Brazil Slaps Nestle, Pepsi, and Others for Hiding GMO Ingredients
As Campbell adopts GMO labels
Latest News
Six major food manufacturers – including Nestle, PepsiCo, and Mexican baking company Grupo Bimbo – have been slapped with fines by the Brazilian Ministry of Justice, which alleges the companies failed to include labels indicating the use of genetically modified ingredients.
The fines range from $277,400 to just over $1 million, for an estimated total of $3 million.
In 2010, inspections carried out by Brazil’s Consumer Protection Agency Senacon discovered that GMOs had been used in cake mixes, snacks, and a variety of other products being sold in the nation’s grocery stores.
Senacon concluded that the companies violated Brazilian consumer rights, including the right to information, freedom of choice, and the right for protection against abusive corporate practices. [1]
Food companies have been required since 2003 to place a label consisting of a yellow triangle with the letter “T” inside (meaning “transgenic”) on food products containing more than 1% of GMOs.
“The decision confirms the Ministry of Justice’s commitment to require all products that use genetically modified ingredients to include this information on their labels,” said Ana Paula Bortoletto, a researcher with the Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense.
GMOs were banned in Brazil in 1998, after the institute won a lawsuit. But GMOs are everywhere in that nation, thanks to black market GMO seeds that made their way into crops. The spread of the GM seeds forced the country to adopt GM technologies, and Brazil is now the second-largest grower of GMO crops in the world, with more than 104 acres of GMO crops in production in 2014.
According to the Genetic Literacy Project, “more than 93% of the country’s soybean crop is GM and almost 90% of the corn crop. GM cotton, more recently introduced, makes up 65.1%.”
Brazil suffered massive environmental and financial costs when GM “Bt” corn proved to be defenseless against the same, destructive caterpillars it was engineered to protect against.
The Association of Soybean and Corn Producers of the Mato Grosso region called on Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Dow companies to offer solutions and to help farmers recoup their losses (ones who spent the equivalent of $54 per hectare to spray extra pesticides.
As a result of the failed Bt corn, Brazilian consumers are highly suspicious of GM foods, which could explain why Nestle, PepsiCo, Bimbo, and the other companies opted to skirt Brazil’s mandatory label law. [2]
The news comes as another food giant – Campbell Soup Co. – announced that it will be adopting GM labels voluntarily.
Sources:
[1] TeleSUR
[2] EcoWatch
Featured photo credit: Greenpeace/Ivo Gonzalez
 | Julie Fidler has written hundreds of articles on key world topics such as health, drugs, and law. She is also the author of Adventures in Holy Matrimony: For Better or the Absolute Worst. Oh, and she loves to take care of two ridiculously- spoiled cats in her free time. |
It is better to create NON GMO-corners in the supermarkets and malls. We will be stickering allmost every product…;)
Article sez: “Brazil suffered massive environmental and financial costs when GM “Bt” corn proved to be defenseless against the same, destructive caterpillars it was engineered to protect against.”
Brazil knows what India knows: Monsanto LIES, and its lies destroy economies and health.
I also took a look at the linked article regarding the black market for GMO seed. What a filthy shame to capitulate to the immoral GMO industry when beautifully sane, clean, productive, and healthful solutions like the following are available:
Life in Syntropy
https://www dot youtube dot com/watch?v=gSPNRu4ZPvE
Yes the trouble that India faces with gmo cotton like taking over the worlds top producer. Not even your lies can stop that. Please don’t come back with your uneducated rant about suicides. India’s farmers were committing suicide long before gmos and the rate has actually slowed thanks to gmos. So at least do us a favor of thinking up a new lie.
You have made some claims here, and demonstrated a fascist stance.
Maybe you have some proof of your allegations/claims?
Talk about uneducated, idiot, diverse crops and eco friendly crops would be better suited for India, considering it’s population. Wasn’t there recently some crop infestation in India on the GMO cotton, and reported increased suicide rates due to the loss?
Yes, your a troll full of disinformation and blatant lies.
Your really stupid and full of crap.
LOL, some recent incident? You really are funny demand proof that you are to lazy to look up for yourself and then put out such a vague claim. Kinda like your military claim there coward.
I didn’t make a military claim there fascist.
trying to attack the messenger since you got caught in your lies again?
Your really a 2 faced coward.
Hard to get caught when you haven’t lied there mommies little perv.
newworldencyclopedia dot org/entry/Solipsism
F**king deranged idiot, get help.
Yes try insults when you have been caught lying.
You lie?
Oh yeah as a fascist it’s ok for your kind, based on agenda.
I don’t meet your fantasies or imagined expectations to support your delusions, so I’m not a fascist and not allowed to lie. If I even did which you have provided nothing but your fascist illusions and demented state of mind as a construct of proof.
Get a life turd..
MLB left, because your buddies tried to hack into his wife’s personal accounts. Some people react and move out in the event of unknown’s. Your buddies or not, best to leave the unknowns to the professionals.
He has far too much at risk to play with amateur’s and their subversive fascist tactics.
Very time consuming and disrespectful there fascist.
Strange then how he gave you such intimate knowledge then, oh wait it is just your split personality!!! Keep em coming there little boy.
Strange how you know nothing, but still insist on displaying your ignorance.
you are correct knowing more than you isn’t really having to be that intelligent.
GMO Bobby’s lying post reveals that Monsanto’s GMO Shills are getting increasingly Nervous and in denial over the Bt cotton-related suicides. Monsanto is having difficulty suppressing the truth these days.
Sure we are, you really don’t have a clue. I feel sorry for you, you have listen to the lies and conspiracy theories for so long that you have lost contact with reality. In another twenty years when gmos keep expanding and all your lies have run out what will you whine about then?
Where the crime involves a conspiracy, or a conspiracy to cover up the
crime, there will invariably be a disinformation campaign launched
against those seeking to uncover and expose the truth and/or the
conspiracy.
Yes everything is a coverup that is a good excuse for all the bad things tha mommy could fix for her little boy.
the person believes they are the only thing that exists, it means that
they can rationally believe in only themselves as everything else is
beyond their experience
Describes you very accurately.
look at the paid monstanto/bayer shills in the comments defending their genocide! rememer when YOUR kids get cancer just remember it’s your fault, you poisoned them, then defended their poisoning for cash. Just remember how cheap your child’s life was to you when they dies because of Monstanto poisoning 🙂
Yet another fool that doesn’t know what they are talking about. First off you are so stupid that you assume anyone that doesn’t agree with you must be getting paid. Secondly you are so stupid that you forget that things like Bt crops have replaced many of the truly harmful insecticides that used to be applied to crops and actually did cause cancer. Your stupidity is the real danger in this world.