From the Dr. Mercola Library
How One Grandmother’s Conviction Led to a Consumer Revolution
The California Right to Know grassroots campaign was initiated by Pamm Larry, a grandmother and former midwife and organic farmer from the small town of Chico in northern California. She had no formal training, no major resources, no connections, and no previous political experience. But what she did have was passion—for healthful food, for the truth, and for doing the right thing. In this interview, she shares her inspiring and empowering journey.
“I have always cared about nutrition, whole foods, and unadulterated foods,” Pamm says. “I mean they just taste better… They’re more nutritious… Genetically engineered foods started coming on my radar about eight or nine years ago… The more I learned, the more horrified I got, wondering what kind of a planet I was leaving my grandchildren.
What were we doing? What were we not doing as people?
Like everybody else that I have talked to on the streets, we all feel pretty powerless, because here we’ve got this huge multinational corporation; a conglomerate—it’s not just one company. It’s a number of them. But they seem to be kind of in cahoots with our government. In the fall of 2010, I got actually very depressed about this… The Organic Consumers Association came out with their Truth-in-Labeling campaign. I immediately wrote to them [offering to volunteer]… But it just wasn’t enough for me. I was increasingly depressed, crying a lot…
[Then] it hit me, just like that. I literally sat up and it was like, ‘Okay, then. It’s your job from now until November of 2012 to do everything you possibly can to just get something on the ballot, because nobody is doing this for us… Nothing is working. People are working really hard, but we the people, have got to stand up and take over.’ My depression went away… I have been angry, I have been frustrated, I have been enraged since then, but I have not been depressed one second!”
At this point, volunteers and staff from the California Right to Know Campaign have submitted nearly one million signed petitions from registered voters across the state of California to county officials, to place Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act on the Ballot for November 6. Now, the campaign is in urgent need of funds—to counteract the propaganda put out by Monsanto, and to educate millions of registered California voters to show up at the voting booths and vote “Yes” for the Right to Know Act.
“We all have this communal belief that there’s nothing that we can do, because we aren’t up there in the high powers. We don’t have megabucks. We don’t have this. We don’t have that. We believe this lie, so it gets perpetuated. If everybody says, “No, this can’t happen,” whether you’re an individual, a business, or a nonprofit organization, if you all decide that “this isn’t going to work,” then it’s not. My new question is: What happens if we all just decide to say yes?” Pamm says.
Joining Forces
The Organic Consumers Association was the first organization to get involved, although Ronnie Cummins was initially a bit skeptical. The Organic Consumers had worked to do the same back in 2004, but could not raise the funds to complete the task of labeling genetically engineered foods.
“We had gotten an email from Pamm Larry, who’s starting this new group. We said, “Well, the odds are pretty low that we can raise the millions of dollars that we need to win the ballot initiative in California.” However, people on the street are ready to do it, especially the moms and grandmothers. So, we said, “Let’s tell our network in California… Let’s tell them about LabelGMOs.org, and let’s see if they volunteer and get in contact with Pamm…” We did, and it caught on.”
Next, they decided to bring it to the attention of the organic industry at a national meeting, as well as other non-profit organizations and public interest groups. Like Cummins, a lot of the leadership in the organic industry and the nonprofit world were skeptical at first.
“They said, “Well, this is a David versus Goliath type of thing. What makes you think that grassroots action can defeat the most powerful combination of corporations in California, biotech and corporate agribusiness?” Ronnie says.
“But gradually, over time, a number of organic companies stood up, like Nature’s Path, Eden Foods, and Lundberg Family Farms. Then the decisive factor was we said, “There are a hundred million people in the United States who are interested in natural medicine and who are reading websites like Mercola.com and others. If we can get the alternative food and farming movement together with the alternative health movement, this combination can create a massive movement.”
And that’s exactly where we are today. We’re all tired of the biotech bullies dictating the rules and deciding whether we have the right to know what we’re eating or not. We’re all tired of the industry simply bribing their way through the political landscape in an effort to create a monopoly on food that threatens the health and welfare of people everywhere. If you’re sick and tired of it too, then I urge you to take a stand, and participate in any way you can.
Why the Biotech Industry is so Afraid of Labeling
As Ronnie says, it’s quite clear that the biotech industry knew the only way their genetically engineered foods would ever get put to use is if they could keep consumers in the dark.
“There’s not a ban on genetically engineered foods and crops, for the most part, in the European Union,” Ronnie explains. “What there is, though, is a requirement for labeling.
You’ll see that companies like McDonald’s, for example, are GMO-free in the European Union. You know, Wal-Mart subsidiaries are GMO-free in the European Union. Now, why is this? Is it because they have a bad conscience about force-feeding people genetically engineered food in Europe, but they don’t have a bad conscience about doing that in the United States? No. It’s because in the European Union, they can no longer conceal from the public that they were pushing these controversial, likely-hazardous foods on them.
In the United States, they have managed to squelch democracy now for 20 years. We now have an opportunity in California to break this control that the biotech industry has over what we’re eating. We have an opportunity for consumers to regain their right to know how their food was produced.
… Fifty countries across the world required labeling, but the biggest producer of genetically engineered foods, and the most powerful nation in the world, will not. So, we’re going to turn the tables in California.”
Polls show that 80 to 90 percent of the public want genetically engineered foods to be labeled. Most people do want to be able to read the label and determine whether or not it contains something they want, or don’t want, to eat.
“It doesn’t matter if Monsanto and their allies spend 50 billion dollars lying to people, saying, “It’s going to raise your grocery bills, it’s an undue burden on California farmers, and the Feds should be the one doing this.” We’re going to beat them. This is going to be – I believe – a watershed for democracy in this country,” Ronnie says.
Photo by Sally Daugherty
