Hershey announced that as part of achieving “simpler ingredients” it will be switching to non-GMO sugar, removing artificial flavors (vanillin), and sourcing milk from cows not treated with the growth hormone rBST in its iconic Milk Chocolate Bar and Kisses by the end of 2015.

Green America's GMO Inside campaign mobilized tens of thousands of consumers to urge Hershey to go non-GMO.

Originally published on Mamavation
by Gina Badalaty

Valentine’s Day often means a box of candy from your sweetie, but just what are you getting in that candy? That annual indulgence could cost you a lot more than you bargained for. Unhealthy chocolate brands are full of more than just sugar. Following our exposes on toxic ingredients in children’s cereal and what’s in your peanut butter, this week we take a look at some of the unwanted ingredients hiding in your favorite chocolate candies and show you some better options.

These are the ingredients we found in traditional, brand name chocolates that you might want to avoid:

• High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) and Corn Syrup Solids:
  These are GMO sweeteners created from corn. The amount of sugar in the standard American diet is disproportionately high, putting many at risk of diabetes and heart disease and have even been linked to cancer and dementia. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, HFCS poses those risks even if you eat moderate levels of it. Although hotly debated, he contends that our bodies process HFCS differently than cane sugar, allowing fructose to be more rapidly absorbed into the blood stream. It then travels to the liver triggering functions that increase your appetite, and increasing your chances of weight gain, diabetes, cancer and dementia.
• Soy Lecithin:
  Derived from GMO soy most of the time, this additive is extracted using hexane, which is removed but particles may be left behind. Hexane is a neurotoxin and carcinogen and since this removal is unregulated by the FDA you may want to consider avoiding it – especially when you add in the fact of GMOs and residual pesticides present in soy.
• Artificial Colors:
  Artificial colors have been linked to ADHD and hyperactivity, as well as allergies. Certain dyes including Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6 contain benzidine, which is a carcinogen that the FDA approves for use at very low levels. We recommend avoiding them.
• Artificial Flavors:
  According to EWG, when generic “artificial flavor” is listed as an ingredient, you cannot be sure what the manufacturer used to create the flavor nor how many ingredients are inside. That makes this a wild card ingredient which may not be suitable for those with allergies or food sensitivities.
• PGPR:
  Used to decrease the use of pricier cocoa butter, this ingredient is made from castor beans. That’s right, they have replaced your chocolate with something else! It is used as an emulsifier so it’s possible this is what brands are referring to when they label “emulsifier” as an ingredient without clarifying which one. Companies have added it to reduce costs since 2006 so long term effects are still to be seen. The need for more research on this additive has been debated since some claim it has had harmful effects on lab animals, but I did not see links to those studies. Use your own judgment with this additive.
• Partially Hydrogenated Oils:
  These likely contain trans fats because that is the easiest way to process this additive. According to the Mayo Clinic, trans fats can raise your “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower your “good” cholesterol (HDL), putting your health at risk. This is possible even for palm oils, although it does have less unsaturated fat available to be converted into trans fat.
• TBHQ:
  The FDA has labeled this preservative as safe up to the legal limit of 0.02% of all the total oils in a product. According to Livestrong.com, 1 gram can make you sick while 5 grams is lethal, so you should be safe, depending on your diet. However, it’s obviously not a healthy choice, even if it’s only mildly toxic.
• Vanillin:
  This is imitation vanilla. There seems to be some debate on whether or not it is toxic, depending on whom you talk to. It can be made from guaiacol, which is a precursor to petrochemicals; in other words, a product from oil.
• Potassium Sorbate:
  This additive is safe for most people, but according to WebMD.com it can cause stomach upset, nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, intestinal gas, and other side effects. They further state that it is unsafe to have too much potassium while pregnant or breast feeding, or if you have disorders of the digestive tract.
• Carrageenan:
  Labeled “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) by the FDA, this item has received so much flack in the last year, that many companies are voluntarily removing it from products such as coconut milk. Is it actually safe? There’s much debate and controversy on that. Wellness Mama has written an excellent article with sources covering carrageenan controversy however; it can irritate those who have food sensitivities.
• Sorbitol:
  According to Food Facts, too much of this ingredient – about 10 grams in a day – can lead to Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It is safe to eat, but you need to watch how much you consume.

On their own, these unhealthy chocolate facts may not seem like much unless you or your child is sensitive to certain foods or additives, or have digestive issue. However, they can add up. If you are not carefully monitoring what your child is eating, she can easily over indulgence. Note that all of these brands contain GMOs. What candies contain these ingredients?

Popular Unhealthy Chocolate Brands to Avoid

FOR KIDS

Mars M&Ms

This candy greets Valentine’s Day in shades of red, pink and white, so naturally it contains artificial color, in the form of at least Red 40. It also has artificial flavor and soy lecithin, as well as corn syrup and cornstarch.

Hershey’s Kisses

What kid doesn’t immediately think of Hershey’s Kisses on Valentine’s Day? The plain milk chocolate version of these contains soy lecithin, which naturally means GMOs, and artificial flavors. Nowadays, Kisses come in a long variety of flavors and also include corn syrup solids, high fructose corn syrup and PGPR.

REESE’S Peanut Butter Cups

There’s always one loved one who can’t eat the chocolate without peanut butter. This iconic candy has long been an American staple, but in addition to soy lecithin and PGPR, it also contains the preservative TBHQ. Maybe it’s time to find a new tradition.

FOR MOM

While many of the above brands may be what your kids want for Valentine’s Day, you may want something a little more grown up, like a box of chocolates. Let’s take a look at some of the more adult brands of Valentine’s Chocolate.

Russell Stover Milk Chocolate Truffles

I loved these growing up so I was disappointed to see they contain soy lecithin, vanillin, corn syrup and potassium sorbate.

Russell Stover Milk Chocolate Almond Clusters

Ingredients include soy lecithin, GMOs, an unnamed emulsifier (possibly PGPR?) and vanillin.

Whitman’s Sampler

This popular box of chocolates contains a description so you know what “flavor” you are getting, but on their website, the ingredients are more of a mystery. Food Facts had reported a list of “warning” ingredients that looked outdated so I checked them against my local supermarket’s list of Sampler ingredients, which matched a more updated version. This brand still has a lot of questionable ingredients: soy lecithin, vanillin, corn syrup, sorbitol and partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil.

Lindt HELLO Heart

These were not the worst offenders in the bunch, but they do contain some choices that you might not want to indulge in. HELLO Hearts contain glucose fructose syrup, the name for high fructose corn syrup in Europe – and that means GMOs here in the States. (Lindt is based in Switzerland.) They also contain caramelized sugar.

Sees Candies Nuts & Chews

This popular brand of Sees boxed chocolates also contains ingredients you might want to avoid. Ingredients include corn syrup, Red 40, artificial flavors, soy lecithin and vanillin.

Godiva

Who doesn’t think of a better quality chocolate when you think of Godiva? They certainly cost more, so the ingredients must be cleaner, right? Turns out, not so much. Ingredients include soy lecithin, corn syrup, vanillin, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, dipotassium phosphate, carrageenan and artificial dyes.

Where Are The Ingredients?

The most surprising part of this research was how few websites listed ingredients. It was a challenge to find ingredients for more than a handful of products at each of these brands except for M&M and Hershey. In fact, for the Hershey’s ingredients, I had to use a different website than the main product site to get the listing of what’s in a Hershey’s Kiss. I don’t know why chocolate manufacturers are not more forthcoming with their ingredients. Is it because there contain more controversial ingredients than I listed above, or other harmful ingredients that they don’t want to reveal? I also wondered why they did chose to list the ingredients for the 2 or 3 products that I found.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while there are less questionable ingredients in the traditional milk chocolate versions of these candies (like Hershey’s Kisses), flavor varieties will include a host of other additives. A chocolate covered cherry may contain Red 40, for example. In addition, you may find more PGPR than cocoa butter in dark chocolate varieties. Always read the package before buying any of these candies if you are concerned about eating clean and avoiding harmful ingredients.

Nontoxic Chocolate Brands You Should Buy

All of these candies can be replaced by healthier, wiser choices – without PGPR standing in for real cocoa butter! If you want to really show someone you love them, why not give them quality organic chocolate for Valentine’s Day? Here are replacement options, creative Valentine’s selections and high quality bars that are organic and make for a better chocolate candy gift choice.

Truffles:

Alter Eco Truffles are USDA Organic, Non-GMO Project Verified and Certified Gluten Free. They contain no artificial flavors, soy or emulsifiers and are made with pure coconut oil. In addition, they are Fair Trade Certified and come in a compostable wrapper!

Box of Hearts:

Available at The Natural Candy Store, Sjaak’s makes a heart shaped box filled with vegan milk chocolate. All ingredients are certified USDA Organic, are gluten free (and made in a wheat-free facility) and do not contain any corn or corn derivatives.

Nut & Chews:

Sjaak’s also make a Nut & Chews Valentine’s Box, available at the Natural Candy Store.

Peanut Butter Cups:

No need to buy Reese’s! Unreal Candy has you covered, with 5 kinds of Non GMO nut butter cups – even Milk Chocolate Crispy Quinoa Peanut Butter. They are also gluten free and Fair Trade Certified and available in your local markets. (Better yet, they are coming out with a Unreal Candy Coating Milk Chocolates – with and without peanuts – that will be corn and soy free, and colored with natural ingredients like red cabbage juice and turmeric extract so you can ditch the M&Ms.)

Other great nut butter cups include Justin’s Nut Butter Cups with a variety of flavors and Sun Cups for those with nut and gluten allergies,. Both are Non-GMO Project Verified and certified organic. If you want to give a Valentine themed version, check out Theo Chocolate for heart shaped peanut butter cups.

Valentine’s Sets:

Theo Chocolate also has a line of bars just for Valentine’s Day – My Cherry Baby Milk Chocolate and Cinnamon Love Crunch Dark Chocolate, or you can splurge for a box of caramels. Can’t decide? Combine both with their Casanova Kiss Gift Set, which has all three. Theo Chocolate is organically certified through QAI, Project Non-GMO Verified and Fair Trade Certified.

Loose Chocolate Hearts:

If you like chocolate hearts, Equal Exchange Dark Chocolate Hearts are certified organic and Fair Trade. They are also gluten free, vegan, corn-free and Kosher, and you can buy them in bulk.

Chocolate Bars Brands

Let’s face it, some of us just flat out love getting a great big bar of chocolate! With these products, you can feel safe that your bar is organic and delicious. The only problem? You might be asked to share…

Chocolove:

Not all of their products are organic, but the ones that are feature unique flavors. Check out Cherries & Almonds Dark Chocolate, Almonds & Sea Salt Dark Chocolate, Orange Peel Dark Chocolate or Toffee & Almond in Milk Chocolate, all available at Thrive Market.

Salazon:

This is another great brand that is certified 100% organic, gluten free, Kosher and mostly vegan. Using cocoa beans that are Rainbow Alliance certified, Salazon chocolate bars are also Fair Trade Certified. This product is also available at Thrive Market.

Green & Black’s:

USDA certified organic and Fair Trade certified, these delicious candies are a must for the chocolate bar lover. Their Milk and Dark Chocolate bars make a great gift for that special chocolate lover in your life.

It’s up to you to decide: do you want to give your loved ones boring chocolate full of GMOs and questionable ingredients this holiday? No way! Instead, show them how much you care with an amazing gift of organic chocolate made with real cacao and full of safe, clean ingredients.

Activists honored the Raise the Bar Hershey Campaign with the Activists Choice BENNY Award, celebrating the work of Green America’s coalitional efforts with allies to push Hershey into addressing child labor in its supply chain. The BENNY Award recognizes Green America's efforts with Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum. This powerful work brought together thousands of concerned individuals, students, teachers, faith groups, investors, and socially responsible businesses to pressure Hershey to trace its supply chain and verify its cocoa would not be grown with child labor. In response, Hershey adopted a 2020 deadline and is on schedule to meet this goal.  Green America, Global Exchange and the International Labor Rights Forum led efforts to take on Hershey, which at the time was the only big chocolate company left with zero commitments to a child labor-free supply chain.  Support groups for the Raise the Bar Hershey campaign included U. Roberto Romano’s groundbreaking film The Dark Side of Chocolate, along with dozens of student  and religious groups. Businesses were critical too: companies like Whole Foods and dozens of food co-ops— including many Green Business Network (GBN) members — dropped Hershey products from their stores. The Business Ethics Network (BENNY) Awards are sponsored by Corporate Ethics International. Celebrating ten years, the BENNY Awards recognize outstanding individual and organizational achievement for campaigns to make corporations more socially and environmentally responsible. Raise the Bar Hershey won by popular vote. GBN Member Green Century also won a BENNY for outstanding achievement in advocating for better corporate behavior. Filmmaker and tireless activist Romano tragically passed away in 2013 from complications related to Lyme disease. He documented child labor globally in countries including Brazil, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Pakistan, Mexico, the Ivory Coast and the United States. The coalition accepted the award in his honor, calling Romano, “one of our most important allies—and one of the most fierce advocates for children the world has ever seen.” Fellow activist Len Morris wrote that Romano’s, “courage was tested in dozens of the world’s poorest places, where government officials, even NGOs, rarely venture. He’d wear a hidden camera to film girls being trafficked, with the full knowledge that discovery meant death.” Romano’s work remains online, leaving a legacy of advocacy for the world’s most vulnerable.

Imagine the farm where the veggies you buy grow: sun, water, a plow. But if you think you need all of this to grow food at a large scale, LED power says: think again.

Using LED bulbs developed by GE, 40 percent less power, 80 percent less food waste and 99 percent less water usage, Shigeharu Shimamura turned a former Sony semiconductor factory in Japan’s Miyagi Prefecture into the planet’s biggest interior hydroponic farm. It’s the world’s largest indoor farm and it’s 100 times more productive than outdoor conventional methods.

Watch this video to experience the LED-powered indoor farm:

Hydroponics has grown in popularity recently as climate change poses new challenges to traditional outdoor growing methods, and waste valuable resources. Shimamura’s energy and space saving ideas, though, have taken hydroponics to a new level.

So, how do they do it?

About 17,500 LED lights over across 18 cultivation racks, each standing 16 levels tall, are used in conjunction with tightly regulated temperature and humidity levels within this productive grow room.

Just 25,000 of square feet produces 10,000 heads of lettuce per day. The cycles of days and nights have been shortened, growing food faster, utilizing a core-less lettuce variant to reduce waste, and maintaining water so it’s not lost to soil. But with a half automated/half manual function method of growing and harvesting, this artificial environment produces some very real results.

This big idea grew out of the rubble of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that shook Japan, leaving food shortages in its wake and radiation contamination from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster. The hydroponic farm helped repurpose a building left abandoned in the aftermath, and feed communities with fresh greens that had could no longer grow.

According to weburbanist.com Shimamura got the production idea as a teenager, when he visited a ‘vegetable factory’ at the Expo ’85 world’s fair in Tsukuba, Japan. He was inspired to study plant physiology at the prestigious Tokyo University of Agriculture, and started an indoor farming company in 2004 called Mirai—meaning future.

Shimamura believes that technology will make it possible to produce almost any kind of plant in a factory setting, including medicinal plants

What’s amazing about this type of expansion and refinement are the opportunities that lie ahead in thinking about climate-controlled areas, or localities with food shortages. Indoor vertical farms could be the answer to a more sustainable, cost-efficient, space-saving farming technique.

What’s the freshest news about these greens?

Shimamura’s indoor farming company, Mirai, is working with GE to set up new facilities using the same technologies in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China, focusing on jam-packed areas with geographical limitations to fresh foods.

These methods are popping up in the U.S., like in Chicago with Green Sense Farms. And given the efficiency seen so far in Japan, we could be looking at the next big green opportunity.

The Keystone XL Pipeline, which would carry roughly 830,000 barrels of tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast in the US, has been one of the most polarizing issues in American politics over the past few years. Environmentalists recognize that the pipeline will do little more than encourage continued tar sands extraction, one of the most carbon-intensive oil production methods on the planet. Supporters of heavy industry see the pipeline as a crucial piece of infrastructure that will create a more robust economy including jobs and increased energy security (although the Keystone would produce very few permanent jobs). President Obama has stated that the future of the pipeline project depends on whether or not it will contribute further to climate change.

Protestors oppose the Keystone Pipeline at a Rally in Washington, DC[/caption] This week, the EPA weighed in on the State Department’s environmental impact statement, using authority granted by the Clean Air Act (CAA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The letter sent to the State Department from the EPA outlines their findings that the pipeline would indeed contribute to climate change. The production, transport, and refining processes, and the burning of the final product would result in an additional 1.3 -27.4 million metric tons of CO2 each year. On the high end, that’s equivalent to the GHG emissions from 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal-fired power plants. With oil prices currently lower than most economists expected, construction of the pipeline would make it cheaper to transport tar sands oil than the current method of shipping it by rail, and would most likely result in increased tar sands production. Although Congress has voted many times in attempt to pass the pipeline without presidential authority, the project remains to be approved. The President has vowed to veto any attempt to force the pipeline into construction before environmental assessments were turned in and considered. The EPA’s comments all but confirm that the pipeline will contribute to climate change, in the face of massive skepticism and denial from supporters of the project. The letter may give the president the confidence he needs to stand up to fossil fuel interests and knock down further attempts at its passage. To learn more about the effort to block the construction of the pipeline, click here, here, and here. You can also take action with Green America, urging President Obama to veto the pipeline.

With the failure of the Federal Government to pass any legislation mandating the labeling of GMOs, and the uphill battle states are fighting to establish a right to know, consumers are looking for alternative options that allow them to choose whether or not the food they are eating contains GMOs. Consumers have two main options for avoiding GMOs at the grocery store including Non-GMO Project Verified and USDA Certified Organic. Market research from the Hartman Group, as well as questions we get regularly at GMO Inside, demonstrate that there is confusion about what each of these labels mean, as well as the validity of each.  Many consumers wonder if organic products can contain GMOs, or if non-GMO means less pesticides in their foods.

In 2001, the FDA, unwilling to set standards for the labeling of GMOs, issued draft voluntary labeling guidelines that allow companies to label products non-GMO or GMO if they choose. Unsurprisingly, no one has voluntarily labeled products that contain GMOs. The only requirement for these labels is that they should not be misleading. If a manufacturer chooses to label their products GMO-free there is no system of checks and balances to confirm the validity of this statement. By contrast, products containing the Non-GMO Project Verified symbol have been verified by the Non-GMO Project, a third-party nonprofit that tests for the presence of GMOs. Products that are USDA certified organic cannot contain GMOs and are regulated by the USDA.

Consumer Reports recently released a study comparing the validity of the labels  and offered insights into which labels tested true. The study found that the Non-GMO Project Verified and USDA organic labels are the most trustworthy. The products met the .9% threshold held by each of these standards (meaning that no more than .9% of the product contains GMOs). Both of these labels provide a guarantee that the product is non-GMO. Consumer Reports did give slightly more standing to the Non-GMO Project Verified label, as the standard requires testing of all ingredients included in a product whereas organic uses process inspection to document the lack of GMOs rather than verification testing. Organic-certified farmers have to document that they are not using GMO seed for their farm to meet Organic standards, but it is possible that GMO seed can drift into their fields from nearby conventional fields.  Additionally, Consumer Reports tested products that were self-labeled by the manufacturer as non-GMO and not verified by a third party which also tested GMO-free and met the .9% threshold. However, transparency is key, and it is possible that as more companies self-declare that their products are GMO free that errors will creep in, so look for third-party verification.

Both organic and Non-GMO Project Verified labels are great ways to avoid GMOs and provide transparency for consumers about what’s in their food and how it was produced. Overall, GE crops have encouraged systematic changes in our food and agricultural systems. Industrialization and consolidation of agriculture has led to increased herbicide use (with a huge increase in glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp), dependence on synthetic fertilizers, and monocropping, just to name a few. GE crops have also had a major impact on the formulation and prevalence of processed foods, drastically impacting the American diet. With overall changes to industrialized agriculture many of the environmental impacts of GE crops have expanded to impact non-GE farming as more farmers have become dependent on pesticides, fertilizers, and seeds provided by only a few companies.

Here are the key differences between the USDA Certified Organic and Non-GMO Project Verified labels:

Boston Organics[/caption]

To summarize, the Non-GMO Project is “designed to honor the National Organic Program’s excellent guidelines for traceability and segregation and build off of the work that certified organic companies are already doing.” The Non-GMO Project seal serves as a rigorous standard of verification for the presence of GE DNA and they see themselves as something that can be done in addition to organics, which provide the healthiest option for food. USDA organic standards incorporate policies for maintaining soil fertility and crop nutrient levels, limiting pesticide and fertilizer usage (prohibiting most synthetic chemicals), and preventing overall negative impacts on surrounding environments. We are seeing a trend where products are opting to have both Non-GMO Project Verified and USDA organic labels to ensure the highest food safety and lowest environmental impacts.

To create a truly healthy food system in the US, we need to shift our crops away from genetically engineered seeds and toxic pesticides and herbicides.  We need to move to organic farming.  It is important that when we fight against GMOs we look at the big picture. Removing GE crops alone will not be the sole solution; it will not undo the changes in our current agricultural system. In order to combat the long lasting environmental impacts of intensified agriculture we need to do things differently, we need to farm in a way that preserves soil health, removes toxins, and preserves that health of farm workers, farmers and consumers. Non-GMO Project Verified is a great step on the path toward organic and moving away from GMOs and intensified agriculture, something that we certainly need. Ultimately we are going to need to do more. Organic, regenerative agriculture is the goal to achieve a just and sustainable food system for human and environmental health.

Around the world, several countries support a consumer's right to know by requiring some sort of labeling for genetically modified foods.

The European Union led the way in 1998, with countries steadily following suit (though laws vary widely worldwide) since then.

The US and Canada do not require labeling of genetically modified foods.

1998: Europe

European Union countries beoame the first to embrace labeling for genetically modified food. Companies must label all other food products and animal feed made with more than .9% of ingredients derived by genetically modified processes (including additives and flavorings). Current laws don’t cover genetically modified animals used as food (not yet on the market in Europe), though the European Food Safety Authority is currently working on proposed future guidelines.

2001: Japan, Australia, New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand’s laws target a slightly higher threshold than Europe and Russia (1%), while Japan’s laws allow a much higher GM threshold of 5%. Also, Japan’s laws aren’t comprehensive, but rather target a legally specified list of food items and ingredients known to sometimes contain GM content. New introductions would need to be added to the list.

2002: China, Saudi Arabia, South Korea

Initially, China’s labeling law resembled Japan’s, requiring labeling of only certain known categories of genetically modified products derived from corn, cotton, rapeseed, soybeans, and tomatoes. In 2007, this law was expanded to stipulate that all GM foods must be labeled (no minimum threshold stipulated). Saudi Arabia, which relies heavily on food imports, follows the 1% threshold, maintains a legally specified list of food items, and exempts restaurants from labeling. South Korea adopted a 3% threshold, and only for products containing GM soybean, corn or soybean sprout.

2003: Thailand, Indonesia

Thailand’s labeling law requires that a food product that lists a GM ingredient as one of the top three ingredients must be labeled, and then only if the GM content accounts for more than 5% of the total product by weight. Indonesia’s labeling law also follows the 5% rule, without the “top-three” stipulation. Animal feed is exempted in both countries.

2004: Brazil, Venezuela

All human and animal feed containing more than 1% GM ingredients must be labeled.

2005: Taiwan

After a three-part phase-in, Taiwan institutes a 5% threshold labeling law for products containing soy or corn.

