By  Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

After controversy surrounding Apeel — a Gates-funded synthetic fungicide and fruit coating — sparked concern over how chemicals are approved in organic products, agribusiness watchdog OrganicEye this week demanded the U.S. Department of Agriculture break Big Food’s stranglehold on the process for approving certified organic foods.

The request comes after a recent social media controversy surrounding a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded synthetic fungicide and fruit coating — Apeel — sparked public debate about potentially dangerous synthetic products and herbicides that make it into the food system under the “organic” label.

“The conflicts of interest in this process are mind-boggling,” said Mark Kastel, executive director of Wisconsin-based OrganicEye. “It’s time for the USDA to change direction to comply with the intent of Congress and save the value of the organic label for ethical farmers and their loyal customers.”

Since Congress created the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) in the 1990s to recommend industry standards for regulating organic food production and processing under the National Organic Program, the board increasingly has become dominated by members of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the most powerful industry lobbying group, Kastel told The Defender.

Once the industry-dominated NOSB recommends guidelines for approving products for use in the organic production process, a different organization — an industry-led and funded nonprofit, the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) — is responsible for reviewing newly branded and formulated food ingredients and agricultural inputs containing those products.

OMRI, which gets most of its funding from the fees it collects from the corporations applying for product approval, is responsible for approving products like Apeel’s organic line, Organipeel, for public consumption.

Along with its letter to the USDA demanding regulatory reform, OrganicEye launched a public campaign to pressure the Biden administration to reduce its dependence on political appointees from corporate agribusiness in organic regulatory oversight.

“Over the last 20 years I’ve learned these people only react to pressure — public pressure, political and media pressure,” Kastel told The Defender. “They don’t do the right thing because it’s the right thing. They do the right thing in damage control.”

Organic agencies captured by Big Ag

The existing regulatory structure grew out of the need in the 1980s to standardize how organic food was produced in order to protect farmers and consumers, Kastel said.

In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act, which, among other things, created the NOSB to serve as a buffer organization between corporate lobbyists and rulemakers.

The NOSB was designed as a public-private partnership — a 15-member panel with dedicated seats for different stakeholders — that set recommendations for different aspects of the organic industry with a mandate to act in the interests of farmers and consumers.

But under the leadership of Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture during the Obama administration and a former million-dollar-a-year agribusiness lobbyist, the USDA began filling seats originally meant for farmers with agribusiness employees.

Today, 80% of the NOSB members are either members of the OTA lobbying group or they work for members of the group, according to research by OrganicEye.

Under Vilsack, the NOSB also was stripped of its ability to set its own agenda. It’s supposed to work independently, but as small organic farmers have been bought up by large conventional ag conglomerates, the corporate dominance over the NOSB also has  grown and organic standards have been watered down to benefit the largest of these corporate “organic” producers, Mercola reported.

Kastel also told The Defender that because the organic industry is heavily dominated by Big Food giants such as General Mills or Perdue Farms, whose primary market is conventional food — rather than by small producers concerned with ecology — there is a constant pressure to “try to change the working definition of organic.”

Their goal, he said, is to make organic agriculture, “as close to conventional agriculture as possible so they have to change their practices of growing food or processing food as little as possible.”

It’s in that spirit that today, the corporate-dominated NOSB creates standards for organic production, Kastel said.

When companies create new inputs or products containing NOSB-approved ingredients to sell to organic producers and consumers, a certifying agent or Material Review Organization (MRO) must verify the product complies with the organic regulations set by the NOSB or relevant laws.

OMRI is one of the key MROs.

For example, a company like Apeel, whose Organipeel contains citric acid  — which is on the NOSB list of approved products — as an active ingredient, would submit its product to OMRI for approval and pay OMRI a fee for the approval process.

According to OMRI’s most recent IRS filings, the nonprofit organization, which operates as a public charity, exceeded $7 million in revenue last year, which came mostly from industry fees, OrganicEye reported.

