by Karen Booker, NOFA-NH PP&A Committee Member

NOFA-NH’s (Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Hampshire) Public Policy & Advocacy Committee urges you to join us and act now to help us fight genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and the consumer’s right to know.

The Just Label It campaign has submitted a petition to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calling for mandatory labeling of GMOs, also referred to as genetically engineered (GE) foods. NOFA-NH has signed on as a partner of this petition, and we ask all our members to also lend their individual voices.

“We are asking the FDA to change a decade’s old and out-of-touch policy,” said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety and lead author of the petition. “Today’s consumers are more informed than ever, and they have a right to know about the foods they are purchasing and consuming. We want the FDA to require labeling on foods intentionally produced using genetic engineering.”

 Several recent surveys have shown that between 89 to 96 percent of the population here in the United States believes that GE foods should be labeled. Most other developing countries have mandatory labeling including the European Union, Japan, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, and China. No mandates require the FDA to label GE foods. Currently the FDA is considering a decision on approving the first genetically engineered animal, a salmon that grows twice as fast as normal. If approved, the FDA will also need to decide whether or not to label it. The Just Label It campaign was conceived by Organic Voices, led by national organic organizations and businesses including New Hampshire’s own Stonyfield Farm (which is on the board, advisory committee, and gave initial funding for the campaign).

Since the federal government isn’t doing anything about labeling, the Just Label It campaign is starting at the grassroots level to flood the FDA with comments from consumers to get mandatory labeling.

Visit the Just Label It campaign’s website at www.justlabelit.org, and click on the “Take Action” link. From here, you can quickly and easily send a pre-written letter to the FDA concerning the petition. However, your comments will hold more weight with the FDA and be counted more quickly if you revise the standard statement on the website to put your feelings in your own words. If you opt not to use the website to send your comments to the FDA, be sure to include the Docket # FDA-2011-P-0723-0001/CP in your letter so that your voice is heard. The campaign launched on October 4, 2011, and it had already logged 335,000 signatures by November 11. The campaign aims for 500,000 comments for the petition by January 15, 2012.

If you’re not sure if this is something that you want to do, consider the fact that it is estimated that between 60 to 70 percent of the processed foods available in the stores likely contain some GE material. The five major food crops that are most likely to be GE are corn (88 percent), soy (94 percent), cotton (90 percent), canola (more than 90 percent), and sugar from sugar beets (59 percent). (No sugar from cane is GE.) The foods that contain these five crops include but are not limited to cereals, crackers, cookies, frozen entrees, tortillas, pizza dough, salad dressing, chips, oils, soy milk, textured vegetable proteins, and lecithin.

If you are concerned about GE foods and whether you are eating them or not, be sure to go to the Just Label It website, www.justlabelit.org, read the information, watch the video and sign the petition. On the Partners page, you will see NOFA-NH and the many other organizations that have joined this campaign for a unified voice against GMOs.

Please also consider spreading the word to your customers, friends, and colleagues via email, newsletters, word of mouth, Facebook, and Twitter.

Help support local farmers by visiting www.nofanh.org.