Given California’s status as a major center of various food movements, it is not surprising that The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act qualified for the November ballot. Proposition 37 will mandate labeling of most processed foods and raw agricultural commodities that have been genetically engineered. It will also forbid any statements or implication, in labeling or advertising, that such foods are “natural.” Although the opposition is not yet in high gear, it seems likely that concerns about new technology applied to our food and the simplicity of the proposition’s goal (let us know, so we can choose) will combine to make passage very likely, as early polls suggest. Passage will be just the beginning of a legal battle over California’s right to impose this labeling requirement on the food industry.
Genetically engineered (GE) foods are a recent phenomenon, but almost no plant or animal we eat would have had a look-alike in the Garden of Eden. Man has bred plants and animals over the millennia for traits deemed desirable, among them taste, size, pest resistance and heat or cold tolerance. But selective breeding has always been limited by reproductive biology.
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