On November 5, Washington State will cast their votes for the
people's initiative 522, "The People's Right to Know Genetically
Engineered Food Act." Your support is urgently needed
Attorney General Bob Ferguson has filed suit against the GMA in
Thurston County Superior Court on behalf of the State of
Washington, alleging the association violated the state’s
campaign disclosure laws
Ferguson alleges the GMA illegally collected and spent more than
$7 million on the No On Initiative 522 campaign, while hiding
the identity of its contributors in order to shield them from
consumer backlash
The lawsuit forced GMA to establish a political committee, aptly
named Grocery Manufacturers Association Against I-522. A list of
the financial donors has now been disclosed to the Public
Disclosure Commission
Biotech are now trying to find a way to label that will still
permit them to exist and make a profit. Pushing for federal
labeling is one part of the plan to dilute the value of the
label
By Dr. Mercola
We’re now only DAYS away from the next big GMO-labeling vote in
the United States; this time in Washington State, where citizens
will cast their votes for the people's initiative 522, "The People's
Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act," on November 5.
As in last year’s California Proposition 37 GMO labeling
campaign, the opposition from industry is fierce, with millions of
dollars being poured into the anti-labeling campaign.
This year, they’ve really outdone themselves, being caught in a
money laundering scheme designed to protect the identity of food
companies contributing money to defeat Initiative 522. As reported
by SeattlePi.com:1
“The food industrial giants gave individually in
California last year, contributing to a $46 million war chest
that narrowly turned back the labeling measure.
In planning the anti-522 campaign, however,
Grocery Manufacturers Association CEO Pamela Bailey recommended
creation of a fund — which became the Defense of Brand Strategic
Account — in part to ‘better shield individual companies from
attack.’ Donations would be laundered through the account.”
Most of the funding for the anti-labeling campaign in Washington
State was donated by the Grocery Manufacturers Association of
America (GMA). The big food and beverage companies that spent
millions on last year’s No on Prop 37 campaign, however, remained
curiously absent from any list of donors throughout most of this
year’s No on Initiative 522’s campaign.
Attorney General Files Suit Against Grocery Manufacturers
Association
On October 16, Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed suit2
against the GMA in Thurston County Superior Court on behalf of the
State of Washington, alleging the association had violated the
state’s campaign disclosure laws. According to the press release:3
“Ferguson alleges the GMA illegally collected and spent
more than $7 million while shielding the identity of its
contributors. The funds were spent to express opposition to
Initiative 522...
‘When Washington state voters overwhelming approved
Initiative 276 in 1972, they voiced their desire for
transparency and openness in elections,’ Ferguson said. ‘Truly
fair elections demand all sides follow the rules by disclosing
who their donors are and how much they are spending to advocate
their views.’
... The AGO [Attorney general’s office] is preparing to
seek a temporary restraining order asking the court to order the
GMA to immediately comply with state disclosure laws. The AGO is
also requesting civil penalties and costs of investigation and
trial, including reasonable attorney’s fees, injunctive relief
and any other relief the court deems appropriate.”
According to the filed complaint, the GMA began plotting and
planning how to best defeat Initiative 522 back in December of 2012,
placing particular emphasis on the establishment of a separate GMA
fund to “combat current threats and better shield individual
companies from attack.”
You can find a summarized timeline of the development of the
anti-labeling campaign in Joel Connelly’s article on SeattlePi.com.4
For example, in it he reveals that:
“The Grocery Manufacturers Association names its fund the
‘Defense of Brand Strategic Account’ and determines that
association members would be assessed, separate from their
normal association dues. The account would be segregated...”
The Attorney General has requested the Superior Court impose the
following penalties on the GMA, which, according to Ferguson, are
meant to serve as deterrents in future state elections as well:
Assess a penalty for failing to comply with state campaign
finance laws in a “timely properly” manner
Pay for the costs of the investigation, plus the state’s
attorney fees
If found guilty of intentionally violating state campaign
finance laws, be ordered to pay triple the damages
Who’s Trying to Block Your Right to Know What’s in Your Food?
As you may recall, after defeating Prop. 37 in California by a
tiny margin, several companies that had contributed to the
anti-labeling campaign suffered significant repercussions—from being
barraged by critical press and humiliating attacks by angry
consumers on social networks like Facebook.
