Washington State’s GMO Labeling Ballot Initiative (I-522)
I-522 would have mandated clear labeling of genetically engineered (GE) ingredients on food packages. The initiative was voted on in 2013. It lost, 51% to 49%. Among the companies who fought the labeling requirements, and money they spent on the ‘No on 522’ campaign were:
- Monsanto: $5,374,411
- DuPont: $3,880,159
- PepsiCo Inc.: $2,352,966
- Coca-Cola: $1,520,351
- Nestle USA: $1,528,206
- General Mills: $869,271
- Bayer CropScience: $591,645
- Dow Agrosciences: $591,645
- BASF Plant Science: $500,000
- ConAgra Foods: $828,251
- Campbell Soup Co.: $384,888
- Hershey Company: $360,450
- Smucker’s Jam: $349,977
- Kellogg Co.: $322,050
- The Hillshire Brands Company: $282,775
- Mondelez International (Nabisco, Oreo): $210,336
- Flowers Foods (Nature’s Own, Wonder Bread): $205,099
- Dean Foods (Land ‘O Lakes, Meadow Gold): $174,553
- Land O’ Lakes: $144,878
- Cargill & Co.: $143,133
- Bimbo Bakeries (Sara Lee and Ball Park): $137,460
- Del Monte: $125,677
- Abbott Nutrition (infant formula like Pedialyte, Similac): $121,296
- Ocean Spray Cranberries: $80,295
- Hormel Foods: $76,803
After the election, the Washington State attorney general sued the Grocery Manufacturers Association of Washington for violating campaign disclosure laws. As of April 2016, the case has yet to come to trial. The latest postponement came when the GMA failed to meet deadlines for disclosing information.
Said Washington attorney general Bob Ferguson: “This attempt to introduce records at the last minute, after resisting our efforts to obtain them earlier in the process, continues GMA’s pattern of trying to hide the ball from the people of Washington. However long it takes, I am committed to holding GMA accountable for its elaborate scheme to shield its members’ contributions from the public.”
California’s Proposition 37
Many large food and seed corporations sunk over $46 million into the fight to defeat Proposition 37 in California, which would have required food companies to list genetically modified ingredients on the labels of its products sold in retail stores. It would have also prevented the labeling of GMO foods as “natural.” The law would would have affected California, but because Californians make up 12% of the U.S. population, those Californian labels would have spilled over to other states as well. Currently food processors list ingredients, calorie, nutritional value and peanut content. Adding GMO ingredients to that list will benefit those who wish to steer clear, until GMO foods are deemed safe and healthy into the long term (yet many feel certain GMOs will never be proven healthy).
The record keeping necessary for the added labels will also help keep track of ecological issues such as gene flow between GMOs and the surrounding ecology, weed killer’s affects, pest and superweed resistance and a host of other ecological issues that could potentially arise with rampant GMO use. This bill would have slowed down the influx of GM crops and help keep track of GMOs impacts.
Currently Europe, Russia, China, Japan, Mexico, Australia and numerous other countries require that food labels list genetically modified ingredients. Why hasn’t the the U.S. insisted on this labeling? Because many large corporations are fighting to keep the U.S. consumer in the dark. Let us know, if there are GMOs. We should have the right to know!
Money Spent To Keep GMO Off Of Labels In California
Ironically most of the companies lobbying against Prop 37 have a stake in the organic industry. See that list below, it might surprise you.
- Monsanto: $7,100,000.
- DuPont: $5,200,000.
- PepsiCo Inc.: $2,500,000.
- BASF Plant Science: $2,000,000
- Bayer CropScience: 2,000,000
- Dow Agrosciences: $2,000,000
- Syngenta Corp: $2,000,000
- Kraft Foods: $2,000,000.
- Coca-Cola: $1,700,000.
- Nestle USA: $1,315,400.
- ConAgra Foods: $1,200,000.
- General Mills: $1,200,000.
- Del Monte: $674,000.
- Kellogg Co.: $790,700.
- Smithfield: $671,000.
- Council for Biotechnology Information: $625,000.
- Heinz: $500,000.
- Hershey Company: $493,900.
- J.M. Smucker Co.: $555,000.
- Grocery Manufacturers Association: $375,000.
- Hormel Foods Corp.: $374,300.
