USDA Renames GMOs as “Bioengineered” or “BE” Foods as New National Labeling Rules Take Effect

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This article originally appeared in Presence Marketing’s February 2022 Industry Newsletter

By Steve Hoffman

Once upon a time, in 2016, the small but mighty state or Vermont implemented a law it had passed requiring companies selling food products in the state that contained genetically modified ingredients to label such products as made with “GMO” ingredients.

As a result of this first-ever GMO labeling law in the U.S., for a few months in the spring of 2016, consumers all across the country began to see GMO labeling disclosure on products containing such ingredients, as some manufacturers opted to label all packaging for the U.S. market rather than just print GMO-labeled boxes for Vermont. Such was the power of that state law mandating the consumer’s right to know.

Yet, reacting to Vermont’s GMO labeling law, Congress soon thereafter passed S. 764, sponsored in the House by former Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo and in the Senate by former Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts, and signed in August 2016 by then President Barack Obama. Dubbed the DARK Act for “Deny Americans the Right to Know,” the law established voluntary labeling much less stringent than Vermont’s previous law, and it pre-empted states from mandating GMO labeling. Published in 2018, the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard directed the USDA to establish a national mandatory standard for disclosing foods that are, or may be, bioengineered.

"The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard increases the transparency of our nation's food system, establishing guidelines for regulated entities on when and how to disclose bioengineered ingredients," former USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said at the time. "This ensures clear information and labeling consistency for consumers about the ingredients in their food,” he said.

Now, as of January 1, 2022, food previously known as GMO or genetically engineered has a new name. According to USDA, such products will now display a “Bioengineered” (BE) label. Critics of the new labeling regulations are concerned that the new GMO “rebrand” may cause more confusion and less transparency, as most consumers are familiar with the term GMO, genetically modified organism or genetically engineered.

"The worst part of this law is the use of the term 'bioengineered' because that's not a term most consumers are familiar with," Gregory Jaffe, Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest's (CSPI) biotechnology project, told the Washington Post.

Companies with products made with bioengineered ingredients have a number of options to comply with the new standard, NPR reported. They can include text on food packages that says "bioengineered food" or "contains a bioengineered food ingredient," or they can choose from two friendly-looking “BE” logos created and approved by the USDA. Or, they can include a QR code for consumers to scan or a phone number for them to text that will provide more information about that food item.

In addition, according to a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the USDA in federal court by the Center for Food Safety, the new GMO labeling standard prohibits producers from using more common labeling terms such as "GMO," plus it will leave out many foods that are "highly refined" or contain levels of bioengineered ingredients that aren't detectable, such as soda and cooking oil, CSP said.

The new standard also discriminates against the poor, the elderly, people who live in rural areas and minorities who may lack access to a smartphone or the internet, CFS said. It also puts an "undue burden" on shoppers to scan food items in stores during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, critics of the new labeling standard have asserted.

"Consumers have fought for decades for their right to know what's in their food and how it's produced," said Meredith Stevenson, CFS attorney and counsel in the litigation, in a December 2021 statement. "But instead of providing meaningful labeling, USDA's final rules will only create more uncertainty for consumers, retailers, and manufacturers."

Some commonly bioengineered foods include corn, canola, soybeans and sugar beets. Most GMO crops are used for animal feed, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, they are also used to make ingredients, such as cornstarch, corn syrup, canola oil and sugar, that routinely find their way into products for human consumption.

USDA Faces Legal Challenge from Organic Industry Over GMO Labeling Standards

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This article originally appeared in Presence Marketing’s January 2022 Industry Newsletter

By Steve Hoffman

The year was 2014 when the state of Vermont passed a stand-alone GMO labeling law, and for a short time, U.S consumers saw major food companies disclose on the package products that contained GMO ingredients. Then in 2015, led by former Representative Mike Pompeo, Congress passed a national GMO labeling law, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, that among other requirements, preempted individual states from mandating their own, more transparent GMO labeling laws. To many critics, the passage of the act watered down transparency in the law that favored corporate interests over the consumer’s right to know. The law, known as the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard, (NBFDS) took effect in July 2016 and tasked the USDA with drafting and implementing the new labeling rules.

