(MintPress) – The California Secretary of State office has announced that voters in California will have the final say whether genetically engineered foods will require special labeling or not, following suit of Japan, China and all the countries in Europe. If the referendum passes, California will be the first state to pass a law that would require companies to label modified food products on packages.
The California Right to Know initiative, which would mandate labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), will be put on the state’s November ballot for citizens to vote on.
GMOs have been a controversial topic for many Americans because the food products – plants or meats – have had their DNA artificially altered by genes from other plants, animals, viruses or bacteria so that foreign compounds are produced in those foods. These alterations are made in laboratories and are not found naturally in the wild.
“A staggering majority of Americans want to know when they are eating GMO food. With up to 80 percent of the non-organic products on our shelves containing GMO ingredients, and little to no long-term studies on their effects, people are concerned,” Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, senior scientist at Pesticide Action Network, told the Monterey County Weekly.
The initiative is supported by an assortment of consumer, health and environmental groups, businesses and farmers, according to the California Right to Know Campaign.
“As a doctor committed to the health of people and the environment, I strongly believe that people have a right to know, and to choose for themselves, whether to eat foods that have been genetically engineered,” said Robert Gould, MD, president of the SF-Bay Area chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, in an interview.
According to recent polls, voters across the United States vastly support GMO labeling. In an April poll by San Francisco TV station KCBS, 91 percent of those polled were in support of labeling.
Grant Lundberg, CEO of Lundberg Family Farms in the Sacramento Valley, said in a statement, “More than 40 other countries – including all of Europe, Japan and even China – label genetically engineered food. Californians deserve to be able to make informed choices too.”
Parents throughout the state are also on board for the initiative, stating that it is in the best interest of everyone in the state of California to pass the Right to Know initiative.
“I want to know whether the food I’m buying contains genetically engineered ingredients,” Susan Lang, a Sacramento mother of two who volunteered to help get the initiative on the ballot, told the California Right to Know Campaign. “All the parents I know want to have this information, too,” she added.
Stacy Malkan from the Right to Know campaign said, “All eyes are on California, and the voters of this state will support our right to know what’s in our food when they vote this November.”
In March, a petition for mandatory labeling of GMOs was submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). More than one million signatures were on the request, breaking an FDA record for the number of signatures on a petition.
While getting the initiative on the November ballot is a big step toward GMO monitoring, Fairbanks noted that there may be exceptions to the rule that could discredit the initiative. These exemptions could include foods sold in restaurants and meat, dairy and alcohol products.
“If this is really about the right to know, why exempt two-thirds of the food people eat every day?” she said.
The initiative would, however, apply to many GMO products, including soybeans, corn, sugar beets and canola, which are present in nearly all processed foods in the United States.