Dupont Pioneer - Running The Country

On my first day back on the job with my former employer, I sat through my second Customer Service presentation. Which means I sat through my second viewing of Bob Farrell’s video and presentation titled “Give Them the Pickle.”

Among other business ventures, Bob has launched several different restaurant chains. Back when Bob was just starting out, he got a letter from a disgruntled customer who explained that on his most recent visit to Bob’s restaurant, the waitress informed him that she’d be happy to bring him his requested pickle . . . for 75 cents. Pay for the pickle? That was a first. And consequently the customer informed Bob that he would never return to Bob’s restaurant again. Ouch!

Obviously a smart man, Bob recognized that he gained far more than he lost when his employees gave out pickles as requested. He told his employees, “Give them the pickle.” That line became his mantra and the basis for his successful career as well as his “Give ’em the pickle” presentations.

The first time I watched Bob’s presentation some nine years ago, I considered its meaning in relationship to the people I serve at work. Although I had similar thoughts this time around, in as much as my son and I recently finished our transcontinental Run For a GMO Free USA, I couldn’t help but also apply Bob’s solid customer service principles to the GMO industry—an industry that includes the White House, Congress, regulatory agencies, universities, The Grocery Manufacturers Association, chemical companies such as Monsanto, Dow, and Dupont Pioneer, the junk food and soda industry such as Mars, Pepsico, and Coca Cola, grocery stores, farmers, and consumers.

Bob Farrell is one of many good spokespersons for the customer service industry. The Grocery Manufactures Association is one of many giant organizations representing the customer servitude industry, an industry that is so large and so powerful that it has, thus far, successfully controlled government policy at the top while snubbing consumer preference on the bottom. In contrast to Mr. Farrell’s Give-‘Em-The-Pickle business model, the GMA makes its money by routinely giving consumers the finger.

In Bob’s world, the customer is king and boss. The customer pays Bob’s mortgage, his kids’ educations, vacations, etc. In the GMA’s world, the industry itself is boss, king, and lord over mindless hordes of hungry consumers. It maintains sufficient control of the food supply that it leaves Americans with little if any choice at all at the grocery store.

The GMA represents, protects, and promotes some of the biggest players in the GMO industry including of course Monsanto, one of the most hated companies in the history of the world. The successful introduction of GMOs into the food supply provides proof of the monopolistic power of the GMA over America’s food policies. Consider this: No one has ever gone to the grocery store to intentionally buy genetically modified organisms or products containing GMOs. In other words, there is no consumer market for GMOs. None. Zip. Nada. Not only is there no consumer market, millions of Americans want GMOs banned, and if not banned, they want them at least labeled so they can readily and easily avoid buying them.

Bob Farrell recognizes the wisdom in giving people a pickle, but he wouldn’t dream of forcing his customers to buy and eat pickles filled with unnatural ingredients they neither need nor want. He wouldn’t dream of overrunning D.C. with lobbyist to get those unnatural ingredients labeled as natural.

Not so with the Omnipotent GMA. The GMA insists on selling people GMO-contaminated products they neither need nor want, while also insisting that those unwanted and unneeded products remain unlabeled. And when millions of people rise up and declare that they don’t want to eat those products, or at the very least, they want those products labeled, the GMA responds with multi million-dollar misinformation campaigns to scare people into voting against labeling. And when Vermont passed the first no-strings-attached GMO labeling bill, the GMA filed suit against the state of Vermont. There is something seriously wrong with an organization that wields sufficient power to thwart what little remains of American democracy!

The GMA claims it’s committed to promoting the health of American consumers. Such claims would be laughable if they weren’t also deadly. Regardless, it can claim to be interested in the health of American consumers until the genetically modified cows come home, but Americans are seeing through the lies. Ultimately, the hubris of an organization that profits by giving people what they don’t want while refusing to give people what they do want, not to mention its obscene level of political influence, will some day prove to be its downfall.

We’re tired of being lied to. We’re tired of being told to shut up and eat our unlabeled, poison-saturated GMOs. We’re tired of being told that we’re not smart enough to understand the meaning of GMO labels. In spite of the GMA’s money, influence, and lies, millions of people from California to New Jersey are standing together, demanding GMO labeling and in some cases demanding GMO Free zones. (We had the privilege of meeting hundreds of these people in our run across the USA.)

The GMA doesn’t know it quite yet, but Bob Farrell is right. We customers are king. And it’s long past time for us to banish the likes of the GMA and reclaim American democracy. A crucial first step to doing so is to label GMOs.

So when GMO labeling hits the ballot in your state, be prepared for the GMA to roll in with its propaganda and its lies. And remember that the GMA has only shown up to get you to shut up, fork over, and chow down. Don’t do it. Raise your voice and cast your vote.

And when you ask for a pickle at one of Mr. Farrell’s establishments, make sure it’s free—GMA and GMO free.

Sources:

http://www.giveemthepickle.com/bob.htm

http://www.RunningTheCountry.com

http://www.gmaonline.org/

http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/blog/2014/jan/18/big_foods_arrogant_move_in_the_gmo_labeling_wars

http://www.gmaonline.org/news-events/newsroom/gma-statement-on-defeat-of-proposition-37-in-california/

http://www.gmaonline.org/news-events/newsroom/gma-files-lawsuit-to-overturn-vermonts-unconstitutional-mandatory-gmo-label/

http://www.gmaonline.org/about/for-consumers/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/10/gmo-labels-congress_n_5576255.html

http://organicconnectmag.com/two-gmo-victories-oregon/

https://www.facebook.com/pages/GMO-Free-Los-Angeles/130864966978664

David and I have a lot of time to talk on the road. I’ve learned a lot about David in the process. And I’m sure David has learned a lot about me.