Now, as the labeling rules are in effect as of Jan. 1, 2022, advocates for clear labeling of GMO foods say the USDA fell short of its promise of transparent GMO labeling. Moreover, the language the agency is requiring on labels to disclose genetically engineered ingredients is confusing to consumers, they claim. In an important first step in a lawsuit challenging USDA’s rules on GMO labeling (which USDA now refers to as “bioengineered or BE foods”) – filed by organic industry groups including the Center for Food Safety and the National Organic Coalition, natural products retailers Natural Grocers, Good Earth Natural Foods and Puget Consumers Co-op, and others – a California federal judge was asked on Nov. 23, 2021, to declare USDA’s GMO labeling standard invalid. The lawsuit was originally filed on July 27, 2020, the National Law Review reported in December.

“Consumers have fought for decades for their right to know what’s in their food and how it’s produced,” Meredith Stevenson, Center for Food Safety attorney and counsel in the case, was quoted as saying. “But USDA instead used its authority to label GE foods by obscuring this information behind QR codes and unfamiliar terminology and omitting the majority of GE foods. Fortunately, the law is on the consumers’ side.”

“It’s critical to shoppers that they know what ingredients are in their food and how they were produced,” said Heather Isely, EVP of Natural Grocers, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “Hiding the presence of genetically engineered products from consumers is a blatant attempt to hide agricultural practices that continue to destroy soils, biodiversity, communities, and public health. Education is part of our core mission and we refuse to misinform our customers.” “I believe that USDA’s GMO labeling law forces me, as a grocer, to engage in deceptive labeling,” added Mark Squire, co-owner and manager of Good Earth Natural Foods. “I cannot look my customers in the eye unless I do whatever I can to stop this misleading labeling system that is so obviously designed to protect the agro-chemical and biotech industry at the expense of consumers everywhere.”

All retail food products made with genetically modified ingredients (GMO or GE), or what the USDA refers to as bioengineered  or BE foods, will be required to disclose as of Jan. 1, 2022, if they contain bioengineered ingredients via plain text or a QR code on the label, reported Food Navigator-USA. However, many suppliers are still not up to speed with the USDA labeling standards, Nate Ensrud of FoodChain ID told Food Navigator-USA. Ensrud noted that the 13 foods USDA identified as high risk to be bioengineered “can be translated into thousands of ingredients and products sources from numerous global suppliers. Companies think that they have documentation that gives them clear insight into the BE risk of their ingredients, but a lot of what we’ve reviewed doesn’t meet the standards we would expect to support compliance,” he said.

At Issue over USDA’s GMO Labeling Standards:

- The term “bioengineered,” as opposed to the better recognized terms, GMO and GE. According to Meredith Stevenson, legal counsel with the Center for Food Safety, USDA’s mandate concerning the word “bioengineered” contradicts the letter of the law itself, which, she told The Counter, as Congress passed it, allows for this word to be used interchangeably with GMO and GE. Stevenson also noted that USDA’s terminology rule contradicts the agency’s own prior stance. Until 2016, USDA insisted on using the term GMO, saying the term permeated American society and not using the term GMO would mislead consumers.

- Highly refined products derived from GMOs in which genetically engineered material is not “detectable” using a “common testing method” after processing, are exempt from labeling disclosure. That includes sugar from GMO sugar beets, which, according to FoodPrint, comprises about 70% of the sugar consumed in the U.S., GMO canola oil, and additives derived from GMO corn or soy such as flavorings, colorings, thickening agents and binders.

- Allowing companies to use QR codes as a labeling option for consumers to scan instead of providing plain text GMO ingredient information on the label. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately one-quarter of low-income residents in the U.S. do not own a smart phone. “It’s quite discriminatory that they decided to go with a QR code that excludes a significant portion of the population from the right to know what’s in their food,” Dana Perls, Food and Technology Manager at Friends of the Earth, told The Counter in December. 

- USDA adds to the obfuscation, reported The Counter, by not allowing retailers to use shelf tags or other signage to inform customers whether a product contains GMO ingredients, even if it was made in their own kitchen. However, retailers are permitted to let customers know if a products is non-GMO.

