HUGE VICTORY! EPA pulls registration for Dow's Enlist Duo herbicide, citing high toxicity levels 25NOV15

EARTHJUSTICE, the Earth's lawyers, wins another for us! From +Earthjustice .....

The EPA just pulled registration for Dow’s Enlist Duo herbicide!

In a huge victory that you helped win, the EPA just pulled registration for Dow’s highly toxic Enlist Duo—created for use on the next generation of genetically engineered crops. Enlist Duo is a highly toxic herbicide that blends glyphosate, a probable carcinogen that is wiping out the monarch butterfly, with 2,4-D, a poison used during the Vietnam War as an active ingredient in Agent Orange. It’s a pesticide that is simply too dangerous for humans and animals! Yet the Environmental Protection Agency approved this highly toxic herbicide cocktail for widespread use on genetically engineered corn and soybean crops. With your help, we challenged the EPA’s reckless decision…and today we won! Responding to litigation, the EPA announced it is revoking the registration of Enlist Duo, stating that the combination of these chemicals is likely significantly more harmful than it had initially believed. This is a huge victory that you helped win! Thank you! Every day, we’re up against powerful corporate interests that will stop at nothing to put profits ahead of people and the planet. But today we proved that by coming together, we can stand up to these powerful industries and win! More than 1 billion pounds of pesticides are being dumped onto U.S. crops every year—threatening your family’s health, drifting into the air, seeping into waterways, endangering farmworkers and threatening the survival of endangered species. But with you by our side, Earthjustice will continue fighting to reform our broken chemical system, targeting the most dangerous chemicals and advancing sustainable agriculture. As we head into a holiday centered around food and taking care of those we love, this victory is even more sweet! Thank you for standing with us as we take on the dirtiest industries of our time—and win! Happy holidays to you and yours,

Trip Van Noppen President READ MORE

MONSANTO, GMO'S, TRANSPARENCY & THEIR SHAREHOLDER MEETING 23JAN14

monsanto is one of those evil companies that believes they are beyond reproach. Some of their shareholders, their investors, like Harrington Investments Inc ( http://harringtoninvestments.com/ ), have other ideas about that, and they want to challenge Monsanto to come clean about GMO crops at the shareholder meeting next week. SumOfUs will be there with a media campaign, lobbying investors and maybe even demanding the right to be heard as shareholders if they are able to buy some stock to gain the right to speak. Contribute to their campaign if you can (I did), every little bit helps, just click the link...


Wow -- already over 6,000 of us have donated, and organizers are rushing to Monsanto HQ to support this crucial shareholder vote. If you haven't already, can you chip in now to help us secure ads in the local media so Monsanto knows we're watching?

Monsanto: it's one of the greatest corporate scandals of our time. This mega-corporation has paid off our politicians, taken over our regulators, and bullied public opponents into submission while it silently monopolizes our food system with its genetically-engineered products.

Now a brave group of Monsanto shareholders are making a stand -- the crucial vote is only one week away, and they desperately need our support to force Monsanto to face up to the risks associated with GMOs. Monsanto has been keeping us and its shareholders in the dark for too long -- this shareholder resolution tells Monsanto to be open with the risks of GMO. 

This is a serious shareholder proposal, and some big, credible investors are already supportive. But many of the biggest investment and retirement funds that invest OUR money are lining up to vote with Monsanto bosses against transparency.

These big institutional investors think that no one's watching them -- and unless we do something now, they'll be right.  Together, we can make sure shareholders know what's up and that we're watching -- and secure their votes against Monsanto's corporate racket. 

The vote happens in just one week. We understand if you can't, but if just 5,000 of us can chip in now, we can launch our urgent campaign to tell Monsanto to come clean on GMOs.

Here's just some of what we could do if we all chip in now:

• Secure advertising in Monsanto's home town of St Louis, Missouri, so that shareholders hear our message as they arrive to vote and know we're watching
• Send organizers to St Louis to raise a media storm outside the shareholder meeting with creative tactics, to make sure the public knows what's happening
• Buy a small, strategic stake in Monsanto -- so that we can speak out as shareholders ourselves and demand they act

This shareholder resolution is legitimate, serious business -- Harrington Investments Inc. is telling Monsanto to come clean, and they need other big shareholders to back them. If the resolution gets a high vote, it would send a very clear signal that Monsanto should disclose the risks associated with GMOs: including contamination of non-GMO crops, damage to "non-target organisms" like bees and other pollinators, and soil contamination.

