“The greatest wealth is health.” – Virgil
Before there were #hashtags and Internet and social media—and long before the #BlackFriday, #CyberMonday, #GivingTuesday phenomena—there was wisdom.
Virgil, a poet who lived in ancient Roman times, wouldn’t recognize today’s world. And he surely wouldn’t recognize today’s food.
But his wise words are more relevant than ever.
OCA was founded around defending your right to meaningful organic standards, to the truthful labeling and marketing of food products, to the end of taxpayer-subsidized, pesticide-drenched GMO “commodity” foods, to the end of factory farms.
With your #GivingTuesday donation we’ll work harder than ever to reclaim our common food and farming system from the chemical and junk food companies that are making us all “health-poor.” Click here to donate online, and/or see instructions for phoning in or mailing your donation.
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The most important thing we can do today as conscious consumers, farmers and food workers is to move away from industrial, GMO and factory-farm food toward an organic, pasture-based, soil-regenerative, humane, carbon-sequestering and climate-friendly agriculture system.
What’s standing in the way of this life-or-death transformation? Rampant greenwashing.
Perhaps no company personifies greenwashing more than Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s. Ben & Jerry’s history—a start-up launched by two affable hippies, from a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vt., —is legendary. Despite selling out to Unilever in April 2000, the brand’s handlers have preserved its quirky, homespun image, and masterfully convinced consumers that Ben & Jerry’s has never strayed from its mission: “to make the world a better place.”
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) recently sent samples of Ben and Jerry’s top-selling ice cream brands to an independent testing lab for analysis. Ten out of 11 samples tested positive for Roundup (glyphosate and AMPA) herbicide contamination
So much for making the world a better place.
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Vermonter Jacques Couture wrote in the Burlington Free Press that he was “a little perplexed” by the “current demand by some vocal Vermonters” that all dairy farmers convert to organic. There’s room for both organic and non-organic, he said.
Couture didn’t specifically mention the consumer campaign asking Ben & Jerry’s to source 100% organic dairy. Nor did he name the nonprofits—Regeneration Vermont and the Organic Consumers Association—behind the campaign.
Did Ben & Jerry’s put Couture up to writing the op-ed? Is the Unilever-owned ice cream maker paving the way for a future announcement that its conventional dairy suppliers will soon start using better farming practices (but not go organic)?
We can only speculate.
But we don’t have to speculate about this: Couture’s opinion piece was missing more than just the details behind the story. It missed the point. Which is this: Conventional dairy, which relies on Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GMO crops, is poisoning Vermont’s water, degrading Vermont’s soil and contributing to global warming.
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If you’re a fan of the classic Ben & Jerry’s ice cream line, you’re in for a treat. A survey conducted by the Health Research Institute (HRI) laboratories found traces of glyphosate in 13 out of the 14 tubs of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream sampled in the UK, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
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Unilever reported disappointing third-quarter sales having lost market share to smaller rivals, dampening hopes that a failed takeover bid by Kraft Heinz would spark a swift improvement in performance.
Underlying sales rose only 2.6 percent, Unilever said on Thursday. That was below the 3.9 percent growth expected by analysts, and the 3 percent seen in the first half of the year.
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Ice cream sold under the Ben & Jerry’s brand contains traces of the weedkiller glyphosate, tests have revealed. Twelve out of 14 samples of the ice cream bought across Europe were positive for glyphosate.
Read moreThe European Parliament today hosted a coalition of EU and US organizations, led by the US-based Organic Consumers Association (OCA), which announced that samples of Unilever-owned Ben & Jerry’s ice cream from France, Netherlands, Germany and the UK contained potentially harmful levels of glyphosate, the primary ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide.
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Regeneration Vermont has spent the last seven months reviewing both federal and state data on the growing problem that is antibiotic-infected dairy and dairy-derived meat products (more than half the U.S. meat supply now comes from culled dairy cows). While not wanting to steal the thunder from the release of the full report, it is essential that the baseless claims that “antibiotics aren’t a problem in Vermont” not be allowed to stand without challenge.
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Ben & Jerry’s announced Monday that their company was taking steps to respond to growing consumer pressure to clean up the sourcing of their ingredients. The changes announced are twofold: a move away from glyphosate-dried crops and a new product line that will be made with organic dairy as its base.
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Ben & Jerry’s has created an ice cream empire by painting their brand as a socially and environmentally responsible one, but the truth is their ice cream is made with CAFO milk that’s destroying the environment. Consumer advocacy groups are calling on Ben & Jerry’s to convert to organic milk suppliers — organic and grass fed would be even better — to live up to their stated mission.
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