Argentina Becomes First Country to Approve GMO Wheat

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This article originally appeared in Presence Marketing’s November 2020 Newsletter

By Steven Hoffman

Among the first countries in the world to use genetically modified (GMO) crops, including soybeans, corn and cotton, on a large scale in agriculture, Argentina on October 9, 2020, announced it has now become the first nation to approve the use of GMO wheat. The move prompted criticism from Argentina’s agriculture export industry, reported Reuters.

The country approved HB4, a wheat variety genetically engineered to be drought resistant and developed by agricultural biotechnology company Bioceres SA, based in Argentina. 

To date, no other country has approved the importation or production of GMO wheat, due to consumer concerns, as wheat is grown primarily for human consumption. According to Reuters, Bioceres said it will only begin marketing the GMO wheat once it is approved for import by Brazil. Brazil is currently the largest importer of wheat produced in Argentina.

“I will not plant HB4 wheat, and I would not recommend that anyone else does, until it has been approved by importing countries. It seems risky in the sense that we could end up with crops that no one wants to buy,” Francisco Santillan, who manages a number of farms in Argentina, told Reuters.

Dave Green, EVP of the Wheat Quality Council, a U.S. trade group, told Reuters, “I don’t hear anything about GMO wheat efforts here. None of our export customers want any.” 

Argentina is one of the world’s largest producers of GMO soy and it is among the nation’s leading exports. However, the BBC reported in 2014 that massive synthetic pesticide use in the country as a result of the explosion of GMO agriculture may be linked to skyrocketing rates of cancer and birth defects in the country.

Yale University Study: GMO Mosquitoes Bite Back

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Originally Appeared in Presence Marketing News, October 2019
By Steven Hoffman

What happens when a U.K.-based biotech company, Oxitec Ltd., releases tens of millions of mosquitoes in Brazil that were genetically engineered to produce sterile offspring with the intent to combat the spread of diseases such as Zika and malaria? “The idea would be that when these males mated with females, the offspring would die. And therefore, the overall population size of the mosquitoes would decline,” said Yale University professor Jeffrey Powell, who led a research study to assess the results of the experimental release of the GMO mosquitoes into the Brazilian rainforest. “What we found was unexpected. Unpredicted,” he said. According to the study published in September 2019 in Nature, the researchers found hybrids of the GMO mosquitoes and the native mosquitoes – signifying that some of the offspring weren’t sterile, reported WSHU Public Radio. “Evidently, rare viable hybrid offspring between the release strain and the Jacobina population (native mosquito species in Jacobina, Bahia, Brazil) are sufficiently robust to be able to reproduce in nature,” the study’s authors concluded. “We don’t know what the effect of having this hybrid population is. These could be stronger mosquitoes, harder to control,” Powel said. Editorial note: Why do these scientists sound surprised? Anyone in the organic and non-GMO movement could have told you what would happen. In fact, we did. Can you say “Unintended consequences?”

Disappointed GMO Labeling Advocates in OR and CO

Source: Wikimedia Commons

With more than $45 million poured in to defeat GMO labeling ballot initiatives in 2014, voters in Oregon and Colorado rejected ballot measures to label GMO foods. However, residents of Maui, HI, passed a ban on GMO agriculture by just over 1,000 votes.

GMO labeling advocates are rethinking national and state strategies after voters rejected ballot initiatives to label GMO foods in both Oregon and Colorado in statewide elections held on November 4.

In Colorado, the campaign to pass Proposition 105 to label GMO foods, which was hugely outspent by anti-labeling forces, suffered a significant defeat with 66% voting against, vs. 34% of voters in favor of labeling. Colorado residents were subjected to a withering barrage of television advertising in September and October by the No on 105 side, the supporters of which, including Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, Pepsi, Kraft and General Mills and others, pumped nearly $17 million into the state vs. just under $1 million raised by the pro-labeling, Yes on 105 campaign.

