Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018; here's how it happened

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.

And what made that decision carry weight? The alternative media.

Whole Foods decision is huge victory for alternative media and grassroots activism

Without Natural News, Organic Consumers Association, Jeffrey Smith, Info Wars and millions of grassroots activists pounding this issue day after day, the cost of Whole Foods doing nothing would not have been high enough to alter the equation. Whole Foods made this decision precisely because of Natural News, the Organic Spies, Info Wars and other alternative media organizations. Because Whole Foods knows that we will not drop this issue and we were going to keep hammering this issue in a very public manner if they did not come out and announce support for GMO labeling.

So in one sense, Whole Foods deserves credit for doing the right thing in this announcement, but at another level they were forced into that position by people like you, the readers of the alternative media.

Whole Foods will deny all this, of course. They will claim this decision was nothing more than a response to the requests of their many customers. But those requests were largely caused by people learning about this entire issue from the alternative media, which has really become the new mainstream media because we are the only sources of real news these days (and we're not run by the White House or mega corporations).

The way Whole Foods explains all this, however, they made this decision solely because they are impressively angelic in their hearts and minds. As Whole Foods President A.C. Gallo says: "We have always believed quality and transparency are inseparable and that providing detailed information about our products is part of satisfying and delighting the millions of people who place their trust in Whole Foods Market each day."

That quote is a complete load of bull, of course. In truth, Whole Foods has systematically deceived its customers about GMOs for many years. It has placed signs on its stores that are blatantly false and misleading: "Nothing artificial, ever!" And it has waged a campaign of total disinformation about the GMOs that continue to be sold right now in not just the food products, but also the supplements it retails. (Yes, many supplements sold at Whole Foods are loaded with genetically modified ingredients.)

So don't let Whole Foods fool you into thinking this is all about "doing the right thing." If anything, Whole Foods has decided to do the right thing only as a last resort, after being forced to do so by the alternative media and grassroots activists. As Winston Churchill famously said in the European theater of World War II, "Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing... after they have exhausted all other possibilities."

Ultimately, it's hard-working people like Ronnie Cummins and Jeffrey Smith who really deserve the credit for Whole Foods making this move.

That's why all this is a victory for grassroots activism over corporate deception. This shows the power of the alternative media to connect people in ways that achieve real change. This shows that when push comes to shove, the alternative media is in many ways more powerful than the lying mainstream media which has engaged in a shameful GMO cover-up.

What happens next

Despite everything written above, if Whole Foods has the guts to make a public announcement like this, they will have my support in this endeavor. It's a gutsy move to publicly oppose Monsanto and the wholly corrupt, mafia-minded biotech industry.

No doubt Whole Foods is going to endure unbelievable heat for this. You can fully expect a lawsuit to be filed by Monsanto against the retailer, and even the USDA and FDA will likely get involved. Remember, it was really Monsanto and the FDA that forced wholesome milk producers to remove the "no rBGH" claim from their labels.

My prediction: Monsanto and the FDA are going to wage a massive regulatory assault on Whole Foods and try to find some way to force Whole Foods to back off this promise to label GMOs. We, the grassroots activists who helped make this happen, would be wise to help defend Whole Foods in this decision. At some point, we may have to organize letter-writing campaigns, call-in campaigns, etc., to the FDA and even U.S. Senators to oppose FDA regulations that attempt to censor and silence GMO labeling. That will probably happen in 2014 - 2015.

In the mean time, product suppliers who sell to Whole Foods are going to have to start making a big decision themselves: Do we create a separate line of products just for Whole Foods, or do we label all our products no matter where they are sold?

Some food companies will decide to pull out of Whole Foods in protest. These will likely be the "no on 37" brands that are total GMO sellouts like Kashi, Silk, Larabar and others. There will be tremendous economic pressure put on Whole Foods over this, believe me.

But the more responsible brands -- like Nature's Path cereals and Amy's Kitchen -- will welcome the labeling and they will quickly comply. (In Nature's Path's case, by the way, they are already 100% non-GMO, so they are already compliant. Amy's also avoids GMOs.)

This will mean that some shelf space may open up at Whole Foods stores because those GMO deceivers will pull out. But this is actually a fantastic opportunity for non-GMO brands to come in and fill the space. This will actually improve Whole Foods' overall product selection and make it an even more inviting place to shop. (Heck, I might even start shopping there again.)

Those companies that choose to comply with the labeling will obviously start telling their own raw materials suppliers that they don't want to buy any more GMOs. And those raw materials suppliers, in turn, will tell their farmers to stop growing GMOs because the market demand is collapsing.

Simple economics means more farmers will stop growing GMOs

The upshot of this is that farmers who grow GMOs will be punished with plummeting demand while farmers who grow certified non-GMO crops will be rewarded with increased demand and increased prices. (Isn't the free market wonderful?)

