For almost 30 years, OCA and our predecessor organization, the Pure Food Campaign, have been educating consumers and farmers about the hazards of genetically engineered (GE) foods and crops, calling special attention to the fact that these “Frankenfoods” and crops are always accompanied by and contaminated with toxic pesticides and chemicals (such as Bayer/Monsanto’s Roundup/Glyphosate, and Syngenta/ChemChina’s neonicotinoids).

GMO foods and their companion pesticides and chemicals destroy the environment, pollute the water and air, kill bees and other pollinators, and poison our bodies, metastasizing the diet- and environmentally-related chronic diseases and damaged immune systems that now plague the majority of the population, including our children. The nation’s chronic disease epidemic, which afflicted 12% of Americans in 1984, before GMOs and highly processed foods dominated our diets, has now risen sharply to degrade the health of approximately 60% of the population. This chronic disease epidemic sets up 145 million Americans to become victims of cancer, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and, as witnessed recently, genetically engineered viruses such as SARS-CoV-2.

From the beginning, corporate agribusiness, chemical companies, and GE technocrats (intertwined with Big Pharma) have understood that consumers are wary of GMO foods and drugs, and will try to avoid these products if they are properly labeled as “genetically engineered.”

After decades of campaigning, OCA and our allies were right on the verge of forcing national GMO food labeling, utilizing the strategy of organizing at the state label with ballot initiatives and grassroots lobbying. But just when Vermont’s hard-fought 2014 mandatory GMO food labeling law was about to come into effect, in the summer of 2016, forcing Big Food to label, in effect nationwide, not just in Vermont, the Obama Administration, Congress, and a group of organic industry “traitors” came to the rescue of the Frankenfood lobby. The Obama “Dark Act” preempted the right of states to implement GMO labeling and mandated instead a bogus federal labeling law, filled with loopholes and exemptions.

The industry-friendly labeling law on “Bioengineered Foods” just came into effect a couple of weeks ago. It is cleverly designed to maintain the appearance of labeling, while actually keeping consumers in the dark about which foods are contaminated with GMOs and their toxic companion chemicals.

As we’ve said all along, the only real protection consumers have to defend themselves against hidden GMOs and their companion poisons is to buy foods labeled as “USDA Organic” (or in the case of animal products, those certified as grass-fed or pastured), to grow your own, or else to buy local and regional products from farmers and ranchers that you trust.

Please watch and share this short two-minute video produced by the Alliance for Natural Health on the new “Bioengineered Foods” labeling law: Bioengineered- What’s in a Name?

Ronnie Cummins is co-founder of the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Regeneration International. To keep up with OCA’s news and alerts, sign up here.