In Oregon, the outcome was much closer, where Measure 92 to label GMOs was narrowly defeated by a razor-thin margin of less than 1% of the vote, with less than 51% of Oregonians voting no. Spending on both sides of the GMO labeling measure broke all state records for ballot measures in Oregon, with the pro-labeling, Yes on 92 side raising $8.1 million, while the No side poured $20.5 million into the state to defeat the ballot measure.

Maui Wins Big; Monsanto Threatens Litigation

However, in a big win to reign in the rampant escalation of GMO agriculture and pesticide use in Hawaii, a ballot referendum in Maui County was passed by just over 1,000 votes to place a moratorium on the growing of genetically engineered or GMO crops on the islands of Maui, Molokai and Lanai until they are cleared by environmental and safety studies. These islands have been major experimental grounds for new, untested GMO crops and pesticides, and residents have grown increasingly concerned about pesticide pollution of rivers and oceans, and health risks to communities located near experimental plots.

True to form, Monsanto has already threatened litigation to overturn the moratorium. According to Hawaii News Now, on November 5, Monsanto issued the following statement in response to the Maui referendum:

“We believe this referendum is invalid and contrary to long established state and federal laws that support both the safety and lawful testing and planting of GMO plants. If effective, the referendum will have significant negative consequences for the local economy, Hawaii agriculture and our business on the island. We are committed to ongoing dialogue as we take steps to ask the court to declare that this initiative is legally flawed and cannot be enforced. Monsanto and other allied parties will be joining together in this effort."

In another small but meaningful 2014 election victory, the citizens of Humboldt County, CA, approved a measure to prohibit the propagation, cultivation, raising, or growing of genetically modified organisms in the county. Humboldt joins Mendocino, Trinity, Santa Cruz and Marin Counties, which previously passed moratoriums or bans on GMOs. Also, two counties in Oregon have banned GMOs, along with San Juan County in Washington State, and the state of Vermont, which is currently facing a lawsuit from anti-labeling opponents including the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

Who Is Funding the Anti-GMO Labeling Side?

Seeking to crush a groundswell movement in America to label genetically modified or GMO foods, a small group of multi-billion-dollar pesticide, biotech and “Big Food” companies poured more than $45 million into Colorado, Oregon and Hawaii in September and October to defeat the GMO labeling ballot initiatives.

Just two dozen corporations, including Monsanto, DuPont, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Kraft, Land O'Lakes, General Mills, Hershey, J.M. Smucker, Conagra, Dow Chemical Co., Kellogg, Smithfield Foods, and others, were responsible for more than $16 million of the $16.7 million total contributed to defeat the Colorado GMO labeling bill. Also of note among the donors seeking to defeat the Colorado GMO labeling bill were Abbot Nutrition and Mead Johnson, companies that make nutritional formulas for infants and the elderly – companies that do not want mandatory GMO labeling on their packaging.

Similarly, Monsanto, PepsiCo, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Land O'Lakes, General Mills, Hershey and other chemical and food multinationals topped the list of donors to the No on 92 campaign in Oregon. To see the list of donors to both the Yes and No sides in Oregon, visit http://gov.oregonlive.com/election/2014/finance/measure-92/.

In contrast, the underdog Right to Know Colorado campaign raised less than $1 million in cash and pledges, mostly through small business donations along with hundreds of $5, $10, and $25 contributions to the campaign from primarily Colorado citizens. Despite grassroots volunteer efforts, phone banks, door-to-door visits, social media, newspaper and digital advertising, plus major endorsements from leading Colorado media, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Whole Foods Market and more, the pro-GMO labeling campaign could not afford to counter any of the negative television advertising that blanketed the state from the No on 105 campaign.

“I can’t understand why these corporations would put $17 million into a Colorado campaign where the pro-labeling side raised less than $1 million,” said Larry Cooper, Co-chair of the Right to Know Colorado campaign. “What are they trying to hide?”

Presence Marketing a Major Contributor to Pro-Labeling Campaigns

Major contributors to Colorado's Yes on 105 and also the Oregon pro-labeling campaign included Presence Marketing/Dynamic Presence, Food Democracy Now, Organic Consumers Association, Annie's Inc., Dr. Bronner’s, Boulder Brands and others. For a complete list visit www.righttoknowcolorado.org/donors and www.oregonrighttoknow.org/endorsements.

