Having just gotten back from this year’s Natural Products Expo West, I can honestly say that the event has imbued me with a new sense of optimism for the future of our industry.
In my previous blog, I noted that although I have been disappointed with our success thus far in promoting organic products, I still enjoy the excitement generated by Expo, as well as mingling with old friends there and reviewing the various new products and enterprises. This year’s show, however, went well beyond anything I had been expecting, especially when it came to organic agriculture.
Often it takes a galvanizing issue to get people to stop bickering and rally around a common cause. Such a renewed sense of purpose was recently provided by the USDA’s approval of genetically engineered alfalfa, which has brought the entire organic industry to its feet. What made me especially happy was seeing key leaders like Walter Robb, co-CEO of Whole Foods, Michael Funk, chairman of United Natural Foods (UNFI), George Siemen, president of Organic Valley and Gary Hirshberg, founder and CEO of Stonyfield, come together to lead a conversation with perhaps 500 organic activists. To me, it offered real hope that organic’s share of the retail food market will indeed manage to get beyond the three percent it currently comprises, and gave me more confidence than I’ve felt in nine years that it will continue to expand. For rising to the challenge created by this ill-advised decision (the alarming implications of which are discussed at the web site of The Organic Center), the leaders of the industry deserve our collective gratitude.
To quickly review why this edict has caused so much consternation, genetically modified alfalfa is a threat to the integrity of organic dairy products for which there is absolutely no rationale (other than to create a potential new cash cow for Monsanto). That’s because conventionally grown alfalfa is rarely a candidate for herbicide treatment (in fact, only nine percent currently receives any), and the entire purpose of bioengineering the crop is to make it “Roundup Ready” — meaning resistant to the pernicious effects of Monsanto’s glyphosate weed-killer Roundup. That makes it possible to spray an entire field of alfalfa with Roundup, which has the effect of putting all surrounding alfalfa fields at high risk of contamination, since bees can pollinate plants within a range of up to four or five miles. (In fact, herbicide usage in this country has tripled since genetically modified crops were introduced.)
The fact that there are no standards for genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, is of major concern to health and environmental experts. Despite bureaucratic dismissals of the risks involved, no one really knows how the prevalence of genetically engineered crops (which now include most of the soy, canola, field corn and cotton grown in the United States) will ultimately affect both the environment and consumers, because they’ve never been subject to any official safety testing. But what we have managed to find out should be raising red flags. Unfortunately, the financial clout of the biotech industry has enabled it to steamroll over such concerns. In fact, top food and agricultural biotechnology firms spent more than $547 million on lobbying
since 1999 with lobby expenditures more than doubling between 1999 and 2009, according to Food & Water Watch. During the same period, food and agricultural biotechnology PACs made more than $22 million in campaign contributions.
Hopefully, the re-inspired leadership of individuals like Walter, Michael, George and Gary will give us a chance to effectively counter the challenge from these big-time hijackers of agriculture — and actually turn it around to help promote, rather than hamper, the growth of organic commodities.
