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Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

by JoanSanderz Posted on March 21, 2013

Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

By John Upton

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/ Luiz RochaBlended Atlantic salmon / Chinook salmon / ocean pout, anybody?

What do you call a farmed Atlantic salmon with a Chinook salmon growth-hormone gene and a DNA splice from a cold-loving eel-like fish?

Tough to market.

Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, and other grocery chains that together run more than 2,000 stores across the U.S. announced this week that they would not sell AquaBounty Technologies’ AquAdvantage® Salmon, aka frankenfish, even if the Food and Drug Administration issues expected approvals.

From a press release put out by Friends of the Earth, which has been waging a campaign that helped convince the retailers to keep the freak fish off their shelves:

Stores that have committed to not offer the salmon or other genetically engineered seafood include the national retailers Trader Joe’s (367 stores), Aldi (1,230 stores), Whole Foods (325 stores in US); regional chains such as Marsh Supermarkets (93 stores in Indiana and Ohio), PCC Natural Markets (9 stores in Washington State); and co-ops in Minnesota, New York, California and Kansas.

“We applaud these retailers for listening to the vast majority of their customers who want sustainable, natural seafood for their families. Now it’s time for other food retailers, including Walmart, Costco and Safeway, to follow suit and let their customers know they will not be selling unlabeled, poorly studied genetically engineered seafood,” said Eric Hoffman, food & technology policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth.

The AquAdvantage® fish is a genetically engineered Atlantic salmon. Added to its genetic makeup is DNA taken from Chinook salmon that triggers fasters growth, particularly during the first two years of life. Because Atlantic salmon naturally grow only during the warmer months, scientists also inserted some DNA from the ocean pout, an eel-resembling creature that revels in the cold. The genetic switch from the ocean pout causes the salmon to churn out growth hormones year-round, further accelerating the speed at which it grows. (The ® means that you are not allowed to sell your own genetically engineered freak fish under the name “AquAdvantage.”)

Many Americans are apparently uncomfortable with this type of genetic manipulation, for some reason.

A San Jose Mercury News reporter stood outside a Trader Joe’s outlet on Tuesday and asked shoppers what they thought about the company’s decision. They seemed to like it.

“It definitely makes me want to shop here,” said Linda Terra of San Jose as her husband, Rod, loaded up their groceries.

The couple tries to eat seafood, especially salmon, at least twice a week.

“I wish everybody would label everything,” Rod Terra said. “What could it hurt?”

Well, Rod, maybe it would hurt the frankenfish’s feelings?

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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Major grocers on frankenfish: ‘Hell no, we won’t sell that!’

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Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

by gt67dx1 Posted on March 8, 2013

Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

By Susie Cagle

Out of the pure goodness of its big corporate heart, Whole Foods wants you to know if there are any GMOs in your $8 kombucha and $30 take-out salad.

Several states are kicking around proposals to require labels on genetically modified foods, but the (w)holier-than-thou natural foods giant waits for no government! It will wait for its suppliers, though. Whole Foods announced today that, by 2018, it will require genetically modified foods be labeled as such.

“We are as excited about this announcement as we are dedicated to supporting transparency and our customers’ right to know what’s in their food,” read the statement from Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb and COO A.C. Gallo. “By 2018, we will require our supplier partners to label products containing GMO ingredients, and we will work in collaboration with them as they transition to sourcing non-GMO ingredients or to clearly labeling products with ingredients containing GMOs.”

Here’s Robb reading more Whole Foods PR off a teleprompter. (Also, when I think Whole Foods offices I think earth tones, not hot pink, but that’s not a judgment.)

“We are the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency,” the statement reads. But the announcement comes on the heels of rumblings that its food culture foil and market dominator Walmart has been kind of on the same trip. Lately even Monsanto is kind of open to the idea of GMO labels. Are these really proactive policies, or are companies just seeing the writing on the wall and the legislation to come?

Either way, cool moves, Whole Foods. But I still kind of hate you, John “Crazy Eyes” “What’s the Big Deal About Climate Change?” “Unchecked Capitalism Rocks” Mackey.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Whole Foods to label frankenfoods by 2018

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Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

by pedzacastrzala87 Posted on January 31, 2013

Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

By Susie Cagle

Want to be able to tell the difference between a natural fish and a genetically engineered frankensalmon in the dystopian food future? It looks like you may not be required to live on the crunchy West Coast for that.

After California’s GMO-labeling Proposition 37 failed to pass last fall, bills that would require labels for genetically modified food are rolling in Oregon and Washington, and similar initiatives are picking up steam in Minnesota, Missouri, and New Mexico, as well as in Connecticut and Vermont, where GMO-labeling legislation failed to pass last year amid threats of legal action from Monsanto.

New Mexico could be the first state to pass such a law. State Sen. Peter Wirth of Santa Fe, who is sponsoring the legislation, says the bill is aimed at “leveling the playing field” for food actually grown in fields.

Minnesota is home to the headquarters of General Mills, Hormel, Cargill, and Land-O-Lakes, which were all big contributors to the fight against Prop 37, but citizens groups are pushing legislators to pass a label law there too (and the local Fox affiliate covers them pretty appropriately). Meanwhile, Missouri’s legislation would just target genetically modified meat and fish.

The most interesting take on the national GMO label fight comes from the belly of the beast: the International Dairy Foods Association, which just had its annual meeting. From Meat Poultry News:

Connie Tipton, president and chief executive officer of the International Dairy Foods Association, urged food and beverage manufacturers to not rest on their laurels following the defeat of Proposition 37, legislation that would have required the labeling of bioengineered foods sold in California, this past November. Tipton spoke Jan. 28 at the IDFA’s annual Dairy Forum meeting.

