Companies Against GMO Labeling

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Numerous large food and seed corporations sunk over $46 million into the fight to defeat Proposition 37, which would have required food companies to list genetically modified ingredients on the labels of its products sold in retail stores. It would have also prevented the labeling of GMO foods as “natural.” The law would would have affected California, but because Californians make up 12% of the U.S. population, those Californian labels would have spilled over to other states as well. Currently food processors list ingredients, calorie, nutritional value and peanut content. Adding GMO ingredients to that list will benefit those who wish to steer clear, until GMO foods are deemed safe and healthy into the long term (yet many feel certain GMOs will never be proven healthy).

The record keeping necessary for the added labels will also help keep track of ecological issues such as gene flow between GMOs and the surrounding ecology, weed killer's affects, pest and superweed resistance and a host of other ecological issues that could potentially arise with rampant GMO use. This bill would have slowed down the influx of GM crops and help keep track of GMOs impacts.

All is not lost, as there is still hope. GMO Labeling Ballot Initiative (I-522) will be up for a vote in Washington State in 2013.

Currently Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, Australia and numerous other countries require that food labels list genetically modified ingredients. Why hasn't the the U.S. insisted on this labeling? Because many large corporations are fighting to keep the U.S. consumer in the dark. Let us know, if there are GMOs. We should have the right to know!

Companies and their donations to keep GMO off of labels:

Ironically most of the companies lobbying against Prop 37 have a stake in the organic industry. See that list below, it might surprise you.

Monsanto  =  $7,100,000.

DuPont  =  $5,200,000.

PepsiCo Inc.  =  $2,500,000.

BASF Plant Science  =  $2,000,000.

Bayer CropScience  =  $2,000,000.

Dow Agrosciences  =  $2,000,000.

Syngenta Corp  =  $2,000,000.

Kraft Foods  =  $2,000,000.

Coca-Cola  =  $1,700,000.

Nestle USA  =  $1,315,400.

ConAgra Foods  =  $1,200,000.

General Mills  =  $1,200,000.

Del Monte  =  $674,000.

Kellogg Co.  =  $790,700.

Smithfield  =  $671,000.

Council for Biotechnology Information  =  $625,000.

Heinz  =  $500,000.

Hershey Company  =  $493,900.

J.M. Smucker Co.  =  $555,000.

Grocery Manufacturers Association  =  $375,000.

Hormel Foods Corp.  =  $374,300.

Unilever  =  $ 460,000.

Mars Food North America  =  $370,280.

Bimbo Bakeries USA  =  $422,900.

Ocean Spray Cranberries  =  $326,500.

Campbell Soup Co.  =  $320,455.

Pinnacle Foods Group LLC  =  $266,100.

Dean Foods Co.  =  $253,950.

Biotech Industry Organization  =  $250,000.

McCormick & Co. Inc.  =  $248,200.

Abbott Nutrition (Infant Formulas / Similac)  =  $230,900.

Rich Products Corp.  =  $225,500.

Cargill Inc.  =  $226,800.

Welch's  =  $167,000.

Knouse Foods Cooperative  =  $160,300.

W.M. Wrigley Jr. Co.  =  $116,900.

Sunny Delight Beverages Co.  =  $114,500.

Tree Top  =  $110,300.

Bumble Bee Foods  =  $98,000.

Sara Lee Corp.  =  $96,800.

Hillshire Brands (Ball Park, Jimmy Dean)  =  $86,000.

McCain Foods USA  =  $50,600.

Dole Packaged Foods Co.  =  $45,580.

Goya  =  $ 56,100.

Clorox  =  $33,000.

S & W  =  $21,100.

BASF, Bayer and Syngenta are subsidiaries of foreign pesticide companies.

Organic (and some Natural) food brands owned by big corporations:

Coca-Cola -  Honest Tea,  Odwalla,  Simply Orange.

Cadbury -  Green and Black's Chocolate,  Nantucket Nectars.

ConAgra -  Alexia,  Hunt's Organic,  Lightlife (vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes like Smart Deli),  Orville Redenbacher's Organic.

Dean Foods -  Horizon Milk,  Silk Soymilk,  Organic Cow of Vermont,  White Wave.

(Said to be in control of up to 90% of the milk market in many states.)

General Mills - Cascadian Farms, Cheerios, Food Should Taste Good,  Larabar,  Muir Glen, Nature Valley.

Groupe Danone -  Stonyfield Farm.

Hershey’s -  Dagoba Chocolate.

Hain-Celestial - (partially owned by Heinz) Arrowhead Mills,  Bearitos,  Breadshop Cereals,  Casbah,  Celestial Seasonings,  DeBoles Pasta,  Earth's Best,  Ethnic Gourmet,  Garden of Eatin',  Gluten Free,  Greek God's,  Hain Pure,  Health Valley,  Imagine Soups,  Linda McCartney,  Maranatha nut butters,  Mountain Sun Juices,  Nile Spice Soup,  Rice Dream,  Sensible Portions,  ShariAnn's,  Soy Dream,  Terra Chips,  TofuTown,  Walnut Acres,  Westbrae Natural,  WestSoy,  Yves Meatless.

JM Smucker -  After the Fall,  R.W. Knudsen,  Santa Cruz Organic.

Kellogg -  Bear Naked,  Gardenburger,  Kashi,  Morningstar Farms,  Natural Touch,  Wholesome & Hearty. (Kashi cereals contain GMOs!) Kellogs uses genetically engineered sugar beets in its non-organic cereals.

Kraft -  Boca,  Back to Nature.