2006: Russia, India, Chile

Russia’s laws on GM food mirror those of the European Union, including the .9% threshold for food products, but make an exemption in allowing GM animal feed to be sold without a label. One of the most stringent proposals for GM labeling in existence, India’s “draft rule” published in 2006 would require labeling for all “primary or processed food, food ingredients, or food additives.” Six years later, controversy around this language still prevents the draft rule from being codified into law.

2011: South Africa

South Africa introduces labeling for all GM products, using the 5% threshold.

Today, Internet retail giant Amazon announced the first steps in moving to 100% wind power for the servers that power Amazon Web Services (AWS), its hosting subsidiary. In response to activists (including tens of thousands of Green America members) calling out the company’s failure to create sustainability goals or green their energy sources, Amazon Web Services, Inc. announced a power purchasing agreement from a wind farm in Indiana. The 150-megawatt Amazon Web Services Wind Farm (Fowler Ridge) project in Benton County, Indiana has agreed to supply AWS with up to 500,000 MWh (megawatt-hours) of wind-generated electricity each year for its data centers – or enough to power 46,000 homes each year. AWS hosts all of Amazon’s online operations, as well as many popular websites including Netflix, Pinterest, and Spotify.

For years, Amazon has been in the rear in the race amongst technology giants to minimize their environmental impacts, coming in well behind Google, Apple, and Facebook in terms of greening its energy usage. Nearly half of AWS’s servers are based in the Northern Virginia region. Dominion, the region’s utility, generates electricity from a mix of 37% coal, 41% nuclear, 20% natural gas, and only 2% renewables. Greenpeace has led the efforts to push Amazon to use renewable energy for its servers by publishing several reports highlighting the company’s lack of environmental and sustainability efforts. Senior Climate and Energy Campaigner David Pomerantz greeted today’s announcement by stating, “As it invests in renewable energy, Amazon can give its customers greater confidence in its new green ambition by publishing information about its energy footprint, as Apple, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have done. Increased transparency will allow AWS customers to know where they and AWS stand on their journey to 100% renewable energy.” Amazon’s announcement today is a step forward, but the company still has far to go. For one thing, it is not yet clear to what extent Amazon’s current and planned servers will be powered by wind. In the fall of 2014 Amazon Web Services committed to a billion dollar investment in a new data center somewhere in Central Ohio – in proximity to one of the largest coal-producing regions in the US, and where 70% of the electricity in the state is produced by coal. AWS has declined to comment on details of the proposed project, and while it is possible that this new data center will be powered by wind from Indiana, there has been no indication that the site to the company’s renewable energy initiatives. Creating a greener energy footprint involves far more than simply purchasing power from one windfarm. A successful path towards greening operations includes measures to maximize energy efficiency, a strong commitment to long-term renewable energy generation, a departure from the renewable energy credits offered by utilities, increased investment in renewable technologies, and advocacy for policies that support renewables. As of now, Amazon is not disclosing any information regarding the path towards becoming a more sustainable company with clean energy production. That is why Green America is continuing to push Amazon to be more transparent about a wide range of sustainability measures, including energy usage. Amazon recently hired a sustainability director and publicly committed to switching to 100% renewable energy. However, the company is still not reporting energy usage data to the Carbon Disclosure Project and has offered no view into their plan towards reduced environmental impacts. Their recently announced deal in Indiana is welcomed and recognized as a step forward, but there is still much more to be done.

I just read an important editorial by New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, in which he dissects a January survey from the Pew Research Center, showing how it explodes the myth of the so-called “welfare queens,” a term popularized by President Ronald Reagan to describe people, usually women, who gamed the welfare system to receive undeserved government benefits.

The survey found that this view hasn’t changed much since the Reagan era: 54 percent of the wealthiest Americans believe “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

In his op-ed, Blow doles out statistic after statistic showing that nothing could be further from the truth.

As Blow states, “‘Easy’ is a word not easily spoken among the poor. Things are hard—the times are hard, the work is hard, the way is hard. ‘Easy’ is for uninformed explanations issued by the willfully callous and the haughtily blind.

He cites a Bureau of Labor Statistics paper stating that 11 million Americans work but don’t earn enough to lift themselves out of poverty. Compounding that, he notes, the poor end up paying more in income taxes than the rich and middle class, and they spend over 40 percent of their income on transportation. Even worse, the poor are “unbanked”—the key reason Green America campaigns for breaking up with mega-banks and moving to community development banks or credit unions.

Blow quotes the St. Louis Federal Reserve to illustrate just how serious it is to be underserved by banks and credit unions: “Unbanked consumers spend approximately 2.5 to 3 percent of a government benefits check and between 4 percent and 5 percent of a payroll check just to cash them. Additional dollars are spent to purchase money orders to pay routine monthly expenses. When you consider the cost for cashing a bi-weekly payroll check and buying about six money orders each month, a household with a net income of $20,000 may pay as much as $1,200 annually for alternative service fees—substantially more than the expense of a monthly checking account.”

It’s powerful stuff. Add to that the fact that the poor are more often victimized by predatory lending schemes and denied credit and loans for mortgages or education—as Green America illustrated in the “Break Up With Your Mega-Bank” issue of our Green American magazine—and you have a lot of struggling people trying to climb out of poverty with far too many unjust burdens holding them down.

This is why it’s so vital to break up with your mega-bank and support a community development bank or credit union, which make it a key part of their mission to provide banking services and fair and affordable loans to low- and middle-income borrowers,  in addition to the educational support they need to succeed.

Visit our website, breakupwithyourmegabank.org, to find out today how you can move your accounts and credit cards to responsible banks that lift up communities that have so much stacked against them.

1. THE RISK TO HUMAN HEALTH
More and more studies point to the idea that there’s grave cause for concern about the health effects of consuming GMOs, including food allergies, irritable bowels, organ damage, and more. But when GMOs appear so frequently in the grocery aisle, one might start to question if GMOs really are good or bad. We're here with five reasons you should avoid GMOs, for the health of people and planet. 

Today, 94 percent of the soybeans and 72 percent of the corn grown in the US are genetically engineered to be “Roundup Ready,” or able to withstand Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide or its generic form, glyphosate. While Monsanto initially marketed Roundup as being “safer than table salt,” several studies have pointed to health risks. A 2008 study in Sweden linked Roundup exposure to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. A 2007 study in Ecuador found a higher degree of DNA damage in a population that had been aerially sprayed. DNA damage can ultimately lead to cancer or birth defects. A 2003 study of tadpoles exposed to Roundup in Argentina found a higher incidence of skull, eye, and tail abnormalities. Corresponding to that study, a 2009 study in Paraguay found that women exposed to Roundup during pregnancy were more likely to give birth to babies with skull and brain abnormalities.

As for the GMO crops themselves, there’s evidence that the new substances engineered into some GMO foods can mimic potent, potentially life-threatening allergens. So basically, we’re introducing new, hidden allergens into foods that will be much more difficult to pinpoint than a standard food allergy, making them deadlier than the average peanut or seafood allergy.

In addition, new research points to the possibility that GMO foods could damage the gut. Bt corn, for example, introduces a protein that pokes holes in the gut of common pests, killing them. While Big Biotech claims that humans won’t experience the same kind of damage, studies out of Cuba and Mexico have found that certain Bt crops do poke holes in the guts of mice. And Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini from the University of Caen in France re-analyzed 17 studies in 2011 and again found statistically significant occurrences of these effects, in addition to liver and kidney damage in rats.

Could this kind of damage extend to humans? Researchers say more studies are needed, but the possibility is strong enough that Green America recommends exercising precaution and avoiding GMO foods whenever possible.

2. THE RISK TO THE ENVIRONMENT
Seventy-two percent of US GMO crops are engineered to tolerate a certain type of herbicide. But the weeds that these herbicides used to kill are coming back bigger and stronger, creating herbicide-resistant “superweeds” that require greater quantities of more toxic pesticides to eradicate. 

In the US alone, superweeds resistant to the RoundUp/glyphosate herbicide have taken over 10 million acres of farmland.

Palmer pigweed, one of the worst of the glyphosate-resistant superweeds, has infested over a million acres in North Carolina, and has caused half a million acres in Georgia to be weeded by hand.

Overwhelmingly, the answer to these superweeds is to spray even more glyphosate, and to engineer crops to be resistant to other pesticides, such as dicamba and 2, 4-D. Dicamba has been linked to reproductive and developmental effects, and 2, 4-D—originally developed as an element of the
notorious Monsanto defoliant Agent Orange—has been linked to cancer, reproductive effects, endocrine disruption, and kidney and liver damage.

It’s a vicious cycle of pesticides-resistant weeds-and ever-more-toxic pesticides, which will have devastating consequences on human health and the environment, while lining the coffers of pesticide and biotech companies.

3. THE RISK TO FARMERS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Every three minutes, a farmer commits suicide in India due to meet rising debts, a phenomenon that has been steadily rising since the 1970s. While the causes behind the farmers’ crushing debt and resultant suicides are complex—ranging from unfair government floor prices for cotton to international trade agreements skewed in favor of other countries—GM seeds do appear to play a role. 

For millennia, farmers in India had cultivated cotton with seeds they’d saved from their own plants. In the 1970s, hybrid seeds came to market, which had been bred to increase yields. Hybrid seeds, however, cannot be saved, so the farmers had to buy more seeds each year. In time, the hybrids required more costly pesticides, as well. Farmer suicides began in 1997, as many went into debt and couldn’t make ends meet.

In 2002, Bt cotton seeds arrived, and though they promised higher yields and higher earnings, the suicide rate has kept going up. These seeds are injected with the Bt soil bacterium so they “naturally” produce an insecticide to fight off the bollworm, a primary pest.

But to produce the higher yields it promises, Bt cotton needs more water and fertilizer than cotton from heirloom or hybrid seeds, applied according to precise timetables. But 90 percent of farmers in Kopulwar’s region have no irrigation and are rain-dependent. They have no money for extra fertilizer.
And so, as the rains fail to come, their cotton plants start to wither. In addition, new pests like mealy bugs have started destroying cotton crops in India, because genetic engineering “weakens the plants,” says scientist and international activist Dr. Vandana Shiva.

And so, as farmers across India continue to pay Monsanto a royalty to plant Bt cotton—often the only kind of seeds available at local markets—the farmer suicide rate continues to climb.

4. THE RISK TO ORGANIC FARMERS
Even when a farmer isn’t growing GM crops, contamination can easily occur—through seed mixing or pollen drift from neighboring GM fields. While this contamination is troubling for those of us who wish to avoid GMOs, it can be an economic disaster for organic and family farmers.

In their 2004 report “Gone to Seed,” the Union of Concerned Scientists found that most of the traditional US corn, soy, and canola crops they tested were contaminated with GMOs.

USDA Organic standards mandate that certified organic produce must come from non-GMO seeds. To prevent inadvertent GMO contamination, organic farmers must establish barriers between their fields and potential GMO contamination. Even with these measures, GMO contamination of organic fields occurs. Absurdly, the Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture (AC21), a group appointed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to address transgenic contamination of organic and non-genetically engineered (GE) crops, recently issued a report recommending that organic and non-GE conventional farmers pay for crop insurance or self-insure themselves against unwanted GMO contamination. The burden is placed on organic farmers to stop unwanted GMOs from contaminating their fields, instead of being placed on the companies that sell GMOs.

In addition, organic and family farmers are under the threat of spurious lawsuits related to this accidental contamination. US biotech giant Monsanto is now notorious for its “seed police,” which detect Monsanto-patented GM seeds or plants on farms that have not purchased the seeds; Monsanto then sues farmers for patent infringement, even if the farmer is a victim of accidental contamination through seed or pollen drift.

Monsanto filed 144 such lawsuits against farmers between 1997 and 2010, and has brought charges against 700 more who chose to settle out of court, according to the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA).

5. OPPOSING OUR RIGHT TO KNOW
Most non-organic soy, corn and sugar beets are GMO, and they make up a significant portion of the Today, most non-organic US corn, soy, cotton, sugar beets are GMO—and combined, they provide a vast portion of the additives used by food manufacturers. 

Green America and our allies believe it’s imperative to mandate labeling on foods containing GMOs, so consumers can avoid these foods if they choose. Unfortunately, the big biotech and processed food companies are fighting back against consumers’ basic right to know, both by spending millions to prevent labeling laws (such as California’s Prop 37) and by working to discredit studies that reveal potential health risks of GMOs. Read more…

Click through to longer version:
This fall, processed food conglomerates and big biotech celebrated as California’s Proposition 37, or the “California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act,” was defeated. Prop. 37 would have mandated labels on GM foods and foods containing GM ingredients.

Given that polls show that over 90 percent of Americans would prefer GMO foods be labeled and a majority would avoid GMO foods, it’s clear that the companies with a financial stake in these foods would benefit from keeping their GM ingredients hidden. Monsanto, General Mills, Coca-Cola, and others sunk over $35 million into defeating the measure. Despite enjoying a 70 percent lead early on, California’s Prop. 37 was defeated, and the corporate campaign won the day over the public interest and consumers’ right to know.

But big biotech isn’t stopping there. According to Consumer Reports biologist Dr. Michael Hansen and the Institute for Responsible Technology’s Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the big biotech companies often try to obscure results from GMO safety studies that aren’t in their favor.

Says Hansen: “What the biotech companies will do, if they find [unfavorable,] statistically significant results, they’ll say, ‘We see this result, but only in males, not females, so it’s not biologically significant.’ Or, ‘We only see effects at a low dose and not a high dose, so there’s no dosage dependency, and there’s no real effect.’ There are things that can harm and that can behave in a way that isn’t linear, but rather in a U-shaped curve: They can have an effect at a low dose, not much at an intervening dose, and then another effect at the higher dose.”

That phenomenon became all-too evident in the summer of 2012, when biologist Dr. Gilles-Eric Seralini at the University of Caen published another study in the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicity pointing to possible health risks of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Seralini and his team fed 180 rats GM corn for two years, and found that the rats developed large tumors or kidney problems and died 2-3 times more often during the study than the 20 control group rats. He found similar results in rats fed GM corn and Roundup, the Monsanto herbicide that certain types of GMOs have been engineered to tolerate. Critics took swipes at the Seralini study immediately after its release, dismissing the claims because the study tested a too small group of rats and included a too-small group of control rats to be statistically relevant.

Echoing Hansen’s warnings, these critics also hit at Seralini’s team because, as Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik put it, “The rats fed higher doses of pesticide or GM corn didn’t consistently get sicker than those fed lower doses. In fact, some rats fed higher doses did better than the others.”

And here we are, hearing the exact same criticism of Seralini’s new study as Hansen predicted. In fact, Hansen and eight other scientists wrote an open letter to Independent Science News—signed by 92 scientists from around the world—defending Seralini. “The Seralini publication, and resultant media attention, raise the profile of fundamental challenges faced by science in a world increasingly dominated by corporate influence,” the letter states. “... Seralini and colleagues are just the latest in a series of researchers whose findings have triggered orchestrated campaigns of harassment.”

As a result, Green America’s GMO Inside Campaign recommends additional research to see of the Seralini study is validated. If additional research supports Seralini’s findings, the call to label and remove GM ingredients will only grow.

(Washington, D.C.) -- Green America joined forty-four labor and human rights organizations today to send a letter to Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, asking him to end a pilot project to recruit prisoners from Thailand’s correctional facilities to fill a labor shortage in the fishing industry. Multiple reports have documented gross labor violations on Thai fishing boats, including forced labor, physical violence, illegally low wages and human trafficking.

“Thailand cannot run from the trafficking problem in its fishing fleet,” said Judy Gearhart, executive director of the International Labor Rights Forum. “And sending prisoners to sea will not address the systematic, pervasive labor problems in Thailand’s fishing industry. It is time for the Thai government to recognize that its treatment of migrant workers lies at the heart of the problem and take real, meaningful steps to ensure all workers within its borders work in dignified, just conditions.”

The groups cited rights abuses as a primary reason that explains labor shortages on fishing boats, and said the prison program would do nothing to end those abuses. They also expressed concern that the plan would merely augment the migrant workers from Burma and Cambodia who currently comprise the majority of the workforce on Thai fishing vessels with Thai prisoners who are equally vulnerable to abuses. Migrant fishers are almost entirely undocumented and without legal status, making them afraid to report to Thai authorities about rights violations they suffer on fishing boats.

The signatories also predicted the prison labor plan could have negative economic and political consequences for Thailand. It noted Western retailers and buyers are already increasingly wary that Thai seafood is produced in supply chains dependent on forced labor and other labor rights abuses, and warned that this scrutiny would intensify if buyers have to deal with new concerns regarding conscripted prison labor in their supply chains.

“The retailers we have worked with in Australia are very responsive to the threat of forced labor in their supply chains,” said Mark Zirnsak, director of the Justice & International Mission at the Uniting Church in Australia Synod of Victoria and Tasmania. “We are working with them, and with Thai suppliers, to increase transparency and ensure just working conditions on Thai fishing vessels. We are deeply concerned that the prison labor program could make it more difficult for the industry partners we work with to verify workers in their supply chains are working without threat of coercion.”

The letter also noted that the plan could be considered evidence by the US State Department that the Thai government is unable, or unwilling, to address the risk of human trafficking in its fishing fleets. Thailand was downgraded to the lowest rank, Tier 3, in the United States’ 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report, and the fishing industry cited as a major area of concern.

“Thailand has repeatedly said that it’s committed to end forced labor and human trafficking, but this pilot project heads in precisely the opposite direction and will make things worse,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch. “This prisoners on fishing boats project should be immediately scrapped.”

Originally published by the Organic & Non-GMO Report
by Ken Roseboro

Snowville Creamery’s Warren Taylor creates model to increase non-GMO feed supply as a way to convert to organic farming and eliminate GMOs.

Snowville Creamery, based in Pomeroy, Ohio is a small dairy operation, but its owner, Warren Taylor, has big ideas. Taylor wants to change the food system—from one based on factory farms and GMOs to one based on local, sustainable, non-GMO, and organic farms and foods. He is starting with his own operation.

Taylor is a career dairyman; he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a dairy process engineer. In his 40-plus-year career, Taylor designed processing plants and systems for companies such as Safeway, Dannon, Land O’ Lakes, and Yoplait. Cut him, and Taylor says he will “bleed white.”

Seven years ago, Taylor left a successful dairy consulting business to start Snowville Creamery. Why? Because he felt that the milk produced today was an inferior, poor-tasting product.

“I was mad at the industry,” he says. “I built a creamery to prove that we can produce good high quality, good tasting milk for everybody in America.”

Applying his engineering knowledge, Taylor wants to produce a model of non-GMO and organic milk production that can be replicated nationwide. I’m not into marketing; I’m a revolutionary and want to change the world,” Taylor says.

Pasture-raised cows

Snowville buys milk from 10 local dairy farms and processes it into milk, cream, and yogurt products. The creamery produces 15,000 gallons of milk per week. Snowville’s dairy products are sold in supermarkets such as Kroger and Giant Eagle and to Whole Foods stores in Ohio, Pittsburgh, PA, Louisville, KY, and Washington, DC. Restaurants in the Columbus and Athens, Ohio areas also use Snowville’s products.

Many of Snowville’s dairy farms raise the brown Jersey cows, which are known to produce milk that contains higher butterfat, lactose, protein, and minerals.

Cows graze on pasture, which makes up about 75 percent of their diet, the rest being grains such as corn, which supply protein.

According to Taylor, pasture-raised cows produce more nutritious milk that is much higher in omega 3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid, essential nutrients for heart and brain function.

It tastes better too. “You can taste the difference of milk from grass fed cows,” he says.

Snowville’s cows graze on pasture 250 days per year, more than double the National Organic Program’s requirement of 120 days for organic dairy cows.

So why doesn’t Snowville just go organic? Taylor, who has heard that question many times, has a ready response.

“Because there is not a sufficient quantity of economically available certified organic feed and forage,” he says. “Organic corn costs about twice whatever commodity corn costs.”

Encouraging farmers to grow non-GMO without chemicals

The feed challenge led Taylor to apply his engineering skills and build his own supply chain, which he believes can be replicated nationwide and could lead to the elimination of genetically modified crops. Taylor chose to source non-GMO corn for feed, which is readily available from Ohio farmers. The non-GMO corn sells for a $.50 per bushel premium above the cost of commodity corn. Taylor offered farmers a $1.00 per bushel premium as a way to encourage them to develop long-term relationships with Snowville. Taylor plans to pay the farmers an additional $.50 per bushel premium each year to encourage them to reduce the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. In this way he is subsidizing the farmers’ transition to certified organic production, which is his ultimate goal.

“In three or four years we are paying $2 or $3 over commodity price, and have created additional organic grain supply for livestock agriculture in Ohio,” Taylor says. “We want to leverage non-GMO into certified organic as quickly as possible. Non-GMO is a bridge.”

Publishes GMO test results on website

Taylor contracted an Amish mill in Wooster, Ohio to process the non-GMO corn and test it for GMOs. He supplied the mill with GMO testing equipment from Envirologix including a Quikscan scanner, computer, and Quickcomb GMO test strips. Taylor developed a protocol with the mill that includes testing, notification to Snowville of test results, and rejection of grains that test above 1.5% GM material.

Snowville publishes the GMO test results on its website for all to see. “I want to be transparent, which is what we all should be doing in the food industry,” Taylor says.

Taylor wanted to label his dairy products as “non-GMO-fed” so he contacted the US Food and Drug Administration, which told him to contact the US Department of Agriculture, which then told him to go back to the FDA. After the government revolving door, Taylor contacted the Ohio Department of Agriculture, which worked with him to develop a label for his products, which reads “From Grass Grazed Cows Fed Only Non-GMO Feeds & Forage.”

Taylor is also putting his products through the Non-GMO Project’s verification program at the request of Whole Foods Market, which wants its suppliers to be verified to meet the company’s GMO labeling requirement by 2018.

Future plans for Snowville include building a local mill to process the feed. Taylor hopes to secure a Slow Money loan to finance the mill. He also received a grant to purchase seeds and work with farmers to grow small grains as feed alternatives to GMO-risk corn.

Taylor sees organic farming and his non-GMO operation as a small but significant step to addressing the big threats posed by chemical intensive GMO agriculture.

“Our approach has the potential to increase the supply to meet the demand, while leading non-GMO feed and forage producers towards certified organic production,” he says. “I’m optimistic we will be able to change the food system.”

As part of our Farmer-Grower series we interviewed Jill Smith, a dairywoman who is most definitely doing milk right. Jill owns and operates Pure Èire Dairy located in Othello, Washington. The name Èire is a bit of a play on words as it literally means Ireland, but has a deeper familial meaning as their family is of Irish heritage and employs practices that her husband’s grandfather would have used. Despite being located in a region surrounded by conventional farmland, Jill is doing things differently with her sustainable agriculture operation. Pure Èire is certified organic, milking all Jersey cows, 100 percent grass-fed and never fed corn or soy. The dairy is also Non-GMO Project Verified and Animal Welfare Approved. They are farming in a way that they believe is respectful to the land and to the animals.  They respect what the animals are giving to them and they want to dairy and farm in that manner.

Q: When and how did your interest in food and farming start? Who or what influenced you?

A: I was a farm kid and my husband was a dairy kid. I was 14 when I started my first project, with FFA. I went to Washington State University and majored in Ag Business and spent the first ten years of my career in the livestock industry, so I have a background in conventional agriculture. I worked for a pharmaceutical company and saw firsthand the use of antibiotics & growth hormones. I have been on both sides of it and I am not knocking on conventional production whatsoever. My husband and I decided to leave our big jobs where we were working really hard for someone else. We went out on our own to raise dairy heifers, working hard for ourselves. We grew it into a large operation where we were feeding and breeding heifers for other milk producers. We practiced good animal welfare, but we raised the heifers as the dairymen wanted, whatever vaccine or antibiotic protocols they used on their own farm. Somewhere along the way my husband had the crazy idea to start an organic dairy. We were shipping to a national processor and under their guidelines. Even if we exceeded organic standards or practices, our milk was mixed with milk from many other dairies.