- Unilever: $ 460,000.
- Mars Food North America: $370,280.
- Bimbo Bakeries USA: $422,900.
- Ocean Spray Cranberries: $326,500.
- Campbell Soup Co.: $320,455.
- Pinnacle Foods Group LLC: $266,100.
- Dean Foods Co.: $253,950.
- Biotech Industry Organization: $250,000.
- McCormick & Co. Inc.: $248,200.
- Abbott Nutrition (Infant Formulas / Similac): $230,900.
- Rich Products Corp.: $225,500.
- Cargill Inc.: $226,800.
- Welch’s: $167,000.
- Knouse Foods Cooperative: $160,300.
- W.M. Wrigley Jr. Co.: $116,900.
- Sunny Delight Beverages Co.: $114,500.
- Tree Top: $110,300.
- Bumble Bee Foods: $98,000.
- Sara Lee Corp.: $96,800.
- Hillshire Brands (Ball Park, Jimmy Dean): $86,000.
- McCain Foods USA: $50,600.
- Dole Packaged Foods Co.: $45,580.
- Goya: $ 56,100
- Clorox: $33,000
- S & W: $21,100
Organic And Natural Food Brands Owned By Big Corporations
Coca-Cola: Honest Tea, Odwalla, Simply Orange.
Cadbury: Green and Black’s Chocolate, Nantucket Nectars.
ConAgra: Alexia, Hunt’s Organic, Lightlife (vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes like Smart Deli), Orville Redenbacher’s Organic.
General Mills: Cascadia Farms, Cheerios, Food Should Taste Good, Larabar, Muir Glen, Nature Valley.
Groupe Danone: Stonyfield Farm.
Hershey’s: Dagoba Chocolate.
Hain-Celestial (partially owned by Heinz): Arrowhead Mills, Bearitos, Breadshop Cereals, Casbah, Celestial Seasonings, DeBoles Pasta, Earth’s Best, Ethnic Gourmet, Garden of Eatin’, Gluten Free, Greek God’s, Hain Pure, Health Valley, Imagine Soups, Linda McCartney, Maranatha nut butters, Mountain Sun Juices, Nile Spice Soup, Rice Dream, Sensible Portions, ShariAnn’s, Soy Dream, Terra Chips, TofuTown, Walnut Acres, Westbrae Natural, WestSoy, Yves Meatless.
JM Smucker: After the Fall, R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic.
Kellogg: Bear Naked, Gardenburger, Kashi, Morningstar Farms, Natural Touch, Wholesome & Hearty. (Kashi cereals contain GMOs!)
Kraft: Boca, Back to Nature.
Mars/M&M: Seeds of Change
Nestle: Tribe Mediterranean Foods
Pepsi: Dole, Harvest Crunch, Izze, Naked Juice, Ocean Spray, Tazo, Tostito’s Organic, Tropicana.
Rich’s: Fresh Meadow
Unilever: Ben & Jerry’s, Knorr, Salada
Personal Care Brands Owned By Big Corporations
Clorox: Burt’s Bees.
Colgate-Palmolive: Tom’s of Maine.
Hain Celestial: Alba Botanica, Avalon Organics, Jason, Orjene, Queen Helene, Zia.
Private/Small Companies That Support GMO Labeling
Only a handful listed. For a larger listing: www.carighttoknow.org
- Alvarado Street Bakery
- Amy’s Kitchen
- Ancient Organics
- Annie’s
- AppleGate Farms
- Aubrey Organics
- Bob’s Red Mill
- Cedarlane
- Earthbound Farms
- Eden Foods
- Equal Exchange
- Frey Vineyards
- Golden Temple (Yogi Tea & Peace Cereal)
- Lundberg Family Farms
- Nature’s Path
- Newman’s Own
- Nutiva
- Organic Valley
- Pacific Natural Foods
- Simply Organic
- Tofurky
- Turtle Mountain
To Donate/Volunteer To Support GMO Labeling
Food Democracy Now! fdn.actionkit.com
Hi Thanks for this list. Even from Australia we can vote with our $$ and send messages to the companies that fund for no labelling. I dont’ know why you didn’t but you need to tell people that their consumer dollar talks louder than words to these companies. We need to actively encourage each other to buy less or none from the companies that flirt with genetic nonsense, and more to the companies that are more wholesome. Nothing speaks louder to commercialism that your own consumer power.
