The Cornucopia Institute recently reported on troubling comments made by USDA Under Secretary Ibach at a House Agriculture Subcommittee meeting regarding the possibility of gene editing in organic. Sign our petition below! If your organization would like to sign on, please contact us.
Under Secretary’s Testimony Opens Discussion to “Enhance Organic Production” USDA Under Secretary Greg Ibach recently made comments before the House Agriculture Subcommittee suggesting it is time to discuss the possible allowance of gene editing methods within organic production. USDA Under Secretary Greg Ibach Source: USDA, Flickr Ibach’s words are in line with the Trump administration’s… Read more »
New rules put agriculture and the public at risk [This action alert is over.] The USDA has recently proposed a set of rules that would allow chemical companies such as Dow and Bayer/Monsanto to determine the safety of their own products. The proposed rules, now open for public comment, would further deregulate an untrustworthy industry…. Read more »
In agriculture, genetic engineering has primarily been used to make crops resistant to pests and disease or able to survive the application of toxins, such as glyphosate. These traits do not occur naturally in the species in question. In practice, these genetically modified (GM) crops are poorly tested for safety, especially with respect to long… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: Cry toxins are highly active protein toxins originally isolated from the bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt). They are genetically engineered into some GMO crops to perforate the gut membrane of insects that eat them. Poisoned pests stop eating and eventually die. Unfortunately, non-target animals, including monarch butterflies, swallowtail butterflies, lacewings, caddisflies, bees, water fleas, and… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: The GMO labeling law crawled out of the swamp in time for Christmas. The USDA will allow QR codes instead of legitimate labeling and, for those who do choose to label clearly, the necessary language is the little-know phrase, “bioengineered food.” Soda and oils made from GMOs are exempt from any labeling. The… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: The USDA has determined that no regulation is needed for food genetically engineered using new technologies like CRISPR. Even after the proposed GMO labeling law goes into effect, slated for 2019, companies using these new technologies are exempted from labeling their products as genetically modified (see Cornucopia’s GMO Voting Scorecard to learn how… Read more »
The Cornucopia Institute Grades Senators and Representatives Ahead of 2018 Fall Election Every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives who voted for or against stripping states of the ability to require the labeling of genetically engineered food (“The Dark Act”) has received a grade on their votes on issues concerning transparency and… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: These farmers and their accomplices who marketed and sold the GMO grain as organic, over eight years, were thankfully caught and are on the hook for almost $11 million. While that is a substantial sum, fraud in U.S.-grown crops is a much smaller business than import fraud. Domestic organic fraud of this kind… Read more »
Cornucopia’s Take: The innocuously named industry think tank, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), has filed a Citizen Petition [PDF] with the FDA to request a prohibition on use of Non-GMO labeling on food. ITIF stops short of declaring all GMOs safe in their petition, but they do argue that there is no scientific difference between genetic… Read more »
