The Battle for GMO Transparency —
Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going
Story at-a-glance
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In May 2014, Vermont passed a law requiring GMO
ingredients to be labeled when sold in the state. The
law goes into effect in July this year
Congratulations! As a result of your efforts to reach
out to your Senators, the DARK Act was not taken up in
the Senate last year, and the rider didn’t make it into
the Appropriations Bill either
Campbell’s Soup broke ranks a few weeks ago when the
company announced it will comply with the Vermont law.
Campbell’s also confirmed that food prices will NOT go
up as a result
By Dr. Mercola
Here to kick off the annual GMO Awareness Week is Ronnie Cummins,
founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). February 4th was
the 22nd anniversary of the introduction of
genetically engineered (GE) foods into the U.S. food system.
Twenty-two years ago, on February 4th, Monsanto's bovine growth
hormone (BGH) was forced onto the market despite complaints from
consumers and scientists warning that this technology is inherently
dangerous.
"Despite the fact that consumers said they wanted
labeling and independent safety testing, they just rammed it on
through," Ronnie says.
"Here we are, 22 years later, [and] a large percentage of
our farmlands and our foods in the United States now contain
genetically engineered or genetically modified ingredients — 75
percent of all supermarket foods.
We've had an interesting 20-year battle with consumers
asserting their right to know; their right to choose."
If Lying Was Illegal, We'd Have GMO Labeling Already
It really heated up in 2012 when OCA, myself, Dr. Bronner's, and
a number of other allies began putting
GMO labeling initiatives on state ballots. California was the
first, followed by Washington in 2013 and Oregon in 2014.
We came very close to winning all those state ballots, despite
food and biotech companies outspending us many times over, pouring
tens of millions of dollars into their anti-labeling campaigns.
Had lying to voters1
been illegal during those campaigns, there's little doubt we'd have
won. During the 2012 campaign, the industry was caught
misrepresenting academic affiliations, misusing federal seal of the
FDA, and falsely quoting the agency in a mailer sent to voters.
The attorney general in Washington State also indicted the
Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) for carrying out an
illegal money-laundering scheme to protect the identity of members
who donated funds to the opposing campaign in 2013.
As explained by Ronnie:
"The Big Food companies had become so worried about
consumer backlash by 2013 that they no longer were willing to go
public with their donations to stop GMO labeling.
They set up a front group and laundered the money
illegally and they got caught. Hopefully, they're going to have
to pay millions and millions of dollars in penalties.
But the thing they really hate the most is that we beat
them in the court of public opinion. We educated a critical mass
of American consumers about the hazards of GMOs and the chemical
toxins — the pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides — that
always accompany them.
We've alerted the public to the dangers of GMO-derived
foods, and the public have stood up and even the corporate media
and the indentured politicians in Washington have had to
listen."
GMO Labeling 'War' Heated Up Several Notches After Vermont's Success
In May 2014, Vermont passed a law requiring GMO ingredients to be
labeled when sold in the state. The industry took the case to court,
but the federal district court upheld the constitutionality of
Vermont's law.
The court also noted that under our federal system, states do
have the right to pass laws about food safety or food labeling when
the federal government has no policy. Ever since then, industry
concerns have mounted to new heights, as have their efforts to
squelch further labeling efforts once and for all.
"In July 2015, they managed to pass a law in the U.S.
House of Representatives, the Pompeo Bill [aka the DARK Act, or
Deny Americans the Right to Know], which was totally outrageous.
It basically said, 'Hey, it doesn't matter that 90
percent of consumers want to know if there are GMOs in their
food. It doesn't matter if we've had a hundred-year tradition of
states being able to pass food labeling laws.
We're going to squelch all that, because Monsanto,
Coca-Cola, and the rest don't want you to know.' They rammed
through that bill," Ronnie says.
The House of Representatives' passing of the DARK Act provoked
hundreds of thousands of phone calls, emails, and visits with
congressional representatives all over the country. As a
consequence, the U.S. Senate got cold feet, and didn't take up the
bill in 2015.
Industry Proposes Unworkable 'Compromise'
In face of that failure, the food industry set up closed-door
meetings with consumer organizations in an effort to reach a
compromise. Naturally, neither I nor the OCA were invited, as
labeling opponents know we're not willing to compromise on your
right to know what's in your food, and your right to choice.