David knows that I grew up in a home with parents who instilled traditional values in their children. And when I say traditional values, I mean the traditional values of working class Christians: Love you neighbors whether you like them or not, do good to those that despitefully use you, we’re all members of the same human family so treat everyone with love and respect, sleep in your own bed, honesty is the only policy, and the Golden Rule.

I grew up believing that all parents at some level believed and taught their children those same values.

But I was wrong.

A few states ago, I struck up a conversation with a young man at church. Our conversation turned to values and why it is that the ruling class seem to operate by a different set of values. He went on to say that lower working class people are taught to obey societal and religious rules and that the ruling class are taught that they make the rules, and because they make the rules, they are free to break the rules as they see fit.

And while the working class are doing just that: working, working 9 to 5, working sunup to sundown, working 40, 60, or 80 hour weeks, working their fingers to the bone, working an honest day’s labor for an honest day’s wages, working and wearing their lives away, the ruling class are buying and selling and investing. They’re making millions, sometimes billions, off of the labor of the working class. They’re buying companies, firing employees at will, then turning around and selling the same companies at obscene profits, giving no thought to the fact that their company flipping places working people on the streets and on the dole.

And while the working class are paying their taxes, the ruling class are pulling the strings on their political puppets to create the tax loop holes that enable them to gain millions, by and large, tax free.

And while the working class are genuinely concerned about the welfare of the human family, the ruling class are concerned only that the working class keep their noses to the grindstone, their shoulders to the wheel, and their mouths shut so the ruling class can continue to profit from other people’s labor.

And while the working class wouldn’t resort to shady means to make a buck, the ruling class don’t give a rat’s ass how they make their bucks or who ends up hurt or dead in the process.

This analysis may be a bit over simplified and may be a bit too black and white, but then again, maybe it’s a dead ringer.

How else can one explain the fact that corporations like Monsanto, Dow, Dupont Pioneer, BASF, Bayer and Syngenta continue to operate on the values of Profit over Loss, Regardless.

Regardless of the fact that their chemical and GMO-based agricultural systems are killing the soil, polluting waterways, and poisoning all life, including the lives of their own children.

Regardless of the fact that their large scale, monocultures destroy precious biodiversity and displace millions of peasant who join the ranks of the poorest of the poor.

Regardless of the fact that many who farm GMOs find that suicide is the only escape from an endless cycle of debt.

Regardless of the fact that by patenting plants and animals, the poisoners become biopirates committing biopiracy as they steal from Nature and from the collective commons.

Regardless of the fact that their corrupt collusion with politicians makes of mockery of democracy.

Regardless of the fact that virtually nobody wants their poison saturated bastardized imitation food and that the only way they can continue to get people to eat such stuff is to continue to keep GMOs unlabeled, even if that means threatening and suing entire states such as Vermont, or creating global “Free Trade” agreements like the TPP that declare participating governments shall do nothing to infringe on corporate profits including the labeling of GMOs.

Regardless of the fact that many countries refuse to buy GMO-based corn and soybeans and those commodities are so overproduced in the USA and their value is so low that GMO-based agriculture can only be sustained by billions of dollars in government subsidies.

Regardless of the fact that most farmers are barely making a living and most of the subsidies they receive end up in the bank accounts and investment funds of the poison peddlers.

Regardless of the fact that the poisoners must shield their eyes from the sight of the deformed, disabled, diseased and dead people their policies and poisons have produced.

Regardless of the fact that they must cover their ears to block the cries of their victims.

Regardless of the fact that their alleged science-based research is little more than the science of fraud and deception.

Regardless of the fact that their profit is commensurate only to their skill as liars.

I am grateful that I was raised with the values of Right and Wrong rather than the values of Profit and Loss. But I want my children to know and understand that there are people in this country and in this world—people they will likely never meet—who care only for their own profit and that those people make and break the rules as they see fit. And those people use their power and influence to ensure that only their political puppets—both democrats and republicans—enjoy the financial backing to win elections or the connections to be appointed to key governmental positions, including the regulatory agencies that are supposedly in place to protect the people and the environment.

I want our children to know that they must assume full responsibility for their own health and well-being. I want them to know that in violation of the Constitution, their conversations are being monitored and recorded, not so much to catch thieves, crooks, and terrorists, but to catch the people who catch government thieves, crooks, and terrorists.

And someday, when enough people have awakened from the collective delusion that corporations care and that the government represents them, I pray that the people who value Right and Wrong will rise up and create a system of government based on the values of Right over Wrong, on the value of loving rather than bombing, on the value of caring for rather than pillaging the Earth and her resources, on the value that all have access to clean and healthy food, education, and health care.

For the sake of the Earth and her inhabitants, may that day come soon.

Brett and David Wilcox are within two weeks of finishing their transcon 3,000 mile Run For a GMO Free USA. To date, their run expenses far exceed donations received. You can help change that fact by making a donation of any amount through their Indiegogo campaign fundraiser.

Tag: Dupont Pioneer

The GMA and The Customer Servitude Industry

Right and Wrong vs Profit and Loss