How Dr. Bronner's Magical Soaps Are Fighting Toxic GMO Crop Production.

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Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and as you may know from reading an article that I wrote last year on how to detox your home and your body. Basically, if I can't eat something without it killing me, I generally don't smear it on my body either. And from liquid soaps to my bar soap to the lip balms that my kids use to lotions, one of the companies that I kind of use as a go to source for the things that I do smear on my body or in my hair is this company called Dr. Bronner's. And Dr. Bronner's is kind of a unique company. They do things like use natural vitamin E from sunflower seeds and citric acid from fermented tapioca for freshness. And they don't use things like chelating agents and dyes and whiteners and synthetic fragrances. They use like essential oils, for example, as a fragrance for their products. All of their soaps are biodegradable and nature friendly. Their bottles are made from recycled plastic and also have all sorts of weird phrases written all over them, which I'll talk a little bit more about later on in today's episode. But today I' actually got the president of Dr. Bronner's on the call with me. His name is David Bronner. He's a guy who's been arrested multiple times for hemp activism. He recently wrote a really polarizing article in the Huffington Post on GMO labeling that we're going to talk about. I live in Washington state and actually there was an initiative called Initiative 522 over in Washington state where I live that David helped to champion. It lost by pretty razor thin margins, but is now being revived in another forum, which we'll also talk about in today's episode. So if you are into healthy personal care products, if you're into the whole GMO controversy, or if you're generally just wanting to kind of stay on the cutting edge when it comes to your health, this is going to be a cool episode for you. So Dr. Bronner, thanks for coming on.

Thank you, Ben, for having me.

Technically, you're not the Dr. Bronner, right? Was that your, your grandfather yeah, My.

Grandfather was Dr. Bronner. Yeah, I'm not a doctor.

Okay.

Yeah, but, yeah, I'll bet you get.

That a lot though.

Yeah, I do. I'd say I'm a doctor of trouble.

So who, who was the original Dr. Bronner? Like, like what was his story?

So Dr. Bronner was. He grew up in southern Germany in a German Jewish soap making family. He himself was the third generation. His grandfather had started the family enterprise in 1858 by the time he was coming of age. And he was apprenticed in the guild system of the time and became a master stonemaker himself. And in his early 20s, the family enterprise had grown quite large and had three different factories, including a large factory in Heilbronn in southern Germany where my granddad grew up. But by the late 20s, kind of the fascist Nazi situation was starting to get bad. I mean, still early. And my granddad was part of the Zionist movement. And my granddaughter was a very intense guy basically from day one. And he was working with his dad and two uncles who were running the show and was having a lot of clashes with them. They were a little more assimilationist, bourgeois, like, hey, stop rocking the boat, this man is going to blow over. And yeah, and my granddad had a lot of kind of newfangled filmmaking ideas and just a lot of generational classes with his father and, and uncles. And so in his early 20s, in the late 20s, my granddad came over to the US and just kind of bailed and said, I'm going to just go start my own business and life in America. And he became a consultant to the US soap industry. So was helping out P and G and various companies build factories. But at the same time, obviously things are getting fast, getting really bad really fast over in Germany. And he's, you know, desperately trying to get his parents out, right. And his two younger sisters, one got out in 36 and went to the Engev kibbutz and then Palestine, now Israel. And his other sister got out in 38 and they, and they had a family vacation. They tried to get their parents out and they were unsuccessful. The Nazis nationalized the factory in 1940 and his parents were gassed soon thereafter. And at the same time he had also married and had three children. And my dad's mom, so his wife died when my dad was very young, when my dad was four. And this is all in the same period. So my grandmother was just dealing with a lot of tragedy all at once. But it was also always this kind of a very mystical, spiritual guy. And had these just very intense experiences and insights that if we don't realize our transcendent unity across religious and ethnic divides and realize that we're all children of the same divine source and get over these trivial differences, we're going to kill ourselves in a nuclear armed world. And so he felt originally called on this mission to advance what he called the all one God faith or the moral ABC in the post war era. By the late 40s, he was going around the country lecturing and advancing his peace plan. And at the same time, in the post war era, better living through chemistry was really starting to take off and diverse industries were starting to transition to petroleum and petrochemicals as their primary feedstocks. Instead of natural ingredients, this included body washes and personal care which were moving towards petrochemical detergents. The natural soap recipes that my granddad had brought with him, these old world high quality soap recipes, very natural, biodegradable, they were out of vogue. My granddad launched his own business and was selling these soaps on the side while he would go around lecturing and advancing his vision and peace plan. This is in the 50s, he realized people were really starting to come hear him talk. Not so much necessarily hear what he had to say, but to get the soap he was selling on the side. At which point he started to put what he was saying on the labels of the soap. So you'd reference our soap labels are now packed with various axioms and wisdoms from my granddad. You know, more or less just driving that.

