The Right2Know March is going to kick off in New York City on October 1, 2011 and will continue straight down the East Cost before ending in Washington, D.C. at the White House.
The goal of the marchers is to achieve GMO labeling standards in the US – they believe that they, and all of us as consumers, have the right to know if the food we consume has been made with genetically modified organisms. In many industrial and developing countries, GMOs are prohibited as their safety has not been proved. In some other countries that allow GMOs labeling requirements are in place to inform consumers about the foods and produce they are about to purchase. In the U.S., on the other hand, GMOs are widely used but food products need not be labeled to indicate that they contain GMOs. Pursuant to certain estimates, 80-percent of the foods in U.S. grocery stores contain GMO ingredients.
Proponents of GMO crops and food products suggest that they are safe, nutritious, and benefit the environment by reducing the use of herbicides and pesticides. According to the Non-GMO Project, on the other hand, ample evidence suggest that GMOs are, in fact, far from safe and nutritious as they:
* can be toxic, allergenic or less nutritious than their natural counterparts
* can disrupt the ecosystem, damage wild plant and animal populations and harm biodiversity
* increase chemical inputs (pesticides, herbicides) over the long term
* deliver yields that are no better, and often worse, than conventional crops
* are laboratory-made and, once released, harmful GMOs cannot be recalled from the environment.
With the long term effects of GMOs being unclear, it is not a surprise that people want the right to decide for themselves what types of foods they consume and feed to their families. So far, biotech companies and others with financial interest in GMOs have successfully lobbied Congress against the labeling of GMO foods. The goal of the Right2Know March is to change that, to give consumers the right to know and the right to choose.
How to sign up for any part of the March? Sign up here.
Tags: genetically engineered foods, genetically modified organism, GMO
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 10:25 pm and is filed under General Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
0 comments:
Post a Comment