Grassroots organizations endorsing the Right to Know Colorado ballot initiative included Moms Across America, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, Colorado Moms for GMO Labeling, Conservation Colorado, Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, Hazon, and others.

Seeing the rising tide of consumer and citizen support for GMO labeling as a threat to profits, Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, Grocery Manufacturers Association, and other pesticide, biotech and junk food companies have teamed up to spend nearly $150 million over the past three years to defeat GMO labeling ballot initiatives in California and Washington in 2012 and 2013, and in Oregon and Colorado this year.

More than 93% of Americans want GMO labeling, according to a 2013 New York Times survey. Yet, less than three dozen chemical, pesticide and junk food companies continue to fight history with a withering amount of cash, deceptive advertising, and threats of lawsuits to confuse voters and legislators about GMO labeling - and to buy our elections.

The Fight Will Continue in Washington D.C.

Scott Faber, executive director of the Just Label It campaign, said the recent election defeats in Oregon and Colorado "only strengthens our resolve to fight for consumers' right to know what's in their food. Now, the fight will shift to the nation's capital, where the same food companies who were fighting the right to know will be seeking to block state laws and make it harder for the FDA to craft a national mandatory disclosure system."

For information and to support GMO labeling, visit www.justlabelit.org, www.righttoknowcolorado.org and www.oregonrighttoknow.org.

Steven Hoffman is Managing Director of Compass Natural Marketing, providing marketing, PR, social media, and strategic business development services to natural, organic and sustainable products businesses. Contact steve@compassnatural.com, tel 303.807.1042.

The Heroes: Companies Supporting GMO Labeling

Source: Pexels

In Colorado, while multi-billion-dollar, multinational corporate opponents have pumped nearly $17 million into the state to try to defeat Prop. 105, the 2014 ballot initiative to label GMO foods, the grassroots Yes on 105 side has raised just under $1 million in campaign funding. The Yes on 105 campaign is using these funds - contributed by hundreds of Colorado residents, and a small group of leading natural and organic products companies and consumer advocacy groups - tohelp educate voters and get out the yes vote via newspaper and digital advertising, an extensive volunteer network, phone banking, and social media - and to endure a withering onslaught of negative, deceptive television advertising and direct mail from the No on 105 side.

Put these brands contributing to consumer transparency and truth in labeling on your shopping list. Support the brands that have stepped up to contribute to Colorado's grassroots Prop. 105 Ballot Initiative to Label GMO Foods against a $17 million onslaught by Monsanto, Pepsi, Coke, Kraft, Dow, Dupont, Hershey, J.M. Smucker, Mead Johnson, Abbot Nutrition, Conagra and others.

Compass Natural Marketing and its principal Steven Hoffman have served as the lead fundraiser and industry communications specialists on behalf of Yes on 105, Right to Know Colorado - GMO. For more information, visit www.righttoknowcolorado.org.

The Heroes:  Support these Companies that Contributed to Yes on 105 to Label GMO Foods in Colorado*

More than $200,000 Food Democracy Now! Presence Marketing/Dynamic Presence

$50,000 - $100,000 Annie's Inc. Organic Consumers Fund

$10,000 - $50,000 Boulder Brands Lundberg Family Farms Dr. Bronner's Applegate Farms Clif Bar Nature's Path UNFI Hain Celestial Group Alliance for Sustainable Colorado

$5,000 - $10,000 Amy's Kichen Frontier Natural Products Co-op KeHE Distributors Nutiva Stonyfield Farm

$500 - $5,000 Daiya Foods Food & Water Watch Justin's .Organic Lucky's Market Door to Door Organics Suja Food Babe Living Maxwell New Belgium Brewery Snack Out Loud Red Idea Group Front & Center Marketing Vital Farms Good Earth Natural Grocery Lucky's Market

Special Thanks Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Whole Foods Market Chipotle Mexican Grill

