Tag Archives: organic

No, GMOs Didn’t Create India’s Farmer Suicide Problem, But…

by ToneyKirschbaum Posted on September 30, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Since the mid-1990s, around 300,000 Indian farmers have killed themselves—a rate of about one every 30 minutes, which is 47 percent higher than the national average. The tragedy has become entangled in the rhetorical war around genetically modified seeds.

Some anti-GMO activists, including Indian organic-farming champion Vandana Shiva, have blamed the high suicide rates directly on biotech seeds—specifically, cotton tweaked by Monsanto to contain the Bt pesticide, now used on more than 90 percent of India’s cotton acreage. Shiva has gone so far as to declare them “seeds of suicide,” because, she claims, “suicides increased after Bt cotton was introduced.”

GMO enthusiasts, by contrast, counter that Monsanto’s patented seeds are a boon to India’s cotton farmers: They’ve boosted crop yields, driven down pesticide use, and alleviated rural poverty, a 2010 paper by the pro-industry International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) argued.

So which is it? According to a recent peer-reviewed paper from a team led by Andrew Gutierrez, an professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley’s department of environmental policy, science, and management, the situation is way too complicated to be aptly described by sound bites in a rhetorical war.

For their analysis, the team looked closely at yields, pesticide use, farmer incomes, and suicide rates in India’s cotton regions, both before and after the debut of Bt seeds in 2002.

They found that on large farms with access to irrigation water, genetically modified cotton makes economic sense—paying up for the more expensive seeds helps control a voracious pest called the pink boll weevil in a cost-effective way.

But 65 percent of India’s cotton crop comes from farmers who rely on rain, not irrigation pumps. For them, the situation is the opposite—reliance on pesticides and the higher cost of the seeds increase the risk of bankruptcy and thus suicide, the study finds. The smaller and more Bt-reliant the farm in these rain-fed cotton areas, the authors found, the higher the suicide rate.

Even so, the paper does not present Bt cotton as the trigger for India’s farmer-suicide crisis. Rather, it provides crucial background for understanding how India’s shift to industrial farming techniques starting in the 1960s left the majority of the nation’s cotton farmers increasingly reliant on loans to purchase pricey fertilizers, pesticides, and hybrid seeds, and eventually GM seeds, making them vulnerable to bankruptcy when the vagaries of rain and global cotton markets turned against them.

The authors note that cotton has been cultivated in India for 5,000 years, and until the emergence of the slavery-dependent cotton empire in the southern United States in the early 1800s, “India was the center of world cotton innovation.” In the 1970s, Indian cotton farmers turned to hybrid seeds that delivered higher yields as long as they were doused with sufficient fertilizer. Until then, the pink bollworm—the pest now targeted by Bt seeds—”was not a major pest in Indian cotton,” they write. But higher-yielding plants draw more insect pests, and so the new hybrid seeds also triggered an increasing reliance on insecticides. Bollworms evolved to resist the chemical onslaught and many of their natural predators (other insects) saw their populations decline, giving the bollworms a niche. Hence when Monsanto’s bollworm-targeting Bt seeds hit the market in the early 2000s, they were essentially an industrial-ag solution to a problem that had been caused by industrial agriculture.

As an alternative to Bt seeds, the paper shows, small-scale farmers can successfully plant varieties of cotton that ripen quickly, before bollworm populations emerge. As for the irrigated cotton farms that are now successfully using the Bt trait, the authors note that India’s large farms, like many of California’s, are tapping underground water that’s “unregulated and unpriced,” at rates much higher than natural recharge. They’re courting a problem that may make the feared bollworm look tame by comparison: “the impending collapse of ground water levels for irrigated cotton.”

Excerpt from:

No, GMOs Didn’t Create India’s Farmer Suicide Problem, But…

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No, GMOs Didn’t Create India’s Farmer Suicide Problem, But…

Even scientists who don’t study the climate think climate change is a big deal

by VilmaCorkill Posted on September 25, 2015

Even scientists who don’t study the climate think climate change is a big deal

By on 25 Sep 2015commentsShare

Only in a country where people treat science like it’s fashion advice from the Olsen twins — that is, subjective and not for everyone — do we have to read headline after headline about broken heat records. I mean, we all know what global warming means, right? Reporting on every uptick in average temperatures like it’s breaking news is arguably insane — delusional at best!