He wrote all this like, I'm holding a bottle of your soap right now and the whole thing is like covered with writing and some of it's kind of straightforward. It's like breathe deeply, health is wealth. But then some of it, it just says like all one or none, all one, exclamation mark, all one, all one. And like back with the full truth. I've learned back to the whey and just like I've stood in the shower before and just like read the whole bottle. It's crazy. So all of these come from. His name was Emmanuel, right? Emmanuel Brauner.

Yeah, Emmanuel. And you're right, I mean you kind of get all sides of the man on the label there. And he was a visionary health food pioneer. He actually did develop various health food seasonings real early, saw early on the problems of this better living to chemistry and the ecological havoc that was imminent. But he also had this kind of more mystical kind of biblical prophet crazy streak that crazy like a fox. I mean he was Totally right on. But it came out in some pretty idiosyncratic ways. And definitely some, some of those pat. Some of the aphorisms on the label are a little more hard to understand than others.

So. So how is this different? I mean, he calls it Dr. Bronner's, or you guys call it Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps. But what, I mean, obviously magic is, is, you know, you know, a little bit of marketing there. But like, what's, what's different? I mean, when I read the label, like the, the soap that I'm holding, this is the stuff I use in the shower. It's your hemp soap. The hemp lavender stuff. It's water, organic coconut, olive oil, lavender extract, faradiel hemp oil, organic jojoba oil, lavender extract and tocopherols. How is that different? Like, how is his process different than the average soap? Like what set Dr. Bronner aside in terms of the way he was making soap?

Yeah, well, I mean, basically he just kept making soap the way it's been made for thousands of years. I mean, in a obviously somewhat better, more refined process. But the basic soap reaction is pretty ancient. I mean, pretty much there's cooking bread and then there's making soap. And it's a very simple process where an oil is combined with an alkali and it's a contained reaction. It's called a saponification reaction. You can just do it on your kitchen stove. And the process is, there's no waste stream. It's very ecological. The result is very high quality product. Well, depending if you know what you're doing. So making is all about taking the right balance of oils with their different fatty acid chains. All oils are chemically triglycerides, and what distinguishes them is the length of their fatty acid chains and how many double bonds they have that gives you a more emollient feel or more high lather. It's all about the balance. And you know, my granddad and his family had really worked out a wonderful coconut olive castile soap recipe. And by contrast with better living through chemistry and the kind of advent of detergent based body care, the simplest surfactant, of which soap, in a way is the very first, but it's so categorically simpler. It's called soap, but all the rest are called detergents and surfactants. And it does involve at least minimum five different processing steps. There's a lot of waste stream. You're generally attaching petroleum reagents, even if you have some natural components to your detergent. Molecule, you're attaching a sulfate and just basically ingredients that are coming off petrochemicals and it's just a dirtier process. And then also the end result is a less biodegradable molecule. So soaps are incredibly biodegradable. You can wash by a stream and not worry about it. It's going to biodegrade rapidly. Whereas a lot of these more modern body washes and detergent based body care, the ingredients are not nearly as biodegradable and it's much more of a problem. And you know, you had referenced earlier about you know, what you eat, you know, you shouldn't put on your skin what you wouldn't need. And I mean we don't recommend eating a soap. I mean it tastes like soap but it's not going to hurt you. But by contrast some of this other stuff is really a bad idea. You need to be calm poison control. If you swallow some other thing about the skin, whatever you put on the skin and is absorbed through the skin does not go through the liver, which is basically how you detox stuff you eat that's not so great. And so in a way where you put on your skin, if you know a lot of these formulations, they have penetrator, you have these enhancers that actually aid penetration and they're actually moving stuff across the dermal barrier directly into the bloodstream. And then you noted the fragrance issue. I mean there's all these compounds and fragrances and synthetic preservatives and some of them implicated hormone disruptors and just they've.

