Out-of-State Kooks Impose Anti-Science Labeling on Oregon

Syringe CornEnvironmental radicals often tout the scientific consensus when it comes to the climate change issue. But when it comes to crops, they’re eerily silent.  The safety of genetically improved foods (GIFs) is well established. The American Medical Association, World Health Organization, Royal Society of London, and just about every other credible scientific organization have looked at the thousands of studies  on GIFs and the consensus is clear: GIFs are as safe as other, non-GIF foods.

In the wake of Vermont’s idiotic decision to place warning labels on foods containing GIFs, some of the fringiest faces in the organic movement are trying to replicate the effort in Oregon. Oregon Right to Know (ORK) is now collecting signatures to get labels on the ballot this November.

And who’s behind ORK? According to campaign finance records, the purportedly “grassroots” movement is the work of the king kooks of Big Organic: Joseph Mercola, Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, and the Organic Consumers Association.

Mercola.com Health Resources LLC, osteopath Joseph Mercola’s organic-goods business, has given ORK $350,000. Jospeh Mercola is a businessman who sells a myriad of questionable products that led the Food and Drug Administration to send him warning letters, stating that his “products are not generally recognized as safe and effective for” treating the conditions he claimed to cure.

ORK is also supported by Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, which gave the group $250,000. Each soap bottle contains 6,000 words in tiny print that tell the reader about Bronner’s “moral ABC of astronomy’s Eternal ALL-ONE-GOD-FAITH [that] unites the Human Race!” Bronner himself spoke of “uniting spaceship Earth,” and believed that Halley’s Comet was the Messiah. This ranting couldn’t be a more apt symbol for the credibility of the anti-GIF movement.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) may not be as kooky as Dr. Bronner’s or as snake-oily as Mercola, but OCA (and its political arm, the Organic Consumers Fund) show the true agenda of the “Just Label It!” crowd. In 1998, during an earlier concocted panic over GIFs, Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s Executive Director, wrote in OCA’s newsletter: “The challenge over the next months and years will be to see if organic consumers, environmental organizations, farm activists, churches, and public interest groups can build upon this tactical victory and begin making headway in the bigger battle — driving genetically engineered crops off the market all over the world.” Supporting what we’ve always said: the goal isn’t a label—it’s a ban.

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