SENATE SELL OUT ON 90% OF NATION DEMANDING GMO LABELS - STATES CAN'T DECIDE BY LAW TO LABEL

 

GMO Labeling Bill Voted Down In Senate

Posted: 05/23/2013 11:31 am EDT  |  Updated: 05/23/2013 4:08 pm EDT 

Michael McAuliff  WASHINGTON -- The United States Senate decided again Thursday that it simply does not want to let states tell people whether or not they are eating genetically modified foo   d.
The Senate voted overwhelmingly -- 71 to 27 -- against an amendment to the sweeping farm bill, squashing a measure that would not have required labeling of genetically modified organisms, but merely would have let states decide if they wanted to require such labeling.
"The concept we're talking about today is a fairly commonsense and non-radical idea," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the sponsor of the amendment, said shortly before the vote. "All over the world, in the European Union, in many other countries around the world, dozens and dozens of countries, people are able to look at the food that they are buying and determine through labeling whether or not that product contains genetically modified organisms."
Sanders has noted that more than 3,000 ingredients are required to be labeled, but genetically modified ingredients are not part of that list. His state and Connecticut have passed laws to require such labeling, but Sanders said local leaders fear that large biotech corporations such as Monsanto could sue the states on the grounds that they are preempting federal authority. He said his bill would make clear that states can do what they want on the issue.
But Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), the chair of the Agriculture Committee, argued that the measure "is not germane to the farm bill" in the first place. She also said the labels run counter to science and the public interest in healthy food.
"This particular amendment would interfere with the FDA's science-based process to determine what food labeling is necessary for consumers," Stabenow said.
"It's also important to note that around the world now we are seeing genetically modified crops that have the ability to resist crop diseases and improve nutritional content and survive drought conditions in many developing countries," she added. "We see wonderful work being done by foundations like the Gates Foundation and others, that are using new techniques to be able to feed hungry people," she said, although it was not clear how labeling would affect such efforts.
Sanders' office pointed out that 64 countries around the world require GMO labeling.
"I believe we must rely on the FDA's science-based examination before we make conclusions about food ingredients derived from genetically modified foods," Stabenow said. "They currently do not require special labeling because they've determined that food content of these ingredients does not materially differ from their conventional counterparts."
While Stabenow seemed assured of the safety of genetically modified food, there is in fact significant debate about whether or not it will prove safe in the long run. There are also growing concerns about the environmental impacts.
The lack of labeling also makes it much harder for consumers who oppose GMOs -- whether they think they are healthy or not -- from voting against them in the marketplace. Most of the processed food on U.S. store shelves contains genetically modified ingredients, including corn and soybeans.
Sanders put forth a similar amendment last year, but it was voted down as well. He promised on Thursday to keep trying. "The people of Vermont and the people of America have a right to know what's in the food that they eat,” he said in a statement after the vote.
Michael McAuliff covers Congress and politics for The Huffington Post.
Source:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/23/gmo-labeling-bill-genetically-modified-food_n_3325972.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

Bt GMO CROPS NEED ADDITIONAL PESTICIDE SPRAYS FOR CORN BORER ROOTWORM

SUSTAINABEAST

Farmers Turn to Pesticide as Insects Resist Genetically Modified Crops

by Daniel Gross May 22, 2013 2:35 PM EDT       Corn rootworm. (Getty)

Genetically modified seeds were supposed to liberate corn farmers from using pesticide to combat rootworms. But as the insects adapt, farmers are having to adapt—by spraying their fields with chemicals.

It’s not just the cicadas. The Wall Street Journal reports there’s a more significant insect threat being posed to America: rootworms.

The bugs, which have the capability to decimate corn and grain crops, have become a more manageable problem in recent years. That’s because companies like Monsanto have developed genetically modified seeds that produce rootworm-killing toxins—without harming humans. (Here’s Monsanto’s rootworm page.) Thanks to the widespread adoption of such seeds, farmers have been spraying their crops with insecticide less frequently. “Today, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, two-thirds of all corn grown in the U.S. includes a rootworm-targeting gene known as Bt,” the Journal reports.

