When it comes to global warming, the science consensus is accurate but when it comes to food, biologists are in the control of Big Business and government lobbyists and the science consensus is out to kill us.
What's the difference, scientifically? None, the consensus and the evidence are far stronger regarding genetic modifications but activists and the organic corporations selling to them have a whole lot of financial interest in feel-good fallacies; that is why California's Proposition 37, the "California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act" initiative, is being funded by giant organic corporations and was proposed by a lawyer who got rich suing businesses under Proposition 65, and specifically exempts organic food from any 'truth in labeling' requirements. It will hurt a competitor of organic companies yet do nothing to harm their own huge revenue streams.
Activists wants to talk about how some businesses are lined up against this, and the reasons food businesses are against it are obvious. No, not because they hate you or your children - but because everyone in the entire food chain can be sued and it won't make anyone's food any better. What gets much less press are the profiteering companies behind it. Here is an updated table of donors from Ballotpedia.
| Mercola Health Resources | $800,000 |
| Organic Consumers Fund | $535,030 |
| Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, All-One-God-Faith Inc. | $290,000 |
| Nature's Path Foods | $246,826 |
| Wehah Farm (Lundberg Family Farms) | $200,000 |
Mercola, the company selling homeopathy magic, has bought more public relations time for this referendum than the biotechnology consortium and grocery manufacturers have spent combined. Even Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps All-One-God-Faith Inc. (which debunks the notion among the right wing that anti-science hippies are all atheists; they are simply Wiccans instead) has spent as much as the giant seed companies.
Defying the tired notion that Republicans are more anti-science because Democratic "elites" (yes, Democratic elites really do refer to themselves that way) do not endorse anti-science positions, the California Democratic Party has come out against GMOs and against the science consensus of the AMA, the National Academies of Science, the FDA, the USDA and the UN - no surprise, when 52 out of 55 members of Congress who signed off on a letter demanding that the FDA label genetically engineered foods are Democrats - and one of the remaining three, Sen. Bernie Sanders is instead an Independent Democrat-Socialist, so even more Democrat than Democrats. Democrats are the anti-science party of this new decade.
Ron Bailey, writing at Reason, has tackled the Prop. 37 issue as well, and he also notes how even the genesis of this movement is suspect - the brainchild of rich trial lawyer James Wheaton, who has made millions suing businesses under the pointless Prop. 65 law he engineered using this same scare activism. You want to know if some chemical anywhere in any business can cause cancer, right? Except there is no proof of harm required and companies have been routinely sued for not having a sign about a chemical that isn't shown to cause harm and they didn't know they had. Hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuits that protected no one and Wheaton has made millions filing the lawsuits.
Bailey's piece is a treasure trove of dirty laundry about the corporate funding of this legislation. Nature’s Path, for example, is a $300,000,000 a year juggernaut in 'organic' cereals. Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps All-One-God-Faith Inc., has revenues of $50,000,000 annually in peddling, you guessed it by their name, organic soap(!). If you have looked around and wondered where the 1% outside Wall Street are, they are in the organic industry. People supporting it can spend $50 million on organic soap, which is as pointless an 'organic' product as pineapples. No wonder they don't care about the actual poor people who have been helped by this science. They can afford not to care.
Wheaton waves his hands and denies being the author of Prop 37. He says he is only listed as the official proponent because financial backers - from outside California - needed a registered California voter as their figurehead. So it's just coincidence they found the millionaire lawyer from Prop. 65 to be the public face of this. Wheaton also made sure to have this legislation written so as to be enforced under the Consumer Legal Remedies Act, which doesn't even require plaintiffs to show that they suffered any harm in order to shake down businesses - he adopted that strategy because he knows it allows them to dodge plaintiff restrictions in California's Unfair Competition Law, which would ordinarily prevent a business that has done nothing wrong, like GMOs, from being penalized with damages in order to grant market share to the organic and homeopathy companies on his side. The lawyer behind this knows how to pit confused, conflicting California laws against each other and get rich doing it; that should make the people claiming this is solely about 'the right to know' feel good.
Mercola, the top donor above, sells homeopathy and suspect supplements - bad enough - but also financed the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), which claims that eating foods made from GM crops causes autism. What a surprise that a community that is anti-GMO invokes autism, since they are also anti-vaccine and think those cause autism also. Someone should write a book about the anti-science mentality that has overrun the left. Oh wait, I did.
The California Democratic Party being anti-science is no surprise, nor is agreement by Senator Barbara Boxer, because they are social authoritarian progressives - what is a surprise is that both support the consensus when it comes to climate change.
Why do they believe climatologists are legitimate and biologists are not? That's a real mystery of science.
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