To sweeping boycott campaigns.
General Mills, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Heinz and
Campbell Soups were among last year’s anti-labeling campaign
contributors. As one parent stated in a comment on
Cheerios Facebook page at the time:
"So sorry that the food my kids loved as toddlers is one
I can't support anymore. I can't believe that General Mills has
the well-being of its customers in mind when it contributes to
movement against labeling of GMOs."
Recent polls show that 64-66 percent of likely voters in
Washington State strongly support GMO labeling. No wonder many of
the same companies wanted to circumvent having to reveal their
unchanged stance on this issue. Now they’ve been forced to reveal
themselves however, and I suspect the backlash could very well
become even greater than before.
On October 17, in response to the Attorney General’s suit, the
GMA established a political committee to oppose the GMO labeling
initiative, aptly named Grocery Manufacturers Association
Against I-522.5
A list of the committee’s donors has also been disclosed to the
Public Disclosure Commission. According to a statement issued that
same day:
"In the spirit of continuing cooperation and in an effort
to provide Washington voters with full transparency about GMA's
funding for the 'No on 522' campaign, the association has
voluntarily decided to establish a Washington State political
committee and to file reports with the PDC disclosing the source
of all funds used in connection with Washington State
elections."
As of this writing, the list of donors and amount of each
company’s donation submitted to the Public Disclosure Commission
includes the following, which totals up to $7,222,500.6,
7 Looks like Pepsi, Coke, and Nestle are the top funders
trying to hide their identity. Quite the triangle of authority of
junk food producers, and purveyors of chronic disease:
Company
Amount donated
Company
Amount donated
Abbott Nutrition
127,459
Bimbo Bakeries USA
94,693
Campbell Soup Co.
265,140
Bruce Foods Corp.
3,006
Cargill Inc.
98,601
Bumble Bee Foods
36,073
Coca-Cola
1,047,332
Bunge North America
94,993
ConAgra Foods
285,281
Clement Pappas & Co. Inc
21,043
Dean Foods
120,245
Clorox Company
12,024
Bush Brothers & Co.
16,233
Flowers Foods
141,288
Del Monte Foods
86,576
Hormel Foods
52,908
General Mills
598,819
J.M. Smucker Co
241,091
Hershey
248,305
Knouse Foods
14,429
Hillshire Brands
97,398
Welch Foods
28,859
Kellogg
221,852
Land O'Lakes
99,803
Moody Dunbar
1,804
McCormick & Co
102,208
Nestle USA
1,052,743
Mondelez Global
144,895
Ocean Spray, Cranberries, Inc.
55,313
Pinnacle Foods Group
120,846
PepsiCo
1,620,899
Rich Products Corp
24,049
Sunny Delight Beverages Co.
21,043
Shearer's Foods, Inc.
25,251
Beware: Big Business Will Try to Dilute the GMO Label
Big Biotech is seeing the end of their game now and are
scrambling to rescue what they can, by any means possible. Such
“backup plans” appear to include carefully selected mouthpieces
writing “independent” opinion pieces, ostensibly agreeing that
labeling is a good idea, while simultaneously proposing plans that
would significantly dilute the value of the label. One way to do
this would be to make it ubiquitous, i.e. so prevalent that you
encountered it on virtually every single food item in every single
store, regardless of whether the food actually contained traces of
it or not in the final product.
This tactic was suggested by one of
Biotech’s primary spokespeople, Mark Lynas, in a recent article.8
In it, he states that people are “getting increasingly scared of
GMOs precisely because the industry is fighting a rearguard battle
not to tell people which foodstuffs contain them,” calling the
industry’s fight against labeling “the worst PR strategy ever.”
Correctly, he also states that this is “the opposite of advertising
– instead of telling people about the benefits of your product and
encouraging them to seek it out, you have to smuggle your core
products into peoples’ shopping baskets so that they can only buy
them either unknowingly or by mistake.”
This epic fail of a strategy has been incredibly
successful up until this point though. Keeping you in the dark about
what’s in your food and calling it ‘natural’ has been the number one
“sales strategy” of junk foods producers utilizing heavily
subsidized ingredients since the inception of genetically engineered
food crops. And had educational and labeling campaigns by concerned
citizens, scientists and organic organizations failed, the “worst PR
strategy ever” would have been left in force indefinitely.
