Major Food Manufacturers Push to Label Genetically Modified Products as “Natural”

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Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Food manufacturers who use genetically modified (GMO) ingredients want permission from the federal government to stamp their products with the word “natural.”

The Grocery Manufacturers Association has asked the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to approve their plan, which would mean any food containing GMO corn, sugar and other such ingredients could be sold as “natural.”

One advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), blasted the food companies’ proposal.

Scott Faber, vice president of the EWG, called the association’s request “audacious.”

“It’s like they’re trying to get the government to say night is day and black is white,” Faber told The New York Times.

The request comes as food manufacturers are increasingly under attack from opponents of GMO ingredients. At least 65 lawsuits are pending in various courts aimed at forcing companies to stop using the word “natural” to describe products with GMO elements.

PepsiCo settled one such lawsuit in August over its use of the phrases “All Natural,” “All Natural Fruit” and “Non-GMO” on bottles of Naked Juices. The company said it would remove “All Natural” from the drinks’ packaging and pay consumers $9 million.

However, PepsiCo will still use “non-GMO” on the juices, even though they are not certified as such.

Cancer Warning: Coke And Pepsi Change Recipe

Friday March 09, 2012 - SKY News

Coca-Cola and Pepsi are changing the recipes for their soft drinks to avoid being forced by law to put a cancer warning on the label.

The caramel colouring in the drinks will contain lower levels of 4-methylimidazole, which has been added to the list of carcinogens in California law.

Coca-Cola's recipe is being changed across the US - but will not be changed in Britain or the rest of Europe.

While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning~~Diana Garza-Ciarlante, from Coca-Cola

Under the legislation, drinks containing a certain level of carcinogens must bear a cancer warning label.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo account for almost 90% of the fizzy drinks market in America.

The changes have already been made for drinks sold in California.

The companies said the new recipes would be rolled out across the US to streamline their manufacturing processes.

Diana Garza-Ciarlante, a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola, said: "While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a scientifically unfounded warning."

The company later said that while its manufacturers had been asked to change the caramel ingredient, its "secret formula" was not being altered.

The American Beverage Association said the new standard was based on one study linking the chemical to cancer in mice and rats, but added there was no evidence showing that it causes cancer in humans.

The Food and Drug Administration said a person would have to drink more than 1,000 cans a day to reach the doses administered that have shown links to cancer in rodents.

Global Day of Action: Occupy Our Food Supply

Friday, February 24, 2012 by Common Dreams
Food justice advocates rise up to confront corporate control of our food system


An alliance of Occupy groups, environmental and food justice organizations have called for a global day of action on February 27 to resist corporate control of our food system and to work towards a healthy food supply for all.

Occupy Our Food Supply is a call facilitated by Rainforest Action Network and is supported by over 60 Occupy groups and over 30 organizations including Family Farm Defenders, National Family Farms Coalition and Pesticide Action Network.

Ashley Schaeffer, Rainforest Agribusiness campaigner with Rainforest Action Network says of the day of action:

"Occupy our Food Supply is a day to reclaim our most basic life support system – our food – from corporate control. It is an unprecedented day of solidarity to create local, just solutions that steer our society away from the stranglehold of industrial food giants like Cargill and Monsanto the devil.”

Occupy Our Food Supply supporter Vandana Shiva says:

"Our food system has been hijacked by corporate giants from the Seed to the table. Seeds controlled by Monsanto the devil, agribusiness trade controlled by Cargill, processing controlled by Pepsi and Philip Morris, retail controlled by Walmart - is a recipe for Food Dictatorship. We must Occupy the Food system to create Food Democracy."

Occupy Wall Street’s Sustainability and Food Justice Committees also issued a letter in support of the day of action:

“On Monday, February 27th, 2012, OWS Food Justice, OWS Sustainability, Oakland Food Justice & the worldwide Occupy Movement invite you to join the Global Day of Action to Occupy the Food Supply. We challenge the corporate food regime that has prioritized profit over health and sustainability. We seek to create healthy local food systems. We stand in Solidarity with Indigenous communities, and communities around the world, that are struggling with hunger, exploitation, and unfair labor practices.”

