Maybe you’ve heard our recent news: our CE-Yo Gary Hirshberg will be changing his role here at Stonyfield so he can spend more time advocating for change in our current food system, especially the labeling of GMOs in our foods. We believe that we have the right to know what’s in our food and how it is produced. We’ve been busy here at Stonyfield fighting the good fight – continuing the work we’ve been doing for years – and would love to have you join us.
Here is some of what we’ve been up to recently:
1. Standing Alongside Just Label It
More than 500,000 people have joined us in submitting comments to the FDA in favor of labeling genetically engineered foods. That’s remarkable! We’re standing alongside Just Label It and asking all of our friends, fans, and yogurt lovers to join us.
We have no time to lose. The FDA is preparing to approve genetically engineered salmon, which would be the first genetically engineered animal on the market in the United States and a huge departure from the status quo. Plus, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is considering a proposal to deregulate corn engineered to be resistant to the herbicide 2,4-D, a major component in Vietnam-era Agent Orange. (In fact, some people are calling it Agent Orange Corn, for short.)
Watch the new video from filmmaker Robert Kenner, who produced and directed the Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary Food, Inc. If you too believe we all have a right to know what’s in our food, then write to the FDA right now.
2. Writing the First Consumer Guide to Genetic Engineering
“Before the GE experiment goes any further, we believe it’s critical that each of us be allowed to choose whether we wish to be human guinea pigs: Foods produced with GE ingredients must be labeled.” – from Label It Now
Gary, our Co-Founder and Chairman, and Britt Lundgren, our Director of Organic and Sustainable Agriculture, joined with Dr. Charles Benbrook, the Organic Center’s Chief Scientist to write an e-book called: Label It Now – What You Need to Know About Genetically Engineered Foods. The book cuts through the complicated scientific debate about genetically modified food to put forth a simple premise: We all have a right to know what’s in our food.
At just $2.99, Label It Now is available at iBookstore here and for download on iTunes here. All proceeds from the book go to support of the Just Label It campaign.
3. Making Our Voices Heard
We’re not shy about helping to educate on organic and the risks of genetically engineered foods and neither is Gary! He’s been out and about making some great – informative – noise and fostering important conversations recently.
Listen to Gary on NPR’s Diane Rehm show. Or read about the highlights of his talk on nutritionist Melinda Hemmelgarn’s blog.
Gary also teamed up with Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation and co-producer of Food Inc., to write an op-ed about your right to know what’s in your food that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. Read it here.
4. Helping You Get to Know Your Food
Just this month we launched an exciting campaign on iWillKnowMyFood.com to help us all make our food a little less of a stranger. We’ve started a space to help you get to know more about the food you eat. We’re sharing blog posts from experts, videos about Stonyfield’s farmers, origins, and ingredients sourcing, and some of the best food news articles and resources around. This month, for example, nutritionist Ashley Koff sheds insight into “What Your Refrigerator Predicts About You”.
We invite you to join in the conversation. Stop by and commit to get to know your food this year. Start by taking a look into your fridge and telling us what you want to know. Then check back to keep learning more!
I have yet to see any comments anywhere about the fact that 2-4-D accelerated use is not compatible with viticulture.We have a growing
wine industry in SW MI. The vinyards are usually interspersed with alternating crops of corn or soybeans. It is currently finable, with removal of ones spray liscence, to apply the herbicide after certain dates here.
I hate to see you using the agent orange hype misinformation about 2-4-D. While 2-4-D resistant corn is idiocy for sustainable agriculture the chemical does have it’s proper use in some circumstances. Agent Orange did have it as a major chemical component. The long range health problems that ensued were the result of DIOXINS that were added to the mix and then cooked at temperature as a chemical accellerant. Please get the story straight rather than using inflamatory buzzwords that do not go with the facts. 2-4-D is NOT Agent Orange.
I have used 2-4-D on restoration jobs to kill off invasive, non native, broadleaved and woody plant material so that native species could be reintroduced. The choice was made because hand labor was not affordable for the scale of the project and bulldozer work would have negated the whole point of the effort. Monsanto’s new resistant corn will at a certain point make 2-4-D another useless tool for the benefit of short term profit.
THANKS FOR RESPONDING! SO SORRY I didn’t notice the date … surfaced this morning again on Face Book. Grrrr!!!!
I just didn’t see how this could be possible!!! I only found you folks and your delicious yogurt recently and read your web site thoroughly … just did NOT want to believe the lie. I will set the record straight with the folks who posted it on FB today.
Thanks Kathy – we appreciate your help in sharing the right news with folks!
