Well, the House followed the Senate's lead in passing the GMO "labeling" bill that will allow big food corporations to "label" their genetically-modified food in a way that looks suspiciously like not labeling genetically-modified food, and will also pre-empt Vermont's actual GMO labeling law to boot -- and then President Obama did what I expected him to do, which was declare victory and retreat by signing the bill. What else are Democrats good at, after all? But the fight isn't over -- the bill does compel the FDA to issue a national GMO labeling standard one day, and when they do, we'll be on that like white on rice. In the meantime, quite a few food processing corporations have actually bowed to popular pressure and started voluntarily putting GMO labels on their products, so Just Label It helps you tell seven big food processing corporations to put clear GMO labels on their food. Not all of them have decided to use GMO labels, nor have they committed to using clear ones, versus the QR codes or website addresses you'd need to jump through hoops to read. So let them know we're watching them.
Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell the EPA to ban the weed-killer atrazine from use on American crops. Why? Because the EPA's own scientific assessment has found high enough levels of atrazine, the second most-used herbicide in America, in rivers and streams that it negatively impacts fish and mammals -- this after UCal-Berkeley biologist Tyrone Hayes found that atrazine disrupted the sexual development of some amphibians. If that doesn't impress you, then consider that you are also a mammal -- not all that different from other mammals, really, except perhaps in self-importance -- and consider, also, that studies from earlier this millenium linked atrazine with delayed menopause, gestational diabetes, and birth defects in humans. It's no use arguing that banning atrazine would raise food prices, as if all attempts to improve our world must be held hostage to food prices, or as if a CEO couldn't break off some executive salary to keep food prices low, nor is it any use arguing that we'll just never come up with something to replace atrazine, when this is America, home of the can-do spirit.
Comments