The movement that failed in California, Lusk argues, “wants the coercive power of the state to strong-arm Americans into eating fashionably. It is the movement that refuses to acknowledge the hard work of the vast majority of American farmers ... simply because they cannot make a living selling the stuff that the food elite think we should all eat. It is a movement that uses scare tactics and misrepresents the consensus scientific opinion about food technologies in an effort to demonize agribusiness.”
Alas, it also isn't likely to stop trying. Lusk notes that after Prop 37 went down, at least one activist group said it planned to back a similar initiative taking shape in Washington state. But he adroitly exposes these groups' hypocrisy: “They readily celebrate bottom-up developments, like the proliferation of farmers markets. But they want to orchestrate, from the top down, whatever they find lacking.”
Lusk concludes with this: “We all can celebrate a good heirloom tomato, but something is rotten about the one forced upon us.”
To which, on this day of giving thanks, we will add a resounding “Amen!”