Best,
Amy
In today’s Huffington Post:
“A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.”
True?
If not, where did they get such an idea?
Hi Kathy –
Not true – we’ve never “surrendered” to Monsanto. We have been fighting against both them and GMOs for years and we’re actively continuing the fight today (as we share here in the post). The erroneous article you refer to is from last year, and it is still as inaccurate and divisive this January as it was last January when it came out. It’s also the wrong thing to be focusing on at a time when so much good is happening.
If you’d like to read more from our CE-Yo from last January, visit here: http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/2011/01/29/the-organic-community-must-come-out-swinging-at-the-right-opponents/
Best,
Stonyfield Amy
The entire idea that Monsanto or any other corporation should be allowed to genetically modify and PATENT life is insane to the core. Look at Monsanto’s track record of harassing and destroying farmers who have tried to save their crops from Monsanto’s poison. You are way off base by thinking that laying down and quietly squeaking, “at least please label it” will help the situation. It will not. You betrayed those who were counting on you to use some of your corporate leverage and help us fight the terrorism of GMOs. Back when Ben and Jerry’s started, they weren’t necessarily organic, but you could trust them because they were true advocates. You have shown that despite the “organic” label, you are not to be trusted. I am severely disappointed and will no longer buy your products. Good-bye.
Hi Karen -
Requiring the labeling of GE foods certainly isn’t the only battle in the fight against GMOs, but it is a major one – and one that you and other concerned consumers like you can participate in. That’s why we’re working so hard to ensure that as many people as possible join in. But we’re certainly not stopping there.
We’re also actively engaged in the fight against GMOs on the farms, at the FDA, in the courts, at the White House, and in Congress. In fact Gary Hirshberg recently stepped down after 28 years as our CE-Yo in order to dedicate even more time to this very issue. We are as passionate about organic food free of GMOs as you and we’re not going anywhere.
Best, Amy
On the Diane Rehm Show earlier this month, Gary Hirshberg agreed that people have a “right to know” if their food is being stored in containers that have been made from genetically engineered crops. Stonyfield has admitted that they do not source the corn for their yogurt cups from non-GE corn, and thus, very likely have been made from genetically engineered corn. Yet, this has not been labeled on the package. Does Stonyfield as a corporation believe that people have a right to know that their yogurt cups are made from genetically engineered crops? If so, why is there not a label indicating this on the package? (If a right to know means a label on the package.)
I ask this question not because I am concerned about genetically engineered crops, nor products produced from them – in fact I think the corn-based yogurt cups are a great thing. However, Stonyfield is arguing that the products being produced by other companies need to be labeled in a manner that is trying to warn consumers as if they were dangerous. At the same time, there appears to be no desire to “warn” their own consumers about the same thing for their own products, and it came out only after some concerned customers complained. Where is the consistency?
Hi Karl –
As we shared before here on the Buzz when you asked in October, we believe in the importance of labeling genetically engineered foods so we all can make informed choices about the foods we eat and feed our families. What’s different about our packaging of course is that it’s not food. Because of the process of making the corn based plastic, there are no genetically engineered proteins in the final packaging and no risk of GMOs migrating into the food.
We’ve certainly tried to be transparent on our website and in social media about the use of genetically engineered corn in our packaging and our investment in Working Landscapes certificates ensuring that farmers grow an amount of non-GMO corn equivalent to the amount of corn we use for our cups. Through our purchases of the corn based packaging we’re actually increasing demand for non-GMO corn. Unfortunately, it’s really hard to communicate all that on little yogurt cups.
(Visit our website to learn more: http://www.stonyfield.com/healthy-planet/our-practices-farm-table/sustainable-packaging/multipack-cups-made-plants/our-use-cor)
Best, Stonyfield Amy
Have you considered starting a petition and collecting signatures? There are websites out there that let you create petitions, and help you use Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and others to help with the collection of signatures. For each signature digitally collected, the sites send an email announcing that “so and so” has signed onto the petition requesting…
I’m not much of an activist, but even I started my own petition asking the federal government to repair the damage to Louisians’s coastal ecosystem, towards which it (the federal government) has been the primary contributor.
http://www.change.org/petitions/restore-louisianas-wetlands-and-coastal-ecosystem
If you start one petitioning the FDA to identify GMO products on labeling with whatever other specifics you’d want to include, I’d be willing to sign it.
Hi Peter – There is a petition for you to sign and we would love for you to add your name. Visit JustLabelIt.org and tell the FDA you demand products made with GMOs to be labeled. We appreciate your adding your voice and joining us!
Best, Amy