Hello Trader Joe’s,
I’ve been a loyal customer of Trader Joe’s for quite some time. As my eyes have been opened to the inexcusable toxins that have infiltrated our food supply, I have been more and more thankful to have an affordable store in which I can feel safer than I do in the mainstream grocery stores.
At first it was a Trader Joe’s employee who informed me that everything sold under the Trader Joe’s name brand did not contain genetically modified ingredients [GMOs], and that seemed like the best news ever, given the amount of stress involved in eschewing GMOs while keeping my family fed. I kept looking for something on the packages that might mention this, and was confused about why it wouldn’t be on the labels. I inquired about it at the front desk, and their response was, in a tone of resignation, that there are no current FDA guidelines on labeling, so Trader Joe’s isn’t labeling anything about GMOs. It was a decent enough answer for me at the time, and after seeing the no-GMO statement on the Trader Joe’s website, I was satisfied, and assumed that Trader Joe’s must be sourcing those ingredients from safe places.
But then my friends and I started to wonder… where DOES Trader Joe’s get their non-GMO ingredients? I stopped at the front desk and asked again about how we KNOW the Trader Joe’s brand is GMO free. They told me that it is all third party verified. I asked if they could tell me who does the third party verification since Trader Joe’s isn’t participating in the Non-GMO Project verification system. They said they didn’t know, and that I could get the Trader Joe’s headquarters phone number off of the flyer and call. This is something that was still on my to do list, but apparently, it will no longer be necessary.
In the last 8 months, particularly since watching the documentary Genetic Roulette, I have become much more vocal about what is in our food. I’ve actually become known as a food activist among my social networks, and was encouraged to start a page about it on Facebook by a friend. I used her name suggestion and called it “Don’t Put That In Your Mouth” and continue posting things daily. I also began recording podcasts with fellow GMO dodging friends to help people navigate this dark time in our nation’s food supply. We encouraged people in the podcasts to take shelter under the Trader Joe’s brand as one of our few affordable safe havens for avoiding GMOs in this country.
For quite some time, I’ve pushed little nagging questions out of my mind because frankly, I just plain NEEDED the Trader Joe’s non-GMO claim to be true.
Let me take a few moments to express my emotional state regarding providing safe food for my family. I’ll sum it up with one word.
Terrified.
No, I am not being dramatic.
Here’s the thing… I’m the mom. My family’s health largely depends on the decisions I make in the kitchen and at the grocery store. I love my family more than anything else and I want to take the best care of them I possibly can. What goes into our bodies is sacred in my opinion. We absorb it. It becomes part of us. The way I feed my child today is a foundation for the physical and emotional well being he will have as an adult. I take this mantle very seriously, so there is an extremely deep emotional connection to the process of feeding my family.
After watching Genetic Roulette, I went through my kitchen and threw out all of the offending GMO items I could find. Condiments, marshmallows, cereals, crackers, cooking supplies, etc. I went to Trader Joe’s and replaced them with Trader Joe’s brand items, and I also steered many friends to Trader Joe’s. I began reading more articles and educating myself about the food situation in America. I had already been on that track for the last several years, but Genetic Roulette really flipped the switch to a zero tolerance position regarding GMOs.
The more I learned, the more I realized how IMPOSSIBLE it is in the United States to make the simple decision to not allow GMOs in your diet. Vegans, vegetarians, and people avoiding gluten don’t make their decision to cut out certain things and then have to read myriad articles just to avoid those ingredients. It’s right there on the label. Yet, those of us avoiding GMOs feel like we need a PhD just to do this one thing. It is extremely time consuming and tiresome.
On many occasions, after reading yet another article about toxic ingredients in our food supply, I have found myself pushing my shopping cart through the grocery store with a sinking panic, wondering how in the world I can buy safe foods. Anxiety and despair seem to weigh heavier than the grocery cart. How am I supposed to do this!? We eat 3 times a day, plus snacks. Every. Single. Day. I have a full life. I do not have all of my days to devote to growing our food and cooking every single meal from scratch. And yet, I cannot throw up my hands and resign to the fact that we’re just going to eat GMOs. Because that is unacceptable.
Ignorance is not the answer.
Ignorance is a victim.
And so, that is my quandary. I have communicated with many others who have felt the same burden, stress, frustration, and desperation I have felt in this journey of trying to not feed my family genetically modified foods. This whole issue is deeply, palpably emotional and extremely serious to many of us.
As a consumer, as an American, as a mom, and as a human being, when I read about all of the unthinkable toxins allowed in our food supply, I feel BETRAYED. The issue here is a basic sense of trust in humanity. A sense of trust that people in an office building in another state would do the decent thing and not pump a bunch of garbage into the mouths of innocent children around the globe, potentially causing immeasurable illness, life long suffering, and ultimately death to an incalculable number of human beings. So now, in the midst of this deliberate large scale food corruption, I feel like I’m losing my faith in humanity. I feel like the grocery stores are now a hostile environment. I feel like when I’m in mainstream grocery stores, I’m in treacherous territory, where I have to be an information ninja so as to avoid hundreds of traps set up by a menacing greedy sociopath who wants to take my money and slowly poison my family. That’s what it feels like. And I’m righteously angry. On behalf of humanity.