In 2009, I started this little dairy on the side with only seven cows. I started with just raw milk. In the meantime, we had already taken over the family farm and transitioned it to organic. We were in a unique situation because we had a conventional herd we could feed transition-feed to. When this dairy started to grow, we were lucky enough to have already transitioned the ground to organic in Othello. There was a barn on one of the pieces of property that we actually decided to rehab into a milking parlor and a certified organic processing facility. The dairy has continue to grow from seven cows to milking 160 cows and processing our own milk. We are now in control of the operation from the soil, to the feed, to milking the cows, to putting that milk in the jug, and getting it on the shelves. This dairy took on a life of its own as it grew. Thankfully, along the way, we were able to transition out of the other two operations we were involved in and make this our sole focus.

This process gave us a great opportunity to have backgrounds in both the conventional and organic dairy industries. We’ve had the chance to ship our milk to a processor and direct market our milk. This dairy has allowed us to take our milk further and find our own niche in the market place with a product that we feel really good about producing. It has certainly given us a whole different perspective on the industry and deepened the respect for those within the dairy industry, on all levels.

Q: Considering emerging and pressing issues like climate change, increased use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds, and intensified agriculture – how has your relationship with food and farming changed over time?

A: When you become a mother or a parent you start to look at your food more. I think the more you delve into the industry and the more you learn, the more you evolve as a producer and a consumer. The more you research your food, the more you learn about production practices and you make choices based on your research. We’d all previously been taught that “milk is milk is milk;” but the more we look at food and farming practices, the more we learn about how we want to feed our own family. Our kids are looking over our shoulders and we want them to make wise food choices, as well as learn to respect animals and land. We want to teach them to be good stewards of the land and environment.

Q: What is your involvement with the coffee industry and how does it relate to your views on food and farming?

A: The coffee industry has been really interesting because they have taken it to the furthest degree to figure out where their coffee is coming from, the flavor notes that change based on where the beans are grown, knowing exactly who it comes from, even knowing the exact batch. They have taken it so very far, and yet, have been slower to look at the quality of the milk they are using. In a lot of cases, the milk makes up 80 percent or more of the drink. A friend within the coffee industry has gotten me involved with the Specialty Coffee Association of America. We took a different perspective and said let’s look at milk the same way we look at the coffee. We focused on identifying the flavor notes that come with the seasonality of a milk like ours, how much milk is actually going into the drink, and how it affects the customers; the taste, the experience, basically the whole package. So I spoke a lot about what our farm does and why. We had baristas using our milk and really enjoyed the flavor it brought out in their coffees. We had several baristas competing in the cappuccino portion of the US Coffee Championships with our milk.  In fact, we worked with the US Barista Champion. She and I hand-picked the bottle of milk to pair with her coffee for competition based on the flavor notes. To pair your coffee with the milk and tell the farmer what you want; that hasn’t been an option in the past. We formulated a special fat percentage at the request of the barista who won, one that we don’t have on store shelves. She had the chance to tell us exactly what she wanted. The dairy industry has long told consumers what they should drink.  I think there are some unique opportunities out there to be telling the farmers what you want, not just in the dairy industry.

It has been really interesting to work with baristas, to hear what they want and for us to get to be part of these activities. It is great to get recognition for producing a milk that really has great flavor that people are proud to use. It changes that “milk is milk is milk” thing; it shakes it up a little bit. There is a coffee roaster in Seattle, Slate Coffee, who is top ten in the US and the best in Seattle. Their entire staff took the time to sit down with me to ask all the questions they had about their milk. They utilize the time they have with their consumers, to stand and talk with them about what makes them unique. It is a bar style where you have the chance to work through your drink with the barista. We have felt so honored to have them use our milk in a deconstructed cappuccino. They put the espresso itself in a small glass and the steamed milk in another glass to be tasted. Then, they combine them so you can taste the combination. It is really forward-thinking and exciting for us to be part of. They have a unique opportunity to explain product differences to their customers and really create a great experience with the coffee. They are a great example of a coffee shop that is trying to tell consumers the whole story.

Q: What do you think is the biggest misconception that modern consumers have when it comes to food, especially dairy?

A: I think it goes back to “milk is milk is milk;” the misconception that it is all the same. If we tell a consumer that we are grass-fed they might look at us and say, “Don’t all cows eat grass?” I think that is a misconception based on great marketing campaigns, such as happy cows coming from California. The majority of cows in California are in confined feeding operations. The dairy industry, for example, has made it even more confusing with different claims such as rBST-free, natural, or growth hormone-free. I use the dairy industry as an example, but I think that it is across the board. Unless you really understand the labels and take the time to ask questions, you just have to go with whichever label looks the best. Our industry has also trained our customers to look for the cheapest milk possible, rather than to seek out product differences. Grocery stores have long used milk as a loss leader. Milk prices are something that nobody wants to see go up, but they don’t reflect the true cost of farming or support the improvement of more sustainable practices.

Q: What do you think is the most important thing for modern consumers to understand when it comes to food, especially dairy?

A: I think knowing where your food comes from and understanding labels are imperative to making thoughtful food purchases. Milk, for example, is one of those foods that we give our kids from the time they are babies. This is a food that is truly in our diet from day one. Ask questions, do your research. There are so many things that go into a gallon of milk; drying processes, removal of protein and fat, all processes that may affect the way we digest milk. I think we have lost a lot of milk drinkers because some of the processes just don’t fit with people’s systems. When we make a naturally nutritious product so sterile that we have to add vitamins and nutrients back to it, we’re really changing the product’s make-up.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who wants to learn more about sustainable food but doesn’t know where to start?

A: If you get an opportunity to meet with a farmer, ask questions, and learn about their practices. I think that leads you to ask more questions and to take it a step further. We had these really sweet gals come over from Seattle because one of the things on their bucket list was to learn how to milk a cow. They probably got 15 no’s before they got our yes. They drove all the way over just to touch and feel a cow. It was fun for all of us, for my husband and me, and for our employees. We take what we do for granted, but to see someone giddy and excited over getting milk out of a cow; it kind of jazzes you up again. People do care and they want to know and develop relationships, but those opportunities are hard to track down these days.

Q: What do you believe is the most underrated issue in talking about food systems? Are there any issues that you don’t feel are talked about enough in mainstream media?

A: I think truth in labeling is huge and deciphering labels. I think it creates so much confusion and it’s an injustice to our consumers. I also think stepping back and actually seeing how the family farm is functioning and whether it is sustainable. The manufacturer may present a much different picture than what is actually happening on the farm. This will be significant for the sustainability of organic milk. If those dairymen are not making it on the pay price that they are getting from their organic processors, they are not going to be around to supply that milk. Again, milk is a special product that nobody wants to see the price to go up on. You will see the price of other products such as beef or conventional milk move around because they are traded as a commodity. In the organic milk industry, the farmer’s milk pay price; whereas in the conventional world, milk trades based on supply and demand. Organic has worked so hard to stay at a low enough price point to attract consumers, but it is not necessarily sustainable for the family farm. If we want organic milk we have to make sure that it is sustainable all the way back to the family farm.

Q: What is your favorite go-to resource when it comes to sustainable food? List any of your favorite books, magazines, websites, cookbooks, etc.

A: The dairy and organic industries do try to educate producers about new methods and ways to improve on what we’re doing. Consumers are a great resource in a business like ours.  As for cooking, my favorite all-time cookbook is an old Irish cookbook that my mother-in-law gave me. It really is just whole foods and simple ingredients. My mother in-law is a great resource because she cooked with what they raised or what was local and seasonal. My husband was raised in a family that wasn’t trying to be organic, they just used what was in season or what they preserved themselves. I didn’t grow up that way even though I was on a farm, so she is my go-to. My primary driver is that I am trying to provide my children with whole foods, or foods we raise ourselves, and teach them to make thoughtful food choices.

This interview has been edited for length.

Read about more Sustainable Agriculture Spotlights and organic farming stories at GreenAmerica.org.

In continuing our Farmer-Grower series, where we celebrate those who engage in sustainable agriculture, we interviewed Albert Straus, a dairyman who is revolutionizing what it means to operate a sustainable dairy. In addition to the dairy, Albert operates Straus Family Creamery located in Marshall, CA. Straus Family Creamery is organic and Non-GMO Project Verified, dedicated to improving environmental practices and long-term sustainability of family farms throughout the area.

History of the Straus Creamery

My father started the farm in 1941 and ran it as a conventional farm for decades. Both my parents were very much environmentalists and concerned with preserving the land, the businesses that were on the land, and farming families. They each formed community groups that were trying to facilitate the conversation between farmers, environmentalists and government agencies in hopes to come up with a plan to keep the land open and to preserve the farming community. My mother started the first agricultural land trust in the nation in 1980, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, which has now preserved nearly 50,000 acres and some 70 farms that won’t be developed in perpetuity.

In 1990, a Petaluma entrepreneur approached me about doing organic milk for ice cream. I had done my senior thesis at Cal Poly about building a processing plant and ice cream was already a passion of mine. After he gave up on the idea, I kept looking into it. It took me three and a half years to figure out what organic was and how to feed the cows, how to treat the cows, how to find funding to build a plant, how to market the products, and how to package the products. Beginning in 1994, we were the first certified organic dairy and creamery in the western United States.

We try to make our products the highest quality that we can, minimally processed and with no additives. From cream-top milk, which is pasteurized but not homogenized, in reusable glass bottles, to European style yogurt, to Greek yogurt to sour cream; the yogurts are all milk and cultures without additives, same with the sour cream. Our ice creams don’t use stabilizers other than egg yolk so it is all organic and super premium ice cream. We have a nutritional ice cream, it is called “NuScoop” that we have been marketing and are just about to re-launch. We have butter that has some of the highest butter fat and lowest moisture of any butter on the market in the world and it is all made in small batches. We make a barista milk that is partially homogenized for coffee shops, it foams better and is sweeter. It is used by Intelligensia in LA and a bunch of other coffee shops. We have an ice cream mix that Bi-Rite and other places use as a base to make their flavors. We also make a soft serve ice cream for their machines. We do a lot of different things.

Q: Transitioning to organic in part was a way to ensure your family farm’s financial security. What were the other key reasons, for you personally, in making that transition? How has that evolved over time?

A: The whole idea was first how do we survive as a family farm; with the conventional dairy system you never know month to month what your milk prices are going to be, it is a big roller coaster while your costs keep going up and up. We lose five percent of our farms every year in the United States: there were 4.6 million dairy farms in 1940 and today there are 49,000. So how do you change that model, how do you survive?

First it was building our own brand and controlling our own prices, creating an environmental and sustainable farming system for ourselves, and then over time our vision became how do we “create a thriving relationship between farms, food, people and earth?” We focus on how we can create a model that can sustain family farms, make them profitable, sustainable, and also help facilitate the revitalization of the farming community.  Seventy-five percent of the dairy farms in Marin and Sonoma Counties are now certified organic, it is no longer the niche, it is the mainstream and the wave of the future.

Q: Considering emerging and pressing issues like climate change, increased use of pesticides and genetically modified seeds, and intensified agriculture – how is your relationship with food and farming changing?

A: Everything that I look at, in our farming system as well as in our creamery business, is about how do we minimize our impact on the environment, build soils, create enhanced animal welfare, as well as coming up with high-quality products that the consumer can be confident in. In 2010, we became the first verified non-GMO creamery in the United States. I had found GMO contamination in our certified organic corn in 2005, and so I started our own verification program and then became verified through the Non-GMO Project. Anytime there are threats to what I feel is organic we see how we can keep organic integrity so consumers can be confident in what organic is.

On the dairy side, for the last ten years we have been generating all of our own electricity and most of our heated water from the waste from cows; we have a methane digester that captures all of their waste as well as the creamery waste. We capture all of the methane gas, which is 23 times more detrimental than carbon dioxide, and use that as a fuel for creating electricity that we sell back to the public utility, and offset our own usage costs. We have several electric vehicles: a farm utility vehicle, an ATV, and Nissan Leaf that we charge off the methane system. (And at our offices in Petaluma we have several electric cars and we use solar power.) What we are trying to do is minimize our use and ultimately the goal is to have a carbon-neutral system. We are part of the Marin Carbon Project where we are measuring the amount of carbon that is being sequestered on our farm by applying compost and doing organic grazing methods; and we are actually showing that you can sequester about 2,000 pounds of carbon per year per hectare. It not only enhances the environment, we are making a system that is more productive for grass forage for the cows as well as having a global impact. Everything we look at is how we can minimize our impact or create a positive change.

We minimize our water consumption use by reusing water and reclaiming it. Our long-term goal is actually to take all our creamery’s wastewater back to potable; we have been doing all sorts of experiments with that to get rid of chemicals. Between the creamery and dairy we reuse almost 90 percent of our water. We have never had sufficient water at the creamery so we haul water in and all of our wastewater out. Water is a precious resource for us.

We are always looking at different types of packaging. Reusable glass bottles is part of that, we get almost 80% of them back. Deposits are paid when bottles of milk are purchased and then consumers bring them back; we get 4-6 uses out of each bottle. We have already reduced the plastic content of each yogurt container by 50 percent and are looking toward at least another 50 percent reduction. Ideally we will get out of plastics all together. We look at all of our resources, and look at how we can improve on those steadily. We are looking at moving our creamery into a new location and the idea is to build a zero-impact creamery. It would include everything from solar power, to highly efficient insulation, and take all these practices that we use for heating and cooling our products and try to make it zero impact, and get to a sustainable model.

Q: There is currently a major divide between organic and conventional dairy. What has been your experience in being a part of the inception of modern organic dairy? What do you think the future of organic dairy looks like?

A: I think dairy farming has been a challenge for farmers. What I have tried to encourage is that the only way to make farming viable and sustainable, to be able to pass on to next generations, and to get new farmers in, is to make a model where farmers pay themselves-- and most farmers don’t. It is important to look at farming as a business not a lifestyle. It can’t be a lifestyle where you either have jobs off the farm or have to use other monetary resources to make the farm go. The only way it can be sustainable for the long run is to make it where the next generation wants to be farmers because they are not going to be working seven days a week, 24-hour days for no money.

When you are looking at conventional and organic, I think organic is something that has a future because we look at all the different systems, how to balance them, make them sustainable and profitable, and look at people, planet and profit as a triple bottom line. It is not just one part; it can’t be profitable without taking care of the land and the animals. In conventional farming, people have been pushed to get big because they have no control over their pricing. You try and get bigger and bigger just to offset some costs, but it is not the answer. You have more problems with pollution and animal welfare because you are being pushed by economics and it is not a sustainable system.

A: As a successful organic dairyman, what advice would you give to others trying to transition to, or survive in, the organic dairy industry?

A: What we are trying to do is gather the resources and advice that farmers need in order to make good decisions. I think it is about getting mentors, consultants, and people that actually can help you move your business forward, and look at the whole picture and help you get the education and experience that you need. The average age of farmers is getting close to 60 years old, so how do you have succession planning? How do you help the next generation get started? Those are things that are challenges and we are trying to come up with solutions for them.

Q: What do you think is the most important thing for modern consumers to understand when it comes to dairy?

A: What I saw happen in the UK is that organic foods lost sales for the last 7 or 8 years because consumers didn’t understand what organic meant, about the farming practices and the system and they didn’t understand quality differences. I think the lesson to be learned is consumers need to understand what the farming practices are, how they are different, how they are sustainable, and how they produce high quality food. I think that to have that understanding and that connection to farming is important; when you have the big chain stores that have labels that don’t reflect actual farms or farming practices there is a disconnect. It is a danger when some retail companies think that sustainability still just means low prices, and that’s not sustainable, it just puts pressure on processors and farmers to produce things below the true costs of production.

Q: In terms of the Farm Bill, do you think there are federal incentives that could be in place and support organic dairy, and what do you think those could be?

A: I like the idea of a system that is not reliant on federal subsidies. I think there are consumers who want to buy organic food but can’t afford it; maybe that is where subsidies should be going. The food stamps and food programs which are a part of the Farm Bill could be expanded to a level that would allow families to afford organic products; I think that is something that has a place. A farmer should be able to get a price that they need and not rely on subsidies to do the basic business of farming. The problem is that a lot of times the government doesn’t understand what farming is.

This interview has been edited for length. All photos are courtesy of Straus Family Creamery.

Read about more Sustainable Agriculture Spotlights and organic farming stories at GreenAmerica.org.

Sabra is one of the fastest growing hummus and dip brands in the US. But Sabra, which is part of Pepsi, has a secret: its hummus contains soybean oil that is likely genetically engineered (GMO).

Green America’s GMO Inside is calling on PepsiCo to remove GE soybean oil and citric acid from Sabra hummus.

Non-GMO Sabra Hummus would join PepsiCo's Stacy's Pita Chips, which recently hit the shelves without GMOs. Pita Chips are just one of Stacy's many cracker-like products that are being transitioned to non-GMO, it only makes sense that the most popular dip for them be non-GMO as well.

Our new campaign, “Sabra Hummus: Stop Mixing in the GMOs!” asks for four specific steps from PepsiCo:

1. We want Sabra Hummus to go non-GMO and for PepsiCo to certify Sabra products through a non-GMO-verified third party.

2. We want PepsiCo to work throughout its supply chain to reduce the use of toxic synthetic pesticides.

3. We want PepsiCo to stop fighting state-level GMO labeling efforts. We have a right to know what’s in our food! It is time PepsiCo starts supporting a mandatory Federal-level labeling initiative.

4. We want PepsiCo to commit to not using GE wheat in Stacy’s Pita Chips if GE what is approved in the future.

Find more background information and tell PepsiCo it is time to change at gmoinside.org/sabra.

Company Spending $640,000 to Block Consumers’ Right to Know If GMOs Are In Food Also Censors Consumers Talking About GMOs on Social Media

November 3, 2014

WASHINGTON D.C - November 3, 2014 - Green America’s GMO Inside campaign is calling out the J.M. Smucker Company (Smucker’s) for removing anti-GMO posts and posts critiquing the company’s funding of opposition to GMO labeling ballot initiatives in Oregon and Colorado. 

Over the past week, Smucker’s systematically has removed posts and comments from its Facebook page that are critical of the company’s stance on GMOs. 

The new censorship policy is an extension of the company’s ardent efforts to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs in food products.  According to the Cornucopia Institute, Smucker’s has spent $640,000 this year to oppose Measure 92 in Oregon and Proposition 105 in Colorado.  The company spent $349,977 to oppose Initiative 522 in Washington State last year.

“Not only does Smucker’s want to prevent consumers from knowing what’s in their foods, they also don’t want visitors to their Facebook page to know about their opposition to labeling,” said John Roulac, co-chair of the GMO Inside campaign and CEO of Nutiva. “Trying to silence consumer outrage is going to backfire on Smucker’s and turn customers away from them."

Alisa Gravitz, co-chair of GMO Inside and president and CEO of Green America, said: “Instead of blocking consumers’ right to know and censoring their Facebook page, Smucker’s should be making plans to label their foods that have GMOs and work to remove GMOs from their foods, since this is what American consumers increasingly want.  Smucker’s can't afford to alienate more than half of their customers.”

GMO Inside learned of Smucker’s removal of posts critical of the company’s stance on GMOs from consumers whose posts were removed.  GMO Inside staff and allies then made several posts and comments to the Smucker’s Facebook page regarding GMOs over the past several days, all of which were removed within the same day.

Smucker’s is allowing other posts on its Facebook page that voice criticisms of the company, and appears to only be deleting posts that are critical of the company’s position on GMOs.

ABOUT GMO INSIDE

GMO Inside is a campaign dedicated to A) helping all Americans know which foods have GMOs inside, and B) removing GMOs from our food supply. We believe that everyone has a right to know what’s in their food and to choose foods that are proven safe for people, their families, and the environment. GMO Inside provides the information for a growing community of people from all walks of life, to make informed decisions around genetically engineered foods. Join the campaign at www.gmoinside.org, and take part in the GMO Inside community on Facebook and Twitter. GMO Inside coalition partners include Nutiva, Food Democracy Now!, Institute for Responsible Technology, LabelGMOs.org, and Vani Hari, creator of FoodBabe.com.

 
ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses, investors, and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.greenamerica.org.

MEDIA CONTACT:   Will Harwood, (703) 276-3255 or wharwood@hastingsgroup.com.

Consumers have unrealized power to steer the close marriage between agriculture and the climate toward healthier outcomes, according to food-policy activists at the Green Festival in Chicago Saturday.

Agriculture is particularly vulnerable to climate conditions, according to the EPA, but also a major contributor to climate change because of carbon-emitting practices including deforestation, fertilization, transportation, fermentation, irrigation and the burning of crop residues.

Not all farmers, however, participate in all those practices.

"There's a huge, huge range in methods of food production," said Lindsay Record, the program director of the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, during a panel at the sustainability and green-living festival at Chicago's Navy Pier. "There's a lot of voting with your fork that you can do."

Record suggested five steps consumers can take to make sure the food they consume has the smallest possible carbon footprint:

1. "Try to incorporate a greater diversity of small grains that are produced locally or regionally," she said.

In recent years, American consumers have gained access to locally grown fruits, vegetables, meats, and cheeses, but grains still tend to be mass produced by large farming operations and shipped across large distances, making them more carbon intensive.

"Grains is the thing that local farmers are producing less often," Record said. But "when they have a grain crop in addition, crop rotations can protect soil from carbon loss. It will help sequester atmospheric carbon, which is really important. At the same time it will help to support those small farmers by increasing their bottom line, because they can diversify the products that they have available."

2. "Eating in season is really a big thing."

American consumers can enjoy oranges in summer and cherries in winter thanks to international food-distribution systems, but all that shipping means more greenhouse gas released to the atmosphere.

"You might think the idea of eating a strawberry in December or January sounds delicious, but they really don't taste as good, and they're shipped from far away. And so by eating fruit in season, you're reducing your transportation carbon footprint. Regional distribution systems are the most efficient. And that is the best, most efficient way to reduce your carbon footprint."

3. "Organic does matter," Record said, not only to the purity of food but to its carbon footprint.

"The synthetic fertilizers and pesticides are made using fossil fuels and fossil fuel derived energy," she said, "so looking for organic products is one of the things that you can do."

Some consumers avoid organic products because of the tend to cost more because of the cost of organic certification and because of economies of scale. But the cost of organic food is amortized over time by health-care costs, according to panelist Alisa Gravitz, president and CEO of Green America, an economic advocacy group.

"You can pay the farmer or pay the hospital," Gravitz said, "and it's a lot less expensive to pay the farmer now than to pay the hospital later."

4. "On dairy, meat, and eggs, look for the pasture-raised" certification, Record said, rather than organic or cage-free.

The meat-production industry produces more greenhouse gas than transportation or industry, so the best thing you can do for the climate is become a vegetarian or vegan. But if you can't kick the meat habit, you can still select meats that do less harm:

"When a farmer is using grass or pasture to raise their animals or livestock, if its managed correctly it can serve as a carbon sink and work to sequester carbon."

According to Nicole McCann, Green America's director for food campaigns, "Even an organic egg, if it's not pasture raised, comes from a factory farm. And 'cage free' really means nothing."

5. "Look for companies that have a commitment to sourcing sustainable ingredients," Record said. "Or if they make it a policy to give back to sustainable organizations."

"Chipotle, Amy's, Lundberg Rice, Clif Bar—all of them are committed to sourcing responsibly and sustainably raised ingredients as well as providing funding to organizations that work to support sustainable farmers," she said.