The end result is victory for everyone: Whole Foods gets its reputation back, consumers get honest labeling, farmers get away from toxic GMOs and superweeds, the environment benefits from less genetic pollution and toxic Monsanto pesticides being sprayed, and the health of those who shop at Whole Foods is vastly improved by not eating hidden GMOs!

Who are the losers in all this? Monsanto and the biotech industry. You might argue they are already losers, ethically speaking, but I'm talking about economics: They are about to get hammered right where it counts: in the pocketbook.

In essence then, this ballsy decision by Whole Foods is one giant kick in the crotch for Monsanto, which is precisely what that corporate monstrosity rudely deserves.

I would personally like to join in this crotch-kicking contest by getting behind Whole Foods in this decision and helping support its efforts to follow through with its GMO labeling promise.

So, for the record, Natural News is fully supportive of Whole Foods on this issue, and we intend to rally grassroots support to help Whole Foods defend this decision when the time comes.

And ultimately, if this goes into place over the next five years, I plan to be among those who help publicize the good news and encourage everybody to shop at Whole Foods. Five years isn't as far off as you think, and I'm a pretty young guy, so I'll still be here covering all this.

Bottom line? Wind up your kicking legs, everybody. We're all about to join in a massive grassroots ballet of Monsanto crotch-kicking lasting five years. Think of it as inverted river dancing.

Source: Natural News

How Hemp Threatens the Corporatocracy

The Fox (Monsanto) Buys the Chicken Coop (Beeologics)

Why would one of the largest purveyors of pesticides, genetically engineered seeds and agrochemicals want to buy a company which has been seeking solutions to the escalating threats to the world bee population?

Monsanto spokeswomen Kelly Powers says it is to give the fledgling company a helping hand. Beeologics has developed a product called Remembee, an anti-viral agent which its boosters claim will help stem the tide of Colony Collapse Disorder, a mysterious plague which has led to the disappearance of the bees in up to a third of the commercial colonies located in the U.S. during the last decade.

The root of the problem, however, may not be the virus targeted by Remembee, a chemical agent which utilizes RNA interference, a mechanism that blocks gene expression, but the herbicides and insecticides that agro-chemical giants like Monsanto, Dow and Bayer have themselves been hawking to farmers around the world.

This is the conclusion of three recent studies which implicate a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, or "neonics" for short, which coat a massive 142 million acres of corn, wheat, soy and cotton seeds in the U.S. alone. They are also a common ingredient in a wide variety of home gardening products. As I detail in an article which was published by Reuters last month, neonics are absorbed by the plants' vascular system and contaminate the pollen and nectar that bees encounter on their rounds. Neonics are a nerve poison that disorient their insect victims and appear to damage the homing ability of bees, which may help to account for their mysterious failure to make it back to the hive.

This was the conclusion of research which came out in the prestigious Journal Science during March. In another study conducted by entomologists at Purdue University the scientists found that neonic-containing dust released into the air at planting time had "lethal effects compatible with colony losses phenomena observed by beekeepers." A third study by the Harvard School of Public Health actually re-created colony collapse disorder in several honeybee hives simply by administering small doses of a popular neonic, imidacloprid.

While these studies strongly suggest that herbicides are a culprit, scientists caution that colony collapse disorder is a complex phenomenon with multiple causes, ranging from the loss of wild bee habitats to the weakening of bee immune systems as a result of poor diet (commercial bees are frequently fed pesticide-laced corn syrup instead of their own honey) and also the techniques of modern beekeeping, which include the artificial insemination of queens, and the resulting loss of genetic diversity in the bee population.

Some have also pointed the finger at the pollen from genetically modified Roundup Ready corn which bees ingest, and which contains a powerful insecticide within its genetic structure. Roundup seeds are manufactured by Monsanto, and are currently planted across wide swaths of the American Midwest and elsewhere.

So with Monsanto products themselves amongst the key suspects in Colony Collapse Disorder, one might ask: Why has the multinational bought a company which has been a key player in researching this disorder as well as Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus, another scourge of bees?

"We're absolutely committed to Beeologics' existing work," said Monsanto spokesperson Kelly Powers. Yet one has to wonder if owning a firm dedicated to shedding light on the trouble with bees might not serve Monsanto's interest in allowing it to further cover up their own corporate complicity in the problem.

Let us hope that Monsanto is as good as its word and uses this newly acquired company to boldly get to the bottom of the mystery of the disappearing bees. But if history is any guide, there is little cause for optimism. The health watchdog group "Natural Society" rated Monsanto "the worst in 2011 for its ongoing work to threaten human health and the environment."

With its acquisition of Beeologic, the multinational has a chance to start improving its record -- right? My advice, however, is don't hold your breath!

Source: The Huffington Post

What Coke Contains

The Vons grocery store two miles from my home in Los Angeles, California sells 12 cans of Coca-Cola for $6.59 — 54 cents each. The tool chain that created this simple product is incomprehensibly complex.