But sadly, we do live in such a country, and therefore have to keep reminding people that yes — climate change is a thing and we humans are largely responsible for it. In that spirit, a group of researchers at Purdue University surveyed nearly 700 non-climate-science scientists at Big Ten universities about their opinions on the matter, because the 97 percent consensus among scientists who actually do study the climate is still not doing the trick. Here’s what they found:

Of 698 respondents, about 94 percent said they believe average global temperatures have “generally risen” compared with pre-1800 levels, and 92 percent said they believe “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.”

Nearly 79 percent said they “strongly agree” and about 15 percent “moderately agree” that climate science is credible. About 64 percent said climate science is a mature science compared with their own field, and about 63 percent rated climate science as “about equally trustworthy” compared to their discipline.

Scientists’ beliefs by discipline. The vertical line is the average response. 

Environmental Research Letters image/J. Stuart Carlton

So basically: Scientists who don’t study the climate are also overwhelmingly on board with anthropogenic climate change. The researchers found no significant differences among disciplines on that point, but they did find that physicists and chemists were more likely to think of climate science as a less mature field than their own, which is understandable, since physics and chemistry are old as hell.

On an individual level, the researchers found that cultural and political values did play a role in scientists’ beliefs, proving once and for all that scientists are, in fact, human beings.

Linda Prokopy, one of the authors of the study and a professor of natural resources at Purdue, said in a press release that she and her colleagues also found a significant difference between scientists who relied on published scientific papers for information and those who relied on the media:

Respondents’ certainty in their beliefs on climate change appeared to be linked to the source of their climate information. Certainty was correlated to how much of respondents’ climate information came from scientific literature or mainstream media, Prokopy said. The more respondents relied on scientific studies for information on climate change, the greater their certainty that human activity is causing the Earth’s temperatures to rise.

“Climate literature is very compelling and convincing,” she said. “Scientists are not fabricating their data.”

There. We’ve heard what these non-experts have to say about climate change. Is everyone happy, now? Can we all agree that the experts aren’t lying and that science is more than just hear-say and witchcraft? No? Fine — next up we’ll poll 17-year-old basketball players and people who are into normcore.

Source:

Purdue study: Climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

, Purdue University.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get Grist in your inbox

See the original article here – 

Even scientists who don’t study the climate think climate change is a big deal

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Smart Solar, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Even scientists who don’t study the climate think climate change is a big deal

Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

by AnnelieseHXW Posted on September 24, 2015

Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

By on 24 Sep 2015commentsShare

Over the past few months, upwards of 50 countries have made their views on fighting climate change exceedingly clear. In submitting pledges to the United Nations in the run-up to the Paris negotiations, cabinets and diplomats the world over have spelled out exactly what their governments are prepared to commit to the global climate dilemma. Now, a team of economists from Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, and Scotland thinks it can leverage these positions to predict the outcome of the Paris talks in the same way football analysts might use players’ stats to predict the winner of the Super Bowl. (After all, COP21 will basically be C-SPAN’s Super Bowl.)

Viewing most national interests as frighteningly cemented, these self-dubbed “predictioneers” are employing a branch of economics called game theory to call the outcomes. Game theory is the math behind rational decision-making. In practice, what the economists’ work takes is figuring out how to convert negotiating blocs’ positions into streams of usable numbers. Climate Home has the scoop:

One method anticipates the bargaining positions of all main actors and blocs, from the United States, European Union to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

How salient is the issue of loss and damage – or climate compensation – for cyclone-menaced AOSIS, for example? How flexible can it be on the issue’s inclusion in a final pact? And what clout can it exert over other countries?

Those variables, deduced by researchers’ scanning of official UN submissions as well as conversations with negotiators, award a value for each “actor”.

