URGENT: PROTECT STATE ANIMAL WELFARE AND GMO LABELING LAWS!
Organic Consumers Association
The meat industry wants a special favor from Congress: A Farm Bill amendment that would wipe out state laws designed to protect animals on factory farms. The amendment also could preempt state laws requiring mandatory labels on foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Don’t let Congress wipe out states’ rights to protect animal welfare and label GMOs. Please tell Farm Bill conference committee members to cut Rep. Steve King’s (R-Iowa) “Protect Interstate Commerce Act” out of the 2014 Farm Bill.
Monsanto, Pepsi and Tyson know they’re about to get hit with a tsunami of state and local bills and initiatives that would ban the growing of GMO crops, or require labeling of GMO-contaminated foods and foods that come from factory farms. That's why the biggest biotech, junk food and meat processing companies are using their campaign cash and lobbying dollars to pressure the federal government to take away state and local rights to regulate food and agriculture. Where better to start than by slipping an industry-friendly amendment into the Farm Bill?
Rep. King calls his amendment the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act” because it would prevent any state from imposing its own higher standards or conditions on imports of food produced or manufactured in another state.
We call it the “Factory Farm Protection Act” because it was written specifically to strike down state laws like California's Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, which requires farm animals to be provided enough space to turn around freely, lie down, stand up and fully extend their limbs. But King’s amendment is written so broadly that it has the potential to wipe out hundreds of state laws that were passed to protect workers, the environment and food safety. It has unprecedented potential to strip states and localities of their democratic right to enact laws to protect their own citizens.
You received this message today because your Senator or U.S. Representative is on the Farm Bill Conference Committee. The committee will decide—possibly as early as this week—on whether or not to include Rep. King’s amendment in the final version of the Farm Bill. Please take action today to protect states’ rights to pass animal welfare and GMO labeling laws.
Thanks!
Alexis, Melinda and the OCA team