Front page

If you’re headed to Austin, Texas, next week to attend the “Southbites: Feed Your Mind” session during Austin’s South-by-Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, don’t expect to hear an honest debate on the health and safety of genetically engineered crops or food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs)—at least not if the biotech industry can help it.

According to Cathleen Enright, executive vice president Food & Agriculture, for the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), there is nothing to debate. GMO agriculture is “sustainable” and GMO foods are “safe.” Anyone who says otherwise is making “scary” statements that have no basis in fact—because every shred of scientific evidence suggesting health or safety concerns related to GMOs “has been discredited,” Enright told me during a March 3 (2015) phone conversation.

We weren’t surprised to learn that BIO doesn’t want to debate the health and safety of GMOs. How do you defend a technology invented for the sole purpose of selling toxic chemicals—to spray on food?

So I guess we also shouldn’t have been surprised that after the organizers at SXSW invited OCA to participate on a panel sponsored by BIO, Enright insisted that we be disinvited.

On Wednesday, February 25, 2015, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, once again floated the idea of consumers using barcodes to identify foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as an alternative to requiring food manufacturers to put a label on products that contain GMOs.
 
Referring to the ongoing debate over GMO labeling laws, Vilsack (according to the Associated Press) told the House during a hearing on agriculture spending: “We could solve that issue in a heartbeat.”
 
Consumers shouldn’t have to rely on a technology that is not readily and/or equally available to everyone, and would no doubt be confusing to others. In more than 60 other countries, where laws require the mandatory labeling of GMOs, consumers can simply glance at the package their food comes in to instantly know whether or not the food contains genetically engineered ingredients.
 
TAKE ACTION: Tell Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Consumers Want GMO Labels, not Barcodes!

On Wednesday last week (February 25, 2015), the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, once again floated the idea of consumers using barcodes to identify foods that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as an alternative to requiring food manufacturers to put a label on products that contain GMOs.

Referring to the ongoing debate over GMO labeling laws, Vilsack (according to the Associated Press) told the House during a hearing on agriculture spending: “We could solve that issue in a heartbeat.”

Solve the issue for whom? Tot-Toting Moms with busy schedules who would need to take the added step of scanning every item in the grocery store, instead of just glancing at the label? Older people who struggle as it is to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies? Or how about for those people who can’t afford—or don’t want to own—expensive smartphones? 

Consumers want the mandatory labeling of GMOs—not barcodes.

The company (Okanagan Specialty Fruits Inc.) that makes the apple wants you to believe that consumer demand was behind the invention.

But the real target customers for GMO apples are fast-food restaurants and food service businesses—companies that want mothers of young children to think they’re selling healthy fresh fruit, even if that fruit is a genetically engineered apple that has undergone no meaningful safety testing for human consumption.

It’s up to consumers to make sure the main customers for Okanagan’s frankenapple—fast-food restaurants who want to serve the apple in kids’ meals and salad bars—know that consumers don’t want ‘em, and won’t buy ‘em.

TAKE ACTION: Tell McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Dunkin Donuts and Subway to Publicly Commit to not Sell GMO Apples

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) is one of the corporate front groups suing Vermont in an attempt to block the state’s GMO labeling law. The trade group is also lobbying for H.R. 4432, an anti-consumer, anti-states’ rights bill intended to preempt all state GMO labeling laws. 
 
Why would the IDFA spend millions to defeat GMO labeling laws, including launching a lawsuit against Vermont? 
 
Isn’t the dairy industry the “Got Milk?” people, the ones who wear milk mustaches to get kids to drink what the industry promotes as healthy whole food? Doesn’t the IDFA represent the family farmers whose black-and-white cows graze happily on green grass outside picturesque red barns?
 
Truth be told, those idyllic images have nothing to do with reality. They’re part of a carefully orchestrated, and very expensive public relations campaign aimed at keeping consumers in the dark about what’s really in the “dairy products” products (can you say GMOs?) on grocery shelves.