With Vermont’s GMO-labeling bill set to go into effect on July 1st, federal efforts to kill this bill — via the DARK Act — have still not died.

The DARK Act, a federal bill which would make it illegal for states to label GMOs, was passed in the House last year but was narrowly defeated in the Senate several weeks ago.

We know that Republicans absolutely do not want Vermont’s bill to go into effect and are still trying to push the DARK Act through the Senate. What is making more news as of late is that Senator Debbie Stabenow, an influential Democrat from Michigan who has taken $500,000 in donations from Monsanto, Dow, and Coca-Cola, wants the DARK Act to pass as well.

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I don’t want to be an alarmist and make things out to be worse than they are, but we are truly on the precipice of organic disappearing as we know it.

Why?

The very dangerous H.R. 1599 (also known as the DARK Act – the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act) just passed a House subcommittee and is expected to go to the House floor for a vote any day now. Representative Collin Peterson (D-MN), ranking member of the House Agriculture Committee, has said quite confidently that it will pass in the House and the only question is whether it passes in the Senate. Read more »

As it stands now, 64 countries around the world require GMOs to be labeled — but the U.S. does not.

Since the federal government refuses to change this policy, states have been taking matters into their own hands by either passing GMO-labeling laws (Vermont) or banning the cultivation of GMOs (Oregon, Hawaii).

Needless to say, this trend isn’t sitting well with any of the big GMO and chemical companies. Read more »

Despite the fact that organic is more popular than ever and companies such as Walmart and Target are significantly boosting their offerings, one would think that support for organic in Washington, D.C. would be growing as well.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Not only is support for organic not growing, the Obama administration and his USDA are doing everything they can to weaken organic standards and dismantle the authority of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), an independent, 15-member advisory board which helps to oversee the industry and make important recommendations.

THE SUNSET RULE

One of the most important policies that we have in organic is something called The Sunset Rule.  What this means is the following. Read more »

Yesterday afternoon I got an email from my friends at the Pesticide Action Network with the best piece of GMO-labeling news yet – Congress in the state of Vermont passed the very first GMO-labeling bill with no strings attached!

If you’re wondering why I used the words “with no strings attached”, there is a specific reason.

This is because Maine and Connecticut previously passed their own GMO-labeling bills but each of those had trigger clauses. So, they won’t go into effect unless other neighboring states pass their own laws as well. Read more »

Very recently, a piece of dangerous legislation was introduced into Congress that would deny your right to know if food is genetically-engineered or not.

Dubbed the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act”, this bill was co-sponsored by U.S. Representatives Mike Pompeo, a Republican from Kansas, and G.K. Butterfield, a Democrat from North Carolina.

Unfortunately, there is nothing “Safe” or “Accurate” about this deceptive bill, and organic advocates are correctly calling it the “Deny Americans the Right-to-Know Act (DARK Act)”.

This shameful piece of legislation would: Read more »

As you may very well be aware of right now, the organic food movement recently lost I-522, the GMO-labeling initiative in Washington State, 51% to 49%.

Our opponents outspent us by approximately $22M to $8M, and from what I hear, the negative and relentless ads were absolutely pounding the airwaves, similar to what happened in last year’s California vote with Proposition 37.

I am greatly appreciative of the effort that the campaign leaders put forth and the tremendous generosity that every donor exhibited, most notably David Bronner from Dr. Bronner’s. Despite the fact that we lost, more Americans than ever know about GMOs and the importance of GMO-labeling. This fact cannot be underestimated.

Yet, the majority of politicians in Washington D.C. still do not support a federal GMO-labeling law, and the only two states that have passed GMO-labeling bills, Connecticut and Maine, have serious requirements that must be met in order for the laws to kick in. The truth is that we are nowhere close to where we need to be. Read more »