It also reported that OMRI’s current executive director previously ran the nation’s largest accredited organic certifier, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF), one of the largest members and corporate donors to the OTA. And it reserves a seat on its board for a designee of the trade-lobby group.

“But,” Kastel said, “what’s most concerning is that they operate without any oversight.”

MROs are not accredited by the USDA or any other certifying agency and there is no regulation under the National Organic Program.

[…]

OMRI approved Apeel’s Organipeel

Apeel, a company that makes synthetic fungicide/fruit coating meant to extend the shelf-life of food — and which was founded by World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leader 2020 James Rogers with funding from the Gates Foundation — was confused online with a cleaning product by the same name.

A safety data sheet for the cleaning product went viral on social media, where users referenced its list of toxic ingredients to warn that Bill Gates was coating fruit with a dangerous chemical.

In fact, Apeel was not coating food with the dangerous chemicals found in the cleaning product. But the controversy drew public attention to the fact that most fruits and vegetables sold in the supermarket are covered with an edible film the the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calls “surface-finishing agents.”

These agents are meant to “increase palatability, preserve gloss, and inhibit discoloration of foods, including glazes, polishes, waxes, and protective coatings,” according to the Code of Federal Regulations.

Over time, these coatings have become more complex than the traditional, organic beeswax used in the past, according to OrganicEye’s white paper on food coatings.

The Apeel company produces two products — Edipeel for use in conventional food and Organipeel for use in organics — but it is moving away from that distinction in its marketing, instead using only its brand name, “Apeel.”

Apeel advertises:

“Yes! We have formulations that are OMRI Listed® for the growers and distributors of USDA Certified Organic produce. Apeel’s products help reduce post-harvest food waste, overpackaging, and costly controlled-atmosphere storage.”

But OrganicEye says this is a form of deceptive marketing because OMRI does not actually include fruit coatings or edible films on its approved products list. The “organic” version of Apeel actually coats the fruit in a citric-acid-based coating licensed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a fungicide.

OMRI gave Organipeel the green light, likely because citric acid is the active ingredient in the fungicide coating. Citric acid is a non-organic ingredient allowed in organic food as long as it isn’t synthetic. However, it makes up only 0.66% of the Organipeel formulation. According to OrganicEye’s white paper, Organipeel’s ingredient list is 99.34% “other ingredients,” which are not made public.

Apeel describes its non-organic food coating, Edipeel, as a colorless, odorless, tasteless coating for fruit and vegetables that’s composed entirely of a mixture of food-grade glycerolipids, derived from edible plant oils.

Its ingredients are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the FDA.

But the product contains mono- and diglycerides, commonly used in processed foods, which has raised concerns among health advocates and researchers who called for further research into the potential adverse effects on metabolic and gut health.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/apeel-food-coating-big-ag-organic-food/

By  Dr. Joseph Mercola

The scent wafting from your clothing is the result of fragrances added to reduce the obnoxious scent of synthetic clothing. As fragrance isn’t regulated, manufacturers are free to add any toxic chemicals to achieve their goals.

• In his first documentary film production, Jon Whelan presents overwhelming evidence showing dangerous chemicals are added to clothing and other products by design, to reduce cost and increase profits.
• The scent wafting from your clothing is the result of fragrances added to reduce the obnoxious scent of synthetic clothing; since fragrance is not regulated, manufacturers are free to add any toxic chemicals to achieve their goals.
• Although Europe practices precautionary principles, the U.S. assumes chemicals are safe until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, it may take many years before science can prove a toxin triggers negative health effects, unnecessarily exposing you to danger.
• Laundry detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets also add fragrance to your clothing, much of which may be vented to your neighborhood through your dryer, contributing to declining air quality.

In his first documentary film production, Jon Whelan, a single dad after his wife died from breast cancer, presents overwhelming evidence that dangerous chemicals are added to products by design.

As he discusses in this interview about his documentary “Stink!,” available on Netflix and YouTube, fragrances and scents are a dangerous, yet purposeful addition to products you use daily.

