Dear John Moore, Editor, Ventura County Star

Re: Stand on Propositions

The evidence is piling against both of your reasons for recommending No on Prop 37. This is a a Proposition that fulfills the real intent of the initiative process. When the regulatory process is subverted through the revolving doors in government, the people have a way to enact laws that make sense to the majority. Your position against the desires of 90% of people polled begs continued efforts to help you be informed and honest. No matter the vote, truth will win in spite of your decision to deny it.

Thanks to thousands of caring, sacrificing citizens, grassroots volunteers, grandmothers who never did anything like this before, diverse business supporters and organizations, and the internet, for placing this conversation on everyone's dinner table. You and the other newspapers who have swallowed the distortion tactics and half-truths and proceeded with your black-outs, brown-outs, and voter recommendations based on industry propaganda will not succeed in keeping Americans ignorant about a serious problem and a simple solution. You will go down on the wrong side of history for the sake of good quarterly profits.

The pesticide and biotech companies have had 20 years to bombard the media with marketing hype about the wonders of GMO crops and pesticides. Articles that are straightforward and positive regarding Proposition 37 would do little to balance the brainwashing of our society for the past two decades. Your treatment of this topic can be likened to a report about the Fukushima disaster in which the reporter tries to balance the bad news for the nuclear industry with statements about how nuclear energy has greatly benefited society and holds great promise.

Monsanto and friends are using their profits from selling Roundup herbicide, processed food, junk food and sodas (with health risks related to the GMO content) to try to hide inconvenient realities about the toxicity of their products. Their sole motive is profit; the fact that people are harmed by their products is inconsequential because they've captured the regulatory process. The FDA is run by Monsanto. Honest scientists who are still there cannot say what they think. This works as long as the media covers up what they're doing.

"Safety testing, science-based regulation, and the scientific process itself, depend crucially on widespread trust in a body of scientists devoted to the public interest and professional integrity. If instead, the starting point of a scientific product assessment is an approval process rigged in favor of the applicant, backed up by systematic suppression of independent scientists working in the public interest, then there can never be an honest, rational or scientific debate." (Dr. William O. Olkowski, Founder Bio-Integral Resource Center, Entomological Philosopher).

You have a heavy responsibility for either not covering this issue at all or only publishing pseudo-balanced reports, as if the distortions and half-truths spread with the profits of pesticides and toxic food deserve a fair hearing next to information for the public benefit. The truth can be found out. Here is something to help you that is written and signed by nearly 100 independent scientists (i.e. not benefiting by the biotech industry) from around the world. This Open Letter is newsworthy. It puts the dichotomy between rigorous scientific process and junk science into perspective. It is time that the media helped the public make the distinction.

http://independentsciencenews.org/health/seralini-and-science-nk603-rat-study-roundup/

Ron Whitehurst, PCA

Co-Owner Rincon-Vitova Insectaries, Inc.