How the International Food Information Council trains junk food companies to hide the truth about GMOs

SOTT: How the International Food Information Council trains junk food companies to hide the truth about GMOs
Sept 11, 2013 | Organic Consumers Association | Alexis Baden-Mayer

Editor's note: This is an edited version of a presentation made on Sept. 10, 2013, by OCA political director Alexis Baden-Mayer, at the American Frozen Food Institute's (AFFI) Government Action Summit. Presenting opposite Baden-Mayer was David Schmidt, president and CEO of the International Food Information Council (IFIC). AFFI is a trade group that opposes mandatory GMO labels. AFFI's largest and most influential member is ConAgra, which contributed $1,176,700 to defeat Prop 37, California's 2012 ballot initiative to label GMOs. ConAgra hasn't yet donated to oppose I-522, the 2013 Washington ballot initiative to label GMOs. But the company is a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), which has so far donated $2.2 million to the NO on 522 campaign. ConAgra's CEO, Gary Rodki, is the GMA's chairman.

Soylent Green, the 1973 science fiction film starring Charlton Heston, depicts a dystopian future where a population suffering from pollution, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and climate change survives largely on processed food rations produced by the Soylent Corporation. Soylent Green is a green wafer advertised to contain "high-energy plankton."

The climax of the film occurs when one of the characters reveals the truth: The world's polluted oceans no longer produce the plankton from which Soylent Green is reputedly made. Soylent Green is made from human remains.

Like all great science fiction, the story of Soylent Green sticks with us because it provides a glimpse into the future. Today, only 40 years after Soylent Green debuted in movie theaters, we have a population suffering from pollution, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans and climate change. And we're surviving largely on processed foods derived from plants that have been genetically modified by the Monsanto Corporation. Very few of us, only 26 percent, know that there are genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food. Yet when polled, 93 percent of Americans say that they want the right to know. Yet the International Food Information Council (IFIC), which is supported by companies like Monsanto, Dow, Coca-Cola, Dannon, Kraft, McCormick and Mars, works on behalf of those companies to block the will of the nine out of 10 people who want the right to know what we're eating.

Could it be that the truth about GMOs, just like the truth behind the protein source in Soylent Green, is a science-fiction horror story? One that the food and biotech industries will go to any lengths to hide from consumers?

The IFIC has produced a handy, nicely Orwellian guide for food manufacturers on what to say, and what not to say, when talking about GMOs. Its very own GMO Newspeak. IFIC's "Food Biotechnology: A Communicator's Guide to Improving Understanding" contains a list of "Words to Use, Words to Lose." The guide instructs readers to "lose" phrases like "not a direct danger to human health" or "most research has not found an adverse effect" and replace them "safe, healthful, sustainable."

Is lack of safety testing evidence of safety?

The genetically engineered food we're eating today has never been safety tested for human consumption, using reliable, independent long-term testing methods. Yet the IFIC, which opposes the pre-market safety testing of GMOs, insists that the lack of safety testing is evidence of safety.

According to the American Medical Association (AMA), GMOs have been "consumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no overt consequences on human health have been reported and/or substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature." So, no scientist has proven that GMOs are causing disease in humans. Does that mean that GMOs don't cause disease? Is it proof that GMOs are safe?

Here's how two different doctors' associations answer that question:

The AMA has a glass half-full approach, but they acknowledge that the reason we think everything's fine is that we haven't adequately addressed the potential harms of bioengineered food. The AMA wants U.S. regulators to do something they've never done before: require companies to submit to mandatory pre-market safety assessments instead of relying on the current voluntary notification process.

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has a glass half-empty approach. While the AMA talks about "potential harm," the AAEM talks about "probable harm." Just like the AMA, the AAEM supports a change in U.S. law to require mandatory pre-market safety testing. But in the meantime, rather than wait another decade or two for federal agencies to require pre-market testing, the AAEM encourages doctors to recommend non-GMO diets.