Consumers can influence food companies more than they realize, the panelists agreed, because they control the demand-side of the industry. Gravitz suggested emailing food companies, leaving Facebook comments (because others see them), and especially calling their 800-number (because every call costs them money, so they pay attention).  Jim Slama, founder of FamilyFarmed.org, said "the key is go to the store and ask for better than they've got."

"It's really an opportunity to bring more sustainability and responsibility into systems by creating that demand," Slama said.

By Jeff McMahon, based in Chicago. Follow Jeff McMahon on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, or email him here.

Industrialized dairy operations aren’t what they once were: bucolic imagery of red barns and a few cows roaming the grass-covered hills. The industry has become a thing of the past; more concerned with profit and efficiency than the cows themselves.

Overall consumption of cow's milk has been decreasing in the United States for years and Dean Foods, once the nation's largest milk producer, declared bankruptcy in 2019. Some of the largest producers of dairy worldwide are companies such as Nestlé and Kraft, known for their questionable ethics and concerning environmental practices. Due to consolidation, the majority of dairy cows are raised in large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) linked to issues of animal welfare and public and environmental health.

Animal Welfare in Industrialized Dairy Operations

The modern cow’s diet is a direct result of the consolidation of the dairy industry and the CAFO lifestyle. When you drink a nice tall glass of milk there is a good chance that unbeknownst to you, you are consuming a product heavily reliant on genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Soy and corn are not only the top crops grown in the US, but they are also majorly genetically engineered (GE) with 92% of corn, 94% of soy, and 96% of cottonseed being GMO. These crops are turned into many hidden additives that result in 75% of processed foods containing GMOs, and are widely used in the dairy industry as feed.

With such large numbers in a herd and no access to grazing, dairy cows consume a diet of mostly GE corn and soy. Currently more than 95% of animals used for meat and dairy in the US eat GE crops. These crops require numerous inputs such as herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers, not to mention large quantities of water, making dairy feed an extremely resource-intensive crop. Cows were not intended to live on a diet of corn and soy; these feeding practices cause numerous severe health issues and digestive problems.

Organic milk is one step in the right direction, though it is not the end all be all. Organic ensures that dairy cows are not given any hormones or antibiotics, but does not ensure the quality of their living conditions and the diversity of their diets. An organic cow is not necessarily grass-fed and vice versa. The USDA definition of grass-fed is very limited and only refers to the type of feed given to cattle and has nothing to do with living conditions and antibiotic usage. Organic doesn’t always mean local or small producer either; many of the environmental issues associated with dairy are a result of consolidation and organic doesn’t remedy this problem. As described above, corporate dairy consolidation is a trend likely to continue.

When it comes to dairy cows there is one key thing to remember: in order for a cow to produce milk it must first produce a calf (usually through artificial insemination). Every year farm operators impregnate dairy cows so they can spend the year continually lactating and then start the cycle again. Throughout the process of impregnation and lactation, cows live in extremely crowded and unnatural conditions, such as standing on concrete floors surrounded by their own urine and feces, without access to pasture.

Once industrial dairy cows have completed their 4-5 prime years of production they are culled from the herd and sold off as hamburger meat (despite the fact that a healthy cow can produce milk for 15-20 years). In industrialized dairy operations, calves are seen more as a byproduct of milk production rather than as actual living beings. Immediately after birth they are taken from their mothers; bull calves are either killed, sent to veal-producing facilities, or raised for hamburger. Therefore, the conventional dairy industry directly supports the production and consumption of conventional meat.

Public and Environmental Health in Industrialized Dairy Operations

Factory farms pose a number of risks to both people and the environment. As a response to crowded and unsanitary living conditions, cows are often given daily doses of antibiotics via feed or injection to prevent the spread of disease and spur growth. The overuse of antibiotics for non-therapeutic purposes has resulted in the prevalence of a number of antibiotic-resistant (AR) bacteria.

These “superbugs” can transfer from animals to humans through contact with animals, contact with infected meat, and the consumption of crops that have been fertilized with manure from feedlots. AR bacteria pose such a great risk due to their ability to horizontally transfer genes to other bacteria that factory farms serve as breeding grounds for life-threatening AR genes to enter the world.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) 2019 Threat Report on Antimicrobial Resistance, of the 2.8 million AR infections each year, 35,000 of them result in death. A number of these infections and deaths could be prevented if animal agriculture did not use our antibiotics supply to compensate for poor living conditions.

In order to maintain and even increase the already high levels of milk production, dairy cows often receive hormones. The most common hormone is recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a genetically engineered synthetic hormone developed by Monsanto. This hormone results in increased cases of infections among the cows leading to a greater need for antibiotics.

The EU and Canada prohibit the use of rBGH due to major human health concerns including a connection to various forms of cancer and its likely impacts on reproductive health. Savvy companies such as Chipotle have already transitioned to sourcing hormone-free dairy products, and it’s time that other companies follow suit.

Along with animal health risks from factory farms, this type of concentrated agriculture results in a number of unmeasured environmental externalities. A large number of cattle contained in one area, without access to pasture, creates vast amounts of consolidated animal waste and methane emissions.

A report published by the CDC voices concerns over the environmental and health impacts of CAFOs (farms with 500 or more cows). Animals produce 3-20 times more waste that humans every year. Cattle manure and gases result in high levels of greenhouse gases, a drastic impact to ambient air quality and is a major contributor to climate change.

Not only is dairy production extremely water intensive with producers using up to 150 gallons of water per cow per day, the waste can leach into ground and surface water polluting numerous ecosystems and water sources. Such environmental hazards pose a constant and direct risk to communities within a close vicinity to a facility. One region cannot contain the harmful impacts; therefore, ecosystems and communities far and wide are at risk.

Steps Toward Change in Industrialized Dairy Operations

It is easy to lose sight of what milk really is and what it takes to produce it. By opening up the discussion on the impacts of industrialized dairy operations, we are creating a space for conversation and change. Many dairies are incorporating organics and grass-fed principles and it is time they become the norm rather than the exception. How do we do this?

Companies such as Starbucks have massive purchasing power and require such large quantities of a product that they have the ability to create a tidal wave of change and drastically improve our food system. We need to hold them accountable. Recently, Chobani announced three organic yogurt flavors coming soon, along with a commitment to work with farmers on transition strategies toward a GMO-free and organic milk supply and to explore what 21st century sustainable dairy operations can entail. When consumers band together by encouraging companies to set higher standards and make more ethical decisions in their supply chains, things begin to change.

Upated February 2023

The global chocolate industry commands more than $83 billion annually, but how much of this gets back to the farmers? Since most chocolate on US store shelves comes from West Africa, Green America has been persistently pressuring US cocoa companies to step up and take care of the workers—and child laborers—in their supply chains. This infographic traces the conventional cocoa supply chain in an effort to show where the majority of the money consumers spends ends up when they buy a chocolate product. Purchasing fair trade chocolate from companies that have more direct relationships with farmers is important, as is ongoing pressure on manufacturers, processors, and traders, to improve the situation for farmers and their families. Want to take this with you to share with others when you trick-or-treat? Download our 1-page version.

Hershey announced yesterday it will be going 100% certified by 2020. Hershey will utilize three different certification systems -- Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance, and Utz.  All three prohibit child labor, which is endemic in the cocoa sector in West Africa, where Hershey sources most of its cocoa.

Green America joined with allies in the child labor and social justice movement in a ten-year campaign to urge Hershey to certify its cocoa as child labor free.  The campaign included protests, letter writing, and petitions, and involved hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

Exactly two years ago, Hershey announced it would source only ethically certified cocoa by 2020. This announcement came after years of pressure on Hershey to prevent child labor on West African cocoa farms from Green America members and our allies Two years later, we’re checking on Hershey’s progress and on how these commitments have impacted cocoa growing communities. But first, a little back story…

2000-2009  

credit: International Labor Rights Forum

In 2001, the world was shocked by stories of horrific forced child labor in West African cocoa growing communities. In response, a “slave-free” label was proposed by US lawmakers. The chocolate industry defeated this proposal and instead signed on to the Harkin-Engel protocol, to voluntarily fix child labor in their supply chains. A decade went by with the industry missing deadline after deadline to stop child labor, as their profits soared. Very little progress was made to prevent child labor among most major chocolate companies.

September 2010 Green America and our allies grew tired of waiting for big cocoa to act on its own to fix child labor. We launched our Raise the Bar, Hershey! Campaign, calling out Hershey, the largest US chocolate manufacturer, as a laggard in addressing child labor problems in its supply chain. In 2009, Mars had already committed to sourcing 100% sustainable cocoa by 2020.

 credit: Celery Street Blog 

September 2011 With growing consumer awareness and outrage, Green America published “Still Time to Raise the Bar” to keep the pressure on Hershey[1]. The report called out Hershey’s failure to address child labor and other labor abuses in its supply chain (a topic that Hershey failed to mention in its own corporate responsibility report). The report acted as a catalyst for tens of thousands of people to write to Hershey. Consumers and religious allies took part in protests at Hershey stores, and investors called on the company to address child labor as well.

January 2012

Green America and our allies planned to run a Super Bowl add targeting Hershey for child labor. In response, Hershey agreed to purchase Rainforest Alliance certified cocoa for its Bliss chocolate products[2]

August 2012 Consumer pressure continued to escalate on Hershey, and retailers started putting pressure on the cocoa giant as well. Green America united food coops, specialty retailers, and Whole Foods to voice their concerns regarding child labor in Hershey products. Whole Foods agreed to drop all Hershey products from its stores.

October 2012 Hershey announced it would ethically source 100% of its cocoa by 2020, but does not disclose an incremental timeline or which certification it will use.[3]

March 2013 In response to ongoing pressure, Hershey shares it plans to worker with Fair Trade USA, Utz and Rainforest alliance for certification, and that it will reach 10% certification by the end of 2013, 40-50% by 2016.[4]

January 2014 Hershey announced it was ahead of its original goal, reaching 18% certified cocoa[5].

Today: Green America is pleased that Hershey has followed through on its plan to move to certified cocoa, and is in fact ahead of schedule. Eight years is a long time in the life of a child, so the sooner Hershey can purchase cocoa that comes from farms that screen out child labor, the better. Child labor remains an urgent issue in West Africa’s cocoa sector, and one that stems from extreme poverty. The average income of West African cocoa farmers and their dependents is well below the level of absolute poverty, according to the Cocoa Barometer.  

Poverty is a major driver of child labor. In order to address the extreme poverty faced by cocoa farmers, chocolate companies must develop long-term relationships with the farmers they purchase from and pay prices that cover the farmers’ cost of production, including the costs of additional hired labor and necessary fertilizers. The added benefit of chocolate companies paying a higher price for their cocoa is that it guarantees the future supply of chocolate, for chocolate companies and all their chocolate loving consumers.

Two years after Hershey’s announcement to ethically certify its chocolate products, we’re celebrating the impact consumers can have when they band together to make change happen! Over the next two years, we’ll continue to monitor Hershey, to ensure the company meets or exceeds it 2016 commitment of 50% certified. We’ll also put pressure on companies who have not taken steps to trace their cocoa supply, like Godiva.

Thank you for taking action with us!

[1] http://www.greenamerica.org/PDF/Still-Time-to-Raise-the-Bar-Hershey-Report-2011.pdf

[2] https://www.greenamerica.org/about/newsroom/releases/2012-02-01-Hershey-Will-Offer-Certified-Chocolate-Following-Consumer-Driven-Campaign.cfm

[3] http://www.thehersheycompany.com/newsroom/news-release.aspx?id=1741328

[4] http://www.thehersheycompany.com/newsroom/news-release.aspx?id=1798984

[5] http://www.thehersheycompany.com/newsroom/news-release.aspx?id=1894137

  My oldest daughter a few years ago at what she calls "the Pumpkin Cart of Honesty," in which a neighbor grows pumpkins and simply sets them out on a cart with a cash box and trusts that people will pay for what they take. We now officially come to the end of our "Don't Have a Cow" blog series. Since many of the posts have been focusing on vegetarian or vegan eating, I'm going to take a different tack.... As part of my quest to eat healthier with my family, I’ve been spending a lot of time getting to know what my local options are. I telecommute for Green America from the Midwest, and it’s pretty easy to find fresh, local food here at harvest-time among all the family farms. But could I eat three meals a day from local sources for ten days, with only a handful of non-local foods allowed (like, oh, chocolate?)? That’s the question behind Vicki Robin’s new 10-day Local Food Challenge. Vicki recently published a wonderful book, Blessing the Hands that Feed Us: What Eating Closer to Home Can Teach Us About Food, Community, and Our Place on Earth, which was all about what she learned by eating food for a full month that came from no further than ten miles from her home. The challenge she’s issuing now is less stringent: You pick any ten days in October and eat only food that has come from within 100 miles or less of your home.  And you can pick ten “exotics”, or foods from afar—like coffee, chocolate, or olive oil—“to make it doable.” The results, says Vicki, can be a life-changing exercise in connecting to your food and community. “Why do it at all? For fun, for curiosity, for integrity, for health, for the love of farmers and community, for making friends, for encouraging others to eat local food, for building an alternative to food-as-usual, for taking a stand for the food system we-the-eaters want: fresh, fair, affordable food for all,” she says. I’d like to try it. Because the local food producers that I’ve connected with are all sources of some of the best and healthiest food I've ever eaten, and dedicating ten days to being mindful about finding more can only make my life richer. There’s Jeff, the apple farmer who smiled indulgently when I asked him for a bag of Honeycrisps and then promptly sliced up some of his close-to-organic heirloom apples for me to try. I dream of those apples all year long and am overjoyed that he just opened up his orchard store again for the season. Mrs. D. operates a small dairy ten miles away where she sells fresh milk, butter, and every flavor of ice cream we could ever want. Alice makes homemade bread with all sorts of wonderful flavors and sells it at the local farmers market. Bill sells organically farmed, truly free-range chicken at the same market for when my family does eat meat, which is less and less often since my animal-loving daughters prefer to eat plant-based meals—as long as their father or I don’t mess them up in the kitchen. Lindsey and Joe operate an award-winning winery within walking distance from my house, and I’ve fallen in love with several of their sweet reds—and with the musical nights and other fun community events they throw at the winery. I just bought a jar of the crunchiest dill pickles I’ve ever eaten at an art fair from a woman my mother’s age who cans four different types, and I’m vacationing on Lake Michigan soon, where I’ll pick up some herb-infused olive oil made only in Wisconsin. Round it all out with mint tea and stevia syrup from my herb garden, which I swap with a friend for fresh zucchini and tomatoes (the deer got all of ours this year). But I know I’ve only hit the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to seeking out local food treasures. I can’t wait to discover more. As Vicki says, “If we want a GMO-antibiotic-cruelty-free, nontoxic, fair to farmers and nutritious food supply, the 10-Day Local Food Challenge gives us firsthand experience of what we stand for. We know we are participating in building the world we want, bite by bite, even as we protest and boycott the food system we don’t want.” To learn more about and join the 10-Day Local Food Challenge, visit localfoodchallenge.org. And don't forget to ask your local growers if they farm organic or close to it, so you can avoid pesticide residues and genetically modified organisms for your health.

—Tracy Fernandez Rysavy, editor-in-chief

“All animals are equal,” Orwell’s pigs proclaim in the novel Animal Farm, “but some animals are more equal than others.”

I've always loved this quote and the round-about ways the pigs describe their own special status. But lately while researching the myriad problems around beef, I've thought about this quote again and again. Meats are often seen as interchangeable when we talk about their place in our diets. Eating animals can be seen as equally problematic from a humane standpoint. Similarly, we often don't differentiate between meats with the labels we use for one another -- "vegetarians," "vegans," and "meat eaters." But the more I read, the more it became apparent that from an environmental standpoint, meats are not equally damaging.

Chances are you’re aware that beef is bad for the environment –if you've kept up with our blog series on the subject or read the lead article of our last magazine issue, you'll know that beef has a disproportionately large impact on our water, climate and even our own health.

But a study conducted by Gideon Eshel, Alon Shepon, Tamar Makov and Ron Milo published earlier this summer quantifies this disproportionate impact in a way that knocked me out of my socks. The study notes that while there’s a general understanding that meat has a higher environmental cost than plants, there isn’t a lot of information comparing the different types of meats on the same standards. The study authors sought to remedy that lack of comparative data.

They found that “beef production requires 28, 11, 5, and 6 times more land, irrigation water, GHG and Nr, respectively than the average of the other livestock categories.”  Let's take a look at that fact in a more visual format. The study authors were kind enough to send me the numbers behind their summary graphs. I've reproduced them here (without standard deviation included).

Here's the resources used by various meats and plants.

The study authors note that beef – the least efficient on all four counts – is the second most popular animal category in the average US diet “accounting for 7% of all consumed calories.”

So what's the solution? In an interview with us Denis Hays, the author of Cowed, explains that while he admires vegetarians and vegans, his first priority is to convince meat eaters to reduce the amount of beef they eat. "If we can persuade those people to reduce their consumption from 1.6 pounds of bad beef every week to, say, one-half pound of good, healthy beef from the right sources, the benefits for human health and the environment will be profound."

And Dr. Alon Shepon, one of the authors of the study agrees about the potential impact of curbing beef consumption. "Beef's inefficiency in GHG, water, land and fertilization towers over all other" categories, he told us. "Exchanging beef with other animal products including other sources of meat reduce the environmental impacts associated with food production."

If you're reducing the amount of beef you eat, make sure you're replacing it with other yummy foods. I particularly like savory apple recipes in the fall.

So for all you vegetarians and vegans -- keep up the good work, and consider focusing on beef if you talk to your friends or family about meat consumption. For you meat eaters who want to make a difference, the "low hanging fruit" in your diet is beef -- reduce that and make a world of difference.

If you'd like a more personalized analysis of your diet, take our food-print quiz to find out how you can make your diet even more climate-friendly and how you compare to other Americans.

Finally, don't let yourself equate beef-reduction with depriving yourself of good food. Check out some of my favorite autumn vegetarian recipes here and here.

Take action: Sign our petition to block GE wheat!

The introduction of genetically engineered wheat will threaten the environment, the world’s food supply, and our economy.

For 8,000 years, wheat has served as a staple crop for humankind. Today, it is the top traded commodity worldwide—grown on more acreage than any other crop and is the main source of calories for 20 percent of the world’s population.

This staple crop is now at risk. Monsanto and other biotechnology companies are currently in the process of developing varieties of herbicide-resistant genetically engineered (GE) wheat.

GE wheat will lead to an increased use of pesticides and fertilizers, which will result in the deterioration of soil health, risks to human health, and water pollution. Herbicide-resistant GE crops are already threatening key pollinator species, increasing the use of toxic pesticides, and propagating the spread of pesticide-resistant superweeds. The introduction of GE wheat also threatens the well-being and economic security of US wheat farmers.

Read more about the problems with GE wheat.

Campaign Goals

The Stop GE Wheat campaign is dedicated to ending the development of GE wheat and promoting a more sustainable agricultural system:

Stop the Development of GE Wheat

Take collective action to “protect the final frontier” and stop the introduction and commercialization of genetically engineered wheat, including varieties developed from gene-editing.

 

Decrease the Use of Chemical Inputs in Wheat Production

Shift conventional wheat growing methods away from the use of glyphosate (and other toxic pesticides), synthetic fertilizers, and other chemical inputs.

 

Promote a Shift to Organic and Regenerative Agriculture

Encourage the growth of organic wheat production in the US and promote a shift towards sustainable, regenerative agricultural methods that prioritize soil health, carbon sequestration, and environmental stewardship.

 

Green America and GMO Inside are pleased to announce our new Farmer-Grower Initiative. Through this new initiative, we are expanding collaboration with farmers, growers, and garden educators across the US to highlight and celebrate the work of those who engage in sustainable agriculture. By amplifying the voice of the sustainable farming community, we aim to bridge the gap of communication between farmers, consumers, and policy makers. Stay tuned on the blog and our Facebook page for new farmer-grower profiles.

We couldn't be more excited to kick off our new Farmer-Grower Initiative with the help of Constance and Eric Payne from Chopping Block Farm. We first connected with Constance and Eric at the Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival in May 2014, and couldn't wait to work with them on our inaugural Farmer Profile. They even gifted us two of their custom-made Chopping Block t-shirts!

Read on to learn more about two of the coolest farmers around - and make sure to "like” the Chopping Block Facebook page. To check out their full website, click here.

Introduce yourself!
We are Constance and Eric Payne of Chopping Block Farm, GMO-free and AgriTrue Certified. We live in De Soto, Missouri, approximately 45 minutes south of St. Louis.

Describe your farm and the sustainable practices you employ.
The primary sustainable practices we employ on the farm are based on many common permaculture design principles and ethics. Through observation of our land and conditions, Farmer Eric was able to create and impose a landscape that maximizes natural and environmental input and minimizes human alteration. We employ Hugelkultur [raised garden beds created on woody debris like fallen branches or logs], swales [water-harvesting ditches] and water-catchment systems, no-till gardening, composting, natural fertilizer and diverse planting that allows symbiotic relationships between plants, insects and animals to thrive.

When and how did your interest in food and farming start?
Many moons ago we both had an interest in gardening, planting and growing food. It wasn't until we moved in together that we were able to join forces to build on the passions and interests we previously had. As a biologist, my [Constance's] interests were rooted--no pun intended--in the effects of the current food system in this country being imposed on the bodies of its consumers. I became interested in eating in a way that was more natural, rather than more convenient. Farmer Eric has always been a “grower,” keeping a garden from the time he was a small child. His experience in gardening, soil and plant biology and permaculture are really to credit for our success. I suppose my interest in the food, paired with his experience in growing it, is what led to farming for us. We had a 5-year plan for a house with five acres. Eight months later, we started a 25-acre farm - go figure.

Considering emerging and pressing issues like climate change, increased use of pesticides & genetically modified seeds, and intensified agriculture – how has your relationship with food and farming changed over time?
We are now much more aware, both as producers and consumers, than we were before we started farming. We do not limit ourselves to a label on a package or box, but realize that through familiarity of current and nearly obsolete practices, regulations, and biological systems, both plant and animal, we are able to choose, consume and produce the most natural items possible from the purest of sources.

What is the biggest misconception that modern consumers have when it comes to food?
Where it comes from. There is such great disconnect with what we put into our bodies these days that many people seem to be oblivious to where their food comes from - and the work that goes into producing it. So many people never think beyond where they buy their food, and how it is grown is rarely considered. We chose the name we did--Chopping Block Farm--in an attempt to make people think about that very fact. We remind people that every piece of meat they eat used to be a live animal and that someone had to raise and kill it, because if you lose that connection to your food, you no longer appreciate it. When you have no appreciation or care for what goes into your body, it has an effect on every aspect of your existence.

What is the most important thing for modern consumers to understand when it comes to food?
That you, the consumer, have control of what goes into your body. You are not limited to convenience, what is on a screen at the drive-through, and what is on sale at the local grocer. Generally speaking, the cheaper “food” is, the worse it is for you. Some of the cheapest food anyone will ever consume is the food you grow yourself. This, of course, when done responsibly, is also some of the best food - and all it takes is a little time and patience.

What advice can you give to someone who wants to learn more about sustainable food but doesn’t know where to start?
Look for small natural or sustainable farms in your area if you are interested in growing. Talk to people, be it in person or via social networking, who have done what you want to do. That is priceless knowledge and practical experience that cannot be beat. If you are interested in obtaining sustainable food, the farmers are again at the top of the list of whom to contact, but also do not hesitate to connect with local farmers markets, CSAs or other consumers with similar interests.

