No on Prop. 37: IN CASE YOU MISSED IT - LA Times Columnist Michael Hiltzik says of Yes on 37: "Manifestly shoddy research is being used to promote Proposition 37"

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik issued a blistering critique of the Yes on 37 campaign Sunday saying it is guilty of "the deployment of weapons-grade junk science." Hiltzik criticized Yes on 37 for its sensational promotion of a now thoroughly discredited French study of rats and GE foods. In the case of the Yes on 37 campaign, he says, "where science is at the heart of the campaign, as it is for Proposition 37, the promotion of manifestly shoddy research is especially shameful".

Below are just a few of the column's many stinging critiques of the Yes on 37 campaign:

• Of course, ignorance and anti-intellectualism are not new phenomena in our elections…
• But where science is at the heart of a campaign, as it is for Proposition 37, the promotion of manifestly shoddy research is especially shameful.
• The research in question is a paper published a few weeks ago by a team led by French biologist Gilles-Eric Seralini. … The Seralini paper attracted almost instantaneous derision from the research establishment, on multiple counts. …The critics of Seralini's paper suggest that it was designed to frighten, not inform.
• Still, it's the political exploitation of a manifestly imperfect study that's disturbing.
• The use of poor information to promote an initiative aimed at creating an informed consumer is a defining flaw of the Proposition 37 campaign.
• That flaw is compounded by the failure of the initiative itself to achieve its own ends, rife as it is with ambiguities and exemptions…

About Prop. 37

Proposition 37 would ban the sale of tens of thousands of perfectly-safe, common grocery products only in California unless they are specially repackaged, relabeled or remade with higher cost ingredients. Prop 37 is a deceptive, deeply flawed food labeling scheme that would add more government bureaucracy and taxpayer costs, create new frivolous lawsuits, and increase food costs by billions — without providing any health or safety benefits. That's why Prop 37 is opposed by a broad coalition of family farmers, scientists, doctors, business, labor, taxpayers and consumers.

Paid for by No on 37: Coalition Against the Deceptive Food Labeling Scheme, sponsored by Farmers, Food Producers, and Grocers.  Major funding by Monsanto Company, E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co., Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and more than 40 food company members.  For a full list of donors visit www.NoProp37.com/donors. - 1-800-331-0850 - www.NoProp37.com

SOURCE No on Prop. 37