Ronnie Cummins, a ponytailed activist who became one of the country’s leading advocates of organic food 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 was 76 years old.
Rose Welch, his wife and partner in the start of 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 lymphatic cancer.
Mr. Cummins was a lifelong activist and protester, beginning with his opposition to the Vietnam War and nuclear power. He settled on organic food activism in the 1990s after being hired as director of the pure food campaigna lobbying group that sought to raise awareness about the dangers of genetically modified foods while pushing for responsible labeling and government testing.
Mr. Cummins worked in the field for the campaign, sounding the alarm at rallies and supermarkets about the dangers of foods that use genetically modified ingredients. He handed out flyers, wrote opinion pieces and answered consumer questions as a spokesperson for the campaign.
He also worked for the Beyond Beef campaign, aimed at reducing beef consumption and promoting safer methods of cattle production. Both campaigns were founded by environmental activist and social theorist jeremy rifkin.
Cummins “was a tough guy who could be an activist and also step back and do the intellectual homework behind what we were doing,” Rifkin said in a phone interview.
“Too often, activists burn out after starting out with high expectations,” he added. “But Ronnie could write, research, reflect and be open to all points of view.”
One of Mr. Cummins’ frequent targets was recombinant bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth hormone, a genetically modified 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, Cummins told The Associated Press that “if we don’t slow down the technology of change with genetically modified additives, we’re going to be making a very big mistake in terms of human health, animal health and survival of family farms”.
He went on to rant about milk produced by hormone-treated cows after he and Mrs. Welch started the organic consumers association based in Finland, Minnesota, in 1998.
“Recombinant bovine growth hormone is bad for dairy cows, literally burning them up in three to four years, causing terrible physical stress and a laundry list of medical problems, including reproductive complications,” Mr. Cummins wrote in The Fresno Bee in 2008.
He enjoyed fighting with the major brands. In 2001, he raised concerns about Starbucks’ promise not to use dairy products with the hormone by asking to see their promise in writing. (The company finally complied in 2007.) He warned about a “sneak attack engineered by Kraft, Dean Foods and Smucker’s.” To put pressure on companies that use modified beet sugar, threatened a protest against Hershey.
Although there are unresolved questions about the effect of genetically modified organisms on biodiversity, there is a near universal consensus among scientists that genetically modified foods are safe to eat.
However, most consumers do not share that view, a skepticism due in large part to the efforts of activists like Mr. Cummins.
The safety of genetically modified foods “is like global climate change, where 99 percent of scientists believe in it,” Pamela Ronald, a professor of plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, told The Roanoke Times in 2013. .
He added: “There are scientists all over the world saying that genetically modified crops are safe to eat, and then there’s 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, in the heart of the state’s oil industry. His mother, Elise (Stout) Abel, was a homemaker who committed suicide in 1951.
When he was 20 years old, 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 she changed her name because she feared reprisals from the Ku Klux Klan for her anti-war activities. . at Rice University in Houston, where he majored in English and philosophy, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1969.
Ms. Welch said she did not know why her husband took the child’s name from Cummins in particular. She said that he told her that she had no criminal record that she was trying to hide with a new identity. Her brother, Jack Abel Jr., said by phone that the story behind the name change “is so personal that 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.
Adrian grew up among refineries and later remembered catching oil-contaminated fish. But he also spent idyllic summers on his maternal grandparents’ farm, where he tended animals and collected eggs.
“My life experience has taught me that money rules and power corrupts, and that putting profits before people and environmental health is not only wrong but deadly,” 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,” she added, “whether we’re talking about public awareness, market pressure, or politics and public policy.”
As a career, activism didn’t pay the bills, so he made a living over the years as a newsstand owner at the University of Minnesota, director of a food co-op in suburban Burnsdale, Minnesota. of Minneapolis, and a house painter. Mrs. Welch was waiting tables.
“I was more or less a hippie,” he said in a phone interview.
They both went to work for Mr. Rifkin in the 1990s, Mr. Cummins as a director, Ms. Welch as a campaign manager. They left to start the Organic Consumers Association, which supports enforcement of the US 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” was finally earning a real salary: $112,900 in 2021.
The OCA has spun off into two organizations: the Mexico-based Via Orgánicaa school farm and agroecology research center, in 2009, and, in 2014, international Regeneration, that promotes ways to develop agricultural practices that rebuild degraded soil.
In the opinion of André Leu, international director of Regeneration International, Cummins had confronted “the powerful elite that monopolized power and wealth” and was “undermining democracy, fair wages, healthy food, peace, climate and the environment.”
A longtime goal of Mr. Cummins was to have the government require labeling of genetically modified foods. He fought for ballot initiatives in several states and scored his first big victory in Vermont in 2014 when he became the first state to pass a labeling law.
Faced with the prospect of a patchwork of state laws, Congress passed a comprehensive federal labeling law in 2016.
But Mr. Cummins did not consider it a victory.
The law, which replaced stricter Vermont 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 list information on the package. 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 Whole Foods supermarket chain “and a cabal of nonprofit organizations that have sold out” of giving in “to Monsanto and corporate agribusiness” by endorsing the legislation.
“In other words, business as usual,” he added, then used a buzzword for GM products: “Shut up and eat your Frankenfoods.”
sheelagh mcneill contributed research.
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