At the Seattle Justice Begins with Seeds Conference, Florence Vincent talks about the Yes On 522 campaign, shows a box of Kellogg’s cereal she purchased in the UK and driving grandmother, Label GMOs Initial Instigator and Chief Robble Rouser Pamm Larry around the state on her September Grassroots Speaking Tour.
Port Townsend organic food outlets support GMO labeling
By Charlie Bermant, Peninsula Daily News
PORT TOWNSEND — The Food Co-op and the Jefferson County Farmers Markets have endorsed an initiative on the state Nov. 5 general election ballot that would require the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified organisms, or a GMOs, in food outlets.
Port Townsend two major organic food merchants announced support of Initiative 522 last week.
If passed, it would require all genetically modified food sold in the state to be identified on its packaging.
“It’s important that people know what’s in their food and can make a choice about what they are eating,” said Ann Pougiales, vice president of the Jefferson County Farmers Market board.
Pougiales said that GMOs are not an issue at the farmers markets in Port Townsend and Chimacum, since organically grown produce is almost always free of modifications, aside from corn.
“Those selling at the farmer’s markets use organic seeds and know the source, so if there is any GMO food there, it is without the knowledge of the vendor,” she said.
Kathie Meyer, the Food Co-op’s marketing and outreach, education and marketing manager, said the requirement to label GMO food wouldn’t change how food manufacturers do business “because they are changing their labels all the time.
“We believe that everyone has the right to know what is in their food,” she said.
On Friday, the Co-op hosted an appearance from Nancy Metcalf, a farming activist from Van Zandt, a small Whatcom County town, who drove a car decorated with a representation of a giant tomato with the fins and tail of a fish on its roof and a host of pro-522 signs.
The car, a 2003 Honda Civic with 83,000 miles, was driven from Washington, D.C., and will be circulating around the Northern Olympic Peninsula over the next few weeks as part of the I-522 campaign.
Metcalf said the giant tomato fish weighs 300 pounds and consists of a steel frame covered by chicken wire and wrapped in papier-mache and fiberglass.
“When the car is parked outside of a store, people come up to me out of the blue and want to talk about the issue,” she said.
“So what would normally be a 90-minute shopping trip can take six hours.”
Pamm Larry — who started Proposition 37, the GMO labeling act that was voted down by California voters in 2012 — also will be appearing at speaking engagements in Port Angeles, Sequim and Port Townsend.
Major grocery chains and agribusiness interests spent $46 million fighting Propostition 37, the online Seattle PI said.
Larry will speak at:
— Quimper Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 2333 San Juan Ave. in Port Townsend, at 7 p.m. Friday.
— Nash’s Farm Store, 4681 Sequim-Dungeness Way in Sequim, at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
— Little Theater at Peninsula College (Room J-16), 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd. in Port Angeles, at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
These events are free and open to the public.
Larry will speak about Prop 37, why it failed in 2012, and why she feels it is important to pass I-522.
Larry, a farmer, midwife and grandmother of three, said she was so concerned about the modern-day food system that she quit her day job to educate herself on GMOs and how to apply for a ballot initiative.
Annmarie Gianni Skin Care is funding the tour.
“I-522 will require that most foods containing GE [genetically engineered] and/or GMO ingredients must be labeled, and will give each of us the Right To Choose what we eat and feed our families,” the Community Rights Coalitin of Jefferson County says on its website, http://communityrightsjeffersoncountywa.org.
The initiative has drawn heavy opposition.
Supporters of the initiative have put together a $3.5 million war chest, the Seattle PI said last week.
Contributors include DuPont, Dow Agrisciences, BASF Plant Science and Montsanto.
The “No on I-522” campaign quotes Mike LaPlant, president of the Washington State Farm Bureau, as saying that “I-522 would force Washington farmers and food companies to implement costly new labeling, packaging, distribution and recordkeeping requirements that do not exist in any other state.”
The campaign against the measure also says that 522 would require fruits, vegetables and grain-based products to be labeled but would exempt meat and dairy products from animals fed GE grains.
Riding around in a car topped with a giant half-vegetable, half-fish is bound to attract attention.
As Nikolas Schiller drives past the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., pedestrians gawk, kids point, and tourists snap pictures.
An oncoming driver pulls up in a stretch of slow traffic and asks, “What is it?”
Schiller explains it’s a Fishy Food Car and hands the man a card bearing a cartoon that asks, “Are we eating fishy food?”
It’s a visual pun. For opponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there’s something fishy - suspicious - about putting genes from other species into food crops, and they want foods containing GMO ingredients to say so on the label.
