Whole foods sells out

[Scooter]

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?

By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must."** -* Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

[More here - Barry]

[Gary Abreim]

This article by OCA is poorly written and inaccurate.

Gary Hirschberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms, someone who has been a waarior fighting against GMOs for years, clarifies what came down and how the fight will continue.

During the deregulation process the USDA presented the industry with two options:
1. Total deregulation of GE alfalfa
OR
2. Deregulation along with some conditions and regulations that can facilitate the protection of non-GE farmers.
A complete ban of GE alfalfa was not an option that the USDA would consider supporting. I think we can agree that option 2 is the better option of the two choices. Whole Foods is choosing to advocate for the option that includes "conditions" that would be put on the use of this GE alfalfa so that they can represent and protect the organic food community, farmers and consumers. Whole Foods is choosing to support this "lesser of two evils" so the organic industry can be able to have a seat at the regulatory table instead of not be represented at all.
HERE IS WHAT THEY ARE DEMANDING ... (and rightly so)
• The protection of seed purity for all farmers, including organic, so we maintain variety and avoid massive mono-culture
• Compensation by the patent holder to the farmer for any losses related to the contamination of his crop
• Public oversight by the USDA rather than relying on the biotechnology industry to voluntarily try to contain GE contamination as the USDA has the authority to protect all US agriculture.

Most of us would like to see no GMOs in the food supply at all, but since they are, the thing we have to do is push for strong regulation and labeling here in the US.

OCA is making some really inflated claims in this article with the use of the terms "cutting a deal with Monsanto", "cabal of the elite", "betrayal" and saying that WF "no longer opposes GE crops".

You can see Hirschberg's comments here: https://www.stonyfield.com/blog

---------------------


By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must."** -* Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

[More here - Barry][/QUOTE]

[Heartfire]

OMG, how disappointing..............

The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?

By Ronnie Cummins
Organic Consumers Association, Jan 27, 2011
"The policy set for GE alfalfa will most likely guide policies for other GE crops as well. True coexistence is a must."** -* Whole Foods Market, Jan. 21, 2011

In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto's Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation's 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America's organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it's time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto's controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for "coexistence" with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.

[More here - Barry]

[Ted Pole]

I'm sure Monsanto will do the right thing, especially as they continue to lobby for and create strategies toward the elimination of the FDA and EPA, because businesses are better able to understand what should be regulated and what should be determined by the free market.

[CSummer]

It does seem apparent that Whole Foods has zero commitment to protecting consumers from GMO products. At least two products they carry and use (canola oil and soy lecithin) are almost certainly genetically modified, and several others may be. This latest news leads me to keep my patronage of WF to an absolute minimum.

This article by OCA is poorly written and inaccurate.

Gary Hirschberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farms, someone who has been a waarior fighting against GMOs for years, clarifies what came down and how the fight will continue.

During the deregulation process the USDA presented the industry with two options:
1. Total deregulation of GE alfalfa
OR
2. Deregulation along with some conditions and regulations that can facilitate the protection of non-GE farmers.

[zenekar]

Mr. Pole, you are joking! Right?

Attila

[nicofrog]

I'm sure Monsanto will do the right thing, especially as they continue to lobby for and create strategies toward the elimination of the FDA and EPA, because businesses are better able to understand what should be regulated and what should be determined by the free market.

Yes this goes along quite nicely with supplying guns to schools and goverment offices,changing the definition of rape,maybe while we are at it we can bring Hitler back to life to? wouldn't he look cute in a desert storm outfit!!

I look forward to having these people play Russian roulette with the entire eco system..and our bodies..whatever makes money!
Obviously this person is kidding,or knows nothing about genetic engineering I suggest reading"Against the Grain" by Mark Lappe'
(an actual scientist) the one who predicted that gmo corn would destroy beneficial insect populations.
as it has been world wide.

[Ted Pole]

The question to ask is whether Whole Foods is joking. Or, if they have simply given up trying to face-off against a megalith like Monsanto, who simply will not stop in their attempts to commodify the forces of nature.