Keep your promise and require labeling of GMO foods. And stop hiring Monsanto execs to work for the FDA, it just looks bad. Why should we have less rights than most European countries? They have the right to know.
We need to know more about, Companies Against GMO Labeling and Private/Small Companies ‘FOR’ GMO labeling thank you for informing us.
If a company fears to label its own food products, the question is ‘how MANY toxic chemicals are in those foods?’ Charles Sutherland, author, ‘The Poison Planters’ http://www.thepoisonplanters.com
Consumers have a right to know whats in their food. GMO out of my shelf.
Please REPOST video. Youtube has filtered info probably because Monsanto had a problem with it. I wanna see!
Here is the video that got removed by YouTube:
vimeoDOTcom/56123191
We need to know more about, Companies Against GMO Labeling and Private/Small Companies ‘FOR’ GMO labeling thank you for this valuable information……Many lives may be at stake, due to this malpractice by such companies. To benefit, Companies do all the nonsense trick….
THANKS so much for making this clear by posting the labeling… I appreciate ‘visuals’! GRIT magazine recently had a nice 2 page glossy advertising by BASF. They’re so offa my subscription renewal list. This, people, is the real war.
Be aware that companies are purchased daily by Monsanto and the rest to disguise their GMO foods in brands we thought were safe. This is why we need to force GMO Labeling on all foods!
Support your local farms and boycotts these companies! That’s how we win is boycotting all the listed companies.
Thank you very much for your list! I have just boycotted all the companies who opposed GMO labeling and my right to know. I will also be returning all products to my local grocery store that are manufactured by the companies who donated money to prevent me from knowing what is in my food. I will also be making a phone call to every single company on the list who opposed i-522 to let them know I will not be buying their products in the future, because they have proven they don’t give an iota about me and my family now!
When our family went non-GMO a year ago, I cleaned out my cabinets and threw a lot of food away. I also returned what I could to the grocery store, and I started reading the ingredients label on everything I purchased. It took an extra hour or two in the grocery store to do my shopping on the front end, as I scoured labels for GMO ingredients, but I have gotten this down now, and I pretty much know which companies are using GMO ingredients, so it doesn’t take any longer to do my grocery shopping. With that clean out, I made phone calls to each company and let them know that I wouldn’t be buying their products until they took out the GMO ingredients. I was amazed at the response from some of the companies I called. Kraft said the dextrose in their pectin was ‘cane sugar’ but claimed their ‘written list’ to prove it was proprietary information. Malt O Meal said that they were taking the HFCS out of their cereals as fast as they could–later I checked, and they did. Post said they listened to their customers and took HFCS out years ago when their customers requested it. Worcestershire sauce said they had gone back to their original recipe. Hunt’s turned traitor and put the HFCS back in their ketchup recently, Wilderness Pie Fillings took out the HFCS, but I think they’ve put it back in now. I have decided not to support these companies any longer, because I don’t like their wishy washy policies.
I’d like to see companies who aren’t using GMO ingredients just put non-GMO on their labels, which will help those who care to give them their business! Now, that I know who the companies are (some were a surprise) that gave money to fight I-522 in WA, it will be much easier to boycott their products and I’ll call them to tell them why! Thank you again!
Why is Horizon not on your list? I heard they too are against GMO labeling. Can you verify if this is true?
Good question about Horizon – it seems that Dean Foods which had owned Horizon, split its organic and soy division (White Wave) and sold it as a separate public company, end of 2012. As Dean Foods had given to the anti labeling side, Horizon was not included in the above list. Now after some research it is clear White Wave is now committed to non-gmo. Thanks so much for the heads up.
BUT – White Wave Food Company is a member of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a trade group that contributed over $7.2 million to defeat I-522 in Washington State… YET – Whitewave also says it has donated money in support of gmo labeling…with a donation of $300,000 to JustLabel It and other monies to different pro labeling organizations…
I’d like to think that to one who supports GMO labeling is helping the community in a sense of inspiratinallity.
– BANDO
I personally find it embarrassing for companies to have their names included on the list of companies that fight GMO labeling. It really is a shame to see great companies like Simply Orange, Kashi, Odwalla and Burt’s Bees that have such amazing potential, sell out to corrupt, money hungry corporations like Monsanto. Let’s run them all down and bring back true sustainability and real food!
