Thoughts I've thunk while sippin' at a cup of tea and reading something provoking, often get dropped here for the benefit of humanity and my own hubris.
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I normally don't delve into local politics, but keep my thoughts on the global human condition (such as it is), but I thought I would revisit an old subject. You may or may not remember my previous discussion on the subject of genetically modified organisms (GMO) as the basis of food … well, I'm not the only one who is concerned about this.
This is a measure on the Oregon ballot (Measure #27) that would required labels on food containing genetically altered ingredients. Well, this is what I asked, right? Maybe.
Mosanto, the GMO-company, has been running tons of ads featuring poor family farmers that will be out-of-work because of an increase in having to label the seeds they get from Mosanto.
And there is some truth to that.
I have to agree with a local newspaper, Willamette Week (scroll down to get to the measures), that it probably would hurt the farmers that I like to support at the local "Farmer's Market" on Sunday mornings. I hate it when a proposal makes two of my principles conflict.
To quote the Willy Week:
While we cannot endorse this measure, we hope that it gets enough votes to prod federal policymakers to craft a national labeling law.
And that is true, this should be a national issue … then maybe we can catch up to Europe, Japan and the rest of the industrialized nations on saying, Whoa!
© 2002-2005, Howard Abrams • Except where otherwise noted, all original content is licensed under a Creative Commons License (see details).
I thought I would mention that this measure (as well as most of the people I voted for) did not get voted in. According to a local news source, it was soundly defeated 70% to 30%.
The problem with the loss is that it didn’t have enough people to vote for it to send a message to Washington for a national labeling law.
Comment posted on Wednesday, 6 November 2002The measure failed largely because the FDA just released a plan to label organic food voluntarily, which is really what people want, no?
If you don’t want genetically modified food, don’t eat out and only shop at Nature’s.
—jrp
Comment posted on Wednesday, 13 November 2002
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