Labeling laws
There are no fish genes in the GMOs on the market today, but nearly all of the corn, soybeans, cotton and sugar beets growing in the U.S. contain bacterial genes that help farmers control weeds and insects.
Schiller’s day job is with a D.C.-based public relations firm. But this summer his fishy apple car will join the fishy corn, soybean, sugar beet and tomato cars driving cross-country to Washington State, where a GMO labeling law is on the ballot this fall.
Momentum is behind them. Labeling laws were approved in Connecticut and Maine earlier this year.
Labeling everything containing a GMO ingredient would take a lot of ink. They’re in 80 percent of the foods on supermarket shelves, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, especially anything processed, in a bottle, box or bag.
Novel food
But are they bad for you? Schiller acknowledges that the only evidence of harm from GMOs is anecdotal, but he’s suspicious.
“This is a novel food. Our grandparents and previous generations didn’t eat this,” he said. “And now all of a sudden we’re seeing higher incidences of food and health issues. And so if [GMO makers] are saying, ‘Oh, everything’s safe,’ but nothing’s labeled, we really can’t trace the safety.”
Health authorities from the U.S. Institute of Medicine to the World Health Organization have said there’s nothing to fear from GMOs.
And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there is no substantive difference between GMO and conventional ingredients, so it can’t require labels.
On the other hand, products without GMOs may say so on the label, and these are now some of the hottest items in the supermarket. Last year, sales of certified-organic products grew 7.4 percent, twice the rate of the food sector as a whole. And foods with the “Non-GMO Verified” seal passed $1 billion in sales in 2011.
‘We should’ve been talking about this’
This has not gone unnoticed by the biotech industry.
This summer, the industry-sponsored Council for Biotechnology Information made an unusual, if understated, admission.
“We recognize we haven’t done the best job communicating about GMOs,” Executive Director Cathy Enright said in a press release.
She was more frank in person.
“We should’ve been talking about this for two decades,” she said, adding that in the last few years in particular, social media have taken opposition to GMOs to a new level. “We haven’t even been near social media.”
Transparency
But for opponents like Schiller, it’s not about a failure to communicate. For one thing, he wants to see the results of safety tests the companies submitted to the FDA.
“And they can say, ‘This is proprietary information. We’ve done our testing. We don’t have to disclose to the public,’” he said. “Anytime you have a veil over something, people are going to want transparency. People are going to want sunshine. And as long as you withhold that, people are gonna think, ‘This is kinda fishy.’”
Sunshine might be about to break through. For the first time, Enright said, the companies’ testing data will be available online at a new website: GMOAnswers.com.
“It’s gonna be technical,” she said. “But we’ve been asked, ‘Show us your data.’”
It’s part of a new pledge of openness and dialogue. Enright said the big seed companies will be opening their doors for people to come and see what they do. There will be dinners where supporters and opponents can sit down and talk. She said a panel of volunteers will be answering any questions the public might have.
“We believe that if people have the information at hand, that it won’t feel fishy; that they’ll be more comfortable with this technology,” she said.
But with a growing number of states considering GMO labeling laws, the industry has a lot of catching up to do.
After over 3,000 miles and 8 days on the road, today the Fishy Fleet arrived in downtown Seattle to attend the Rally for Your Right to Know. Up next the Fishies will be given to Washington residents to drive around the state to help raise awareness about GMO labeling.
+ KOMO News: Seattleites rally in support for labeling genetically modified food
Eighteen activists in six art cars, including Fishy Tomato (above), each affixed with a fish-mix sculpture — fish apple, fish soy, fish wheat, and so on — will travel from D.C. to Seattle’s Hempfest, with many stops in between, including one at the Missouri headquarters of Monsanto, a biotech company, for an overnight camping protest.
Organizer Adam Eidinger told The Huffington Post that the purpose of the demonstration is to show support for an upcoming Washington state referendum on GMO labeling and to have “at least a million” people see the cars.
“People who will get more interested in GMO issues,” said Eidinger.
“The Fishy Food art car fleet’s cross-country swim from Washington, D.C. to Washington state will get people talking about the importance of GMO labeling,” David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps — which helped pay for the cars — said in a media release.
It’s still not clear what the results will be — as much as some support regulation of tomatoes mixed with Arctic flounder genes, there are those who say such activists are anti-science fearmongers.
Either way, it’s bound to be a colorful journey — and one with a lot of pit stops. Eidinger said that the art cars, while making a strong message, only get about 11 miles to the gallon.