Mars/M&M -  Seeds of Change

Nestle -  Tribe Mediterranean Foods

Pepsi -  Dole,  Harvest Crunch,  Izze,  Naked Juice,  Ocean Spray,  Tazo,  Tostito's Organic, Tropicana.

Rich's -  Fresh Meadow

Unilever -  Ben & Jerry’s,  Knorr,  Salada

Personal Care:

Clorox -  Burt’s Bees.

Colgate-Palmolive -  Tom’s of Maine.

Hain Celestial -  Alba Botanica,  Avalon Organics,  Jason,  Orjene,  Queen Helene,  Zia.

Beer:

Anhueser Busch -   Stone Mill and Wild Hop.

______________________________

Private/Small Companies 'FOR' GMO labeling:

Only a handful listed. For a larger listing: www.carighttoknow.org

Alvarado Street Bakery - a coop

Amy’s Kitchen

Ancient Organics

Annie's

AppleGate Farms

Aubrey Organics

Bob's Red Mill

Cedarlane

Earthbound Farms

Eden Foods

Equal Exchange - a cooperative

Frey Vineyards

Golden Temple (Yogi Tea & Peace Cereal)

Lundberg Family Farms

Nature’s Path -  Canadian company, family owned

Newman's Own

Nutiva

Organic Valley - a cooperative of family farms.

Pacific Natural Foods

Simply Organic

Tofurky

Turtle Mountain (Purely Decadent, So Delicious)

Support for GMO labeling:

www.cornucopia.org

Source: Inspiration Green

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Her name is Rachel Parent, and she’s suddenly an internet sensation for her cool-headed debate about GMOs on a popular Canadian TV show. (She’s also the founder of the Kids Right to Know GMO Walk.) As you’ll see in the video below, Rachel calmly argues for the basic human right to know what’s in our food, even as the condescending bully of a host named Kevin O’Leary verbally assaults the girl and practically accuses her of murdering children.

During the debate, Kevin O’Leary, co-host of the The Lang And O’Leary Exchange show, viciously attacked Rachel, first accusing her of being a “lobbyist” against GMOs (an absurd accusation that O’Leary knows is false, as there is no corporate interest in honest food labeling), and then equating her position of questioning GMOs with somehow supporting a holocaust of widespread death of children. Despite the outrageous attacks, Rachel Parent simply countered his utterly contrived accusations with the facts: GMO crops don’t out-produce regular crops, GMOs are a dangerous global experiment using human beings as lab rats, and consumers should have the right to know what they’re buying or eating.

(It is astonishing that people like O’Leary want consumers to have less information about what they’re buying, keeping them in the dark and subjecting them to the accidental ingestion of modified foods that have been linked to organ damage and cancer tumors.)

Watch her video debate with Kevin O’Leary below:



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New App Lets You Boycott Monsanto And More By Scanning Your Shopping Cart

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In her keynote speech at last year’s annual Netroots Nation gathering, Darcy Burner pitched a seemingly simple idea to the thousands of bloggers and web developers in the audience. The former Microsoft  programmer and congressional candidate proposed a smartphone app allowing shoppers to swipe barcodes to check whether conservative billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch were behind a product on the shelves.

Burner figured the average supermarket shopper had no idea that buying Brawny paper towels, Angel Soft toilet paper or Dixie cups meant contributing cash to Koch Industries through its subsidiary Georgia-Pacific. Similarly, purchasing a pair of yoga pants containing Lycra or a Stainmaster carpet meant indirectly handing the Kochs your money (Koch Industries bought Invista, the world’s largest fiber and textiles company, in 2004 from DuPont).

At the time, Burner created a mock interface for her app, but that’s as far as she got. She was waiting to find the right team to build out the back end, which could be complicated given often murky corporate ownership structures.

She wasn’t aware that as she delivered her Netroots speech, a group of developers was hard at work on Buycott, an even more sophisticated version of the app she proposed.

“I remember reading Forbes’ story on the proposed app to help boycott Koch Industries and wishing that we were ready to launch our product,” said Buycott’s marketing director Maceo Martinez.

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott. “It’s been completely bootstrapped up to this point,” he said. Martinez and another friend have pitched in to promote the app.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in iTunes and Google. Play in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

Even more impressively, you can join user-created campaigns to boycott business practices that violate your principles rather than single companies. One of these campaigns, Demand GMO Labeling, will scan your box of cereal and tell you if it was made by one of the 36 corporations that donated more than $150,000 to oppose the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

Deciding to add that campaign to your Buycott app might make buying your breakfast nearly impossible, as that list includes not just headline grabbers like agricultural giant Monsanto but just about every big consumer company with a presence in the supermarket aisle: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft, Heinz, Kellogg’s, Unilever and more

Buycott is still working on adding new data to its back end and fine-tuning its information on corporate ownership structures. Most companies in the current database actually own more brands than Buycott has on record. The developers are asking shoppers to help improve their technology by inputting names of products they scan that the app doesn’t already recognize.

And if this all sounds worthy but depressing, be assured that your next trip to the supermarket needn’t be all doom and gloom. There are Buycott campaigns encouraging shoppers to support brands that have, say, openly backed LGBT rights. You can scan a bottle of Absolut vodka or a bag of Starbucks coffee beans and learn that both companies have come out for equal marriage.

“I don’t want to push any single point of view with the app,” said Pardo. “For me, it was critical to allow users to create campaigns because I don’t think it’s Buycott’s role to tell people what to buy. We simply want to provide a platform that empowers consumers to make well-informed purchasing decisions.”

Source : Forbes

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