Proposition 37 Defeated, Implications

    California's Proposition 37 was defeated at the ballot box. The proposition would have required that foods containing genetically modified ingredients be labelled as such. Similar laws exist in 40 countries. An assortment of powerful industrial giants spend one million dollars a day to defeat the initiative. Major opponents of the measure in order of expenditure included Monsanto (over 7 million), E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Co. (about 5 million), Pepsico, Inc. (over 2 million), Basf Plant Science, Bayer Cropscience, Dow Agrosciences, Syngenta Corporation (2 million), Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola North America, Nestle USA, Inc., Conagra Foods, General Mills (over 1 million) and Kellogg Company, Smithfield Foods, Inc., Campbell Soup, H.J. Heinz, and Del Monte Foods (over 500,000. Other contributors included Hershey, Smucker, Ocean Spray Cranberries, Mars, Hormel and Unilever. Total expenditures were probably over 50 million dollars. Supporters of the proposition spent about one tenth as much.
    The defeat of this measure assures that California citizens will remain blissfully unaware of the GMO laden foods they are consuming. A survey of the food and beverage vendors listed above should provide a clue to how widespread GMO ingredients are in the food supply.
     The GMO industry has been quick to follow up on their victory. Organic growers and food safety advocates on November 20 condemned an advisory report to the Agriculture Department which would require farmers of conventional and organic crops to bear the cost of preventing contamination from GMO varieties by purchasing insurance. The proposal allows producers of genetically modified crops to abdicate responsibililty for any contamination resulting from their farming practices.