Big Food Illegally Hid Funders of Campaign to Kill GMO-Labeling Effort, Judge Rules

[villager]

Interesting to note that "Big Food" is the headline from... Fortune!

The ‘spirit and letter’ of the law was broken, the judge says.

The nation’s largest food industry group broke the “spirit and letter” of the law when it concealed the backers of a multimillion dollar campaign to kill a food-labeling initiative, a state of Washington Superior Court judge ruled on Friday.

The pre-trial ruling, by Thurston County Superior Court Judge Anne Hirsch, found that the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association, the food industry group, violated the state’s campaign finance disclosure laws when it tried to hide the identities of the corporate funders. GMA had waged a fight against Washington’s 2013 food-labeling initiative, with $11 million in donations from PepsiCo PEP 0.53% , Nestle nestle-s-a and Coca Cola KO 0.71% .

The state Initiative 522, which would have required food labels for genetically modified ingredients, was narrowly defeated.

“There is one, and only one, reasonable inference that can be drawn from the facts before this court: that the GMA intentionally took steps to create and then hide the true source of the funds…from the voting public of Washington State,” the judge wrote.

The facts of the case are undisputed. The GMA created a special fund (called “Defense of Brands”) specifically to fight GMO labeling efforts, and they collected $14 million in payments from member companies, many of them the nation’s food giants. (See the funders here.) Meeting notes, memos, and other internal GMA documents clearly show that shielding member identities was one of the primary purposes of the fund.

<snip>

http://fortune.com/2016/03/13/big-food-illegally-hid-funders-of-campaign-to-kill-gmo-labeling-effort-judge-rules/

[Person 2713]

1. GMA what a surprise...not!

[AxionExcel]

2. Big GMO-Chem-Pharmaceutical Food has wicked bad Republican Family Values

Obviously. Glaringly.

They also have a grand gaggle of "supporters" infesting the Intertubes hither and yon.

[AxionExcel]

3. Of immediate relevance: Dark GMO Act on front burner this week.

If you are happy to surrender your right to know what's in the food being served up to you by Big GMO-Chem-Pharmaceutical Food Corps, Inc., then do nothing. You are all set.

But if you would like to know what's in the food you and your family are eating, then wake up and smell the rancid stink of the DARK ACT. It will be on America's front burner this week. Time to exercise the will of over 90% of American citizens who would like to know what's in the food, and overturn the profit-obsessed will of the Citizens United, Inc. Congress, Inc.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/vote-controversial-dark-act-looms-horizon/214693/

[AxionExcel]

4. SECRECY. Ever wonder why Republicans and GMO-Chem corps hide everything from public view?

I don't. I know that they have VAST QUANTITIES of skanky fugly shit
they don't want American citizens to know the truth about.

[malaise]

5. Give thanks for the judge

Rec

[AxionExcel]

6. Yup

[Stuart G]

7. k and r...nt

[bvar22]

8. If you support food labeling, you should have voted for this guy:

Whatever happened to that guy?
He would have made a good president.

[villager]

9. I would have preferred him to the "Rockefeller Republican" incumbent we have now. nt

[Dont call me Shirley]

10. But gmos are good for you...

[villager]

11. That's why there's everything to hide!

Oh -- and shut up about all the pesticides required to dump on GMO crops!

[Dont call me Shirley]

13. The pesticides are NOT killing the bees! Stop saying that!!!...

and

[Ghost in the Machine]

12. "Media Reports That GMO Science Is Settled Are Flat-Out Wrong"

Media Reports That GMO Science Is Settled Are Flat-Out Wrong

In the wake of prominent media reports about supposed scientific agreement on the safety of genetically engineered food, including a cover story in National Geographic that equates concerns about GMOs with climate change denial, U.S. Right to Know is calling on media to accurately report that the science on GMOs is contradictory, unsettled, and has been largely controlled by corporations that profit from GMO seeds and the pesticides that go with them.

“Unfortunately, many members of the media, and even some scientists, have been snookered by PR firms about a supposed scientific consensus on GMOs that doesn’t exist,” said Stacy Malkan, media director of U.S. Right to Know.

Seedy Business, a recent report by U.S. Right to Know, outlines how agrichemical firms have spent more than $100 million since 2012 on political and PR campaigns to shift the media narrative on GMOs. In a video removed from the Internet, the public relations firm Ketchum bragged about doubling positive media coverage on GMOs.

For an accurate picture of the science, U.S. Right to Know urged journalists to read a January 24 statement published in the journal Environmental Sciences Europe — signed by 300 scientists, physicians and scholars — that asserts there is no scientific consensus on the safety of GMOs.

The claim of scientific consensus on GMOs frequently repeated in the media is “an artificial construct that has been falsely perpetuated,” the peer-reviewed statement said. {emphasis mine, since the "pro-GMO" crowd always seems to ask about "peer reviewed studies"}

Entitled “No Scientific Consensus on GMO Safety,” the statement does not take a position on whether GMOs are unsafe or safe. Rather, it cites a concerted effort by GMO seed developers and some scientists, commentators and journalists to construct the claim that there is a “scientific consensus” on GMO safety, and that debate on the topic is “over.”

http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/02/21/media-reports-gmo-science-settled-flat-wrong/

Peace,

Ghost