They did get a handful of people to meet with them though. The
proposed compromise to mandatory labeling was to use so-called QR or
smart codes on food packages.
By scanning the QR code using your smartphone, you could then
look up information about the food on the brand's website. I've
previously listed the many
drawbacks of this "smart label" system, and why it's simply NOT
a viable alternative.
Few consumers fell for this ruse, and polls show 90 percent of
American consumers want clear labels on food packages, NOT
user-unfriendly smart codes. The U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) recently announced that a compromise with the consumer groups
could not be reached.
Campbell's Soup Company Breaks Rank
Vermont's GMO labeling law takes effect on July 1 this year, and
food companies are undoubtedly on edge about the fact that some
40,000 or 50,000 food products will have to bear the "contain
genetically engineered ingredients" label or be reformulated.
Campbell's Soup Company broke ranks with the GMA and the rest of
the food industry a few weeks ago when the company announced it will
comply with the Vermont law. Campbell's executives also said they
will remove GMOs from certain products.
Moreover, Campbell's confirmed that food prices will remain
unchanged—which is what we've been saying all along.
It DOESN'T cost anything extra to add a few words to the label.
The argument that GMO labeling would result in a $500 price hike for
the average American family was, and is, completely FALSE. Whole
Foods Market has also announced that by 2018, any GE product sold in
its stores will have a GMO label.
"The rest of the food industry cried out that Campbell's
had stabbed them in the back. Although a couple of them like
Hershey's, Hellmann's Mayonnaise, Cheerios, Ben and Jerry's, and
then some restaurant chains like Panera and Chipotle had already
said, 'We're getting GMOs out of our products.' Then, of course,
some of them have started buying up as many organic brands as
they can," Ronnie says.
"Basically, the Big Food industry is in disarray. They
want this issue to go away because, according to Fortune
magazine, they lost 4 billion dollars last year. Consumers are
mad at them; not only for having GMOs in their products, but for
trying to conceal that.
Consumers are starting to say, 'How come they took out
all their GMOs in the European Union, but in the United States,
they haven't taken them out and they don't want us to know?...
I think when we look at all these food companies, like
Kraft, who are taking artificial colors and synthetic chemicals
out of even their non-organic products, and buying up every
organic brand they can buy, we're seeing a change. American
consumers are starting to not only take control of their health
but take control of their food and their diets.
The food companies, the chemical companies, and Monsanto
could ignore this for a while, but they can't ignore it
anymore."
Besides GMOs, What Else Is the Food Industry Hiding From You?
The food and biotechnology industries have fought hard to prevent
you from knowing there are GE ingredients in your food. So what else
are they trying to keep you in the dark about? For starters, they
don't want you to know that some 95 percent of your meat and animal
products come from animals that are fed GE grains, are drugged, and
raised under horrific living conditions in feedlots and concentrated
animal feeding operations (CAFOs).
It's a dangerous system from a food safety standpoint, not to
mention inhumane and cruel, which is why
gag laws have been enacted, making it a felony to document and
publicize what goes on in these massive factory farms.
"We need to demand the right to know which of our meat
and animal products come out of factory farms," Ronnie says.
"The next stage in this food fight to know what we're eating and
to be able to choose what's healthy, sustainable, and humane, is
to think a little bit more about meat, dairy, and eggs."
Let's also not forget that most Americans are spending
half of our food dollars eating in restaurants ... Does the menu
really tell you very much? No. You have to become not just a
passive consumer. Ask that waiter 'Is this farmed salmon or is
this wild-caught Alaskan salmon? You got this hamburger on the
menu. Is this grass-fed? Does it come from a local or regional
farmer,' and so on.
There exists this conversation and this food fight into
the other sectors of food and farming economy, which are huge.
One of them is meat and animal products, the other are
restaurants ... Let's think before we pull out our wallets.
Let's look more closely at these menus and labels. Let's
exercise our right. It is a right to take control of our health
and of our food."
Let's also not forget the issue of pesticides. Since the
introduction of Roundup in 1974, 1.8 million tons2
of it has been sprayed on U.S. crops alone. Worldwide, nearly 10
million tons of glyphosate has been used. It's the most commonly
used chemical in agriculture in the history of mankind.