Done some interesting, I don't know if you've seen any of these studies. There was one a couple of years ago they did on guys and soap with phthalates and parabens in it. And they tested their urine and within three hours after taking a shower and this stuff, it was winding up in their urine and they were basically peeing out hormone disruptors after taking a shower with the average bottle of soap that comes off the counter. I personally I travel with one of your guys bars because frankly liquids are just annoying for me to travel with because I can never remember if it's a 4 ounce or a 5 ounce container container. And even though I go through TSA pre check now, I still get stuff confiscated every now and again. So I just travel with your bar and I don't touch the soap at any of the hotels that I go to and I literally just use, use the bar in my hair and on my body and that's, that's it because I Don't want a lot of those disruptors in my body. But you guys have other stuff too. Like I mentioned, you've got like lip balms and, and body balms. But what else does Dr. Bronner's have? And we're all familiar, or those of us who have seen Dr. Bronner familiar with the big bottle of liquid Soap with the 30,000 different words written on the outside of it. What are some of the other things that you guys have that people should know about?

Yeah, well, just basically a kind of diverse personal care line. So we've got a hair rinse product that pairs well with the soap. So the soap is not optimized with the petroleum conditioning ingredients that are in most shampoos. So you could buy like a hair rinse, an organic hair rinse and leave in cream that will give you the same feel and really luxurious feel without all the kind of synthetics and really problematic ingredients. We actually, you know, along with like, you know, the lotions and the lip balms and whatnot, we, we also have our own virgin coconut oil for culinary purposes. I should talk about the fact that all of our ingredients are certified organic. All our major ingredients are organic. All our products are certified under the same organic program that certifies food. In addition to that, they're also certified fair trade. What we realize is that while organic is crucial as far as supporting agriculture that is not polluting our food and water and is not introducing a huge pesticide load in our farm working communities and into our bodies through the residues in our food. That doesn't tell you the social conditions under which our ingredients are produced and what were the wages, what were the prices and working conditions. So we've also certified all our major supply chains fair trade, which is pretty key because you wouldn't wish a lot of the conditions on your worst enemy that our common consumer goods are produced on there. And it's really important that you look that you also are looking for the fair trade, especially for. In our case we have a lot of our oils are tropical, so they're being produced in the developing world. And a lot of times you need to have that third party check. So anyways, on the coconut oil we had a project that grew out of a tsunami relief project in Sri Lanka. One thing led to another and we set up our own fair trade coconut factory initially to supply our soaps. But then a partner in the project that was supposed to take the food, we were going to output a cosmetic and a food grade coconut oil. And Sri Lanka produces the Highest quality virgin coconut oil for food. It's also at a price premium. And that partner backed out of the deal. So we were kind of left holding the bag and went ahead and just like, well, we got to introduce this on the food side. So we introduced the virgin coconut oil under Dr. Bronner's brand in 2011, and that is actually now our second after the liquid soap is now our top selling product line.

