Robyn O'Brien Shines Light on Food Allergens

Called the “Erin Brockovich of food,” activist and author Robyn O’Brien brought her fight to the Organic Produce Summit as one of the keynote speakers during the mid-July event in Monterey, CA.

The well-educated Texas native grew up in a very conservative Houston household and was very successful in the financial world before an allergic food reaction by her young daughter turned her into a crusader.  The analyst in her----honed in corporate America----was soon found trying to figure out what caused her daughter’s near death experience in January of 2006.  She discovered startling statistics that informed her efforts. 

One in three Americans, she said, will suffer from one of the “four A’s” in their lifetime: allergies, autism, asthma or ADHD. More than 40 percent are expected to get cancer in their lifetime.  Only one in 10 breast cancers is genetic, meaning the other nine have a different root cause.

What has changed, she told an overflow crowd of OPS attendees, has been the nation’s food supply.  She said artificial growth hormones for animals were first used in a substantial way in 1994. It was also in the 1990s when genetically engineered grain crops became commonplace as both a source of feed for our livestock and an ingredient in processed foods.  O’Brien theorizes that the meteoric rise in food allergies is not to the food itself but to what has been done to it. 

She is a big advocate of using organic farming techniques and properly labeling all food.  “Consumers want ‘free from’ food,” she said, meaning food that doesn’t contain genetically altered ingredients, hormones or pesticides.  O’Brien advocates a complete overhaul of the U.S. food production system.  She notes that only one percent of farmland in America is being farmed organically. 

O’Brien applauded the crowd of OPS attendees for being on the cutting edge of this movement and said the country needs “an all hands-on deck approach” to organic farming.  “We need capital.  We need change. We need guaranteed buyers,” she said.

America also has to value its farmers.  “There is so much opportunity in front of us to convert our supply chain.  We have to get creative and innovative,” she said.

O’Brien strongly believes that consumers are on board.  She pointed to the success of the “Annie’s” brand, which began as an organic pasta company in New England in 1989, raised $1.3 million in a public offering in 1995 and was sold to General Mills in 2014 for $830 million…all on the shoulders of its organic macaroni and cheese products.

O’Brien has backed up her own words with the founding of rePlant Capital. The company concentrates on investing from “the soil to the shelf” to change the equation for the nation’s organic farmers.  At the time of her daughter’s allergic attack, she was about to launch a new hedge fund.  Instead she turned her attention to food and authored “The Unhealthy Truth” along the way, which is her well-researched story of how the U.S. food industry allows hidden toxins into the food supply.