But Monsanto's board is refusing to back the proposal, despite claiming to be transparent and even though the resolution doesn't require them to disclose any proprietary information. Meanwhile, the company has spent more than $15 million is California and Washington alone to defeat proposals to label GMO food -- a measure that over 90% of Americans support.

Can you chip in now to stand up to Monsanto and support these brave shareholders in their campaign? We know you might not be able to, but if you can we really appreciate your support.

Big institutional shareholders invest the funds of people like us -- but too often they vote against our own interests and cozy up to management. It's only when we publicly hold them to account that we can change this. We're already reaching out to big Monsanto shareholders to call on them to act -- but we need to be able to tell them that we've got the whole SumOfUs community behind us, and we need to be able to show them that we're ready to make a media storm at the shareholders' meeting to hold them to account.

We know what we need to do: get institutional investors to speak to the expert advisors to win their support, show thse investors we'll be there to hold them to account, and to keep piling the pressure on with national and international media coverage -- but we can't do it unless we all come together to make it happen. If we don't, then Monsanto's shareholders will know that no one is watching when they vote down this crucial resolution on GMO transparency.

Can you chip in now to fund our campaign to tell Monsanto to come clean on the risks associated with GMOs? This is the only shot we'll get to directly change the direction of Monsanto this year.

Thanks for all you do,
Paul, Lisa, Johnny and the rest of us. 

SumOfUs is a worldwide movement of people like you, working together to hold corporations accountable for their actions and forge a new, sustainable path for our global economy.

How Dr. Bronner's Got All Lathered Up About GMOs 4NOV13

I have used Dr Bronner's soaps for years (I especially love the almond and lavender soaps) because they are great soaps that are gentle on the environment and because of the company's use of hemp in it's products, their support of the legalization of hemp in the U.S. and their social and environmental activism. It is way cool Mother Jones has published this article, here it is for you.....

Best known for tingly soaps with wacky labels, the company has become one of the biggest players in the battle over labeling genetically modified ingredients.

—By Josh Harkinson

| Mon Nov. 4, 2013 3:00 AM PST

Yes on 522 logos on Dr. Bronner's soap bottles: "Totally unprecedented in the world of product labeling." Dave Gilson

It's midmorning at the hive of cheap buildings that serves as the global HQ of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, and, as usual, David Bronner isn't working on anything to do with soap. Sure, his phone is ringing off the hook with business calls and a rep from Trader Joe's is visiting tomorrow, but the 40-year-old CEO—who looks like a 6-foot-5 raver version of Captain Jack Sparrow—could care less. A Burning Man amulet dangles on a hemp necklace over his tie-dye shirt as he leans in toward his computer screen, staring at what really matters to him: the latest internal poll results for Washington Initiative 522, a ballot measure that would require the labeling of foods containing genetically modified organisms.
The initiative, which Washingtonians will vote on tomorrow, is one of the costliest in state history: Its proponents have spent a little more than $7 million, while their opponents in biotech and agribusiness have poured in $22 million.* Dr. Bronner's has donated a whopping $1.8 million to the Yes on 522 campaign. (That's on top of $620,000 it gave in support of a similar California ballot measure last year.) At stake, Bronner says, is consumers' right to decide what they put in their bodies. "If we don't win the right to label and enable people to choose non-GMO, then everything is going to be GMO."