“On this day, in New York City, community gardeners, activists, labor unions, farmers, food workers, and citizens of the NYC metro area, will gather at Zuccotti Park at noon, for a Seed Exchange, to raise awareness about the corporate control of our food system and celebrate the local food communities in the metro area.”

Vandana Shiva: "We must Occupy the Food system to create Food Democracy."

"When our food is at risk, we are all at risk."

In an op-ed on the Huffington Post today, Farm Aid president Willie Nelson and sustainable food advocate Anna Lappé, supporters of the day of action, emphasize that the consolidation of our food supply is harming the environment, food safety and farmers:

Our food is under threat. It is felt by every family farmer who has lost their land and livelihood, every parent who can't find affordable or healthy ingredients in their neighborhood, every person worried about foodborne illnesses thanks to lobbyist-weakened food safety laws, every farmworker who faces toxic pesticides in the fields as part of a day's work.

When our food is at risk we are all at risk.

Over the last thirty years, we have witnessed a massive consolidation of our food system. Never have so few corporations been responsible for more of our food chain. Of the 40,000 food items in a typical U.S. grocery store, more than half are now brought to us by just 10 corporations. Today, three companies process more than 70 percent of all U.S. beef, Tyson, Cargill and JBS. More than 90 percent of soybean seeds and 80 percent of corn seeds used in the United States are sold by just one company: Monsanto the devil. Four companies are responsible for up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. And one in four food dollars is spent at Walmart.

What does this matter for those of us who eat? Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, the destruction of soil fertility, the pollution of our water, and health epidemics including type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and even certain forms of cancer. More and more, the choices that determine the food on our shelves are made by corporations concerned less with protecting our health, our environment, or our jobs than with profit margins and executive bonuses.

This consolidation also fuels the influence of concentrated economic power in politics: Last year alone, the biggest food companies spent tens of millions lobbying on Capitol Hill with more than $37 million used in the fight against junk food marketing guidelines for kids.

The Occupy Our Food Supply website indicates that the action is Inspired by the theme of CREATE/RESIST, and that in addition to confronting the corporation control of our food supply, we must work towards solutions to make healthy food accessible to everyone. It invites people to share their fair food solutions on their Facebook page and on Twitter using the #F27 hashtag.

* * *

Eric Holt-Giménez, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First Executive Director,writes that while the demand to fix the food system seems reasonable, it does not address the "inequitable foundations of the global food system."

The goal of food justice activists is a sustainable and equitable food system. Their strategy is to actively construct this alternative. Tactics include community gardens, CSAs, organic farming, etc. The problem is that this combination of strategy and tactics only addresses individual and institutional inequities in the food system, leaving the structure of the corporate food regime intact. The food justice movement has no strategy to address the inter-institutional (i.e. structural) ways that inequity is produced in the food system. By openly protesting the excesses of capitalism, Occupy does address this structure. This is why the convergence of Occupy and the food justice movement is so potentially powerful -- and why it is feared. The political alignment of these movements, however, is no small challenge.

McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

Department of Health putting fast food companies at heart of policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease
* Felicity Lawrence
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 November 2010

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

In an overhaul of public health, said by campaign groups to be the equivalent of handing smoking policy over to the tobacco industry, health secretary Andrew Lansley has set up five "responsibility deal" networks with business, co-chaired by ministers, to come up with policies. Some of these are expected to be used in the public health white paper due in the next month.

The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises. Working alongside them are public interest health and consumer groups including Which?, Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health. The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association. The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers. The food deal's sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.

The leading supermarkets are an equally strong presence, while the responsibility deal's physical activity group is chaired by the Fitness Industry Association, which is the lobby group for private gyms and personal trainers.

In early meetings, these commercial partners have been invited to draft priorities and identify barriers, such as EU legislation, that they would like removed. They have been assured by Lansley that he wants to explore voluntary not regulatory approaches, and to support them in removing obstacles. Using the pricing of food or alcohol to change consumption has been ruled out. One group was told that the health department did not want to lead, but rather hear from its members what should be done.

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, the leading liver specialist and until recently president of the Royal College of Physicians, said he was very concerned by the emphasis on voluntary partnerships with industry. A member of the alcohol responsibility deal network, Gilmore said he had decided to co-operate, but he doubted whether there could be "a meaningful convergence between the interests of industry and public health since the priority of the drinks industry was to make money for shareholders while public health demanded a cut in consumption".

