The Good, the Bad and the Imposter Organic Brands

“No thanks, we’d rather not know what’s in that box of food stuff,” said the people of Washington state and California.

Not really, they were just bamboozled by brilliant and brilliantly deceptive ad campaigns costing $70 million dollars.

Last year Proposition 37 in California and just this month Ballot Initiative 522 in Washington State asked voters if they wanted mandatory labeling for foods containing GMOs in the respective states. Both states failed to pass labeling laws at about the same margin, 48% yes to 52% no.

The TV commercials were a powerful force to those who have never heard of a GMO, and there are many. The average person is going about his or her business, trying to put food on the table. Then they see an ad telling them that the initiatives are written poorly and will raise grocery prices, hurt family farmers and open the door for law suits. Of course they are not going to vote for it.

I know this is not a timely post, but I could not bring myself to write about this right after the election. I was devastated. But then it occurred to me, look at how many people did vote for labeling in spite of all the negative messages! The movement is growing.

Processed foods are big business. 90% of “food” in the grocery store is processed and 80% of that food contains one or more GMOs.

Pesticides are also huge business. Just ask Monsanto. Their pesticides sales were 3.7 BILLION in 2012, up 14% from 2011.

And those are the groups that funded the negative ad campaigns; pesticide companies, junk food companies and the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

The Organic Consumers Association is calling on consumers to boycott these organic and “natural” traitor brands:

• PepsiCo (Donated $2.5M): Naked Juice, Tostito’s, Tropicana, Loóza, Izze, Sabra, Smartfood, Stacy’s, Mother’s and Near East
• Kraft, recently became Mondelez (Donated $2M): Boca Burgers and Back to Nature
• Safeway (Member of Grocery Manufacturers Association, which donated $2M):“O” Organics
• Coca-Cola (Donated $1.7M): Honest Tea, Odwalla
• General Mills (Donated $1.2M): Muir Glen, Cascadian Farm, Larabar
• Con-Agra (Donated $1.2M): Orville Redenbacher’s Organic, Hunt’s Organic, Lightlife, Alexia
• Kellogg’s (Donated $791k): Kashi, Bear Naked, Morningstar Farms, Gardenburger
• Smucker’s (Donated $555k ): R.W. Knudsen, Santa Cruz Organic
• Dean Foods (Donated $254k): Horizon, Silk, White Wave

The bad news is that these companies are about to propose the biggest stunt yet. They are going to ask for voluntary labeling across the U. S. Why? So they don’t have to keep spending millions of their profits to defeat individual state labeling laws. Of course, no one will voluntarily label their foods.

The good news is that the movement is growing because of people spreading the word.

So again, print out this handy dandy list of companies and let them know how you feel about them… the next time you DON’T buy their “natural” or organic brand.

Download your wallet-sized boycott guide.
Download a poster-sized boycott guide.
Learn more about the boycott

Author: Lauren

Plant-based educator and speaker View all posts by Lauren