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Don’t underestimate the importance of Vermont’s passage of a GMO-labeling law. 


Tiny Vermont (population 626,000) is the first of what will likely be a number of states to confront America’s food oligarchy and try to force these cartels to actually do something their customers want. How will the oligarchs respond? 


Almost certainly not the way they should, which would be to adjust their food labels to include information about which ingredients are genetically modified. More likely, they will respond with legal maneuvering, possibly including a suit against Vermont, and heavy lobbying of their political pals in Washington to put a hold on the Vermont law, which is due to go into effect July 1, 2016, more than two years out. 

 

The oligarchs have been dodging and weaving like crazy to avoid having to disclose their heavy use of genetically-modified ingredients, for fear of losing business to foods without the stuff that makes people nervous (and likely sick). They spent heavily to defeat citizen initiatives requiring labeling in California and Washington in 2012 and 2013. Several states that passed labeling laws, like Maine and Connecticut, made them contingent on neighboring states passing them. 


The oligarchs say the GMO labeling requirement is too cumbersome, too costly, etc., etc. They say that, all while Coca Cola, one of the oligarchs, in a recent legal case maintained its Minute Maid subsidiary should be allowed to continue deceptive labeling that enables it to call its apple-grape juice (99 per cent of the ingredients) a “Pomegranate blueberry blend” to “support brain and body,” even though those ingredients are less than one per cent. (The fact that “support brain and body” is a health claim gets completely ignored in the legal arguments.)

 

We see the same behavior in the dairy arena, where the cartel stands in the way of any American research into the health benefits of raw milk, and opposes in states around the country any expansion of access to raw milk. The idea is to force-feed people the processed stuff, much the same as the idea is to force-feed Americans GMO-tainted food. 


Aside: why do I call these corporations and their executives “oligarchs”? Because much of our food system is controlled by a few large corporations. One example of this expanding oligopoly control is in America’s huge meat industry.  Here is how journalist Christopher Leonard describes the producers of chicken, pork, and beef in a new book, The Meat Racket: “Just a handful of companies produce nearly all the meat consumed in the United States…..a powerful oligarchy of corporations that determines how animals are raised, how much farmers get paid, and how meat is processed, all while reaping massive profits and remaining almost opaque to the consumer.” 

 

(The companies are Smithfield, Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill.) 

 

Then there is the oligopoly that controls America’s $10 billion cereal market. Four companies—General Mills, Kellogg’s, Pepsico, and Kraft Foods–are estimated to control more than 80% of the market. And, of course, these companies sell their breakfast cereals worldwide. Carbonated drinks, chips, and other processed foods are similarly dominated by a few.

 

Our media have fun with the notion of the Russian “oligarchs” who run that country, but have difficulty coming to grips with the reality that the U.S. is run similarly. 


Bottom line, the food oligarchy is afraid of the competition inherent in the labeling requirement, just as they are afraid of the competition inherent in widening access to raw milk. These corporations know that consumers will avoid products with GMO ingredients. The corporations will be forced to lower prices, and squeeze their profit margins, to convince people to buy these genetically altered products.


Oligarchs don’t compete. They beat up the competition, ignore their customers, anything to avoid being honest and forthright. Congrats to Vermont’s politicians for deciding to part company with the oligarchs.