This is truly outrageous when you consider that Monsanto deceived
us yet again with this product. It's neither biodegradable nor safe.
Instead, research shows it's a carcinogen. It also destroys
critically important soil microbes, which has led to a reduction in
food quality. We really need to double down and eliminate this
toxic assault, not just to protect ourselves, but also to protect
the environment.
Get Ready for Biggest Food Boycott Ever, Lest Food Industry Backs
Down
Vermont's GMO labeling law takes effect this July. The GMA and
its members, including Monsanto (which alone employs 300 attorneys),
are appealing the federal district court decision to the circuit
court. Ronnie is confident Vermont will prevail, but it's certainly
possible that some of the circuit court judges might not look at the
fact in the same way the first judge did.
Even the food industry recognizes they may lose, which is why
they're pressuring the Senate to block all further attempts to label
GMOs.
"The Senate Ag committee has a guy, Pat Roberts, from
Kansas, who's never seen a pesticide he didn't love. He's never
seen a factory farm he didn't love. He's never seen a big check
from special interests that he didn't love to put in his bank
account.
Even Roberts has said, 'I'm not sure we can pass this
[denial of consumer right to know] in the Senate' ... They're
going to try, perhaps until the last minute. But I think what it
looks like at this point is that we can prevail.
If we don't — if the Senate dares to ram through a bill
in the last minute to take away the right of consumers to know
what's in their food, and the right of states ... then we have a
surprise for them. That 4 billion dollars that they lost from
their bottom line last year is going to get a lot bigger,
because you can't just slap consumers around anymore.
We're preparing a great boycott of all the GMA companies
and all their brands if they dare to preempt Vermont at the last
minute. But chances are they're making plans. They've already
decided like Campbell's to throw in the towel. They're going to
either have labels on their products or they're going to have to
reformulate it."
Remember, every time you pull out your wallet, you cast your vote
for the kind of food system you want, and that terrifies the food
industry. They know they survive or perish at the hand of consumers,
which is the reason for all this lack of transparency. Up until
recently, most people were simply too uninformed to ditch their
brands for something better. This is rapidly changing, and as it
does, the status quo can no longer prevail. The food industry must
change or die.
Hopefully, they will decide to not only stop fighting us with
regards to labeling, but also to take a long, hard look at the food
they're serving to kids in schools, old folks' homes, retirement
centers, corporate cafeterias, and veterans' hospitals. They must
stop poisoning the American public for the sake of short-term
profits.
Our health care system simply cannot bear all of this
diet-induced disease. "If they don't, well, we'll just make the
organic and grass-fed industry and the natural health industry grow
faster than ever," Ronnie says.
Other Big Plans in Store to Inform and Protect Your Health
The OCA has hired legal help to draft new bills that require
factory farmed foods to be labeled as such, and they've talked to
several legislators across the country. So far, no one has agreed to
support such a bill. In fact, as Ronnie says, they're all "scared to
death" of such legislation.
The factory farm industry, the drug companies that supply them
with drugs, the genetic engineering and agribusiness centers that
supply them with feed — these industries are massive, and they wield
a lot of power.
"So far, we haven't gotten any headway in states like
Vermont, Wisconsin, or Maine where we've tried to talk about
this," Ronnie says."But we think there's another way
that we can inform consumers about what's in their
factory-farmed foods.
What we started doing over the last year is try to send
in some samples of milk, meat, and dairy products to labs to
test for GMO DNA ... animal drug residues ... pesticide,
fungicide, or herbicide residues, and/or their breakdown
compounds (metabolites)."
One major problem they encountered was that few labs were willing
to work with them. To remedy this situation, I, the Natural Health
Association, and other groups, have joined forces with the OCA to
set up our own independent laboratory. We're also investigating labs
around the world that might be willing to be objective.
"The industry likes to say, 'Organic and grass-fed are
not worth the extra money and that it's all just hype. The
Organic Consumers Association wants to take more of your
hard-earned money to get you to spend it on organic or grass-fed
when it's not really necessary' ... [W]e will get rigorous
scientific testing done, and then we will explain to the public,
'Here's what's in your food. Here's in what's in your kid's
food,' Ronnie says.