Your sense of smell is one of the most primal of your five senses. It is a key to survival, is often the first warning of safety or danger and is linked to memory.

In fact, a powerful attraction to fragrances is manipulated by advertisers and marketers in order to sell clothing, personal care products and laundry products.

You can recognize up to 10,000 different smells and, according to Stuart Firestein, Ph.D., of Columbia University, this system is very closely connected to the limbic system, said to contain your most basic drives.

A study in 2015 published in Chemosensory Perception investigated how odor-evoked memories influence consumers’ perception of a product. Researchers found fragrances evoking stronger personal emotional memories were preferred by the study participants.

It is not surprising scent is powerfully connected to emotion and memory and drives buying decisions.

Unfortunately, companies add toxic fragrances to mask the odor of noxious chemicals and as scent branding to acquire new customers and keep customers.

Smelly pajamas led to documentary film

The documentary film “Stink!” was triggered when Whelan purchased a pair of pajamas from the children’s clothing company Justice for his daughter.

After opening the package, he found a weird smell. Whelan called the company to be sure the clothing was safe but was stonewalled by company representatives.

Returning to the store, he found all of the packaged pajamas had the same odor. At this point, he decided to tape the conversations he had with Justice and other companies and began delving into the addition of chemicals to clothing and personal care products.

In a telling conversation with Procter and Gamble, manufacturer of a long list of cleaning and personal care items, including Crest toothpaste, Dawn dish soap, Pampers diapers, Tide laundry detergent and Pantene shampoo, the representative claimed they didn’t add a carcinogenic chemical to their products, it was just “there.”

[…]

As with exposure to many different toxins, one exposure at a low level may not trigger an immediate health condition, but what about repetitive or chronic exposure?

[…]

The effect from toxins is cumulative and can add up quickly when you’re exposed to chemicals in your food, furniture, air and clothing, all at once and on a daily basis.

Whelan believes if the legislature won’t ban a chemical that regulators know causes cancer, then it may be nearly impossible to fight for transparency and health protection against a highly-motivated and richly-funded industry destined to forfeit profits if they are forced to stop using cheaper, damaging and dangerous chemicals.

[…]

Dangerous endocrine disruptor chemicals

Whelan uses the example of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in his documentary, stating exposure to these has an inverted dose-response curve.

In other words, the danger is higher with lower-level exposure over long periods of time. Your exposure occurs with the use of personal care products, food packaging materials and clothing.

Vague arguments and claims have been used to dispute reports showing the use of toxic chemicals may be poisoning adults and children, causing damage beginning even before birth.

[…]

However, the American Academy of Pediatrics, a group of over 65,000 well-educated and science-based pediatricians in the U.S., agree with Kristoff and is asking parents to limit their children’s exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in plastic.

They warn these chemicals, such as phthalates, nitrates and bisphenol, may damage children’s health for years to come.

Research from the World Health Organization (WHO) has even suggested a ban on endocrine-disrupting chemicals may be needed to protect the health of future generations. Their research is one of the most comprehensive studies on different disrupting chemicals to date.

Dr. Leonardo Trasande, an expert in children’s environmental health, believes children are more susceptible due to their dose exposure.

And, as noted by Dr. Claire McCarthy, a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, “Because the exposure is small and gradual we don’t even realize it’s happening.”

Fighting to keep chemicals in your products

Whelan believes the solution should be mandatory transparency so companies would make better decisions about what they use in their products and consumers could make informed decisions about what they buy.

Instead, companies are operating under the honor system set up by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) while fighting to keep cheap chemicals in their products so they can be made inexpensively, thereby protecting profits.

Unfortunately, the public pays for these cheaper products on the back end by spending thousands treating diseases triggered by overexposure to chemicals, which can build up in your system when you’re exposed to multiple products, such as personal care items, new furniture and carpeting and even clothing.