The GMO battle is the latest in a long line of feisty political campaigns waged by Dr. Bronner's, the lovably weird cleaning products dynasty best known for its tingly peppermint liquid soap with the earnestly logorrheic label. ("Absolute cleanliness is Godliness! Teach the Moral ABC that unites all mankind free, instantly 6 billion strong we're All-One.") Since it was founded in 1948 by Bronner's grandfather, the Southern California company has become a soapbox for a variety of causes—from the elder Bronner's religious universalism to its recent campaigns to legalize hemp and marijuana, clean up fair trade and organic standards, and combat income inequality. Activism and charitable donations consume about half of the company's healthy profits. "I feel that if we are not maxed out and pushing our organization to the limit, then what are we doing?" says Bronner.
Embracing lefty lifestyle politics might not seem like the best way to grow a business—until you sit on the orange velour couch in Bronner's Tibetan-flag-draped office in Escondido and watch the phone light up with calls from buyout firms. In the 15 years since Bronner took over, annual sales have grown 1,300 percent, from $5 million to $64 million. Along the way, the company's castile soaps have gone from hippie niche products to staples on the aisles at Target. And yet Bronner has twice refused offers from Walmart to carry his soaps, even at full price, because he can't stomach the chain's politics and crummy worker pay and benefits. The best way to go mainstream, he has found, is to be as unapologetically countercultural as possible.

"Doctor" Emanuel Bronner and his famous liquid soap Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap

At a time when companies strive to project authenticity and altruism, Dr. Bronner's remains unique. "Dr. Bronner's has always stood out on its own," says Joel Solomon, the president of Renewal Partners, a venture capital firm that invests in socially responsible businesses. "Their activism as a company is not engineered; it wasn't coached by a public relations firm. It is the real thing. Dr. Bronner's does their thing the way they think it should be done and nobody is going to change them." Dr. Bronner's shares a small but lucrative niche with socially conscious companies such as Working Assets (annual sales: $100 million) and Patagonia ($540 million). Yet none of those brands can match Dr. Bronner's idiosyncratic vision.
Bronner's grandfather, Emanuel Heilbronner, was born into a German Jewish family of soap factory owners in 1908 and immigrated to the United States in 1929. His parents died in Nazi concentration camps, and he dropped "Heil" from his last name because of its associations with Hitler. More interested in godliness than cleanliness, Bronner—not really a doctor—invented a Judeo-Unitarian pop religious philosophy, publicizing its tenets on the labels of the soap bottles that he gave away at his lectures. He became so obsessed with spreading his All-One faith that he and his sickly wife put their three children in foster homes for long stretches so he'd have more time to travel and speak. In 1945 he was arrested after a particularly fervent speech at the University of Chicago and committed to a mental hospital. He escaped and fled to Los Angeles, where he founded Dr. Bronner's All One God Faith, which now does business as Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps.
"The soap was there to sell his message," David Bronner tells me, "and if you didn't want to hear it, he didn't want to sell to you." Emanuel Bronner's cosmic ideals and his soap's 18 suggested uses (including as a contraceptive douche—since removed) found a following on communes and hiking trails, even though Bronner wasn't exactly a flower child; he hated communists and never smoked pot. Bronner's son, Jim, rejected his father's mystical ramblings and went to work for a chemical company, where he developed a firefighting foam for Monsanto (it doubles as fake snow on movie sets). But in 1988, he stepped in to rescue Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps after it lost its nonprofit status and declared bankruptcy, recapitalizing it as a for-profit company.

"The activism side of the company enables us to take risks that no sane company would."

At first, David Bronner (Jim's son) wasn't sure he wanted to become the next standard-bearer for the soap-making clan. After graduating from Harvard in 1995 with a biology degree, he wound up in Amsterdam and immersed himself in its psychedelic drug culture. "I just had my life explode on many levels of identity," he recalls about a late-night ecstasy and LSD trip at a gay trance club. These experiences and a lot of reading eventually opened his eyes to the value of his grandfather's All-One philosophy, and the power of the soap company as a vehicle for change. In 1997, he let his dad know that he was ready to work for the family business, but only "on activist terms." A year later, his father died of lung cancer and Bronner, at the age of 25, became the new CEO.
Early on, Bronner decided that he'd rather feel good about his job than worry about making a ton of money. In 1999, he capped the company's top salary at five times that of the lowest-paid warehouse worker. He employs a lot of people he met at Burning Man, including Tim Clark* (official title: Foam Maestro), a buff guy whose job mostly consists of driving a psychedelically painted foam-spewing fire truck to music festivals, which is about as close as the company gets to actual marketing. (Dr. Bronner's has run ads in Mother Jones.) Bronner also employs lots of grandmotherly ladies like office manager Nina Vujko, an intensely loyal, 32-year employee whose office is plastered with photos of her coworkers' babies.
Limiting executive pay and spending virtually nothing on advertising left a lot of extra cash for improving the products and funding social campaigns—which have often gone hand-in-hand. For years, the soap had included an undisclosed ingredient, caramel coloring. As the new CEO, Bronner wanted to remove it for the sake of purity, but feared that die-hard customers would assume the new guy was watering down the product. So he decided to incorporate hemp oil, which added a caramel color while also achieving a smoother lather. But there was a hitch: A few months after he'd acquired a huge stockpile of Canadian hemp oil, the Bush administration outlawed most hemp products. "Technically, we were sitting on tens of thousands of pounds of Schedule I narcotics," Bronner recalls.