What do you believe is the most underrated issue in talking about food systems? Are there any issues that you don’t feel are talked about enough in mainstream media?
There is a great underrepresentation of information on the nutritional value of “food.” Because of the pesticides, herbicides, constant tilling, and careless practices of modern agriculture, the health of our soil is greatly depleted. When the soil is no longer a source of nutrition for the plant, but instead only a “growing medium”, that translates to everything we eat. The fruits, vegetables and nuts grown in unhealthy soil are a mere shadow, nutritionally speaking, of what they could be if grown in healthy soil.

Healthy soil would eliminate the need for many of the poisons that our food is exposed to. Conventional meat is often raised on feed made from empty plants growing in the empty “soil” that sits on most commercialized farms, and that produces meats with a diminished nutritional value. When food is produced this way, people need to be aware that they are not eating food as it was intended to be eaten.

What are your favorite go-to resources when it comes to sustainable food, farming, gardening, etc.?

People & Organizations: Bill Mollison, Geoff Lawton, Eliot Coleman; Slow Food USA
Websites: Permaethos.com, The SurvivalPodcast.com
Books: Storey's Guide to... books from Storey Publishing. There are a million great ones!

Many thanks go out to Constance and Eric for sharing their story! Visit their website at www.choppingblockfarm.com to learn more about the principles behind their mission, see photos, and more.

Read about more Sustainable Agriculture Spotlights and organic farming stories at GreenAmerica.org.

As students start getting ready to go back to school, some of them are also getting ready to embark upon a new year of greening their campuses. Green America editorial fellow Sari Amiel discovered five inspiring examples of how students are making their campuses more socially just and environmentally sustainable. Every Monday and Wednesday from now through August 27^th, we’ll post one of Sari’s stories here on our blog.

Cornell's "Dump and Run" program gets items that students would normally throw away at the end of the school year into the hands of people who can use them.

As each year of college draws to a close, students have to face a reality that, for months, they been avoiding—the amount of stuff that has accumulated in their rooms. With time and space in short supply, students will often throw away many still-useful items. That’s why Cornell University gives its students the ability to “Dump and Run.”

Since 2003, Cornell’s Dump and Run program has decreased its move-out waste stream by collecting unwanted items at the end of each school year and re-selling things that are still usable at the start of the next year.

“[This program is] really good in terms of keeping as much as we possibly can out of the landfill,” says Karen Brown, Cornell’s Director of Campus Life Marketing and Communications, who oversees the Dump and Run program. “And I think it’s very effective in terms of our relationship with the Ithaca community.”

Before Cornell’s residence halls close for the summer, the Campus Life office reminds students to place their unwanted items in collection boxes, which are situated in several residence halls, sororities, and fraternities around campus.  In the late spring and summer, those living in off-campus residences and homes in the community can also call Brown’s office to request pickups of their donations.

Dump and Run commonly receives refrigerators, clothing, lamps, and storage containers. Many of the donated items still contain tags, says Brown. In the past few years, she has seen a life-size inflatable palm tree, Halloween costumes, aquariums, Christmas trees, and a $700 pair of Jimmy Choo shoes.

Volunteers from local nonprofits, along with a few student volunteers, spend the summer in a 3,500-square-foot storage unit, sorting through the collection of college artifacts to separate still-usable items from things that are clearly at the end of their lives and need to be disposed of.

“We try to recycle everything that we can,” says Brown. “I’m pleasantly surprised [by] how little ends up in the landfill.”

The vast majority of the items are sold at the campus Dump and Run sale on the Saturday after freshmen move-in day. This sale is open to Cornell students and staff, as well as the general public. It’s so popular that, although the sale starts at 8:30 a.m., townspeople start arriving at 5:30 a.m. By the time the doors open, there are usually about 100 people lined up outside.

“I think this program has done a lot to help with our relationship with our surrounding town…because they really appreciate it,” says Brown. “It’s a great way to convince people to clean out their basements and garages.”

After the sale, Brown says the program distributes leftover items to nearby nonprofits that might be able to use them. Dump and Run volunteers give leftover clothes to a local women’s center, send blankets and towels to animal shelters, and donate nonperishable food to food pantries.

However, Cornell does manage to sell most of the donations it receives. It gives almost 100 percent of the proceeds from the sale to the local nonprofits that send volunteers to help with the Dump and Run program. The fraction of the sales revenue that each nonprofit receives is proportional to the number of hours that its volunteers spent working with Dump and Run. Cops, Kids & Toys, the group that helps Dump and Run the most, volunteered more than 3,000 hours last year.

One of these nonprofit groups is a student-run organization. According to former co-Chair Christina Roberti, Cornell’s Student United Way chapter uses its share of the sale revenue to fund its Summers of Service program. Summers of Service provides financially constrained high school students with a stipend so that they can afford to accept unpaid summer internships at nonprofits.

Cornell’s Campus Life office presently stores items in facilities donated by the Cornell Veterinary School. However, a lack of storage space is the largest constraint that Dump and Run faces, so students still end up throwing some still-usable items out at the end of the year.

“When we see things end up in the dumpsters and we know we can’t go get it, it’s disheartening,” says Brown. “I think if we had twice the warehouse space, we would fill it.”

From a student perspective, Roberti really appreciates the Dump and Run program.

“From my point of view, it saves a lot of waste,” says Roberti. “I just moved out of a 14-person house… Anything that wasn’t trash we donated to Dump and Run, but we probably would have thrown it out had it not been for the sale.”

—Sari Amiel

Apple responds to over 23,000 comments from concerned consumers. More needs to be done to protect workers.

August 14, 2014

Washington, DC – August 14, 2014 –Green America announced today that it is pleased with Apple’s August 13 announcement that it is taking first steps to protect the workers who make their products from dangerous chemical exposures. Apple announced that it is banning the use of benzene and n-hexane in the final assembly of its products. 

Green America continues to urge Apple to go further to ensure the safety of all workers in its supply chain. Beyond benzene and n-hexane, there are thousands of chemicals used in the manufacturing of electronics—some which are largely untested—and many chemicals used by Apple suppliers remain undisclosed. Apple first needs to disclose all of the chemicals used in the manufacturing processes of its products, not just those with restrictions. Additionally, while Green America applauds Apple for investigating all its final assembly plants in China, the nonprofit is urging Apple to look deeper into its supply chain, to the second and third tier suppliers, where chemical usage and safety procedures are less controlled. Apple has 349 supplier facilities in China with an estimated 1.5 million workers. Apple has investigated just 22 of these facilities (6.3%) which employ a third of the workers who work on Apple’s products. This sample does not represent a cross-section of all of Apple’s suppliers in China. Apple is still allowing benzene and n-hexane, and many other potentially hazardous chemicals, to be used in its second and third tier suppliers.

Elizabeth O'Connell, campaigns director at Green America, said: "This announcement and the preceding investigation shows that Apple listens to its customers.  However, Apple needs to go further to create a safe environment at all factories in their supply chain for the health and safety of all 1.5 million workers."

Green America will continue to call for Apple to identify and disclose all chemicals used in all supplier factories. Chemicals deemed hazardous to human health must be replaced with safer alternatives in all factories. In situations where the danger of a chemical is unknown, Apple must require proper testing. Apple must institute and enforce appropriate exposure monitoring, medical monitoring, and effective training and management systems to ensure worker health and safety, and ensure that any workers harmed in the manufacture of its products receive appropriate medical care. 

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses, investors, and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.greenamerica.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: Will Harwood (703) 276-3255 or wharwood@hastingsgroup.com

Slated to be the largest climate rally in history: we’re hitting the streets of NYC at the People’s Climate March to demand that our world leaders take substantive and immediate action on climate change.

Record-breaking temperatures. Unprecedented drought. Extreme weather.

Over the past few years, we’ve experienced some of the worst climate-related disasters in history. But with further delay on real solutions to the global climate crisis, we’re looking at a future that is far more grim than the present.

This September, Green America is joining over 550 participating organizations to change the course of history at the People’s Climate March.

With the UN Climate Summit taking place the following week, all eyes will be on New York as we make our message loud and clear.

Concerned citizens from all over the country will descend on New York City to march in solidarity with all those fighting for our future. Will you join us on September 21?

By signing up with the People’s Climate March, you’ll receive up-to-date information regarding logistics, transportation, and more. Link up with participating groups in your area here.

Most importantly, don’t forget to invite your neighbors, classmates, friends, and family.

This could be the day that changes everything. We can’t wait to see you out there.

Apple removes two of the most toxic chemicals from its tier 2 assembly (August 2014)

Green America’s End Smartphone Sweatshops campaign, in partnership with China Labor Watch (CLW), called on Apple to remove toxic chemicals including benzene and n-hexane from its supplier factories in China. Only five months into the campaign, Apple announced in August that it would “explicitly prohibit the use of benzene and n-hexane” at 22 of its final-assembly supplier factories.

Health-conscious people avoid it and few people admit to using it, but it always turns up at a summertime cookout, picnic, or potluck…mayonnaise. Mayonnaise is a staple in dishes like potato salad, coleslaw, and the beloved deviled egg. Some people even mix it with ketchup and put it on hot dogs, or use it alone on French fries. Made mostly of oil, eggs, and vinegar, mayo is the ever-present guest at your summertime gathering. With 31 percent market share in the US (and 52% in Canada), Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise is the likely brand in your potato salad. Other similar culprits may include Duke’s, Miracle Whip, Kraft, and Heinz. But there's a special ingredient lurking in your Hellmann's mayo that you should know about...GMOs.

Hellmann’s, acquired by Unilever in 2000, just celebrated its 100^th anniversary as America’s most popular mayonnaise. Its main competitor, Miracle Whip (owned by Kraft), was introduced as a cheaper alternative during the Depression Era. Because Miracle Whip used powdered eggs instead of whole eggs, it lost the “real” appeal to consumers, since “real” mayonnaise could only contain whole eggs, vinegar, and olive oil. Hellmann’s used this as a key marketing tactic against Miracle Whip for a long time, promoting its own truly “real” mayonnaise and getting a leg up on the competition.

As the years have gone by, we have seen a growing separation between the ingredients used in Hellmann’s mayo and its marketed image of their “real” product. The company’s latest advertising campaign co-opts the sustainable food movement by asking customers to consider supporting local farmers, and starting a home garden rather than focus on the product itself. Alison Leung, Unilever’s foods marketing director, said, “We gave [consumers] an idea to buy into.”  The reality of Hellmann’s is clearly far from its clever marketing campaign.

What is the “Real” Problem with Hellmann’s?

Hellmann’s used to take great pride in its “real” ingredients. Now, Hellmann’s mayonnaise is made with less-than wholesome ingredients produced in ways that put people, animals, pollinators, and the planet at risk. Half of the ingredients are likely produced from genetically modified (GMO) crops. The eggs are also sourced from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), commonly referred to as factory farms.

The actual list of ingredients in Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise are (those that are likely directly or indirectly GMOs are bold): soybean oil, water, whole eggs and egg yolks, vinegar, salt, sugar, lemon juice, calcium disodium EDTA (used to protect quality), natural flavors.

Concerns about GMOs

The reality: Hellmann’s “Real” Mayonnaise is nothing like the product offered 100 years ago, and the current version is bad for people and the planet. GMOs and growing herbicide resistance have increased the use of toxic chemicals on crops, polluting our soil and water and posing a significant negative environmental impact. Corporate control of GMOs hurts small farmers. The biotech and chemical corporations spend millions to support anti-labeling efforts and keep consumers in the dark about their food. There are also health risks. GMOs are not yet proven safe for human health—the FDA does not require independent testing of GE foods, allowing for many of the studies on GMOs to be industry-funded and heavily biased.

Among the list of ingredients in Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise, the following products are of particular concern:

• Soybean oil: 93 percent of soy in the US is GMO
• Sugar: 54 percent of sugar sold in the US is from sugar beets, of which over 90 percent are GMO
• Vinegar: Made from corn, of which 89 percent is GMO
• Eggs: Laying hens (egg-producing chickens) are fed GMO corn and soy
• Natural flavors: A nebulous term that includes many ingredients that people don’t consider to be natural

Concerns about Eggs and CAFOs

Corporate and Geographic Consolidation

Gone are the days of pastures, barns, field crops, and farm animals. Eggs are produced in industrial operations with hundreds of thousands of laying hens in each facility, growing by nearly 25 percent from 1997 to 2007. Nearly half of egg production is concentrated in five states: Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, California, and Pennsylvania. Egg operations have grown in size by 50 percent in the same ten-year period, averaging 750,000 hens per factory farm. Though headquartered in Mississippi, Cal-Maine is the largest egg producer in the United States, selling 685 million dozen eggs in 2007 with a flock of 23 million hens.

Animal Welfare

The manner in which laying hens are raised directly affects their wellbeing and health. Egg-laying hens are subjected to mutilation, confinement, and deprivation of the ability to live their lives as the active, social beings they are. More than 90 percent of eggs in the US are produced in confinement conditions. Welfare abuses run rampant in egg CAFOs including: killing male chicks upon hatching because they have no value to the egg industry, debeaking young female chicks causing severe pain, living in battery cages with the equivalent of less than a sheet of paper of floor size, being subjected to a process called “forced molting” where hens are starved and deprived of food for up to two weeks to shock their bodies into the next egg-laying cycle, and slaughtering them after their egg production declines in 1-2 years even though the lifespan of an industry chicken would be 5-8 years.

There is growing concern about the living conditions in which food animals are raised; however, there is little oversight when it comes to product labels, as we have recently seen in the news regarding the label “natural”.The majority of egg labels have no official standards or oversight or enforcement mechanisms, nor much relevance to animal welfare. Labels include: cage-free, free-range, free-roaming, pasture-raised, certified organic, vegetarian-fed, and more. The highest-welfare eggs come pasture-raised with certification from Animal Welfare Approved. Unfortunately, few farms are certified to this standard. Check out the organization’s mobile app to find products near you.

Even certified organic is not without flaws. According to a report by Cornucopia, industrial-scale organic egg producers, with facilities holding as many as 85,000 hens each, provide 80 percent of the organic eggs on the market. This means that less than half of a percent of egg-laying hens in this country are on pasture-based farms. Therefore, it is important to dig deeper and do research into the company. Local producers offer a shorter supply chain and more transparency.

Hellmann’s claims to be committed to using cage-free eggs in its products, with a portion of their eggs currently cage-free and a mission to use 100 percent cage-free eggs by 2020. Rather than using Animal Welfare Approved certification, the company opted for American Humane Certified where forced molting through starvation is prohibited, but beak cutting is allowed. To qualify as “cage-free”, the birds must be kept uncaged inside barns–but may still be kept indoors at all times.

Public and Environmental Health

Poor living conditions directly impact public and environmental health. Large-scale factory farm operations produce more than just that little white orb used in baking recipes and for brunch dishes; they are also breeding grounds for disease and pollution.

Large hen facilities house hundreds of thousands of animals in each structure and result in Salmonella poisoning of eggs. Due to a Salmonella outbreak in 2010 where close to 2,000 cases in three months were reported, the US experienced the largest shell egg recall in history—half a billion eggs. While Salmonella rates are higher in battery cage systems, it is still a problem for cage-free facilities due to the sheer number of hens living in such close quarters.

As seen in other factory farm operations for pigs and cows, chicken CAFOs produce higher levels of waste than can be disposed of in a timely and environmentally responsible manner. The imbalance of a large number of animals in an increasingly smaller space causes mountains of fecal matter to pile up. Ammonia levels increase, negatively impacting air quality by creating particles inhaled by animals and people and producing unpleasant odors. Elevated ammonia levels also negatively impact water quality, running off into local streams and rivers. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), ammonia can be carried more than 300 miles through the air before returning to the ground and then into waterways. The nutrients in runoff from animal waste can then cause algal blooms, which use up the water’s oxygen supply killing all aquatic life, leading to “dead zones.” Dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico are growing larger every year, in addition to those along the East Coast.

In addition to having a devastating impact on aquatic life, industrial egg production also contributes to climate change. After assessing the lifecycle of eggs from “cradle-to-grave” production, the Environmental Working Group reported that consuming two extra-large eggs is equivalent to driving a car more than one mile.

Unilever and the Grocery Manufacturers Association

Not only is Hellmann’s mayonnaise made of bad ingredients, but its parent company, Unilever, has its own tainted history. Unilever gave $467,100 dollars to GMO anti-labeling forces in California in 2012. Though the company stepped back from the fight against labeling by not contributing directly to “No on 522” in Washington in 2013, the company is still a dues-paying member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). Currently, the GMA, Snack Food Association, International Dairy Foods Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers are suing the state of Vermont for recently passing a mandatory GMO labeling law.

Additional Resources

In the coming week, GMO Inside will release a mayonnaise scorecard showing how various brands measure up in terms of GMO ingredients, prevalence of eggs from CAFOs, and sustainability. Within the scorecard we will offer better alternatives and highlight which brands to avoid. We will also post recipes for making homemade mayonnaise (vegan and non-vegan) to give consumers the ultimate ability to control the quality of ingredients used to make the ever-present spread. Stay tuned!

Dynamic Green Festival® speaker Jeffrey Smith has traveled around the world, talking with government leaders and community activists on the dangers of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the food supply. Known for his ability to translate scientific studies on GMOs into language that everyday people can understand, Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You’re Eating (Yes Books, 2005) andGenetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods (Yes Books, 2003). Smith is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), a nonprofit group that educates policy makers and the public on the risks associated with GM foods. He’s also been the subject of a targeted, robust industry campaign to discredit his work, but we think you might want to listen to him anyway. Learn more about GMO risks and subscribe to a free newsletter at responsibletechnology.org, and find out how to avoid GMOs at NonGMOShoppingGuide.com.

Jeffrey Smith speaks at a Green Festival.

Green America/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: How did the potential dangers of GMOs first land on your radar?

Jeffrey Smith: It came from a warning by a scientist at a lecture I was attending in 1996, who laid out a number of hard scientific facts showing that there was no way companies could introduce safe GM foods, given the primitive and unreliable nature of the technology.I realized that the information was powerful and compelling, but it was known by very few and largely among scientific circles, so I endeavored to translate the scientific concerns into language others could understand.

I started with lectures and brochures and then the book Seeds of Deception, which became the bestselling book on GMOs. As a result, I launched the Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT). I’m not against genetic engineering (GE) as a science—not against GE medicine, if the scientists understand the side effects that can occur. I’m not against gene therapy, where you correct a defective gene and save lives. I’m not against GE studies in labs. But to feed the products of this infant science to people without studying their effects and releasing them into the environment where they can’t be recalled is extremely dangerous and irresponsible.

GA/Tracy: I think many people have at least a vague knowledge of the impact GMOs have on the environment, but very few appear to understand that they also may affect human health.

Jeffrey Smith: When you look at the big picture, GMOs may be a powerful contributor to the rise of major diseases in the US: food allergies, irritable bowel, and a host of other problems. There’s a shorthand way of referring to the studies that find health concerns: The American Academy of Environmental Medicine determined that GMOs pose a significant health threat, citing several animal feeding studies showing reproductive problems, accelerated aging, gastro-intestinal disorders, immune system dysfunction, organ damage, and problems in the regulation of cholesterol and insulin.

The Academy has urged all doctors to prescribe non-GMO diets. When I speak to doctors around the country, they report seeing an increase in the incidence and severity of certain diseases, which they believe are GMO-related. Moreover, when these doctors take people off of GMO diets, they report that the symptoms—of migraines, gastro-intestinal disorders, weight problems, and more—start to disappear.

GA/Tracy: Can you give some examples of the troublesome studies?

Jeffrey Smith: The animal feeding studies for reproductive dysfunctions are astounding. Rodents that eat GM soy had changes in young sperm cells. Their testicles turned from pink to blue. The DNA function in the embryo offspring changed. In one study where female rats were fed GM soy, more than half of their babies died within three weeks, compared to a ten percent death rate in those fed non-GMO soy. The survivors from the GMO-fed group were largely infertile. In another, most hamsters fed GMOs lost the ability to have babies by the third generation. Infant mortality was also at four to five times the rate of non-GMO eaters. Mice fed GMO corn had smaller and fewer babies. This is just one topic. In other animal feeding studies, we also see toxicity in the liver and kidneys as a consistent result. Likewise, every competent test that evaluated immune-system problems in animals fed GMOs found them.

There are hardly any long-term feeding studies and no post-marketing surveillance. The only human feeding study ever conducted confirmed that the gene inserted into soybeans to make them “Roundup Ready”—or non-killable by the pesticide Roundup’s active ingredient glyphosate—transferred into the DNA of the bacteria living inside our intestines, and the transferred gene may have continued to function. The bacteria became “Roundup Ready.” These results could mean that long after we stop eating GMOs, we could have GM proteins produced inside our intestines. If the Bt toxin-producing gene from corn transfers, we might turn our intestinal flora into living pesticide factories.

GA/Tracy: There’s always this widespread assumption that if these foods were unsafe, the government wouldn’t allow them on the market. Is our government protecting us?

Jeffrey Smith: In a word, no. When you read the formerly secret internal memos of the US FDA [Food and Drug Administration] scientists at the time they were evaluating GMO policy in 1991-2, there was an overwhelming consensus that GMOs could create allergies, toxins, new diseases. The FDA scientists repeatedly warned their superiors, asking for long-term, rigorous safety studies. However, the White House had instructed the FDA to promote GMO technology. So they hired Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto attorney, to oversee the creation of GMO policy for the FDA. Under Taylor’s watch, the FDA publicly claimed it was not aware of any information saying that GMOs were different from conventional foods. On the basis of that lie, the FDA said no testing of GMOs were required, and companies like Monsanto could determine whether their own products were safe, without telling the FDA or consumers. Michael Taylor became Monsanto’s VP and is now back in the FDA as the food safety czar.

GA/Tracy: Are there any studies that say GMOs are safe?

Jeffrey Smith: Sure, but they’re most often performed by the biotech companies themselves. In Genetic Roulette, I have 41 pages showing how these companies have bad science down to a science. They rig their research—using the wrong detection or statistical methods. They dilute or overcook their samples. Animal feeding studies are too short and superficial to find anything going wrong—and things do go wrong, in spite of their best efforts, but they ignore those findings.

In one case, a Monsanto study showed that Monsanto’s GM corn varieties had no effect on health. Then a group of independent scientists re-analyzed the data and linked it to signs of organ toxicity. When the company wanted to show that milk from cows treated with rBGH [recombinant bovine growth hormone] contained very little bovine hormone, it had its scientists pasteurize the milk 120 times longer than normal. When that didn’t work, the scientists added powdered milk, pasteurized it some more, and finally destroyed 90 percent of the hormone. The FDA reported that pasteurization destroys 90 percent of bovine hormone in milk from cows treated with rBGH, ignoring the obvious flaws in study.

GA/Tracy: You’ve said we’re at a “tipping point” of consumer concern when it comes to GMOs. Can you explain?

Jeffrey Smith: There’s no consumer benefit to a GMO. They’re not like extra salt or sugar, which are under attack for health reasons but provide taste. GMOs are simply soaked in poison. They’re either herbicide-tolerant or they have an insect-killing toxin in every cell of the plant, including the food portion. No one is clamoring for a daily dose. For these reasons, we believe a tipping point can be achieved without convincing majority of US, just by giving the right information to those inclined to avoid GMOs. If GMOs become unpopular like trans-fats, why would a company keep using them? Even if a company sees a tiny drop in market share that it can point to anti-GMO sentiment in US consumers as the cause, that will be a powerful signal that it’s time to start removing GMOs from their products.

