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Organic Consumers Association was founded in 1998, in part to shut down plans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow foods containing genetically engineered ingredients…
Read moreDedicated To People, The Planet, and All Its Inhabitants – Since 1996
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Organic Consumers Association was founded in 1998, in part to shut down plans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow foods containing genetically engineered ingredients…
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Ben & Jerry’s will no longer state on its packaging that the milk and cream used in its ice cream comes from “happy cows.”That’s (a little) good news for consumers who have been misled for year…
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October 16 was World Food Day. So we thought it fitting to remind consumers why it’s critical to boycott industrially produced meat, and why we should never give up the battle to end factory farm…
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You depend on your local farmers for the healthy food you buy at your community’s natural food store and farmers’ market.Unfortunately, many small family farms struggle to succeed financ…
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First, let’s say a big, collective “Thank you.”Thank you to the 12 jurors who listened attentively and critically, during long days of testimony, then deliberated with …
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Splashed across the Ben & Jerry’s website are cartoon-like pictures of happy cows romping in green pastures. There’s a reason those cows are depicted by drawings, not …
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Bugs—and farmers—are shaping the entire world.
That’s the message, or at least part of the message, Jonathan Lundgren delivered in his TEDxBrookings talk on regenerat…
A mighty band of citizen activists, along with the Nebraska Farmers Union, are taking on a city council and a corporate giant. And they need your help.
Retail giant Costco wants to build the largest chicken factory farm in the U.S., in Fremont, Nebraska. The city’s elected officials have approved the project. But the people and farmers in surrounding cities, whose lives will suffer the most, are fighting back.
Costco and the Fremont City Council are singing the same old tired tune, that a giant factory farm will bring jobs to the city.
What they don’t want Fremont residents to know, is that those jobs will be low-paid and dangerous, that the water pollution generated from another huge factory farm will be devastating for Nebraskans, whose water is already badly compromised by agricultural runoff, and that local farmers will get ripped off under contracts stacked in favor of the retail giant.
We’re so impressed with what Nebraska Communities United is doing to stop this project—including organizing workshops to help local farmers farm profitably, sustainably and independent of corporate control, that we’re asking for your help.
Your local natural health food store could never get away with stocking its shelves with Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller. Toxins that cause cancer and birth defects don’t belong in “health” food stores.
So how do some of these stores get away with stocking Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, when our testing revealed that ten of 11 flavors contain glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup?
This week, we called 290 of the best natural health food stores and co-ops nationwide to find out which ones sell Ben & Jerry’s.
We’re relieved to report that most—198—don’t. But unfortunately, 92 (31 percent) do. Here’s the list of natural health food stores and co-ops that sell glyphosate-contaminated Ben & Jerry’s. If your store is on this list please take this letter to the store manager and ask him or her to stop selling Ben & Jerry’s. After your visit, fill out this form to let us know what happened.
Most of the stores that sell Ben & Jerry’s display it right next to the organic brands they sell—a move that misleads consumers into thinking Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is organic, too.
It’s tough to even know where to start with this one, but here goes.
A company called Impossible Foods, with $257 million in venture capital funding, recently launched its fake, genetically engineered Impossible Burger—even though, the FDA (supposedly in charge of food safety) can’t say if the burger’s “secret sauce”—soy leghemoglobin—is safe.
How can Impossible Foods put soy leghemoglobin in food if the FDA hasn’t deemed it safe? The New York Times explains:
The F.D.A.’s approval is not required for most new ingredients. Companies can hire consultants to run tests, and they have no obligation to inform the agency of their findings, a process of self-affirmation.”
While you let that sink in . . . here’s the other half of that story. Impossible Foods asked the FDA to weigh in on the safety of its “secret sauce” ingredient, even though it wasn’t required to. The agency did. This is what regulators wrote in a memo to Impossible Foods:
“F.D.A. believes the arguments presented, individually and collectively, do not establish the safety of soy leghemoglobin for consumption,” nor do they point to a general recognition of safety.”
Despite that statement, the Impossible Burger went to market. Because, as it turns out, a company can introduce into the food system a product or ingredient that the FDA says may not be safe—as long as the FDA doesn’t say the product is unsafe.
That’s one issue with the Impossible Burger. Here’s the other. According to Max Goldberg, author of “Living Maxwell,” Impossible Foods uses genetic engineering to make the secret sauce that the FDA won’t say is safe. In his column, which appeared on the same day as the New York Times article, Goldberg raised the question of genetic engineering, and whether Impossible Foods is misleading consumers. Goldberg explains how the Impossible Burger is made: