GMO activists and their misguided attack on Starbucks

A bunch of activists, including musician Neil Young, are upset with Starbucks! Yeah, what’s new?

This time, according to Bloomberg News, it has to do with their membership in a trade association.

They report that the advocacy group SumOfUs is calling on Starbucks to end their membership with the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) because of their legal case against the GMO law (“a move supported by Monsanto”) that requires foods be labeled as having GMO ingredients. Starbucks says “it has nothing to do with the lawsuit.” They’re simply a member of the GMA.

According to Bloomberg News, “SumOfUs has gathered more than 300,000 signatures on a petition calling on Starbucks to drop its GMA membership. The campaign got a boost last week from [Neil] Young, the 69-year-old rock legend. He said on his personal website that he would no longer buy his lattes at Starbucks in protest.”

Now, Vermont is the first state in the country to make GMO labeling mandatory. As you’ll recall, that failed here in Washington not too long ago. The GMA argues the law violates their free speech rights and claim it’s in direct conflict with findings from the federal government that GMOs are safe and not something to be scared of.

Let’s say Starbucks supports the idea of a lawsuit (even though they say they’re not involved with the lawsuit); that they’re against labeling food with GMO ingredients. That makes business sense. Activists have been somewhat successful in scaring people from GMOs. If you put a label on food that says “this item has GMO ingredients,” the impact is to scare people: “Well why do we have to know about those GMO ingredients? It must be a warning label!”

The label is meant to scare you away from eating GMOs even though they’re not dangerous (and that’s coming from someone who actually would pick the non-GMO food if given the choice because I’d prefer food as natural as possible, but I’m also not a Kool-Aid drinker on this).

Why would Starbucks — or any business that serves food with GMO ingredients — want to put a warning label on their items? It could hurt sales. It’s not even good science.

And by the way, as much as it’s a smart business move to be against labeling GMO foods if you sell foods with GMO, it’s also a smart business decision to point out you don’t have GMOs. You think all the “health food” that proudly proclaims it doesn’t have GMOs in their ingredients are doing it just to promote a healthy lifestyle? No. They’re also doing it for marketing reasons. It makes them money!