Whelan points out that the world knows formaldehyde causes cancer, yet manufacturers are not removing it from their products. In fact, the U.S. was caught using products with heavy levels of formaldehyde in environmentally damaged areas.

[…]

Prop 65 mandates labeling federal government doesn’t regulate

California has taken a more proactive approach to the health of its citizens.

In a study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group, researchers found 287 chemicals in the cord blood of newborns. These babies were essentially born pre-polluted before ever consuming a single manufactured product.

In 1986 California voters approved an initiative best known as “Proposition 65,” requiring the state to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects.

Since it began, it includes nearly 800 chemicals, and manufacturers are required to notify consumers when these chemicals are included in their products.

According to the American Cancer Society, the risk of developing cancer was 40% in men and nearly 37% in women as of 2014. Their global cancer facts and figures suggest this number will grow to 50% by 2030.

Europe practices precautionary principles; the U.S. does not

In the documentary, Whelan reveals the American Chemistry Council spent $121,000 per congressman to assist election campaigns.

The influence pays dividends since it requires legislative action to alter the current status where manufacturers release chemicals under an honor system requiring proof chemicals are safe for consumer use prior to distribution.

Currently, the U.S. does not use precautionary principles, but rather acts under the assumption chemicals are “innocent until proven guilty.” The opposite is true in Europe, where if a chemical is suspected dangerous, it’s phased out.

However, proving guilt is nearly impossible in the short term as these chemicals often accumulate over years in your body before the effects are noticeable. This works to the advantage of the industry.

For example, one of the world’s most popular chemical weed killers, Roundup, made by Monsanto (now Bayer), has been on the market since 1974.

After 45 years on the market, Monsanto was ordered to pay $289 million when a jury found Dwayne Johnson’s non-Hodgkin lymphoma was at least partly triggered by glyphosate in Roundup, to which he was exposed as a school groundskeeper.

The judge upheld the guilty verdict but later reduced the damages to $78 million.

After the verdict, the presiding judge, Suzanne Ramos Bolanos, commented the company “acted with malice, oppression or fraud and should be punished for its conduct.”

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/toxic-chemicals-clothing-scent-corporate-profits-cola/

Big Tech is rushing ahead of any legal framework for artificial intelligence, or AI, in the quest for big profits, while pushing for self-regulation instead of the constraints imposed by the rule of law.

Rick Claypool is a level-headed policy analyst and number-cruncher for Public Citizen, who is known for reporting the decline in corporate crime enforcement with each succeeding presidency. (Biden less than Trump.)

His latest report (with Cheyenne Hunt) clearly shows him in an unusually agitated state. Its title is “‘Sorry in Advance!’ Rapid Rush to Deploy Generative AI [artificial intelligence] Risks a Wide Array of Automated Harms.”

Claypool is not engaging in hyperbole or horrible hypotheticals concerning Chatbots controlling humanity. He is extrapolating from what is already starting to happen in almost every sector of our society.

I challenge you to read his report without experiencing cognitive dissonance and throwing up your hands thinking the genie is already out of a million bottles.

Claypool takes you through “real-world harms [that] the rush to release and monetize these tools can cause — and, in many cases, is already causing.”

Claypool’s analysis takes you through five broad areas of concern, excluding the horrific autonomous weapons the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), aka the Department of Offense, is deeply involved in developing.

The various section titles of his report foreshadow the coming abuses: “Damaging Democracy,” “Consumer Concerns” (rip-offs and vast privacy surveillances), “Worsening Inequality,” “Undermining Worker Rights” (and jobs) and “Environmental Concerns” (damaging the environment via their carbon footprints).

Before he gets specific, Claypool previews his conclusion:

“Until meaningful government safeguards are in place to protect the public from the harms of generative AI, we need a pause.”

Just how he doesn’t say. Because with so many increasing generators of these Chatbots around the world, this flood of Frankenstein Chatbots may present the same problem that the dean of the Harvard Law School, Roscoe Pound, described regarding the prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the 1920s as being beyond “the limits of effective legal action.”

