Oxnard Rotary- Both Sides of the Argument, Prop 37

 

THANKS

I’d like to thank John Clay and all of you in the Oxnard Rotary for inviting us to participate in this important voter education forum. Oxnard was built around agriculture, and our county is one of the top food producers in the U.S. The outcome of this proposition will affect our citizens in many ways, both economically and in terms of our health.

 

INTRO

I’m no professional public speaker. But my wife Jan and I own a second-generation family business here in Ventura, and what we do makes us uniquely qualified to speak on behalf of Proposition 37.

So please bear with me and I promise to give you plenty of reasons to seriously consider voting for this important proposition.

 

Since 1950, Jan’s family has owned what is known as an insectary. We grow beneficial insects, so farmers can have non-toxic alternatives to protect their crops. Jan and I have been working together since 1997, and today we sell beneficial insects and other biological pest management products in the US and around the world.

 

We also work very hard to conduct our lives in ways that have minimal negative impact on our environment. We have an extensive solar heat and electrical system, and a waste water reclamation system for both our home and our business. We grow much of our own food, and use absolutely no toxic pesticides or herbicides on our property.

 

My concern for the potential problems of genetically modifying our plants and animals began 20 years ago. With a degree in Biology from Indiana University, and post grad courses in Biochemistry, I knew that splicing new properties into plants and animals is an imprecise science at best. Add one thing, and six other unintended changes happen. These unintended mutations can cause poisons to be created in the cells that can give us allergies or make us susceptible to disease.

 

Here’s a very scary example of just one GMO good idea gone bad. There are crops that have been engineered to be tolerant to the herbicide RoundUp.

 

Designing food to be tolerant to an herbicide that kills weeds is shaky science to begin with, unless you sell RoundUp. However, the problem lies in the unintended effects. RoundUp-Ready plants absorb RoundUp instead of dying, so our food ends up with RoundUp in it. The genes that make the plants RoundUp Ready then transfer to bacteria in our own gut, and our gut produces the same proteins that are in the RoundUp ready crops. Unfortunately, these proteins resemble known allergens, so our own bodies are now producing substances that create allergic responses in us!

 

These allergens are now being produced by our own bodies! Yet these GMO crops are still on the market, with many more about to be released!

This one example is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

That is why Jan, I and thousands of other concerned California citizens raised almost a million signatures in order to get Prop 37 onto the ballot.

 

If you remember nothing else of my presentation, remember this:

GMO’s are already being shown to be linked to many human health problems, and YOU HAVE THE RIGHT to know which of your foods contain them, so you can protect yourself and your family.

If we don’t label them now, then they’ll be too hard to track later.

If they can't be tracked, it will be harder to hold the responsible company accountable.

That is why Biotech and Big Food are spending over $35 million to try to defeat this initiative.

In the business world, when we’ve created something and patented it, isn’t it normal to broadcast that our product is in what we sell? Doesn't INTEL want you to know that there's "INTEL INSIDE"?

So why don’t they want us to know about the GMOs inside?

 

FACTS & MYTHS

First of all – you have to consider who is opposing Prop 37. They are the pesticide companies with Monsanto and Dupont Chemical being the biggest donors followed by BASF, Bayer, Dow and Syngenta amounting to over $20 million. The Big Food companies starting with Pepsico, Nestle, CocaCola, Conagra, and General Mills and others bring the current total to $35 million. Many of you may remember when Monsanto and Dow Chemical insisted that Agent Orange and DDT were safe.

 

Here’s the truth:

About grocery prices. There is not one shred of independent evidence that they will go up with Prop 37. In a cost assessment done by law professor Joanna Shepherd-Bailey, she forecasts a one time only cost of $1.27 per household for companies to label the food. Europe never saw an increase in prices, and neither will we.

 

About the Exemptions written into Prop 37. They are there for legal and practical reasons. This bill is simple - it requires labeling of the foods we eat most often - foods at the grocery store. Do you think Monsanto & Coca-Cola would be suddenly supportive of our Right to Know if the measure had fewer exemptions?

 

About frivolous lawsuits. Prop 37 offers no incentives for lawsuits. They are only to achieve truth in labeling. It's like a fix-it ticket. The retailer has 30 days to get a label on the goods or take it off the shelf. There is no provision in this law to sue for damages. What's more, American food manufacturers already label our food. They already do it honestly and they are already labeling GMOs for foreign markets. There is no reason to believe they won’t obey this simple law, so there is no reason to believe there will be a slew of lawsuits.

  • About the burden on retailers and farmers. Recordkeeping and occasional product quality issues are a part of doing business. The desire for customer satisfaction drives truth in labeling all the way up the supply chain from the farmer to the retailer.

About claims that GMO foods are tested: The FDA does not require safety tests. A growing body of peer-reviewed studies links GMOs to allergies, organ damage, and other health problems, and the only peer-reviewed, long-term safety study of Monsanto’s GMO corn links it to mammary tumors, kidney and liver problems, and premature death. Even the American Medical Association and World Health Organization have asked for mandatory safety studies.