I actually have some. And I was going to ask you about this because I was waiting for you to have on the. To come on the show to ask you this question. Your coconut oil says whole kernel on it. Organic whole kernel, virgin coconut oil. What does whole kernel mean?

Yeah, and we actually also sell a white kernel, which is the more traditional virgin coconut oil on the market. So the whole kernel, it's kind of like brown rice versus oil, white rice, coconut have. You have the husk and you have the shell and then you have the skin on the coconut meat. That skin is generally shaved off prior to drying out the flesh and then pressing the oil out. We have a version that does that, but it turns out, like with brown rice, that a lot of the nutrition is right there with the skin. So you lose a lot of the nutrition when you do that. And if you press the coconut flex with the skin still attached, it's still part of the situation. You get more of a nutritious oil. And the flavor is really not that different. I mean, it's slightly yellower, it's a slightly nuttier flavor, and I actually prefer it. I think it actually outsells our other more traditional VCO 2 to 1. I think most people prefer the slightly kind of coconutier flavor, and it's also just healthier than the traditional vco.

Okay, interesting. So there's a whole kernel version and a white kernel version.

Yeah, exactly.

These are the two different types of coconut oil you can get.

And generally we're one of the very few that offer a whole kernel. Most people do just do the white just because it's a more neutral flavor.

So is it more of like the fatty acids that make the whole kernel more nutritious and gives it that kind of nutty flavor?

You know, I think that the fatty acids, those medium chain that make coconut, like super healthy generally is that holds through all varieties. This is more the micronutrients, vitamins and whatnot that you lose when you peel off the skin. But those medium chain, those fatty acids, which really is what drives the current health craze around coconut, rightly so that does exist with Both varieties.

Okay, got it. Well, what I'm gonna do for people who are listening is before we start to talk about GMOs, cause I really want to get into that. I will put a link in the show notes for this episode over at below. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Bronner that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com B R O N N E R if you want to check out the show notes and look at the coconut oil and some of the other stuff from Dr. Bronner's that I personally use. I mean you can grab most of the stuff off of off of Amazon or even at your local health food store, grocery store. You can find a lot of this. But I want to kind of change course here a little bit, David, and talk about this article that I saw that you recently wrote on the Huffington Post. And your article is called Herbicide and Insecticide Use on GMO Crops Skyrocketing While Pro GMO Media Run Interference. It's a pretty provocative title. So first of all, from what I understand, you wrote this article in response to an article that was written in the New Yorker. Can you tell me about that original article that was written in the New Yorker and why it is that it seemed to have kind of pissed you off and inspired you to write this article in response?

Yeah, sure. I mean, the problem with a lot of high profile pro GMO media or articles that New Yorker was the latest and Amy Harmon over New York Times is another kind of problematic writer, science writer, and Nathaniel Johnson at Grist is another problematic writer, is they kind of have bought the chemical industry's propaganda on what genetically engineered foods are about. And we all like to think that this technology is about boosting yields and making crops more drought tolerant and improving photosynthesis and other things people like to think about with this technology. And it's false. I mean, it's in print in potential form. Yeah, hopefully someday that'll happen. But what's happening on the ground with over 99% of GMO crops that are in US soil are engineered to do two things. One, resist herbicide so to survive high doses of Monsanto's leading wheat killer so that you can just blast huge amounts of wheat killer on our food crops. And or two, they produce Bt insecticidal protein inside the tissue of the plant so that every single cell of every single plant over the entire growing season is expressing insecticide. And the problem with this is that both traits have rapidly led to resistance in the target weed and target insect populations. So Much like overdosing antibiotics in the factory farm and these horrible, deplorable factory farm situations where these animals aren't going to survive, they're just completely sick. Horrible situation. And they're just 80% of the antibiotics in this country are going into animals. And what that's done is rapidly selected resistance in the target bacteria and pathogens so that now they're resistant to all our different antibiotics. And it's becoming this huge worldwide crisis that now all our antibiotics that we need for people are not working because they've been overdosing them in these factory farms.

