Page 11 - the NOISE March 2014

mand it,” said Ken Cook, President of Envi- ronmental Working Group (EWG).
Three top agribusiness companies have decided not to wait around for a federal standard on GMOs and have filed a lawsuit in US district court in Honolulu suggesting Kaua’i’s ordinance is unconstitutional. Syn- genta, DuPont and Agrigentics, Inc, a unit of Dow Chemical Co, are claiming that Ordi- nance 960 is invalid and have asked the court for an injunction to permanently prevent its enforcement. In an interview, Paul Minehart, a spokesman for Syngenta, said the ordi- nance “arbitrarily targets our industry with burdensome and baseless restrictions on farming operations by attempting to regu- late activities over which counties in Hawai’i have no jurisdiction. These activities are al- ready regulated by governmental agencies under state and federal laws.”
The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and environmental law group Earthjustice have stepped into the arena to help defend Kaua’i’s right to restrict GMO cultivation and pesticide use on its land. “The chemical in- dustry has been using bullying and misin- formation all along to try to derail this law,” Earthjustice Managing Attorney Paul Achit- off said. “They consider their impacts on the health of Kaua’i’s residents as collateral dam- age. We look forward to defending Kaua’i’s families and its environment, and are confi- dent justice will prevail.”
Another provision in the CFSAF proposed legislation would officially add GMOs to the list of ingredients to which the word “natu- ral” can be applied. Prompted by an esti- mated 65 class action lawsuits recently filed against food manufacturers and a $9 million settlement involving PepsiCo’s Naked juice line, the CFSAF wants to end this battle once and for all. Many processed foods contain ingredients derived from GMOs, especially in the form of soy, corn, canola, and sugar beets.
The FDA describes the use of the word “natural” on food labels as follows: “From a
food science perspective, it is difficult to de- fine a food product that is ‘natural’ because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth. That said, FDA has not developed a definition for use of the term natural or its derivatives. However, the agency has not objected to the use of the term if the food does not contain added color, artificial flavors, or synthetic substances.”
But consumers have begun to protest the use of this term as deceptive when the food in question contains GMOs. In the Naked lawsuit, PepsiCo was ordered to remove the “All Natural” wording from its Naked la- bel and paid damages to consumers. But it will continue to use the phrase “Non-GMO” on its product even though the fruit juices used are not certified as such. The legisla- tion proposed by the CFSAF would make it official for GMO ingredients to be included among those labeled as “natural” without further disclosure.
Some food manufacturers, however, are beginning to feel the heat from consumers and are responding by removing GMO ingre- dients from their products. In January, Gen- eral Mills announced that it would remove GMO derived beet sugar (generally labeled simply as “sugar”) and corn starch from their signature breakfast cereal Cheerios. Accord- ing to their website, General Mills made the change only to this product because “It’s the unique and simple nature of original Cheer- ios that made this possible — and even that required significant investment over nearly a year. Cheerios’ principal ingredient has
always been whole grain oats, and there are no GMO oats. We use just a small amount of corn starch in cooking, and just one gram of sugar per serving for taste. So we were able to change how we source and handle ingredients to ensure that the corn starch for original Cheerios comes only from non-GMO corn, and our sugar is only non-GMO pure cane sugar.”
The change to Cheerios was prompted in part by a consumer advocacy campaign by GMO Inside, part of the non-profit organiza- tion Green America. Even though the move- ment persuaded General Mills to budge on one of its most popular products, GMO Inside is continuing to push the company to take the next step. A new campaign for GMO free Honey Nut Cheerios, General Mills’ number one selling brand, is underway. Cit- ing the simplicity of the original Cheerios recipe and that it provides several organic cereal options which, by law, may not con- tain GMOs, General Mills notes that it does not intend to change the composition of any of its other products in the immediate future.
“For our other cereals, the widespread use of GM seed in crops such as corn, soy, or beet sugar would make reliably moving to non- GM ingredients difficult, if not impossible,” said the company.
But non-GMO Honey Nut Cheerios are of- fered for sale in Europe and American con- sumers, according to GMO Inside, want to know why not in the US. General Mills cites differences in the agricultural and regulatory environments and says “we offer consum- ers choices in both places.” The European Union (EU) considers GMOs “new food” and therefore subjects them to much more strin- gent safety and health evaluations than the US. Many EU countries have also banned the cultivation of GMO crops so they are less available to manufacturers in those regions forcing the use of non-GMO alternatives.
Continuing consumer pressure is not go- ing unnoticed by other companies though. January also brought an announcement from Post Foods that its popular Grape-Nuts cereal will no longer contain GMOs. Kashi, a division of Kellogg’s, now has 11 cereals that are certified by the Non-GMO Project as free from genetically engineered ingredients. It began changing cereal formulations in 2012. GMO Inside has also targeted Chobani, the leading brand of Greek yogurt in the US. The consumer group says that dairy ingredients used in Chobani products may come from cows sustained on GMO feed. Whole Foods recently announced that they would no lon- ger sell Chobani based on this information.
In spite of the changes being made by these companies, most of them still pub- licly support the idea that GMOs pose no health or safety risks. Most of the major US manufacturers of processed foods are also members of the GMA and support the vol- untary labeling of GMOs that the CFSAF has proposed. According to environmental and consumer advocacy organizations like EWG and CFS, that proposal will result in no label- ing at all.
But consumer pressure is starting to turn the tides. Perhaps, one by one, our choices about the items that go into our grocery carts will send a loud and clear message to food suppliers that will stop falling on deaf ears.
| Cindy Cole knows a good tomato when she sees one. cindy@thenoise.us
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• MARCH 2014 • 11