The Argument for Labeling March 25, 2014
Oregonians value healthy farms, clean water, and good food. Our pioneer spirit places a priority on personal freedom and individual choice about how we live our lives. This same pioneering spirit that defines Oregon’s way of life is creating a grassroots movement of shoppers who want to know what’s in our food.
We have a right to know important information about the food we eat and feed our families - such as sugar and sodium levels, whether flavors are natural or artificial, and if fish is wild or farm-raised. We should also have the right to choose whether we want to buy and eat genetically modified (GMO) food, just like 64 other countries already do.
Labeling GMO foods would assist shoppers who are concerned about the potential effects of increased pesticides and herbicides to make informed purchasing decisions at the store.
The Oregon Right to Know initiative is about transparency and empowering shoppers. This is not a ban on genetically modified food and this is not a debate on the science. It’s about choice. We don’t need the government or big corporations preventing us from knowing how our food is produced. Provide us the information, and we can trust ourselves to make our own decisions about the foods we want to eat.