Despite the difference in policy positions between the two groups of doctors, there's one thing they can both agree on: GMOs haven't been safety-tested yet. And they need to be.
IFIC says: "Consuming foods produced through biotechnology is safe for children and women who are pregnant or nursing." Wow, that's reassuring. Wouldn't we all love for that to be true? But now that we know that to IFIC "safe" just means "hasn't been safety tested," let's look into this.

IFIC's reference for that statement is: U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Genetically engineered plants for food and feed, 2012. I wasn't aware the FDA had issued a statement on GMOs in 2012, so I clicked the link.

I found the old FDA statement of policy that hasn't been updated since 1997. I had read it before. But I read it again, and found that it says absolutely nothing about the safety of biotechnology for children or women who are pregnant or nursing. But I did notice something I hadn't before. A little asterisk at the bottom of the page that says, "Effective June 18, 2001, the Office of Premarket Approval is now the Office of Food Additive Safety."

Once the FDA had decided against putting GMOs through premarket safety tests, the agency could no longer claim to have an office of premarket approval. I suggest an additional entry to the IFIC's GMO Newspeak Dictionary, on behalf of the FDA: "Lack of premarket safety testing is food additive safety."

So what do we know about the safety of GMOs for children and pregnant or nursing women?

According to a study published in 2011 genetically engineered DNA survives in our bodies and is passed on to our children before birth. The study found that 93 percent of pregnant women and 80 percent of their babies have genetically engineered DNA in their blood.

Is this causing disease? We don't know yet. The researchers in this study said that babies developing in the womb are highly susceptible to the adverse effects of xenobiotics, chemicals found in an organism which are not normally produced or expected to be present in it. In this case, they're talking about crops that are genetically engineered to produce their own insecticides inside the plant. The researchers warn that GMOs could disrupt the biological events that are required to ensure normal growth and development. They say we need a new field of multi-disciplinary research, combining human reproduction, toxicology and nutrition.

In the meantime, we need to label GMOs and let people make their own choices about what they want to eat.

Many people are finding that their health and their children's health improves when they go non-GMO. The type of person I most frequently meet through my activism these days is a mother who had to address a health problem of her own, or a health problem in her children, and who found that going non-GMO improved that condition. This is case for Robyn O'Brien, who started Allergy Kids; Kathleen Hallal, who co-founded Moms Across America (her son had an autoimmune problem that was relieved with a non-GMO diet); Tara Cook-Littman, who is responsible for passing the country's first GMO labeling law with GMO Free CT (she got rid of a variety of her own health problems, including headaches, gastrointestinal issues, tingling fingers and anxiety by going non-GMO); and Diana Reeves, who started GMO Free USA (she treated health problems in her two daughters by going non-GMO after her son died from cancer at age 4).

Better nutrition from foods with no nutritional value?

Now, one question you might have is, if we label GMOs, and more people start eating non-GMO diets, could we be steering people away from healthy food? Is there nutrition that only GMO plants provide? IFIC says: "Food biotechnology is being used to improve nutrition."

Not really. Unless you think high fructose corn syrup, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and refined sugar provide nutrition.

Genetically engineered crops are used to make the worst junk-food ingredients. GMOs are primarily used to produce high-fructose corn syrup made from genetically engineered corn, refined sugar made from genetically engineered sugar beets, and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils made from genetically engineered corn, soy, canola and cotton. If you don't think you're eating cotton, look at the ingredients on a box of Ritz crackers.

Beyond talking about what genetic engineering might produce someday in the future, there's really no way for IFIC to spin the fact that genetic engineering hasn't produced any uniquely nutritious foods. IFIC's list of "Foods from Crops & Animals Raised Using Biotechnology" is "sweet corn, papaya, dairy products [from cows given genetically engineered growth hormone], sweeteners (e.g. corn syrup, sugar), vegetable oils, corn starch, soy protein, and more." By "more" they mean more processed food ingredients made from corn, soy, cotton, canola and sugar beets. Where's the "improved nutrition" on that list?

More pesticides equals fewer pesticides?

IFIC says that GMOs have reduced the amount of insecticide used on crops. But where's the proof?