Running actors’ values through game theoretic models produces a series of predictions for what observers can expect from the negotiations.

Sound a little too Nate Silver to be true? It might be. Things like political momentum and the reality of fatigued, hungover diplomats are tricky, if not impossible, to capture in game theory.

But in fact, researchers on the team have predicted U.N. climate talk outcomes before — with impressive accuracy. In 2009, before the notably boondoggled Copenhagen negotiations, two of the team’s economists independently predicted the unfortunate Copenhagen outcome (which failed to guarantee any legally binding international climate action). Here’s more from Climate Home:

Frans Stokman at the University of Groningen, predicted a weak, voluntary agreement which slightly deepened pledges made for the Kyoto Protocol, and pledged a limited adaptation fund.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, a self-styled “predictioneer” favouring science over punditry, too predicted the Danish summit would be a “bust”.

“Sacrificing self-interest for the greater good just doesn’t happen very often. Governments don’t throw themselves on hand grenades,” he wrote in a Foreign Policy article in October 2009.

Success in Paris won’t take governments throwing themselves on hand grenades, but it will take an immense amount of compromise — especially on behalf of developed countries. How optimistic should we be about these compromises? The economists are expected to reveal their predictions shortly before the negotiations begin in late November.

Source:

‘Predictioneers’ forecast Paris climate talks outcome with game theory

, Climate Home.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get Grist in your inbox

Jump to original: 

Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Hagen, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Smart Solar, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Can game theory predict what will happen at the U.N. climate negotiations?

Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

by NikiPaceecyot Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>
Jailhouse Coffee

Do prison cells sell? That seems to be the idea behind Solitary Sumatra, an organic, fair trade coffee blend sold by Jailhouse Coffee, a newish small-batch roastery in New York City. The coffee is not made by prisoners or ex-felons and the company’s only connection to incarceration is that, according to its website, “there is a ‘bighouse’ just near the roastery” in Queens.

The 83 marks scratched into the coffee bag far surpass the 15 days the United Nations specifies as the maximum amount of time anyone should spend in solitary confinement. Anything beyond that “constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 80,000 prisoners are in isolation at a given time in the United States. Some of these are the “worst of the worst,” but many are not. In New York, prisoners have been thrown in the hole for “wasting food” or having an “untidy cell or person.” On Rikers Island, not far from Queens, 16-year-old Kalief Browder spent long stretches in solitary confinement during the three years he spent in pretrial detention for allegedly stealing a backpack. Two years after his release, he committed suicide. Nearly two out of five suicides in prison happen in solitary confinement. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, President Obama, and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy have spoken out against the excessive use of solitary confinement in this country.

So who thought solitary confinement would make a good branding idea? Is it just hipster irony that makes our prison system’s most extreme aspects somehow cute? Perhaps it’s the Orange Is The New Black effect, a consequence of the popularization and romanticization of prison life. (Like the woman who dressed a girl in an orange jumpsuit and blackface for Halloween last year.)

I couldn’t reach anyone at the company to explain their marketing strategy. So far, they seem to have gotten little flack for their brand, though one person has taken it upon himself to circulate a petition asking the company to change its name. Jailhouse Coffee’s blends also include Solitary Peru, Good Behavior Organic Blend, and Chain Gang Espresso, which harkens to the time when black prisoners were used as free labor across the South.

Link:  

Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

You Can’t Go To Prison For Destroying The Economy, But Bad Peanut Butter Is Another Story

by AntoniaDWQ Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Food company executives who play a role in outbreaks that sicken and kill consumers now face the prospect of decades in prison because of a recent precedent-setting case and a crackdown by federal prosecutors.

Stewart Parnell, an executive from Peanut Corporation of America, a now-defunct company behind one of the worst Salmonella outbreaks to hit the US, was sentenced Monday to 28 years in prison. He sold contaminated food products that claimed nine lives and sickened more than 700 people in 46 states.

It is by far the most severe punishment ever given for criminal food safety violations. His brother, Michael Parnell, also a top official at PCA was sentenced to 20 years and quality assurance manager, Mary Wilkerson was sentenced to five.

