GMO-Free Portland!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/574245.stm

This is old but its funny. In 2007, the Press reported that a catering company used by Monsanto in Europe for its cafeterias banned GMO's from their homemade food. So did the company in the House of Lords! I love Europe. Too bad they are losing the battle with all the "test" crops over there. I'm sorry- back to the funny. Read this article.

Its wonderful to see Greenpeace fighting for your rights with this great brochure on what to avoid in your country. Enjoy!
Canadian non-GMO shoppers' guide

This was absolutely fun. It has been at times difficult explaining to various businesses that we want nothing except to spend our money to get them more customers in our non-GMO niche. We went in to see if we could give away our service. I was not prepared for Anni to ask if she could buy more of our brochures up front so we didn't have to cover the cost. Then she said what we were doing around town was exciting. I know! Ok but Then, we found out that they are celebrating non-GMO month, October, with a store-wide promotion of shelf-tags and posters. Good gravy! Have I died and gone to non-GMO heaven? Check out the write up on our Stores page. :) We're about to get 50 sets of brochures and pager-email cards out to people thanks to our new Patron. Now to go find them on Twitter and/or Facebook!

We have our 2nd official Patron (you won't be surprised at who...) It's Papa G's! Check out the updated picture and writeup on our restaurants page . I was impressed when we talked on the phone but as Ernie and I got to hear in person about the store's mission and actually see how hard he and the employees work in the off-site kitchen and in the SE Portland deli, when he could easily turn a better profit if he weren't so darned picky about sustainability and organics, really showed us how much his store is a mission. We believe businesses can be missions. A good number of the stores and restaurants we feature are special that way. But the food is just really good. 

And if that weren't enough, besides Papa G's menus for our Farmers' Market campaign we're planning, we have a whole lot of stuff from the Oregon PSR's Campaign for Safe Food. A beautiful flier called "Know Your Milk. Does it have artificial hormone?" and the rBGH-free ice cream campaign postcards that you can send to Good Humor-Breyers and to Dreyers to let them know you want that recombinant bovine growth hormone out of your ice cream! Or what? Or maybe you'll buy Julie's pints and Alden's quarts of awesome non-GMO, organic ice cream. They really don't want more people discovering those 2 brands while they mull over this decision on whether to remove a carcinogen from the milk or not. If you don't know rBGH is a carcinogen, I'll show you the online version of the flier here. Words come to mind when I read about rBGH and they aren't "Ice" and "Cream." How about YUCK! and WRONG!? When it comes to dairy though remember it all has to be organic or its not non-GMO.

You know the plan- we promote places where we can get food without GMO's who have either an option for or are all about non-GMO (or, more choosily, organic). They take advantage of our donation of outreach materials of this website, plus for our Patrons, our window cling, and customer pager line and the fliers we purchase from the responsibletechnology.org (see below). These are a resource for our Patrons' customers who ask for more information on what GMO's are, why not to eat them, and how to avoid them. We at GMO-Free Portland! believe that anyone that understands would start feeling very uncomfortable about the nature of the other "food" they've been eating as well as the unsavory practices of the majority corporate food industry. Together, we will naturally give even-more support to our growing family of real food providers that we frequent. We, the no-GMO's will help ourselves and our planet by seeing that the right people prosper, and thus our niche will grow even faster until it is an irresistible market. That will increase the success of all who grow, distribute, package, sell, and serve the good healthy food we all should have and our quest of doing the right thing for ourselves and nature itself will get a lot easier. We (you and Ernie and I) have a good food ethic that promotes causes of human rights, the health of all-things-Earth, and of course the inseparable subset of Earth health, human health. This is one way we can make a difference.

Yesterday, Papa G's made a Facebook post that linked to our site that mentioned how eating organic is important. 9 people so far have given the post a "like" not counting us ;) So we checked our stats when we happened upon it just now. 28 individuals that had never seen our site visited yesterday instead of the average 10 (that average grows weekly), and we had our usual daily 10 as of 3pm today instead of by midnight! One Facebook post by one business did that. At least 20 people have been to our site that otherwise wouldn't have- and our site connects them to a ton of resources including some incredible non-profits that fight this battle and other great causes. And of course we're serving people by introducing them to more good food places because we deserve healthy lives. We got 10 extra visitors a week ago when a Facebook friend of mine posted about our site on his personal page. And we love our personal friends and our families too that passed out our card. This campaign and its success is a joint venture with all of you. Thank you.

This is where the "GMO-Free Portland!" Project will generate some buzz and get non-GMO in people's minds. Cravin' Raven became our first Patron today. This is the cling we made (design below) in their window, which happens to be behind their basket of brochures outside so people will see it. We are for you, GMO food avoiders- whether you eat less of them now, are just learning and wanting to stop eating them ASAP, or no-GMO's like us. We are for you, businesses, that are also endorsers because you recognize and respect our right to NON-Genetically Engineered food and cater to our niche as one of many valid food choices. Together, with Ernie and I, and all the great organizations and people we link to that are on our side, we are a community. And though we are making our stand in our hometown of Portland, we are with you and for you, wherever you are- because we open the door for other communities. In fact, we have www.GMOFreeProject.com now reserved so that we can link to other regions when it catches on. We have some more friends in Portland- and establishments that are going to be patrons soon. If you're reading this site, please introduce yourself in an email to mail@gmofreeportland.com, so we can welcome you to our community. :)

There are 2 ways currently to donate assets to the cause.
1.We get $115 credit with our web host if you click this link. Regardless, we'd refer anyone because they are that good. Don't let the look of this site fool you lol- that is user-related! We can't get cash without a certain allocation (see below) because we're not a business. The web hosting referral is a great deal because we like them a lot. They are supportive of the Open Source community. So much so, that they remind me of co-op people. They are there 24-7 and they are friendly and smart. They are the opposite of the IT jokes stereotype. We refer "good guys" all over this site- the philosophy is that we should encourage the businesses we want to see succeed by giving them our business and NEVER supporting businesses with horrible practices.

      I have to clarify the "never support bad business practice companies," however. We
      never support companies that exploit third-world country farmers, for example.
      Non-Fair-Trade chocolate companies with a Fair-Trade line are on the jerk list
      big time). Because GMO's are not known to be terrible by the general public I don't
      avoid everyone that sells GMO's if they offer non-GMOs too.

Anyway, because iPage may really benefit people that need web hosting and they are being very generous (that's just over a year's worth of hosting credit from you trying the site for a month!) recommending them and getting credit seems just like the kind of thing we do here to help the good guys and form partnerships for mutual success with good guys alone.

2. If you sent us $20 we could put out 50 booklet packets at a Portland Farmers Market or some other task you ask us to do where you cover the exact materials cost but not say, our gasoline. If you're interested in sponsoring some of our work by paying the exact cost of any activity large or small, please email us. But remember- your shopping dollar and vocal nature are the most powerful ways to support the effort- as long as we have the cash we will buy the stuff to give away for the outreach. Currently we don't have much stuff going out that costs a lot. If we become really successful, our hope is that we'll have partners interested in the cause because its working- and those folks will help us! Until then, we are giving what we have.

Thank you for your support!!!!

A personal friend said we should get a booth at a farmers market. Yes! Our literature, the print resources we give out, and the flyers for the businesses that participate (whom we call "Patrons" and supportive "Friends.") with us all on a table with a balloon and some GMO-Free snacks. One flier is going to be for interested restaurants and stores to become our Patrons.

Fastsigns printed them in small quantity and they look wonderful