Hillary Clinton is Just Plain Wrong on GMOs

[cascadiance]

160. There is a difference where GMO foods affect our environment at large...

... whereas medications affect those that it is given to (and if perhaps at times science isn't careful perhaps their offspring too).

The reason why Europe and other countries are banning it is because of the precautionary principle, that we've seem to lose sight of with our increasingly "Libertarian" approach of letting the courts decide damages after the fact when something has been harmed by the actions of corporations, etc. instead of ensuring that we don't allow them to do something that can permanently damage people or our environment beyond simple repair and say it can be fixed later by providing financial disincentives to continue that damaging practice after the damage (perhaps catastrophic damage) has already been done. Should we just let the nuclear power industry do anything and say well, maybe later after we've had a nuclear accident, we can assess damage and costs and if it is too big a price, then companies will stop manufacturing power that way? Should we have another Fukushima or Chernobyl happen here before we do anything. There's a reason why we have the Price Anderson act (our government!) provide financial support in event of tragedy since no insurance companies are stupid enough to try and offer private industry liability insurance themselves.

Another case of precautionary principle the rest of the world is employing where we aren't is in the case of mad cow disease. Though we now ban the feeding of cow parts to other cows to prevent it from happening, we don't ban the feeding of pork, chicken, or other animal parts to the cows, and cow parts back to the chickens and pigs too. Europeans and Japanese are concerned that there is research that shows that even though pigs and chickens themselves don't get mad cow disease, they can carry it, and therefore, by feeding parts between different animals, they can still keep the disease spreading. They ban all of the feeding of animal parts to other animals to prevent this, where we don't. We always let corporate America dictate the rules of our "regulatory oversight".

India is an "experiment"? It really has absolutely FAILED then! Indian farmers hate it to the point of having epidemic levels of suicides as a result of their using GMO seeds for farming instead of their old traditional methods.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-seeds-of-suicide-how-monsanto-destroys-farming/5329947

We're at a critical time to get GMO labeling where it should be so that traditional farmers that don't want to have their crops INFECTED by the DNA of these unnaturally raised crops don't have to pay extra to ensure that their products are clean of it so that they can have organic labeling themselves for consumers that want choices free of this crap. They are being asked to pick up the tab for the costs of GMO pollution in our environment and the marketplace that these big companies want to externalize on to them.

Vermont was one of the first states to pass through their legislature GMO labeling laws and they're under legal assault with tons of lawsuits from the likes of Monsanto.

Oregon wants to be the first state (or perhaps one of a few this fall) to pass GMO labeling laws through a ballot initiative this fall, and this initiative is getting endorsed by the Democratic Party amongst many other players here. Just the last week or so, suddenly big money is being spent by the GMO industry to try and shut this down and spread a lot of disinformation like labeling will increase food costs, when it is the GMO industry that has in effect raised our costs of getting GMO-free "organic food" that we didn't have to endure earlier when we didn't have GMO pollution to worry about. They are already labeling their foods for export to other countries that require them to have these foods labeled, so how much more can it cost to use the same supply chain management and oversight that they use for those exports to sell these same products here in states with labeling laws?

http://www.blueoregon.com/2014/08/myth-gmo-labels-increasing-food-prices/

Another reason why Oregon is a big target for them now is that just in the Spring in primary season, one of the big victories in this state was when two Oregon counties, not necessarily "liberal" hotbed counties like those in Portland, passed local propositions by voters to ban GMO farming in those counties. These counties happen to be also in the heart of where a big chunk of the world organic seeds are grown and harvested here too, so local farmers were heavy to support these propositions. GMO companies I think sense that this proposition could get more bipartisan support here in this state than in other states.