What does this have to do with Trader Joe’s? I’ll tell you.
The nagging questions I’ve been suppressing, out of my own desperation for a safe place to shop, just got a lot louder after reading the latest report by investigative food journalist Food Babe entitled “What Is Trader Joe’s Hiding?” She confirmed all of my fears. Let me quote just a few excerpts from her report:
"During my research, I found out there is no regular independent third party certifier verifying their products are non-GMO on a regular basis at Trader Joe’s. It is completely up to Trader Joe’s product supply team to regulate GMOs from suppliers – not the Non-GMO Project or the USDA (for organics) that requires a high level of standards and third party testing before stating a product can be deemed free of GMOs. If there are complaints about a product, Trader Joe’s will conduct verification with a secret third party that they won’t disclose, but it’s completely up to the consumer to alert Trader Joe’s with a complaint."
And… "Trader Joe’s says they review affidavits (the documents that prove an ingredient is not made or contaminated with GMOs) from their suppliers who make their store branded products, but there is no way to verify this. I asked Trader Joe’s if they would send me an affidavit showing proof of non-GMO corn or soy in at least one of their products that wasn’t labeled certified organic and they refused saying, “Unfortunately we don’t share those documents, they are confidential.” They wouldn’t even tell me what country some of the products were produced in either as they do not provide “country of origin” labeling.
I find the denial of my request maddening, considering I requested a similar affidavit from Honest Tea, who is owned by Coca Cola, and they completely complied and sent me the information with the confidential suppliers name blacked out. Heineken Beer also provided their affidavits when I asked them to prove to me they use no genetically modified ingredients in their beer.”
And… "I have a hard time trusting a company that is not willing to show their affidavits to a customer or prove that their products are in fact GMO free. Trader Joe’s won’t spend any of their 8 billion dollars in sales to test and prove their products safe. And they won’t tell us what companies they work with to develop their products or what countries their ingredients come from." [http://foodbabe.com/2013/08/07/what-is-trader-joes-hiding/]
So there it is, Trader Joe’s. You are unwilling to reveal who does your third party non-GMO verification, how often you test for GMOs, and where your food comes from. And so I must ask…
Do you UNDERSTAND who your demographic is!? Do you REALLY understand WHO your potentially most faithful (OR potentially most litigious) customers ARE!?
I don’t think you do.
We are the desperate ones. The despairing enlightened ones. The ones who prioritize organics over iPhones. The ones who “let food by thy medicine”. Who show up to march against Monsanto. Who feel we have been violated and will not be toyed with. Who no longer patronize most restaurants. We are the throngs who know enough to read the articles and then read the labels and then vote with our dollars. We’ve been double-crossed by food companies and a corrupt government. We feel lied to, powerless, and horrified. We are the sad souls looking for food we can trust.
TRUST.
…
Trust is paramount.
And so it is in this sorry state that you stand poised to adopt all of us food orphans into your loyal customer base, and yet you refuse to give us the single most important thing we need… TRANSPARENCY. At best, you are being stubborn and insensitive to your demographic. At worst, you’re lying and trying to cover up a huge scam while you feed us all GMOs. I believe the truth might be somewhere in the middle. I think you’re being obstinate and inconsiderate toward your customers, and perhaps haphazard and negligent in your non-GMO verification.
Do you understand that we are ripe for harvesting? Do you understand how fast we will turn on you when we get a whiff that you are not who we thought you were?
HERE IS MY EXHORTATION: Please take us seriously. Please do not be careless with us. There are far too many of us to casually dismiss. The grassfire is spreading and the flames are getting hotter. Please change your policy about not disclosing your sources. Please step up and be rigorous about the non-GMO tests on your brand. Please be transparent about who verifies this and how often. Please be willing to provide proof of this upon request when high profile investigative food journalists come calling. And please, for the love of all that is right and good, have integrity in all you do to be worthy of our trust.
I will tell you some of the things that make me not trust Trader Joe’s brand. Your packaged soups have crazy high sodium. Your non-dairy milks contain carrageenan. Your frozen entrees contain conventional meat. You sell products that very likely contain GMOs like Go Lean Crunch and Orangina. Your selection is scant for those who want to avoid GMO fed meat. So very many of your products contain “natural flavors” which we all know are created in laboratories and bad for our bodies. And then there’s the part where you will not lay our concerns to rest about the legitimacy of your non-GMO claims for the Trader Joe’s brand.
You have this TREMENDOUS OPPORTUNITY! There has never been a time like this in history where the food system was so massively corrupt and the consumer was so widely informed and so under served in this area. You could be the beacon, and yet you persistently keep us in darkness. Target is doing just the opposite, they are coming around and bringing out their “Simply Balanced” brand. If you do not rise to the occasion, you could be perilously close to a mass exodus and class action law suit. It happened to Naked Juice and so many other brands. It could happen to you.
As for this one mom who feeds this one family who has this one Facebook page and this one very loud and very far from being silent voice… I hate to say, I will be shifting much of my shopping to Whole Foods and Target.
Because I don’t think you really get who I am.
Very Sincerely,
The Kitchen Warrior
