Where are GMOs found? Although the list is changing all the time, GMOs are currently labeled, extremely restricted, or banned in The European Union (United Kingdom, Norway, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Ireland. They are also banned in Australia (but that’s shifting now due to pressure from NuFarm/Monsanto, and the Aussies are not happy) and New Zealand. Elsewhere in the world, GMOs are similarly restricted or banned in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria, Poland, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, China, Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Fiji, Sri Lanka, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. In Canada the debate is still underway: government scientists concerned about human health impacts complained that they were being pressured to approve the GMO milk hormone, which is injected into cows to increase milk supply. They testified that the drug maker, Monsanto, offered them a bribe of over $1 million to approve it. They also reported that their research study documents were stolen from a locked file cabinet in a government office. Here in the United States (where several of our largest corporations have a vested financial interest in GMOs), the proliferation of misinformation has resulted in very little progress: Maryland has banned genetically engineered fish; North Dakota and Montana filed bans on genetically engineered wheat; Burlington, Vermont declared a moratorium on genetically engineered food; Boulder, Colorado banned genetically engineered crops; the California counties of Mendocino, Trinity and Marin and the San Juan county of Washington state have all successfully banned GM crops. As of 2013, after the FDA denied more than 1 million signatures in a national petition to label GMOs, more than two dozen states have begun working on state-wide labeling measures. Maine, Connecticut and Vermont are several steps down the approval process for labeling; Washington state will vote on labeling in November 2013, and other states are taking steps as well. But state efforts have not come without a price: Monsanto sued Vermont and Connecticut’s GMO labeling measures into silence for over a year, and with the help of multiple large U.S. food manufacturers who rely on genetically engineered corn and soy, spent almost $46 million to confuse the California voters into (narrowly) defeating a GMO labeling proposition in November 2012. And there’s no guarantee state efforts will be upheld: the U.S. Senate recently decided that it does not want to give states the authority to tell people if they are eating genetically modified food with a 71 against 27 vote. #GMO
Posted on: Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:35:40 +0000
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