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Outside a Whole Foods store in Seattle, a cyclist rides past a car promoting a failed November ballot measure in Washington to require labeling of genetically engineered foods. The figurine on the car represented a cross between a soybean and a fish.

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

A proposed ballot measure to require the

sold in Oregon has cleared a big legal hurdle, allowing sponsors to soon begin collecting signatures to qualify for the 2014 ballot.

But supporters are still figuring out just how to proceed in the

in Washington state.

The Oregon Supreme Court recently dismissed a challenge to the ballot title for the initiative, which is closely patterned after the Washington measure.

Scott Bates, a Tigard software architect and director of GMO Free Oregon, said his group will soon be ready to gather signatures. However, "we are still absorbing the lessons from" the Washington defeat, he said. "We're having a gut check at the moment but we're planning on moving forward."

As part of its gut check, the group is also putting the final wording on an alternative measure that makes some changes aimed at blunting some of the charges leveled at the Washington initiative by the food and biotechnology industries.

That defeat "spooked a lot of the donor community," said Bates, and he's working to make sure funders are comfortable with the language of any labeling initiative put on the Oregon ballot.

If the group decides to go ahead with this new initiative wording, they'd have to go through the ballot title process again. That could delay signature gathering for several months and require the group to spend more on paid canvassers to be sure of making the ballot. (The group needs to collect 87,213 signatures by early July to qualify).

At this point, Bates said he's not entirely which route he will go, although he said he is confident that he will aim for next November's ballot.

The labeling initiative

-- with 51.1 percent against and 48.9 percent in favor -- in an election where the turnout was just 45 percent.

"The simple big mistake we made was running in an off-off-year election," said Trudy Bialic, public affairs director PCC Natural Markets in Seattle and an author of the initiative. "If we had waited until 2014, I think we would have pulled it out."

In a regular election year, Oregon can expect a much higher turnout. Since all-mail voting was approved in the state in 1998, turnout in non-presidential general elections has ranged between 69 percent and 72 percent.

Bialic said that her campaign's analysis concluded that they won every age group except seniors, who provided enough of a margin to defeat the measure. Seniors won't be as big a percentage of the electorate in a high-turnout election, she said.

Opponents aren't so sure a bigger turnout will make a difference.

Scott Dahlman, executive director of Oregonians for Food and Shelter, said GMO labeling initiatives always start out with strong public support, but "once voters are educated on the issue it starts to swing in opposition."

Dahlman, whose group represents the pesticide, fertilizer and biotech interests, argued that state-by-state labeling makes no sense. He said it would raise food prices and also hurt Oregon food producers.

GMO critics argue that this isn't true. They say companies don't want to label their products for fear consumers will turn away from genetically engineered food.

There is disagreement among anti-GMO activists about whether the Oregon initiative should be written differently to head off some of the major charges flung at proponents both in Washington and in California, where a similar measure lost in 2012 by less than three percentage points.

In both states,

on the idea that the measures contained nonsensical exemptions. Why, the ads asked, would soy products be labeled while dairy products were largely exempt? Why label fruit juice but not alcoholic beverages?

Proponents said they only tried to conform to federal labeling regulations and that the ads were just designed to confuse voters.

David Bronner, the president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, argued that it was important to deal with the exemption issue, according to Bates. His firm was the largest donor to the pro-labeling campaign in Washington, giving $2.3 million. Bronner could not be reached for comment Friday.

George Kimbrell, a Portland-based attorney at the Center for Food Safety, said he's not sure it makes much difference.

"The other side is going to sow confusion" no matter which version Oregon goes with, said Kimbrell, whose group has also been a major supporter of the measures.

-- Jeff Mapes