But if you’ve read your Darwin, you’ll know that species have been known to adapt to circumstances. And that seems to be happening in the corn fields. Some rootworms apparently were immune to the nasty stuff in the seeds. And they have been reproducing. The upshot? Farmers are bringing back the chemicals. In addition to purchasing the rootworm-proof seeds, they’re now having to start using insecticides. Companies like Syngenta, which makes soil insecticides for corn crops, are reporting booming sales.

Genetically modified crops have been touted as a solution to many of the woes afflicting agriculture. The theory was that scientists could rearrange the chemical makeup of crops so that they could resists the perils posed by drought, or heat, or pestilence. But while you can fool nature for a while, it’s apparently difficult to do so over the long term.

Source:  http://www.thedailybeast.com/features/sustainabeast.html

GMO CROPS INCREASE YIELDS? NOT SO FAR

The inconvenient truth about GM

Genetic modification has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides and resist pests. It has done little to increase yields

Green shoots of hope: apricot seedlings in the lab at Zaiger’s Genetics in Modesto, California Photo: ALAMY

By Geoffrey Lean

8:08PM BST 17 May 2013

Some 10,000 years ago, somewhere in the Middle East’s fertile crescent, happenstance sowed the seeds of much of modern agriculture. Pollen from a wild goat grass landed on primitive wheat, creating a natural – but stronger and more productive – hybrid. Alert early farmers saved its seeds for growing their next harvests, starting a long process of development that has led to all the modern varieties of wheat that feed a third of the world’s people.

Now scientists at Britain’s National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) have deliberately duplicated that ancient accident, with a different goat grass, in an attempt to restart – and enormously accelerate – the process with new genes. Early indications are that this could increase wheat yields by a dramatic 30 per cent.

The National Farmers’ Union president, Peter Kendall, describes the potential as “just enormous”. And it is indeed the sort of breakthrough we desperately need, since – in little more than 35 years – the world will have to increase food production by a challenging 70 per cent if it is to feed its growing population. In the next half century, adds the NIAB, we will have to grow as much wheat as has been harvested since that original hybridisation occurred at the dawn of agriculture.

Hunger is rapidly rising up the agenda. David Cameron missed this week’s crucial vote on the Europe referendum because he was in New York to co-chair a UN panel setting new targets for tackling it, and will host a special hunger summit next month. And two important new books outlining solutions will feature at a session on “feeding the world” at the Telegraph Hay Festival, opening next week.

One is by Prof Sir Gordon Conway, formerly both President of the Rockefeller Foundation and Chief Scientific Adviser to the Department for International Development, who is one of the most thoughtful supporters of genetic modification. But what emerges from his book, One Billion Hungry, from this week’s breakthrough, and from a host of other evidence, is how little – so far, at least – GM technology is contributing to beating hunger.

It was not involved in the NIAB’s quantum leap, which was due to conventional breeding techniques. Nor was it involved, to give an example from Prof Conway’s book, in developing new varieties of African rice, called Nerica, which are up to four times as productive as traditional varieties, contain more protein, need a much shorter growing season, resist pests and diseases, thrive on poor soils and withstand drought.
The same is true of another of his superstars, Scuba Rice, which beats flooding by surviving 17 days underwater and still achieving enhanced yields – and, within three years, had been taken up by 3.5 million Asian farmers.

CGIAR – the international consortium of research centres that developed this miracle rice (and kicked off the Green Revolution more than half a century ago) – has also used non-GM techniques to produce more than 30 varieties of drought-tolerant maize, which have increased farmers’ yields by 20 to 30 per cent across 13 African countries; climbing beans that have trebled production in Central Africa; and wheats that thrive on salty soils. A host of other successes include blight-resistant potatoes and crops enriched with vitamin A, iron and other essential nutrients.

Genetic modification, by contrast, has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides (often manufactured by the same company, thus encouraging their use) and resist pests. They have done little to increase yields per se – though they have helped by controlling weeds and insects – while varieties designed to withstand drought and floods, and improve nutrition, are only now beginning to emerge.
GM may be able to do jobs that more conventional techniques cannot manage: conferring heat resistance to cope with global warming is one candidate. But the impression often given by its proponents that it is the main source of new crops, and thus essential to feed the world, could hardly be further from the truth.
Nor is biotechnology all GM. The Nerica rices, for example, owe their existence to cell tissue culture. Scuba rice was produced through the technique of marker-assisted selection, which identifies and enables the use of a whole sequence of genes.

