Note: Nutiva is now a Richmond company.
Nutiva CEO announces next step in campaign for GMO-free world



Nutiva CEO John Roulac demonstrates an example of a "shelftalker"--a label that retailers can use to warn consumers that products may contain GMOs. (Photo: Sarah Phelan.)

By Sarah PhelanPosted 2 hours ago

On the day after the election, as folks were picking themselves up after a night spent celebrating or grieving, Nutiva CEO John Roulac, a major financial supporter of the failed genetically-modified-food-labeling Prop. 37, was putting his best GMO-free foot forward.

“Obviously, I would have loved to have won, but 47 percent is respectable and demonstrates that 47 percent of Californians want the right to know what’s in their food,” Roulac said, referring to the 4.3 million Californians who voted yes on Prop 37.
“Many people, if they are confused, just vote no,” Roulac said, after a campaign that saw Monsanto and other biotech giants spend $46 million to persuade the public that it’s not necessary to know if their food contains genetically modified organisms.
“We sparked a modern GMO movement and this is not the end of the war,” Roulac said.

The next front in the war begins Friday with the launching of GMOinside.org, a website that will provide tools and campaign ideas to create a GMO-free world, Roulac said.

“We’re planning to create a GMO-free holiday,” Roulac said. The website will list common foods that people can use as GMO-free alternatives to traditional fare on Thanksgiving and other holidays.

“We’ll be launching GMO-free Fridays at home and at restaurants, just like Meatless Mondays, and we are working with several retailers to provide ‘shelf-talkers’,” Roulac said. A shelf talker is a label that retailers can print and put on metal strips and apply to foods to identify products that contain GMOs. “We are hoping this will create a prairie fire that spreads across the country,” he said.