For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Genetic Engineering page and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

The following is a speech delivered Aug. 2, 2013 at the Justice Begins with Seeds Conference in Seattle, Washington:

Nine out of 10 of us want to know where Monsanto’s been hiding the GMOs in our food and a most of us wouldn’t eat those GMOs if we knew where they were.

If everything in this country were decided democratically, most of the food we eat would be non-GMO and Monsanto would be driven out of business.

We don’t have a problem convincing people we’re right, we have a problem with our democracy when we can’t get the politicians to pass the laws that the majority of us want.

But no government, no matter how corrupted by corporate money, will be able to stop us when we get the nine out of 10 people who agree with us to take action with us. And that’s what’s starting to happen.

Monsanto knows that democracy doesn’t work for them, so they’re not taking any chances with it. They’ll fight us at the local and state level when they have to, but when they get a chance, they’re going to take us to a place far away from the voters where it’s hard to hear their voices and where money talks very loudly: Congress.

This is what they did when the Center for Food Safety’s lawsuits started having an effect. Monsanto got their main man in Congress, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), to slip the Monsanto Protection Act into a spending bill that Congress had to pass to avoid a government shut-down. It was stuck in the bill at the last minute and it didn’t get a vote, but it became law. 

We’re seeing the same thing now with the King Amendment. Republican Congressman Steve King from Iowa got the House to include an amendment to the Farm Bill that says no state can put any condition on the manufacture or production of any agricultural product in interstate commerce. The debate on the King Amendment in Congress has focused on Prop 2, a ballot initiative passed by the voters of California that says farm animals should have enough room to spread their limbs and turn around. That’s why we’re calling it the Animal Cruelty Protection Act, but I was told by Hill staffers that Rep. King actually came up with this idea because of state laws regulating ethanol. The law is so broadly written that it could apply to anything, animal welfare laws, ethanol regulations, and certainly the laws we’re passing to regulate GMOs.