Beyond GMO Labeling
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on Beyond GMO Labeling
The following is from the Institute for Responsible Technology:
As you may know by now, Congress passed legislation (S.764) that wipes out Vermont’s excellent GMO labeling law and substitutes a fake national GMO labeling regime. President Obama signed the bill into law July 29th. This sham labeling bill excludes most processed foods from requiring a label; defines genetic engineering so narrowly, that most GMOs on the market don’t qualify, and gives the USDA two years to come up with additional criteria for labeling, which will likely contain even more loopholes.
For products that will require labeling, companies can avoid actually stating on the package that it contains GMOs. Rather, they can force consumers to go on a wild goose chase by calling a listed 800 number to find the answer, or using their smart phones—if they have one—to scan a QR code and then navigate a website.
And to make this law even more irrelevant, if companies decide to ignore the labeling requirements altogether, there is no enforcement or penalty.
Although this is clearly a defeat in our campaigns for getting mandatory labeling in the United States, we are still winning the bigger, more important effort to eliminate GMOs from the market altogether.
Labeling GMOs was never the end goal for us. It was a tactic. Labels make it easier for shoppers to make healthier non-GMO choices. When enough people avoid GMOs, food companies rush to eliminate them. Labeling can speed up that tipping point—but only if consumers are motivated to use labels to avoid GMOs. Therefore, if mandatory labels had been put into place, we would still be required to educate and motivate consumers.
The good news is that the tipping point is already underway based on the voluntary non-GMO labels being put on packages. Major food companies already realize that making non-GMO claims gives them a competitive edge. Why else would Nestles dedicate time during their extremely expensive TV commercials to brag that their coffee creamer is non-GMO? Why else would Dannon announce that their feed for dairy cows will be non-GMO within three years? And why else would Del Monte, Campbell’s, Hershey’s, Post, General Mills, Red Gold, Applegate, and so many others make similar non-GMO commitments? They are scrambling to get the non-GMO sales advantage before their competitors. The flood gates are opening. We are totally winning. Let that sink in.
This major shift in the marketplace has come about due to compelling, behavior-change messaging. And that’s IRT’s specialty. It involves accurately conveying the health dangers of GMOs in compelling ways, and exposing the lies, cover-ups, and outrageous behavior of the pro-GMO forces.
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SUPERFOOD OF THE FUTURE: COCKROACH MILK?
An international team of scientists has just sequenced a protein crystal located in the midgut of cockroaches. The reason?
It’s more than four times as nutritious as cow’s milk and, the researchers think it could be the key to feeding our growing population in the future.
Although cockroaches don’t actually produce milk, Diploptera punctate, which is the only known cockroach to give birth to live young, has been shown to pump out a type of “milk” containing protein crystals to feed its babies.
The fact that an insect produces milk is pretty fascinating – but what fascinated researchers is the fact that a single one of these protein crystals contains more than three times the amount of energy found in an equivalent amount of buffalo milk (which is also higher in calories then dairy milk).
Clearly milking a cockroach isn’t the most feasible option, so an international team of scientists headed by researchers from the Institute of Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine in India decided to sequence the genes responsible for producing the milk protein crystals to see if they could somehow replicate them in the lab.
“The crystals are like a complete food–they have proteins, fats and sugars. If you look into the protein sequences, they have all the essential amino acids,” said Sanchari Banerjee, one of the team, in an interview with the Times of India.
Not only is the milk a dense source of calories and nutrients, it’s also time released. As the protein in the milk is digested, the crystal releases more protein at an equivalent rate to continue the digestion.
“It’s time-released food,” said Subramanian Ramaswamy, who led the project. “If you need food that is calorifically high, that is time released, and food that is complete, this is it.”
It’s important to point out that this dense protein source is definitely never going to be for those trying to lose weight, and probably isn’t even required for most western diets, where we are already eating too many calories per day.
But for those who struggle to get the amount of calories required per day, this could be a quick and easy way to get calories and nutrients.
“They’re very stable. They can be a fantastic protein supplement,” said Ramaswamy.
Now that the researchers have the sequence, they are hoping to get yeast to produce the crystal in much larger quantities–making it more efficient (and less gross) than extracting crystals from cockroach’s guts.
The research was published in IUCrJ, the journal of the International Union of Crystallography.
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DO ORGANIC WINES TASTE BETTER?
W. Blake Gray, writing in Wine-Searcher, reports that California wines made from certified organic or biodynamic grapes taste better than wines made from conventionally farmed grapes, according to a major academic.
“To any people who are mocking organic or biodynamic wines, now we can say they are better and we can prove it,” Grgich Hills vice president of vineyards and production Ivo Jeramaz told Wine-Searcher.
To be exact, the study shows that ratings in three major publications-–Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, and Wine Enthusiast-–are four points higher on average for eco-certified wines compared to control group wines from the same regions and same vintages.
Four points on average is a huge difference: bigger than the standard deviation in two of the three publications. In less mathematical terms, it’s like saying the eco-certified wines were an entire grade higher.
So it will be interesting to see how the mainstream press and the public picks up on the study, which is titled: “Does Organic Wine Taste Better? An Analysis of Experts’ Ratings.”
“Consumers have still a negative view of organic wines,” Magali Delmas, one of three co-authors of the study, told Wine-Searcher. “The experts and the winemakers have a different opinion. It’s nice to be able to show that.”
The study analyzed a huge number of ratings of California wines: 74,000 total over the vintages between 1998 and 2009. Eco-certified wines were a tiny minority: just 1.1 percent of the total, because less than 2 percent of California’s vineyards are certified organic or biodynamic, according to the study.
