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As Turkey Day approaches, animal lovers cringe, food safety advocates become vigilant and industrial turkey producers hope you aren’t reading the news.

Specifically, the purveyors of factory farm turkeys hope you haven’t heard about the latest turkey salmonella outbreak in 35 states, causing 63 hospitalizations and at least one death.

Can consumers rely on labels to make good buying decisions? Not really.

Many consumers rely on labels to help them avoid serving a sick, contaminated or abused bird on Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, navigating the maze of labels and marketing claims is at best time consuming, and at worst, a waste of time. For example, "cage free" and "hormone free” are meaningless since cages and hormones aren’t used (or at least, aren’t supposed to be used) in turkey production anyway.

Clearly there is a lot that turkey producers, even the so-called "humane" ones—don’t want you to know.

Remember when Whole Foods promised consumers that by the end of 2018, all of its U.S. and Canada stores would require labels on any foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?

About midway through 2018, Whole Foods reneged on that promise.

Now, the retailer once known as a mecca for organic food shoppers is selling GMO potatoes—and those potatoes aren’t labeled.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Whole Foods to stop selling toxic GMO potatoes!

When you buy food labeled “natural,” you probably assume it doesn’t contain “unnatural” ingredients—like agrochemicals known to cause cancer.

But as we’ve found with some other so-called “natural” products, that’s not always true. 

The latest “natural” product to test positive for Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller? Florida’s Natural orange juice.
 
TAKE ACTION: Tell Florida’s Natural: Orange Juice with Roundup Weedkiller Isn’t ‘Natural’

There are about 8,700 lawsuits pending against Monsanto, by people who allege that exposure to Roundup weedkiller is responsible for their cancer. Most of the people behind these lawsuits have stories not unlike the one told by Dewayne Johnson, during his landmark jury trial which resulted in a unanimous decision against Monsanto.

Like Johnson, many of these people have non-Hodgkin lymphoma—or they have family members who have already died from the disease. They face long, grueling trials as they go up against the biotech behemoth.

When the judge in the Monsanto Roundup trial signaled she might overturn the jury’s verdict, we expected the worst.

In the end, Judge Suzanne Bolanos slashed the amount of money the jury said Monsanto should pay its victim, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, from $289 million to $78 million.

That may not sound like much of a win, but there was good news in her decision: The jury’s verdict was upheld.

What Monsanto really wanted was for Bolanos to throw out the jury’s unanimous decision that Monsanto’s wildly profitable flagship weedkiller caused Johnson’s cancer, and that Monsanto knew all along that Roundup is a carcinogen.

That didn’t happen. That was good news for everyone who’s ever fought to get Roundup off the market, and for everyone who’s ever wanted Monsanto to be held accountable for its crimes.