Label GMOs Texas: grassroots campaign for food transparency launched in the Lone Star State

Monday, August 11, 2014
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: GMO labeling, Texas, grassroots campaign

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(NaturalNews) A grassroots campaign to require honest GMO labeling on food products has been launched in Texas. Called "Label GMOs Texas," the campaign follows in the footsteps of the highly successful Vermont campaign which achieved victory earlier this year.

The Facebook page for the Texas campaign is available here.

A petition demanding the labeling of GMOs in Texas has also been launched here.

People interested in joining the campaign can email [email protected] and request to be added to the announcement list. Natural News has been informed by the campaign organizers that action instructions will be emailed out within roughly two weeks.

The fundamental human right to know what we are eating

Like nearly all informed Americans, Natural News believes that food consumers have a fundamental human right to know what they are buying and eating. The right for consumers to know the ingredients of foods, the country of origin, the organic status and the GMO status of foods they buy is impossible to deny.

Those who oppose GMO labeling do so as a matter of willful deception: they do not want consumers to realize they're buying artificially engineered foods containing deadly pesticides. The entire effort put on by the biotech industry and deceptive food companies to block GMO labeling is one of the most insidious and evil-minded campaigns in the history of agriculture. Food democracy and transparency is an abhorrent idea to these companies, because they are fully aware that their profits are largely derived from tricking consumers into buying something they would much rather avoid if they had an informed choice.

That's why the biotech industry and processed food manufacturers have only managed to defeat state labeling laws through the use of blatantly illegal money laundering tactics, highly deceptive disinfo campaigns and the contracting of "hired gun" scientists to confuse and misinform the public about GMO labeling.

In the history of dirty campaign tactics, nobody has a more disgusting track record of lies and deceptions than the biotech industry and the processed food manufacturers who profit from GMOs. When they claim their campaigns are backed by "science," what they really mean is "corporate-funded junk science" designed to trick the public and protect corporate profits. This can only be achieved through an elaborate campaign of deception which continues to this day.

Will Texans demand honest food labeling?

Texas is a fiercely independent state, which is one of the reasons why I like being a Texan so much. The state is filled with high-integrity, hard-working people who believe in honesty, morality and transparency.

Many Texans, however, don't yet fully understand how GMOs are poisoning their children, poisoning their farms and compromising their future. Parents who are feeding their children corn flakes don't yet realize that every flake of that cereal contains a poison which was engineered into the corn.

The Texas A&M "chemical agriculture" approach is deeply embedded into Texas culture. Many farmers think nothing of spraying 100 acres of grass with Roundup in order to re-seed the land with Coastal (high-protein forage grass for cattle). It doesn't help, either, that Texas A&M is funded in part by Monsanto. So we can all expect fierce resistance from Texas A&M "scientists" who the industry will no doubt pay off and roll out in front of the press to spread calculated lies about GMO labeling. (It worked for them in California, so why not spread the same lies in Texas?)

The biotech industry pulls all sorts of stunts to deceive the public about GMO labeling. For example, in the California campaign they dreamed up fake organizations with official sounding names like (for example) the "California State Nurses Association" and then mailed postcards to every household with quotes from "nurses" who claimed GMO labeling would be horrible. They pull these same tricks with other fictitious organizations, too.

This same industry got caught money laundering in Washington State, illegally funneling millions of dollars into the campaign to defeat GMO labeling there. The GMA, in fact, just lost a court battle over its money laundering activities. There is nothing this industry won't do to keep consumers in the dark and keep pushing its poison. This includes willfully breaking the law.

Austin will be pivotal in the battle for GMO labeling in Texas

The Austin crowd is well ahead of the curve when it comes to recognizing the dangers of chemical agriculture and hidden poisons in genetically modified corn. If GMO labeling ever becomes law in Texas, it will be primarily due to grassroots efforts among the residents of Austin (and Dallas).

To most Texans, Austin is viewed with a tremendous amount of suspicion. Most of Texas is rural country, where people like myself live on ranches of various sizes, taking care of animals, keeping our rifles sighted in and our tractors running. To most rural Texans, Austin is seen as leaning too far to the left, with an almost socialism slant. So there will be some suspicion among rural Texans about anything that appears to have originated in Austin.

That's why this GMO labeling battle will be so interesting to watch. It's really a clash of cultures in Texas. I'm one of the few who spans those cultures, being both pro Second Amendment and simultaneously in favor of chemical-free agriculture and honest food labeling. Most people are squarely in one camp or the other, with very little cross-over, so it's not difficult to see how the issue of GMO labeling in Texas will meet resistance. Democratic lawmakers will tend to be in favor of it, while Republicans will likely tend to oppose it.