Acknowledgments Alex and Ana Bogusky Steve and Grace Hughes Organic & Non-GMO Report The Crunchy Grocer Alfalfa's Market Compass Natural Marketing Journeys for Conscious Living Durango Natural Foods Co-op Jared Polis John Foraker Joshua Kunau and Jeremy Siefert, GMO OMG Robyn O'Brien Quinn Popcorn Silver Hills Bakery The Organic Dish Meetings and Events Sandy Gooch and Harry Lederman

Visit our Donors Here:  http://www.righttoknowcolorado.org/donors Visit our Endorsers Here:  http://www.righttoknowcolorado.org/endorsements

Join a growing number of supporters of GMO labeling. To contribute to Right to Know Colorado to Label GMOs, visit www.righttoknowcolorado.org to make an online donation. For corporate or individual contributions, contact Steven Hoffman at steve (at) compassnatural.com.

Please help us win in Colorado, for all Americans.

* Sources: Right to Know Colorado, www.righttoknowcolorado.org Colorado Secretary of State Elections Division, reporting as of Oct. 27, 2014, http://tracer.sos.colorado.gov/PublicSite/SearchPages/CommitteeDetail.aspx?OrgID=25377

GreenMoney Journal: GMOs in Our Food: Do We Have a Right to Know?

Test your knowledge on GMOs in food! Compass Natural's Steve Hoffman and Nikki McCord of McCord Consulting co-authored an article in the Fall 2013 edition of GreenMoney Journal: "If you’re anything like us, you’re probably enjoying a snack while checking your email and catching up on your blogs. If you’re eating a conventionally produced snack – that is, one that is not Certified Organic or Non-GMO Verified – chances are it could be full of GMOs. Check your packaging. Did you see the label informing you of this fact? Most likely you didn’t because companies are not required to tell you whether or not GMOs are in your foods. And yet, GMOs are in about 80% of commonly processed foods. So what are GMOs and what is their impact on human and animal health and the environment? . . ."

Read More: http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/fall-2013/gmo/

Say it Ain't So, Mr. President: Tell Me You Didn't Cave on GMOs!

Source: Pexels

Commentary by Steven Hoffman Update: In the second deregulation of GMO crops in a week, on February 4, the USDA announced it will now allow farmers to begin planting “Roundup-Ready” GMO sugar beets in order to avoid a “shortage of U.S. sugar.” This decision, released to the media on a Friday at the end of the business day—a key tactical PR move when you don’t want media attention—is in defiance of a court order made by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White banning the planting of GMO sugar beets until a study of their environmental impact can be done, according to reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Boulder, CO (February 7, 2011) – The USDA on January 27 announced it would allow the planting of genetically modified alfalfa without any restriction or labeling requirements.

Since then, the organic industry has been up in arms. Alfalfa is the nation’s fourth largest crop and a prodigious pollinator, and as such, it is all but guaranteed that organic alfalfa crops will become genetically contaminated, which could be particularly threatening to organic dairy producers who rely on alfalfa as feed for their cows.

Now, it is reported that the Obama administration itself appears to have used this issue as a trading card to further its own agenda, allowing GMO alfalfa to become completely deregulated, according to a commentary by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and a January 27 article in the Wall Street Journal.

Calling the proposal to regulate GMO alfalfa—originally promised by USDA secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack—overly “burdensome” to business, the Obama administration, led by departing presidential advisor David Axelrod, “abandoned a proposal to restrict planting of genetically engineered alfalfa,” says the Wall Street Journal.

Say it ain’t so, Barack!

The organic industry, in my respectful opinion, should sue the USDA for putting an unreasonable burden on our own market—the only agricultural system in the United States requiring a paper trail from seed to shelf. Now, organic producers are at huge risk that their organic seed stock will become polluted by GMO alfalfa and other pollinating GMO crops, including GMO corn and sugar beets, significantly threatening their ability to produce certified organic product.

The organic industry may not know it is at war with the biotech seed industry, but the biotech industry definitely knows it is at war with organic. This time, through shrewd political lobbying with USDA and the White House, biotech agriculture has won a decisive victory in the continuing onslaught of genetically engineered foods, controlled by only a handful of multinational corporations.