It's as american as apple pie with a nine-year shelf life.

[nicofrog]

It can be amazing how huge popular out-cry will effect the "suits" at the top
the mid east,like the french revolution,is a good example of the phenomina,they also DO not want the pristine gates of their new falgship in Santa Rosa,or good ol Sebastopol,or Petaluma to be soiled by disapointed customers handing out literature.
I'm just thinking....

[zenekar]

Good thinking, Nicofrog. But what will motivate a critical mass to put such pressure on Whole Foods? What would inspire people to boycott and protest? It doesn't seem to be in the nature of US citizens to respond to injustice the way folks have in other nations, Egypt being a good example now. In the US, as long as people have the conveniences and material things and are amply entertained, there doesn't seem to be any reason to rock to boat. Most people don't realize that the boat is sinking and it's time to get on the life rafts.

Attila

[Gary Abreim]

I don't believe that beating on Whole Foods to deal with the GMO issue is most productive....not enough leverage there. They are being targeted as the problem. The problem is the USDA.

Stonyfield's website/blog has a link to how we can take the most effective action. Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, Gary Hischberg, Maria Rodale and many other anti-gmo's organizations and leaders have signed on to this fight. go to this site to learn more https://www.stonyfield.com/blog/

One's time can be used more wisely rather than doing a Whole Foods rant.

BTW, I am not a lover of Whole Paychecks.

Gary Abreim

[zenekar]

Yes, write to USDA. But if Whole Foods were seriously boycotted they would be pressured to use their leverage to push the USDA to do their job and regulate Monsanto's activities that is endangering the world's natural and organic food production. More importantly, support the locally owned markets to keep the dollars circulating in the community. It's possible to eat well without shopping at Whole Foods -- let them know by boycotting them.

Attila

[podfish]

Yes, write to USDA. But if Whole Foods were seriously boycotted they would be pressured to use their leverage to push the USDA to do their job and regulate Monsanto's activities that is endangering the world's natural and organic food production. More importantly, support the locally owned markets to keep the dollars circulating in the community. It's possible to eat well without shopping at Whole Foods -- let them know by boycotting them.

Attila

here's another issue where I think the focus is misplaced, to everyone's detriment. I don't think it's at all clear that there's anything inherently wrong with a GMO as a food, just because it's GModified. However, the business practices and legal precedents being set are incredibly bad. I've only got a dilettante's knowledge so I'd love to be corrected, but my understanding is that Monsanto and others have successfully prosecuted the neighbors of their customers for stealing their organisms, even though it was inadvertent, because the plants spread beyond the fields where they were planted into adjacent farms. They are allowed to patent life forms, which to me is ethically on a par with declaring corporations people. There's all kinds of corporate malfeasance associated with these big agribusinesses that's far more of a problem than the threats to our precious bodily fluids.

[sharingwisdom]

In reading what you wrote, it seems that how GMO's affect the health of the body isn't as important as how it affects agriculture and politics. I see it as all the same. It's all interconnected.

I do feel that GMO's are not inherently in the best interest at all for humanity nor are the corporations that create them.After watching, The World According to Monsanto https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-...g-to-monsanto/, Foods Inc. https://www.freebestmovies.net/2010/...mentary-movies. Seeds of Suicide https://conspiracyrealitytv.com/corp...fied-organisms. There is a great deal of denial about the dangers of GMO's for all of life.

About the farmers who are being sued by Monsanto, https://www.percyschmeiser.com, the Supreme Court of Canada agreed with Schmeiser ruling that he didn't have to pay Monsanto anything. Cases are slowly being won.Schmeiser has traveled to 40 countries telling his story and supporting farmers, workers, and all of humanity about the dangers.

here's another issue where I think the focus is misplaced, to everyone's detriment. I don't think it's at all clear that there's anything inherently wrong with a GMO as a food, just because it's GModified. However, the business practices and legal precedents being set are incredibly bad. I've only got a dilettante's knowledge so I'd love to be corrected, but my understanding is that Monsanto and others have successfully prosecuted the neighbors of their customers for stealing their organisms, even though it was inadvertent, because the plants spread beyond the fields where they were planted into adjacent farms. They are allowed to patent life forms, which to me is ethically on a par with declaring corporations people. There's all kinds of corporate malfeasance associated with these big agribusinesses that's far more of a problem than the threats to our precious bodily fluids.

