Dr. Bronner pumps in money to pass Oregon mandatory labeling campaign

| | September 24, 2014

The most expensive food fight in Oregon history is just getting interesting, and David Bronner is smack in the middle of it.

Bronner is the CEO of Southern California’s Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, a counter-culture-loving company known for minty, organically certified cleaning products and labels filled with more information than some magazines.

And he’s now donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in company profits to help pass Measure 92, which if approved by voters in November would make Oregon one of the first states in the nation to require the labeling of genetically modified foods.

Q. The opposition insists that genetically engineered seeds and foods can be beneficial in terms of the overall food supply. Do they have a point?

A. The food industry has been sold a bill of goods, and Big Food is now carrying water for Big Ag. This is not boosting yields, and it’s not making food production cheaper. The facts on the ground are coming out and insecticide use is surging. This is not a sustainable method of agriculture.

Q. Your company is donating a lot of money to this effort ($550,000 and counting). Do you personally have any say in how it’s spent?

A. Not me personally, but definitely a few others do. They’ve been through these fights and know how this works. We’d love for this to be entirely on a grass-roots basis, but Oregon is about to be carpet-bombed by one of the most sophisticated propaganda machines ever assembled. You need some sophistication to match that.

Read the whole, original interview: Dr. Bronner’s betting big on Oregon’s pro-GMO labeling campaign

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