Last week, by a vote of 28-2, the Vermont state Senate passed H.112, a bill to require mandatory labeling of GMOs in foods sold in Vermont. The bill also makes it illegal to call any food product containing GMOs ?natural? or ?all natural.? Unlike bills passed last year in Maine and Connecticut, which require four or five other states to pass GMO labeling laws before they can be enacted, Vermont?s law contains no ?trigger? clauses, making it the first ?clean? GMO labeling law in the country! Yay!! The bill now goes back to the House which is expected to agree to the Senate?s amendments, then to Gov. Peter Shumlin who is expected to sign it.? It is expected that Monsanto will sue the state of Vermont in order to prevent enactment of H.112. but it is also expected that Monsanto will lose, and the law will go into effect on schedule, on July 1, 2016.

Under a new change in General Mill’s privacy policy, consumers will not be allowed to sue if they have ever downloaded coupons, entered a box-top sweepstakes, or “liked” the cereal’s page on Facebook. The change in General Mills’ policy was announced on their home page with a banner saying “all disputes related to the purchase or use of any General Mills product or service to be resolved through binding arbitration.” That means even small acts of online fandom will strip customers of their rights to a day in court. Other big food companies are expected to follow suit to curb the growing number of lawsuits being filed over labeling, ingredients, and claims of health threats. General Mills has lost costly legal battles to dissatisfied consumers in recent years; a 2012 settlement forced it to take the word “strawberry” off the packaging for Strawberry Fruit Roll-Ups?which don’t actually contain the fruit. Just last month, it had to take the word “natural” off its Nature Valley products because a California judge ruled that they contained processed and genetically engineered ingredients.

?Extreme Levels? of Monsanto?s Roundup Herbicide Found in Soy Plants

A new study conducted by scientists from the Arctic University of Norway has detected ?extreme levels? of Roundup, the agricultural herbicide manufactured by Monsanto, in genetically engineered (GE) soy.? The study, which will be featured in June?s issue of Food Chemistry and available?online, looked at 31 different soybean plants on Iowa farms and compared the accumulation of pesticides and herbicides on plants in three categories: GE ?Roundup Ready? soy, conventionally produced (not GE) soy, and soy cultivated using organic practices. They found high levels of Roundup on 70 percent of GE soy plants. What level of Roundup is considered high? According to Monsanto, an ?extreme level? of the herbicide as 5.6 milligrams per kilogram of plant weight. Astonishingly, the Norwegian scientists found a whopping nine milligrams of Roundup per kilogram, on average. Consider this information every time you consume GE soy because you are ingested a toxic chemical along with it.