Another group called the Organic
Voices Collaborative has been developed to give organic consumers a voice
in D.C. Their first project is GMO labeling. They have already engaged
Fenton to do some research on consumer messaging, and the results of
that will be the basis for our Communications Toolkit. There is also the AC21
Committee, a USDA Advisory Committee on Biotechnology that had its first
meeting in August. The organic industry has decent representation, though
we’re definitely outnumbered. Chuck
Benbrook, Laura Batcha, Missy
Hughes, Mary-Howell R. Martens,
Isaura Andaluz, Michael Funk and
Lynn Clarkson are seven of the group’s
23 members.
Westgate: We’ve gone from what some considered an overly ambitious concept
to a totally solid reality, with hundreds of companies and over 5,000 products
now participating in our product verification program—and it keeps growing!
For many in the organic industry, in the beginning it was hard to acknowledge the threat of contamination, but ignoring the GMO problem would only
make it worse. As people started to realize that the government was not going
to take our side anytime soon, they really came around to the value of self-regulating as an industry. The Project gives everyone a chance to participate in protecting our food supply right now. Whether you’re on the producer side
choosing to sign on to our rigorous standard for GMO controls, or on the consumer side making non-GMO choices for your family, the Non-GMO Project is
empowering. With this strategy, we don’t have to wait for regulation to protect
our non-GMO choices—we can do it ourselves. That’s not to say that policy
work isn’t important—that has to happen too. But it’s a parallel effort. Every
year that goes by, it gets harder to produce non-GMO. We can’t afford to sit
around and wait for Washington.
OP: How has the Non-GMO Project
evolved over the last four and a half
years?
OP: How have some organic companies really taken leadership on this issue?
Westgate: I consider all of the founding companies of the Non-GMO Project to
be true leaders. More and more organizations are jumping in to help, but companies like Eden Foods, Nature’s Path, Lundberg, Organic Valley, UNFI and
Whole Foods Market rolled up their sleeves to deal with this in earnest from
the beginning. Some proactive companies had testing programs already in
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