(This article originally appeared on Organic Insider but because of its importance and urgency, it is being re-posted on Living Maxwell. Please become an Organic Insider subscriber today.)

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In mid-June, President Trump received a tremendous amount of attention for signing an executive order directing the USDA, FDA and EPA to make it easier for genetically-engineering plants and animals to enter the food supply.

At face value, this seemed to be an ominous development. Yet, industry observers were not particularly impressed. Read more »

(The Impossible Burger from Impossible Foods)

As Beyond Meat’s very successful IPO is bringing a lot of attention to the alt-protein category, it is important to take a look at what exactly are in these food products.

One popular name in this space is the Impossible Burger, a product we first wrote about in 2017 when Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents uncovered that the FDA disagreed with the company’s safety assessments of the burger’s main ingredient — soy leghemoglobin. However, the company continued selling it to the public anyhow without informing consumers about the FDA’s very serious concerns.

The issue this time around with the Impossible Burger is the amount of glyphosate that it contains. Read more »

Based on what we have seen from the current administration’s USDA — the scrapping of the organic animal welfare rules, allowing hydroponics in organic even though it is a complete violation of the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, and turning a blind eye to ‘organic factory farms’ – should anyone be the least bit surprised that the recently released GMO-labeling rules completely fail the American consumer? Read more »

(Photo credit to Samuel Levy)

With the ag-biotech industry having made incredible progress brainwashing consumers and politicians into thinking that GMO foods are perfectly safe, the fact remains that no independent, long-term safety studies of these foods have ever been conducted on humans.

And because the general public has been falsely convinced into believing that GMOs are safe and government oversight has been minimal, scientists are pushing genetic engineering into other areas that could spell potential disaster for our planet and our survival. Read more »

In the summer of 2016, President Obama signed an absolutely horrible GMO-labeling bill into existence.

Two years later and with the proposed standards of this bill recently released to the public, we now see just how deceptive and confusing this piece of regulation is.

Here are a few of the major points of the GMO-labeling law, which is formally known as the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard.

1) The standard defines “bioengineered” food as food “(A) that contains genetic material that has been modified through in vitro recombinant deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) techniques; and (B) for which the modification could not otherwise be obtained through conventional breeding or found in nature.”

First and foremost, a GMO-disclosure rule should make it clear and easy for consumers to know whether a food is genetically-modified or not.

The truth is that most people have no idea what “bioengineered” means, and using this seldom-used, scientific term is confusing to shoppers.

Replacing “GMO” or “genetically-modified” — terms that have been used by consumers for decades — with “bioengineered” is both disingenuous and deceptive. 

Second, the definition of “bioengineered” does not give us any clarity about whether the next generation of GMO technologies, such as gene-editing, synthetic biology and RNAi, will be covered under this rule. This is critically important.

2) Companies will have three options to disclose the presence of “bioengineered” foods – text, symbol or QR codes. QR codes are inherently discriminatory since nearly 100 million Americans do not have a smartphone.

The proposed bioengineered symbols with a smiley face, grass, a blue sky and sunshine — all of which are supposed to be neutral — give off the impression that “bioengineered” foods are healthy!

3) It is still uncertain if heavily processed, genetically-modified sugars, syrups and oils will require a label. Read more »

Following in the footsteps of Campbell’s Soup, General Mills has just announced that it will label all GMOs in its products.

In its press release, the company says that with Vermont’s GMO-labeling bill going into effect on July 1st, it wouldn’t make sense to label GMOs in its products just for that state. So, whatever GMO-labeling requirements that Vermont will mandate, General Mills will put those same labels on its products for every state in the country. Read more »

Many people are under the impression that organic crops will just “always be there”.

Meaning, we don’t have to worry, we’ll just go to the local farmers market or Whole Foods, they’ll always have organic. These people will figure out any potential problems.

Yet, if you look behind the scenes and learn what is happening with alfalfa, a main source of feed for animals in the organic meat and dairy industries, you’ll quickly realize that the situation for organic is very dire. Read more »