BLOG POST OF THE WEEK
Gene Giants to OCA: ‘Stay Home’
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.
ACTION ALERT
Please Sign On!
When OCA was invited to be on a panel with Cathleen Enright, executive vice president food & agriculture, for the Biotech Industry Organization (BIO), at the “Southbites: Feed Your Mind” session during Austin’s South-by-Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, we jumped at the chance.
But after we’d accepted the invitation, an organizer at SXSW told us that Enright had vetoed our participation.
We called Enright to confirm that she was controlling who was on the panel, and that OCA was not welcome. Her explanation? OCA has “demonized” GMO food technology and she was not interested in a debate on the health and safety of GMOs.
We’ve written a letter to Enright, expressing the views of millions of consumers who believe that the GMO health and safety debate is far from over.
If you agree that there’s plenty of credible, unbiased scientific evidence to suggest that GMOs are not safe and healthy, please read and sign our letter by March 12.
MORE FROM THE OCA BLOG
Another Bad Idea from USDA
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?
Vilsack’s barcode scheme is just one more attempt to keep consumers in the dark about the GMOs in their food—and absolve the USDA, FDA and EPA of any responsibility for the toxic soup of chemicals poisoning our food and ecosystem.
ACTION ALERT
GMO Labels, Please. No Barcodes!
For an industry that spends millions on advertising and public relations campaigns to convince consumers that their products are safe, it's a mystery as to why they're willing to spend hundreds of millions to keep consumers from knowing that they're buying those very same products.
Unless, of course, those products aren't safe at all.
Knowing that millions of consumers believe GMO foods and ingredients are actually unsafe, and that those consumers and millions more want at least enough information on a package or product in order to avoid purchasing them if they choose, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has (once again) suggested that barcodes are the answer.
To which we say, no thanks. U.S. consumers want the same basic right that consumers in more than 60 other countries have--the right to know if their food has been genetically engineered. And the most efficient way to provide that information, without requiring consumers to own or use fancy technology, is a clear and simple label.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack: Consumers Want GMO Labels, not Barcodes!
SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF
Taking Back the Science
Go to the biotech industry-funded propaganda website gmoanswers.com and the first thing you see is this: Stand up for Scientists. Stand up for Science.
It’s good advice. And with your help, and the help of a growing number of courageous scientists and lawyers willing to risk attack by well-funded industry groups, we intend to do just that.
Because, despite industry claims, the science really is on our side. It’s just been systematically covered up, with help from our own government.
Two recently published books serve as examples of how the tide is turning against biotech, chemical agribusiness and the junk food industry. Poison Spring: The Secret History of Pollution and the EPA exposes the complicity between industry and the EPA when it comes to approving poisonous chemicals.
And in Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, featuring a foreword by Jane Goodall, author Steven Druker outlines how the FDA has covered up the extensive warnings of its own scientists about the dangers of GMOs, lied about the facts, and violated federal food safety law by permitting these foods to be marketed without having been proven safe through standard testing.
With your help, this will be the year we take back the science argument, and expose not only the lies behind chemical agriculture, GMO foods and toxic (on every level) factory farms—but also the liars who tell them. Thank you for your support!
Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)
Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Bad Deal
Watch Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) explain the “Investor State Dispute Settlement” (ISDS) aspect of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), an international trade deal that, if passed, will severely weaken environmental, food safety and other consumer-protection laws:
Any deal that gives foreign corporations special rights to challenge our laws outside of our legal system is a bad deal. So long as the TPP includes Investor State Dispute settlement, the only winners will be international corporations.
FAIR WORLD PROJECT
Cow-Free Milk? No Thanks!
Sometimes technological advances come about to answer the wrong question. But what happens when you ask the right question—but technology turns out to be the wrong tool?
You get Muufri.
If you don’t feel comfortable drinking milk from a cow, but do feel comfortable drinking milk that a few guys made in the lab on summer vacation, then Muufri is for you.
Here’s what Muufri and its makers, Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, got right. We have a huge industrial agricultural problem and one of its worst aspects is CAFOs-Confined Feeding Animal Operations—those “factory farms” where animals are crowded together in unsanitary and inhumane conditions, standing in their own urine and feces, waste that eventually moves on to pollute our waterways and contribute to climate change.
Animals in CAFOs are cared for by underpaid workers who put their own physical and mental health at risk every day. This system needs to be changed and we need alternatives fast.
But synthetic milk isn’t the answer.
LITTLE BYTES
Essential Reading for the Week
New Dietary Guidelines Reverse Flawed Recommendations on Cholesterol
Jane Goodall and Steven Druker Expose US Government Fraud over GMOs
McDonald's Is Finally Phasing Out Antibiotics in Chicken. Thank Chipotle.
A Pesticide Banned, or Not, Underscores Trans-Atlantic Trade Sensitivities
Big Pharma Is America's New Mafia
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