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Right-to-Know Fight Heats Up as Pro-GMO DARK Act Advances
Senate committee approves bill that would overrule mandatory label laws passed on the state level
Mar 01, 2016
Defying the rights of Americans who overwhelmingly want to know more about what they eat, a Senate committee on Tuesday advanced legislation that will block states from requiring that foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMO) be labeled.
The so-called Denying Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act (pdf) passed the Senate Agriculture Committee 14-6. It now moves to the upper chamber's floor, setting up a Congressional battle as Vermont prepares to become the first state to implement a mandatory GMO labeling law.
The federal bill pre-empts state laws by establishing a national voluntary labeling standard for foods made with GMOs, similar to the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 that passed the House in July. The Senate bill has reportedly gone through significant negotiations to garner bipartisan support. However, opponents, including Wenonah Hauter, executive director of watchdog Food & Water Watch, argue that "more compromise will not fix the problem at the bill's core."
"Blocking state laws that require GMO labeling will strip away the ability of states to protect the public's right to know what is in their food," Hauter said Tuesday. "Any version of this bill that would result in anything less than mandatory on-package labeling is unacceptable."
Indeed, more than 9 out of 10 Americans surveyed have said they support mandatory GMO labeling. Despite this, lawmakers--with significant backing from the biotechnology industry--continue to push pro-GMO legislation.
In 2014, Vermont passed a new labeling standard due to take effect on July 1. As the first state to pass a law that does not include a "trigger clause"--which requires that other states pass similar legislation, such as in Connecticut and Maine--Vermont now emerges as the GMO battleground as Senate lawmakers consider this bill.
Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) weighed in on the controversy Tuesday, tweeting:
And Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, also from Vermont, argued Tuesday that the bill would "move production methods into the shadows."
The bill's supporters frame the debate as an economic one, arguing that mandatory labeling laws would drive up the price of food and that such restriction would be a "nightmare" for the food industry.
However, Scott Faber, senior vice president of government affairs with the Environmental Working Group, argues that this claim is "false."
"The truth is," Faber wrote Monday, "food companies change their labels all the time to highlight innovations or make new claims. Studies show that adding a few words to the back of the package as part of a routine label change will not impact the cost of making food."
Moreover, major food corporations are forced to label GMOs in 60 other countries that have passed such requirements.
"Those labels don't cause confusion, and they don't add to the cost of food," said Katherine Paul, associate director of the Organic Consumers Association. "The food corporations providing labels in those 60 countries could provide that same information to consumers here in the U.S.--if we didn't allow them to buy our politicians."
"The only 'nightmare,'" Paul continued, "is that consumers in the U.S. are denied this fundamental basic right to know purely because Monsanto and Big Food have corrupted our political system."
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Organic Under Attack: Report Exposes Big Food's Tobacco-Style PR Blitz
Food and chemical companies are spending hundreds of millions to spread false information about the safety of pesticides, GMOs, and antibiotics in food
Jun 30, 2015
Remember that recent blog post you read about the popularity of genetically modified foods? Or the economics expert on the news who questioned if paying the price of organic food was 'worth it'?
According to a new report, these views were very likely the product of a public relations blitz by Big Food and Big Ag firms that are actively working to spread misinformation about the safety of industrial agriculture practices and discredit the value of organic food in the face of growing popular demand.
At the same time the sale of organic products has skyrocketed--jumping to more than $35 billion in 2013--the country's largest food and chemical companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to combat this trend. In 2013, Monsanto alone spent $95 million on marketing.
"Rather than respond to changing market demands by shifting the way they do business, many large food and agrochemical companies are using tobacco-style PR tactics to mislead the public and attack the organic food industry to try to win back skeptical consumers," states the environmental watchdog Friends of the Earth in a new study published on Tuesday.
The report, Spinning Food: How Food Industry Front Groups and Covert Communications are Shaping the Story of Food (pdf), reveals the methods employed to spread industry propaganda. Tactics include infiltratingsocial media sites with seemingly independent platforms, attacking the credibility of scientists and other advocates, partnering with media venues on disguised 'native advertising,' targeting female audiences by co-opting female bloggers and promoting messages that disparage "organic moms" as elitist bullies, and crafting relationships with third-party allies who echo carefully crafted talking points.
What's more, these industry-bought voices are finding a platform on some of the largest corporate media outlets.
"In the last four years alone, these companies have set up six new front groups that often appear as independent experts in the media, but are in fact made up of industry or PR professionals that are promoting messages designed to defend industry profits and win critical national policy battles on these issues," the report states. These groups include the U.S. Farmers and Rancher's Alliance, partnered with Monsanto, DuPont, Dow, and Syngenta, and the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food, created by the Grocery Manufacturer's Association.
While the food industry's use of such campaigns is not new, according to the study, the level of spending in recent years, the increase in the use of front groups, and the deployment of covert social media tactics are "unprecedented."
"This onslaught of industry-sponsored spin is aimed at stemming the growing tide of consumers seeking healthier food produced without GMOs, toxic pesticides, or routine antibiotics," said Kari Hamerschlag, senior program manager at Friends of the Earth.
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Good News on Trans Fat, But Industry Loopholes Leave Bad Taste
Public health group 'disappointed' FDA did not set a speedy deadline and wary of 'labeling loophole that allows processed food manufacturers to avoid full disclosure.'
