I thought this was newsworthy enough to pass it along to you guys. I have been aware of the dangers that GMO's pose to us for some time now and have written about it on more than a few occasions. In my research and in just becoming aware, I have started to notice the little NON GMO Project Verified icons showing up on more and more products.
And now Whole Foods will be requiring food companies to label all products sold in their stores that contain GMO's by 2018. Even though 5 years seems like quite a long time, it is still a great thing in my opinion if they can pull it off. While Whole Foods boasts that they are a healthy alternative to regular grocery stores, you still have to read labels if you are trying to eat clean. Their shelves are lined with heavily processed soy ingredients, artificial ingredients, and yes... GMO ingredients.
Unless corn, soy, canola, sugar & artificial sweeteners, papaya, cotton (and it's oils), meat, and dairy are organic, they are genetically engineered. Just between corn and soy and all of the food ingredients they make with those two items, a huge percentage of packaged foods are contaminated.
Here's a quick article summing it all up...
Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018
Natural News (Original Source)
In a huge victory for the alternative media and grassroots activism, Whole Foods announced on Friday that it would require GMO labels on all products by 2018. (Click here for the press release.) This announcement deals a significant blow to Monsanto, DuPont and all the GMO pushers who openly admit that they want consumers to remain ignorant about what they're eating.
It's a brilliant move for Whole Foods, given that by 2018, anyone who wants to be certain whether they are avoiding GMOs will gladly choose to do all their shopping at Whole Foods. After all, if Albertson's (for example) doesn't require GMO labeling while Whole Foods does, in which store would you rather shop? Whole Foods!
But the real story here is everything that led up to this. The turning point in all this was, in my opinion, the 2012 release of the Organic Spies video in which Whole Foods employees were caught on camera lying to customers about GMOs.
Natural News broke this story and was instrumental in getting the video posted on our free speech protected video service TV.naturalnews.com, a public location which could not be easily banned by Whole Foods. YouTube, by comparison, routinely bans videos that blow the whistle on dishonest corporate behavior, but TV.naturalnews.com hosts whistleblowing videos and has so far resisted all attempts to have those videos banned or removed. (We even host most of the Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory series, including the "memory-holed" FEMA camp episode that has disappeared everywhere else.)
This Organic Spies video proved to be hugely embarrassing to Whole Foods, causing an uproar across the 'net and causing many customers to start shopping elsewhere such as Green PolkaDot Box, which avoids carrying any products containing GMOs.
Following the Organic Spies video, InfoWars reporters Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton launched a breakthrough video investigation that exposed the "big Whole Foods lie" of claiming "Nothing artificial, ever" on the side of their stores while secretly selling unlabeled GMOs in their stores. We also documented the "Nothing artificial, ever" fraud here on Natural News. GMOs are, of course, "artificial." They are engineered by man, not created by nature. In this video, Whole Foods was caught in yet another blatant, embarrassing lie.
The Prop 37 campaign was also in full swing during all this, and Whole Foods refused to contribute a single dollar to the California ballot measure. After being confronted and publicly shamed, a Whole Foods executive did quietly contribute $25,000, but only after being called out for failing to support the campaign.
Alternative media holds Whole Foods' feet to the fire
Add all this up and you get the impression that Whole Foods was actively opposed to GMO labeling. And it was the alternative media that was holding Whole Foods' feet to the fire. While the mainstream media refused to even touch the issue (because mainstream media is nothing more than a dumbed-down, cartoon-level disinfo broadcast for morons and sheeple), the alternative media plowed full steam ahead. Natural News, InfoWars, Mercola, the Organic Consumers Association, the Institute for Responsible Technology and many other organizations kept hammering the issue, and tens of millions of grassroots activists made their voices heard in a resounding way.
Through various back channels, Whole Foods got the message loud and clear that there was no way they were going to be able to stop this. The alternative media can't be easily bought off because the key people who run the alternative media aren't in it for money (unlike the mainstream media).
If Whole Foods didn't get fully behind the mandatory labeling of GMOs, it was going to find itself in a runaway confidence crisis. After all, if health-conscious customers can't trust Whole Foods to be transparent with them about what's really in their foods, there's not much of a reason to shop at Whole Foods, is there?
Whole Foods capitulates and decides to require labeling
Sometime between November 2012 and March 2013, Whole Foods executives made a decision to finally get behind GMO labeling. They announced that all the foods they carry would need to be labeled with GMO content by 2018. As StreetInsider.com reports:
Whole Foods Market announced... that, by 2018, all products in its U.S. and Canadian stores must be labeled to indicate whether they contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It is the first national grocery chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency.
On the surface, this was immediately heralded as a highly ethical leadership decision by the market leader in health food retailing, but behind the scenes an entirely different equation was being calculated. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey never makes a decision unless it's in his financial interest to do so, and as his history of false-identity Wild Oats blogging shows, he's not beyond engaging in wild deceptions in order to make more money for himself and his investors.
Ultimately, Mackey and the Whole Foods executives realized what I've been trying to tell them for months: That if they didn't get behind GMO labeling, they were going to lose everything. Promoting GMO labeling isn't simple a choice of ethics for Whole Foods, it's a matter of economic survival.
(Original Source)
As much as I applaud Whole Foods for stepping up, I am generally disgusted with the food industry. Being that I am a commercial producer of food now, I would not be able to live with myself if I knew my company sold food products containing the garbage that most foods are made of. I'm just glad that I can say I'm not poisoning people with Raw Generation juices. I'm actually creating a real food product that has no artificial anything. There are so few companies that can say that today, but here's to hoping Whole Food's decision is the momentum we need to create the tipping point.
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