To: The Maine State House, The Maine State Senate, and Governor Janet Mills
Label GMOs in Maine now!
Please support LD 991, an act to amend Maine's genetically modified food products labeling law. The bill, introduced this year, already has strong bipartisan support, with both Republican and Democratic sponsors.
In 2013, Maine passed a law requiring the mandatory labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs). But that law contains a trigger clause stating that the law can't be enacted unless five contiguous states, including New Hampshire, also pass mandatory GMO labeling laws.
I don't want to wait for New Hampshire, or any other state, before I have the right to know what I am feeding my family. Citizens in more than 60 other countries have the right to this basic information. Studies prove that the cost of adding this information to a label is negligible for food manufacturers, retailers and consumers.
Please lead on this issue, which is important to consumers and to Maine's strong local food and farming economy. Thank you.
Why is this important?
Even though Maine passed a mandatory GMO labeling law in 2013, Maine citizens, myself included, still don't have the right to know if our food has been genetically engineered--thanks to a trigger clause in the original law. That's about to change, if we convince Maine lawmakers to support a bipartisan bill introduced this year.