Food, Inc. Review

by Nicholas Smith - Community Market's Marketing Director 8/1/09

For many years now, the natural foods industry has been fighting Monsanto. Considering how many times Monsanto has won in the past, it’s easy to get discouraged from chipping away at this solid brick wall of a company. Nevertheless, those times that we actually do break through, offers a little taste of hope, tempting us, and making us hungry for more.

With that said, Monsanto has lost a battle worth rejoicing over. In response to growing consumer demand for milk from rBGH-free cows, Monsanto launched a nation-wide effort to make it illegal to label dairy products that come from untreated cows. During their campaign, Monsanto went to such lengths as attempting to get the FDA to ban rBGH-free labels nationally. Over the years, they have been largely unsuccessful in their attempts to conceal the growth hormone (Its use is banned in the European Union, Japan, Australia, and Canada) from the American public. Surprisingly, states such as Indiana and Kansas shot down Monsanto’s attempts at deception, causing Monsanto to scurry away with its tail between its legs. In 2007, United States grocery chains Kroger and Safeway banned the use of rBGH-treated milk in their store-branded dairy products. In January 2008, Starbucks stopped using rBGH-treated milk, and in March 2008, Wal-Mart banned rBGH use in their store-brand milk products. Finally, after 5 years of declining sales and several legal setbacks, Monsanto decided to dump rBGH.

Stories like these prove that public awareness and opinion is powerful enough to stop comp- anies like Monsanto (as well as the FDA), possibly exposing more light in the near future for those of us who would like to be informed of what’s in our food products. It is important to keep chipping away, despite Monsanto’s firm grip on our food supply. They aren’t invincible, and we now know that awareness just might be our deadliest weapon.