He said: "On alcohol there is undoubtedly a need for regulation on price, availability and marketing and there is a risk that discussions will be deflected away from regulation that is likely to be effective but would affect sales. On food labelling we have listened too much to the supermarkets rather than going for traffic lights [warnings] which health experts recommend." Employers are being asked to take on more responsibility for employees in a fourth health at work deal. The fifth network is charged with changing behaviour, and is chaired by the National Heart Forum. This group is likely to be working with the new Cabinet Office behavioural insight unit, which is exploring ways of making people change their behaviour without new laws.

Lansley's public health reforms are seen as a test case for wider Conservative policies on replacing state intervention with private and corporate action.

While public interest groups are taking part in drawing up the deals, many have argued that robust regulation is needed to deal with junk food and alcohol misuse.

The Faculty of Public Health, represented on several of the deal networks, has called for a ban on trans fats and minimum alcohol pricing. Professor Lindsey Davies, FPH president, said: "We are hopeful that engaging with the food industry will lead to changes in the quality and healthiness of the products we and our children eat. It is possible to make progress on issues such as salt reduction through voluntary agreements, and we're keeping an open mind until we see what comes out of the meetings, but we do think that there is still a role for regulation."

Responding to criticism that industry was too prominent in the plans, the Department of Health said: "We are constantly in touch with expert bodies, including those in the public health field, to help inform all our work. For the forthcoming public health white paper we've engaged a wide range of people, as we are also doing to help us develop the responsibility deal drawn from business, the voluntary sector, other non-governmental organisations, local government, as well as public health bodies. A diverse range of experts are also involved."

He added that the government wanted to improve public health through voluntary agreements with business and other partners, rather than through regulation or top-down lectures because it believed this approach would be far more effective and ambitious than previous efforts.

An over-arching board, chaired by Lansley, has been set up to oversee the work of the five responsibility deal networks, with representatives of local government and a regional health director – but it too is dominated by the food, alcohol, advertising and retail industries. Gilmore called for a better balance of commercial interests and independent experts on it.

Other experts have also expressed concern at Lansley's approach. Professor Tim Lang, a member of the government's advisory committee on obesity, doubted the food and drink industry's ability to regulate itself. "In public health, the track record of industry has not been good. Obesity is a systemic problem, and industry is locked into thinking of its own narrow interests," said Lang.

"I am deeply troubled to be sent signals from the secretary of state about working 'with business' and that any action has got to be soft 'nudge' action."

Jeanette Longfield, head of the food campaign group Sustain, said: "This is the equivalent of putting the tobacco industry in charge of smoke-free spaces. We know this 'let's all get round the table approach' doesn't work, because we've all tried it before, including the last Conservative government. This isn't 'big society', it's big business."

How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition

Pepsi's strategy: Create a research environment so scientists and public health experts don't feel out of place at the corporate HQ of sugar, salt and fat.
By Michele Simon, AlterNet
Posted on August 5, 2010

Last month PepsiCo set off a firestorm among angry bloggers when the company attempted to buy its way onto the popular ScienceBlogs (run by Seed Media Group) with its own offering called Food Frontiers. Apparently, the actual scientists didn't appreciate having their space invaded by PR flaks. One blogger put it succinctly, "I don't care how many PhD scientists they hire, PepsiCo is a corporation, not a research institute, for crissakes!" Within two days, ScienceBlogs apologized and pulled PepsiCo's plug, but not before some disgusted bloggers quit altogether. (Food Frontiers continues to live on PepsiCo's corporate Web site.)

While this story illustrates a victory in the battle against one corporation's attempt to control scientific discourse, in the bigger picture, PepsiCo appears to be winning the war.

PepsiCo Picks off Public Health Experts One by One

Ask anyone who's been in the public health field for at least 10 years if they've heard of Derek Yach, and the response is likely to be: "Of course, he's a public health hero." If you ask for a response to Yach's decision to go work for PepsiCo, the reaction will be head-shaking. "Shocked," "deeply disappointed," "a blow to public health," were all phrases I heard when the news came, in 2007, that one of the world's most respected public health experts went over to the dark side.

