Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018

Whole Foods announces mandatory GMO labeling by 2018; here's how it happened


(NaturalNews) In a huge victory for the alternative media and grassroots
activism, Whole Foods announced on Friday that it would require GMO
labels on all products by 2018. (Click here for the press release.)
This announcement deals a significant blow to Monsanto, DuPont and all
the GMO pushers who openly admit that they want consumers to remain
ignorant about what they're eating.

It's a brilliant move for
Whole Foods, given that by 2018, anyone who wants to be certain whether
they are avoiding GMOs will gladly choose to do all their shopping at
Whole Foods. After all, if Albertson's (for example) doesn't require GMO
labeling while Whole Foods does, in which store would you rather shop?
Whole Foods!

But the real story here is everything that led up to
this. The turning point in all this was, in my opinion, the 2012
release of the Organic Spies video in which Whole Foods employees were caught on camera lying to customers about GMOs.

Natural News
broke this story and was instrumental in getting the video posted on
our free speech protected video service TV.naturalnews.com, a public
location which could not be easily banned by Whole Foods. YouTube, by
comparison, routinely bans videos that blow the whistle on dishonest
corporate behavior, but TV.naturalnews.com hosts whistleblowing videos
and has so far resisted all attempts to have those videos banned or
removed. (We even host most of the Jesse Ventura Conspiracy Theory
series, including the "memory-holed" FEMA camp episode that has
disappeared everywhere else.)

This Organic Spies video proved to
be hugely embarrassing to Whole Foods, causing an uproar across the 'net
and causing many customers to start shopping elsewhere such as Green PolkaDot Box, which avoids carrying any products containing GMOs.

Following the Organic Spies video, InfoWars reporters Aaron Dykes and Melissa Melton launched a breakthrough video investigation
that exposed the "big Whole Foods lie" of claiming "Nothing artificial,
ever" on the side of their stores while secretly selling unlabeled GMOs
in their stores. We also documented the "Nothing artificial, ever" fraud
here on Natural News. GMOs are, of course, "artificial." They are
engineered by man, not created by nature. In this video, Whole Foods was
caught in yet another blatant, embarrassing lie.

The Prop 37 campaign was also in full swing during all this, and Whole Foods
refused to contribute a single dollar to the California ballot measure.
After being confronted and publicly shamed, a Whole Foods executive did
quietly contribute $25,000, but only after being called out for failing
to support the campaign.


Alternative media holds Whole Foods' feet to the fire

Add all this up and you get the impression that Whole Foods was actively opposed to GMO labeling. And it was the alternative media
that was holding Whole Foods' feet to the fire. While the mainstream
media refused to even touch the issue (because mainstream media is
nothing more than a dumbed-down, cartoon-level disinfo broadcast for
morons and sheeple), the alternative media plowed full steam ahead.
Natural News, InfoWars, Mercola, the Organic Consumers Association, the
Institute for Responsible Technology and many other organizations kept
hammering the issue, and tens of millions of grassroots activists made
their voices heard in a resounding way.

Through various back
channels, Whole Foods got the message loud and clear that there was no
way they were going to be able to stop this. The alternative media can't
be easily bought off because the key people who run the alternative
media aren't in it for money (unlike the mainstream media).

If
Whole Foods didn't get fully behind the mandatory labeling of GMOs, it
was going to find itself in a runaway confidence crisis. After all, if
health-conscious customers can't trust Whole Foods to be transparent
with them about what's really in their foods, there's not much of a
reason to shop at Whole Foods, is there?

Whole Foods capitulates and decides to require labeling

Sometime
between November 2012 and March 2013, Whole Foods executives made a
decision to finally get behind GMO labeling. They announced that all the
foods they carry would need to be labeled with GMO content by 2018. As StreetInsider.com reports:

Whole
Foods Market announced... that, by 2018, all products in its U.S. and
Canadian stores must be labeled to indicate whether they contain
genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It is the first national grocery
chain to set a deadline for full GMO transparency.

On the surface, this was immediately heralded as a highly ethical leadership decision by the market leader in health food
retailing, but behind the scenes an entirely different equation was
being calculated. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey never makes a decision
unless it's in his financial interest to do so, and as his history of false-identity Wild Oats blogging shows, he's not beyond engaging in wild deceptions in order to make more money for himself and his investors.

Ultimately,
Mackey and the Whole Foods executives realized what I've been trying to
tell them for months: That if they didn't get behind GMO labeling, they were going to lose everything. Promoting GMO labeling isn't simple a choice of ethics for Whole Foods, it's a matter of economic survival.

And what made that decision carry weight? The alternative media.

Whole Foods decision is huge victory for alternative media and grassroots activism

Without
Natural News, Organic Consumers Association, Jeffrey Smith, Info Wars
and millions of grassroots activists pounding this issue day after day,
the cost of Whole Foods doing nothing would not have been high enough to
alter the equation. Whole Foods made this decision precisely because of
Natural News, the Organic Spies, Info Wars and other alternative media
organizations. Because Whole Foods knows that we will not drop this issue
and we were going to keep hammering this issue in a very public manner
if they did not come out and announce support for GMO labeling.

So in one sense, Whole Foods deserves credit for doing the right thing in this announcement, but at another level they were forced into that position by people like you, the readers of the alternative media.

Whole
Foods will deny all this, of course. They will claim this decision was
nothing more than a response to the requests of their many customers.
But those requests were largely caused by people learning about this
entire issue from the alternative media, which has really become the new
mainstream media because we are the only sources of real news these
days (and we're not run by the White House or mega corporations).