But in the end new crops can only do so much. Most of the hungry, in a bitter irony, are themselves farmers who cannot produce, or afford, enough of it – and the new seeds are often beyond their reach. Prof Conway stresses the importance of helping such small, subsistence farmers grow more but it is the second book The Last Hunger Season – whose author, Roger Thurow, will be at Hay – that goes into detail on how to get them the help they need. Just as 10,000 years ago, the future rests on them.

Pot-growing is sending green principles up in smoke
Talk about sitting back and watching the grass grow. Greens and government officials in Washington State are normally fierce towards carbon emitters, pioneering tough standards on power stations, for example. But their principles go to pot when it comes to cannabis growing.

The practice, legalised there by a vote in last year’s presidential election, is immensely polluting. Growing just one kilo of marijuana, a study concluded last year, releases as much carbon dioxide as driving across the United States seven times. This is because it is mainly cultivated indoors – with bright lights, air-conditioning, fans, dehumidifiers and even machines specially generating the gas to produce more potent puffs.
Normally keen green groups, such as the Sierra Club and Conservation Northwest, have dopily told The Seattle Times that they have other priorities. Governor Jay Inslee – who hails Washingtonians as “the people who are destined to defeat carbon pollution” – declined to comment. And the City of Seattle, despite aiming to be carbon-neutral by 2050, is producing new zoning regulations to permit plenty of indoor reefer ranching.
Making cultivation go outside would be much cleaner, of course. But there seems to be a joint determination to hash things up.

Handing the keys to Ukip
When will the Government stop insulting its own supporters? No sooner has housing minister Nick Boles repented by saying he wants to “work with” those he once denounced as “hysterical Luddites” for worrying about inappropriate building in the countryside, than Michael Gove accuses them of opposing social mobility, aspiration and the family. No wonder the Government’s planning policies are a big factor behind the Ukip surge.

If the Education Secretary would return from the history curriculum to the present day, he might realise that the Conservatives he apparently despises agree that there must be much more housebuilding and that some of it should be in the countryside. All they have been asking – for nearly two years now – is that it is properly planned.

Besides, such social condemnation comes ill from a government that last year saw the first fall in constructing affordable housing in a decade, is encouraging builders to renege on agreements with councils to supply it, and has instituted a mortgage support scheme that the Office of Budget Responsibility says risks driving up house prices.

Developers love it all, of course, but – while they may provide funds – they don’t have many votes. 
Source:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/agriculture/geneticmodification/10064255/The-inconvenient-truth-about-GM.html

THE WORLD DISACCORDING TO MONSANTO

Published on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 by Common Dreams

Rallying Cry: Citizens Worldwide to Unite in 'March Against Monsanto'

Dr. Vandana Shiva: "The March against Monsanto is a call to end the dictatorship over seeds, over life, over food and over our freedom."

- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

Tens of thousands of activists are uniting in a global day of action to "take back the food supply," in a worldwide March Against Monsanto Saturday.
News of the event has gone viral as environmentalists and others opposed to the rampant spread of genetically modified (GM) crops have planned over 400 events in more than 45 countries. In the United States, actions in 47 states are slated to occur simultaneously at 11 AM PT.
"Our website is averaging over 40,000 visitors a day and our Facebook page has reached over 10,000,000 people in the last 7 days," the organizers wrote on their website Tuesday.
Tami Monroe Canal, who initiated the march, says she was inspired to start the movement to protect her two daughters. “I feel Monsanto threatens their generation’s health, fertility and longevity. I couldn't sit by idly, waiting for someone else to do something.”
The protesters are marching against the dangers of GM crops in addition to the "cronyism" which has enabled the biotech giant to dominate the global food supply.
"Monsanto has no intention of serving the people. They betray humanity, they betray life, they belie mother nature—and they do so at the expense of all of us," Canal said in an online interview.
She adds that a large part of the problem is the "cronyism that exists between the government and Monsanto," specifically referencing Michael Taylor of the Food and Drug Association and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—both of whom had longtime affiliations with the company.
On their website, the march organizers lay out their reasons for the fight:

