It looks as if the near future—in fact, as soon as July 2016 if all goes well—Vermonters are going to know a lot more about what’s in their food than all the rest of us.

 That’s because on April 16, 2014, the Vermont State Senate passed, by an overwhelming majority of 28-2, H.112, the first no-strings-attached GMO labeling bill in the nation. The bill, which now goes to the Vermont House and then onward to Governor Peter Shumlin’s desk, requires mandatory labeling of all food sold in Vermont containing GMOs. The bill goes even further, making it illegal to label any food product containing GMOs “natural” or “all natural.”

Is Vermont’s groundbreaking bill a big deal? You bet it is. The bill goes beyond the bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut that contain so-called trigger clauses that require comparable labeling laws to be passed in four or five other contiguous states—think Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—before the two states’ laws can be enacted.

Passing labeling laws in some of those Northeastern states—or any other state, for that matter—has proven to be a high hurdle, making Vermont’s lead even more remarkable. In fact, H.112 may just be the bellwether that anti-GMO activists have been hoping for. After all, in poll after poll of American consumers, results show that a whopping 91% of us favor labeling of GMO products.

Take a look at the map below and you’ll see that there’s a flurry of state-level, GMO-labeling legislative activity currently sweeping the U.S. To the dismay of St. Louis giant Monsanto and the other international chemical and biotech companies in the GMO club, this year there are more than sixty active bills in twenty-three states stretching from the East Coast to the West.

Here’s how Ronnie Cummins, the national director of the Organic Consumers Association, explains the context of Vermont’s game-changing legislation.

Today’s victory in Vermont has been twenty years in the making. Ever since genetically modified crops and foods entered the U.S. food supply in the early 1990s, without adequate independent pre-market safety testing and without labels, U.S. consumers have fought to require the labeling of foods containing GMOs.

Consumer demand for mandatory labeling of GMOs spawned a national grassroots movement that has persevered despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the biotech and food industries to lobby state lawmakers in Vermont, and to fund anti-labeling campaigns in California (2012) and Washington State (2013).

Today, consumers and a number of principled legislators in Vermont made it clear to Monsanto, Coca-Cola and other opponents of consumers’ right to know: We will not back down. This movement is here to stay.

And, if  some of you are thinking, “Why should I care? This GMO thing doesn’t affect me,” here’s a list of some of the biggest food companies in the world whose (unlabeled) GMO-containing products make up a hefty 90% of the food on the shelves at your very own local grocery retailer.

Coca Cola

General Mills          

Nestle

Kellogg’s          

Kraft

Pepsico

Unilever

The post Vermont is first to go all in on GMO labeling appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In Russia, officials are seriously considering passing a sweeping ban on all genetically modified crops. In banning GMOs, they will be joining other countries including Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, just to name a few. The attitudes of these countries stand in stark contrast to those of the GMO giants, China, and the United States, the top two GMO producers in the world. So why is the rest of the world so afraid of what the USA and China has embraced?

Well, for starters, studies have shown that BT (a toxin found inside genetically modified crops) is passed through the blood of pregnant women to the fetus. That means that all children born within the past 20 years were, in some way, affected in the womb through the GMO diet that has infected America. What are the effects? A government sponsored study in Italy shows that maternal consumption of GM ingredients can increase the risk of autism. This explains the enormous spike in autism that has affected the USA in recent years. Autism now effects 1 in 88 children – a number that has risen considerably. In the mid-1970s, that number was 1 in 25,000.

But can GMOs affect individuals outside of the womb? Scientific evidence says yes. Several studies on mice being fed GMO diets have shown startling results. Cancer, organ failure and tumors were all results of the long-term consumption of genetically modified corn.

What about humans? Many individuals suffer from debilitating allergies, including nut allergies. As GMO foods are currently unlabeled in the USA, the risk of an individual allergic to nuts consuming a crop containing a nut gene is high. In 1996, this issue arose as allergic reactions to the seemingly harmless soybean were on the rise. It was addressed by the New England Journal of Medicine, which identified the nut genes within the popular GM soybean as the cause. Currently, the USDA doesn’t require safety testing of genetically modified foods, including allergen testing. Premarket safety testing is rare. However, it should become mandatory – there is no excuse to expose the public to products that could potentially wreak havoc on their health. Many experts have come to this consensus, including the American Medical Association.

