First-Ever Consumer Guide e-Book on GMO Foods Co-Authored By Stonyfield Yogurt Founder
The founder and CEO of the world’s leading organic yogurt company, Stonyfield Farms, announced that he has stepped down from the company he founded and will be focusing instead on food regulatory issues, came along with the news that he has co-authored a consumer guide e-book designed to help Americans better understand genetically modified foods.
Stonyfield’s Gary Hirshberg authored the book, titledLabel It Now: What You Need to Know About Genetically Engineered Foodsalong with Charles Benbrook, the chief scientist of The Organic Center, a research and education institute leading the science on organic food and farming methods, and with Britt Lundgren, Stonyfield’s director of organic and sustainable agriculture.
A longtime advocate of organic farming, Hirshberg, along with Benbrook and Lundgren designed the book around the issue of transparency—citing that consumers have a right to know what is in their food, particularly whether it contains genetically modified ingredients or not.
The e-book goes into detail on Roundup—the glyphosate-based pesticide marketed by Monsanto and used predominantly on GMO crops. It also covers the science, regulatory issues and policies on genetically modified foods, and how they contributed to the rise of GMO seeds that have come to dominate our nation’s food supply, volunteering the American public without their consent to serve as guinea pigs subjected to exposure of the controversial seeds and pesticides.
Proceeds from the e-book will go to support the JustLabelIt.org campaign—a national petition aiming to get the FDA to require mandatory labeling on all genetically modified foods. The e-book is available for $2.99 and can be downloaded via major digital booksellers.
The California Department of Food and Agriculture estimates that more than 70 percent of all processed foods contain genetically modified ingredients; 93 percent of soy, 86 percent of corn and 93 percent of cotton and canola planted in the U.S. in 2010 were genetically engineered.
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Image: Label It Now
