Traveled from DC to Missouri in mid-August with “The Fishy Fleet” (an offshoot of anti-GMO protest group Occupy Monsanto). It was a convoy of 17 activists piled into a 1960s-era RV and 5 “fishy” cars with friendly looking frankenfood sculptures on top…
Near Pittsburgh the fleet held up traffic when a toll booth attendant took a pix with her iPhone. One Ohio woman, who followed “Fishy Sugarbeet” into a gas station, proclaimed: “That’s the freakiest thing I’ve seen in Perry County — lately!”…
Outside Monsanto Corporation’s global headquarters in Creve Coeur, Mo., company stock holder and convoy organizer Adam Eidinger read aloud from his shareholder resolution asking Monsanto to “work with the FDA to develop food labeling guidelines for American consumers that discloses whether genetic engineering was used to produce the food”…
When asked for a statement, Monsanto says it supports voluntary labeling, but that mandatory labeling in the “absence of any demonstrated risks…could imply that food products containing these ingredients are somehow inferior to their conventional or organic counterparts.”
Riding around in a car topped with a giant half-vegetable, half-fish is bound to attract attention.
As Nikolas Schiller drives past the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., pedestrians gawk, kids point, and tourists snap pictures.
An oncoming driver pulls up in a stretch of slow traffic and asks, “What is it?”
Schiller explains it’s a Fishy Food Car and hands the man a card bearing a cartoon that asks, “Are we eating fishy food?”
It’s a visual pun. For opponents of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there’s something fishy - suspicious - about putting genes from other species into food crops, and they want foods containing GMO ingredients to say so on the label.
Labeling laws
There are no fish genes in the GMOs on the market today, but nearly all of the corn, soybeans, cotton and sugar beets growing in the U.S. contain bacterial genes that help farmers control weeds and insects.
Schiller’s day job is with a D.C.-based public relations firm. But this summer his fishy apple car will join the fishy corn, soybean, sugar beet and tomato cars driving cross-country to Washington State, where a GMO labeling law is on the ballot this fall.
Momentum is behind them. Labeling laws were approved in Connecticut and Maine earlier this year.
Labeling everything containing a GMO ingredient would take a lot of ink. They’re in 80 percent of the foods on supermarket shelves, according to the Grocery Manufacturers Association, especially anything processed, in a bottle, box or bag.
Novel food
But are they bad for you? Schiller acknowledges that the only evidence of harm from GMOs is anecdotal, but he’s suspicious.
“This is a novel food. Our grandparents and previous generations didn’t eat this,” he said. “And now all of a sudden we’re seeing higher incidences of food and health issues. And so if [GMO makers] are saying, ‘Oh, everything’s safe,’ but nothing’s labeled, we really can’t trace the safety.”
Health authorities from the U.S. Institute of Medicine to the World Health Organization have said there’s nothing to fear from GMOs.
And the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says there is no substantive difference between GMO and conventional ingredients, so it can’t require labels.
On the other hand, products without GMOs may say so on the label, and these are now some of the hottest items in the supermarket. Last year, sales of certified-organic products grew 7.4 percent, twice the rate of the food sector as a whole. And foods with the “Non-GMO Verified” seal passed $1 billion in sales in 2011.
‘We should’ve been talking about this’
This has not gone unnoticed by the biotech industry.
This summer, the industry-sponsored Council for Biotechnology Information made an unusual, if understated, admission.
“We recognize we haven’t done the best job communicating about GMOs,” Executive Director Cathy Enright said in a press release.
She was more frank in person.
“We should’ve been talking about this for two decades,” she said, adding that in the last few years in particular, social media have taken opposition to GMOs to a new level. “We haven’t even been near social media.”
Transparency
But for opponents like Schiller, it’s not about a failure to communicate. For one thing, he wants to see the results of safety tests the companies submitted to the FDA.
“And they can say, ‘This is proprietary information. We’ve done our testing. We don’t have to disclose to the public,’” he said. “Anytime you have a veil over something, people are going to want transparency. People are going to want sunshine. And as long as you withhold that, people are gonna think, ‘This is kinda fishy.’”
Sunshine might be about to break through. For the first time, Enright said, the companies’ testing data will be available online at a new website: GMOAnswers.com.
“It’s gonna be technical,” she said. “But we’ve been asked, ‘Show us your data.’”
It’s part of a new pledge of openness and dialogue. Enright said the big seed companies will be opening their doors for people to come and see what they do. There will be dinners where supporters and opponents can sit down and talk. She said a panel of volunteers will be answering any questions the public might have.
“We believe that if people have the information at hand, that it won’t feel fishy; that they’ll be more comfortable with this technology,” she said.
But with a growing number of states considering GMO labeling laws, the industry has a lot of catching up to do.
Eighteen activists in six art cars, including Fishy Tomato (above), each affixed with a fish-mix sculpture — fish apple, fish soy, fish wheat, and so on — will travel from D.C. to Seattle’s Hempfest, with many stops in between, including one at the Missouri headquarters of Monsanto, a biotech company, for an overnight camping protest.
Organizer Adam Eidinger told The Huffington Post that the purpose of the demonstration is to show support for an upcoming Washington state referendum on GMO labeling and to have “at least a million” people see the cars.
“People who will get more interested in GMO issues,” said Eidinger.
“The Fishy Food art car fleet’s cross-country swim from Washington, D.C. to Washington state will get people talking about the importance of GMO labeling,” David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps — which helped pay for the cars — said in a media release.
It’s still not clear what the results will be — as much as some support regulation of tomatoes mixed with Arctic flounder genes, there are those who say such activists are anti-science fearmongers.
Either way, it’s bound to be a colorful journey — and one with a lot of pit stops. Eidinger said that the art cars, while making a strong message, only get about 11 miles to the gallon.
Critics say these foods need to be labeled and some are taking that message to the street of D.C.
Cesar Maxit is an artist. On Thursday, his canvas is a Ford Escort. He is working on what is called the Fishy Fleet.
“The first look people have is a little bit of shock and astonishment, said Adam Eidinger.
People shocked to see the fleet on the streets of Washington, such as Fishy Corn and Fishy Tomato. They are trying to send a message with these vehicles.
“The way to do that we thought was to have these smiling protagonists — these smiling fishy characters, so we have the tomato and the apple and the corn,” Maxit said.
Their website is areweeatingfishyfoods.com. The fruits and vegetables that look like fish are supposed to represent genetically modified organisms (food) or GMOs.
Biotech companies are altering the genetic code of certain seeds. These activists say those foods should be labeled.
For the next week and a half or so,these cars will be tooling around D.C. After that, they will embark on a cross country trip.
“Basically our group is driving cross country to Seattle, Washington to deposit these fishy food cars with activists there who are going to campaign to label genetically engineered food,” said Edinger.
The labeling issue is on the ballot in Washington state this November. There is also a fight at the federal level.
Louis Finkel represents the Grocery Manufacturers Association. He says there is no danger.
“500 peer-reviewed research studies on a global basis have all concluded unequivocally there’s no material difference and no health risk associated with the technology,” he said.
The people at Fishy Food say consumers need more information.
“You drive down the road and someone will sit there with their mouth open and they don’t believe what they’re seeing,” said Robin Bell.
They say it is time to believe what you are seeing and know what you are eating.
Today the Fishy Fleet made an appearance in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC while they were filmed for an upcoming news package by DC Fox 5 reporter Beth Parker. We’re looking forward to watching it on TV tonight!