 

REASONS TO WANT TO KNOW

Last Monday night at Ventura College, Dr. Robyn Bernhoft, Medical Director at the Bernhoft Center for Advanced Medicine in Ojai , gave a presentation about health risks of GMOs. He is a fellow of the Academy of Environmental Medicine, the organization that linked asbestos to cancer and lead to brain damage.

 

The doctor provided insights about why gastrointestinal and autoimmune diseases have been following the upward curve of the spread of GMOs in the American diet. But first you should know something about another GMO crop, Bt corn. In this case, the engineers shoot the Bt gene from a bacterium that makes a toxin for killing caterpillars. The mode of action of the toxin makes HOLES in the caterpillar's gut that causes death.

 

Now, back to the doctor's talk. He said, "The reason people get autoimmunity, or allergies, or asthma, frequently, is gut problems. The Animals fed GMO corn and soy all have problems with their gut. They have breakdown in gut integrity, they have food leaking into their bloodstream, they have thickening of the lining of their gut that looks to some pathologists like precancerous lesions. When humans get breakdown of the gut integrity they start absorbing partially digested food into their bloodstream. The immune system has to deal with that... This is where the tremendous rise in allergies comes from." He also linked GMOs to the dramatic rise in autism.

 

Dr. Bernhoft is just one of an increasing number of doctors who notice that when they take people with autoimmunity off of GMO foods, he says, "Often in a couple of months the autoimmunity goes away or it gets a lot better.…and when you put them back on the GMO food the problems come back." Quite a few of these doctors are interviewed in the new documentary Genetic Roulette available online at geneticroulettemovie.com.

 

Remember the Bt toxin and the holes in the caterpillar gut? Well, the Bt that is spliced into corn to kill caterpillars does not get destroyed in our digestive system, like we were promised by Monsanto and our FDA. In a human study done in Canada, the Bt toxin showed up in 93% of pregnant women and 80% of their babies umbilical cords. We see study after study showing various problems and yet a GMO food producer does not even have to notify the FDA when bringing a new GMO product to market.

 

Ironically, as an insectary, we have long had natural programs that completely eliminate the need for Bt crops. We have four natural, biological products to control caterpillars. Our customers don't need genetic engineering to produce high yields of quality crops. Prop 37 is about our fundamental right to know what is in our food so we can choose food that is grown with our family's health and safety in mind.

 

GMO crops are said to have a lot of promise, but they have not lived up to that promise. GMO crops have failed, are failing and biotech companies have failed to convince consumers that we want to eat food that is registered as a pesticide or contains an herbicide.

 

THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Over ninety percent of consumers polled say they want GMO food labeled. A labeling bill has been introduced into the US Congress every year for twelve years. During the same period biotech lobbyists, spent over a half billion dollars on congressional campaigns and every bill was quickly killed in committee.

 

US & CANADA LAG BEHIND 60 OTHER NATIONS

Labeling GMOs in food is standard procedure in 61 countries including Europe, Japan, and even Russia and China. People in 15 other states are also working on ballot propositions or legislation to label GMOs.

 

ETHICS OF EXPERIMENTING ON SOCIETY AT LARGE WITHOUT THEIR CONSENT

In science, when humans are used as test subjects, medical ethics require informed consent. Yet for fifteen years Americans have been fed GMO foods without being notified and without their consent. People have a moral right to be informed before they become ‘guinea pigs’ for the food industry.

 

This is not a ban on GMOs, and it isn’t saying whether genetic engineering is good or bad. It’s simply saying let’s label these foods. Americans should not be unwitting lab rats.

 

CONCLUSION

The opposition to Prop 37 has cited costs of labeling GMO’s and the cost of possible litigation. In dozens of countries the labeling laws were implemented minimal increase in cost. There has been no evidence of harm to farmers or retailers. This allegation has proven to be unfounded.

 

The opposition has said that Prop 37 is vague or poorly written, or that it isn’t comprehensive enough. I believe it is simple and clear. However, I agree that it doesn't go far enough. I would love to see GMO’s banned until all of the long-term studies are completed as recommended by the AMA and the AAEM. The evidence of harm is too widespread, and existing studies on them are too few.

 

I think this is a brilliant law, BUT this isn't really about writing perfect laws. It’s about your health. It’s about your family’s health. It’s about the safety of our food supply for a thousand generations to come.

 

The opposition brings up the lie that James Wheaton, a trial lawyer, wrote the initiative. The primary author of the initiative was a man named Joe Sandler, who is a food safety lawyer from Washington DC. James Wheaton was brought in at the end of the process to be the hired proponent as that is a big job in and of itself and he had knowledge and experience in it. He was not involved in the crafting of the law.

 

It was crafted for a unique situation for a state that has no money, and a food system in crisis. It takes into account the current state budget, depressed economy, grocers, farmers and consumer groups. It is well written and efficient.

 

It’s all about YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT’S IN YOUR FOOD!

Remember mercury, asbestos, radium, lead, Vioxx, DDT, tobacco. All of these were originally purported to be safe and found their way into our food, our medicines and our homes, only to create terrible health problems down the road.

 

Vote Yes on 37. You deserve to know if GMO’s are in the food you buy.