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SANTA CRUZ – Vickie Bergquist has never taken part in a protest – until now.

Bergquist, 50, of Boulder Creek, and her daughter, Tarah Locke, 25, of Santa Cruz, will lead a march for GMO-Free Santa Cruz, from the Santa Cruz Town Clock at 1 p.m. Sunday to raise awareness of genetically modified foods and demand they be labeled.

“I have such a passion about this,” said Bergquist. “We feel like it’s everyone’s right to know.”

The march coincides with World Food Day, started in 1981 to increase action to alleviate hunger, and a march in front of the White House planned by the Non-GMO Project, a nonprofit with 49,000 fans on Facebook.

Bergquist began looking closely at what her family was eating after her husband was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease.

She learned that corn and soybean seed in the U.S. have been genetically modified to increase yields by developing herbicide tolerance and resistance to insects.

Farmers have embraced these new varieties, which commercially introduced in 1996.

Genetically engineered crops represent 94 percent of soybean seed, 88 percent of the corn and 73 percent of the cotton planted, according to the U.S. National Agricultural Statistical Service.

Bergquist has changed her cooking and eating habits. So has her daughter, who discovered she was intolerant of dairy foods.