The hefty sentences signal that the feds are stepping up prosecutions against high-ranking officials and underscores some of the challenges agencies face when they want to hold companies accountable. Still, the crimes committed by the Parnells could have led to much stiffer sentences. Stewart Parnell was convicted of 47 offenses, which qualified him for a sentence of up to 803 years—and he was facing life behind bars.

“Honestly, I think the fact that he was prosecuted at all is a victory for consumers,” says Bill Marler, a foodborne illness lawyer who represents more than 50 victims of the outbreak. “Although his sentence is less than the maximum, it is the longest sentence ever in a food poisoning case. This sentence is going to send a stiff, cold wind through board rooms across the U.S.”

The massive 2008 Salmonella outbreak prompted officials to strip 4,000 products made by 361 companies from store shelves, resulting in roughly $200 million in losses. Ultimately, the tainted food was traced back to PCA—a manufacturer that sells peanut-based-products to companies like Kellogg, Sara Lee, and Little Debbie, as well as government programs that produce food for poor children and the military. According to a federal investigation, company officials spent years covering up unsanitary production conditions, faking test results, and lying to customers and consumers when salmonella was detected in their facilities.

Salmonella victim Jacob Hurley with his father Peter J. Scott Applewhite/ AP

Jacob Hurley was one of the victims infected with salmonella in 2008 after eating one of his favorite snacks—peanut butter crackers. At the time, he was only 3-years-old. Hurley, now 10, survived and traveled with his father to the sentencing on Monday. “I think its OK for him to spent the rest of his life in prison,” he told the judge.

Nine victims, such as Clifford Tousignant, a Korean War hero with three Purple Hearts who became ill after eating a peanut butter sandwich died from their infections caused by contaminated food.

The indictment against Parnell, which relied on uncovered emails and investigations, revealed that between 2003 and 2009 PCA shipped products before the results of tests were complete. Parnell green-lighted the use of faked and fabricated certificates of analysis, documents that certify food has been properly tested. Even after Salmonella had been detected numerous times, the company continued to claim that their products were safe and sell them to customers.

In several emails Parnell instructs his employees to violate standards. After being told in 2007 that salmonella testing results would take longer than expected and shipping would be delayed, he responded, “Shit, just ship it.” Soon after an employee sent an email saying that some peanut totes were “covered in dust and rat crap,” to which Parnell responded “Clean em all up and ship them.”

After the outbreak, PCA was liquidated through bankruptcy proceedings.

“Our prosecution is just one more example of the forceful actions that the Department of Justice, with its agency partners, takes against any individual or company who compromises the safety of America’s food supply for financial gain,” said Acting Associate Attorney General Stuart Delery in statement after the sentence was announced.

While victims and advocates are pleased that the case is finally coming to a close and the Parnells are on their way to prison, Marler says he hopes more will be done to stop shoddy business practices that could lead to future infections.

Largely because of the outbreak linked to Peanut Corporation of America the FDA has introduced new rules, along with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)—a bill signed into law in 2011 intended to crack down on contamination before it reaches consumers. However, so far the agency has lacked the resources to fully implement them. Congress has appropriated less than half of what the Congressional Budget Office recommended was necessary to fund implementation of FSMA.

To make up for investigations into potential risks, Marler says the FDA has beefed up its prosecution of law-breakers.

And, in some cases, like Parnell’s it’s warranted, he added.

“I am not a huge fan of criminalization of things but I think there are instances where it’s necessary,” he says. “This is one of those necessary cases—the facts are so horrific and the clear knowledge that they had that they were shipping contaminated product.” But, he adds, “We would all be better served if we spent more money to have more FDA inspectors—and just avoided these problems to begin with.”