Really. So it's not like usually you hear about antibacterial hand soaps and antibiotics as being the reason, the reason for bacterial resistance. And you're saying that GMO crops are contributing to this as well?

No, I'm making the analogy, but that's another good you're making, which is the antimicrobial overdoing it with soap. Like throwing in a super powerful antimicrobial soap does plenty. Good job putting in the antimicrobial. Now you're going overboard and you're creating resistance in these target pathogens. So I'm saying, like by analogy, what is happening with antibiotics.

I got you bacteria.

Is this is happening in the weeds and the insects, they've been blasting so much herbicide.

Okay, so in the same way that the human beings are becoming resistant to a lot of these powerful superbugs, we're creating the same kind of like super bug resistant crops.

Well, yeah, or the weeds and the insects themselves are now resistant. Like, we can't kill them. They've thrown so much because of engineered resistance. And pretty much every weed scientist and pest scientist that was not on the chemical industry's payroll was saying, like, you can't blast that much weed killer year after year after year and not use non chemical, not also use non chemical methods of pesticides we control, like cover cropping and rotation crops and break the pest cycles in natural ways. And then in addition, when you throw that much chemical toxins on our field, you're eliminating all the natural pest predators. So what's happened is genetic engineering has led to what's called a pesticide treadmill. So far from freeing us from pesticides or reducing the pesticide load on our farms, it's led to this huge spike because they created resistance in the target weeds and the target insects. So they're not dying with the usual chemical doses. Now instead of like, oh, okay, we really need to rethink this and bring in non chemical modes of control. They are doubling down and are throwing more and more chemical insecticides and herbicides, much more powerful, much more toxic herbicides, including 2.4D, which is half of Agent Orange. It was an herbicide that supposedly with the advent of genetic engineered crops, we weren't going to have to use anymore. Well, now that the weed killer that they had been using doesn't work anymore, now they're breeding resistance or engineering resistance into the next generation soy and corn crops that are resistant to huge amounts of 2,4d which is a known toxin. It's a terrible chemical. It's not even allowed in very Scandinavian countries. And now we're breeding resistance in our.

It's called 2, 4D.

Yeah, 2, 4D. It's just linked to non Hodgkin's lymphoma and just all kinds of bad new stuff. But the chemical industry is just right. This month railroaded 2,4D tolerant crops through EPA and USDA approval process. Getting back to Michael Spector, New Yorker. This is all happening that the, that what's actually happening on the ground, what's actually happening in the regulatory pipeline. Like the whole game of the chemical industry with genetic engineering is not talked about. He has this 10 page article that's like bashing Banana Shiva, an activist in India who's you know, really great and has been calling out like the you know, kind of worst excesses of this industrial ag machine that's so completely pesticide driven and chemical driven and just attacking her, like just kind of picking little pieces of this and that as a substitute that basically making a strawman and spending 10 pages talking about crap that does not exist in the ground or is happening in the regulatory pipeline, basically writing a huge pro industry puff piece giving cover to them. Even as the USDA and EPA which are captive agencies, the chemical industry monster, they spend huge amounts of money on both parties to make sure their hand picked people who are in EPA and USDA that are making the key regulatory decisions. So as this is happening, they've got Michael Specter at New Yorker, kind of like a leading liberal center left publication kind of talking to the center left people like hey, GMOs are just the best thing ever. And anti GMO people are, you know, these dumb, whatever people who are totally anti science and irrational and not once does he mention the 2,4D resistant crops. It's the whole game. Like that's the game that this is what they need. Like their first generation herbicide tolerant crops don't work anymore. Like glyphosate does not Work on half the country. They desperately need this 2.4D and it's such a disaster. And not once is this even mentioned in the New Yorker article. And it's just like, wow, New Yorker. I mean this is just shows the power of the chemical industry that they penetrated. And they spent so much money lobbying. Not just government elites, but our media elites, our scientific elites. They basically pulled the wool over everybody's eyes. Not everybody, but too many. And Michael Spector is just the latest example of wow. Someone who should really know better. The editors at New Yorker should know better. This is embarrassing and that you have such a pro industry puff piece even as literally within eight weeks of the USDA EPA regulatory decision, which everyone knew, I mean, everyone's jumping up and down like whoa, it's real bad news, this is happening. And he just writes this huge article, doesn't mention it once.