Independent scientists have reviewed industry's claims of insecticide reduction and found that overall, when you balance a supposed reduction in insecticide use against how GMOs have increased herbicide use, GMOs have actually increased the use of pesticides on average by 404 million pounds per year.

Herbicides used to be sprayed around your food. Now, thanks to genetic engineering, they can be sprayed directly on your food. Insecticides used to be sprayed on your food. Now, thanks to genetic engineering, they're produced by your food. And, as we've learned from the Journal of Reproductive Toxicology study, the genetically engineered insecticide gene stays in your body and can be passed on to your children before birth.

Contrary to Monsanto's marketing, RoundUp, the herbicide used on genetically engineered crops, is not benign. Ask the people who live in Argentina in what have come to be known as the "crop-sprayed towns." They live so close to the genetically engineered "RoundUp Ready" soy plantations that they are regularly sprayed with the herbicide. They have extremely high rates of birth defects, cancers and other serious health problems.

If consumers knew about genetically engineered food, would they still eat it? The New York Times poll that showed nearly unanimous support for GMO labels also revealed that about half us would not eat genetically engineered food if we knew how to avoid it. This is why IFIC has to hide the truth about GMOs.

Consumers' growing distrust of GMO foods is also why IFIC's "Words to Use, Words to Lose" guide advises proponents of GMOs not to say "genetically altered" and instead use the word "enhanced." Why it suggests GMO proponents drop the word "pesticides" and talk about "crop protection" or even "organic" it explains why the IFIC recommends replacing "transgenic" with "high-quality." And substituting "chemical" for "natural." And dropping the words "insect- or drought-resistant" in favor of "plentiful."

It also explains why the IFIC wants the purveyors of GMOs to talk about "ancestors" not "DNA," and why they substitute "biology," "genetically modified."

Obviously, I think the way IFIC talks about GMOs is ridiculous and deceiving, but I'll give them this: Talk about GMO food any way you like, just label it.

It's possible that I'm in a room filled entirely with people who are outside the 93 percent who want GMOs labeled. But just in case anyone here agrees with me, you can help make history this year by supporting the Yes on 522 campaign for GMO labels in Washington State.

GMO Virus: Silent Killer? | Interview with Alexis Baden-Mayer

GMO Virus: Silent Killer? | Interview with Alexis Baden-Mayer
Jan 30, 2013 | breakingtheset

Abby Martin talks to Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director for the Organic Consumers Association, about a recent discovery by the European Food Safety Authority, which found a viral gene unsafe for human consumption in almost all GMOs

The 'Monsanto Rider': Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?

Photo Credit: Bogdan Wankowicz/ Shutterstock.com

The 'Monsanto Rider': Are Biotech Companies About to Gain Immunity from Federal Law?
July 6, 2012 | AlterNet / By Alexis Baden-Mayer and Ronnie Cummins

The Secretary of Agriculture would be required to grant a permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, regardless of environmental impact.

While many Americans were firing up barbecues and breaking out the sparklers to celebrate Independence Day, biotech industry executives were more likely chilling champagne to celebrate another kind of independence: immunity from federal law.

A so-called “Monsanto rider,” quietly slipped into the multi-billion dollar FY 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill, would require – not just allow, but require - the Secretary of Agriculture to grant a temporary permit for the planting or cultivation of a genetically engineered crop, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed. All the farmer or the biotech producer has to do is ask, and the questionable crops could be released into the environment where they could potentially contaminate conventional or organic crops and, ultimately, the nation’s food supply.
Unless the Senate or a citizen’s army of farmers and consumers can stop them, the House of Representatives is likely to ram this dangerous rider through any day now.

In a statement issued last month, the Center For Food Safety had this to say about the biotech industry’s latest attempt to circumvent legal and regulatory safeguards:

Ceding broad and unprecedented powers to industry, the rider poses a direct threat to the authority of U.S. courts, jettisons the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) established oversight powers on key agriculture issues and puts the nation’s farmers and food supply at risk.

In other words, if this single line in the 90-page Agricultural Appropriations bill slips through, it’s Independence Day for the biotech industry.

