Alert: GMO industry trying to sneak sham labeling into spending bill
There hasn’t been a holiday sneak attack like this since the Grinch stole Christmas!
I’ve been warning you for months that companies like Monsanto are working overtime to pass a federal law that would kill labeling of genetically modified foods.
They even arm-twisted the House into passing the so-called Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act this summer.
But now the biotech industry is planning their most devious attack yet on your right to know what you’re eating.
They’ve attached a new plan to a government spending bill that would make figuring out which foods contain GMOs nearly impossible.
And we’re running out of time to stop it.
If you’ve been following the news, you know our Congress can’t get its act together on an end-of-year spending bill.
Big surprise, right?
They’ve been passing “stopgap” measures to keep the government open. But now there’s a massive federal spending bill that seems headed for a vote this week — and special interests have been attaching extras to it like they were adding ornaments to a Christmas tree.
And one of those special interest groups is the GMO industry.
You see, it’s been nearly five months since the House passed the DARK Act — which would basically kill mandatory labeling of GMO Frankenfoods.
But the DARK Act ran into a buzz saw in the Senate, which isn’t moving the bill.
So now Monsanto and its GMO political puppets are trying to use this huge spending bill to force the Senate’s hand.
They’ve attached a “rider” to the spending bill that would create a phony GMO labeling program that no company in its right mind would ever use.
Under the proposed rule, GMO companies could voluntarily choose to put a code on their packages that you’d scan with your smart phone. And then an app (we can only hope it works as well as the Obamacare website we spent millions on) will tell you if the food is GMO.
I mean, come on! This may be the single dumbest piece of legislation ever drafted — and when it comes to our government, that’s saying something.
Tell me which of these companies is going to voluntarily label its foods as GMO? These are the exact same companies that have spent millions — and fought tooth and nail — to kill labeling all over the country.
But now we expect them to start sticking these codes on their packages? You’ve got a better chance of seeing Bigfoot doing backstrokes with the Loch Ness Monster!
And another thing — how many people are really going to trudge through their supermarket scanning these codes? I sure hope you get better cell phone reception in your supermarket than I do!
It’s a dumb system that’s going to be ignored the minute it’s put into place. And it looks like it would trump the straightforward, mandatory labeling laws that have been passed in states like Vermont.
The worst part is that the GMO goons in Congress may try to force through this pork-laden spending bill with an all-or-nothing vote. It’s what the Organic Consumers Association calls “legislation by blackmail.”
That means if you want to vote for the spending bill — and keep the government open — you have to vote for the GMO rider, too.
The good news is that we still have time to stop this — but not much.
A vote on this spending bill is expected any day. So we all need to contact our members of Congress today and tell them to drop the GMO rider.
While you’re at it, remind them that you and your family deserve to know what you’re eating. And that’s not a right we expect our elected officials to ever trade away.
Sources:
“QR codes in the DARK Act? A new tactic to shroud GMO labeling” Farm-to-Consumer, December 2, 2015, farmtoconsumer.org
“Congress will miss its Friday deadline for government spending bill” Paul Singer, December 8, 2015, USA Today, usatoday.com
