March Against Monsanto, Part II

Milt Harwick of GMO-Free PA, Lehigh Valley Chapter, talks about the DARK Bill at last Saturday's March Against Monsanto in Centre Square:

"There's a bill in Congress proposed by Mike Pompeo of Kansas, where he wants to make it illegal for states to require GMO labeling. And as part of that, there's 20 states that have legislation in some form for GE (genetically engineered) labeling because the Federal Government's not doing their job; they're really letting the people down. And so this is a counter attempt on the part of the Federal Government, which should be taking care of labeling to begin with, to kind of put the kabash on what states are trying to do. So we term it 'The DARK Act,' which is 'Deny Americans the Right to Know,' so it's an acronym for that. It would make state attempts to require GMO labeling illegal. Vermont's already passed a law; the Governor's signed it. So if that act passes, it would inundate Vermont's law. It would also stipulate that a company can't be sued for using the term 'natural' on their food if it has GMO ingredients. And it would also stipulate that the Federal Government has the exclusive rights for labeling related to GMO and that it's on a voluntary basis. We already have a voluntary basis; nobody's saying that you can't label your products that they have GMO ingredients. We already have that. But it's all an attempt to fight against the labeling requirements. But, there is a counter bill being proposed that was submitted March of this year by (Oregon Representative Peter) DeFazio that does the opposite, that says we have a right to know what's in our food. I'm just blown away by the fact that our government is putting poisons in our food. The World Health Organization, about two weeks ago, reported that glyphosate, the key ingredient in (the pesticide) RoundUp is a probable carcinogen. Glyphosate is a key ingredient in Monsanto's GMO RoundUp-resistant fruit. Do you know how that works? What they do is they modify the DNA in the seed and they actually insert glyphosate into the DNA, and it's a shotgun approach. It's not like they know exactly where it's going in the DNA; it's just blasted and it goes in there somewhere. As the plant grows--let's say it's corn--it produces leaves, it produces corn, it produces glyphosate. It's a chemical factory. We have to do something about it.