If you haven’t already pitched in, please make a donation soon. If you have already contributed, please forward this week’s issue of Organic Bytes to friends, or share it with your social media networks.

We need your help today to raise $1 million for the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act. If we reach our goal by May 26, we will receive a matching $1 million gift from Mercola.com, Nature’s Path, Lundberg Family Farms, Eden Foods and a number of public interest organizations.

I’ve had the pleasure of speaking directly with some of you who have called in to make donations. Many of you have thanked OCA for bringing so many groups together around this cause. Twenty years ago, when the FDA outrageously declared that genetically modified foods were “substantially equivalent” to unmodified foods, and therefore would not be labeled, we and our allies didn’t have large email lists, Internet fundraising capabilities, or social media. We couldn’t have waged a massive campaign like this.

Today, we can almost instantly connect millions of people – and potentially raise millions of dollars – in order to fight back.

And it’s working. Groups like Food Democracy Now!, Mercola.com, Natural News, Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, Mother Earth News, OccupyMonsanto360, Alliance for Natural Health, the Farm Food Freedom Coalition, Real Food Media, FoodFreedomGroup.com, Institute for Responsible Technology, and many more are reaching out to their grassroots networks, in a massive show of solidarity.

Since May 1, we have raised over $600,000, which will go directly toward winning the campaign in California, as well as supporting other state GMO labeling campaigns. With your help, we will raise another $400,000 – plus a $1 million matching gift – by May 26.

This GMO labeling battle in California is huge. It’s the best opportunity – our last best hope – to show the government and those corporations that have a stranglehold on our food supply that we – moms, dads, grandparents, students, ordinary citizens – will no longer be kept in the dark about genetically engineered bacteria, viruses, and foreign DNA routinely being laced into our food. We will no longer sit back and allow companies and retailers to label or market GMO-tainted food as “natural” or “all-natural.”

We have a real chance to win in California on November 6. The Biotech industry can’t win in November by buying off politicians because this is a citizens’ ballot initiative. Registered California voters bypassed the legislature to put this on the ballot themselves. Our members and our allies gathered nearly one million signatures – almost twice as many as we needed – to put this issue on the ballot. Polls show that 90 percent of voters support GMO labeling.

Unable to buy their way to victory, Big Biotech and Food Inc. will use their huge war chest to try to scare voters into defeating this initiative. They’ve already cranked up the propaganda machine with the usual lies: Labeling will make food more expensive, family farmers will suffer economically; the law is too confusing, etc.

None of this is true. Almost 50 countries – including Russia, China, Japan and the European Union – require labeling of genetically engineered food and ingredients. Far from the disastrous results that Monsanto would have us believe, labeling has not significantly increased food costs, nor are consumers in those countries confused. Small farmers are doing just fine.

What has happened is this: Once labeling was required by law, millions of consumers rejected GMO-tainted food products. Consequently food manufacturers and retailers stopped selling GMOs. Farmers stopped growing them. Sales of organic products increased significantly. Consumers, empowered with the Right to Know, became more knowledgeable and healthier. Farms and fields became less contaminated. All because companies like Monsanto and Dow, Wal-Mart, Con-Agra, and Kellogg’s were no longer able to force-feed genetically engineered foods to the public.

It is hard to believe that here, in the US, we continue to allow Monsanto and corporate agribusiness to carry out the largest food experiment in history, to literally treat us as like lab rats. It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time to pass the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Foods ballot initiative.

Please take a minute today to think about who – among your family, friends, business associates, social media contacts – might be willing to donate to this campaign, or to help promote the campaign to their networks, online or offline.

This is the food fight of our lives, the battle that will determine the future of food and farming. The stakes are high. Your support is critical.

Please give as generously as you can. And please help us spread the word.

For an Organic Future,

Ronnie Cummins
Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund

P.S. All money raised for this campaign will go through the Organic Consumers Fund, a 501(c)4 allied organization of the Organic ConsumersAssociation, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action. Donations are not tax-deductible.