Dr. Bronner's CEO David Bronner Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap

Rather than destroy the inventory, he sued the Drug Enforcement Agency to change its stance on hemp, which comes from a nonpsychoactive strain of cannabis. Adam Eidinger, who now heads the company's activism efforts in Washington, DC, served DEA agents at agency HQ bagels covered with poppy seeds (which, in theory, could be used to make heroin) and orange juice (which naturally contains trace amounts of alcohol). In 2004, a federal court handed Bronner a victory, striking down the ban and allowing him to keep his stores of hemp oil.
The success of the hemp campaign convinced Bronner to push his company ever closer to the bleeding edge of the progressive movement. In 2003, Dr. Bronner's became the world's first soap company to win organic certification. Then it sued rival companies such as Kiss My Face and Estée Lauder that were using the "organic" label as window dressing. When Bronner couldn't find certified organic and fair trade sources of palm, coconut, and olive oil, he created his own in Ghana and Sri Lanka, and scaled up small existing projects in Israel and Palestine. (His coconut oil business now accounts for 12 percent of company sales, almost as much as bar soap.)
Bronner has been arrested twice for his hemp activism—first in 2009 for planting hemp seeds on the DEA's lawn to protest a ban on domestic cultivation, then last year for milling hemp oil in front of the White House inside a metal cage designed to thwart the cops. Now he's talking about partnering with renegade American farmers to manufacture the nation's first line of domestically grown hemp-based foods. Obviously, that sort of thing isn't on the agenda of competing green brands owned by corporate multinationals. "The activism side of the company enables us to take risks that no sane company would," Bronner notes. "But the point of what we are doing is to fight, and the products serve that."

"Technically, we were sitting on tens of thousands of pounds of Schedule I narcotics."

Nowhere has that been more evident than in the GMO fight in Washington. While many organics companies have contributed to Washington's 522 campaign, none has gone to the mat like Dr. Bronner's, which prominently displays a Yes on 522 ad on its soap labels. "Taking sides on a political campaign like that is totally unprecedented in the world of product labeling," Robert Parker, the president of Label King, the printer of the Dr. Bronner's labels, tells me as we float among the breakers during a company "board meeting"—an early morning surf at Carlsbad's Terramar Beach with Bronner and a handful of his employees and friends.
On the day I met with Bronner, Eidinger was arrested in Washington, DC, for posing as a Monsanto lobbyist and dumping $1,600 in dollar bills from a balcony inside a Senate office building. The company's director of social action, Eidinger is also the brain behind Occupy Monsanto and a fleet of cute "fishy foods" art cars (Fishy Sugar Beet, Fishy Tomato, etc.) that have been crisscrossing Washington state to make light of how GMOs sometimes incorporate fish genes. (The pro-522 TV ads have taken a tamer approach, playing up consumer rights and countering the claims that labeling will raise food prices.)
Bronner falls on the more measured side of the anti-GMO camp. "I have no in-principle objection to genetic engineering or synthetic biology," he explains, pointing out his background in biology and his dad's work for Monsanto. His beef with GMOs has less to do with ambiguous fears about "frankenfoods" than with the well-documented effects of the widespread deployment of herbicide- and pest-resistant genetically modified crops. While those breakthroughs were meant to cut down on the need for chemical inputs, studies have found that they've instead bred new superbugs and superweeds that, in turn, must be suppressed with ever more and stronger pesticides and herbicides. "Far from freeing us from the chemical treadmill," Bronner says, "GMOs are doubling down on it."
Bronner brings me to a bright, 120,000-square foot warehouse down the road from a Home Depot—his company's future headquarters and factory store. There Bertine Kabellis, a spunky, Haitian-born factory manager, details the plans to make the blandly corporate space feel more like home. The factory store will include a "fragrance bar," an empty bottle refill station, and a hemp activism diorama featuring a Bronner lookalike mannequin sorting through cannabis plants in a cage. "So it's going to be really, really rad," Kabellis says. "We're going to have Dr. Bronner pinhole glasses for sale."
"Leopard-print Speedos?" Bronner wants to know. "Which I have to get for Palm Springs Pride," he adds, thinking out loud. "I'm gonna rock 'em."
Kabellis is explaining the layout of the new organic, farm-to-table employee cafeteria when Bronner interrupts her with a message from Eidinger, who's just been released from jail. A photo shows him in his Monsanto lobbyist outfit rolling around in a pile of dollar bills.
"Oh my gosh, he has no shame!" Kabellis says. "He's dangerous!"
"That's so ridiculous," Bronner says, slipping his phone back into his baggy hemp trousers with a huge smile on his face. "It's so rad."