Derek Yach's story even plays a prominent part in a graduate-level food policy class at NYU that dedicates an entire class session to industry co-optation, because of its current impact on the nation's debate over the obesity epidemic.

It was a personnel coup for the nation's largest food company and purveyor of such notoriously unhealthy products as Mountain Dew and Cheetos. PepsiCo's new "director of global health policy" came with a pedigree the company must have been salivating over.

A native of South Africa where he did his medical training, Yach established the Center for Epidemiologic Research at the South African Medical Research Council. But he earned his global health hero reputation as Representative of the Director General at the World Health Organization. There, he helped cement the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, an unprecedented global treaty that pitted Yach against the world's most powerful tobacco industry leaders.

While at WHO, Yach also became embroiled in food issues, at times finding himself at odds with Big Food. I first interviewed Yach back in 2004 for an article about how the United States government was obstructing a critical WHO document on nutrition policy and was impressed with his straight-shooting style. Indeed, his willingness to speak out about food politics ultimately led to his downfall at WHO, which only furthered his public health hero status to the rest of us.

Ironically, though, it was when he later joined Kelly Brownell's team at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University that things went downhill. Yach left Rudd for a brief stint at the Rockefeller Foundation before joining PepsiCo in 2007.

New York University Professor Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics, offers her take on what happened:

I first met Derek Yach when he was a public health hero at WHO for his efforts to get food companies to stop marketing junk foods to kids and to stop lobbying against proposed WHO advice to restrict sugars. He lost on both counts, but not for lack of trying. He must have decided that outside advocates can't get anywhere with food companies and that change has to come from within. I'm dubious that meaningful changes from within are possible for a company that makes most of its money selling sodas and potato chips, but that's just me.

I encountered Yach again in March after I blogged about how Yale Medical School had entered into a partnership with PepsiCo to fund a research lab and fellowship. I was upset both personally and professionally because my public health degree is from Yale.

I read the news in my alumni magazine, which included a photo of smiling Yale faculty members and PepsiCo executives, including Yach. The morning after my blog posting, I got an email from Yach. It seemed he wanted to explain himself to me and defend PepsiCo in the process. But even after a 30-minute phone call, I remained unconvinced that his role at PepsiCo was anything more than a well-orchestrated PR move to position the company as being on the cutting edge of health and nutrition.

PepsiCo has placed other health experts on its payroll for similar reasons.

Just a few months after Yach was hired, PepsiCo tapped Dr. Mehmood Kahn also for the newly created position of "Chief Scientific Officer." Here is how Yach described Kahn in a 2008 talk at Yale, to make the point that PepsiCo is serious about doing legitimate research:

[Kahn] like me comes from a medical background. Born in Pakistan, trained in England, a few years at the Mayo Clinic where he was involved in heading endocrinology and metabolic research and then headed Takeda Pharmaceuticals Worldwide R&D for a number of years, before coming to PepsiCo.

Kahn also served as division chief of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

But PepsiCo didn't stop there. PepsiCo plucked its latest plum from the tried and true depository of scientific experts: the U.S. government. In late 2009, Dr. George Mensah became PepsiCo's "Director of Heart Health and Global Health Policy." Previously, Dr. Mensah (a native of Ghana) spent nearly a decade with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, helping lead the federal agency's efforts to fight strokes, heart attacks, heart disease and colorectal cancer. But his government career got trumped by Cheetos.

In a May interview, Dr. Mensah explained his decision to work for PepsiCo: "The real role we play is to use the best science available to make sure everything we do supports our customers. I don't feel like I've left public health." And why should he, when he's surrounded by other doctors? Great strategy: Create a research environment so scientists don't feel out of place at the corporate HQ of sugar, salt and fat.

It's also no accident that all three hires have significant international experience and are not natives of the U.S. A global corporation for years, PepsiCo is increasingly expanding into the developing world. Last year, the company surpassed Nestlé in India sales.

To recap: Since 2007, PepsiCo has hired at least three noted international experts in medicine, science and public health. Their pedigrees span the world's premier public health organization, America's top public health governmental agency and the most respected medical and research academic institutions. Not bad HR recruitment.

According to an article published earlier this year in Business Week ("Pepsi Brings in the Health Police") over the past two years, PepsiCo has hired a dozen physicians and PhDs. What are they up to exactly? Kahn explains that the goal is "to create healthy options while making the bad stuff less bad."

