Cargill’s Non-GMO Project partnership highlights food companies’ ‘unwillingness to educate consumers’

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[Editor’s note: Julie Gunlock is a policy director at the Independent Women’s Forum and runs the organization’s Culture of Alarmism Project.]

[M]isinformation and fearmongering about GMOs persists. Activist groups like the Non-GMO Project deserve most of the blame.

Yet there’s another reason GMOs continue to be vilified: The unwillingness on the part of food companies, like Cargill, to help educate consumers about the GMO process. Food companies’ willingness to place the Non-GMO Project’s verified label on their products is just one example of this complacency.

Cargill’s main error was that they focused solely on pleasing one customer — the subset of shoppers looking for non-GMO food products — while forgetting an important business partner — the farmers that choose to sell Cargill their GMO corn. These farmers understandably bristle at the idea of working with a company that sidles up to an organization demonizing their farms.

Cargill’s claim that it cares about its customers and wants to respond to their demands is noble. Yet, Cargill also has a duty to their partners — in this case, the American farmer — to expose radical activist groups that actively work to misinform and frighten consumers about safe agriculture and food manufacturing processes.

One of Cargill’s mottos is “helping farmers prosper.” Cargill should remember this motto in their efforts to build coalitions. Partnering with an activist organization that seeks to destroy the biotech industry, harm farmers and limit consumer choices will do nothing to advance this righteous goal.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post: The Unholy Alliance Between Big Biz And Big Alarmism

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