Proposition 37 in California - What Went Wrong?

The majority Californians voted against Proposition 37 in Tuesday's election. Prop 37 would have given them the right to know whether the foods they are buying in their grocery stores have any genetically modified ingredients, aka GMO's.

The proposition was defeated 53% to 47%. Allegedly misleading advertisements paid for by large biotechnology and pesticide corporations are rumoured to have contributed to the defeat. 46 million dollars was spend on this advertising campaign.

GMO labeling is required in Europe and other countries, and the polls indicated that 90% of the US population was supporting labeling and the right to choose - so what happened? Was it the misleading advertising campaign?

Link to a detailed article on the defeat of Proposition 37:

http://www.cornucopia.org/2012/11/monsanto-throws-gmo-victory-party-in-california/

Link to an article on the first-ever GM food safety study to test over the entire life span of laboratory rats:

http://commonground.ca/OLD/iss/255/cg255_GMcorn.shtml

In the meantime, in Canada, Bill C-257 is a private member bill introduced by Alex Atamanenko of the NDP. It is an act to amend the Food and Drugs Act to require labelling for genetically modified foods. Private member bills rarely become law in Canada. Bill C-257 was introduced in June of 2011 and has had a first reading, but there's been no further action on it.

Alex Atamanenko had the following to say about his bill:

“Canadians are becoming more and more concerned about the food they eat. Independent research is difficult to find when dealing with this topic. There are scientists in the world who have found adverse effects. For example, studies were done on Monsanto's MON 810 corn in Europe. As a result, this corn has been banned in a number of European countries. Bulgaria has a total ban on GMOs because of health and environmental concerns.

“This bill is about the choice of Canadians to determine what they want or do not want to eat.”

Petitions have been repeatedly introduced supporting Bill C-257, but there's been no further movement towards passing the bill. To see the efforts, check out the Open Parliment page on it:

http://openparliament.ca/bills/41-1/C-257/