[Occupymendocino] [Fwd: Natural News: Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018]

[agnes at mcn.org]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: Natural News:  Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018
From:    "Bob Wilkinson" <row1330 at yahoo.com>
Date:    Sun, March 10, 2013 2:26 pm
To:      "Bob Wilkinson" <row1330 at yahoo.com>
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rom a friend of mine:
Friends and "investors":  Sell your Monsanto stock now.  Sell Dow and
Dupont while your at it. 

I hope this is the beginning of the end for GMO in our food.

b
 


Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018; here's how it
happened  (from Annie W.)
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor 

(NaturalNews) In a huge victory for the alternative media and grassroots
activism, Whole Foods announced on Friday that it would require GMO labels
on all products by 2018. (Click here for the press release.) This
announcement deals a significant blow to Monsanto, DuPont and all the GMO
pushers who openly admit that they want consumers to remain ignorant about
what they're eating.

It's a brilliant move for Whole Foods, given that by 2018, anyone who
wants to be certain whether they are avoiding GMOs will gladly choose to
do all their shopping at Whole Foods. After all, if Albertson's (for
example) doesn't require GMO labeling while Whole Foods does, in which
store would you rather shop? Whole Foods!

But the real story here is everything that led up to this. The turning
point in all this was, in my opinion, the 2012 release of the Organic
Spies video in which Whole Foods employees were caught on camera lying to
customers about GMOs.

Natural Newsbroke this story and was instrumental in getting the video
posted on our free speech protected video service TV.naturalnews.com, a
public location which could not be easily banned by Whole Foods. YouTube,
by comparison, routinely bans videos that blow the whistle on dishonest
corporate behavior, but TV.naturalnews.com hosts whistleblowing videos and
has so far resisted all attempts to have those videos banned or removed.
(We even host most of the Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory series,
including the "memory-holed" FEMA camp episode that has disappeared
everywhere else.)

This Organic Spies video proved to be hugely embarrassing to Whole Foods,
causing an uproar across the 'net and causing many customers to start
shopping elsewhere such as Green PolkaDot Box, which avoids carrying any
products containing GMOs.

Following the Organic Spies video, InfoWars reporters Aaron Dykes and
Melissa Melton launched a breakthrough video investigation that exposed
the "big Whole Foods lie" of claiming "Nothing artificial, ever" on the
side of their stores while secretly selling unlabeled GMOs in their
stores. We also documented the "Nothing artificial, ever" fraud here on
Natural News. GMOs are, of course, "artificial." They are engineered by
man, not created by nature. In this video, Whole Foods was caught in yet
another blatant, embarrassing lie.

The Prop 37 campaign was also in full swing during all this, and Whole
Foods refused to contribute a single dollar to the California ballot
measure. After being confronted and publicly shamed, a Whole Foods
executive did quietly contribute $25,000, but only after being called out
for failing to support the campaign.

Alternative media holds Whole Foods' feet to the fire
Add all this up and you get the impression that Whole Foods was actively
opposed to GMO labeling. And it was the alternative media that was holding
Whole Foods' feet to the fire. While the mainstream media refused to even
touch the issue (because mainstream media is nothing more than a
dumbed-down, cartoon-level disinfo broadcast for morons and sheeple), the
alternative media plowed full steam ahead. Natural News, InfoWars,
Mercola, the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible
Technology and many other organizations kept hammering the issue, and tens
of millions of grassroots activists made their voices heard in a
resounding way.

Through various back channels, Whole Foods got the message loud and clear
that there was no way they were going to be able to stop this. The
alternative media can't be easily bought off because the key people who
run the alternative media aren't in it for money (unlike the mainstream
media).

If Whole Foods didn't get fully behind the mandatory labeling of GMOs, it
was going to find itself in a runaway confidence crisis. After all, if
health-conscious customers can't trust Whole Foods to be transparent with
them about what's really in their foods, there's not much of a reason to
shop at Whole Foods, is there?

Whole Foods capitulates and decides to require labeling
Sometime between November 2012 and March 2013, Whole Foods executives made
a decision to finally get behind GMO labeling. They announced that all the
foods they carry would need to be labeled with GMO content by 2018. As
StreetInsider.com reports:

Whole Foods Market announced... that, by 2018, all products in its U.S.
and Canadian stores must be labeled to indicate whether they contain
genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It is the first national grocery
chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency.

On the surface, this was immediately heralded as a highly ethical
leadership decision by the market leader in health food retailing, but
behind the scenes an entirely different equation was being calculated.
Whole Foods CEO John Mackey never makes a decision unless it's in his
financial interest to do so, and as his history of false-identity Wild
Oats blogging shows, he's not beyond engaging in wild deceptions in order
to make more money for himself and his investors.

Ultimately, Mackey and the Whole Foods executives realized what I've been
trying to tell them for months: That if they didn't get behind GMO
labeling, they were going to lose everything. Promoting GMO labeling isn't
simple a choice of ethics for Whole Foods, it's a matter of economic
survival.
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