[podfish]

In reading what you wrote, it seems that how GMO's affect the health of the body isn't as important as how it affects agriculture and politics. I see it as all the same. It's all interconnected.

I do feel that GMO's are not inherently in the best interest at all for humanity nor are the corporations that create them..

no, I didn't say that. I do think that there's no inherent reason that all GMOs should be considered the same. If Monsanto has a hand in it, I'm suspicious not because it's a GMO but because Monsanto isn't primarily concerned with making the world better for the rest of us. If a GMO is well engineered, it's likely to be a huge boon to humanity - so in that sense I take the exact opposite position from you. They should be inherently "in the best interest of humanity". A well-designed organism can produce more food with less fertilizers. The engineering is tricky and choices can be made (and I presume are being made) by the labs doing the work with insufficient concern about bad side effects. But it's no different than a mining company choosing to poison a river with tailings because it lowers their costs and improves their profits. Monsanto benefits if the organisms they develop tie farmers to other Monsanto products, too. So it's the market forces that are causing the problems, not necessarily the technology behind any GMO.

[CSummer]

I didn't want to believe that evil was so alive and well in the world until I learned of Monsanto's practice of suing the very farmers that should be suing Monsanto for contaminating their crops with unwanted - and undesirable (even the rats don't like it) - GE canola. Now I learn that evil is winning on yet another front: alfalfa. Once it is unleashed into the environment, it seems unlikely that it's spread will be contained until it reaches the edges of the continent or regions where it simply won't grow.

In effect, the government has allowed the producers of GE seed to ram their products down the throats of millions of unsuspecting consumers. Are GMOs safe for humans and other organisms, including all the beneficial insects and microbes that live in symbiotic relationship to cultivated plants? It would take many years of research and testing to answer that question. In Europe, many countries adhere to the precautionary principle and don't allow anything to be unleashed into the environment that hasn't been proven safe with exhaustive lab testing. In the US, the entire country is the biotech industry's lab and we are their guinea pigs. High and rapid return on investment apparently takes precedence over ecological wellbeing and human health.

My wish is that those of us who must eat will one day join forces with those who want to grow food responsibly and sustainably to reverse the gains of the corporations that show little concern for either farmers or consumers.

C Summer

no, I didn't say that. I do think that there's no inherent reason that all GMOs should be considered the same. If Monsanto has a hand in it, I'm suspicious not because it's a GMO but because Monsanto isn't primarily concerned with making the world better for the rest of us. If a GMO is well engineered, it's likely to be a huge boon to humanity - so in that sense I take the exact opposite position from you. They should be inherently "in the best interest of humanity". A well-designed organism can produce more food with less fertilizers. The engineering is tricky and choices can be made (and I presume are being made) by the labs doing the work with insufficient concern about bad side effects. But it's no different than a mining company choosing to poison a river with tailings because it lowers their costs and improves their profits. Monsanto benefits if the organisms they develop tie farmers to other Monsanto products, too. So it's the market forces that are causing the problems, not necessarily the technology behind any GMO.

[sharingwisdom]

So Podfish, we will just agree to disagree on the technology of GMO whether it be Monsanto, Bayer and the other companies that are mentioned in those videos I suggested. You didn't see the pigs that were grown with human genes...very sad. Or the amaranth genes that were put into other plants to make them hardier. You might want to hear the wonderful woman doctor from India who has created an amazing food bank to preserve the seeds and what she found in GMO'd foods, how terribly they were affecting the farmers and her people. It's an eye opener. So is the huge GE'd salmon with the company, that is not Monsanto, discussing it along with an environmental Lawyer who has been following the deception of both the GE'd fish, animals and plants. As far as I'm concerned, the technology, at any level, is not for world sustainability or health. It is for profit and world domination.

no, I didn't say that. I do think that there's no inherent reason that all GMOs should be considered the same. If Monsanto has a hand in it, I'm suspicious not because it's a GMO but because Monsanto isn't primarily concerned with making the world better for the rest of us. If a GMO is well engineered, it's likely to be a huge boon to humanity - so in that sense I take the exact opposite position from you. They should be inherently "in the best interest of humanity". A well-designed organism can produce more food with less fertilizers. The engineering is tricky and choices can be made (and I presume are being made) by the labs doing the work with insufficient concern about bad side effects. But it's no different than a mining company choosing to poison a river with tailings because it lowers their costs and improves their profits. Monsanto benefits if the organisms they develop tie farmers to other Monsanto products, too. So it's the market forces that are causing the problems, not necessarily the technology behind any GMO.

[podfish]

So Podfish, we will just agree to disagree on the technology of GMO ... . You didn't see the pigs ..... Or the amaranth genes ...
As far as I'm concerned, the technology, at any level, is not for world sustainability or health. It is for profit and world domination.

guns don't kill people. People kill people. Or so the cliche goes. But guns don't provide food for many people, although they had a lot to do with supporting the pioneers who moved west. But at the time they were a useful technology. Sadly they were misused to the detriment of buffalo - and non-food uses are pretty much always disastrous. GMOrganisms are just organisms. Showing they're misused is trivial to do and doesn't support the argument for blanket condemnation. I supposed I introduced a somewhat uncomfortable analogy, but I'll push it a bit: it's not possible to deny weapon technology to the world. Once Pandora set them free, it's been more effective for the police to be armed rather than to refuse to use the technology.
Yeah, I don't like that argument either. But seriously, it's a technology that has huge potential. Technologies pretty much always offer benefits. Rather than suppress them, they need to be controlled. Refusing to notice its potential helps no-one. That's not to dismiss the hazards, either, but a blanket prohibition is a silly way to approach it. People who do understand its uses are needed as allies in the fight to regulate it, and they're being pushed away by such all-or-nothing positions.

[sharingwisdom]

I understand your point in wanting to show that the technology has potentials to help others but not in the hands that use them now. I guess the same could be said about nuclear power, though again, I personally don't agree on the use of this technology in powering utilities or wars either.

Due to no real studies over a long period of time to show GMO's real effects or safety, the fact that science and the corporations tied to funding the research would rather use us (humans, animals and plants) as guinea pigs to test out their research, just the short term effects are bad enough. The movie, Corporations Patenting Life, is really worth watching. https://conspiracyrealitytv.com/corporations-patenting-life-genetically-modified-organisms/

And man's evolutionary development, at this point, (my opinion of course) is not in a place to bring an emotional component of authenticity of intentions to the board, so the mental and intellectual aspects of the ego proceed w/o even allowing choices in labeling the products. That says so much about a hidden agenda to me. Why a need to hide it? If it's so great, let people know where it exists and let them make the choices.

[Our world faces a crisis as yet unperceived by those possessing power to make great decisions for good or evil. The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparallel catastrophe ~ Einstein]

guns don't kill people. People kill people. Or so the cliche goes. But guns don't provide food for many people, although they had a lot to do with supporting the pioneers who moved west. But at the time they were a useful technology. Sadly they were misused to the detriment of buffalo - and non-food uses are pretty much always disastrous. GMOrganisms are just organisms. Showing they're misused is trivial to do and doesn't support the argument for blanket condemnation. I supposed I introduced a somewhat uncomfortable analogy, but I'll push it a bit: it's not possible to deny weapon technology to the world. Once Pandora set them free, it's been more effective for the police to be armed rather than to refuse to use the technology.
Yeah, I don't like that argument either. But seriously, it's a technology that has huge potential. Technologies pretty much always offer benefits. Rather than suppress them, they need to be controlled. Refusing to notice its potential helps no-one. That's not to dismiss the hazards, either, but a blanket prohibition is a silly way to approach it. People who do understand its uses are needed as allies in the fight to regulate it, and they're being pushed away by such all-or-nothing positions.