Claypool quotes Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, who released in November 2022 the shocking ChatGPT AI product, saying afterward: “I think we are potentially not that far away from potentially scary ones.”

Altman has been busy up on Capitol Hill mesmerizing legislators by saying “regulation is needed,” by which he means the industry itself writing the rules and standards for Congress.

Using its existing authority, the Federal Trade Commission, in the author’s words:

“has already warned that generative AI tools are powerful enough to create synthetic content — plausible sounding news stories, authoritative-looking academic studies, hoax images, and deepfake videos — and that this synthetic content is becoming difficult to distinguish from authentic content.”

He adds that “these tools are easy for just about anyone to use.” BIG TECH is rushing way ahead of any legal framework for AI in the quest for big profits while pushing for self-regulation instead of the constraints imposed by the rule of law.

There is no end to the predicted disasters, both from people inside the industry and its outside critics. Destruction of livelihoods; harmful health impacts from promotion of quack remedies; financial fraud; political and electoral fakeries; stripping of the information commons; subversion of the open internet; faking your facial image, voice, words and behavior; tricking you and others with lies every day.

AI’s potential for deception will make Fox News’ deceptions look comparatively restrained.

With Congress and the White House issuing unenforceable exhortations to the industry to be nice, safe and responsible, critics are looking to the European Union’s first stage passage of an AI Act to protect its people from the more overt damages to their common and individual rights and interests.

The Act’s focus is on which uses of AI need to be curbed, including the adverse impact on elections. It mandates the labeling of AI-generated content.

On May 16, Public Citizen petitioned the Federal Election Commission to issue a rule preventing the use of AI to deceive voters.

All legislative bodies will have to confront the barriers of secrecy — claims by governments on weapons and surveillance development and the already asserted “trade secrets” by corporations.

In the U.S., there will also be First Amendment defenses for free speech by these artificial entities called corporations. Their corporate lawyers will have a lucrative field day concocting delays and obstructions.

Our nation and the world are barely organized enough to control through treaties the use of nuclear weapons — through treaties, poorly prepared for devastating pandemics, and virtually nowhere in foreseeing and forestalling the mega-threats of generative AI “to society and humanity.”

Those were the words of an open warning letter calling for a six-month pause, signed by top CEOs (such as Elon Musk), technologists and academics.

With few exceptions, a lazy Congress, readying for a long July 4 holiday break followed by taking off all of August for a congressional recess, is oblivious to its special powers and duties to the American people.

Let’s see some congressional urgency to put some specificity and enforcement teeth behind and beyond Biden’s nonbinding “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” published by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in October 2022.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.), who sits on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, is pushing for the creation of a new federal agency to regulate AI technologies.

For now, I have two recommendations. Demand your senators and representatives join you for local town meetings during Congress’s August recess where you and your lawmakers can listen to each other and address the pressing issues. Tell them that this runaway robotic juggernaut is stripping humans of their own mental identities, autonomy and self-reliant judgments.

Everyone is at risk. Even Microsoft and Google have little idea of the whirlwind they are unleashing, driven by shortsighted profits, not wisdom, civic principles and accountabilities to public institutions and the people themselves.

Have your local experts formulate the focus of the town meeting agendas, backed by your sense of urgency.

Then demand that your members of Congress end their three-day-a-week work routine and conduct rigorous hearings in Washington and around the country with a deadline for passing legislation. Tell them they, too, are at risk for the fakery, slander and imitations of the Chatbots.

Lastly, upgrade and make more precise your skepticism toward the Chatbots already entering and affecting your lives and localities. Be on guard and develop an ever-larger circle of trusting relatives, friends, neighbors and coworkers.

The corporate Chatbots are coming on fast without any legal or ethical frameworks to restrain and discipline them from subverting your freedoms and a true sense of reality.

[…]

Via https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/dod-artificial-intelligence-weapons-chatbots-cd/