With $45 million of false advertising, giant food corporations defeated California’s Proposition 37
SONOMA COUNTY, CA— A month before last fall’s elections, California Proposition 37 (requiring genetically modified food to be labeled as such) enjoyed a lead of more than 20 percentage points. Yet on election day it was defeated 53%-47%. How did this occur?
During the last month of the campaign, almost $45 million in advertising was dumped on the people of California to convince them they are better off not knowing what is in their food. It was spent by Monsanto, by Dow Chemical and Kellogg’s, by Pepisco and Nestles and many other companies that profit from genetically engineered food.
The campaign waged by the “No on 37” committee was full of lies. They said if Prop. 37 passed the cost of food for the consumer would increase by almost $500 per year. This came from a study funded by the committee itself, and it contradicts the experience of the more than 60 countries that currently require GMO-food labeling.
They also lied about the credentials of their spokespeople and claimed newspapers supported them that did not. They lied about “trial lawyers” being behind the proposition, when in fact the law was written to discourage lawsuits.
They even sent out a mailer implying the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged a no vote on 37, using the FDA logo beside a statement the FDA denied making — not only a lie but a serious violation of federal election laws.
Hundreds of thousands of Californians worked to get Prop. 37 on the ballot and inform their fellow citizens about it. But these huge transnational corporations trampled all over the work they had done, engulfing California in a blizzard of lies.
They were able to do this because, in a number of rulings culminating in the 2010 decision known as “Citizens United,” the Supreme Court has slowly transferred the rights of human beings to corporate entities and given them the power to control our political system in ways that make a mockery of the notion that we are a democracy.
The Court has ruled, in effect, that “money is speech,” allowing corporations and the wealthy to buy our elections.
Combine the “rights” of human beings with the privileges given corporations, and the inevitable outcome is corporate rule on a global scale, the destruction of the planetary environment, and an increase in the concentration of wealth that makes misery inevitable for the vast majority of the population of the earth.
But today we have an historic opportunity to say “enough” and strike at the root of the evil facing us. We can take back our country — and our planet — from the corporations that have taken over the world. This is what the moment demands. Now is not the time for half measures and compromises. It is time for us to take our stand and stand together as human beings. If we do this, the future can be ours.
Abraham Entin is the founder of Move to Amend Sonoma County (Calif.) and is a frequent spokesperson for the organization.