The Prop 37 campaign was the first truly effective education
campaign in this regard, which is why you cannot look upon it as a
failure. It raised an enormous amount of awareness about this issue.
Before last year, many Americans had no idea what
genetically engineered food was, or that they were eating
it daily, or that it might be a component causing their health
problems. Now that labeling is reaching the point of inevitability,
Big Biotech are trying to find a way to label that will still permit
them to exist and make a profit. But how to dilute the label to
where people don’t care if a product is labeled or not?
“Consumer right to know, however unjustifiable on
scientific grounds, is an argument that – once a critical mass
of people are demanding it – it is be political suicide to
oppose. However, simply giving in is not an option either,”
Lynas writes.
“Having different laws in every state would indeed be a
short-cut to prohibition, which is exactly why the labeling
activists have chosen it as their strategy. So those of us who
want to defend science and who understand the true potential of
biotechnology have no option – we have to change the game... And
maybe, just maybe, the most powerful weapon the antis have in
their arsenal will ultimately turn out to be their Achilles
heel.”
Industry Will Seek Refuge in Ubiquity
In his article, Lynas proposes a way forward that would virtually
guarantee GMO label ubiquity. Quite simply, you’d be hard-pressed to
find an item that didn’t have one, and it would hit you all at once.
In short order, you’d be so used to seeing the GMO label, and so
overwhelmed by lack of options (or so their reasoning goes) the GMO
label wouldn’t even register as an item calling out for a choice to
be made. To accomplish this kind of saturation to the point of
complacency, GMO labeling must be:
Mandatory; industry-wide; and operated at the federal level
Designed in such a way that there’s no implication of health
or safety issues
Process-based, so that the label must be used whether the
final product contains any residue of GMO or not
According to Lynas, “ubiquity is surely the industry’s safest
refuge.” Personally, I believe the industry may be underestimating
the depth of the concerns that people have about the safety of
genetically engineered foods and the giant chemical companies that
make them.
The FDA battle will be significant, but the existing European
standards along with a few state laws will set a bar that will
likely need to be matched or result in political disaster for the
administration. I have never supported FDA labeling strategies as a
first step as they are too highly influenced by lobbyists, you can
bet the agency is receiving pressure from the biotech and junk food
industry to set a standard before they lose more ground through
state and international laws– an FDA ruling is inevitable.
Recent history has shown that food companies will relent
and change their ingredients once they realize that you, and
millions of others, really don’t want GMO’s in your food,
and won’t buy it if it contains GMO ingredients. There are
alternatives, but biotech companies like Monsanto have been so
efficient in their takeover of agriculture, even to the point of
buying up seed companies to eliminate competition, that many food
manufacturers now have a hard time obtaining non-GMO ingredients.
The upshot, of course, is that increased demand for non-GMO
ingredients by major food companies will encourage farmers to revert
back to conventional, non-GMO crops.
Yet another tactic that industry could reach for is labeling
similar in its requirements as those for other nutrients, like
sodium or trans fats. Oftentimes, if a product contains less than a
certain amount per serving, it doesn’t have to be disclosed on the
label. This is why you oftentimes find products listing ridiculously
tiny serving sizes. Many products containing GMOs could slip below
the radar this way as well.
Wild Card Could Shift the Status Quo on GMOs
Unforeseen wild cards could come into play too. The American
press has been anything but astute in its reporting on GMOs. This
could quickly change however, should Pierre Omidyar and Glenn
Greenwald’s new media organization aimed at providing independent
in-depth journalism take off, for example.9
At that point, any journalist interested in a career would have to
quit regurgitating industry propaganda and start digging around for
the real story. In the case of GMOs, the tipping point for
genetically engineered foods would quickly be reached were the real
story to hit the masses as part of their daily news feed.
“In January 1999, the biotech industry boldly predicted
that within five years 95 percent of all commercial seeds in the
world would be genetically modified and patented. They did not
anticipate the gag order of a scientist being lifted three weeks
later in Europe.
A firestorm of media reported on his results of a
GMO-feeding study. Over 700 articles were written within a
single month in the UK. In 10 weeks, the tipping point of
consumer rejection was achieved in Europe – heralded not by the
European Commission banning GMOs, but by Unilever banning GMOs,
then Nestlé, and then virtually everyone in Europe because they
realized that using genetically modified ingredients had become
a marketing liability.”