We’re seeing evidence that the tipping point is approaching. Non-GMO labels are one of fastest growing labels. There are GMO labeling bills being introduced in more than a dozen states. In fact, we’re seeing a watershed opportunity in California: There’s a ballot initiative now calling for mandatory labeling of all GM-laden foods sold in the state. If that passes—and we believe it will in November—I believe that companies would rather eliminate GMOs than admit to consumers that they’re using them.

GA/Tracy: Are the dangers reversible? How can we protect ourselves?

Jeffrey Smith: That’s the question: What about our organs, our gut bacteria, etc.? I do know that some doctors are having great results getting people off of GMOs. At least one study fed mice GM soy for eight months, and saw significant changes to the liver, pancreas, and testicles. Then, the researchers put the mice on non-GM soy for a month, and the problems started to reverse. So we have good news there. On our Web site, we have free materials, including our Non-GMO Food Guide. We have a Non-GMO Tipping Point Network where people join others to educate their communities. We’re also launching a campaign to protect children, who are most at risk, from GM foods. We invite people to participate in the non-GMO revolution.

Though dozens of countries around the world require genetically modified food to be labeled, the US is not one of them. In the absence of lables, here are our best tips for avoiding GMOs when you shop:

1. Look for the Non-GMO Project label: The Non-GMO Project label provides consumers with independent, third-party assurance that a product contains no GMOs. The Project tests high-risk ingredients in the products that bear its label, to ensure that they contain less than 0.9 percent GMOs (allowing for low levels of unintentional contamination).

2. Be wary of unverified non-GMO claims: A company may legally label its products as being GMO-free without having to perform testing or otherwise prove to a third-party that is the case.

3. Buy organic: USDA-certified organic products cannot intentionally contain GMOs. The USDA doesn’t require testing for GMOs, so accidental contamination of organic products may occur.

4. Avoid high-risk ingredients: These nine ingredients are all considered high-risk for GMOs. Avoid non-organic versions of these, whole and in ingredient lists.

5. Avoid non-organic processed foods: The list of hidden GM ingredients in processed foods is long, ranging from ascorbic acid to xanthan gum. Get a full list of ingredients to avoid in the Non-GMO Shopping Guide.

6. Look at the price-look-up (PLU) sticker: If it shows a four-digit number, the produce is conventionally grown without GMOs, and a five-digit number beginning with “9” means 100-percent organic. Technically, a five-digit number beginning with “8” means it is genetically modified, but since such labeling is voluntary, Consumers Union’s Dr. Michael Hansen says he doesn’t know of a single example of such a label existing.

Every 30 minutes, a farmer commits suicide in India, a phenomenon that has been steadily rising since the 1970s. Documentary filmmaker Micha X. Peled took his cameras to the vibrant farming community of Telung Takli in the state of Maharashtra—which sits at the heart of the crisis— to find out why.

Peled’s 2011 film Bitter Seeds starts out with brief scenes from the funeral of a farmer who has just committed suicide. It swiftly cuts away to follow the story of Ram Krishna Kopulwar, who has been farming cotton on the same three acres since he was seven, as he plants genetically modified (GM) Bt cotton seeds for the first time. The question at the heart of the film is whether or not this gentle family man will join the list of farmers who have given Maharashtra and a handful of neighboring states the nickname of “India’s Suicide Belt.”

For millennia, the film notes, farmers in India had cultivated cotton with seeds they’d saved from their own plants. In the 1970s, hybrid seeds came to market, which had been bred to increase yields. Hybrid seeds, however, cannot be saved, so the farmers had to buy more seeds each year. In time, the hybrids required more costly pesticides, as well. Farmer suicides began in 1997, as many went into debt and couldn’t make ends meet.

In 2002, Bt cotton seeds arrived, and though they promised higher yields and higher earnings, the suicide rate has kept going up, notes the film. These seeds are injected with the Bt soil bacterium so they “naturally” produce an insecticide to fight off the bollworm, a primary pest. Seed salesmen come to Telung Takli with Bt cotton seeds, promising farmers that they “won’t get insects” and that their yields will increase earnings by 4,000 rupees ($80). Truth be told, no other types of seeds are available from local seed stores, so Kopulwar and the other farmers buy the Bt seeds, with hope in their hearts.

Indian farmer Ram Krishna Kopulwar tries to make ends meet  as GM cotton seeds cut his normal crop yields in half.

Like the vast majority of the farmers in his region, Kopulwar cannot get a bank loan, so he turns to an illegal moneylender to get the 900 rupees ($18) to pay for his seeds. The moneylender charges seven percent interest and demands Kopulwar’s farm as collateral.

As Kopulwar cultivates his fields, he prays that the cotton will grow, and that he will earn enough to send his two daughters to school alongside his son, and to ensure their good marriages.

To produce the higher yields it promises, Bt cotton needs more water and fertilizer than cotton from heirloom or hybrid seeds, applied according to precise timetables. But 90 percent of farmers in Kopulwar’s region have no irrigation and are rain-dependent. They have no money for extra fertilizer. And so, as the rains fail to come, their cotton plants start to wither.

One day, while tending the waist-high plants, Kopulwar’s wife Sunanda finds that while the plants are free from bollworms, they have now become infested with mealy bugs— which international activist and scientist Dr. Vandana Shiva blames on the Bt cotton seeds.

“Genetic engineering disturbs the physiology and metabolism of the crops,” Shiva tells the cameras. “So we’ve had crop failure in GM cotton in the year of a drought, and we’ve had crop failure in the case of too much rain. All new pests start to occur because the plant has been weakened.”

There is no cure for mealy bugs, Kopulwar says to the filmmakers, as he starts to rip the infested plants out of his fields.

When he finally goes to market, he carries half of the cotton that he has brought in previous years. He’s forced to turn down a marriage proposal for his daughter, by a comparatively wealthy teacher whom his daughter well likes, because he cannot pay the dowry. Worse yet, the moneylender comes calling and reminds Kopulwar that he has signed away his farm. Meanwhile, Sunanda Kopulwar begs her husband not to kill himself to try to prevent the moneylender from taking their land.

While the causes behind the Maharashtra farmers’ crushing debts are complex—ranging from unfair government floor prices for cotton to international trade agreements skewed in favor of other countries—Bitter Seeds poignantly shows how GM cotton seeds contribute to the problem, rather than helping to solve it as the Bt seed salesmen promise.

The vast majority of India’s cotton farmers pay a royalty to Monsanto, a US biotech firm that owns the Bt cotton seed patent, every year. And as the farmer suicide rate continues to climb and Monsanto’s stranglehold on the Indian market grows ever tighter, the film paints an all-too vivid picture of how the company continues to make farmers promises that it cannot keep.

Dr. Jane Doe is a biologist who works on crop evolution, genetics, and improvement at a major university. She asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of her work. Dr. Doe talked to Green American editor-in-chief Tracy Fernandez Rysavy about her research into stronger, better hybrid seeds, how they compare to GMOs, and how biotech companies have tried to stand in her way.

Green America/TRACY: We can’t talk specifically about your work with crop improvement, because it’s so unique and needs to be protected. Would you give our readers a general sense of what your research entails?

Dr. Doe: My work uses conventional hand-pollination techniques to move genes from wild relatives into crop plants to create new lines that are eco-friendly, cause no harm to human health, and are as hardy and strong as the biotech companies promise their GMOs are. These wide-cross varieties have native pest resistance, native drought tolerance, and many other native traits that make a great product with great yields and are well adapted for sustainable agriculture. We can do it better than industrial agriculture with genetic engineering.

TRACY: Most people didn’t even know about genetic engineering technology back in the ’90s when it was first being introduced, but you’ve been skeptical since the beginning. What made you so cautious?

Dr. Doe: I’m a geneticist. Back in 1996, I knew the details of how genetic engineering works and knew there were a lot of possibilities for harm. Most people have no clue, because they do not understand the science involved in genetic engineering.

Our genomes are designed to be stable and keep out bacteria and viruses to keep us healthy and whole. You have to understand when you’re working with genomes, when you insert DNA into a chromosome, it causes all kinds of shifts in the genome. Biotech companies don’t just put an alien gene, also referred to as a transgene, in a plant, for example. When they insert a gene in the lab, it includes a whole cassette of foreign DNA that goes in with it. It has insertion sequences that come from viruses or bacteria. It has antibiotic-resistant reporter genes. It has promoters that will ramp up transgene production so the level of the toxin in the GMO plant is many hundredfold times anything that would ever occur in nature.

We’ve never created any regulations around GMOs that address the genomic changes that occur from use of transgene technology, what effects the movement of transgenes have within genomes or into other crops, wild plants, bacteria, and the human gut. There’s no independent research on GMOs —only test data generated by the companies themselves that they report to the federal government to satisfy the loosely defined “substantial equivalent” guideline. We have no idea whether GMOs are safe or not. This is huge to me! What are we doing?

If you look at data, the increase in food allergies in children, gluten sensitivities, leaky gut, and other immune-related health problems corresponds precisely with the proliferation of GMOs. I suspect eating these products is having an impact on our health. If we could really do independent research, I am confident we’d see some major things going on. And it’s exacerbated by the fact that GMOs are tied to more harmful chemicals going into environment.

GMO seedlings in an environmental growth chamber.

TRACY: You had your own problems with an allergy to GMO corn.

Dr. Doe: Yes. The biotech companies say, “Oh, there’s no problem with our GMOs. They’re not allergenic.” But I grew out some GMO plants when my state’s agriculture department asked me to provide samples for their exhibit at the state fair. We grew the plants in a greenhouse. When I went in to make pollinations, I went into anaphylactic shock and had to be rushed to the hospital. The doctor said, “You’re allergic to the pollen, and your career working with this crop is over.”

But we did a skin test using GMO pollen and non-GMO pollen, and it was obvious I was only allergic to something in the GMO pollen. I have seen the same thing at a biotechnology company: A man who was working in the greenhouses was literally so allergic to the GMO plants, he had to take medication and completely suit up before he could go inside. I’ve seen other greenhouse workers who get sick when they go in to care for transgenic plants and scientists who wear masks and gloves when working with GMO plants because they know they are allergic. This makes me suspect a lot of people may have allergic reactions to GMOs, but without labeling, doctors cannot trace health problems related to GMO exposure.

TRACY: The reason we can’t talk in depth about your work is that you have experienced some negative push-back from the big biotech companies. Can you tell our readers about some of it?

Dr. Doe: I had a collaborative grant from a scientific foundation with matching funds from a big life sciences company involved in biotechnology. The life sciences company didn’t come through with its funding commitment—it turned out there was a high-level executive blocking it. This kept me from ever getting a product to market. One of the scientists in the company told me they had been stringing me along to keep my non GMO technology off the market. We were going to sue for breach of contract, but a lawyer advised they’d countersue and tie up my technology for years.

TRACY: This wasn’t your only experience with sabotage.

Dr. Doe: I developed an agreement with a mid-size seed company that paid an annual fee for access to my genetics to create commercial hybrids for sale. The first year the company tested my lines, it hired outside farmers to grow them. I got a call telling me the farmer had driven his tractor over my plants, and only my plants, within this huge field. They thought the plants were destroyed, but then they bounced back up! They were very hardy survivors!

The next year, the farmer who was growing out the materials again for the company went in and sprayed my plot with herbicide. Then we discovered my plants were naturally resistant to the herbicide he used. 

TRACY: The million-dollar question is, were these accidents?

Dr. Doe: Since it only happened to my plants, it seemed pretty obvious it was not accidental. We later found out that another biotech company had paid the farmer to get rid of my crop, but subtly. [The sabotage] would have worked except my plants were so resilient.

Tracy: Biotech companies seem to have a troubling amount of control over the US seed supply. How bad is it?

Dr. Doe: The strategic plan of the large chemical companies has been to take over the seed industry, so they started buying up foundation and other seed companies.

Examples are the Monsanto buy-out of DeKalb, and Dupont’s purchase of Pioneer Hi bred. The business plan has been to convert all of the seed to patented GMOs and force the public to buy the GMO seeds that are tied to the company’s chemicals. The medium-sized seed production company I mentioned earlier started getting squeezed financially more and more. By our fourth year of working together, it was having to pay such high tech fees for the GMO traits from Monsanto and other biotech companies, it could not make a profit and was forced to sell its business to one of the chemical giants. I saw this coming and wanted my genetics to stay completely non-GMO, so we parted ways.

TRACY: Can you explain how the “inbred” seed technology works, and how seed companies have ownership of it? This seems to be at the heart of the problem when it comes to these seed company buyouts.

Dr. Doe: The commodity seed that’s sold to farmers every year is an F1 hybrid that gives big yields from hybrid vigor. To produce a hybrid, you have to have two inbred lines, which are proprietary. It takes many years to develop a true breeding inbred.

Because of inbreeding depression, elite inbreds are usually small and wimpy. So the challenge for the plant breeder is to find two inbreds that, when you cross them through natural pollination, make a good hybrid—give the best agronomic performance and yield.

In the past, foundation seed companies sold inbred seed with a license agreement, and you’d have to pay a royalty if you used one of their inbreds in a commercial hybrid. The inbred combinations that make up commercial hybrids are every company’s trade-secret. Companies obtain patents or Plant Variety Protection Act (PVP) certification on their hybrids and proprietary inbreds.

Now, companies like Monsanto, Dupont, Syngenta, Pioneer, Dow, and Bayer Crop Science have bought out most of foundation seed companies and smaller seed producers, and are primarily selling GMO seed and the chemicals that go with it. There are very few seed companies that sell non-GMO seed any more.

GMO cotton farm in South Africa.

TRACY: How do scientists like yourself obtain inbreds to create non-GMO hybrids, then?

Dr. Doe: The PVP certification has expired on a lot of old elite inbred lines, and you can get seed of those lines through the USDA germplasm bank. That’s what I’ve been doing, and that’s how smaller companies can access inbred lines to make non-GMO hybrid seed to sell. What’s interesting lately is that as inbreds come off PVP, USDA often refers you to request seed from Monsanto or another company assigned the certification. Corporations are savvy in how they try to protect business interests.

It’s getting harder and harder to get good non-GMO inbreds for making hybrid seed. Today there are fewer and fewer independent seed companies. Many of the ones that still exist sell GMO seed. The big companies have converted almost all of their materials to GMO.

One big company that used to sell non-GMO seed is selling less and less. From what one of the company scientist told me, I suspect it can’t maintain the purity of the non GMO lines because of GMO cross-contamination in genetic nurseries and production fields.

TRACY: What are your options now for getting your hybrids to market?

Dr. Doe: One option would be to form a seed production company and develop new hybrid seed for sale. But getting it to market in the US would be challenging, because biotech companies control most seed distributors, and they aren’t going to sell my seed.

One distributor told me he couldn’t sell my non-GMO seed. He was afraid the biotech companies whose products he sold would put too much pressure on him and shut him down. They have a lot of power over the supply chain. It’s a bad situation. There are some small seed companies that sell non-GMO and organic seed. If consumer demand for non-GMO goes way up, there may not be enough non-GMO seed supply to meet demand. That scenario could increase opportunities for me to partner with US seed companies that sell non-GMO seed.

Another option is working with seed companies in Europe and other countries where there is high demand for non-GMO seed.

TRACY: You’ve turned your back on lucrative offers from the biotech industry to buy your technology. Any regrets?

Dr. Doe: I sometimes have regrets. gave up a lot of money when I walked away from a particularly lucrative offer from a big biotechnology company. But I know I’ve stayed true to what I believe.

I’ve seen a lot hard data that raise red flags about the safety of GMOs, and I really question whether GMO food is good for people, for the future, for children’s health. I’ve seen lots of scientific evidence that proves we can grow all the food the world needs with non-GMO seed. I know that the arguments companies make for their GMO technologies are false and misleading the public. I couldn’t die in peace, I couldn’t face my maker if I sold out to those guys. I’m doing what I believe is right.

George Naylor has been growing non-GMO corn and soy on his Iowa farm since 1976. He talked to Green America editor-in-chief Tracy Fernandez Rysavy about his fight to stay GMO-free.

Green America/TRACY: Why did you decide to go GMO-free?

George Naylor: I chose not to raise GMOs, period. I just refused to buy products where corporations are messing around with the building blocks of life with their profit motive. Doing so without taking into account the environmental and health consequences is wrong.

3.9 billion years of evolution provided us with enough diversity that we shouldn’t have to try to go against the principles of ecology to produce crops. On the other hand, my just raising and relying on corn and soy isn’t a truly sustainable thing either. I’m always looking for some way to do something different. I’m going to have to take the plunge and decide how much income I can live with and whether I can grow something else in a different way.


TRACY: Has finding non-GMO seed been a challenge for you?

George: Yes, but you can find it. I rely on one company for very good seed, but more are offering non-GM every year.

As for soy, since 95 percent or more is engineered to be Roundup Ready, the various companies are not putting research or their best genetics into creating conventional varieties. The choices are very slim and often not good ones.

George Naylor has farmed GMO-free corn and soy in Iowa since 1976. Photo by Chris Henning.

TRACY: Do you receive a premium for growing non-GM crops?

George: I’ve gotten a premium for non-GMO corn and soy. With corn, I don’t actually need a premium [to make ends meet]. My non-GM corn yields as good or better than my neighbor’s GM corn. Non-GM soy doesn’t yield as well due to the seed and a much bigger problems with weeds. So the premium does help with that.

I’ve been receiving a soy premium for four to five years because of consumer demand in Europe. European companies turn my soy into non-GM soy meal and soy oil. There’s enough clarity in the market that European consumers want livestock products from non-GM feed.

TRACY: What do you hear from other farmers about their experiences with GMOs?

George: I’ve heard a lot of anecdotal evidence where farmers are now asking for conventional seed varieties because they’re paying through the nose for GMOs, and those GMOs are not working. They’re getting superweeds. New varieties of GM corn were supposed to combat corn rootworm, but it only took a few years before rootworm became resistant, so the farmers are paying for this trait that doesn’t work anymore. It’s dubious whether it worked well in the first place.

Big companies advertise products with same kind of misrepresentation that any other corporation advertises consumer goods. For instance, Monsanto, when it brought out seeds with rootworm resistance, had pictures in magazines where someone was holding up one corn plant with scrawny roots and another that had beautiful root systems. It implied that if you didn’t buy Monsanto corn, you’d end up with the scrawny root plant. That was totally misrepresenting the truth.

I think farmers are wising up now. It’s dawning on them that they are paying a lot to Monsanto and Dupont, Syngenta and Dow, for features that aren’t working.

TRACY: Have any of the farmers you know run into the Monsanto “seed police”?

George: My seed cleaner, the guy that cleans my soy seed that I save from year to year, has implied that he’s aware of Monsanto people following him around. Monsanto forbids farmers from saving its soy seed. So if it finds evidence that a seed cleaner is cleaning Roundup Ready seed to be used again, it would pursue a lawsuit.
 

TRACY: How big of a problem is GMO contamination, from where you sit?

George: My non-GM corn is right across the fence from my neighbor’s GM corn, so it’s clear there is going to be some contamination. If I’m going to continue to market my corn as non-GM, I definitely have to worry about contamination from my neighbor. Corn pollen can blow for miles.

You have to worry about contamination throughout the whole system. One year, I was going to raise soy for a company that processed it here to send to Japan for food products. I had picked a variety that I knew would do well. Before planting time, when I was supposed to get my seed delivered, the seed company said we can’t find enough seed that isn’t already contaminated with Roundup Ready. I had to pick another. The choices weren’t as good. The yield was terrible, and my premium didn’t make up for the yield loss at all.

Within the bigger system, contamination can happen. Seed companies won’t guarantee the purity of their non-GM seed. They have done what they can to make sure it is non GM, but they won’t guarantee it.

So far, I haven’t had any crops rejected by the people who buy my corn and soy. But I know farmers who have had crops rejected by the same buyers due to contamination.

TRACY: What about superweeds? Are the GMO farmers in your area having issues with those?

George: Oh, yeah. It’s not as pronounced as in the southern US or in places where they’ve done a lot of notill farming and used Roundup as a burn down. Roundup used to kill virtually every green plant in the field except the GMO crop, but now farmers are having to add more chemicals to their spray tanks to combat the weeds that escape Roundup.

When you raise just one crop on same piece of land, you’re encouraging the pests to come back with a vengeance. It’s an unecological approach to agriculture.

And when the unecological effects come about, the biotech companies get to sell more products and pesticides to deal with that problem. Biotech companies now have products in the pipeline that will not only be resistant to Roundup but to 2, 4-D and dicamba. Those two herbicides present other terrible problems for farmers. Pesticide drift, especially with dicamba, and its potential to hurt other crops is huge.

With traditional herbicides, you have a small window in which to spray crops at the right time to kill weeds. Herbicide won’t kill weeds if they get too big. But later on in the season, you might get a whole new flush of weeds and can’t spray again [because it’ll harm the crops]. So you try to spray when weeds are small but late enough that the crop will canopy over and prevent new weeds.

With the Roundup Ready system, Roundup will kill weeds whether they’re small or big, so there’s a bigger window in which to spray a hell of a lot of acres. Some farmers will think they can prosper by farming more and more acres this way.

What this does is intensify competition between farmers. Basically, the farmers that are willing to do the most unecological things are going to win competition for land. That means fewer farmers and fewer ecological farmers. And a total loss of biodiversity. Factory-farm-raised livestock depends on corn and soy meal. Processed foods depend on corn starch and soy protein and vegetable oil. So as long as the system cranks out feed as cheap as it can, that’s going to encourage more of the same—more factory farmed livestock production.

Farmer prices are based on supply and demand. Big agribusiness is expanding supply all over the world. So you can see we’ll be in a farm crisis again where prices of corn and soy do not meet cost of production. Anybody who’s invested in the idea that prices will stay stable will be in big trouble. Every food product price is somewhat tied into every other one. The collapse of the most basic food items will bring down all food product prices.

I’m hoping that consumers will become as informed as those in Europe and start saying they don’t want GMO food. They will recognize they’ve been buying inferior products that have huge consequences on our environment and our society. They will also demand better public policy.


TRACY: How hopeful are you that this could happen? 

George: I think there’s some good signs that people are getting educated. The campaigns to label GMO crops have educated a lot of people. A friend of mine used to say the truth will set you free.

Fifty to sixty percent of US sugar comes from sugar beets—and almost all of that comes from a genetically modified (GM) version of the plant. Sugar is in a good chunk of our foods, even savory ones like soups and bread. With no requirements in our country that GM foods be labeled, you may be consuming a lot more GM sugar that you think.

As detailed in the April/May 2012 “Frankenfood” issue of the Green American, a number of health concerns have been raised about genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and most of them center around how little we know about the long-term effects of consuming these creations. 

“GMOs are being put in American food without long-term testing and without labeling,” says Elizabeth O’Connell, Green America’s GMO Inside campaign director. “The American public should have the right to an informed choice on whether or not to eat GM food, as they do in more than 60 other countries.”

You may already be aware of many of the many health issues around GMOs and sugar. What you may not be aware of are the sordid events that led to a marriage between the two, as this plant rose above the law.

Regulating the GM Sugar Beet
In March of 2005, genetically modified sugar beets appeared on the US market for the first time. Crafted by Monsanto to include a gene from a soil bacterium, this GM beet was able to withstand a copious onslaught of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide (glyphosate). The agricultural industry could spray as much of the weed-killer as it wanted without impacting crops.

Today, Monsanto’s GM sugar beets make up 95 percent of the US crop, having been planted year after year despite a US District Court injunction against planting and even a ruling by US District Court Judge Jeffrey White that the 2011 crop be destroyed due to illegal deregulation. The story of how Monsanto raised its product above the law is a case study of the power of the biotech industry over federal regulators.

