Rep. Lance Harvell is the sponsor of a bill (LD 718) intended to get Maine behind the growing right-to-know movement about genetically modified organisms, popularly dubbed Frankenfoods.

GMO foods are everywhere in the food system, particularly in almost all commercial corn and soy products. They are created in laboratories by splicing non-food genes (pesticides, fish, ladybugs, etc.) into the corn or soy gene to create a plant that, theoretically, protects itself against adversity.

Big agriculture patents those new genes and sues farmers who save seed from year to year (an ancient agriculture tradition), and also sues non-GMO farmers whose crops suffer from wind-blown pollen pollution from neighboring GMO fields.

That is damaging enough to farmers, but why people really need to know about GMOs is because people have a right to know what they are eating.

Some doctors believe that the incredible increase in dangerous allergies is related to the use of GMOs, which became endemic in the food system about the same time serious, life-threatening allergies began to spike.

Also, how would vegans or people whose religious beliefs forbid certain foods (kosher, etc.) know if what they were eating conformed to their beliefs?

The only way to ensure now that a person is not eating/drinking (most sodas are sweetened with GMO corn syrup) GMO food is to buy and eat local and/or organic foods.

We support LD 718.

Emery Goff Carhart and William Carhart, Farmington