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has sponsored an amendment to kill the rider, whose official name is “the farmers assurance” provision. But even if DeFazio’s amendment makes it through the House vote, it still has to survive the Senate. Meanwhile, organizations like the Organic Consumers Association, Center for Food Safety, FoodDemocracyNow!, the Alliance for Natural Health USA and many others are gathering hundreds of thousands of signatures in protest of the rider, and in support of DeFazio’s amendment.

Will Congress do the right thing and keep what are arguably already-weak safeguards in place, to protect farmers and the environment? Or will industry win yet another fight in the battle to exert total control over our farms and food supply?

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Biotech’s ‘Legislator of the Year’ behind the latest sneak attack

Whom do we have to thank for this sneak attack on USDA safeguards? The agricultural sub-committee chair Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) – who not coincidentally was voted "legislator of the year for 2011-2012" by none other than the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto and DuPont.  As reported by Mother Jones, the Biotechnology Industry Organization declared Kingston a "champion of America's biotechnology industry" who has "helped to protect funding for programs essential to the survival of biotechnology companies across the United States."

Kingston clearly isn’t interested in the survival of America’s farmers.

Aiding and abetting Kingston is John C. Greenwood, former US Congressman from Pennsylvania and now president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. No stranger to the inner workings of Congress, Greenwood lobbied for the “farmers assurance provision” in a June 13 letter to Congress, according to Mother Jones and Bloomberg, claiming that “a stream of lawsuits” have slowed approvals and “created uncertainties” for companies developing GE crops.

Greenwood was no doubt referring to several past lawsuits, including one brought in 2007 by the Center for Food safety challenging the legality of the USDA’s approval of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa. In that case, a federal court ruled that the USDA’s approval of GMO alfalfa violated environmental laws by failing to analyze risks such as the contamination of conventional and organic alfalfa, the evolution of glyphosate-resistant weeds, and increased use of Roundup.  The USDA was forced to undertake a four-year study of GMO alfalfa’s impacts under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). During the four-year study, farmers were banned from planting or selling the crop – creating that ‘uncertainty” that Greenwood is so worried about.

The USDA study slowed down the release of GMO alfalfa, but ultimately couldn’t stop it. As Mother Jones reports, in 2011, the USDA deregulated the crop, even though according to its own study, the USDA said that “gene flow” between GM and non-GM alfalfa is "probable," and threatens organic dairy producers and other users of non-GMO alfalfa, and that there is strong potential for the creation of Roundup-resistant "superweeds" that require ever-higher doses of Roundup and application of ever-more toxic herbicides. The report noted that two million acres of US farmland already harbor Roundup-resistant weeds caused by other Roundup Ready crops.

In another case – which perhaps paved the way for this latest provision now before the House - the USDA in 2011 outright defied a federal judge’s order to halt the planting of Monsanto’s controversial Roundup-Ready GMO sugar beets until it completed an Environmental Impact Statement. The USDA allowed farmers to continue planting the crop even while it was being assessed for safety on the grounds that there were no longer enough non-GMO seeds available to plant.

Who loses if Monsanto wins this one?

Among the biggest losers if Congress ignores the DeFazio amendment and passes the “farmers assurance provision” are thousands of farmers of conventional and organic crops, including those who rely on the export market for their livelihoods. An increasing number of global markets are requiring GMO-free agricultural products or, at the very least, enforcing strict GMO labeling laws. If this provision passes, it will allow unrestricted planting of potentially dangerous crops, exposing other safe and non-GMO crops to risk of contamination.

As we’ve seen in the past, farmers who grow crops that have been inadequately tested and later found dangerous, or whose safe crops become contaminated by nearby unsafe crops, risk huge losses and potentially, lawsuits from their customers. Ultimately, the entire US agriculture market and US economy suffers.