In criticizing the USDA on loosening restrictions on GMO alfalfa, Sen. Patrick Leahy, author of the original Organic Foods Production Act, called it “a big payday for the giant firms that pushed for this rollback,” according to the Burlington Free Press.

Before we lose this battle completely, we must press all our government and business representatives all the way up to the president to push for required labeling of GMO ingredients, just like in Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Over there, GMOs are in hardly any grocery products because they must be indicated on the label—and when they are, nobody buys them.

Here in America, the pro-biotech lobby has been very successful in that there is no labeling requirement at all for GMO ingredients in foods. As a result, most consumers don’t even know that GMO ingredients are in 80% of conventional grocery products, and that virtually 90% of all the corn, soybeans, cotton and sugar beet crops in the U.S. are from GMO seed.

If consumers knew their foods were derived from genetically engineered ingredients, no one would buy them! That is how the biotech seed and herbicide companies have the advantage—and they’ve known that since GMOs were first introduced. “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it,” said Norman Braksick, president of Asgrow Seed Co., a subsidiary of Monsanto, in a 1994 article in the Kansas City Star. Even then, the biotech lobby knew how consumers would react. Their success is a direct result of violating the consumer’s right to know regarding labeling of what is in their food.

There is more than enough science to show that GMO foods are risky to human, animal and plant health and the environment. The use of toxic, synthetic herbicides has increased by nearly 400 million pounds due to GMO agriculture, and superweeds are already becoming resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup, the primary herbicide used in GMO agriculture. Because of that, GMO farmers are now being recommended to use even more toxic herbicides.

I urge you to read balanced perspectives on this issue, and then write to your congressperson, senators and also to the President to require the labeling of GMO ingredients in foods. The organic industry and organic consumers need to speak loudly on this issue.

Just remember, the same lobby that brought you GMO food had this to say:  “Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the FDA’s job,” said Phil Angell, Monsanto’s director of corporate communications, in a 1998 New York Times article.

And now, it’s only getting worse. Urge organic industry leaders that there is no compromise with GMOs in our food system. It will only backfire on the organic industry. Heck, where are organic dairy farmers going to get organic alfalfa in 10 years, maybe even only five? Let’s see what the cost of organic milk is then. That would be another victory for the biotech lobby – to continue to make organic foods out of reach of most folks’ budgets.

Don’t think that ain’t in their plan.

About Compass Natural - Your Guide to the Natural, Organic & LOHAS Market

Compass Natural LLC, established in 2002 and based in Boulder, CO, brings 30 years’ experience in natural and organic products sales, marketing, public relations, communications, research, event planning, and strategic industry guidance to businesses with interests in the $290 billion market for natural, organic, sustainable, and socially responsible products and services. Visit www.compassnatural.com or call 303.807.1042, info@compassnatural.com.

Article also featured in Elephant Journal: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2011/02/say-it-aint-so-mr-president-tell-me-you-didnt-cave-on-gmo-alfalfa/

© 2011. All rights reserved.

Resources:

Non-GMO Project: http://www.nongmoproject.org/2011/01/29/team-organic-will-never-surrender-to-monsanto-now-we-continue-the-fight-together/

Institute for Responsible Technology: http://www.responsibletechnology.org/news/1092

Chews Wise: http://www.chewswise.com/chews/2011/01/vilsack-gm-alfalfa.html

Grist: http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-31-media-reports-white-house-pressure-stomped-on-vilsack-over-gmo-a

Whole Foods Market Blog: http://blog.wholefoodsmarket.com/2011/01/no-regulations-ge-alfalfa/#more-14431

Organic Consumers Association: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_22449.cfm

Maureen Dowd, New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/opinion/30dowd.html?ref=maureendowd

Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703399204576108601430251740.html?mod=wsj_share_twitter#printMode

New York Times, on GMO Sugar Beets: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/business/05beet.html?src=busln

Rodale: http://www.rodale.com/gmo-alfalfa

Burlington Free Press: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20110128/NEWS03/110128011/Leahy-criticizes-USDA-ruling-on-genetically-modified-alfalfa