TOP NEWS OF THE WEEK
Lying Through Their Teeth
In yet another blatant show of support for Monsanto, members of the U.S House Committee on Agriculture signed off on a bill intended to permanently shut down the GMO labeling movement.
The Committee took only 17 minutes to push H.R. 1599 toward a full House vote, expected to take place early next week.
Members justified their votes on the basis of lies. Official statements issued by Committee Chairman Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) and Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.)
were disingenuously crafted to make consumers think the purpose of this bill, the “Mother of All Monsanto Protection Acts,” is to give consumers what they want—labels on foods containing GMOs.
Consumers increasingly want to know more about where their food comes from and how it is produced. I think H.R. 1599 satisfies that demand while also recognizing what we know about the safety of the foods that our farmers produce.
H.R. 1599 doesn’t come close to satisfying consumer demand for labeling. It creates the framework for a government-run voluntary labeling scheme, while shutting down states’ rights to require mandatory labeling. Who in their right mind believes that corporations that spent hundreds of millions of dollars to keep labels off their GMO foods are suddenly going to voluntarily label them after this bill passes?
Conaway’s and Peterson’s statements perpetuated the lie that GMOs have been thoroughly tested and proven safe. And the issue of Monsanto’s glyphosate, the toxic chemical used on more than 80 percent of GMO foods, being officially classified as probably cancerous to humans? Barely mentioned.
ACTION ALERT
Desperate Measure
A recent article by the arguably conservativeFortune magazine painted a bleak picture for the processed junk food industry. Fortunereported that the top 25 U.S. food and beverage companies have lost an equivalent of $18 billion since 2009. According to a survey paid for by the financial magazine, 64.2 percent of consumers are “very” or “extremely” concerned about pesticides on their food; 56.5 percent said the same thing about hormones, 52.2 percent about antibiotics and 45.9 percent about GMOs.
No wonder food companies are desperate to keep GMO labels off of their products, and avoid conversations around the fact that GMO foods are grown using massive quantities of cancer-causing pesticides.
Lucky for them, these companies belong to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, one of the most powerful lobbying groups in D.C. The GMA is behind the obscene spending to defeat GMO labeling ballot initiatives. It’s behind the lawsuit to overturn Vermont’s GMO labeling law. And it’s behind this week’s swift green-lighting of H.R. 1599, a bill to ensure that GMOs are never labeled, and never ever subjected to pre-market safety testing.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Which is why a host of D.C. lawmakers, who depend on Big Ag for campaign contributions, are willing to throw consumers and democracy under the bus, in order to pass what we’ve alternately referred to as the DARK (Deny Americans the Right to Know) Act and the “Mother of All Monsanto Protection Acts.”
H.R. 1599 will be voted on by the House, probably next week. We must let every single member of Congress know that this bill subverts the truth about GMOs and the pesticides used to grow them, as well as the rights of states to protect their citizens as granted under the Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
URGENT: Help us stop the DARK Act
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Off the Hook
Photo Credit: Ville Misaki via Compfight cc
As early as this fall, all Hershey’s product labels will include a QR code. You’ll be able to scan the code to find a detailed list of the products’ ingredients, including whether or not they contain GMOs. Assuming of course that you have a smart phone handy, and time to use it.
PoliticoPro reports that while Hershey’s may be the first to use this fancy technology, nearly 90 other food manufacturers are involved in the program, expected to be rolled out by summer 2016. Whose standards will they use to determine if a product is GMO-free? Anybody’s guess.
So, all these food companies that have been so loudly complaining that they’ll be financially devastated if they have to add four words (in plain view) to their existing product labels—“produced with genetic engineering”—seemingly have no problem investing in QR code technology designed to make it more complicated, and more difficult, for consumers to know if the products they’re buying contain GMOs.
But what’s even more telling is the fact that by investing in these new labels, Big Food is revealing how confident the industry is that Congress will overturn Vermont’s GMO labeling law, never pass a mandatory federal law, and create a weak, useless voluntary scheme that will let them off the hook.
This week, Congress moved one step closer to doing exactly that. Next week, when the full House is expected to vote on H.R. 1599, the “Mother of all Monsanto Protection Acts,” the U.S. House of Representatives could send this anti-consumer bill to the Senate. Or worse yet, employ some tricky political maneuvering involving attaching riders to other bills, in order to bypass a fight in the Senate.
We continue to fight this preposterous anti-consumer, Monsanto-friendly bill on all fronts. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
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)
ACTION ALERT
It's (Way Past) Time
It's been six years since Congress last raised the federal minimun wage requirement—to a whopping $7.25/hr. Meanwhile, the cost of living, including food and housing, has steadily increased.
The Raise the Wage Act gives Congress a chance to help 35 million low-wage workers get a much-needed raise. This legislation will even gradually raise the wage for 10 million tipped workers, who have been stuck with a $2.13/hour minimum wage for 22 years!
Who are the minimum wage earners? From the Guardian:
According to former secretary of labor Robert B Reich: “Most low-wage workers aren’t young teenagers; they’re major breadwinners for their families, and many are women. And they and their families need a higher minimum.” Yet business owners and conservative pundits have done an excellent job misinforming the public on who works minimum wage jobs.
It’s way past time we pay these people a living wage.
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress: It’s Time to Raise the Minimum Wage!
NEW STUDY
Formaldehyde in GMO Soy?
When the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) wrongfully declared GMOs “substantially equivalent” to non-GMO foods, the agency set the table for decades of corruption. Corruption of our food supply. Corruption of our health. Corruption of our Democracy.
Now, along comes a new study, published in the peer-reviewed Agricultural Sciences, that says GMO crops, or at least GMO soy crops, are absolutely not substantially equivalent to non-GMO soy crops.
From a press release:
The study, led by Dr. V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, Ph.D., an MIT-trained systems biologist, utilizes his latest invention, CytoSolve, a 21st century systems biology method to integrate 6,497 in vitro and in vivolaboratory experiments, from 184 scientific institutions, across 23 countries, to discover the accumulation of formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, and a dramatic depletion of glutathione, an anti-oxidant necessary for cellular detoxification, in GMO soy, indicating that formaldehyde and glutathione are likely critical criteria for distinguishing the GMO from its non-GMO counterpart.
More than 90 percent of all U.S. soy crops are GMO. Soy is commonly found in a long list of foods.
The biotech industry was founded on bad science and great public relations. For the most thorough history of how Monsanto has corrupted our food and our government, read Steven Druker’s, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth: How the Venture to Genetically Engineer Our Food Has Subverted Science, Corrupted Government and Systematically Deceived the Public.
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
It's So Simple
Who will fix the global warming problem? Not who you think.
While governments pin their hopes on complex carbon tax schemes, and while technophiles scramble for a high-tech solution, farmers all over the world are actually cooling the planet. And feeding the world.
We’ve been made to believe that without fossil fues, without external inputs, without big mechanization, without long-distance trade, we cannot feed the world. Every one of those assumptions is false. - Vandana Shiva
The only thing Big Food is feeding us is a line.
The climate crisis is real. And urgent. We have the solutions. We need to spread the word.
LITTLE BYTES
Essential Reading for the Week
WHO Cancer Expert: Glyphosate Is Definitely Genotoxic
Another 'Too Big to Fail' System in G.M.O.s
13 Health Foods That Taste Better than Junk Foods
Bt Cotton Directly Linked to Indian Farmer Suicides in Rain-Fed Areas
NIH Protects Sugar Industry over Children's Teeth
Scientific Review Shows Fluoridation May Not Prevent Cavities
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