Correction: Updates have been made to this story. The original version overstated the amount of money raised by proponents and opponents of Initiative 522. It also incorrectly reported that Foam Maestro Tim Clark has tattoos. Mother Jones regrets the errors.

Josh Harkinson

Reporter

Josh Harkinson is a staff reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips at jharkinson (at) motherjones (dot) com. RSS | Twitter

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Behind the Burrito: 5 Things Chipotle's Ads Don't Tell You 25SEP13

CHIPOTLE may be better for you than mcdonalds or burger king or those other places, but I don't like their deceptive and manipulative advertising campaigns. so they are just another fast food joint for me to avoid, and be better off for it. From Mother Jones.....

The restaurant touts organic cilantro, locally sourced veggies, antibiotic-free meat, and naturally raised pigs. Does it live up to its sustainable-food reputation?

—By Dana Liebelson

| Wed Sep. 25, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

Chipotle Mexican Grill, the popular burrito chain that has more than 1,500 restaurants worldwide, hit the advertising jackpot earlier this month when it released a Pixar-style commercial that went viral and turned the restaurant into an overnight poster child for sustainable food. The advertisement, set to a mournful Fiona Apple song, depicts an animated scarecrow discovering the truth about factory farms—and then deciding to start his own farm instead (the scarecrow's farm is apparently vegetarian, because the animals magically disappear).

The restaurant chain has pushed hard to separate its image from McDonald's, a former investor in the company, and revamp itself as a sustainable-food choice for Americans who are against global warming and antibiotics, and in favor of fresh, locally sourced food. In its advertisements, the company throws around the word "natural" a lot—but unlike "organic," that doesn't have an actual USDA definition. So how well does Chipotle actually stack up? In an email, Chris Arnold, a spokesman for Chipotle, tells Mother Jones that "Chipotle is probably more transparent about the ingredients we use than any other national restaurant company. We have never professed to being perfect. Rather, the commitment we have made is to constant improvement, and we are always working to find better, more sustainable sources for all of the ingredients we use."

Here are five questions raised in Chipotle advertisements:

1. Does Chipotle support genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?

One of the main characters in Chipotle's scarecrow video is a creepy bird that flies around the factory farm and appears to be some kind of hybrid between a crow and a robot. In another scene, bird-robots are pumping mysterious chemicals into a chicken, inflating it like a beach ball. The video clearly implies that messing with Mother Nature is bad news—and Chipotle doesn't do it. Arnold says that "the film is about a host of issues in agriculture and industrial food production—the overuse of antibiotics, harsh crowding of animals, and the high degree to which so much food is processed. But there are no GMO references, either literal or symbolic."

