Together with GMO Free Oregon and NW Food Sovereignty Coalition we have just completed collecting our first 1,000 sponsor signatures!  After our language has been approved by the state, we will start collecting our 100,000 signatures to have this measure on the November ballots.  Please look for upcoming signature events including an event being planned at Capella's Market!  If you would like to get involved in this movement and volunteer please let us know!

Coming soon to a county near you!  We are currently working with GMO Free Oregon, NW Food Sovereignty Coalition and CELDF to bring forth a county measure that can be adapted by all counties that will ban the growth and cultivation of GM crops in the open environment.  Please contact us if you would like to be a volunteer or leader in your county!

GMO-Free Eugene is proud to be a member of the NWFSC and we are honored to list our newest members, Holy Cow Foods and Sweetlife Patisserie!  "The Northwest Food Sovereignty Coalition is a task force of organizations and individuals committed to working together for a sustainable, local, organic and environmentally just food system."  If you are an organization that shares this vision and would like to join this coalition and make a difference in our food system locally, please contact us!

"One Million Strong: Record-Breaking Comments Delivered to FDA to Label GE Foods.   Congratulations, together, we have made history. We now stand more than one million strong in asking the FDA to label genetically engineered (GE) foods."   Learn more HERE.

The biotech industry has been genetically modifying our food supply since 1996.  Currently, up to 85% of U.S. corn is genetically engineered; as are 91% of soybeans and 88% of cotton, this includes cottonseed oil which is often used in food products.  According to industry, up to 95% of sugar beets are now genetically engineered as well.  It has been estimated that upwards of 70% of processed foods on supermarket shelves–from soda to soup, crackers to condiments–contain genetically engineered ingredients.  Right now, strategies are taking place on the part of biotech to introduce GM wheat into our country and the European Union.  Not only will this cause a loss of millions of dollars in exports to our wheat industry, because most other countries in the world have bans or require labeling of genetically modified organisms, but unlike other GM grains, such as corn and soybeans, wheat is grown primarily for direct human consumption—not processed into oils or used as livestock feed.  The results of directly consuming GM wheat are unknown and represent a great health hazard.

All animal studies that have been conducted on GM foods to date, have yielded alarming results, including infertility, immune problems, faulty insulin regulation and gastrointestinal problems.  The FDA’s own scientists have warned that consuming genetically modified ingredients could lead to the creation of new diseases, nutritional problems, and unpredictable side effects including allergies.  Since GMOs were released into our food supply, food allergies have increased 50%. Now, 1 in 17 US children have developed a food allergy so severe, it can put them into anaphylactic shock.  

One type of genetically modified food crop is resistant to the herbicide weed killer Roundup and another type is genetically engineered to contain its own pesticide.  That pesticide, referred to as Bt toxin, has been genetically engineered inside the plant.  This is the case for one type of genetically engineered corn.  Scientists took a gene from the bacteria that produces the Bt toxin, and genetically forced that gene inside the DNA of a corn plant.  That corn plant now contains a pesticide in every cell of the plant and gives off its own pesticide, 24/7. 

Up to this point the biotech industry has been telling us that the Bt toxin in the food crops are safe to humans because the toxin breaks down in our digestive system.  A study done in 2011 at the University of Sherbrooke, Canada, which has been published in the United States National Institute of Health database, shows the toxin does not break down in our digestive system.  The Bt toxin actually travels through our blood stream, to our organs and if we’re pregnant women, the toxin travels through the umbilical cord of the fetus and directly affects the fetus’s brain.  Scientists believe this is a cause for many developmental disorders in young children.  Especially those disorders that are new or have increased substantially since GMOs were introduced into our market.  It has further been found that the Bt toxin not only survives our digestive track, it has been found in the human intestines, where it can transfer to our own intestinal flora and cause our flora bacteria to produce Bt toxin as well, in essence, creating a pesticide factory inside each of us.   

The biotech industry has also been telling us these genetically modified crops will yield more, will be resistant to certain diseases and will address our hunger issues.  GMO crops do not yield more; they yield less than their natural counterpart crops, except for the GM corn crop which yields the same as the natural crops.  The only crop that yields have increased on over the past 15 years is the soybean crop and that is contributed to selective breeding not genetic engineering.  A major problem happening now in the mid states is the GM corn crop, which was engineered to be resistant to the root worm, has been overcome by a super bug breed of that root worm.  And we should all know, our world’s hunger problem is not related to a lack of food, but rather a lack of resources and availability to buy and consume food.  In fact, genetic engineering is not a sustainable agricultural method and because it is not sustainable, we cannot rely on it to feed the populations now or in the future.

There is also great concern regarding the unwanted cross contamination of GM crops with natural crops.  Cross contamination occurs when pollen from a GM variety carries to other natural and conventional crops by various means and contaminates those crops resulting in a permanent and irreversible biological change to the natural crops.  Some of the various means of contamination are wind, birds or other wild life, or the pollen drift contamination from transportation of GM varieties on our roads and highways.  Once a farmer’s crop has been contaminated with a GM variety, under patent laws, that crop no longer belongs to the farmer, but to the biotechnology corporation that owns the patent on those seeds. Court cases to date have proven favorable to the biotechnology corporations no matter how the cross contamination occurred or whether it was wanted or even known about by the farmer.  GM crops and natural crops cannot coexist, it is virtually impossible. 

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