Vermont's GMO-labeling bill goes into effect in a mere seven weeks, and word on the street is that the nefarious anti-GMO labeling bill, S. 2609, may come back to the Senate floor before then. It's proponents perhaps believe that once one state starts mandating GMO labeling, corporations will simply put the label on everything they have, lest a can of corn intended for sale in New Hampshire accidentally falls off the truck in Vermont. They may believe this because big ag corporations tell it to them -- though, of course, food labels are not made by monks with quill pens. These are our biggest, brightest, boldest entrepreneurs -- who never seem to lack lame excuses for why people can't have nice things. So Food and Water Watch still helps you tell your Senators to reject S. 2609, which would make GMO labeling voluntary like that's ever worked before, and instead support S. 2621, which would make GMO labeling mandatory. This bill could come back on its own, or as an amendment to another bill; however it happens, we need to be ready.
Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to help keep kids safe from lead by passing S. 2631, the Lead-Safe Housing for Kids Act, then Color of Change still helps you do that. Four million children currently live in housing that gets some level of federal assistance, and any amount of lead causes brain damage in children, so this is pull-the-baby-out-of-the-fire-now time. And S. 2631 would, as you may recall, set lead limits much lower than they're currently set for federal housing, and would also mandate the Department of Housing and Urban Development (or HUD) to do far more thorough inspections of federal properties before letting families with children move in. The bill would also end the exemption for "zero bedroom" housing -- folks live in plenty of places that don't have proper bedrooms, after all. I struggle to understand what objection one would have to protecting children from lead poisoning in federal housing. Well, OK, understanding their reasoning, such as it is, isn't the problem -- understanding how they sleep at night is.
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