My entire family. and by entire i mean my grandchildren’s best friends grandchildren for generations to come will never purchase. Nor support anyone that stands against the consumers right to know what is in our food. SHAME ON YOU SELL OUT’S!!!
its to bad when big companies like montasanto, and others only care about money then the publics health,,a chemical is inserted into a seed, making it grow up to be have seedsless fruits or vegtables, which in turn i9s bad for arew hnealth as well. the seed sprout and then the plants bloom, getting flowers, which honey bees land on, then they cant find their way back to their nest, so far we have lost close to a third of are honey bee population, thanks to deadly gmo plants, let stop using gmo foods and stop buying foods that have gme products in them.keep america safe ands let have our kids grow uo nmice and hnealthy, no morew gmo foofs or gmo anything.
A couple of you have mentioned support you farmers. I am a farmer and I can tell you that this movement is anti agriculture. A wise man once said Internet lies will travel half way around the globe before the truth has had a chance to put it’s boots on. Go tour Monsanto. Read the list of over 2800 independent studies released by forbes in September 2013 that show that these products are safe. Talk to farmers, and not just your small farmers market farmers. Talk to the bigger ones also and find out about ethanol and it’s effect on carbon. Find out about their yields and their pesticide usage. I hate fighting this battle. When I was a kid I always felt like urban people thought of us farmers as dumb hicks. Now I feel like the image is evil corporate farmers. I remember how exciting it was in 1996 when I planted my first Roundup Ready soybeans and I had to spray 1 herbicide on it instead of the witches brew I sprayed before. And roundup has an extremely high LD50 rating which means it’s very very safe. Then I remember when BT technology came out and we started taking the insecticide boxes off our planters because we didn’t need them anymore. So we have super weeds now. Those weeds are now resistant to glyphosate. But they are also resistant to a whole lot of other chemicals that have nothing to do with GMOs. They adapted to those chemicals also. And the BT gene still works. I know the arguments but I have first hand knowledge on the pesticide use. When they say it increased the usage it is flat out not true. The BT gene is a protein. Naturally occurring. In fact it was sprayed over the top of crops for the last 50 years and it is considered an organic practice. . So do people have a right to know? Sure, but why aren’t you demanding to know what Pesticides are used on it??? And I’m talking about your organic food as well. Organic regulation vary greatly from state to state so when you buy something certified organic in one state and drive across the state line and buy it again are they both the same? Question it. People are so misinformed that if the products were labeled it would be catastrophic to agriculture as a whole. I’ve tried my best to be respectful. Thanks for the read.
I wrote post 20. I originally thought it best to be anonymous but decided I would like people to be able to contact me if they wanted to, politely, engage in a discussion about this.
Some sites (Wikipedia and Wikinvest) state that Heinz sold its interests in Hain-C, although there does seem to be a degree of friendliness. Is your information up to date on this? Thanks.
@ #20 Ok so you say the BT technology is safe. How do you explain the studies done by chris Kresser…google him, these comment forums do not allow HTML links. Also you can read up how GMO’s have BEEN PROVEN to cause cancer tumors
i can post more and mo
I encourage you to do what I have done. We all should be in agreement that you should avoid almost all of the products these companies produce if you have any concern over what goes in your body but these companies make delicious convenient products to their defense. BUT until they change their support for GMO labeling I have written the companies a letter informing them how much money I spend buying their products (some of these companies have 100+ products!) annually and let them know that I will not purchase any more of their products until I learn that they refuse to use GMO products in theirs. I also let them know that I intend to share what I know about GMO’s and their company’s support for banning the labelling of GMO’s with as many family and friends as will listen. Small step, minimal impact if you only consider my annual spend but actions like this en masse will work for sure. At the end of the day these guys want our money and will sell us anything legal that we choose to injest.
Do what I did, download the Buycott App, select a no GMO campaign alert and scan the UPC of everything you buy to avoid all the Companies Against GMO Labeling. I also try to buy organic fruits and vegetables at the local produce market.
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These big companies will lose money if most people wont buy their products due to their non gmo labeling. I have a three year old son and I refuse to buy anything that’s not labeled. I buy all organic!! I am very distraught about companies who refuse labeling.
