I have a very liberal friend in the Seattle area (that may be redundant) to whom I mentioned that very fact. She was totally agast.
If you want to find some real common ground with lefties and evironmentalist just get on the subject of food safety, food security, or food sovreignty. There is a revolving door in Washington between government and the big food and drug industry. It doesn't much matter what party is in control. What is going on is a generaly limiting of our freedom of choices to that of eating factory food and getting health care through increasing medication.
The only way to overcome this is at the grassroots level. That would be having we, the consumers, spending our dollars on food that we can trust. Even the lefties will understand market forces in those terms. Rather than try to outlaw GMO's just let us exercise our right to choose what we put in our bodies.
I spent last Saturday at a "Sustainable Living" event at someone's homestead. It was a mixed crowd both in age and world views, but there was general agreement that we should all take responsibility for meeting our basic needs. And there was the idea that what you couldn't eat, you could sell and/or give it to someonw who was hungry.
I totally agree. I have no problem with label requirements; there's nothing wrong with knowing exactly what you're eating. But bans are stupid. All they do is give the FDA a reason to keep expensive militarized SWAT teams.
P.S. I really didn't intend to hijack this thread. I just wanted to say that people who need food assistance might be better off learning to grow it first. The dual positives being that the food is healthier and you learn self-sufficiency. (There, I didn't even mention how fat EBT users seem to be.)