On Friday the 3rd of July, GE labeling campaigner Craig Winters died. He was fighting an ongoing cancer battle, with multiple back surgeries and other treatments to boot.

Winters was involved in political efforts to label genetically engineered crops for many years, which never succeeded. His most recent effort was during the 2008 Presidential campaign. He organized efforts to seek campaign promises to label GE foods from the major candidates, asking people to send in written requests with a standard, printed form for them to sign and send to Winters. After a while, his site announced that all of the democratic candidates supported labeling.

I learned about this seven months ago when Jeffrey Smith claimed that President Obama had promised to label GE foods. After some investigation, it turns out that he did not make that promise at all. You can read about the whole miscommunication here.

During my investigation, I actually called up Craig Winters on the phone to talk to him about it. He seemed somewhat optimistic about convincing Obama’s presidency of his position, but he had not read about Obama’s statements in support of the technology, either. Winters was certainly very busy with other matters – when I called him he had just gotten out of surgery the previous day.

Winters not only started The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods, he also

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