Monsanto Sponsors Food Prize... and Awards It to Itself
Before I wrap this up, there’s a related story that is too
hilarious not to include, in light of these discussions about
transparency, honesty and integrity. On October 17, Monsanto’s
executive vice president and chief technology officer, Robert T.
Fraley, a scientist with Syngenta, along with a third scientist from
private industry, were awarded the World Food Prize10
at a fancy red carpet event. The prize, totalling $250,000, was
awarded for "feeding a growing global population."
A testament to growing public awareness on these issues, the move
was widely ridiculed as a joke taken straight from the parody
publication The Onion. Why? Well, first of all, Monsanto
itself donated $5 million to the fund. Syngenta is also a financial
backer. Besides such obvious conflicts of interest, Eric
Holt-Gimenez of Food First11
commented that awarding the World Food Prize to monopolies that
profit from hunger is like giving the Nobel Peace prize for going to
war—noting, with some irony, that this too has been done in the
recent past...
“The World Food Prize has become a corporate celebration
of self,” he writes. “Even The New York Times12
suggested that this award may be a PR attempt to counter the
growing global backlash against GMOs. It is also an effort to
fibrillate the industry's flat economic performance that has
followed the heady days of the 2008-09 food crisis (in which
they made record profits while a billion people were pushed into
the ranks of the hungry).”
Kuai Ousts GMOs
While Big Biotech pays their lackeys to pat themselves on the
back, yet another area of the world has taken a firm stand
against genetically engineered foods. According to the
Huffington Post:13
“After a marathon hearing, the Kauai County Council
passed a hotly debated bill... that could lead to prison time or
fines for employees of agricultural companies if they don’t
divulge specifics about pesticide use, abide by strict setback
rules for spraying chemicals or disclose when they grow
genetically engineered crops... The law is set to take effect in
nine months — with or without the mayor’s signature, because
bills receiving five or more votes are veto-proof.
... Attorneys for the biotech companies said during the
hearings that aspects of the bill are ‘vague and ambiguous’ or
amount to an ‘illegal taking’ of property. Council members said
that they expect biotech companies to file lawsuits in response
to the bill's passage. (Small farmers are exempt from the bill’s
pesticide provisions.)
Earlier this month, nine local attorneys, including
prominent environmental lawyers, released a statement urging
council members not to bow to pressure from the biotech
companies. 'We believe that Bill 2491 is sound, and the mere
threat of a lawsuit by industry interests should not prevent the
council from taking action they believe is important to their
community,' the statement read.”
Join Us in Your Right to Know by Getting GMOs Labeled!
While California Prop. 37 failed to pass last November by a very
narrow margin, the fight for GMO labeling is far from over. In the
past few weeks, Connecticut and Maine have passed GMO-labeling
bills, and 20 other states have pending legislation to label
genetically engineered foods. So, now is the time to put the pedal
to the metal and get labeling across the country—something 64 other
countries already have.
I hope you will join us in this effort.
The field-of-play has now moved to the state of Washington, where
the people's initiative 522, "The People's Right to Know Genetically
Engineered Food Act," will require food sold in retail outlets to be
labeled if it contains genetically engineered ingredients.
Please help us win this key GMO labeling battle and continue to
build momentum for GMO labeling in other states bymaking a donationto the Organic
Consumers Association (OCA).
Remember, as with CA Prop. 37, they need support of people like
YOU to succeed. Prop. 37 failed with a very narrow margin simply
because we didn't have the funds to counter the massive ad campaigns
created by the No on 37 camp, led by Monsanto and other major food
companies. Let's not allow Monsanto and its allies to confuse and
mislead the people of Washington and Vermont as they did in
California. So please, I urge you to get involved and help in any
way you can.
No matter where you live in the United States, please donate
money to these labeling efforts through the
Organic
Consumers Fund.
Sign up to learn more about how you can get involved by
visiting
Yeson522.com!
For timely updates on issues relating to these and other
labeling initiatives, please join the Organic Consumers
Association on
Facebook,
or follow them on
Twitter.
Talk to organic producers and stores and ask them to
actively support the Washington initiative.