Continued: 

You Can’t Go To Prison For Destroying The Economy, But Bad Peanut Butter Is Another Story

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, Green Light, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on You Can’t Go To Prison For Destroying The Economy, But Bad Peanut Butter Is Another Story

Skin Cleanse – Adina Grigore

by Myrna Posted on September 18, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Skin Cleanse

The Simple, All-Natural Program for Clear, Calm, Happy Skin

Adina Grigore

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: February 17, 2015

Publisher: Harper Wave

Seller: HarperCollins


Breakouts. Dryness. Redness. Oiliness. If you&apos;re like most women, you&apos;ve been on a never-ending quest for perfect skin—or even just good skin—since adolescence. It&apos;s a frustrating pursuit to say the least, filled with one disappointing (and expensive) miracle solution after another. Why is it so hard to get good skin? Adina Grigore, founder of the organic skincare line S.W. Basics, would argue that getting clear, calm, happy skin is about much more than products and peels. Or, rather, it&apos;s about much less. In Skin Cleanse, she guides readers through a holistic program designed to heal skin from the inside out. We tend to think of our skin as a separate entity from the rest our bodies when in fact it is our largest organ. The state of our skin is a direct reflection of what our bodies look like on the inside. So Adina&apos;s program begins as any healthy regime should: with the basics for full-body health. That means eating plenty of fresh, whole foods; drinking more water; getting blood pumping and oxygen flowing to your cells through movement; and giving your skin a chance to repair and regenerate by resting. From there, readers are challenged to a skin cleanse that requires going product-free for twenty-four hours. Once detoxed, Adina then shows us how to overhaul our beauty routine, how to carefully add some products back in, and even how to make our own products at home, with advice and targeted solutions for specific skin conditions such as acne, dry skin, oily skin, and more.The secret to beautiful, stress-free skin is simple: it&apos;s an inside job.

See original article here:  

Skin Cleanse – Adina Grigore

Posted in FF, GE, organic, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Skin Cleanse – Adina Grigore

Grow Your Own Medicine: A Guide to Growing Health-Giving Plants in Your Own Backyard – Mim Beim

by Myrna Posted on September 16, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Grow Your Own Medicine: A Guide to Growing Health-Giving Plants in Your Own Backyard

Mim Beim

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: February 1, 2011

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Seller: HarperCollins


Create an organic medicine cabinet in your own backyard with this step-by-step guide to growing and using plant superfoods! the medicinal powers of herbs, vegetables and fruits have been revered for thousands of years. this practical guide shows you how to grow and use these plants to prevent diseases, treat everyday ailments and promote general good health. More than sixty plants and their properties are discussed in detail, from echinacea to fight colds and boost the immune system, to cabbage to ward off cancer; from thyme-oil antiseptic to ginger compresses for cramps; and from arthritis-relieving potato poultices to libido-boosting damiana tea. You will learn their medicinal properties, how best to administer them – in teas, tinctures, compresses, poultices and more – and, of course, how to grow and prepare them for use. Whether you have a small vegie patch – or the space to create one – or room in a courtyard or balcony for a few pots, this book will show you how easy it is to create an organic medicine cabinet in your own backyard. Plant your way to good health!

Visit link – 

Grow Your Own Medicine: A Guide to Growing Health-Giving Plants in Your Own Backyard – Mim Beim

Posted in FF, GE, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments Off on Grow Your Own Medicine: A Guide to Growing Health-Giving Plants in Your Own Backyard – Mim Beim

Driscoll’s Organic Strawberries Make a Big Move Forward

by AmparoWhitefoord Posted on September 15, 2015

FEATURED NONPROFIT PARTNERS

Copyright © 2015 Care2.com, inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved

logoff
my account
my care2

site feedback

ONSITE FEEDBACK FORM

Problem on this page? Briefly let us know what isn’t working for you and we’ll try to make it right!

See the original post: 

Driscoll’s Organic Strawberries Make a Big Move Forward

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Driscoll’s Organic Strawberries Make a Big Move Forward

Chipotle Says It Dropped GMOs. Now a Court Will Decide If That’s Bullshit.

by VictoriPhilpott Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

What should have been an easy public-relations win for Chipotle is turning into a major headache—but one that could have interesting repercussions in the public debate about genetically modified organisms.