We have only to look back to the StarLink corn and LibertyLink rice contamination episodes for evidence of how misguided this provision is. In October 2000, traces of an Aventis GM corn called StarLink showed up in taco shells in the U.S. even though the corn had not been approved for human consumption because leading allergists were concerned it would cause food allergies. The contamination led to a massive billion dollar recall of over 300 food brands. The 'StarLink' gene also turned up unexpectedly in a second company's corn and in US corn exports, causing a costly disruption to the nation’s grain-handling system, and spurring lawsuits by farmers whose crops were damaged.

A similar disaster occurred for US rice farmers in 2006. In august of that year the USDA announced that mutant DNA of Liberty Link, a genetically modified variety of rice developed by Bayer CropScience, a then-German agri-business giant, were found in commercially-grown long-grain rice in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Missouri. LibertyLink rice, named for Bayer’s broad-spectrum herbicide glufosinate-ammonium, was never intended for human consumption. Following the announcement of contamination, Japan banned all long-grain rice imports from the U.S., and U.S. trade with the EU and other countries ground to a halt.  Rice farmers and cooperatives were forced to engage in five long years of litigation against Bayer

CropScience in an attempt to recoup some of their losses.

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All the other ways this provision is just plain bad

There’s a reason we have laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Plant Protection Act of 2000, which was specifically designed “to strengthen the safety net for agricultural producers by providing greater access to more affordable risk management tools and improved protection from production and income loss . . .”. The ‘farmers assurance provision” is a thinly disguised attempt by the biotech industry to undermine these protections. Worse yet, it’s an affront to everyone who believes the US judicial system exists to protect US citizens and public health.

Why should you be outraged about this provision? For all these reasons:

·      The Monsanto Rider is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. Judicial review is an essential element of U.S. law, providing a critical and impartial check on government decisions that may negatively impact human health, the environment or livelihoods. Maintaining the clear-cut boundary of a Constitutionally-guaranteed separation of powers is essential to our government. This provision will blur that line.

·      Judicial review is a gateway, not a roadblock. Congress should be fully supportive of our nation’s independent judiciary. The ability of courts to review, evaluate and judge an issue that impacts public and environmental health is a strength, not a weakness, of our system. The loss of this fundamental safeguard could leave public health, the environment and livelihoods at risk.

·      It removes the “legal brakes” that prevent fraud and abuse. In recent years, federal courts have ruled that several USDA GE crop approvals violated the law and required further study of their health and environmental impact. These judgments indicated that continued planting would cause harm to the environment and/or farmers and ordered interim planting restrictions pending further USDA analysis and consideration. The Monsanto rider would prevent a federal court from putting in place court-ordered restrictions, even if the approval were fraudulent or involved bribery.

·      It’s unnecessary and duplicative. Every court dealing with these issues is supposed to carefully weigh the interests of all affected farmers and consumers, as is already required by law. No farmer has ever had his or her crops destroyed as a result. USDA already has working mechanisms in place to allow partial approvals, and the Department has used them, making this provision completely unnecessary.

·      It shuts out the USDA. The rider would not merely allow, it would compel the Secretary of Agriculture to immediately grant any requests for permits to allow continued planting and commercialization of an unlawfully approved GE crop. With this provision in place, USDA may not be able to prevent costly contamination episodes like Starlink or Liberty Link rice, which have already cost farmers hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. The rider would also make a mockery of USDA’s legally mandated review, transforming it into a ‘rubber stamp’ approval process.

·      It’s a back-door amendment of a statute. This rider, quietly tacked onto an appropriations bill, is in effect a substantial amendment to USDA’s governing statute for GE crops, the Plant Protection Act. If Congress feels the law needs to be changed, it should be done in a transparent manner by holding hearings, soliciting expert testimony and including full opportunity for public debate.

If we allow this “Monsanto Rider” to be slipped into the FY 2013 Agricultural Appropriations bill, consumers and farmers will lose what little control we have now over what we plant and what we eat.
If you would like to join the hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens who have already written to Congress in support of the DeFazio amendment, please sign our petition here.

Alexis Baden-Mayer is Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Ronnie Cummins is founder and director of the Organic Consumers Association. Cummins is author of numerous articles and books, including "Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers" (Second Revised Edition Marlowe & Company 2004).