Corporations announce plans to proactively label their GMO products–should we trust them?
They say you should never look a gift horse in the mouth. But one wonders if that old adage needs a bit of updating in a much more cynical and conniving age.
For instance, if that generous giver of all things equine is someone known to you, perhaps someone who has a reputation for shady dealings in the area of horsey donations, you might at least ask yourself one or two questions regarding his motivation, mightn’t you?
That doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Such is the case with several big customers of GMO crops like General Mills and Campbell’s who have recently announced their intentions to step up on their own and change their labels, unbidden, to reflect which of their products contain GMO products.
And, you know, that’s great and all. A win is a win.
But given that these are the world’s largest food corporations, and that they’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars to avoid being required to label the genetically engineered ingredients in their products before now, perhaps a moment of suspicion is in order.
Especially when general Mills makes claims like “…you should know what’s in your food and how we make ours.”
Yeah… Thanks. That was, uh, sudden.
For a company that has fought tooth and nail to prevent anyone from finding out exactly that information, some would even call that a “cynical about-face.” But we are avoiding name-calling against those who seek to endow us with free equines at the moment.
So let’s forget for a moment that General Mills–along with many other food companies that fought so hard against the labels in Vermont–still pays its lobbying arm the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) a lot of money. That’s the multi-billion-dollar lobbying group that is even now still trying to overturn Vermont’s law in the courts, and preempt it in Congress.
Without going all Scully and Mulder here, it surely isn’t too much of a stretch to throw out the supposition that these guys know how to play the long game. That they might be rather adept at disguising their true motives.
So when some suggest that maybe corporations like General Mills might just be making a play for Congressional and public sympathy in anticipation of turning around and going in an altogether different direction once we’ve stopped paying attention, it doesn’t seem so outrageous.
One theory: by making this announcement, by pinky-swearing that their new deathbed conversions are the real thing, companies like General Mills and Campbell’s will give their stooges in Congress just enough cover to be able to aver with a straight face that no state-level legislation is needed.
But that’s just one theory. One thing is certain: they won’t ever give up the fight to force us to buy their poisonous garbage, and we should never give up the fight against them.