Back in April, the fast-casual burrito chain announced that it would stop serving food prepared with genetically engineered ingredients. At the time it didn’t seem like a huge change, since only a few ingredients—notably the soybean oil used for frying—contained GMOs. (More than 90 percent of the soy grown in the United States is genetically engineered.) But as critics in the media were quick to point out, there was an obvious hole in Chipotle’s messaging: The pigs, chickens, and cows that produce the restaurant’s meat and dairy offerings are raised on feed made with GMO corn. (In fact, 70-90 percent of all GMO crops are used to feed livestock.) And don’t forget the soda fountain, serving up GMO corn syrup by the cup.

Last week, Chipotle got officially called out, when a California woman filed a class-action lawsuit against the company for allegedly misleading consumers about its much-publicized campaign to cut genetically modified organisms from its menu.

“As Chipotle told consumers it was G-M-Over it, the opposite was true,” the complaint reads. “In fact, Chipotle’s menu has never been at any time free of GMOs.”

Chipotle has never denied that its soda, meat, and dairy contain, or are produced with, GMOs. A spokesman, Chris Arnold, said the suit “has no merit and we plan to contest it.” Still, the case raises an unprecedented set of questions about how food companies market products at a time when fewer than 40 percent of Americans think GMOs are safe to eat (they are) and a majority of them think foods made with GMOs should be labeled.

The California statute applied in the lawsuit deals with false advertising: Allegedly, the “Defendant knowingly misrepresented the character, ingredients, uses, and benefits of the ingredients in its Food Products.” The suit then provides a cornucopia of Chipotle marketing materials, such as the image to the left, which implies that that taco has no GMOs in it—even though, if it contains meat, cheese, or sour cream, then GMOs were almost certainly used at some stage of the process. The suit goes on to detail how Chipotle stands to gain financially from this anti-GMO messaging. The upshot is that, according to the complaint, Chipotle knew its stuff was made from GMOs, lied about it, and duped unsuspecting, GMO-averse customers like Colleen Gallagher (the plaintiff) into eating there. (Gallagher is being represented by Kaplan Fox, a law firm that specializes in consumer protection suits. The firm didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

It will be up to the court to decide whether Gallagher’s claims have any merit. But there’s a big stumbling block right at the beginning: There’s no agreed-upon legal standard for what qualifies a food as being “non-GMO,” and thus no obvious legal test for whether Chipotle’s ad campaign is legit. In fact, several food lawyers I spoke to said this is the first suit to legally challenge the veracity of that specific claim, which means it could set a precedent (in California, at least) for how other companies deal with the issue in the future. That sets it apart from deceptive marketing suits related to use of the word “organic,” for example, for which there is a lengthy legal standard enforced by the US Department of Agriculture. (Organic food, by the way, is not allowed to contain GMOs.)

“There are many definitions of what constitutes non-GMO that are marketing-based definitions,” said Greg Jaffe, biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. “But nothing like the federal standard for organic labeling exists for GMOs at the moment.”

In the context of this lawsuit, that lack of clarity may work to Chipotle’s advantage, said Laurie Beyranevand, a food and ag law professor at Vermont Law School. Without specific guidelines to adhere to, Chipotle could basically be free to make “non-GMO” mean whatever the company wants it to mean (more on that in a minute). The question before the court is about the gap, such as it exists, between Chipotle’s understanding of that term and its customers’ understanding of it, when it comes to the meat, dairy, and soda at the heart of the suit.

Beyranevand said the soda could be a weak point for Chipotle. Even though the company’s website is clear that its soda is made with GMO corn syrup, customers could still be misled by the advertising into thinking it isn’t.

Meat and dairy are a different story, and there’s a bit of existing law that makes Chipotle’s rhetoric seem more defensible. In Vermont, the only state to have passed mandatory GMO labeling laws, meat and dairy products are exempted. And that makes some sense: Even if a chicken has been stuffed full of genetically modified corn its whole life, it’s no more a GMO than I would be if I ate the same corn.

“Chipotle is just sort of riding on the coattails of that state legislation,” Beyranevand said. In other words, Chipotle could have pretty good grounds to argue that a reasonable person wouldn’t confuse its advertising with the notion that livestock aren’t fed GMOs.

