ConsumerismEconomicsGMOsHealth & DiseaseSociety

We Don’t Want to Know

I awoke this morning eager to find out the results of November 6th’s voting in the U.S. of A. And no, I’m not talking about the tiresome presidential election….

The voting I’m referring to is in regards to Proposition 37 — the bill aimed at getting GMO-containing foodstuffs labelled in California. As recent posts in our GMO category will tell you, I’ve been keen to see people backing this bill, so they can be empowered with the right to choose.

This bill was, to me, a ‘no brainer’. It would simply serve to legislate what should be a basic human right — the right to know. But, as is usually the case where basic rights and simple ethics come up against financial interests, the money clouds the issue and wins almost every time.

Proposition 37 was quashed yesterday, under the weight of over 45 million dollars worth of corporate-funded media campaigning. Only a few weeks ago, polling had the ‘yes’ vote (that’s yes to labelling) at over 60%, but then Monsanto and its Big Industry friends (including DuPont, Bayer, DOW Agrisciences, Pepsico Inc., Kellogg, General Mills, and other ‘food’ and pesticide companies) let loose a flurry of deceptive radio and television adverts, carefully designed to herd Californians back into their monopolistic, plutocratic fold. "That’s it people — hurry along now. Trust us, we know what we’re doing… and where we’re going…".

Now that November 6 has passed us by, and GMOs are still free to promiscuously wander Californian shelves without labelling, the No to 37 campaign’s methods of working are under the spotlight, along with accusations of blatant criminal fraud.

As I type, the sleet and rain outside does nothing to improve my mood, as I realise that even today people will succumb to the most ludicrous arguments — where corporate brainwashing can get the general public to not only desire their own destruction, but to even venture out into the community to vote for measures that will help ensure it (à la cartoon at top).

And yet, I take heart in the knowledge that although yesterday’s battle may be lost, the war is only beginning. The ‘No’ vote, despite the massive funding behind it, overcame by only a slim margin. This means that there is a large and growing momentum in understanding in the U.S.A., and I hope we will see this ballot-based bill move from state to state, until the victory is won.

I think it’s important to consider a base problem here. Laws are being drawn up and implemented, not because of debate, not through sound argument, reason, or through holistically joining the dots across civilisation to get the clearest picture of the best way forward. Rather, they’re being imposed on an unsuspecting public by a disgustingly wealthy and biased corporate elite who have only their own best (but short term) interests at heart. Until we get the money out of politics, which means getting industry out of politics, efforts along these lines will always be one step forwards, and two back.

While we figure out exactly how to do that, there is something direct you can do in the interim to help ensure the next ballot has increased chances of success — you can punish those pretentious ‘natural’ brands who helped finance the No to 37 campaign, by boycotting their products:

7 Comments

  1. Good drawing, sadly too real.

    Never soon enough you’ll tell me but not to despair, the campagne and run up for the vote has created an unprecedented buzz and growth of awareness wordwide of the risks and danger of gm crops and foods, great documentaries, conferences, seminars, seralini’s and other new studies coming out everyday are filling mainstream papers all over like never before, weighting down the scale to the right side. Schools, doctors, associations have sharpened their strategies to impose the other way and general public largely improved its understanding of the situation.

    That also participated to identify more clearly the many corrupt scientists, press, officials and politicians working to crook people and ecosystems. Displayed the templated corporate strategy of controle and corruption also applied in medical, finance, education, defense etc…

    Where you had an shapeless mass of ignorance is emerging a fiercely informed population, it won’t be about majority anyway but critical mass.

    The vote was just a few weeks to early, that’s all.

    It’s coming and gm food days are counted.

    Fx.

  2. Hi Craig,

    Food is a strange issue, in fact, I’d go as far as saying that it is a smouldering political issue. A good example of this is garlic. In Australia most of our garlic (not all, but most) is imported. It is treated with the reasonably toxic pesticide methyl bromide, yet it is between 10 times and 20 times cheaper than the locally grown garlic (very occasionally the difference is as much as $2/kg versus $40/kg).

    With the exception of one household, all of my friends and acquaintances cook using this imported garlic. But the garlic has this sort of flat, metallic, chemically taste to me which I find to be kind of disturbing and it permeates the rest of the food. It certainly doesn’t taste like garlic.

    So why do they buy it? The answer is because it is cheap. GMO’s are the exact same problem in that they allow producers to continue with industrial agricultural practices which treat the environment as if it were a factory. In the short term, this does keep food prices down. In the long term there are some serious costs to pursuing this strategy.

    If anyone doesn’t believe me, go and grow your own food (or support an organic grower etc.) do a taste comparison with the industrially produced food you may be eating now and let your nose and tongue show you the difference.

    There is no better time than now to start growing your own food or for taking a PDC as it is unprecedented historically that in Industrial economies only 2% of the population is involved in agriculture. This situation is unsustainable and will not continue forever and will most certainly change within our lifetimes.

  3. Yes, hopefully the GM labeling legislation will be passed in the near future so that we can be informed consumers.

    Perhaps in the meantime we can encourage those producers/companies that don’t use GM ingredients in their products to state it clearly on their packaging?

  4. We have been concerned about GM foods and ingregients for a long time now and are now starting to grow a lot of our own produce at home. Whenever we have “excess” that we cannot use we have been giving these away to neighbours, friends and family. However, we have been experiencing the bizarre issue with some people (my parents included) who refuse this free gift, as they say they would prefer to buy “cheap imports” instead.

    My parents, in particular, admit they would prefer to buy cage eggs from a supermarket, than be given beautiful large delicious free range eggs from our rescued battery hens who now have a much better life foraging in our back yard.

    I could not fathom why they would not accept unlimited free ethically produced eggs over the cheap caged eggs at the shops??

    My father summed it up thus “If we get a bad egg we can take it back for a refund… if someone gets poisoned, we have recourse to sue the shop/provider/manufacturer. If there’s something wrong with one of YOUR eggs, who takes the blame?”

    What a sad indication that our society has been so brainwashed that people now have a “take the blame” mentality and would CHOOSE a bad process over a good one for this reason alone. This is not about money. This is about conditioning and control. They have been conditioned and they are being controlled.

    If anyone lives near Mansfield, Qld, we have LOTS of free range eggs for the taking…

  5. The people of (the United States of) America, collectively speaking, need to grow some balls. Laconic balls. Otherwise they’ll all continue to be merely sheeple. If the people of America lose the personal freedoms that they’ve all come to enjoy, it’s because they did not remember to practice self-responsibility as a precursor for self-determination. Unfortunately it appears that the pundits in the US government understand this better than the masses.

    And, at the risk of sounding pro-capitalist, I also say that not all the potential farmland in the Continental US is under cultivation. With an effective agricultural program the US can grow enough to feed its own population. However, the solution that would allow this runs counter to the monopolistic sensibilities of the powers that be.

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