The
way Whole Foods explains all this, however, they made this decision
solely because they are impressively angelic in their hearts and minds.
As Whole Foods President A.C. Gallo says: "We have always believed
quality and transparency are inseparable and that providing detailed
information about our products is part of satisfying and delighting the
millions of people who place their trust in Whole Foods Market each
day."

That quote is a complete load of bull, of course. In truth, Whole Foods has systematically deceived its customers
about GMOs for many years. It has placed signs on its stores that are
blatantly false and misleading: "Nothing artificial, ever!" And it has
waged a campaign of total disinformation about the GMOs that continue to
be sold right now in not just the food products, but also the supplements it retails. (Yes, many supplements sold at Whole Foods are loaded with genetically modified ingredients.)

So
don't let Whole Foods fool you into thinking this is all about "doing
the right thing." If anything, Whole Foods has decided to do the right
thing only as a last resort, after being forced to do so by the
alternative media and grassroots activists. As Winston Churchill
famously said in the European theater of World War II, "Americans can
always be counted on to do the right thing... after they have exhausted
all other possibilities."

Ultimately, it's hard-working people
like Ronnie Cummins and Jeffrey Smith who really deserve the credit for
Whole Foods making this move.

That's why all this is a victory
for grassroots activism over corporate deception. This shows the power
of the alternative media to connect people in ways that achieve real
change. This shows that when push comes to shove, the alternative media
is in many ways more powerful than the lying mainstream media which has engaged in a shameful GMO cover-up.

What happens next

Despite everything written above, if Whole Foods has the guts to make a public announcement like this, they will have my support in this endeavor. It's a gutsy move to publicly oppose Monsanto and the wholly corrupt, mafia-minded biotech industry.

No doubt Whole Foods is going to endure unbelievable heat for this. You can fully expect a lawsuit to be filed by Monsanto against the retailer, and even the USDA and FDA will likely get involved. Remember, it was really Monsanto and the FDA that forced wholesome milk producers to remove the "no rBGH" claim from their labels.

My
prediction: Monsanto and the FDA are going to wage a massive regulatory
assault on Whole Foods and try to find some way to force Whole Foods to
back off this promise to label GMOs. We, the grassroots activists who
helped make this happen, would be wise to help defend Whole Foods
in this decision. At some point, we may have to organize letter-writing
campaigns, call-in campaigns, etc., to the FDA and even U.S. Senators
to oppose FDA regulations that attempt to censor and silence GMO
labeling. That will probably happen in 2014 - 2015.

In the mean
time, product suppliers who sell to Whole Foods are going to have to
start making a big decision themselves: Do we create a separate line of
products just for Whole Foods, or do we label all our products no matter
where they are sold?

Some food companies will decide to pull out of Whole Foods in protest. These will likely be the "no on 37" brands that are total GMO sellouts like Kashi, Silk, Larabar and others. There will be tremendous economic pressure put on Whole Foods over this, believe me.

But
the more responsible brands -- like Nature's Path cereals and Amy's
Kitchen -- will welcome the labeling and they will quickly comply. (In
Nature's Path's case, by the way, they are already 100% non-GMO, so they
are already compliant. Amy's also avoids GMOs.)

This will mean
that some shelf space may open up at Whole Foods stores because those
GMO deceivers will pull out. But this is actually a fantastic
opportunity for non-GMO brands to come in and fill the space. This will
actually improve Whole Foods' overall product selection and make it an
even more inviting place to shop. (Heck, I might even start shopping
there again.)

Those companies that choose to comply with the
labeling will obviously start telling their own raw materials suppliers
that they don't want to buy any more GMOs. And those raw materials
suppliers, in turn, will tell their farmers to stop growing GMOs because the market demand is collapsing.

Simple economics means more farmers will stop growing GMOs

The
upshot of this is that farmers who grow GMOs will be punished with
plummeting demand while farmers who grow certified non-GMO crops will be
rewarded with increased demand and increased prices. (Isn't the free market wonderful?)

The
end result is victory for everyone: Whole Foods gets its reputation
back, consumers get honest labeling, farmers get away from toxic GMOs
and superweeds, the environment benefits from less genetic pollution and
toxic Monsanto pesticides being sprayed, and the health of those who
shop at Whole Foods is vastly improved by not eating hidden GMOs!

Who
are the losers in all this? Monsanto and the biotech industry. You
might argue they are already losers, ethically speaking, but I'm talking
about economics: They are about to get hammered right where it counts:
in the pocketbook.

In essence then, this ballsy decision by Whole
Foods is one giant kick in the crotch for Monsanto, which is precisely
what that corporate monstrosity rudely deserves.

I would
personally like to join in this crotch-kicking contest by getting behind
Whole Foods in this decision and helping support its efforts to follow
through with its GMO labeling promise.

So, for the record,
Natural News is fully supportive of Whole Foods on this issue, and we
intend to rally grassroots support to help Whole Foods defend this
decision when the time comes.

And ultimately, if this goes into
place over the next five years, I plan to be among those who help
publicize the good news and encourage everybody to shop at Whole Foods.
Five years isn't as far off as you think, and I'm a pretty young guy, so
I'll still be here covering all this.

Bottom line? Wind up your
kicking legs, everybody. We're all about to join in a massive grassroots
ballet of Monsanto crotch-kicking lasting five years. Think of it as
inverted river dancing.

Source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/039405_Whole_Foods_GMO_labeling_Monsanto.html