I am a person who has the right to know if the food I am buying at the market is GMO or just sprayed with pesticides. I have the right to know.
If the GMO foods are safe, why not labeling it and let us to chose if we want to buy? The only one reason for NOT labeling it is that the GMO foods are harmful, not healthy!
Cascadian Farms which is owned by General Mills has a new line of organic foods that are now non gmo verified. However, in the past, this company has put up money to fight gmo labeling. Is this still true as of today August 13, 2014? Cascadian Farms is stating that state to state labeling is very expensive and that nationally would eliminate this. What the heck does that mean? I just want to know if Cascadian Farms is loyal to their purchases instead of using the money to go up aganist us that want our foods labeled.
How much they paid you to come post here?
They said DDT was safe, they had study to prove it. Now it’s banned due to it’s extreme toxicity. They said round up was safe and organic. Now they had to remove their organic label due to false adversing and many studies show that round up is very poisonous. Now they are saying GMO is safe? Eh, do you take us for idiots?
Do you realize that you take money over people health? My conscience wouldn’t support what you are doing. So I wonder how you can sleep at night.
dole has organic banana………damn it.
Please update Annie’s as they are no longer privately owned and are now a part of General Mills…
I love seeing the antiGMO comments. You people don’t have an ounce of knowledge. Even using GMO as a blanket term shows misunderstanding. If you think bt crops cause cancer or any harm to humans, go back to school and learn how to read scientific studies. Learn some physiology. While you’re at it, you people are incredibly ignorant of genomics, so try giving that a shot if you can even understand what I am typing.
Hi,
You have Annie’s listed as a ‘good’ product, but ‘Buycott’ says they use GMO’s and are owned by a company that supports no truth in labeling.
Any further info?
Thanks
Thanks for the lists. Given that about 8 million Asian children have died because anti-GMO paranoia and lies about GMO Golden Rice (There is not a shred of credible evidence of harm to human health from GMOs), now I know which anti-GMO wacko outfits are contributing to this genocide. Shocked by this statement? Read the Wiki articles about Golden Rice and GMOs.
And I have a right to have all vegetables produced using animal feces labeled. Unlike GMOs, which have never harmed anyone, shit-produced spinach and fruit juice has killed people by E. coli. Label organic veggies produced with feces and then I’ll think about labeling the harmless stuff.
Just so you know Joseph that manure you are referring to is called fertilizer. Fertilizer is used by all farmers (including your super duper GMO ones) that is why you are supposed to wash your food before eating it. Common sense. Gardens use them as well (called compost) its necessary for healthy soil. All food should be labeled because the consumer wants to know and has the right to know. When the GMOs and GE labels come out you feel free to go buy them up
GMO’s are such a complicated issue. The majority of scientists believe that GMO’s can not harm humans when eaten and I tend to believe them. But many scientists are not as certain about the environmental impacts they could have and it can’t truly be determined in studies. Another part of the issue is genetic diversity. Large companies are eradicating crop diversity because they only want their seeds to be used. One of the leading theories on why people have become more allergic in recent years is we have been having a decrease in genetic diversity for all kinds of plants like grass and foodstuffs which makes us more likely to develop allergies. As a farmer on here mentioned most farms use chemicals on their crops and for those farmers GMO’s mean fewer chemicals seeping into the soil and that the farmers have to handle fewer chemicals which is healthier for them and their families. Really it would be great if all farms were chemical free in my opinion but I find that very unlikely to happen when the average farmer can barely afford to stay afloat. I do feel that people should get to know what they are eating and if people don’t want to eat GMO’s they shouldn’t have to. But now that some states have implemented GMO labeling the unintended result is a larger monopoly by big companies like Monsanto which is making it harder for smaller companies to develop GMO seeds. Big companies can easily afford labeling but for smaller companies it is much harder. Monsanto and other big ag companies often work towards things like making GMO’s to help end world hunger but it doesn’t negate the bullying they have done to farmers who don’t want to buy their seeds, and the fact that near monopolies like Monsanto have caused some of that world hunger by putting many small farmers out business in the US and other parts of the world. At the end of the day I’m fine eating GMO’s though I have a few worries, but what really upsets me isn’t the GMO’s it’s big companies like Monsanto, ConAgra, and Tyson having near monopolies. They say they produce jobs and they do but only by taking those jobs away from smaller businesses that would have provided those jobs if these companies weren’t so big and powerful. And the majority of the jobs they create pay relatively less than they used to pay before we had ag monopolies. And the quality of food products like beef and vegetables have gotten worse as these huge companies are progressively dominating their fields of industry. When so few have so much power over our food supply it’s easy for abuses of power to happen.