Delmas, a professor of environmental economics at UCLA, said the publications did not want to cooperate, but their ratings were already published.
“If Wine Spectator had wanted to work with us, it would have helped,” Delmas said. “It was very, very time-consuming.”
Delmas and her co-authors were extremely thorough in investigating whether the reviewers at the publications liked eco-certified wines better, even counting the number of positive and negative words in each review. Eco-certified wines had more positive words and fewer negatives than conventional wines.
Six years ago, Delmas was one author of a study limited to Wine Spectator that determined that wines made from organically grown grapes got higher ratings and their prices were lower. Subsequent studies have shown that while consumers pay a premium for organically certified fruits and vegetables, they do not do so for wine.
A major reason is label confusion. “Organic wine,” in the US, must be made without added sulfites, and is thus susceptible to spoiling. Delmas did not consider “organic wines” as part of the eco-certified group for this year’s study, instead including only wines made from certified organically grown or biodynamically grown grapes that were not labeled as “organic wine.” But the study did include single-vineyard wines from certified organic or biodynamic vineyards that did not list “made from organically grown grapes” on the label.
Chappellet is a case in point for a winery that could use the designation on some of its wines, but chooses not to. Chappellet’s estate vineyard on Pritchard Hill in Napa Valley is certified organic, but it buys grapes that are not for its non-estate wines.
“We’ve always felt that the grapes from organically grown vineyards were better,” winemaker Phillip Corallo-Titus told Wine-Searcher. “We’ve really just done it for ourselves and the people who buy our wine. It’s been a belief that the Chappellets have that as stewards of the land, we should farm organically. We never really made a decision that it was something we needed to advertise. We do it for ourselves. We do it because we want to.”
None of the three magazines whose scores were surveyed can be called advocates of organic farming. And two of them, Wine Spectator and Wine Enthusiast, say they score their wines through blind tasting.
“I remember reading [Wine Advocate critic Robert] Parker and him saying: ‘I taste wine and I score. I don’t care how they farm,'” Jeramaz told Wine-Searcher. “If in a blind tasting, it’s confirmed, then people want to see more organic wine.”
In 1991, the TV show 60 Minutes did a segment on the so-called French paradox – that French people had lower rates of heart attacks than Americans – and concluded that drinking red wine was keeping French hearts healthy. Red wine sales in the US immediately rose. But that was a health issue, not one of taste.
Aron Weinkauf, winemaker at Spottswoode, which was one of the first Napa estate vineyards to be certified organic, told Wine-Searcher he doesn’t think the study will have much impact.
“There are plenty of non-organic 100-point wines,” Weinkauf said. “But a study like that is certainly great. I hope it does well for organics and biodynamics. Farming organically as long as we have, we believe it contributes to better quality of soil and better quality wine.”
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GROWING FOOD ORGANICALLY SOLVES MANY PROBLEMS AT ONCE
A new report released by The Organic Center reviews almost 100 scientific studies demonstrating that the best choice consumers can make to combat antibiotic resistance and protect themselves from antibiotic-resistant bacteria is to choose organic food.
Antibiotic resistance has been described as one of the most pressing human health concerns today and contributes to thousands of deaths each year. While the use of antibiotics in conventional agricultural practices has been implicated as an important contributor to this growing crisis, research also demonstrates that livestock production without the use of antibiotics, such as in organic agriculture, is an important part of the solution.
This review paper takes an in-depth look at everything from mechanisms by which resistance develops in bacteria and the role that modern day agricultural practices play in exacerbating the problem, to how organic agriculture provides a simple and effective means to combat the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and to protect the health of consumers.
The Organic Center also hosted a webinar in late July updating donors on their projects, including a guest presentation from Dr. John Quinn of Furman University about his collaborations with The Center.
Dr. Quinn discussed his research showing increased biodiversity on organic farms and his work developing a quick, straight-forward method for farmers to calculate on-farm biodiversity through the Healthy Farm Index. He is currently working with The Center on a companion tool specifically designed to help organic growers increase their on-farm biodiversity based on the new National Organic Program guidance on natural resources and biodiversity conservation.
The Organic Center will also be participating in a study trip to Germany on organic food production and trade, organized by the German American Chamber of Commerce of the Midwest to deepen transatlantic exchange. Site visits will include the FiBL Research Institute of Organic Agriculture; Hessian Ministry of the Environment, Climate Protection, Agriculture and Consumer Protection; IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements), and the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture.
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SOME BREAKING RESEARCH ON ORGANICS AND TOXIC CHEMICALS
A new study published in Biological Control has found that beneficial predators and parasitoids are more effective at controlling agricultural pests on organic farms than they are on conventional farms. The results demonstrated that organic farms host higher levels of beneficial insects, which can be an effective form of pest control.
A large group of leading scientific experts, medical experts, and children’s health advocates has joined forces in a call to action to reduce common chemical exposures shown to interfere with the brain development of fetuses and children.
Newly released results from long-term field studies conducted by the Swiss Research Institute FiBL suggest that organic farming in tropical regions can be as productive as conventional farming while providing greater economic benefit.
A recently published article in the scientific journal Nature Communications has found that contaminated pollen from wild plants near land cultivated for corn and soy production is a source of pesticide exposure throughout the entire season. Researchers found that agricultural pesticides as well as insecticides used for the control of mosquitoes and other pests contaminated wild flower pollen.
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