The role of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been “essentially to escort genetically engineered crops through their process as fast as possible,” says Page Tomaselli, senior staff attorney at the Center for Food Safety. The USDA was the agency that initially gave the biotech industry the green light for full deregulation of the sugar beets in 2005, allowing the seeds to be sold and planted with no restrictions.

Yet, the USDA did so without properly assessing the environmental impacts, as required under the National Environmental Policy Act. The Center for Food Safety (CFS), along with the Sierra Club, High Mowing Seeds, and the Organic Seed Alliance, successfully sued the USDA. US District Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled that the USDA had violated federal law, and his court placed an injunction on the crop. While the farmers could harvest the existing year’s crop, they couldn’t plant a new one until the USDA completed a proper Environmental Impact Statement.

At this point, Monsanto and allies in the sugar beet industry went to the USDA with concerns that this injunction could cause a sugar shortage. There was not enough non-GM seed stock available to meet the demand for sugar beets anymore, they claimed. The USDA decided to issue field permits for the GM sugar beet crop to be planted in spite of the court’s ruling.

When the seed companies choose to stock GM seeds and not traditional ones, they are creating a situation where they can “potentially say that their hands are tied and all that they have are these genetically engineered seeds,” says Tomaselli.

Who Regulates the Regulators?
The nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice responded to these field permits with legal action, arguing that these permits were illegal given the District Court order to cease planting.

“We had to run into court and ask the judge to stop them,” Earthjustice managing attorney Paul Achitoff told Reuters that day, “It’s an extreme sort of a thing ... but the circumstances were such that there wasn’t any alternative. They basically had dared the court to stop them.”

On November 30th, 2010, Judge White ordered that the newly planted GM seedlings be removed from the ground.

However, in February of 2011, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Judge White’s original injunction. Instead of addressing whether the USDA issued illegal permits, it perplexingly looked at whether the seedlings caused “irreparable harm.” Judge Thomas of that court wrote, “Biology, geography, field experience, and permit restrictions make irreparable injury unlikely.”

The court vacated Judge White’s original injunction. The USDA issued temporary permits for the sale and planting of GM sugar beets while it completed an Environmental Impact Statement. Once the statement was finished, the agency permanently deregulated GM sugar beets.

Today, over 90 percent of the US sugar beet crop is genetically modified. 

The “Monsanto Protection Act”
If Judge White’s order in November of 2010 had been carried out and that year’s crop of sugar beets had been destroyed, it would have introduced a new element of risk for agricultural companies choosing to grow GM seeds. Monsanto wanted to make sure the sugar beet litigation would never happen with future crops, and it knew exactly how to do that—by changing the laws.

On March 29, 2013, President Obama signed H.R. 993, a large appropriations bill, into law. It contained a rider known by anti-GMO activists as “The Monsanto Protection Act,” which was inserted into the bill by Congress.

According to Tomaselli, this rider codified what the USDA did in the sugar beets case, forcing “the USDA to issue permits if a judge vacates a deregulation decision ... [creating] a situation where we would not be able to challenge these permits under the National Environmental Policy Act or the Endangered Species Act or any other environmental law that these permits might be violating.”

The good news is that this bill will expire in September of 2013, giving conerned citizens another chance to fight back when biotech lobbyists attempt to get Congress to reintroduce it. Green America’s campaign, GMO Inside, is already laying the groundwork for the battle to come.

Implications for the Future
To this date, the USDA has not turned down a petition to deregulate a GM crop, nor has it voluntarily conducted an Environmental Impact Statement on such a crop.

“The USDA will do virtually anything to avoid meaningfully regulating GMO crops. We’ve seen this in every case that we’ve litigated,” says Achitoff. 

Now with the Monsanto Protection Act codified into law, “the implication is that the companies that are growing [new GM] crops will be able to continue growing them even before any environmental review has been completed,” adds Tomaselli.

With 13 new GM crops ready to go before the USDA for approval this year, and no labeling laws in place for people to make informed decisions about what they eat, the potential environmental and health impacts of untested GMOs could be of grave concern.

So What Can We Do?
Between cross-contamination and a shrinking traditional seed stock, it’s questionable whether our sugar beets can ever be non-GMO again. The sugar beet case raises the question of how much control we really have over GMOs once they’ve taken over the marketplace.

“Monsanto and the biotech industry are incredibly powerful and have successfully inserted themselves into the work of legislators and regulators,” says O’Connell. “We’re losing more and more traditional seed stock in favor of genetically modified seeds, and our actions now will have repercussions for generations.”

To keep GMO sugar out of your cupboard, look for cane sugar—GM sugar cane is still in development, so for now you can be sure that it is GMO-free. Going a step further and choosing organic and Fair Trade cane sugar will protect the health of the workers and the planet.

And join Green America’s campaign, GMO Inside, to take action for meaningful GMO regulation and labeling.

“Ultimately, the USDA is not going to protect us from GMOs, let alone regulate them,” says O’Connell, “It’s up to us to protect our families and preserve the thousands of years of heritage we have in our seeds and in our food.”

In 1998, a group of scientists, lawyers, and environmental advocates gathered at the Wingspread Cnference Centerin Racine, WI, to discuss the case for exercising precaution in the face of scientific uncertainty.

“We believe existing environmental regulations and other decisions, particularly those based on risk assessment, have failed to protect adequately human health and the environment—the larger system of which humans are but a part,” the attendees collectively wrote in what they called The Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle.

The attendees urged corporations, government entities, organizations, communities, scientists, and other individuals to “adopt a precautionary approach to all human endeavors.”

Then they defined exactly what that approach would be in a statement that would become known far and wide as The Precautionary Principle: When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.

In other words, people shouldn’t have to prove that a given substance, product, or process is causing harm. Industry should have to prove that the substance, product, or process is safe.

If the Precautionary Principle had always been at the root of US policy:

• Cigarettes wouldn’t be responsible for one of every six deaths in the US.

• Children in four million US households wouldn’t currently be exposed to unsafe levels of the neurotoxicant lead.

• Three million Vietnamese wouldn’t have been killed, maimed, or born with birth defects caused by Agent Orange, which was used as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. And US Vietnam War veterans wouldn’t currently experience a higher incidence of cancer and nerveand respiratory disorders.

• DDT wouldn’t have nearly decimated bald eagle, peregrine falcon, and other wildlife populations, and Rachel Carson never would have had to ask whether it was responsible for a rise in human cancer rates.

• The toxic effects of everything from asbestos to PCBs, lead to dioxin, might have been confined to a lab, rather than being unleashed on the public.

Since we published our “Frankenfood” issue of the Green American in the spring of 2012, Green America has been asking whether someday we’ll be adding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to the list of toxins that wreaked havoc on human health and the environment in the absence of a precautionary approach. Can we prove beyond the shadow of doubt that GMOs are dangerous to human health? No. Nor can we prove that they’re safe.

That’s why Green America advocates for the use of the Precautionary Principle. GMOs have been unleashed into our food supply without adequate testing for safety to human health and the environment. We want them off the market and out of our bodies until adequate testing can occur.

People shouldn't have to prove that GMO food or the pesticides tailored to them are causing harm. Industry should have to prove that they are safe.

Who’s Protecting Our Families?
A common argument from GMO advocates is that “nobody has gotten sick from eating GMOs, and they’ve been around for years.”

“It’s such garbage science,” says Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman, a molecular biologist and plant pathologist who is a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment program. “You wouldn’t know these things are doing harm unless you do long-term epidemiological studies to detect these kinds of harm. And they’ve never been done for GMOs.”

Approval of GMO crops currently rests with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). “In 1991, the White House hired Michael Taylor, a former Monsanto attorney, to oversee the creation of GMO policy for the FDA,” says Jeffrey Smith, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology and a pioneering activist against GMOs. “Under Taylor’s watch, the FDA publicly claimed that GMOs were no different from comparable conventional foods. It said no testing of GMOs was required, and companies like Monsanto could determine whether their own products were safe.”

From 1996-2000, Taylor worked for Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy. He is now back at the FDA as the agency’s “food safety czar.”

“It’s a clear conflict of interest,” says Smith. To this day, the FDA approves GM foods based largely on tests conducted by the biotech industry. Companies like Monsanto generally test their GMOs for a period of 90 days or less. Usually less, says Gurian Sherman.

“Tests over 90 days are very rarely done and never done for regulatory purposes,” he notes. “In the US, the longest required tests are only a month long, and only for pesticidal crops like Bt, because those are evaluated by the EPA. The FDA has no requirements for any kind of testing—it’s all voluntary.”

A study of 90 days or less can indicate short-term problems, but it can’t tell you whether there will be long-term effects, says Gurian-Sherman.

“If a GMO was acutely toxic and made people sick within a day, it would be detected pretty quickly [by the current regulatory process],” he says. But the fact that no long term tests are required for approval makes it impossible to be certain that GMOs don’t harm human health, despite Big Biotech’s ongoing assertions that these crops “have been proven safe.”

And independent studies are difficult to conduct in North America, because the biotech companies that own the patents on GMO seeds also have some control over who gets to study them.

“If you want to do research on GMOs in North America, you need an agreement from the patent holder,” says Dr. Thierry Vrain, a soil biologist and former plant genetic engineer. “You have to sign a document that you will observe certain rules and will tell them what you want to do and how you plan to do it—and that you will have their agreement before you can publish. Scientists are muzzled.”

However, scientists in Europe have managed to get around or ignore those agreements to study GMOs. And those studies are turning up warning signs that GMOs could be inflicting harm on humans and the environment.

Although evidence was mounting in the 1950s that cigarettes caused cancer, the tobacco industry spent millions influencing and manufacturing studies to demonstrate the opposite. Anti-GMO advocates worry that GMOs are being subjected to similar “tobacco science” tactics.

Herbicides: The Biggest Health Risk
“People worry about genetic modification, but with herbicide-resistant crops, perhaps the biggest health risk is the huge amount of herbicides currently being used,” David Schubert, head of the cellular neurobiology lab at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, told the Associated Press in April.

Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, generic name glyphosate, is the most popular herbicide sold worldwide—with 187 million pounds of it sprayed in the US alone in 2007, according to the EPA. Several GM crops, including corn, soy, canola, and sugarbeets, are engineered to be “Roundup Ready,” or resistant to glyphosate. This allows farmers to spray the herbicide on their field and kill weeds, but not their crops.

While Monsanto once marketed Roundup as being “safer than table salt,” studies continue to mount that show potential links between glyphosate and ill health effects.

• A 2007 study conducted by Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador found a higher degree of DNA damage—which leads to cancer—in populations that had been aerially sprayed with glyphosate, compared to those living 80 kilometers away from the sprayed area.

• In an article published in the August 2009 issue of Toxicology, researchers from the Universities of Caen and Burgundy in France reported that they’d exposed human cells to glyphosate and found it acted as a hormone disruptor. The first hormone disruption effects occurred at an exposure of .5 parts per million (ppm), which the authors note “is 800 times lower than the level authorized in some food or feed.” DNA damage, a precursor to cancer, occurred at exposures of 5 ppm.

• Argentine government scientist Andres Carrasco published a study in Chemical Research in Toxicology in 2010 on his study that linked low-dose glyphosate exposure to malformations in frog and chicken embryos.

• And a 2012 review of several studies conducted by scientists at King’s College London School of Medicine and other universities urged new risk assessments be conducted for Roundup, after review authors found evidence that glyphosate could cause birth defects. The authors called the European Union’s current acceptable daily intake level for glyphosate “potentially unsafe.”

And since the vast majority of GM crops are engineered to be resistant to one herbicide in particular, Roundup or glyphosate, farmers have been relying on this one single chemical, which has resulted in an epidemic of glyphosateresistant weeds. Biotech companies are currently engineering crops that will be resistant to even more toxic pesticides—namely dicamba and 2, 4-D—to combat them. Scientists predict that these new crops will cause herbicide use to double or even triple.

Precaution with Our Health
Even looking beyond pesticide applications, GM crops themselves could be causing human health problems.

Dr. Thierry Vrain used to genetically engineer plants as the head of biotechnology for Agriculture Canada’s Summerland Research Station. But when he retired 12 years ago and escaped what he calls “the biotech bubble,” he conducted more research that utterly reversed his way of thinking about his former career. Today, he speaks to audiences across North America about the potential dangers of GMOs.

“When you inject, push, shoot foreign genetic material into genome of a plant, you are creating collateral damage, because the genome is not what we thought 30-40 years ago when we first had the idea of doing genetic engineering,” he says.

“The idea was that the genome contains about five to ten percent of DNA that is coding genes, and rest of the genome is long sequences of DNA that make no sense at all. When I was in grad school, it was called ‘junk DNA’ and considered useless,” he says. “So the old paradigm in biotech was that one gene will code for one protein. You take a gene for herbicide resistance, put it in a plant, and expect to see that protein and that’s all.”

But in 2003, when the Human Genome Project sequenced the entire human genome, everything changed.

“We found only about 22,000 genes to make 100,000 proteins, so the old paradigm doesn’t work,” he says. “A gene can make more than one protein. Genes collaborate with each other to make proteins. It’s a lot more complex than we’d imagined.”

Vrain says that because they’re stuck in this old paradigm, biotech scientists aren’t looking into the effects of additional, “rogue” proteins that are created during the genetic engineering process.

“A modified gene is under completely foreign regulatory sequences,” he says. “We don’t have a clue as to what they are and what they can do.”

But what we do know is that even in the absence of long-term testing, “there are short-term feeding studies that have found problems with GMOs,” says Dr. Michael Hansen, a biologist and senior staff scientist at Consumers Union.

One 2008 study conducted by the National Institute of Food and Nutritional Research in Italy compared MON 810, a type of Bt corn, to its non-GMO counterpart, grown in neighboring fields. The corn was fed to elderly and weaning mice for 30 and 90 days, and researchers found differences in gut bacteria and peripheral immune responses.

“The Bt toxin pokes small holes in cell walls in the guts of insects, which kills them,” says Smith. “The claim had always been that Bt was only toxic to insects and had no impact on human or animal cells.”

A study from 2012 published in the Journal of Applied Toxicology in February exposed human cells to the Bt toxin extracted from a certain type of Bt corn engineered by Monsanto.

“The study showed that not only did it have impact, but it created the same type of small holes in human cells that kill insects,” says Smith. “If we have holes in our gut, this can lead to diseases and disorders.”

And although biotech companies claim the Bt toxin breaks down in the human body, research published in 2011 in Reproductive Technology found the Bt toxin circulating in the blood of 93 percent of the pregnant women tested, as well as in 80 percent of their fetuses. The toxin was present in the blood of 69 percent of non-pregnant women tested.

A 2013 study, published in the Journal of Organic Systems, fed pigs GM corn and soy and compared them to pigs fed a non-GM diet. The pigs fed the GM corn and soy for 22.7 weeks showed severe stomach inflammation.

In 2011, Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini from the University of Caen in France reanalyzed 19 long-term animal feeding studies from corn and soy from biotech company data and elsewhere, and also found that GM crops created holes in the guts of mice, as well as other problems. His analysis showed evidence of liver damage in females and kidney damage in males.

Argentinian mother Viviana Peralta (left) had to rush her daughter Ailen to a hospital after agrochemicals were sprayed on GM soy from planes near her home. The baby had turned blue and Peralta was suffering from respiratory problems. Peralta joined with others to launch a lawsuit against soy producers in the country, which resulted in a ban of spraying glyphosate and other chemicals within 1,500 feet of homes.

Runaway RNA
In addition, concerns are arising around Simplot’s Innate potatoes and Arctic apples. Innate potatoes are genetically modified to reduce bruising and to contain lower levels of acrylamide, a neurotoxin that occurs in potatoes when cooked. Arctic apples are engineered to prevent browning.

Innate potatoes use genetic material from other potatoes and Arctic apples from other apples to cause RNA interference or RNAi. RNA is a nucleic acid present in all living cells that carries instructions from DNA to control the synthesis of proteins. The new genetic material in Innate potatoes and Arctic apples prevents the RNA from delivering its messages.

“The problem is the unintended consequences that can happen with these RNAi,” says Hansen. “There have been studies that show pieces of RNA can survive digestion, be absorbed into bloodstream, and enter a gene and shut it down. A number of papers have pointed out that with RNAi in human cell cultures or honeybees, there are huge amounts of off-target effects.”

For example, a 2012 study of RNAi, conducted by researchers at the University of São Paulo and Pennsylvania State University, introduced a doublestranded RNA in honeybees, which was derived from green fluorescent protein. The gene doesn’t occur in honeybees, so the idea was that the protein shouldn’t cause effects in the bees. However, the researchers found that the protein had an adverse affect on ten percent of all the genes of the bee.

“In general, the affected genes are involved in important developmental and metabolic processes associated with RNA processing and transport, hormone metabolism, immunity, response to external stimulus and to stress,” write the researchers.

“When you disrupt all of these things, God knows what you could do,” says Hansen.

These studies and others that show possible ill health effects from GMOs don’t claim to answer once and for all whether GMOs are safe for humans. But they do generally conclude with a call for “further study” or “more long-term studies” to fully assess safety.

These studies and others showing potential for harm from GMO consumption were enough for the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) to recommend that its more than 600 medical doctors and natural health practioners encourage their patients to adopt GMO-free diets.

“Doctors who do so have noticed a lot of chronic conditions, like food and other allergies, clear up,” says Dr. Robin Bernhoft, president of the AAEM. “Are the GMOs to blame, or something else? We’re not sure, but studies are finding organ damage and damage to lining of intestines, which could have autoimmune effects in humans. Without more long-term safety testing, we’re conducting the biggest, most uncontrolled feeding experiment in the history of humanity.”

Dr. Jane Doe, a biologist who works on crop evolution, genetics, and improvement at a major university, agrees: “If you look at data, the introduction of GMO foods maps out with increases in food allergies in children, gluten sensitivities. If we could really do independent research, we’d see some major things going on with human health.”

As astute readers might suspect, Jane Doe is not her real name. She asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of her research.

“Go after the biotech industry, and they cream your career,” she says.

Sowing the Seeds of Doubt
Doe’s statement points at one of the biggest problems with GMO research, which is that Big Biotech has been accused of throwing up obstacles to independent science.

“Scientists whose studies find problems with GMOs are often pounced upon, often threatened, sometimes fired, often denied funding,” says Smith. “This has created a very dangerous environment where independent science is being suppressed and has caused hundreds to refuse to do research in this area.”

For evidence, you don’t have to look any further than the much-maligned 2012 study by Dr. Gilles-Eric Séralini.

“There was a firestorm of criticism after he published his article from so-called respected scientists,” says Doe. “But if you look at them, they’re funded by biotech companies. There’s so much conflict of interest.”

Séralini isn’t alone. Dr. Arpad Pusztai conducted research at the Rowett Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1998, finding that a certain type of GM potatoes could stunt the growth of rats and impair their stomach lining and immune systems. The Rowett Institute seized Pusztai’s raw data, banned him from speaking publicly about it, and published an audit in which six anonymous reviewers criticized it.

In response, Pusztai sent the audit, his report, and a rebuttal to scientists who requested it, resulting in 21 US and European scientists releasing a memo supporting him.

The study was published in October 1999 in The Lancet, whose editor Richard Horton told the journal Science that “the paper had survived even stricter scientific scrutiny than normal.”

The Institute refused to renew Pusztai’s contract in 1999. And when Dr. Andreas Carrasco of the Buenos Aires University Medical School tried to speak publicly in 2010 about his aforementioned study linking low-dose glyphosate exposure to birth defects in frogs and chickens, a mob of 100 people threatened and beat a delegation of students who’d gone to hear him. Dr. Carrasco shut himself in a car and was “surrounded by people making violent threats and beating the car for two hours,” according to Amnesty International.

“Members of the community who witnessed the incident have implicated local officials in the attack, as well as a local rice producer,” says a statement by the organization. “They strongly believe that the violence was promoted by them, and motivated by the powerful economic interests behind local agro-industry.”

Independent vs. Industry Science
When reporting on the “safety” of GMOs, the media often notes that the studies that say GMOs are safe outnumber those that find problems.

“Good science isn’t just a numbers game,” says Hansen. “You have to look at the quality of the studies, look at experiment designs. [Biotech] industry studies are frankly biased.”

Research published by Dr. Johan Diels in December 2010 issue of Food Policy looked at how “conflicts of interest” affect biotech studies. Diels and his team at the Portuguese Catholic University analyzed 94 biotech papers and found that 100 percent of the studies that came from industry-funded scientists (41 out of 41) never found adverse effects.

Out of the 51 that didn’t have an industry scientist on board, 12 found a problem, which experts like Hansen note is “extremely high statistical significance.”

“Our data reinforce the need that all affiliations, whether financial or professional, should be openly declared in scientific publications,” write Diels and his colleagues, who recommend that in cases where study outcomes influence policymakers, preference should be given to “peer-reviewed studies where no conflict of interest can be observed.”

The Debate Isn’t Over
Around the world, 64 countries require some form of labeling on foods with GM ingredients or ban them outright. European Union countries were the first to embrace labeling, requiring that all foods and animal feed made with more than .9 percent of GMO ingredients bear labels.

Russia also mandates labels on food containing more than .9 percent GMOs, and in September of 2013, it created a country-wide system to register all GMOs intended for use, as well as products created with or containing GMOs.

The fact that this many countries have taken action against GMOs means the question of their safety is far from settled. Reputable scientists from around the world do not consider all GMOs “confirmed as safe and nutritious,” as Monsanto and other biotech companies would have people believe after only 90-day trials.

At the very least, foods containing GMOs should be labeled, so people can make their own decisions about what they eat, says Green America campaigns director Elizabeth O’Connell.

“Green America is not against genetic research or human gene therapy. We’re not even preemptively against all GMOs,” she says. “What we want is for the FDA to mandate independent, long-term testing of GMOs to ensure they are safe before unleashing them on the public. People shouldn’t have to be lab rats for the biotech industry.”

On Monday, July 14, Citibank agreed to pay a $7 billion settlement related to sub-prime mortgage-backed securities sold to investors during the lead up to the financial crisis of 2008. The settlement results from a Justice Department effort to crack down on the complex and risky behaviors that led Wall Street to the brink of collapse in 2008. While the overwhelming majority of Americans want to hold bankers accountable for gambling on peoples’ livelihoods, the recent settlements don’t represent a real victory for the population. If we break down the structure of the most recent settlement, it’s easy to see why this is far from the just or green finance that we encourage and deserve.

Citi agreed to pay a total of $7 billion dollars to end a DOJ inquiry into its involvement in the financial crisis. Citi will pay $4.5 billion in cash, and $2.5 billion to provide relief to struggling homeowners and low-income tenants in the form of restructured mortgages. Of the $4.5 billion cash payment, $4 billion will go to the Justice Department as a civil penalty. The other $500 million will be paid as fees to state Attorneys General and to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

There are a few reasons why this settlement looks more like a PR stunt than Citi actually trying to right any wrongdoing. First of all, the majority of the settlement will go to the agencies doing the prosecution, pretty much to spend at their discretion. The prosecuting agencies do not represent the true victims of the housing crisis, the ones who were aggressively sold mortgages that they had no chance of affording a few years down the line. The lion’s share of the settlement, in effect, settles little more than legal fees.

Citigroup can count the loan modifications it will make for sub-prime borrowers under the government Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) as part of the settlement. This program awards incentive payments to the bank to modify bad loans. Citi will actually receive payments for abiding by the terms of the settlement they reached with the government. The assistance to homeowners, those most affected by the financial crisis, will therefore be subsidized.