• Research studies have shown that Monsanto’s genetically-modified foods can lead to serious health conditions such as the development of cancer tumors, infertility and birth defects.
• In the United States, the FDA, the agency tasked with ensuring food safety for the population, is steered by ex-Monsanto executives, and we feel that’s a questionable conflict of interests and explains the lack of government-led research on the long-term effects of GM products.
• Recently, the U.S. Congress and president collectively passed the nicknamed “Monsanto Protection Act” that, among other things, bans courts from halting the sale of Monsanto’s genetically-modified seeds.
• For too long, Monsanto has been the benefactor of corporate subsidies and political favoritism. Organic and small farmers suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.
• Monsanto's GM seeds are harmful to the environment; for example, scientists have indicated they have contributed to Colony Collapse Disorder among the world's bee population.

Ahead of the march, activists worldwide have registered events and are speaking out about the importance of taking on "evil multinational corporations like Monsanto."
"The march against Monsanto is inspired by the love for freedom and democracy, the love for the Earth, the soil, the seed," said India's Dr. Vandana Shiva, Seed Freedom Movement pioneer, in a video promoting the action. "And it is our deep love for life on Earth in freedom that makes all of us march against Monsanto and we stand in solidarity with everyone."
"This dictatorship must end," she adds. "The March against Monsanto is a call to end the dictatorship over seeds, over life, over food and over our freedom."
Roberta Gogos, who organized the march in Athens, Greece, emphasized the vulnerability of austerity-impacted countries to industrial bullying.
“Monsanto is working very hard to overturn EU regulation on obligatory labeling (questionable whether it's really enforced in any case), and no doubt they will have their way in the end," she said. "Greece is in a precarious position right now, and Greece's farmers falling prey to the petrochemical giant is a very real possibility.”
Similarly, Ecuadorian activist Josh Castro added that he was inspired to protect his country, with "the richest biodiversity in the world," from the devastating effect of monocultures and GM seeds.
“Ecuador is such a beautiful place," he said. "We will not allow this Garden of Eden to be compromised by evil multinational corporations like Monsanto."
The global day of action has been organized by a coalition, including The Anti-Media, Activists’ Free Press and A Revolt-Digital Anarchy.
"It's time to take back our food. It's time to march against Monsanto."

INDONESIA SELLS OUT TO FRANKENSWEETENER AND 13 FRANKENCROPS

Development underway for first transgenic sugarcane plantation

Anggi M. Lubis, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Business | Mon, May 20 2013, 11:58 AM

A- A A+

Paper Edition | Page: 14

Sweet and sticky: Workers harvest sugarcane at a plantation in Tulungagung, East Java, Indonesia. The government recently approved the first transgenic sugarcane and other 13 biotech food crops for commercial production. Antara/Sahlan Kurniawan
The National Genetically Modified Product Biosafety Commission (KKHPRG) recently approved the first genetically-altered sugarcane crop, paving the way for the development of transgenic sugarcane for commercial production.

Bambang Purwantara, a member of the commission, said that the institutions which held the mandate to approve biotech plants had all given the nod to a drought-resistant transgenic sugarcane seed

The cane, developed by state plantation firm PT Perkebunan Nusantara, the Indonesian Sugarcane Plantation Research Center (P3GI) and experts from the State University of Jember in East Java, is currently under a limited field testing.

“We are proud to announce that the first biotech staple crop will be a drought-resistant sugarcane. We expect to see the transgenic sugarcane planted by next year at the latest,” Bambang explained.

The commission is currently assessing another sugarcane variety — said to be resistant to herbicide — developed by the state plantation company and scientists from the research center and the university.

The drought-resistant sugarcane is the first out of 14 recommended biotech crops that are being assessed by the commission, which was established in 2010 to oversee the developing biotechnology.

Thirteen other transgenic food crops have passed food safety testing, which ensures that the products are safe for human consumption.

The recommended biotech crops include several varieties of corn, soybeans, sugarcane and an antifreeze protein producing plant.