Taking Pesticides and Animal Drugs to Task
The agricultural industry uses some 20,000 different pesticides,
many of which — despite being legal to use — act as hormone or
endocrine disruptors. As explained by André Leu, author of "The
Myths of Safe Pesticides," pesticides pose a significant health
threat even in minute amounts. Research also shows that the
synergistic action between various chemicals typically makes them
FAR more toxic in combination than individually.
"People are not paying attention to the fact that the
most commonly used herbicide in America on corn is not even
Roundup; it's atrazine. How come atrazine is banned in the
European Union and most industrialized countries?" Ronnie
says.
"It's very clear: It's carcinogenic. It makes frogs
develop extra legs. It turns male fish into female fish with
eggs. It does damage to you when you drink that tap water or
when you eat that food that's got the atrazine residue.
We've got to keep educating people about GMOs. But the
next stage in this food safety campaign is the toxic pesticides
that always accompany them. We can add (when we're talking about
meat and animal products) the animal drugs that always accompany
them.
Once we win consumers' right to know what's in their
food, including the pesticides and the animal drugs, the big
companies are going to stop using these things, and the organic
and the grass fed sector will become what it used to be before
the Second World War — the dominant part of our food and farming
system."
Creating Synergy Between Organic Food and Natural Health
We've made great headway, but there's clearly a lot more to be
done. Ronnie and I personally thank you for everything you've done
to further this cause, and hope you stick with us as we move
forward. I strongly encourage you to give OCA your financial
support, because we are making a difference.
Food companies have to start being honest and truthful in telling
us what's in our food, and we will not quit until they do. We can't
do it alone, however. We need your help, and this week, you can
double the impact of your donation, as I will match each and
every dollar you donate to the OCA.
In closing, Ronnie notes:
"The most encouraging thing about in the United States
and North America these days is that we've got a hundred million
people occasionally buying organic and grass-fed food products.
A lot of them are buying them more than occasionally. That's why
we have this 55-billion-dollar industry of organic, non-GMO, and
grass-fed.
But we also have a hundred million natural health
consumers out there who are taking control of their health, who
are at least occasionally buying supplements and visiting
alternative practitioners. My big dream for 2016 is to create an
even greater synergy between the organic consumers and the
natural health consumers, because we live in a world where we
need both organic food and grass-fed food, and natural
Help Support GMO Labeling
GMO proponents claim that genetic engineering is “safe and
beneficial,” and that it advances the agricultural industry. They
also say that GMOs, or genetically “engineered” (GE) foods, help
ensure the global food supply and sustainability. But is there any
truth to these claims? I believe not. For years, I've stated the
belief that GMOs pose one of the greatest threats to life on the
planet. Genetic engineering is NOT the safe and beneficial
technology that it is touted to be.
The FDA cleared the way for GE (Genetically Engineered) Atlantic
salmon to be farmed for human consumption. Thanks to added language
in the federal spending bill, the product will require special
labeling so at least consumers will have the ability to identify the
GE salmon in stores. However, it’s imperative ALL GE foods be
labeled, which is currently still being denied.
The FDA is threatening the existence of our food supply. We have
to start taking action now. I urge you to share this article with
friends and family. If we act together, we can make a difference and
put an end to the absurdity. Thankfully, we have organizations like
the
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) to fight back against these
corporate giants. So please, fight for your right to know what’s in
your food and help support the GMO labeling movement by making a
donation today.
Internet Resources Where You Can Learn More
Here are useful resources to help you learn more about GMO’s and
what you can do to fight back:
Together, Let’s Help OCA Get the Funding They Deserve
Let’s help OCA get the funding it deserves. I have found very few
organizations that are as effective and efficient as OCA. It’s a
public interest organization dedicated to promoting health justice
and sustainability. A central focus of the OCA is building a
healthy, equitable, and sustainable system of food production and
consumption.
This week, help us fight for the right to know what's in our
food. To benefit the GMO labeling efforts, we are matching donations
up to $250,000 during GMO Awareness Week to the Organic Consumers
Association. Please make a donation to help OCA continue the fight
for GMO labeling.