Biggest Grocery Chains Say No to GMO Salmon
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on Biggest Grocery Chains Say No to GMO Salmon
The two largest grocery stores in the United States, Kroger and Safeway, have made commitments to not sell GMO salmon, according to statements released today by Friends of the Earth and a coalition of more than 30 consumer, health, food safety and fishing groups, including Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, and Consumers Union.
These stores join other leading supermarket chains — now totaling over 9,000 stores nationwide — that have already rejected the GMO salmon that is still under review by FDA.
Kroger, the leading conventional grocery chain in the U.S. with 2,424 stores, informed Friends of the Earth of its decision in a December email from Keith Dailey, director of media relations at Kroger. “Should genetically engineered salmon be approved, Kroger has no intention of sourcing it,” Dailey wrote.
Safeway, the number two conventional grocer with 1,406 stores, confirmed their position in an email to Friends of the Earth last week.
“Should GE salmon come to market, we are not considering nor do we have any plans to carry GE salmon. The seafood products we offer will continue to be selected consistent with our Responsible Seafood Purchasing Policy, Responsible Sourcing Commitment and our partnership with FishWise,” Safeway’s statement said.
“By making commitments to not sell genetically engineered salmon, Kroger and Safeway have joined the large number of grocery chains, from Trader Joe’s to Target, that have wisely chosen to listen to the majority of consumers who do not want to eat genetically engineered fish,” said Dana Perls, Food and Technology policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth. “Now Costco, Walmart, Albertsons and other retailers need to catch up and provide their customers with what they want: natural, sustainable seafood that isn’t genetically engineered in a lab.”
***
MONSANTO’S ‘COEXISTENCE’ WITH ORGANICS IS A DEATH SENTENCE
You might have heard a new term floating around the Internet – “Coexistence”- an idyllic term to promote the fantasy of GMO and non-GMO crops living in harmony side by side. But Monsanto and the USDA’s new “coexistence” plan is a road to extinction for America’s organic farmers. And if approved, it will mean the end of organic food as we know it, according to Food Democracy Now.
Right now the U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with biotech lobbyists to finalize a plan so Monsanto’s GMO crops can contaminate organic and non-GMO farmers’ crops at will. Even worse, the USDA’s new plan could force these farmers to pay for crop “contamination insurance” to protect themselves against unwanted contamination by Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered genes.
When Monsanto says “coexistence”, what they really mean is: “We will contaminate organics.”
The new policy recommendations are the result of a special industry-controlled panel instigated by Secretary Vilsack in 2011 that sought to find “cooperation” between stakeholders to find a “solution” for the contamination of organic and non-GMO crops by genetically engineered pollen from neighboring fields.
GMO seeds have been widely adopted in the five main commodity crops, with more than 90 percent adoption rates of genetic engineering in corn, soy, cotton, sugar beets, canola, and alfalfa. Therefore, the genetic contamination of neighboring farmers’ fields planted with organic and non-GMO crops is virtually guaranteed. Now, as new GMO crops are being approved, it’s only a matter of time before other organic crops are contaminated too.
Despite claims by Monsanto and the USDA, nobody can overrule the laws of biology and dictate how plants reproduce. Patented GMO pollen is spread by wind, insects, birds and animals, and no matter how much Monsanto denies it, their GMO crops will contaminate and destroy the integrity of farmers’ organic and non-GMO crops.
This policy would circumvent legal victories won in court, as in the case of organic farmer Steve Marsh in Australia and the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association vs Monsanto here in the U.S. In response, Secretary Vilsack created the USDA Advisory Committee on Biotechnology and 21st Century Agriculture, known as AC21.
At Secretary Vilsack’s request, the AC21 sought to find “types of compensation mechanisms” that “would be appropriate to address economic losses by farmers in which the value of their crops is reduced by unintended presence of genetically engineered (GE) material(s).” Tragically, AC21 was dominated by pro-GMO industry lobbyists, who hijacked the agenda to protect the biotech industry.
Rather than force the patent holders of genetically engineered crops to compensate organic and non-GMO farmers when their fields are contaminated by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical and Syngenta’s patented genes, the USDA’s AC21 recommendations shift the entire cost of contamination to organic and non-GMO crop farmers.
Even worse, if the current AC21 plan is adopted, it could exempt biotech seed and chemical giants, Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta, from any future legal liability or financial compensation to organic and non-GMO farmers whose crops become contaminated.
By supporting the USDA’s new “coexistence” plan, farmers may have to forfeit their right to file future claims of economic injury and damages against Monsanto. That’s because new “coexistence” rules could impose mandatory arbitration that would prohibit farmers from taking Monsanto to court over GMO contamination. Forever.
While the USDA claims that it has “unequivocal” support for all forms of agriculture and its policies will be based on “science-based stewardship,” the truth is that Monsanto and the USDA know it’s impossible to control “gene flow” once a GMO crop is approved.
The fact is, contamination has been a part of the biotech industry’s GMO strategy from the beginning. In 2001, biotech industry consultant Don Westfall told the Toronto Star: “The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded
that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender.”
Fight back by visiting this website:
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/1220?t=7&akid=1174.101853.sS6HbA
***
GLYPHOSATE IS IN THE AIR AND RAIN
Farming with genetically engineered seed has altered our daily exposure to chemicals, such that even the rain and air contains physiologically active levels of glyphosate from corporate agriculture’s war against any plant not part of its monocultured, genetically engineered system of production, according to an article in Wake Up World.
With a significant body of research now available showing that glyphosate and its components are far more toxic than believed at the time of its government approval, the implications of ubiquitous glyphosate exposure should be carefully considered.
Ultimately, findings like these reveal that the perception of choice and health freedom, when it comes to the consumer’s right to avoid harm from GMOs by refusing to buy or consume them, is illusory. Not only are consumers in the U.S. not allowed to know what is in their food with accurate and truthful labeling of ingredients, we now know that biopollution from GMOs produces uncontrollable and irreversible changes in the genomes of other organisms—including humans.
The contamination of GM foods with herbicides like Roundup (glyphosate) makes them not equivalent to their non-contaminated alternatives. The reality is that the environment is becoming so saturated with the fall out from the ever-expanding GM agrichemical farming grid that even if you somehow find a way to avoid eating contaminated food, you will be forced to have to deal with its adverse health effects, as long as you need air to breath and water to drink.
Ultimately, unless our food production system moves beyond its present chemical war-modeled phase of GMO monoculturing, even non-GMO food will end up being contaminated with these chemicals and rogue genes, because nothing ‘natural’ lives in a vacuum – and if it does, then it really shouldn’t be called “organic,” and maybe shouldn’t even be called food.
###