Do fish genes belong in our tomatoes? It’d be a misnomer to ask if you want to eat food that hasn’t been tested yet – because genetically modified foods ARE being tested…on the public. Billion dollar corporations such as Monsanto don’t care about spending money to perform safety tests – it doesn’t increase their profit margin. Besides, why pay test subjects when you can test your products directly on the consumers – for free? We shouldn’t be asking if fish genes belong in our tomatoes. We should be asking a far more personal question – What are my rights as a lab rat?

As Russia considers banning genetically modified food, another landmark decision is being made here in the USA. This year, Monsanto’s patent on GMOs expires, and the United States Patent office will have to decide if it will grant them another. It’s time to wake up the lab rats.

The post GMOs: There’s something fishy about these tomatoes appeared first on Occasional Planet.

2013 was a mixed year for advocates of labeling GMO ingredients in our food. On the plus side, the movement gained visibility and succeeded in bringing the GMO debate to the mainstream. Even more important were the GMO-labeling laws passed in Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine. Those victories, however, were a mixed bag as well. Those bills require that a total of five contiguous states with combined populations of at least 20 million pass similar bills before the already passed bills can be implemented. This means that voters in at least two other states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, or Rhode Island, will need to pass their own labeling regulations.  On the minus side, advocates suffered a major setback when campaigns funded by big money and big Ag helped defeat hard-fought state labeling initiatives in California and Washington State.

Even this early in the New Year, however, things are looking somewhat brighter. Food conglomerate General Mills has given a boost to those concerned with the GMO controversy by announcing that the original Cheerios is now GMO free.  The boxes of cereal will prominently feature labeling touting the change. Diehard Cheerios fans won’t notice the difference. The recipe for the seventy-three-year-old cereal is exactly the same. The main ingredient remains oats, which have never been grown from GM seed. What will change is that the cornstarch and sugar used to sweeten the oats will be GMO free.

It’s clear from General Mills’ rollout of the new, non-GMO Cheerios that the company hopes to reignite interest and boost sales of the iconic cereal. The change comes at a time when cereal sales in general are down 2.5 percent from the previous year. Even though the company denies the claims of labeling advocates that pressure from consumer/activist groups, such as Green America’s GMO Inside that specifically targeted General Mills, motivated the change, a spokesperson for the company acknowledged that the company’s hope is that “consumers will embrace” the decision. The change in the sourcing of ingredients could hardly be called a revolutionary move for the company since Europeans have been enjoying non-GMO original Cheerios for years.

The switch to non-GMO in just one product in the family of General Mills’ cereal products has been called an “empty gesture” by some food journalists, especially since other Cheerios products will continue to contain GMO corn and soy products. Adding to this perception is the fact that General Mills stands behind its belief that GMOs pose no human health risks. The empty-gesture meme might be somewhat extreme. Small or limited gesture might be a better way to describe it.  After all, the more foodstuffs on the shelves that are GMO free and labeled as such, particularly by mainstream corporations like General Mills, the more consumers may come to expect and demand by way of their spending habits more accountability from other food producers.

This year and coming years promise more positive developments in labeling of GMOs and stocking non-GMO products by some of the country’s largest grocery chains. By their own estimate, Whole Foods already sells over 4,800 non-GMO Project–verified products from over 250 brands. In 2013 Whole Foods became the first national grocery chain to announce a deadline to require GMO labeling in all of its American and Canadian stores. Acknowledging the difficulties to complete the transition by 2018, Whole Foods issued the following statement:

Since GMOs are so prevalent in the major food crops in our country—they’re a majority of U.S. corn, soy, canola, cottonseed and sugar beets crops—this process will be challenging.  But we are working hard and have committed to having labeling for all products by 2018. Many will be labeled ahead of this timeline.

Target and Trader Joe’s have jumped in as well. Each company’s in-house brands are expanding production and marketing of non-GMO products. According to official statements from Trader Joe’s, a process begun in 2001 has resulted in all in-store brand products being sourced from non-genetically modified ingredients. Trader Joe’s devotees should note, however, that one-fifth of the products on the shelves at Trader Joe’s are produced by other companies and are still not labeled for GMOs.

Even with these positive developments, the GMO-labeling controversy is not going to be settled easily. The majority of American corporate food purveyors are fighting fiercely to prevent laws at the state and federal levels that would require labeling. In Washington State, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) spent $22 million to defeat the ballot initiative that failed in 2013. Many of the largest food corporations are now pouring money into a well-funded lobbying effort to encourage the federal government to pass an across-the-board ban on mandatory labeling laws at the state level. Interestingly, the corporations and their consumer base could not be further apart on this issue. In survey after survey 90% of Americans favor GMO labeling.

The post Cheerio, GMOs! appeared first on Occasional Planet.