Ronnie Cummins, scourge of genetically modified food, dies at age 76

Ronnie Cummins, a ponytail activist who became one of the country’s leading advocates for organic foods and a leading critic of genetically modified foods, died April 26 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where he lived and worked part-time. He turned 76.

Rose Welch, his wife and partner in founding the Organic Consumers Association, an advocacy and information organization, said his death, which was not widely reported at the time, was caused by bone and lymph cancer.

Mr. Cummins was a lifelong activist and protestor, beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War and nuclear power. He focused on organic food activism in the 1990s after being hired as the director of the Pure Food Campaigna lobby group that sought to raise awareness of the dangers of genetically engineered foods while pushing for responsible labeling and government testing.

Mr. Cummins worked in the field for the campaign, raising the alarm at rallies and supermarkets about the dangers of food containing genetically modified ingredients. He handed out leaflets, wrote opinion pieces and answered consumer questions as a campaign spokesperson.

He also worked for the Beyond Beef campaign, aimed at reducing beef consumption and promoting safer methods of raising livestock. Both campaigns were founded by the environmentalist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin.

Mr. Cummins “was a tough guy who could be an activist and also step back and do the intellectual homework behind what we were doing,” said Mr. Rifkin in a telephone interview.

“Too often activists get burnt out after starting out with high expectations,” he added. “But Ronnie could write, research, reflect and be open to all viewpoints.”

One of the frequent targets of Mr. Cummins was recombinant bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth hormone, a genetically engineered hormone produced by Monsanto that stimulates milk production in cows.

On the first day farmers were allowed to sell milk from cows injected with the hormone, in 1994, Mr. Cummins told The Associated Press that “if we don’t slow change technology with genetically engineered additives, we will be making a very big mistake in terms of human health, animal health and the survival of family farms.”

He continued to rant about milk produced by hormone-treated cows after he and Mrs. Welch started the Organic Consumer Association, based in Finland, Minnesota, in 1998.

“Recombinant bovine growth hormone is bad for dairy cows, literally burning them out in three or four years, causing terrible physical stress and a long list of medical problems, including reproductive complications,” Mr. Cummins wrote in The Fresno Bee in 2008.

He enjoyed competing with big brands. In 2001, he expressed doubt about Starbucks’ promise not to use milk products containing the hormone by asking to see the promise in writing. (The company finally complied in 2007.) He warned of a “sneak attack developed by the likes of Kraft, Dean Foods and Smucker’s.” To put pressure on companies that use modified beet sugar, he threatened to protest Hershey.

While there are unresolved questions about the effect of genetically modified organisms on biodiversity, there is an almost universal consensus among scientists that genetically modified foods are safe to eat.

However, most consumers do not share that view, a skepticism largely due to the efforts of activists such as Mr. Cummins.

The safety of GM foods “is like global climate change, which 99 percent of scientists believe in,” Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, told The Roanoke Times in 2013.

She added: “You have scientists all over the world saying genetically engineered crops are safe to eat – and then you have Ronnie Cummins.”

Mr. Cummins was born Adrian Alton Abel on October 28, 1946, in Jefferson, Texas, about 20 miles from the Louisiana border. His father, Jack, was an accountant for Gulf Oil in Port Arthur, Texas, at the heart of the state’s oil industry. His mother, Elise (Stout) Abel, was a homemaker who committed suicide in 1951.

In his twenties, Adrian changed his name to Ronnie Cummins, the name of a boy who was also born in 1946 and died in 1954. Ms. Welch said he changed his name because he feared reprisals from the Ku Klux Klan for his anti-war activities. from Rice University in Houston, where he majored in English and philosophy, graduating in 1969 with a bachelor’s degree.

Ms Welch said she didn’t know why her husband took the name of the Cummins boy in particular. She said he told her he had no criminal record which he tried to hide with a new identity. His brother, Jack Abel Jr., said over the phone that the story behind the name change is “so personal I can’t share it.”

In addition to his wife and brother, Mr. Cummins is survived by his son, Adrian Cummins Welch; and his sisters, Molly Travis and Bonnie Abel.

Growing up among refineries, Adrian later recalled catching oil-contaminated fish. But he also spent idyllic summers on his maternal grandparents’ farm, caring for animals and collecting eggs.

“My life experience has taught me that money rules and power corrupts, and that it is not only wrong but deadly to put profit before people and environmental health,” he wrote in his book “Grassroots Rising: A Call to Action on Climate, Farming , Food and Green New Deal” (2020) “Organized grassroots power can make a big difference,” he added, “whether we’re talking about public awareness, market pressures or politics and public policy.”

As a career, activism didn’t pay the bills, so over the years he made a living as a kiosk owner at the University of Minnesota, the director of a food co-op in Burnsdale, Minn., outside of Minneapolis, and a house painter. Mrs. Welch waited tables.

“He was kind of a hippie,” she said in a phone interview.

Both went to work for Mr. Rifkin in the 1990s, Mr. Cummins as director, Mrs. Welch as campaign manager. They left to create the Organic Consumers Association, which supports the enforcement of the United States Department of Agriculture’s organic food standards, produces educational materials for organic consumers and businesses, and encourages public pressure campaigns on organic food issues.

The “hippie” finally earned a real salary – $112,900 in 2021.

The OCA has made two organizations independent: the Mexico-based Via Organicaan agroecological farm school and research center, in 2009 and, in 2014, Regeneration International, that promotes ways to develop agricultural practices that restore degraded soil.

According to André Leu, the international director of Regeneration International, Mr. Cummins opposes “the powerful elite who monopolized power and wealth” and “democracy, fair wages, healthy food, peace, the climate and the environment.”

An old goal of Mr. Cummins was for the government to mandate labeling on genetically modified foods. He fought for ballot initiatives in several states and won his first major victory in Vermont, in 2014, when it became the first state to pass a labeling law.

Faced with the prospect of a patchwork of state laws, in 2016 Congress passed a sweeping federal labeling bill.

But Mr. Cummins didn’t consider it a win.

The law, which replaced Vermont’s stricter legislation, gave companies the option of using an icon or a scannable QR code that would direct consumers to a website, rather than having to spell out the information on the packaging. And some foods, such as highly refined sugars and oils, were exempt from the labeling requirement.

Mr Cummins, in an article on his websitecalled brands like Organic Valley and Stonyfield Farms “organic traitors” and accused the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the supermarket chain Whole Foods “and a cabal of sold-out non-profits” of surrendering “to Monsanto and corporate agribusiness” by passing the legislation. supports.

“In other words, business as usual,” he added, then used a buzzword for genetically modified products: “Shut up and eat your Frankenfoods.”

Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.