Katherine's Blog
Would you consider a smoked salmon product, made from farmed salmon fed a diet of chemicals and antibiotics, to be “natural” or “All Natural”?
Or is it more likely that the company peddling that product just hopes the word “natural” will hook more buyers?
TAKE ACTION: Tell Ducktrap: Stop falsely claiming that your smoked Atlantic salmon is “All Natural.”
In 2016, Christine Sheppard traveled to The Hague, Netherlands, to testify before the Monsanto Tribunal (which Organic Consumers Association helped organize).
Sheppard told the panel of lawyers and judges she believed Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller had caused her life-destroying non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She later joined tens of thousands of cancer victims who sued Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).
Last week, Bayer settled most of those lawsuits, for a staggering $10 billion.
Sheppard, whose story began in 1995, on a farm in Hawaii that she and her husband were forced to sell after her cancer diagnosis, called the settlement a “slap in the face.” As she wrote this week in the Guardian:
“Bayer admitted no guilt, will continue to sell Roundup, and refused to label it as carcinogenic. People will continue to get cancer from it.”
$10 billion is a lot of money to have to pay out to victims of a product Bayer insists is “safe.” We can probably count that as a win.
The industrial meat industry has been hogging the food-related news cycle lately. The COVID-19 outbreaks at meatpacking plants. The slaughterhouse shut-downs. The “depopulating” of farm animals. Meat shortages and rising meat prices.
And then there’s the corresponding good news: Consumers buying more organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised meat products from local farmers and CSAs—even online sales of these products are surging.
So far, the industrial factory farm dairy industry hasn’t seen nearly as much news coverage during the pandemic. But under the mainstream media radar, two organizations recently shone a spotlight on dairy producers.
The Institute for Ag and Trade Policy (IATP) issued a report on the role of industrial dairy in global warming. The report, “Milking the Planet: How Big Dairy Is Heating Up the Planet and Hollowing Rural Communities,” calls for “redirecting public funds away from industrial agriculture, regulating the public health, environmental and social impacts of this extractive model of production and designing incentives to regenerate rural communities through agroecology.”
Whether you’re looking to treat yourself to a breakfast garnished with smoked salmon, or planning to serve up pre-dinner appetizers of sliced smoked salmon atop crackers, buyer beware: When it comes to the claims made on smoked Atlantic salmon packages and websites, brands are often just blowing smoke.
Popular smoked Atlantic salmon brands entice consumers with promises like “premium,” “all natural,” “super fresh” and “healthy and nutritious.”
Some brands claim their products are “sustainably sourced.” On the issue of animal welfare, one owner of multiple smoked Atlantic salmon brands claims on its website that the company’s approach to fish health and welfare is “second to none.”
It all sounds great to the consumer. But here’s the real deal: All of these smoked Atlantic salmon products are made from salmon raised on massive industrial fish farms, and in some cases, nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean.
If your daily health regimen includes a dose of collagen supplement, beware.
Despite labeling claims such as “Pure,” “All-Natural” and “Cleanest Nutrition Possible,” and deceiving images of grazing cows, open pastures and cage-free chickens on packaging and websites, most collagen peptide supplements are derived from industrial factory farms—and many collagen products contain heavy metals.
Organic Consumers Association (OCA) and Clean Label Project (CLP) tested 28 of the top-selling brands of collagen supplements on Amazon.com. Here’s what we found.
Organic Consumers Association was founded in 1998, in part to shut down plans by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow foods containing genetically engineered ingredients to be certified organic.
We won that important battle. But we’ve never stopped campaigning to end the genetic engineering of our food supply, out of concern for human health and the environment.
We’ve also never stopped fearing the worst: that genetic engineering of viruses could lead to a global public health disaster.
SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All ‘Biodefense’ Labs Now!
Monsanto and the rest of the Biotech Giants promised that GMO foods would reduce pesticide use, increase the nutritional content of food, boost farmers’ profits and feed the world by increasing yields.
Instead, they turned glyphosate into one of the most widely and recklessly used herbicides in history—and destroyed the natural biodiversity so critical for a resilient ecosystem.
Now, we’re fighting back . . . with a plan for regeneration.
Companies like Monsanto and Cargill have spent the last couple decades trying to convince you that GMO crops and foods are the only way to “feed the world.”
But industrial ag’s wild experiment—using toxic chemicals, synthetic fertilizers, genetically engineered seeds and factory farms—has proven to be a disaster . . . for our soil and water, for farmers, or farm animals and for our public health.
It seems forever that we’ve been trying to get Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller off the market, and out of our food.
It’s a battle that’s had more than its share of highs and lows.
Where are we today? Fighting a new company—Bayer now owns Monsanto. And watching the courts go ‘round and ‘round, as they start then stop trials, order, then reduce (and now, potentially, reverse) judgments against a company facing nearly 43,000 lawsuits.
As Bayer digs in its heels, insisting that Roundup is “safe,” and as our regulatory agencies echo those false claims, the company finds itself fighting back in the courts, while simultaneously hinting at a settlement that could include taking Roundup off retail store shelves (but not off U.S. farms).
It’s enough to make your head spin.
About a year ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made it official: Consumers can no longer buy paint removers containing methylene chloride, a chemical linked to cancer, cognitive impairment and other health issues. (In a controversial move, the agency stopped short of banning the chemical for commercial/industrial use).
EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, in a statement issued November 22, 2019, said the “EPA’s action keeps paint and coating removers that contain the chemical methylene chloride out of consumers’ hands” in a “step that will provide important public health protections for consumers.”
Methylene chloride must be pretty bad for the EPA to ban it. After all, the agency refuses to ban chlorpyrifos, a known neurotoxin especially harmful to children, and glyphosate, the chemical in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller deemed a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization.
So how is it that Walmart and Amazon won't sell you any paint remover containing methylene chloride. But both retailers will sell you decaffeinated coffee that tests positive for methylene chloride?
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