According to its website, most of Chipotle's products contain genetically modified organisms (GMO), which accelerate the pesticides arms race and have not been adequately tested for long-term health effects. Chipotle has taken the laudable step of publicly backing GMO labeling and aiming to "eliminate GMOs from Chipotle's ingredients"—but the restaurant isn't there yet. According to Chipotle's website, all soy bean oil and corn products contain GMOs. That doesn't sound so bad, except that Chipotle chicken, steak, fajita vegetables, rice, tortilla chips, and tortillas all contain one or both of these items. (Restaurants in the New York City metropolitan area are an exception; they don't use soy bean oil.) Additionally, Arnold tells Mother Jonesthat the feed given to cows and pigs "very well could be GMO, given the prevalence of GMO crops in this country. Non-GMO feed is not part of our protocol."

2. Do Chipotle pigs, chickens, and cows frolic in big grassy fields?

The scarecrow ad wasn't the first time Chipotle has pushed the message that its animals frolic in fields (to pop music.) In 2011, it released the animated commercial above, set to a Coldplay song. Arnold, the Chipotle spokesman, says, "I think the way we portray our suppliers is very consistent with how they operate in reality" and that Chipotle uses "a number of naturally raised meat suppliers." Pork suppliers that fall under "naturally raised meat" are Niman Ranch Pork Company and Du Breton (you can see a Chipotle video with the founder of Niman Ranchhere). Niman Ranch's website says the farm takes many admirable steps to ensure its pigs are ethically raised, such as giving them a 100 percent vegetarian diet, veterinarian care, and allowing sows to have 64 square feet to share with their young. But the image in the commercial, that all the pigs are hanging out in a pasture, might not be accurate. Pigs at Niman Ranch aren't required to have outdoor access. They can be housed in hoop buildings with sunlight, instead. "Growing and finishing hogs"—the kind that you eat—are only requiredto have 8 to 18 square feet of space each, depending on weight, if they are housed in a structure that permits outdoor access. In cases where pigs are housed in hoop buildings, they only get 5 to 14 square feet. Access to to pasture or fields is "recommended" but not required. Drew Calvert, Niman Ranch's director of communications, tells Mother Jones that "we cannot speak to Chipotle's advertising, claims or videos" and "the number of farmers who raise hogs for Niman Ranch fluctuates, but a majority of the farmers raise animals outdoors."

The New Yorker also reports that some of Chipotle's beef is bought from Meyer Natural Foods, which finishes feeding cows in feedlots—so the beef isn't 100 percent grass-fed. (Arnold said over the phone that most of Chipotle's beef is "raised on pasture" but not 100-percent grass fed.) Meyer's website doesn't list a requirement for square feet of space for cattle, instead it says its farms must meet the more subjective, "adequate space for comfort" standard. (Meyer did not immediately respond to request for comment.) Arnold also noted that "chickens are raised in chicken houses, but with more space per bird than conventionally raised chicken [in factory farms.]"

3. Are most Chipotle ingredients locally sourced?

This clever billboard implies that if Chipotle were to talk about all of its "locally sourced" ingredients, it wouldn't fit on a snappy advertisement (again, "natural" has no federally regulated definition and can mean virtually anything). Chipotle's definition for "locally sourced" means that an ingredient was grown no more than 350 miles from a restaurant—which is 50 miles closer than the USDA recommendation—a worthy goal. But right now, the only locally sourced ingredients at Chipotle are onions, avocados, peppers, tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro—all of which are mixed with nonlocal items to produce the items you see on the menu. And all of which could probably fit on a billboard, with plenty of room. Arnold says using "local" in its advertisements is not misleading, because "when we advertise programs like this (whether our local produce program or our naturally raised meat program), we do it only when those things are available. Unfortunately, we can't get local produce year-round." He does note that Chipotle will have used more than 15 million pounds of local produce this year.

4. Does Chipotle ever use animals that are given antibiotics ?

Factory farms use antibiotics on animals to promote growth, even in the face of terrible health conditions. The resulting "superbugs" can even have harmful effects on humans—for example, women have started getting urinary tract infections that are resistant to antibiotics, a problem that is being attributed to chicken factory farming. Steve Ells, Chipotle founder, chairman and co-CEO, said in an August statement, "We decided to start serving meat from animals that have never been given antibiotics or added hormones more than a decade ago…And we continue to be committed to the elimination of antibiotics that are used to promote growth in livestock being raised in confinement operations." Right now, Chipotle allows animals that are sick to be given antibiotics, but they are not permitted to return to Chipotle's supply and are instead sold as conventional meat. Ells said the company is "willing to consider" allowing animals to rejoin after they've been treated with antibiotics. Only about 80 percent of Chipotle beef is raised without antibiotics (or growth hormones) because of supply shortages—the rest is sourced from conventional farms, although Chipotle tries to notify customers when that is the case.