It is funny how a lot of the businesses that support/fund GMO labeling are organic. I guess it would help if their biggest competitors (GMO crops) were put out of business. GO GO GMO!
To all the shills coming here saying GMO’s haven’t killed anyone yet:
BEHOLD: L-tryptophan caused 37 Deaths and around 1,500 Cripplings in the late 80’s / early 90’s – it was a commercially marketed amino acid manufactured with genetically engineered bacteria by the Showa Denko company.
Note: Showa Denko destroyed the evidence that could have been used to determine the scientific cause of the problem. They destroyed the genetically engineered bacterial stocks, along with any potentially surviving specks that investigators might have recovered from the walls or the equiptment in their facilities. As a result of this, we scientists may never be able to learn exactly what happened.
To the farmers coming here saying us anti GMO people are undermining agriculture, Shut Up! your closed monoculture obsessed mind will never ”solve world hunger” and you are definitely no hero, do you actually WANT to have a better future and provide more, healthier food for your potential customers? THEN STOP MONOCULTURE, HERBICIDE, CHEMICAL FERTILISING, PESTICIDE RELIANCE and LEARN about PERMACULTURE !! Only through Permaculture, food forests, Polyculture, Agroforestry and Organic growing methods can we actually ”feed the world” … also, the earth is nowhere near it’s carrying capacity and it is NOT overpopulated as the malthusian / darwinist morons will have you believe, take a look at The World Food Clock to see how much waste we create, how much resources we waste because of factory farming, … Conventional Farming was obsolete as soon as we adopted it and started chemically altering the environment for profit, it is MINING the soil and not working with it in any way.
The only reason why billions starve is because of western capitalism and bankster wars, because people lack the money (fictitious fiat currency / promissory notes) to pay for the food), Using Organic / Permaculture methods especially in small scale farming, yield increase has been proven to be 4-5 times More than monoculture farming and WITHOUT the need for GM Or Hybrid Seed.
You Cannot Perfect Perfection, so STOP f*cking with Nature
Actually, as far as GMO is concerned, what I have a problem with is not so much the fact that it’s modified. I don’t like the way the biggest GM crop company Monsanto deals with things like windborne pollen and copyrighted DNA. Planting copyrighted crops too close to other farmers’ hybrid and heirloom crops, they end up contaminating everyone else’s crops with copyrighted DNA (via pollen), and then SUE them into bankruptcy. The only way out of this is for all non-gm farmers to always have their crops tested, which can be too expensive also.
Why not just label the Non GMOs then? Wouldn’t that work as well?
It’s also sad that such ignorant peolple, and I do mean ignorant by the exact definition, support the GMOs in their own food and the produce which will one day be jarred into the food for their infants. This is the produce that is supposed to nurture our children as they grow and give them a good start for the rest of their life. Yet uneducated imbeciles that choose to fight to keep GMOs hidden simply because they are against the primarily organic companies for funding labeling because they (‘ guess it would help if their biggest competitors (GMO crops) were put out of business. GO GO GMO! ‘ -Darec) . All these companies have done is provide safe and healthy food for you as they all promise, yet so few deliver. The ignorance of people is quite concerning. I’m only sorry our children will inherit the Earth so many have knowing ruined while many others support out of being uneducated.
When the government stops taking back handers from GMO companies, stops hiring Monsanto staff into government and stops poisoning world food, then they may find they have damaged the world so much and have been killing us all slowly with poisons, pesticide, fungicides, weed killers and killing off our pollinators with reckless abandon.
Monocultures, GMO and DNA hijacking from GMO crop pollution are killing the world
List gmo ingreadents on all us foods
GMOS ARE ACTUALLY GOOD! There is no proof at all that they are causing health problems and live saving products have been developed thanks to this technology. LEARN THE FACTS!!
wow surprising