Of course, not everyone agrees with Vermont’s approach. That includes the Non-GMO Project, an independent nonprofit that has endorsed nearly 30,000 food products as being non-GMO over the past five years. The group won’t give its stamp of approval to meat products that have been fed GMOs. According to Arnold, Chipotle “would love to source meat and dairy from animals that are raised without GMO feed, but that simply isn’t possible today.”

a GMO by any other name…
Let’s zoom out to the broader issue: Why isn’t there a standard definition for what makes a food product count as “non-GMO”?

The closest thing is a bit of draft language the Food and Drug Administration published in 2001 that was meant as a nonbinding blueprint for companies that want to voluntarily label their foods as non-GMO. Turns out, that simple-sounding phrase is loaded with pitfalls. As “GMO” has gone from a specialized term used by biochemists to describe seeds, to broadly used slang for the products of commercial agriculture, its meaning has gotten pretty garbled. That makes it hard to come up with a legal definition that is both scientifically accurate and makes sense to consumers, and it leaves companies like Chipotle with considerable linguistic latitude.

First of all, there’s the “O” in GMO. A burrito, no matter what’s in it, isn’t really an “organism,” the FDA points out: “It would likely be misleading to suggest that a food that ordinarily would not contain entire ‘organisms’ is ‘organism-free.'” Then there’s the “GM”: Essentially all food crops are genetically modified from their original version, either through conventional breeding or through biotechnology. Even if most consumers use “GMO” as a synonym for biotech, the FDA says, it may not be truly accurate to call an intensively bred corn variety “not genetically modified.”

Finally, there’s the “non”: It might not actually be possible to say with certainty that a product contains zero traces of genetically engineered ingredients, given the factory conditions under which items such as soy oil are produced. Moreover, chemists have found that vegetables get so mangled when they’re turned into oil that it’s incredibly difficult to extract any recognizable DNA from the end product that could be used to test for genetic modification. So it would be hard, if not impossible, for an agency like the FDA to snag your tacos and deliver a verdict on whether they are really GMO-free.

The point is that Chipotle likely isn’t bound to any particular definition of the non-GMO label, and that we just have to take their word that the ingredients they say are non-GMO are, in fact, non-GMO. Lawmakers are attempting to clear up some of this ambiguity: House Republicans, led by Mike Pompeo (Kan.), succeeded in July in passing a bill that would block states from passing mandatory GMO labeling laws similar to Vermont’s. The bill is now stalled in the Senate, but it contains a provision that would require the USDA to come up with a voluntary certification for companies like Chipotle that want to flaunt their GMO-less-ness.

Until then, another solution would is to seek non-GMO certification from the Non-GMO Project, though the group would likely reject Chipotle’s meat products. In any case, Arnold said, neither Chipotle nor its suppliers are certified through the project, and they don’t intend to pursue that option.

“We are dealing with relatively niche suppliers for many of the ingredients we use,” Arnold said. “By adhering to a single certification standard, we can really cut into available supply of ingredients that are, in some cases, already in short supply.”

With all this in mind, here’s a final caveat: When Chipotle has its day in court, how we actually define what is or isn’t a GMO product might not matter too much, explained Emily Leib, deputy director of Harvard’s Center for Health Law. That’s because the California laws in question here are as much about what customers think a term means, as what it actually does mean.

“The court will ask, ‘Is there a definition of non-GMO or not?” Leib said. “They’ll say, ‘No,’ and then they’ll ask, ‘Is this misleading?’ How does this use compare to what people think it means?”

That’s what makes this case interesting, since the truth is that most of the burrito-eating public knows very little about GMOs. Does that make it illegal for Chipotle to leverage peoples’ ambiguous (and mostly unfounded) fears to sell more barbacoa? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, probably don’t eat too much Chipotle, anyway.

Read original article – 

Chipotle Says It Dropped GMOs. Now a Court Will Decide If That’s Bullshit.

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Chipotle Says It Dropped GMOs. Now a Court Will Decide If That’s Bullshit.