In my interview with Yach in March, he used similar corporate-speak. The example he uses is how the R&D team is hard at work trying to make Cheetos lower in fat and sodium, with smaller portion sizes. He predicts that within five years, the product's artificial coloring will be gone. But does any of this matter? Should people be eating such pseudo-foods in the first place? Yach rationalizes in his response: "While we are not likely to become a fresh fruit and vegetable company, we have made public commitments to increase the use of fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grains in our products. A major challenge involves ensuring that we do so in ways that maximizes the full nutritional equivalence of whole foods in our future products."

Full nutritional equivalence? I don't recall seeing that in the U.S. dietary recommendations: "Eat foods with full nutritional equivalence." But what else can you aspire to when your food products don't fit into any actual food groups?

Just where is all this alleged desire to improve the product portfolio coming from? Dr. Mensah waxes sentimental about PepsiCo's CEO (which Yach does as well):

It's coming from the very very top. Indra Nooyi, if you didn't know her, you would think she was a public health specialist. There is real passion at the top. ... Indra Nooyi wants PepsiCo to be part of the solution.

Of course she does, because otherwise she'd be part of the problem.

CEO Indra Nooyi Inserts PR into Annual Obesity Report

CEO Nooyi has certainly made her intentions to position PepsiCo in the midst of the nation's discourse about obesity loud and clear. In addition to her hiring spree and endless speeches on the corporate "Performance with Purpose" tag line, Nooyi recently succeeded in infiltrating one of the nation's most respected annual reports on obesity.

For the past seven years, a nonprofit called Trust for American's Health (TFAH) has published a report called F as in Fat, which updates the grim obesity statistics from around the nation, culling information mostly from respectable government sources.

In this year's edition, released in June, smack in the middle of the sobering data and potential policy solutions came an unexpected new entry: a two-page missive penned by Indra Nooyi herself. As you might expect, it reads more like a press release than scientific analysis: "We firmly believe companies have a responsibility to provide consumers with more information and more choices so they can make better decisions," Nooyi wrote.

Even more troubling, this report is co-published by its funder, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the nation's largest health care foundation. One of RWJF's most ambitious goals is to "reverse the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015."

So how did the nation's largest health care funder and a prominent public health organization let the nation's largest food company get airtime in their annual obesity report? Good question.

Reporter Melanie Warner, who published an excellent piece about this at BNET ("Obesity Report Chronicles the Sad State of America -- and Tells Us How Great PepsiCo Is"), asked TFAH to explain itself. Here is what she learned:

Laura Segal, spokesperson for the Trust for America's Health, says that having Nooyi's comments in the report was an innocent attempt to have the "industry perspective" and not the result of any shady financial relationship. "We reached out to a number of companies and Pepsi was the first one to respond. We want to represent a range of opinions and the industry segment is a significant component of dealing with obesity," says Segal.

In contrast, Harold Goldstein, executive director of the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, sees this incident as part of a disturbing trend:

There seems to be a growing interest among public health organizations to appear "unbiased" when discussing obesity prevention by providing a forum for industry. It would be the equivalent of providing a forum for the tobacco industry to espouse their "personal responsibility" message in reports on smoking-related deaths.

Harold Goldstein also notes what Nooyi conveniently left out:

She doesn't mention the highly sophisticated multimillion dollar national marketing and lobbying campaign they have undertaken to promote themselves as good corporate citizens and undermine efforts to establish state and local policies to reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, which have been the single leading contributor to the obesity epidemic.

In other words, when food companies such as PepsiCo (even when speaking through their own scientific experts) opine on a major public health problem, we are not about to hear the entire story, but rather one filtered through the corporate agenda, which by definition must promote its bottom line, and thus omit the less flattering aspects.

Finally, Marion Nestle had this to say:

By this time, research has clearly demonstrated that partnerships and alliances of health organizations with food companies benefit the food companies far more than the health organizations. The goals of public health and food companies differ. Food companies enter such alliances for public relations and to deflect public attention from the need to regulate their marketing practices.

That is why no matter how many MDs or PhDs the company hires, PepsiCo should never be looked to as an expert on anything other than what it does best: marketing and selling highly processed food and beverage products to the world.