CANTON – The owner of a local health food store is making a special effort to be certain her customers are not unknowingly getting genetically modified foods.

Rainbow Crabtree of Nature’s Storehouse, 21 Main St., is part of the battle to get foods that have been grown from genetically modified stock to be labeled as such: GMO, or genetically modified organisms.

“When you shop for food you expect to see labels indicating whether a product is organic or local,” Crabtree said in a news release. “But don’t you also want to know if the product or ingredients have been genetically modified?”

Crabtree said Nature's Storehouse is phasing out these products and wants the public to know about the issue and what she is doing at her store.

“Full disclosure on how foods are grown and processed is essential if we are going to make informed choices on how we feed ourselves and our families,” she said.

She is complaining about what she calls “traitor brands,” those which own natural food companies “yet spend millions to block our right to honest information about GMO's in our food.”

“This is an unacceptable deception,” she said.

“We believe that individual consumers have a right to know how their food is grown. Growers and manufacturers should be required to label GMO products as GMO products. We want to know if our food is GMO, conventional, local or organic. What logical explanation could there be for hiding this information from the public?”

Crabtree said she is purging her store of products from companies that “actively lobbied against the GMO labeling bill in California. This bill, also known as Proposition 37, would have required identification of genetically modified ingredients and prohibited products made with such ingredients from being labeled as natural.”

Consumer trust that labels tell the buyer the whole story are important anywhere, but especially to those who are seeking out natural and organic food.

“We want our consumer dollars to support transparency and honesty when it comes to information about food.

“We are excited to introduce new products made by companies that are in line with our values of honesty, sustainability and wholistic wellness,” she said, and invites everyone to visit her store and look at the brands on her shelves, and to ask questions.

She also suggests two web sites with more information, www.justlabelit.org and www.nongmoproject.org.