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Cheerios To Go GMO-Free
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "ABC News reports that General Mills has ended the use of genetically modified ingredients in Cheerios, its flagship breakfast food. General Mills has been manufacturing its original-flavor Cheerios without GMOs for the past several weeks in response to consumer demand. Original Cheerios will now be labeled as 'Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients,' although that it is not an official certification. 'We were able to do this with original Cheerios because the main ingredients are oats,' says Mike Siemienas, noting that there are no genetically modified oats. The company is primarily switching the cornstarch and sugar to make the original Cheerios free of GMOs. Green America has been targeting Cheerios for the past year to raise the profile of the anti-GMO movement. 'This is a big deal,' says Green America's Todd Larsen. 'Cheerios is an iconic brand and one of the leading breakfast cereals in the U.S. We don't know of any other example of such a major brand of packaged food, eaten by so many Americans, going from being GMO to non-GMO.' For its part, General Mills says, It's not about safety,' and will continue to use GMOs in other food products."
Quite right.
This is about politics rather than science. The corporate shills want to make this strictly about food safety in order to distract from the abuses of companies like Monsanto.
Any regime that doesn't allow for a farmer to save and replant his own seeds needs to be torn down, burned, and then bombed.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We know this. GMO-free is a marketing term for affluent pananoid yuppies. It is not something that will ever feed mass numbers of needy people.
No, it's about being open and honest about what goes into your food. We in California had such a staggering amount of BS inserted into a campaign season, regarding GMO product labeling, that consumers were completely baffled what the impact was going to be and voted with the most convincing and well backed ads. Therefore we do not have a state statute requiring the labeling of food as containing all or part GMO components.
That was pretty damn insidious by Pro-GMO Big Ag.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm seriously sick of this ignorant crap. There is absolutely no known possible mechanism for GM foods to cause cancer because they're GM.
That's kind of like all the anti-drug people who say that there is no scientific proof that marijuana has any medicinal value. It was absolutely true. But the reason it is true is because you needed the DEA to give you a permit to work with banned drugs and they only like to give out permits projects researching adverse effects, not beneficial effects.
Same thing with GMO's -- the testing coverage of GMOs is very weak. There is this get out jail free card they use to legally avoid testing called substantial equivalence - the theory is that if you are just mixing genes from two different kinds of food, then its all good. They do very limited testing to make sure there is nothing obviously wrong (like the potatoes genes haven't turned the new GMO crop into belladonna) but the basic testing is all that's ever done if they can claim equivalence. Of course they do this because comprehensive testing would be really, really, really expensive. So, you know, let the customers beta test it.
So yeah, there is no known mechanism because no one is looking for one.