The Biblical argument: GMOs seen as a violation of God and nature

There's also a strong argument of GMO opposition among the many Christians in Texas who honor God and regularly attend church. There's no more horrifying example of violating God's will than taking a seed which once provided nourishment and engineering it to produce a toxic poison. The very idea that a corporation could patent and own food crop seeds while denying farmers the ability to save those seeds for the next growing season is clearly seen as a violation of Biblical principles and natural law. Anyone who truly follows Christian principles would, almost by definition, be horrified at the truth about GMOs if they came to understand what's really happening.

There is tremendous evil to be identified and rooted out in the biotech industry which is filled with scientists who are almost universally anti-God atheists who don't believe in the soul, morality or spiritual judgment. The "anti-God" aspects of GMOs and the biotech industry could really be brought to light in a grassroots campaign across rural Texas.

The Alex Jones factor

There's also an interesting Alex Jones factor in any Texas GMO labeling campaign. Jones is of course strongly conservative on issues like the Second Amendment, liberty, the Bill of Rights and so on. At the same time, he's very well informed about the corporate poisoning of America and the truth about GMOs, fluoride, aspartame and so on.

Jones has a very large following in Texas, and his daily radio show (which I previously guest hosted several times) reaches millions around the world. Through his influence, Jones has the ability to rally a large number of conservative Texans to the cause of GMO labeling, if he so chooses. Then again, he's also quite busy covering far more serious current events such as the possibility of war with Russia, the invasion of Texas through its open southern border, the federal attempt to disarm all Americans, and so on. Although I don't speak for him, Jones may decide that GMO labeling simply isn't that big of a priority considering the wholesale assault on America being staged from the White House.

Texas is also home to Glenn Beck, a wildly popular conservative radio commentator whose actions often confound liberty-loving Texans. For example, Beck surprised a lot of people with his "open arms" approach to welcoming illegal aliens crossing the border rather than calling for the borders to be immediately closed and secured. Then again, on a lot of other issues, Beck is very much liberty-minded and argues strongly for a return to constitutional principles.

On the issue of GMO labeling, I have no idea where Beck might fall on the spectrum of support vs. opposition. Clearly agriculture and nutrition is not his area of focus, so he may not comment on it at all. For Beck, commenting on GMOs is a lose-lose proposition. If he comes out in opposition to GMO labeling, his listener base will aggressively accuse him of colluding with Monsanto. If he comes out in favor of GMO labeling, he might offend some of his more "pro business" conservative allies and show sponsors. Beck's best strategy on this is to avoid talking about GMO labeling altogether.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting lineup: Texas has the Health Ranger, Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Ron Paul and many other freedom-loving celebrities, many of whom fully recognize the inherent evil of GMOs and the biotech industry. On the other hand, Texas also has Texas A&M, which is steeped in chemical agriculture and full of "scientists" who are fully capable of going on television and swearing with a straight face, "These chemicals are harmless." (That's the same thing they said about Thalidomide, Agent Orange, DDT and lots of other deadly chemicals, by the way.)

How it will really play out is up to the people of Texas. Will they choose to allow their children to be quietly poisoned with insecticides engineered into their corn flakes? Or will they demand the free market solution of honest GMO labeling so that consumers can make their own free choice about what they wish to buy and consume?

Texas political leaders need to be educated about the long-term dangers of GMOs and chemical agriculture

Another important question is what might happen if a law gets passed and it goes to the desk of likely future Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott is a remarkable, courageous man who holds true to the fundamental concepts of liberty for a free Texas. But I don't know if he is well informed yet on the issue of GMOs and how genetic engineering (and the chemicals that go along with it) will actually devastate Texas agricultural production in the long run.

Even more, the long-term health effects of GMOs -- which include cancer -- will cost billions of dollars in state medical expenditures. Medical costs are bankrupting many states, and any time something like GMO labeling might allow citizens to avoid cancer-causing foods and thereby reduce their risk of disease, it should be seriously considered on its cost-saving merits alone. If Texans had an honest choice, a significant percentage of them would consciously choose to avoid GMOs altogether, and cancer rates would measurably drop.

People like Rick Perry and Greg Abbott need to be politely but firmly educated about why the future of Texas agriculture depends so much on the ability of Texas farmers to declare their independence from corporate GMO predatory farming practices. Texas farmers and Texas consumers need to be allowed a free market choice on what they wish to grow, buy or consume, and those choices need to be fully informed so that consumers have the information necessary to make those decisions.

Join the grassroots campaign in Texas

Click here for the Label GMOs Texas Facebook page.

Click here for the label GMOs petition for Texas.

Email [email protected] to be added to the announcement list.

Good luck, Texans! Twenty-six million people are ready to stop eating poison if given a chance.