So what is the USDA and the EPA regulatory decision? What is it that they're deciding.

Whether or not to approve the chemical industry's next generation herbicide tolerant crops. They basically have genetically engineered genes from a bacteria into corn and soy that produces an enzyme that enables the corn and soy to survive much higher doses of 2,4D wheat killer than any plant would otherwise be able to survive.

So that means they're going to have to spray even more of those toxic chemicals on the food or in the farming community.

Exactly. And the bottom line is GMOs equals pesticides. The chemical pesticide industry bought the seed industry in this country 20 years ago and it's engineering resistance to their pesticides. And that's the game. And they're selling you both their patented GMO seeds and then they're selling them, selling you the pesticides that go with them. And it's a completely unsustainable model. It's just driven by the short term profit interest of the chemical industry. We're killing our soil. Our soil is just dirt. The soil microme, the biome of the soil is dead. So they're having to put more and more chemicals each year. It's more and more chemicals to bring these sick plants to harvest. There's like three different herbicides, three different insecticides, three different fungicides just to get these plants to harvest. The model is so out of balance. There's no natural plant predators. In fact, one of the main insecticides they're using is these neoniconotoids. So these are these new class of insecticides that now coat 90% over 90% of GMO soy and corn. They actually sell you the Seed with these insecticides. And they're so toxic that the seeds are by law required to be brightly colored so you don't eat them, so no one will eat them or touch them. The problem is that these insecticides are water soluble and they're persistent in the environment. They get out in the environment and they've been identified conclusively as the leading cause of colony collapse disorder in bees. And they're now banned in Europe. But over here the chemical industry has such a grip on a regulatory process, on our regulators and our government and on our media that they're just getting away. It's just like this disaster. It's like a slow motion train wreck. And so what the labeling movement is trying to do is just as a first step, like our foods, if they've been engineered to resist pesticides so that the food is saturated in pesticide, we have a right to know that. And by having that on the label, people can have the opportunity to make an informed, wise choice to support agriculture that's more sustainable versus this completely unsustainable.

Yeah, I live in Washington state. Back in 2012 a couple years ago, we had Initiative 522 and that was where they wanted genetically engineered foods to have to be labeled so you'd at least know if you were eating stuff that had been exposed to these herbicide sprayed crops or had caused farming communities and farms to get blasted with these herbicides or genetically modified organisms. And that failed. It didn't fail by a lot. I think it was like, you know, a little over 50% opposed it. So it failed by pretty slim margins. And I know that Dr. Bronner's was one of the main contributors in support of I 522 passing. And I know it didn't pass. Maybe it comes back up here in Washington state. But what can people do who are listening in? There's something coming up in Oregon I believe, right?

Yeah, absolutely. So the, the movement really reawakened in 2011, 2012 with the Prop 37 effort in California. And this is when people started to really realize and wake up that wow, genetic engineering is not about anything else than herbicide tolerance. That's what is driving us the game. And it's rapidly failing and it's leading to even more toxic herbicides blasting our food. And that was the real reawakening of the movement. And Prop 37 narrowly failed 5,149 in 2012. The movement was really getting its act together for the first time. It was politically naive, but we still almost pulled it out. And then in Washington it's not a good year to go in 2013. It's an odd year, an off year. The electorate was not ideal. It skewed much smaller, older and more conservative. Nonetheless, we almost pulled that out again, lost 51, 49. And in both times being outspent by five to one. I mean huge amounts of money on the other side actually broke and smashed all records in Washington state that no one had ever spent that much money to defeat a ballot initiative.