Besides food safety testing, the biotech plants also have go through feed safety and environmental safety tests to assess use as animal fodder and to assess its environmental impacts respectively, as laid down in the Agriculture Minister’s regulation No. 61/2011 sets out the establishment of a transgenic system.

Genetically modified crops are designed by scientists to for higher yields and resistance to insects and herbicides, but still the idea has generated controversy worldwide. Scientists who view biotech crops with caution have linked the consumption of biotech crops with illnesses, such as cancer.

Environmentalists also regard genetically-altered crops as tampering too much with nature.

Conversely, others say that the crops use less pesticide and land, thus benefiting the environment.

With growing population and demand production needs to increase on limited plots of lands.

Critics also raise economic concerns over expensive patents on seeds.

There are plans to import 2.27 million tons of raw sugar this year, up by 8.1 percent from 2.1 million tons in 2012, in a bid to meet the surge in refining capacity of local sugar mills.

Data from the Agriculture Ministry shows that 780,000 tons of corn were imported in the first quarter, three times as much as the 260,000 tons last year.

Data from BPS also shows that consumption of grain increased by an average 8 percent each year between 2000 and 2012, while corn yields increased on average by only 6 percent and corn per planted hectare increased by only 1 percent per annum.

The high demand for soybean-made tempeh and tofu cannot be met by local production and 60 percent of soybean needs are met by imports.
SOURCE:  http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2013/05/20/development-underway-first-transgenic-sugarcane-plantation.html

GMOs - THE NEW, MORE PALATABLE EUPHAMISM: "ENHANCED"

Pivotal moment hit in battle over genetically enhanced food 

By Ben Goad and Julian Hattem - 05/18/13 11:17 AM ET

The decades-old fight over genetically modified food has reached a fever pitch in Washington.

The Obama administration and Congress are weighing the safety of technological advances that seem ripped from science fiction, including salmon that can grow to full size in half the normal time and strains of crops engineered to resist powerful herbicides.

Critics of these innovations warn that they could pose threats to public health, damage the environment or, in the salmon’s case, lead to the destruction of species when gene-splicing goes wrong.

Proponents argue that genetic engineering is perfectly safe and say it’s critical to providing a sufficient food supply for the world’s ever-growing population.

Proposed regulations to govern the foods are the subject of skirmishes that pit food safety advocates, organic farmers and consumer rights groups against the agriculture and biotechnology industries.

At the same time, a renewed legislative effort to require labels on genetically modified foodstuffs is gaining momentum in Congress.

“There’s a new consciousness in America about food and Agriculture,” said Colin O’Neil, the Center for Food Safety’s director of government affairs. “Finally this issue is being elevated to the national spectrum.”

Late last month, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced a bill that would require labeling on all genetically modified food.

“Consumers deserve to know what’s in the food they eat,” Boxer said. “When we give them the facts, they make the best decisions for their families.”

The effort is not new. Boxer started pushing the idea 13 years ago, and her legislation is seen as facing a difficult path forward through the divided Congress.

But both backers and opponents of the measure agree that support has grown. When she first introduced the bill, Boxer had zero co-sponsors. Now the legislation has more than 30 in the House and Senate, including a pair of Republicans.

The strides come as an increasing number of states have taken up the issue. None carried a heavier price tag than California’s Proposition 37, which was on the state’s ballots last year.

Industry groups and other critics of the measure poured more than $44 million into an opposition campaign, outspending proponents by a margin of more than four to one. The proposition was narrowly defeated.

But this month, Vermont's state House overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring labels on genetically modified foods, the first time an American legislative body approved such a measure. At least two dozen other states are considering similar labeling requirements, which have also been adopted in more than 60 foreign nations. 

An ABC News poll last summer showed that 93 percent of the public believes that the government should require labels on food that has been genetically modified.

"I think 93 percent of Americans really don't agree on anything in this country," said Gary Hirshberg, chairman of the advocacy group Just Label It. "So there really are few issues that unite Americans than desire to know what's in our food. People want to know more, not less.”

Representatives from the agriculture and biotechnology industries concede that momentum is not on their side.

"We're losing the battle when it comes to educating the public about the benefits of biotechnology and the opportunities that it gives all of us to make sure that people are fed across the world," said Tyler Wegmeyer, the director of congressional relations with the American Farm Bureau.

