“If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.” — Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, quoted in the

Kansas City Star, March 7, 1994

“Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech
food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its
safety is the FDA’s job.” — Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, quoted in the

New York Times, October 25, 1998

For nearly two decades, Monsanto and corporate agribusiness have
exercised near-dictatorial control over American agriculture, aided and
abetted by indentured politicians and regulatory agencies, supermarket
chains, giant food processors, and the so-called “natural” products
industry.

Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination
of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the
tipping point. We’re fighting back.

This November, in a food fight that will largely determine the future
of what we eat and what we grow, Monsanto will face its greatest
challenge to date: a statewide citizens’ ballot initiative that will
give Californians the opportunity to vote for their right to know
whether the food they buy is contaminated with GMOs.

A growing corps of food, health, and environmental activists –
supported by the Millions against Monsanto and Occupy Monsanto
Movements, and consumers and farmers across the nation – are boldly
moving to implement mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods
in California through a grassroots-powered citizens ballot initiative
process that will bypass the agribusiness-dominated state legislature.
 If passed, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act
will require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and
food ingredients, and outlaw the routine industry practice of labeling
GMO-tainted foods as “natural.”

Passage of this initiative on November 6 will radically alter the
balance of power in the marketplace, enabling millions of consumers to
identify – and boycott – genetically engineered foods for the first time
since 1994, when Monsanto’s first unlabeled, genetically-engineered
dairy drug, recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), was forced on the
market, 

As Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director for the Organic Consumers
Association, pointed out at an Occupy Wall Street teach-in in Washington
DC in early April: “The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered
Food Act ballot initiative is a perfect example of how the grassroots
99% can mobilize to take back American democracy from the corporate
bullies, the 1%. By aggressively utilizing one of the last remaining
tools of direct democracy, the initiative process (available to voters
not only in California and 23 other states, but in thousands of cities
and counties across the nation), we can bypass corrupt politicians, make
our own laws, and force corporations like Monsanto to bend to the will
of the people, in this case granting us our fundamental right to know
what’s in our food.”