non gmo bread.jpg
Some food labels already say whether a product contains GMO ingredients.
(Associated Press)
Campaign organizers say they'll submit more than 150,000 signatures on Wednesday to place an initiative on the November ballot that would require the labeling of genetically modified foods.
Oregon GMO Right to Know has scheduled a press conference for 11 a.m. Wednesday on the front steps of the Oregon Capitol.
"We will qualify for the November ballot," campaign spokesman Sandeep Kaushik said Tuesday. "I don't think there's any uncertainty about that."
The campaign needs to submit 87,213 valid signatures by July 3 for the measure to qualify. The Oregon Secretary of State's Office will then analyze a sampling of the signatures to verify if enough valid ones were collected.
Campaign organizers relied on volunteers and paid signature gatherers to collect the signatures in about six weeks. The petition only qualified for circulation May 14 after legal challenges on the ballot wording were resolved.
Political observers expect the initiative, if it qualifies, to be one of the costliest election battles in state history. Already, labeling supporters have collected $1.2 million for the campaign, including a number of large checks.
Washington voters defeated a similar initiative in November 2013 after food and biotech companies opposed to the measure contributed a record $22 million in spending.
Another similar initiative was defeated in California in 2012 by fewer than three percentage points. Opponents spent $46 million fighting the measure there.
"We don't have any illusions that we're not going to be vastly outspent. We will be," Kaushik said. "We're confident given the strong positive reaction we've had during our signature gathering phase that we can be successful."
-- Yuxing Zheng