The industry groups contend that genetically enhanced produce and protein products are exactly like the rest of the food lining the aisles of the nation’s grocery stores, with no additional public health risks or nutritional differences.

Mandatory labels, the industry says, would only serve to prejudice consumers against important technological advancements.

“This is not meant to inform customers, it’s going to scare customers,” argued Cathy Enright, an executive vice president at The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).

The trade association has been part of an extensive Washington lobbying effort in support of genetically modified food products.

The efforts could be paying off in some areas.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is weighing a proposal from the biotechnology firm AquaBounty Technologies to approve the fast-growing salmon for human consumption. Already, the agency has issued draft findings that the Boston firm’s fish are identical to traditional salmon, safe to eat and won’t cause environmental harm.

An extended public comment period on the proposal closed late last month, though it was unclear how soon a decision would come. Approval would be a major victory for the industry groups, and could hold implications for other genetically modified animals.

But the proposal has faced major pushback from a coalition of public interest and consumer advocates, environmental groups, commercial fisheries and other business interests.

Roughly 1.8 million people signed on to an online petition opposing approval. Dubbing the salmon “Frankenfish,” the groups have warned that the genetic fish could escape their designated water and mix with unaltered fish.

“They could wreak havoc on wild salmon populations,” said O’Neil of the Center for Food Safety, who cited research finding that the escape of 60 modified fish could lead to the extinction of the wild population in less than 40 generations.

BIO’s Enright dismissed the contention, saying the proposal calls for many levels of safeguards, not the least of which is an assurance that the fish will be sterile.

As they await the FDA’s decision, industry groups are smarting from a U.S. Agriculture Department’s (USDA) announcement that it would need additional environmental studies for crops genetically modified to be resistant to two weed-killers.

For years, farmers have planted herbicide resistant or “Roundup ready” corn, cotton and soybeans, which allow farmers to spray their fields for weeds.

But the crops have led to stronger “super weeds,” leading chemical and agricultural companies Dow and Monsanto to produce new herbicide resistant plants that the USDA has concluded need to be studied before approval.

Public interest groups cheered the increased scrutiny, but industry organizations said the delays involved would be a blow to the companies who developed the new strains as well as for farmers who have grown to rely on them.

While the Obama administration is taking executive action on multiple fronts, it has been careful not to take sides in the broader debate over the merits of genetically enhanced crops.

“Some people want you to pick sides,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told The Hill. “I'd rather do the tougher job: trying to bring sides together. That’s what I'm going to focus on."

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/regwatch/energyenvironment/300555-pivotal-moment-reached-in-battle-over-genetically-enhanced-food#ixzz2U1wWe37H

WENDY'S: WHERE'S THE FAIR WAGES??

Published on Wednesday, May 22, 2013 by In These Times

 