Who is spending all the money to defeat it?

Oh, well, primarily it's Monsanto, dupont, Dow, Syngenta, BASF and Bayer. Those are the big six chemical companies that own the seed industry.

I suspect they've got a little more money than soap companies.

Yeah, I get it. And then the second tier are the junk food manufacturers, the Coca Colas and Pepsi Cos of the world.

Really? Why would they contribute to this?

Well, I mean there's, there's cracks appearing in that coalition. I think they bought the propaganda a little bit that somehow they think they're getting cheaper corn syrup out of herbicide tolerant GMO corn, which is false. But I think they bought that a little bit. But I also think part of what they're concerned about is there's a new version of GMO coming online rapidly on something actually important to talk about is it's called synthetic biology. And rather than just inserting a gene from another organism into a different organism that can never interbreed in nature, which is traditional genetic engineering, synthetic bio is you actually will engineer DNA from scratch and insert it into yeast and that DNA will, for instance, it'll be programmed to take sugar. Like you just feed a vat of yeast with the synthetic DNA, a bunch of sugar and the DNA is programmed to make say vanilla or saffron or different flavors or different other food molecules and food like substances. And this is actually happening as we speak. So Symbio vanilla, the synthetic biology is, the nickname is Symbiol. So Synbio vanilla is actually in the market right now, unlabeled. I think that the food industry is looking at this synthetic biology technology and that's kind of more driving. It's not so much. They don't necessarily care that much about herbicide tolerant business model of the chemical industry and they don't necessarily, maybe they believe it, but they probably, probably realize that the only one making money on that one is Monsanto Daudapant. But I think they're more eyeing this in parallel application of the technology that's starting to come online Synthetic biology. And that's why they don't want to see any of this stuff labeled. But we're not entirely sure what's mobilizing the, the big food guys as much as they are. But we also know that there are backdoor channel communications between some of the major food companies and movement leaders in the sustainable agriculture movement. Actually, Ken Cook, the founder of Environmental Working Group makes an analogy to Big Oil and Big Auto that for the longest time Big Auto was on and lockstep with Big Oil as far as opposing higher mileage standards for cars. And eventually Big Auto figured out that they sell cars and it doesn't matter how efficient the engines are. And they cut a deal with the Obama government administration and we actually finally are seeing some meaningful mileage regulations phase in over time here and that they really did not need to be carrying water for the oil industry. I think there's a similar transition point we're getting close to here that these big food companies are getting hit hard. They're basically getting, their brands are getting wrecked in the states that we're fighting these battles in. It's not just these big food companies. They own organic brands. Coca Cola owns Honest Tea. General Mills now owns Amy's. They own these organic companies that are basically getting boycotted and they're at war with their consumers own desire for basic transparency in their food. And it's such a loser for them. I think that we are starting to see fissures in that coalition between Big Food and Big Chemical. And I really do see Oregon so just kind of getting to the crucial current battle. Oregon is really the key battleground. We've come together. It's a great state as far as its food culture, its connection to real traditional family farming. Less than 1% of agriculture in Oregon is actually GMO in the first place. Another dynamic is the GMO salmon. FDA is about to approve a genetically engineered salmon that's got these eel like ocean pout genes in it that enables it to grow abnormally fast. So that's kind of. Yeah, it's, you know, it's a major obviously issue in the Northwest where salmon is of huge cultural and economic importance. So that's, you know, it's another good battleground for that reason.

Is, is there, have there been any studies on what that salmon does to you when you eat it? I mean, like, is it bad for you or, or does it just like lead to more of these? I mean, does it cause the same issue in the ocean as it does with the land based crops that you're Talking about?

