Norm Benson

Past as Prologue: What the Campbell’s Execs Forgot About Organic Labels

[Insert George Santayana quote here] Steven Novella over at the Neurologica blog, follows up on Campbell’s decision to label their products made using genetic engineered products, even if there is no mandated nationwide standard. He first talks about the lack of science for labels. “The very notion of GMOs is a false dichotomy. Opponents thenContinue reading “Past as Prologue: What the Campbell’s Execs Forgot About Organic Labels”

Is Campbell’s GMO Announcement Mmmm mmm…good?

Campbell Soup Company (NYSE: CPB) today [January 7, 2016] announced its support for the enactment of federal legislation to establish a single mandatory labeling standard for foods derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs)….Campbell is prepared to label all of its U.S. products for the presence of ingredients that were derived from GMOs. There’s an interestingContinue reading “Is Campbell’s GMO Announcement Mmmm mmm…good?”

What Campbell’s Got Right and Wrong in Their GMO Label Announcement

Campbell’s announcement coincided with the new U.S. government’s eating guidelines; “Campbell Announces Support for Mandatory GMO Labeling.” “Genetic engineering,” California’s legislative analyst wrote in 2012, “is the process of changing the genetic material of a living organism to produce some desired change in that organisms characteristics.” In other words, GE is not an ingredient, likeContinue reading “What Campbell’s Got Right and Wrong in Their GMO Label Announcement”

Cold Soup. Campbell Announces GMO Labeling

WARNING: This product contains deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). DNA is linked to a variety of diseases that affect both animals and humans. It is a risk factor for cancer and heart disease. Pregnant women are at very high risk of passing on DNA to their children. Yesterday, January 7, 2015, the Campbell’s Soup Company announced thatContinue reading “Cold Soup. Campbell Announces GMO Labeling”

Is Campbell’s Soup Company’s GMO Announcement Hot or Cold?

Our Choices, Our Future (for food)

Rachel Laudan is a food historian, author, and visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book Cuisine and Empire, “shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers….By emphasizing how cooking turns farm products into food and by taking the globe rather than theContinue reading “Our Choices, Our Future (for food)”

7 Million Versus Shell, really?

This is a WTF moment for me. Greenpeace UK is protesting Shell drilling for oil in the arctic, and they say nearly seven million people agree with them. Fine. I get that. What boggles me is the irony of the message their photo conveys, which is “We cannot survive without oil.” Around 7 million #PeopleVsShell,Continue reading “7 Million Versus Shell, really?”

50 Shades of Green

Or, Why Does Green Power Provide More Jobs? The other day we considered the cost of burning coal. Today, we look at one of the selling points of “green energy.” Pols and others say “green jobs” provide more jobs. The short of it, is that they need more people per kilowatt to do the jobContinue reading “50 Shades of Green”

The Cost of Coal

A recent tweet trumpeted a report that 250,000 Chinese died in 2013 due to smog from coal (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/12/china-coal-emissions-smog-deaths). The report on the deaths came partly from Greenpeace, of course. There is little question that coal is dangerous. It is dangerous to mine. Its emissions are a problem; coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste.Continue reading “The Cost of Coal”