Farmworkers Fight Wendy’s, the ‘Last Holdout’ on Fair Food

by Michelle Chen

An oversized puppet of the Wendy's mascot, provided by the People's Puppets of Occupy Wall Street, took part in silent street theater to convince the fast food giant to sign onto the Fast Food campaign. (Coalition of Immokalee Workers) While rain pattered gently on the concrete steps of Manhattan’s Union Square last Saturday, a group of workers were giving the assembled crowd a tour of the sun-scorched fields of Florida’s tomato farms. The performers had turned the urban square into a stage for a street theater performance, depicting backbreaking labor and tussles with industry goons emblazoned with corporate food brand logos.
By dramatizing a farm scene amid the bustle of Greenwich Village, Chelsea and the surrounding neighborhoods, the activists of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers highlighted the connection between farmworkers’ daily struggles and the villain of the drama: Wendy’s restaurants, which are the primary target of the group’s Fair Food campaign for decent labor standards in an industry built on modern-day serfdom.
The Union Square rally–featuring a brass band adorned with Wendy’s trademark red pigtails and tomato-shaped placards proclaiming “Justice for Farmworkers”–was part of a nationwide series of Fair Food demonstrations that are helping bridge the conceptual gap between food consumerism and farm labor, a sector replete with poverty wages and brutally exploitative conditions in the fields. The Coalition has been campaigning for months to push Wendy’s and the Florida supermarket giant Publix to sign a Fair Food agreement like the agreements brands like Chipotle and Trader Joe’s have already signed.
The Fair Food Program mandates about an additional penny in wages for each pound of tomatoes picked by Florida workers. That seemingly trivial amount, when multiplied by the massive scale of tomato agriculture, adds up to a meaningful difference in the lives of thousands of farmworkers who typically lack a living wage and basic labor protections: Since January 2011, the penny-per-pound premium has put some $10 million in their pockets, which could mean a raise of more than 60 percent for some low-wage laborers.
CIW activist Oscar Otzoy told Working In These Times in Spanish that, by spreading the word through rallies across the country, “We take action directly against the corporations that are responsible for the conditions that we're facing. Because in the market context that exists, it's these big companies that profit the most from the work that we as farmworkers are doing. And as they continue profiting, we continue facing the conditions that have existed for so long.”
"The atmosphere is ripe for a cross-cutting consumer-labor movement to ensure fairness for all the hands that feed America."
Otzoy, who has been working in the United States for seven years, noted that although immigrant workers are at the center of their campaign, the exploitative conditions have affected all farmworkers–those with and without papers and even U.S. citizens, because the production structure is inherently exploitative. “Our goal with this program is to get to a day when everyone, regardless of their status, is treated with dignity and respect on the job,” he said.
To prevent abuses like wage theft and forced labor, the Fair Food Program sets a broad code of conduct that ensures compliance with labor laws, “including zero tolerance for forced labor and systemic child labor,” a binding commitment to an auditing process for growers, and a system for workers to file complaints against employers. The program also deploys health and safety monitors to help protect workers from the many hazards lurking in hot, pesticide-laden fields.
The agreement is anchored by the 2010 commitment by Florida’s major growers’ association, Florida Tomato Growers Exchange, representing about 90 percent of the state’s producers. Since then, the Coalition’s program has attracted massive support from consumers, community groups and upscale foodies, and pressured numerous industry purchasers to sign on. The Coalition's unique, worker-led organizing model fuses consumer education and outreach with grassroots labor mobilization, and in the process reveals interlinked systems of consumption and production. In effect, their movement envisions "food justice" as structural change within a massively consolidated industry.
Wendy’s is seen as the “last holdout” among major fast food chains. However, advocates note that, ironically, CEO Emil Brolick was something of a fast-food pioneer in 2005, when the company he led then, Taco Bell, became the first corporate buyer to sign the Fair Food Agreement.
The campaign is well versed in challenging corporate resistance. Negotiations with Trader Joe’s dragged on for months as the company criticized the program’s provisions as “overreaching.” The fashionable food bazaar finally capitulated following a similar New York protest campaign in 2012. As Josh Eidelson reported last year, the sticking point in the Trader Joe’s campaign was perhaps not so much the extra penny–the company insisted it was already paying a price premium–but the idea of contractual obligation to fair labor standards. 
Similarly, in its ongoing stand-off with the Dutch supermarket corporation Ahold, the CIW has clashed with the CEOs not over the pricing arrangement, but over their demand for a binding agreement, as opposed to the usual voluntary “corporate social responsibility” code of conduct. Ultimately, the Fair Food Program isn’t just about boosting wages but empowering workers as industry stakeholders.
But the next frontier for the fair food movement may be far more ambitious. While groups like CIW have waged successful grassroots campaigns for farm labor, fast food restaurant workers have also been raising their collective voice through an unprecedented wave of strikes in various cities. Meanwhile, advocacy groups like Just Harvest and Food Chain Workers Alliance, which push for food policy reforms for greater labor protections and social sustainability, have been building cross-sector labor alliances to link workers in the fields, processing factories and fast food kitchens. The atmosphere is ripe for a cross-cutting consumer-labor movement to ensure fairness for all the hands that feed America.

© 2013 In These Times

Michelle Chen is a contributing editor at In These Times. She is a regular contributor to the labor rights blog Working In These Times, Colorlines.com, and Pacifica's WBAI. Her work has also appeared in Common Dreams, Alternet, Ms. Magazine, Newsday, and her old zine, cain.