Each can originated in a small town of 4,000 people on the Murray River in Western Australia called Pinjarra. Pinjarra is the site of the world’s largest bauxite mine. Bauxite is surface mined — basically scraped and dug from the top of the ground. The bauxite is crushed and washed with hot sodium hydroxide, which separates it into aluminum hydroxide and waste material called red mud. The aluminum hydroxide is cooled, then heated to over a thousand degrees celsius in a kiln, where it becomes aluminum oxide, or alumina. The alumina is dissolved in a molten substance called cryolite, which is a rare mineral from Greenland, and turned into pure aluminum using electricity in a process called electrolysis. The pure aluminum sinks to the bottom of the molten cryolite, is drained off and placed in a mold. It cools into the shape of a long cylindrical bar. The bar is transported west again, to the Port of Bunbury, and loaded onto a container ship bound for — in the case of Coke for sale in Los Angeles — Long Beach.

The bar is transported to Downey, California, where it is rolled flat in a rolling mill, and turned into aluminum sheets. The sheets are punched into circles and shaped into a cup by a mechanical process called drawing and ironing — this not only makes the can but also thins the aluminum. The transition from flat circle to something that resembles a can takes about a fifth of a second. The outside of the can is decorated using a base layer of urethane acrylate, then up to seven layers of colored acrylic paint and varnish that is cured using ultra violet light, and the inside of the can is painted too — with a complex chemical called a comestible polymeric coating that prevents any of the aluminum getting into the soda. So far, this vast tool chain has only produced an empty, open can with no lid. The next step is to fill it.

Coca-Cola is made from a syrup produced by the Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta. The main ingredient in the formula used in the United States is a type of sugar substitute called high-fructose corn syrup 55, so named because it is 55 per cent fructose or “fruit sugar”, and 42 per cent glucose or “simple sugar” — the same ratio of fructose to glucose as natural honey. HFCS is made by grinding wet corn until it becomes cornstarch. The cornstarch is mixed with an enzyme secreted by a rod-shaped bacterium called Bacillus and an enzyme secreted by a mold called Aspergillus. This process creates the glucose. A third enzyme, also derived from bacteria, is then used to turn some of the glucose into fructose.

The second ingredient, caramel coloring, gives the drink its distinctive dark brown color. There are four types of caramel coloring — Coca Cola uses type E150d, which is made by heating sugars with sulfite and ammonia to create bitter brown liquid. The syrup’s other principal ingredient is phosphoric acid, which adds acidity and is made by diluting burnt phosphorus (made by heating phosphate rock in an arc-furnace) and processing it to remove arsenic.

A much smaller proportion of the syrup is flavors. These include vanilla, which is the fruit of a Mexican orchid that has been dried and cured for around three months; cinnamon, the inner bark of a Sri Lankan tree; coca-leaf which comes from South America and is processed in a unique US government authorized factory in New Jersey to remove its addictive stimulant cocaine; and kola nut, a red nut found on a tree which grows in the African Rain Forest (this may be the origin of Coca-Cola’s distinctive red logo).

The final ingredient is caffeine, a stimulating alkaloid that can be derived from the kola nut, coffee beans and other sources.

All these ingredients are combined and boiled down to a concentrate, then transported from the Coca-Cola Company factory in Atlanta to Downey where the concentrate is diluted with water infused with carbon dioxide. Some of the carbon dioxide turns to gas in the water, and these gas bubbles give it effervescence, also know as “fizz,” after its sound. 12 ounces of this mixture is poured into the can.

The top of the can is then added. This is carefully engineered: it is made from aluminum, but it has to be thicker and stronger to withstand the pressure of the carbon dioxide gas, and so it uses an alloy with more magnesium than the rest of the can. The lid is punched and scored so that a tab opening, also made of aluminum, can be installed. The finished lid is put on top of the filled can, and the edges of the can are folded over it and welded shut. 12 of these cans are then packaged into a painted paperboard box called a fridge pack, using a machine capable of producing 300 such packs a minute.

The finished product is transported by road to a distribution center, and then to my local Vons. This tool chain, which spans bauxite bulldozers to refrigerators via urethane, bacteria and cocaine, produces 70 million cans of Coca-Cola each day, one of which can be purchased for about two quarters on most street corners, and each of which contains far more than something to drink. Like every other tool, a can of Coke is a product of our world entire and contains inventions that trace all the way back to the origins of our species.

The number of individuals who know how to make a can of Coke is zero. The number of individual nations that could produce a can of Coke is zero. This famously American product is not American at all. Invention and creation is something we are all in together. Modern tool chains are so long and complex that they bind us into one people and one planet. They are not only chains of tools, they are also chains of minds: local and foreign, ancient and modern, living and dead — the result of disparate invention and intelligence distributed over time and space. Coca-Cola did not teach the world to sing, no matter what its commercials suggest, yet every can of Coke contains humanity’s choir.

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Source: Medium

Why in the World Are We Spraying

A comprehensive documentary covering the chemtrail topic, well worth a watch.