“The drumbeat for GMO labeling is as loud as ever and proponents are taking their show on the road,” she said. “They are training their eyes on other states… Moreover, they learned from their mistakes. We anticipate that these new initiatives will be better written with a better ground game to push them forward.”

Tipton added that Walmart’s GMO-labeling efforts were cause for concern.

“It announced this past summer it planned to sell a new crop of genetically modified sweet corn created by Monsanto. Nothing wrong with that, but a lot of us were scratching our heads when Wal-Mart added that it would label the product as containing GMO ingredients – even though the Food and Drug Administration has already said the product is safe. Given Wal-Mart’s size and market share, there are legitimate concerns that its decision on GMO labeling will force other retailers to march in lockstep behind the industry giant.

March in lockstep, eh? This is starting to sound familiar (and fascist), though GMO-labeling fascism seems more appealing than frankenfood-fascism, but maybe that’s just me.

Not to be completely outdone by states with fewer organic quinoa points-of-sale, supporters of California’s Proposition 37 have licked their wounds and swear to be back with another campaign to label GMOs next year.

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Campaign to label frankenfoods goes viral

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Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 19, 2012

Walmart bribed its way around Mexico’s environmental rules

By Susie Cagle

BREAKING: Walmart did another terrible thing!

grass_stained_feet

The retail giant is not just the biggest employer in the U.S. — it also dominates Mexico with 2,275 outlets. And it got there by playing very, very dirty. According to the second part of a New York Times investigation, Walmart de Mexico routinely bribed officials not just to get its plans bumped to the top of the pile, but to “subvert democratic governance.” This is how the company successfully built a Walmart in a Teotihuacán alfalfa field a mile from ancient pyramids that draw tons of tourists. (Now those tourists get a view of a boxy Walmart supercenter when they climb to the top.) The local leaders said no, so Walmart de Mexico paid a guy $52,000 and redrew the zoning map itself.

Frankly, this is not very surprising. But it’s damning as hell. From the Times:

Thanks to eight bribe payments totaling $341,000, for example, Wal-Mart built a Sam’s Club in one of Mexico City’s most densely populated neighborhoods, near the Basílica de Guadalupe, without a construction license, or an environmental permit, or an urban impact assessment, or even a traffic permit. Thanks to nine bribe payments totaling $765,000, Wal-Mart built a vast refrigerated distribution center in an environmentally fragile flood basin north of Mexico City, in an area where electricity was so scarce that many smaller developers were turned away.

But there is no better example of Wal-Mart de Mexico’s methods than its conquest of Mrs. Pineda’s alfalfa field. In Teotihuacán, The Times found that Wal-Mart de Mexico executives approved at least four different bribe payments — more than $200,000 in all — to build just a medium-size supermarket. Without those payoffs, records and interviews show, Wal-Mart almost surely would not have been allowed to build in Mrs. Pineda’s field.

The Times seems eager to point out that this is a Walmart problem, not a Mexico problem. These bribes were not, as Reuters puts it, “routine payments.” Except that in effect they actually were.

Walmart now says it’s all kinds of ready “to fully cooperate with the competent authorities in whatever investigation,”  Fox helpfully reports (even though the company abandoned its own internal investigation years ago). Perhaps this is because it could be facing “sizable fines.”

This is both vindicating and infuriating, like most times Walmart gets caught doing something terrible. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice might be investigating, but they aren’t commenting on the story, at least not yet. Meanwhile, shares of Walmart’s stock rose 30 cents today.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

by Myrna Posted on November 29, 2012

Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

By Susie Cagle

Would you like to fry up pink slime all day, and still be on food stamps? Well, you’re not alone. (Shocking, right?)

New York City food service workers at some of the nation’s biggest, baddest chains walked off the job this morning for a super-rare one-day strike against low wages.

Workers are organizing around the Fast Food Forward campaign at dozens of McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell, Domino’s, and Papa John’s locations city-wide, in an industry that has traditionally been devoid of if not outright hostile to union power. As Josh Eidelson at Salon reports, one 79-year-old McDonald’s worker has already been suspended this week for signing up coworkers to the campaign’s petition. From Salon:

New York Communities for Change organizing director Jonathan Westin told Salon the current effort is “the biggest organizing campaign that’s happened in the fast food industry.” A team of 40 NYCC organizers have been meeting with workers for months, spearheading efforts to form a new union, the Fast Food Workers Committee. NYCC organizers and fast food workers have been signing up employees on petitions demanding both the chance to organize a union without retaliation and a hefty raise, from near-minimum wages to $15 an hour.

Striking workers detailed strict working conditions and verbal abuse while on the job. Their current wages — $8.90/hour median in New York City, where the $7.25/hour federal minimum reigns supreme — don’t reflect the economic realities of the booming U.S. fast-food industry. Apparently recession America has a taste for Happy Meals.

From Sarah Jaffe at The Atlantic:

Fast food weathered the recession, and the biggest names are seeing big profits. Yum! Brands, which runs Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, saw profits up 45 percent over the last four fiscal years, and McDonald’s saw them up 130 percent. (After Walmart, Yum! Brands and McDonald’s are the second and third-largest low-wage employers in the nation.)

Raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.80 per hour would likely have a tiny effect on how much consumers pay for food, but it could cut deep into those corporate profits.

Fast-food workers are not just cooking and serving the pink slime to you — they have essentially become it, squeezed for profit through Yum! and McDonald’s capital meat grinders.

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Super-rare fast-food worker strike hits NYC

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