And as if the taxpayer hasn’t already paid enough for the egregious actions of large financial institutions leading up to the financial crisis, any mortgage principal reductions to homeowners from Citi will come in the form of earned income for tax purposes. Any supposed relief homeowners enjoy will be taxed as income, in many cases negating any relief in the first place. This is due to the expiration of the Mortgage Debt Relief Forgiveness Act, which Congress has failed to renew. Without this essential protection, the settlement might actually leave some borrowers worse off.

The settlement reached between Citi and the Department of Justice doesn’t even address the losses incurred by investors who purchased securities backed by sub-prime mortgages in the lead-up to 2008.

At the end of the day, Citi will pay $7 billion to get regulators and investigators off its back. The settlement comes after JP Morgan Chase reached a similar agreement to the tune of $13 billion last year. The DOJ collects more cash than it knows what to do with, the mega-banks continue to gamble with real peoples’ homes (increasingly in the rental market that grew as a result of the crash), and tax-paying citizens are left to foot the bill. Nobody involved with the packaging and sale of toxic mortgages will see the inside of a jail cell, and all parties involved will move forward as if the mess didn’t occur in the first place. If you’re tired of the illusion of justice in our legal and financial systems, Green America urges you to take the time and tell Eric Holder to re-prioritize the prosecution of those involved mortgage fraud. Unless the people stand up and demand justice, there will be nothing to deter mega-banks like Citi from driving the economy to the brink of collapse all over again.

Luna and Larryʼs Coconut Bliss® is a coconut milk-based ice cream available in seventeen flavors: Cappuccino, Cherry Amaretto, Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge, Chocolate Peanut Butter, Chocolate Walnut Brownie, Dark Chocolate, Ginger Cookie Caramel, Lunaberry Swirl, Mint Galactica, Mocha Maca Crunch, Naked Almond Fudge, Naked Coconut, Pineapple Coconut, Salted Caramel & Chocolate and Vanilla Island. Coconut Bliss also produces Naked Coconut, Strawberry Love, Café Latte and Dark Chocolate Bars.

Creators Luna Marcus and Larry Kaplowitz met at a permaculture educational center in Oregonʼs Willamette Valley. They found an inspiring social environment dedicated to sustainable lifestyle practices. After giving up dairy, they found themselves unsatisfied with the ice cream alternatives that were available at the time. The soy and rice-based ice creams left them wanting more, both in texture and integrity of ingredients.

Inspired by the many uses of coconut milk in other cuisines, Luna and Larry decided to try it as a base for ice cream. Working with a simple, hand-crank ice cream maker purchased from Goodwill for $1.50, they came up with the perfect recipe: organic coconut milk sweetened only with agave. With their new dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free ice cream base, they began to experiment with many unique flavor combinations.

After months of tasting parties for friends and neighbors, they saw great potential in the product. It was time to expand on the idea and share it with the world. In 2005 Luna & Larryʼs Coconut Bliss began selling hand-packed pints to local natural food stores.

Based in Eugene, Oregon, Luna and Larry have transformed their idea into a successful business with products available throughout the U.S. and Canada. Coconut Bliss can be found in most natural food stores and a growing number of conventional grocers, as well as scoop shops and smoothie bars.

To this day Luna & Larryʼs Coconut Bliss is committed to creating the finest coconut milk-based ice cream products on the planet. Carrying on the tradition of quality and integrity, we continue to source ingredients that are certified organic, Non-GMO verified, certified Kosher, and fairly traded.

About Bliss Unlimited

Bliss Unlimited, LLC was founded to create a satisfying ice cream without the health and ecological impacts associated with dairy, soy, or gluten. Coconut Bliss® is the evolution of ice cream. USDA-certified organic and Non-GMO verified, Coconut Bliss® is based on cholesterol-free coconut milk that is packed with lauric acid and medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs), and sweetened with naturally low-glycemic agave syrup. The company values ecological and social sustainability, and strives to use the highest quality and most ethically produced organic ingredients it can find. It is privately owned and based in Eugene, Oregon, and has been operating since February 2005. For more information about Coconut Bliss® products and where to buy it, visit coconutbliss.com.

Luna & Larry's Coconut Bliss is a supporter of the GMO Inside campaign and based in Eugene, Oregon. Check out the illustrated Story of Coconut Bliss here.

James Hoggan is a Canadian public-relations expert who is also known for his commitment to ethics and integrity in PR. He is the chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and founder of DeSmogBlog.com, which works to “expose misinformation campaigns polluting the public debate about climate change and the environment.” He’s also the author of Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming.

In his latest book, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot: The Toxic State of Public Discourse and How to Clean It Up (New Society Publishers, 2016), Hoggan interviews a number of experts—from Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff to Thich Nhat Hahn and the Dalai Lama—on how adversarial rhetoric and polarization is stifling discussion and debate, thwarting society’s ability to solve our collective problems.

Green America talked with Hoggan about his ideas for cleaning up “the pollution of the public square”.

Green American/Tracy Fernandez Rysavy: Our current public dialogue around issues is, as you say, toxic and polarized. Why is this polarization dangerous?

James Hoggan There’s a type of polarization that is healthy. Democracies are built on healthy debate. But when polarization becomes so intense and such an overriding part of public debate that people decide on what’s true and false based on what political party or set of beliefs they come from, collective problems become impossible to solve. It’s almost like people think, “If you believe this, you’re one of us. If you don’t, you’re one of them.”

When name-calling takes the place of argument, you’re trying to shut people up who disagree with you. When you have that type of polarization, democracy is broken. You can’t fix problems, whether it’s income inequality, climate change, gun control, immigration.

Green American/Tracy: You say in the book that “most dialogue is just disguised monologue.” Can you talk a little more about that?

James Hoggan:I say that because I don’t think we’re very good listeners. We don’t practice it much. I was invited to a dialogue that was put on by the Canadian Petroleum Producers. They call them “dialogues”, but they don’t mean they’re willing to change their mind, which is what a dialogue is. They want to be polite, courteous, and then explain to you what is actually happening, based on the idea that you’re getting the facts wrong. For dialogue to take place, you have to be willing to change your mind. You have to start by thinking the other side may be well-intentioned and have a point, and you may actually learn something.

We had a series of dialogues for [oil-and-gas company] Shell with environmental groups across Canada, facilitated by [social scientist Daniel] Yankelovich’s group. They were very interesting. There was a disciplined structure. You can’t make somebody be open-minded, but you can set a structure up where there is more opportunity to listen. These dialogues were an opportunity for people on each side of an issue to present their case or point of view. Then, there were exercises where they had conversations about it with a facilitator facilitating people into listening—and nudging them away from the idea of “defeat opponent” and toward “let’s explore the issue from both sides”.

The part that was most interesting was getting people to understand the difference between debate and dialogue. In debate, the intention is to win, and someone else loses. A dialogue is more a conversation and an exploration. [When people enter a true dialogue], it’s like light bulbs going off around the table on both sides; it’s quite magical.

Green American/Tracy: You say both the left and right are to blame for the toxic state of public conversation. How are we all getting it wrong?

James Hoggan: We find it easier to see someone else’s bias than we are able to see our own. It’s a good thing to remind ourselves when we’re in a debate that more than likely, the people we’re in a debate with have intentions that are good. And you, too, could unknowingly be under the influence of bias. Both the right and the left need an open mind, open heart, open will.

Green American/Tracy: One of the refrains throughout the book is that sometimes, good people do bad things for good reasons. Why is it important to remember this?

James Hoggan: The public square can be polluted just like the natural environment can be polluted. One of the ways we pollute is through something [lobbyist and consensus builder] Roger Conner talked about: the advocacy trap. Let’s say I care deeply enough about something to start a charity or not-for-profit to help—replenishing salmon streams on the coast, for example. Because the media is the way it is, it looks for a way to criticize what I’m doing.

When people criticize in public something you care about, we very quickly move from “They’re wrong” to “They’re up to something.” Before you know it, you think of them as a wrongdoer. You’re in a debate between good and evil, where you’re David and they’re Goliath. It slams the advocacy door shut. You become more interested in defeating the SOB on the other side than saving the salmon. I’m nervous about anyone telling me we should just get along better. There are so many things we should be thanking advocates for! Women wouldn’t have the vote. We’d be back in the dark ages in terms of civil rights. Democracy. It’s naïve to think advocacy is bad. But it’s a double-edged sword.

"In debate, the intention is to win and someone else loses. A dialogue is more a conversation and an exploration."

If we get into this advocacy trap way of thinking, it oversimplifies, so it’s impossible to get to what the other side is thinking about. Sometimes you do need to polarize, but sometimes we need to turn down and tone down the polarization. You’re probably not surrounded by evil people. Changing the way you look at people and assuming they have good intentions and may have a point is a better way.

Green American/Tracy: How can this approach help if the other side isn’t doing it?

James Hoggan: There was this moment for me when David Suzuki and I sat down with [Buddhist monk] Thich Nhat Hahn. He’s a big environmental advocate. He said to David, “We don’t need to keep telling people they’re destroying the planet. We need to deal with the despair.” So I said, “One of your Vietnamese monasteries posted pictures of abusive police officers to protect monks and nuns. That seems like activism. So you’re not saying we shouldn’t be activists?” He has a way of looking at you that is almost like he almost knows more about you than you do, like he’s looking at your soul. It’s an openness that is frightening. He said, “Speak truth, but not to punish.”

Whoa! I thought. What does that mean? For me, the meaning I have drawn out of it is that we should never be afraid to speak up against injustice. But we don’t want to get mixed up in how we do it. Accusing people of bad intentions and offending their sense of sacredness creates resistance.

Green American/Tracy: That’s hard when someone is talking about building a wall on the Mexican border or banning Muslims from the US.

James Hoggan: One of the more dangerous phenomena is what Jonathan Haidt calls groupish righteousness. [Presidential candidate Donald] Trump feeds off of it. If we look closely at the world today, one of the most common emotions is fear. People are afraid of what’s going on economically. There’s a lot of fear—and anger, which is a way of masking fear— around immigration, terrorism, security threats. Fear that some people have of change.

If we think about a lot of Trump’s supporters as being in a state of fear, demagoguery works: “Don’t worry about climate change, it’s a hoax. I’ll protect you and your jobs from these Mexicans. I’ll protect your night clubs from these Muslims.” It’s traditional propaganda. This is not public discourse. The demagogue doesn’t get away with demagoguery. If you don’t speak out, they do get away with it. Speak the truth. But not to punish.

Green American/Tracy: When you interviewed the Dalai Lama, he said: “We must respect all forms of life, with less concern about getting something back.” What do we need to take from this message when it comes from dialoguing with “the other side”?

James Hoggan: Compassion is hard. It is hard. The way I look at it is it’s what’s effective. If you really care about these issues, it makes it easier to let go of the need to defeat somebody and the need to be right—and have them as wrong. Then you can think in a clear way about the right path forward to get things done.

Persistence is important. The Dalai Lama said to me, “We have a saying in Tibet: If you fail, try again. Two times fail, two times try again. Nine times fail, nine times try again.” There’s an incredible power in warmheartedness and compassion and openness.

For more on James Hoggan and his book, visit ImRightAndYoureAnIdiot.com.

Study Reveals Global Electronic Giant’s Human Rights Violations; Green America Campaign Follows “Bad Apple” Push to End Poisoning of Chinese Factory Workers.

July 10, 2014

Washington, DC – July 10, 2014 – Global electronics giant Samsung should immediately address child labor abuses at one of its cell phone supplier factories in China, according to the nonprofit Green America, which urged concerned consumers to take action by signing a petition at www.greenamerica.org/samsung/.

The Green America petition comes in reaction to a report released late yesterday by the workers’ rights watchdog organization China Labor Watch (CLW), Another Samsung Supplier Exploiting Child Labor, in which underage workers were found to be working at Shinyang Electronic Co. Ltd. Shinyang is a South Korean-owned company, mainly producing the covers and other parts for Samsung cell phones. The report reveals that five children (under 16) were found to be working in this facility, as well as numerous minors (under 18). These young workers are subject to the same long hours as other workers, and compensated less. These children were also working the night shift, from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am, six to seven days a week.

Green America’s latest petition adds to a growing global movement for more responsibly-made electronics. In the past few months, more than 20,000 individuals have signed Green America’s petition to Apple calling on the company to “end smartphone sweatshops” by addressing worker health and safety risks.

“It’s criminal for Samsung to profit at the expense of children,” said Green America campaigns director Elizabeth O’Connell, “Samsung needs to take immediate action in this facility and others to ensure that children are removed from work and compensated appropriately. Additionally, Samsung must take action to address serious health and safety failings in its facilities.”

In Samsung’s most recent sustainability report the company said it inspected working conditions at 200 suppliers in 2013 and that “no instances of child labor were found.” The violations found in CLW’s report raise questions about the effectiveness and thoroughness of Samsung’s self-monitoring.

CLW’s Executive Director Li Qiang said, “Samsung’s social responsibility reports are just advertisement. Samsung has put its energy into audits and the production of these reports, but these things are meant to appease investors and don’t have any real value for workers. Samsung’s monitoring system is ineffective and has failed to bring about improvements for workers. What Samsung says is not important; what’s important is their actions.”

Additional reports from Korea have indicated that more than 200 former Samsung workers suffer from grave illnesses, allegedly contracted while working in Samsung plants.

Samsung is the most popular cell phone manufacturer in the world. In 2013, Samsung sold an estimated 550 million phones worldwide, or nearly twice as many phones as the US population.

Workers in Samsung’s facilities in China, Korea and elsewhere work long hours for little pay and often do not have adequate safety training or equipment to keep themselves safe on the job.

Additional findings in the report, Another Samsung Supplier Exploiting Child Labor, include:

• Shinyang employs child labor (under 16 years of age), in violation of China’s Labor Law. These child workers, without a labor contract, do the same work for the same long night-shift hours and at the same intensity as adult workers but are paid one-third less. Child laborers are only paid for 10 hours of work a day despite working for 11 hours.
• Shinyang employs many minors (under 18 years of age). These are typically students who enter the factory as temp workers.
• Workers do not receive any pre-job safety training in spite of the 24 hours required by China’s Provisions on Safety Training of Production and Operation Entities. This is despite coming in contact with harmful chemicals, such as industrial alcohol and thinners.
• Workers do not necessarily receive protective equipment, such as gloves or masks, from the factory, only receiving equipment after requesting for it.
• The factory employs hundreds of temporary workers who are paid a flat hourly rate, regardless of overtime hours worked, in violation of Chinese labor regulations.
• Workers are made to work 11 hours per day, as many as 30 days per month, accumulating more than 120 hours of overtime, more than three times in excess of China’s legal limit of 36 hours.
• In order to hide excessive overtime hours from inspection of documents, Shinyang lists the overtime pay for all overtime beyond 80 hours as “benefits” on workers’ pay stubs.

The full report can be read on China Labor Watch’s website.

These abuses are in violation of national laws, international labor law, and Samsung’s own Global Code of Conduct, which states that the company will treat workers in a fair and legal manner, will not endanger worker health and safety, and will not hire underage workers.

Consumers wishing to take action against Samsung can visit www.GreenAmerica.org/Samsung/

Consumers looking for a more responsible phone choice can use Green America’s flow chart. http://blog.greenamerica.org/2014/06/25/well-what-phone-should-i-buy-then/

ABOUT GREEN AMERICA

Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses, investors, and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. http://www.greenamerica.org.

MEDIA CONTACT: Will Harwood, (703) 276-3255 or wharwood@hastingsgroup.com.

In early June, President Obama announced the EPA’s push to limit carbon-based power plants in order to diminish the largest source of pollution and global warming. Green Century announced their support of this large step, providing a petition by Environment America, to gather support of the EPA’s effort to combat this environmental issue.

In an article by the New York Times, Obama’s push to tackle climate change is notated as one of the “defining elements of [his] legacy.” This new regulation may bring heavier support of the cap and trade policy that President Obama advocated for in 2010, which meant to inspire business leaders to make safer investments in the clean energy sector, but also recognized the possibility of higher prices.

The necessity for public approval of this decision is quite hefty as drastic environmental changes rooted in carbon pollution bring about a cry for help. By signing the climate action petition, individuals will be able to share their support for an effort that will icrease the likelihood of positive change for our climate.

EPA releases the Clean Power Plan, new rules that set targets for states to reduce their climate emissions from power plants.  The Clean Power Plan is a key component of the United States meeting its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement.  The fossil fuel industry and several states are fighting the Clean Power Plan, and the Trump Administration is threatening to undo the regulations.  Green America’s Green Business members provided extensive comments supporting the Clean Power Plan.

This month, we celebrate National Pollinator Week from June 16^th – 22^nd. The unanimous US Senate vote seven years ago instated an official week each year to reflect upon and take action to address the urgent issue of declining pollinator populations. Pollinators—bees, birds, butterflies, bats, beetles, and others—are vital to our food supply and ecosystem and positively impact all of our lives. We can thank pollinators for every third bite of food we take.

Unfortunately, a mysterious phenomenon is posing a major threat to the food industry: Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The recent decline in honey bee populations is a devastating event attributed to CCD. In the US, over 25% of commercial honey bees have disappeared, sparking a scientific investigation into the drivers behind CCD. Emerging research on the impact of pesticides, particularly neonicotinoids (neonics for short), on honey bees is creating cause for concern. Neonics are a relatively new family of pesticides that are sprayed on plants, coated on seeds prior to planting, and applied to soil. They are one of the most commonly used pesticides in the world; and while they are fairly new, since they are so widely used, they may have a much larger impact than expected.

The Harvard School of Public Health released a study this month suggesting that neonicotinoids may significantly harm honey bee colonies over the winter because the bees abandon their hives and eventually die.The study replicated a 2012 finding from the same research group that found a link between low doses of neonics and CCD. According to a recent article by Earthjustice, one prevailing theory is that neonics damage, “the bees’ ability to find their way home; they simply get lost, run out of gas and die.” Harvard researchers are not the first to find a negative impact of neonics on bee colonies; the Amerian Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), reported similar results.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are increasing the use of toxic herbicides. Friends of the Earth and author Michele Simon recently released a new report called Follow the Honey which exposes how chemical pesticide companies are using the same PR tactics as previously used by tobacco. Another notable highlight in the report is that Monsanto—the number one GMO seed company in the world—has a lot of business at stake in the bee crisis because it sells seeds pre-treated with neonics. Friends of the Earth’s report states that Monsanto’s “Seeds and Genomics” segment netted $9.8 billion in sales in 2012. “In the US, roughly 90 percent of corn is treated with neonicotinoids. Monsanto promotes “Acceleron®” as a designer seed treatment for its genetically modified seeds — corn, soy and cotton.” It is too soon to tell if the Harvard study will lead to the ultimate demise of neonicotinoids; therefore, opponents of GMOs and toxic pesticides need to continue to advocate against their usage.

GMO Inside is taking a stand against chemical and GMO seed companies through corporate pressure campaigns. Currently, we are calling on General Mills to take the lead in the packaged-goods sector and move toward offering more sustainable products. In addition to removing GMO ingredients from Cheerios, we are asking General Mills CEO Ken Powell to make a long-term commitment to sourcing ingredients that reduce toxic pesticide usage; followed by putting out a call to suppliers to begin phasing out over the next five years the three most devastating pesticides for human and pollinator health, atrazine, neonicotinoids, and glyphosate. As growing evidence reveals the ecological and environmental harms of GMOs and related pesticides, and as a growing number of consumers become aware of the potential health risks, consumers will increasingly seek out products that are produced sustainably. General Mills would be wise to act now.

Keep an eye out for details on a national call-in day of action planned for Tuesday, June 17th.

TAKE ACTION TODAY: Say No to Honey Nut GMOs and sign our petition!

Nestlé's baby formulas are exposing American and Canadian babies to unhealthy and under-studied GMOs (genetically modified organisms).

GMOs have never been proven safe for human consumption; and the inadequate research that has been done on GMOs does not look at long term effects in humans, let alone infants. Babies are particularly vulnerable when it comes to eating GMOs.

Nestlé is the world's #1 food company in terms of sales. Researching Nestlé's products and its business practices is disheartening, to say the least. I am sure you will be angry too. Here is a list of Nestle’s crimes, including some associated with infant formula:

• Nestlé is a member of the Grocery Manufacuturers Association, who constantly lobbies for loose restrictions on GMO foods and donates absurd amounts of money against GMO labeling initiatives.
• What do they have to hide? A million dollars’ worth? Nestlé USA donated $1,052,743 to the anti-GMO labeling campaign in Washington last year.
• In 2012, Business Insider published an article called “Every Parent Should Know the Scandalous History of Infant Formula”. The article explains the tumultuous history of Nestlé's baby formula and why it is a predatory company that undermines breastfeeding. Nestlé has gone into developing poor countries and intensely promoted infant formula. This has led to many deaths because of the lack of clean water sources to prepare formula safely. Also, many families cannot afford to purchase formula after the free samples stop, and by that time, many babies die from malnutrition. Boycotts of Nestlé’s baby formula have been going on since the early 1970s.
• In November 2002, Nestlé got caught up in a labeling scandal. Police ordered Nestlé Colombia to get rid of 200 tons of imported powdered milk. “The milk had come from Uruguay under the brand name Conaprole, but the sacks had been repackaged with labels stating they had come from a local Nestlé factory, and stamped with false production dates of 20th September and 6th October 2002. The real production dates were between August 2001 and February 2002. A month later another 120 tons with similarly false country of origin and production dates were discovered, pointing to systematic fraud. The discoveries caused a stir, with senators insisting the Attorney General conduct a full inquiry leading to prosecutions.” Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo charged Nestlé with using sub-standard, contaminated milk, “a serious attack on the health of our people, especially the children.”
• In January 2013, a video came out of former Nestlé CEO, Peter Brabeck, saying that water is not a human right and it should be privatized.
• In 2012, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City, who is seen as a “health advocate”, launched the Latch On, NYC initiative which wants hospitals to stop promoting formulas.
• Back in 2001, Nestlé was accused of buying cocoa from the Ivory Coast and Ghana, which may have been produced using child slaves. BBC produced a report saying that thousands of children in Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo were being purchased and shipped to the Ivory Coast, to be sold as slaves to cocoa farms.
• Sadly, Nestlé has no fair trade policy to make sure that the producers of its cocoa and coffee are paid a living wage. “As one of the four corporate giants dominating the coffee-roasting industry, along with Sara Lee, Kraft and Procter & Gamble, it is thus partially responsible for the plight of millions of coffee growers in the global south, who are being paid unfairly for their produce and face economic ruin due to collapsing world prices.”
• Nestlé has been accused of promoting unhealthy food, especially marketing unfairly to kids; a recent report by the UK Consumers Association claims that 7 out of the 15 breakfast cereals with the highest levels of sugar, fat, and salt were Nestlé products.
• Nestlé, which makes Nestea, conducts—and pays others to conduct—painful and deadly tea tests on animals.
• According to Forbes, for many years, Nestlé used palm oil from companies that were ruining Indonesian rainforests, threatening the livelihoods of local people and pushing orangutans towards extinction.

For even more information on the history of criticisms of Nestlé, click this link. 

Join GMO Inside in standing up to Nestlé. Our babies deserve better than GMOs. 

Here's a message from our friends at Just Label It:

Please join us in thanking Vermont for leading the way on GMO labeling! The Vermont Legislature just passed a bill to label genetically engineered foods and ingredients without any contingencies on other states passing similar legislation. This brings Vermont one-step closer to being the first state to enact legislation that will require GE labeling.

To thank Vermont and show support for its GMO labeling bill, print out this sign and take a picture holding it. Then send it back to us or post it on our Facebook page.

The bill is now headed to Governor Peter Shumlin's desk and once he signs it, it will require that genetically engineered food sold in Vermont be labeled starting in July 2016 - no "ifs," "ands," or "buts!"

Let's show our support!

Let's make this happen nationally!