5. Is most Chipotle food organic?

 

Chipotle regularly brags about its organic cilantro, its cotton products, and how it's doing more than the rest of the industry to promote organic food. And that may be true—but organic pickings at Chipotle are still slim. (Chipotle's Arnold says, "Twitter is somewhat limited for communications like that because of the 140-character limit, but I don’t think they ever imply that our food is 'organic.'") According to the Chipotle website, the only organic items—unlike the word "natural," organic has a strict USDA definition—are beans, oregano, avocado, and cilantro, and potentially jalapenos and rice. And judging by Chipotle's Twitter account, Chipotle isn't revealing on its website that ingredients, like beans, labeled "organic" are not entirely organic. (Arnold argues, "We are quite careful in labeling these things so our customers know what we have and where.")

So if you're headed off to lunch after reading this article, and you want to eat organic, avoid GMOs, and get food that's locally sourced—your best best is to go to a grocery store, read the labels very carefully, and make a sandwich. But if that's not an option, you're far better off going to Chipotle than McDonald's, where if you order a burger—literally just a bun, meat, and Big Mac sauce—you're eating more than 60 ingredients. Good luck, America.

Reporter

Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared inThe Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | TWITTER

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Do you know what's in your food? & Senator Merkley vs. Monsanto, Tell the Senate: Repeal the Monsanto Protection Act 22MAI13

WE have the right to know what is in our food. If there wasn't something wrong with GMO / GE food the industry wouldn't be fighting this bill in Congress. Even the prc and Russia (along with 60 other countries) require this labeling! Click the link to tell your Representative and Senators to pass the Boxer-DeFazio bill mandating genetically engineered labeling of our food. AND the monsanto protection act needs to be repealed. This should have never become law, and Sen Jeff Merkley D OR has introduced a bill to repeal this legislation, click the link below to tell your Senators to pass his bill! 

