General Mills pulls Cheerios 'app' following groundswell of GMO opposition

Monday, February 18, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: General Mills, Cheerios, GMO

(NaturalNews) A social media marketing experiment recently launched by food giant General Mills went down in flames less than one day after it was created following a groundswell of opposition to the company's hidden use of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). According to Activist Post, a Facebook "app" created by General Mills that allowed members of the public to generate their own messages about the company's Cheerios breakfast cereal product was pulled after countless individuals swarmed the system with messages warning others about the presence of GMOs in General Mills food products.

It was intended to be a cute and fun way for fans of Cheerios to express their feelings about what the cereal has meant to them personally over the years. Complete with the cereal brand's iconic yellow background, the app's template was creatively designed to allow users to create their own messages in the same black font used on the cereal boxes, and even punctuate their messages using pictures of the tiny "Os" as dots and periods. But rather than receive messages of appreciation, the app was quickly bombarded with messages of protest and outrage about GMOs.

"Deception," "Poison," "Contains Toxic Ingredients," and "We are not guinea pigs," are just a few of the many user-created images that quickly flooded the wall of the Cheerios Facebook page. So many users were generating messages of protest about General Mills' deception with GMOs, in fact, that administrators for the company's Facebook page reportedly could not keep up with censoring and removing them all fast enough to keep them hidden from view. You can view images of some of the messages before they were deleted here:
http://www.activistpost.com

General Mills spent more than $1.1 million defeating GMO labeling in California

As you will recall, General Mills donated at least $1,135,300 to the No on 37 campaign in California, which used deception and lies to defeat a ballot measure that would have required GMO labeling at the retail level. And many health-conscious Americans are now fully aware of General Mills' efforts to keep the public in the dark about GMOs, which is why they decided to launch their own grassroots protest using the company's Cheerios Facebook page.

The Cheerios Facebook page is still active, it turns out, which means any Facebook user can still leave comments about GMOs without actually having to "Like" the page. This is a powerful tactic in spreading the word about unlabeled GMOs in the food supply, and it is one we encourage NaturalNews readers to engage in for the benefit of public health. They may have the money, but we have the numbers -- we just have to start upping the ante, so to speak, and putting up more of a fight.

You can access the Cheerios Facebook page here to leave your own comments:
https://www.facebook.com/Cheerios

Using social media to spread the word about GMOs

Even though Prop. 37 in California has been defeated (at least according to the official story, anyway), the fight to label GMOs is not over. Washingtonians, for example, will likely have the opportunity to vote on whether or not to label GMOs in their state in the upcoming 2013 election (http://www.naturalnews.com), and many other states are right now working on their own GMO labeling legislation as well.

This means we must continue to spread the word about GMOs, particularly through social media and the "Label It Yourself" project (https://www.naturalnews.com/036051_GMOs_label_it_yourself_activism.html), both of which are grassroots driven. You can also continue to speak your mind on the Facebook pages of companies that use GMOs, and especially those that opposed Prop. 37 (https://www.naturalnews.com/036834_kashi_larabar_boycott.html).

Sources for this article include:

http://www.activistpost.com