Jun 16, 2015
In a move it says will prevent tens of thousands of heart attacks and thousands of deaths, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday issued a final decision that gives the food industry three years to phase out partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of trans fat in processed foods.
The FDA's declaratory order (pdf), based on a rule first proposed in 2013, states that the agency has made a "final determination" that partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs) are no longer "generally recognized as safe" for use in human food. According to the FDA, foods that commonly contain trans fat—a byproduct of PHOs—include processed baked goods, microwave popcorn, coffee creamers, and ready-to-use frostings.
Scientists and public health experts generally welcomed what is effectively a ban on trans fat, but some warned that the agency's action wasn't strong enough.
"We applaud the FDA for taking an important step that would eventually eliminate partially hydrogenated oils--the primary source of trans fats in Americans' diets--in our food," said Renee Sharp, Environmental Working Group's (EWG) research director. "But we're disappointed that the FDA did not set a speedy deadline. What's worse, the FDA has failed to close the labeling loophole that allows processed food manufacturers to avoid full disclosure."
EWG explains that the agency's rule "appears to retain a loophole that allows food processors not to disclose trans fat content of less than half a gram per serving. That means the label of an item containing .49 grams of trans fat can falsely say 'zero' trans fat or 'trans-fat-free.' People who eat a package containing several servings can unknowingly consume several grams of this dangerous substance."
According to EWG, FDA memos show that the food industry has developed at least 200 uses for partially hydrogenated oils. Industry officials have said that 80 percent of these uses don't require disclosure of the presence of trans fat because of the half-gram loophole.
According to news reports, the Washington, D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association, which lobbies for food companies, has begun preparing a petition seeking approval for the limited use of trans fats in certain products, such as decorative sprinkles.
Bloomberg's reporting on the rule described it as a boon for palm oil, which can be used as an alternative to PHOs. However, groups like the Rainforest Action Network have previously warned that using palm oil as a stand-in is "the wrong approach," given palm oil's ties to rainforest destruction and orangutan extinction.
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Food Industry Giants to Wage Legal Battle to Defeat Vermont's Landmark GMO Labeling Law
The GMA wasted no time in announcing its lawsuit to defeat the pro-labeling legislation
May 09, 2014
As pro-labeling advocates were cheering Vermont's passage of a GMO labeling bill on Thursday, a powerful food industry lobbying group announced its plans to file a federal lawsuit to overturn the law.
Governor Peter Shumlin's signature yesterday marked a landmark moment as Vermont became the first state to enact a no-strings attached law mandating the labeling of genetically modified food and preventing GMO foods from being labeled as "natural."
In response, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents food and beverage industry giants like Pepsico and Cargill and poured millions into defeating measures in California and Washington, said it would sue the state -- likely an unsurprising development to Vermont, which has already set up a Food Fight Fund site to "mount a powerful defense" against legal battles.
The GMA issued a statement on Thursday cheering GMO crops as having "important benefits for people and our planet" and calling Vermont's law "critically flawed and not in the best interests of consumers."
The statement also included an announcement from the group that it would be starting a legal battle against Vermont, saying that government "has no compelling interest in warning consumers about foods containing GM ingredients, making this law's legality suspect at best."
"In light of this fact, in the coming weeks GMA will file suit in federal court against the state of Vermont to overturn the law."
The GMA statement urges support instead for labeling legislation from Republican Rep. Mike Pompeo, which has been dubbed the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act and criticized as a "Monsanto, Koch Brothers alliance."
The GMA is also investing current efforts to discredit the film Fed Up, which opens in theaters on Friday, and is described as "the film the food industry doesn't want you to see."
According to reporting on Friday by Christina Wilkie in the Huffington Post:
Days before the film's release, a new website appeared that at first looks nearly identical to the official "Fed Up" site. But instead of featuring the movie trailer and showtimes, the site adopts the popular online quiz format, luring people in with a challenge: "Think you know the facts about 'Fed Up?' Take the quiz."
The "quiz," it turns out, is nine "true or false" questions. Six of them are statements made by doctors and food policy experts in "Fed Up," such as, "Food companies have caused the obesity rate to skyrocket." If you click "true," you'll get a big, fat "incorrect," and below that, some selectively edited figures about obesity rates. The other three questions are about the food industry, and the steps it claims to have taken to combat obesity. The correct answer for these is "true."
As for who is behind this propaganda page for the food processing industry, say hello to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the primary lobbying group for the nation's largest food and beverage companies.
The lobbying group launched the dummy website, called FedUpFacts.com, on Wednesday, the same day it purchased Google ads for search terms related to the documentary, including its title. The ads direct back to the quiz site, where there is a disclosure notice at the bottom of the page: "FedUpFacts is brought to you by the Grocery Manufacturers Association, representing the makers of the world's favorite food, beverage and consumer products."
The filmmakers, however, hope to put a spotlight on the fact that "far more of us are sick from what we are eating than anyone has ever realized," and to call out the "decades-long misinformation campaign orchestrated by Big Food and aided and abetted by the U.S. Government."
You can watch the trailer for the film below:
FED UP - Official TrailerNOW PLAYING. FOR THEATERS AND INFO VISIT: fedupmovie.com facebook.com/fedupmovie Twitter: @fedupmovie This is the ...
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