

The move­ment even has its own web­site: www.labelityourself.org.

The Label It Yourself (#LIY) is a decen­tral­ized, autonomous grass­roots cam­paign born out of our bro­ken food sys­tem. We have been ask­ing our gov­ern­ment to label food prod­ucts so we can make edu­cated deci­sions about what we eat. The gov­ern­ment has ignored our requests and so we are tak­ing mat­ters into our own hands.

Using LIY’s resources, we encour­age peo­ple to: autonomously label GMOs and empower oth­ers to do so, res­cue words like “All Natural” and “Natural Flavors” from being hijacked, expose unfair labor prac­tices. We have a right to know what is in our food and where it is com­ing from.

The sources of the frus­tra­tion fuel­ing this move­ment are only too obvious.

Despite receiv­ing over 1 mil­lion sig­na­tures to a peti­tion demand­ing the label­ing of foods con­tain­ing GMO ingre­di­ents, the FDA has so far declined to respond in any way. Well, they did try to change the mil­lion plus num­ber into a few hundred—possibly a new type of government-only math­e­mat­ics. The big biotech com­pa­nies push­ing GMOs, Monsanto in par­tic­u­lar, have shown a remark­able abil­ity to bend the FDA, USDA and even the White House to their will. 

Monsanto even man­aged to turn the Bush Administration State Department into an exten­sion of its sales force to try and force GMOs into the European Union, as dis­closed by Wikileaks.

A few state leg­is­la­tures have taken the ini­tia­tive to intro­duce GMO label­ing laws. All have been defeated by the biotech lobby, the lat­est being Vermont and Connecticut.

Meanwhile pub­lic con­cern over the safety of GMO foods has only grown. There are count­less arti­cles about the health, envi­ron­men­tal and eth­i­cal issues sur­round­ing GMO foods, many of which have been pub­lished right here by Organic Connections.

With sur­veys by orga­ni­za­tions such as the Mellman Group show­ing that 90 per­cent of vot­ers are in favor of label­ing, it is lit­tle won­der that pub­lic frus­tra­tion is being con­verted into guerilla actions. 

The Mellman Group results were also con­sis­tent with other surveys:

• 93% believe GE foods should be labeled (10/10, Thomson Reuters PULSE™ Healthcare Survey, “National Survey of Healthcare Consumers: Genetically Engineered Food”)
• 96% believe genet­i­cally mod­i­fied foods should be labeled (6/11, MSNBC)
• 95% of con­sumers believe GE foods should be labeled (11/08, Consumers Union, “Food-Labeling Poll: 2008,” p. 13)
• 94% believe genet­i­cally mod­i­fied food should be labeled (9/10, Washington Post)
• 93% of the American pub­lic wants the fed­eral gov­ern­ment to require manda­tory label­ing of genet­i­cally engi­neered foods (6/11, ABC News)

Add to this the con­tin­u­ally grow­ing knowl­edge afforded to con­sumers by the Internet and social media. More and more peo­ple are sim­ply ignor­ing the mes­sages poured at them by main­stream media out­lets on behalf of biotech and food indus­try adver­tis­ers. The same sur­veys by the Mellman Group showed that more and more peo­ple sim­ply don’t believe mes­sages from these organizations.

The pent up frus­tra­tion of con­sumers over the desire to know what is in their food is fast becom­ing a defin­ing human rights issue in the United States.

This is no more appar­ent than in California. In a water­shed event, the issue of GMO label­ing has now been taken away from the hands of politi­cians for the first time. The California Secretary of State has cer­ti­fied the GMO Right to Know Initiative for the November 2012 bal­lot. And as Tom Philpott of Mother Jones opined, “California could force the rest of the US to label GMO foods.”

Revolutions, at least those based on pop­u­lar move­ments, are gen­er­ally about rights. The GMO label­ing issue is no excep­tion. We as con­sumers have the right to know what is in our food. Opposing this is a group of biotech com­pa­nies and indus­trial food giants who feel their rights to profit can over­ride cus­tomer pref­er­ence. Possibly the over­ar­ch­ing fact in this fight is that we as con­sumers are the far greater power. All the adver­tis­ing, lies, lob­by­ing, agency cor­rup­tion and even legal threats by the biotech and food indus­tries amount to only one thing: get­ting us to part with money and flow it to them.

What You Can Do

There are the legit­i­mate fac­tors of own­er­ship and pri­vate prop­erty that come into play in the Label It Yourself effort. Civil dis­obe­di­ence has become regarded as a legit­i­mate means of protest. But since gro­cery stores are pri­vate prop­erty and not civil enti­ties, this could be a prob­lem. There are how­ever pow­er­ful tools avail­able to us to make the changes that are needed.

1. We can vote with our wal­lets right now. Simply stop buy­ing foods that obvi­ously con­tain GMO con­tents. The Non-GMO Project has tools and a data­base to help.
2. Californians can vote in November. You can help sup­port the California cam­paign here: www.carighttoknow.org.
3. Perhaps the most impor­tant tool is edu­ca­tion. Let peo­ple know about the issues of GMO ingre­di­ents in foods. Too often we hear, “What’s a GMO?” That’s exactly what the biotech com­pa­nies hope for—ignorance of the issues. The more peo­ple remain unin­formed, the more suc­cess­ful these com­pa­nies become. (Isn’t it inter­est­ing that while most busi­nesses thrive on inform­ing their poten­tial cus­tomers about their prod­ucts, the biotech indus­try fights dis­clo­sure tooth and nail and thrives on our igno­rance?) There are LOTs of resources. This site has numer­ous arti­cles and links to impor­tant con­sumer advo­cate groups like the Center for Food Safety, Institute for Responsible Technology and of course the Non-GMO Project.

Here’s to a health­ier food future.