Do you know if the foods you’re eating contain ingredients that are genetically engineered? Right now, there is no law that says food containing genetically modified ingredients must be labeled. Consumers should have the right to know what is in their food, and make the decision about what food they want to buy for themselves. Join our friends at Food & Water Watch, and tell your members of Congress to support the Boxer-DeFazio bill to label genetically modified food. -- Gene Let's Label Genetically Engineered Foods Tell Your Members of Congress to Co-sponsor the Boxer-DeFazio bill! We deserve the right to know what's in our food. Send your members of Congress a message today! Can you feel it? The groundswell of grassroots support to label genetically engineered foods is overwhelming. Communities all over the country are coming together to force action on the state level, and Congress is taking notice. Ask your members of Congress to co-sponsor federal legislation to label GE foods! By now, you've probably heard about the "Monsanto Protection Act," a rider that was added to the budget bill needed to keep our government running. It seriously limits the ability of our federal agencies to protect consumers against harmful genetically engineered (GE) crops. Monsanto is never going to stop using its money to infringe on our right to safe, healthy food, but we can fight back by giving consumers critical information about what we're eating. Email your members of Congress to support the Boxer-DeFazio bill to label GE foods! It's critical that we win on GE labeling at the state level, and we're working hard with our partners on the ground to make that happen. At the same time, we need strong, uncompromising federal legislation to ultimately ensure that all Americans have the right to know what's in their food. Just as labels list fat, sodium and sugar, labels should tell consumers whether the food we eat contains GE ingredients. It just makes sense. Over 60 countries, including China, Japan and Russia, require GE foods to be labeled. Shouldn't we be next?  Take action to support federal legislation for GE labeling: http://act.foodandwaterwatch.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=749 Thanks for taking action, Sarah Alexander Deputy Organizing Director Food & Water Watch act(at)fwwatch(dot)org Tell the Senate: Repeal the Monsanto Protection Act The petition to your senators and Senate leadership reads: "The Monsanto Protection Act is an outrageous and dangerous giveaway that forces approval of genetically modified foods ahead of our safety. Please support Senator Merkley's amendment to repeal this shameful act of Congress." "One of the most outrageous special interest provisions in years." That’s what Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) calls the Monsanto Protection Act, which became law in March.1 Now we have an opportunity to stop it. Senator Merkley has proposed an amendment to the Senate Farm Bill that would repeal the Monsanto Protection Act – but it will take serious grassroots pressure to even make sure the amendment comes up for a vote. Tell the Senate: Repeal the Monsanto Protection Act. Click here to automatically sign the petition. Cynically dubbed the "Farmer Assurance Provision," the Monsanto Protection Act allows Monsanto and other companies to ignore existing food safety rules, and continue selling genetically modified seeds even if a court has blocked them from doing so. Even worse is how this shameful giveaway became law. It was inserted anonymously, and without review into the must-pass budget bill to avoid government shutdown in March. CNN said that "the law passed without most of Congress even knowing about it."2 Jon Stewart put it a different way: "The laws of the most powerful nation on earth are written with the same level of accountability as internet comments."3 Even from our dysfunctional Congress, this was stunning. Tell the Senate: Repeal the Monsanto Protection Act. Click here to automatically sign the petition. Our system of ensuring the safety of genetically modified foods is already insufficient, and wrought with industry influence. The FDA and USDA routinely approve foods without sufficient review, and often rely on shoddy industry-generated studies to determine the safety of GMO foods. The courts provide a vital check to allow us to challenge approvals that were conducted too hastily – as when federal courts found the USDA’s 2009 approval of Monsanto’s GMO sugar beets to have been based on an insufficient review. But the Monsanto Protection Act strips the courts of the power to halt seed sales, and actually compels the USDA to approve products whose approval the courts have challenged. It’s so outrageous, the USDA says the provision might not be enforceable.4 Now our legislators have an opportunity to undo this appalling act of putting special interests like Monsanto ahead of our health and the safety of our food. Urge the Senate to take action now: http://act.credoaction.com/go/675?t=5&akid=7959.179403.jF2AMC. Thanks for fighting industry influence in our food. Elijah Zarlin, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets Learn more about this campaign 1. "'Monsanto Protection Act' Repeal Effort Officially Backed By Sen. Jeff Merkley," Huffington Post, 5/20/13 2. "Last Minute Legislation: Bad for Our Health," CNN, 3/29/13 3. "Jon Stewart explains the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’," Mother Nature Network, 4/12/13 4. "Group says Monsanto law skirts courts, requires approval of genetically engineered seeds," Politifact, 3/29/13

USDA decision could increase your exposure to this toxic pesticide 12APR12

EVERYONE living in an area where corn is grown should be concerned about this pesticide / herbicide and take the time to send an e mail to the USDA asking them to deny dow chemical's request to allow increased use of 2,4-D (part of the deadly Agent Orange herbicide cocktail). You know this company,  dow/union carbide, they brought us the environmental disaster at Bhopal, India that has killed approximately 20000 people....click the link to the EPA before 27APR12.

Unless we act quickly, a dangerous weed killer linked to cancer and birth defects could become much more widely used in U.S. agriculture. The pesticide is called 2,4-D and it doesn't just taint the crops it's sprayed on: once released, it travels through the air, seeps into the ground and contaminates our drinking water. We can prevent the rampant overuse of 2,4-D by asking Department of Agriculture officials to reject a profit-minded proposal to sell genetically engineered corn that won't die when sprayed with the poison. But we have just two weeks to convince them. Click here to send a letter urging the USDA to reject Dow's dangerous proposal. When it enters the human body, 2,4-D causes cell damage and hormonal disruption, which can result in reproductive harm and diseases like lymphoma. This pesticide is so hazardous that it has been banned in several other countries. NRDC asked the EPA to protect Americans, but the EPA is refusing to take any action. Without that support, the USDA's decision is even more critical. If the USDA grants Dow's request, it will mean more farmers around the country will spray much greater amounts of 2,4-D on their fields. If we can show the USDA that the public doesn't support this proposal, we can counter pressure from Dow and make the case for public health over corporate profits. Send a letter today urging the USDA to oppose Dow’s hazardous plan.