Vandana Shiva at Hawaii State Capitol GMO Labeling Rally (video)

Edited from the livestream of the event held at the Hawaii State Capitol on January 16, the video contains Dr Vandana's Shiva's speech on GMOs and the future of farming.

On the opening day of the 2013 Hawaii State Legislature, Dr. Shiva, the renowned anti-GMO activist from India visited Hawaii.

Dr. Shiva addressed the GMO labeling rally, which was the end point of a march which started three miles away at the University of Hawaii. The march drew hundreds of demonstrators from Oahu and the neighboring islands.

Her rousing speech refers to Monsanto and Big Pesticide, basically five big corporations trying to take over the food supply of the world and attempting to patent life itself. She points out that there are thousands of species of each type of crop in the seed banks, which Monsanto wants to destroy, for sheer greed and profit.

Dr. Shiva's speech includes a reference to Europe and the awful economic situation in Greece, Spain and Italy. But she brings note to the fact that when she was in Italy recently, she noticed that as people became unemployed, so the gardens sprung up everywhere and young people started growing their own food. She says growing this food is the future, not GMOs.

To quote Dr. Shiva, "The only thing that Monsanto can bring us is a suicide economy. For the farmers who have committed suicide, for our children whose future is being robbed, for the planet where we commit a planetary collective suicide, in terms of wiping out our future."

"We will create Earth democracy. Our legislators will have to take instructions from the Earth, from the children, from the future."

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/341554

New Mexico next in line to try for GMO labeling

While California's Proposition 37 ballot initiative to label GMO products seems to have failed, a State Senator in New Mexico is next to take the baton in the fight for labeling of genetically modified food products.

As was seen with Proposition 37, with Monsanto and Big Pesticide's excessively deep pockets used to fight the ballot initiative, New Mexico might have a fight on their hands too. 

 

However, State Senator Peter Wirth (D-Santa Fe) has proposed an amendment that, while it won’t be brought into debate until next year, he hopes will be approved and will ensure that NM consumers know exactly what is in their food. If Sen. Wirth’s amendment is approved, it will make it mandatory for genetically engineered food and items containing genetically modified, or genetically engineered (GE), products to be adequately and clearly labeled. 

 

 Sen. Wirth said, “The premise of this amendment is simple – New Mexicans deserve the right to know what’s in the food they are eating and feeding to their families.” “Labeling GE foods and feed will empower consumers with basic information to help them decide for themselves the types of food they want to buy.” Sen. Wirth is already making headway in terms of getting people to talk about his plan. 

 

 Food & Water Watch's New Mexico Organizer, Eleanor Bravo says of his amendment, “Giving foods with GE ingredients a label will only improve and expand independent health and scientific knowledge about genetic engineering.” 

 

“We need the research of genetic engineering to be expanded beyond the companies who own the seeds and stand to profit and labeling will allow this to happen,” she added. 

 

Sen. Wirth's proposal would state that companies that do not properly label GMO items will be subject to penalties under current rules pertaining to “mis-branding.”  

 

It will be a hard fight, as just a few weeks ago, Proposition 37 lost by a margin of 53 to 47 in favor of the No on Prop 37 campaign. People involved in the Yes on Prop 37 campaign feel that the last-minute defeat was caused by the multi-million dollar campaign launched by Monsanto, other pesticide companies, and junk food companies against labeling of GMOs. 

 

There is still a certain amount of concern over the results of the election, due to discrepancies in tallies shown on the California Secretary of State's website, but no real outcome has come of this.

 

Mark Kastel of The Cornucopia Institute said in a statement last month that “Genetically engineered foods found on market shelves have most commonly been altered in a lab to either be resistant to being sprayed by large amounts of toxic herbicides, or to produce, internally, their own insecticide.” 

 

“Corporations that produce both the genetically engineered crops and their designer pesticides, in concert with the multi-billion-dollar food manufacturers that use these ingredients, fought this measure tooth and nail, throwing $46 million at the effort that would have required food manufacturers to include informational labeling on GMO content on their packaging.”  

 

Related articles:

Proposition 37 — possible that election fraud made it fail  

Cheerios' Facebook page hijacked by anti-GMO protesters 

Pepsico's 'Naked Juice' to feel the pain after boycotting Prop 37 

Vandana Shiva interviewed on HARDtalk by the BBC about GMOs (video)

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/339653

'Yes on Proposition 37': Narrow loss, movement victory

Yesterday it was a close call in voting on Proposition 37, the ballot initiative for mandatory labeling of GMO products. While the Ca Right to Know campaign lost the battle for now, it is not conceding the war.

With 4,277,985 people voting "yes" (47.9%) and 4,835,045 people voting "no" (53.1%), it was very close. 

Bearing in mind that the opposition pushed a massive $45 million dollars to quash the bill, Yes on 37 did amazingly well with smaller, but far more honest, donations and endorsements.  

The following is the Right to Know Election Statement:

Yesterday, we showed that there is a food movement in the United States, and it is strong, vibrant and too powerful to stop. We always knew we were the underdogs, and the underdogs nearly took the day. Dirty money and dirty tactics may have won this skirmish, but they will not win the war.

Today, we are more than 4 million votes closer to knowing what’s in our food than when we started. This is a victory and a giant step forward. We are proud of our broad coalition of moms and dads, farmers, nurses, environmentalists, faith and labor leaders who did so much with so few resources to bring us to this point, and we will carry forward.

These results are also a reminder of the corrupting influence of huge multinational corporations on our electoral process. The world’s leading pesticide and junk food companies outspent Yes on 37 by more than 5 to 1, and beginning on October 1, spent about a million dollars a day on a hailstorm of false claims, misrepresentations and fear mongering over five simple words on a label. In the end, they spent enough money to hide the truth from the majority of voters. The food manufacturers are on the wrong side of history; they should not fight their customers, but join them.

Today is not the end of our campaign to secure our fundamental right to know what’s in our food. It is a strong beginning, and we thank the millions of Californians who stood with us. We are proud of our grassroots movement, our 10,000 hardworking volunteers, and the diverse coalition of health, faith, labor and consumer groups that stood with us. We will keep fighting for consumer choice, fairness and transparency in our food system. And we will prevail. 

To Victory! 

The California Right to Know Campaign 

Anyone wishing to learn more and join the fight, visit www.carighttoknow.org.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/336401#ixzz2BZh5671P

LA City Council on Election Day 2012