Yeah, I think personally my primary concern and I think a concern that most have is that if you have the genetically engineered salmon escape and are out competing the native wild populations that they could drive them extinct pretty quickly. And you know, and that, that, that I think is the primary concern. There's also concerns about. Yeah, I mean just you know, is, you know, is this the really the most healthiest thing to be eating? You know, it's not. My, I guess my personal concern is more on the environmental side. Just in general, I guess my concern is more motivated on, you know, the environmental consequences of this technology. On the traditional soy corn it's. There's a huge pesticide load that is blasting our food and getting into our food and water and then into our environment and killing the pollinators and non target wildlife. Similarly with the salmon, the concern is more the impact it would have on wild species, the wild salmon stock which are already overfished and it's not a good situation anyways. Oregon is a really great battleground for us. There's you know, the in state coalition of grassroots is just huge and on fire.

So what could people do? Like if people. Well obviously it sounds like at this point it would be people living in Oregon.

Right.

Who could do something.

Yeah, well everybody can go to oregonright.

To know.org Is that just one word? Oregonright to know.org yeah, that's right, one word.

And if you're in Oregon, volunteer, you know, sign up the phone bank, help canvas, drive out the vote. You know, this is going to come down to turnout. Marijuana legalization is also on the ballot. We're coordinating closely with our vote voter registration and getting out the vote efforts and both of us, you know, are targeting younger voters tend to be with us more on either issue. It's, there does seem to be a generational split for some reason. Well, you know, certainly on cannabis and it's also emerged on GMOs. So it's really about kind of turning out the lower frequency younger voters and if we can drive them out, we're going to win. So you know, that's kind of the game is get out the vote and then you know, wherever you live in the country you can donate because you know, the other thing we needed to be doing is while we're being totally outspent on the airwaves and obviously you're never going to be able to match them dollar for dollar. We do need to get our message and our messengers out there and get some critical amount of mind share to push back on all the BS that they're saturating Oregon voters right now with. I mean, it's a real carpet bomb of a propaganda operation, basically bigger than Oregon's ever seen. Just like bigger than Washington's ever seen. You can't turn around right now in Oregon without seeing their bs. So, you know, we also do need money in the door to just kind of close us out and get our messages and messengers out there.

So oregonright to know.org and I'm also going to put a link to that article that you wrote in the Huffington Post in case folks are listening in. And if you are listening and you want to kind of read a little bit more of the details behind why it is that this is a is a problem or you want to print that out or link to it for your friends. And I'll also put a link to all this stuff over in the show notes@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Bronner that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com B R O N N E R so it is pretty important. Again, even if you don't live in Oregon, you can at least go visit oregonright to know.org and help to fight GMO crop production and the spread of some of this toxic crap all over the planet earth. So I think it's pretty important in addition of course to using some darn tasty coconut oil and some pretty cool soap. So anyways, David, thanks for coming on the show and sharing this stuff with us.

Yeah, thank you Ben for the opportunity and, and yeah, thank you.

Alright folks, so that's your call to action. Go head over to OrganRightsKnow.org, grab yourself some soap that's not gonna kill ya and some coconut oil and some other cool personal care products while you're at it. And until next time, this is. Oh by the way, David, this thing in Oregon is going pretty quick, right? Like because this podcast coming out November 1st. What's the date people need to get over there.

Yeah, well the vote is, well it's actually a mail mail by ballot.

Okay.

By mail. So it's. But basically though, 80% of the votes will be cast between November 1 and November 4. So that's the game. So right when this hits is it's like the real game on.

It's so you can pretty much like get out to get out in the next three days if you're listening to this podcast when before it first comes out, November 1st, Saturday. So take action soon November 1st through November 4th. So don't sit on your butt and wait this thing out. Go take action now. As soon as you finish your run or your bike ride or your weightlifting session, whatever you're doing while you're listening in. So check all that out. It's over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Bronner David, thanks for coming on. And folks, until next time, this is Ben Greenfield signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have a great week. Visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

Sa.