GMO Political Action: Please Help and Forward to Friends

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ESSAY OF THE WEEK Dr. Oz Flip Flops as Mass Media Attacks Intensify                                                               Less than two months after telling millions of TV viewers that organic food is “worth the investment,” America’s most popular TV doctor is singing a different tune. In the December issue of Time, Dr. Oz described organic foodies as “elitist” – part of the 1% – and claimed that conventional foods are nutritionally equivalent to organic foods. In the cover story, Dr. Oz directly contradicted his October 19 attack on the controversial Stanford study, published in September, which concluded that organic fruits and vegetables are no better than their conventionally grown counterparts. The famous TV doc devoted an entire program to lambasting the Stanford study because it didn’t address the toxic health consequences of foods loaded with pesticides. Why the flip-flop? And what’s up with all the highly publicized mass media attacks on organics? Are Big Food, Big Ag and Big Biotech getting nervous? Read the essay here ACTION ALERT Stop the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ and Other Dangerous Riders! TAKE ACTION! Monsanto could get everything it wants for Christmas, unless we convince legislators this week to strip both the 2013 Agriculture Appropriations Bill (H.R. 5973) and the Farm Bill of dangerous riders that would give the biotech industry unprecedented power and immunity from not only an already-weakened review process, but also from federal law. Here’s what’s at stake. Attached to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill is the “Farmers Assurance Provision” (Section 733) which is nothing more than a sneak attack on American farmers, consumers and the environment. If passed, this rider, aptly renamed the “Monsanto Protection Act,”  would give Monsanto immunity from federal law by allowing the biotech industry to plant genetically modified crops, even if a federal court has ordered the planting be halted until an Environmental Impact Statement is completed. On the Farm Bill side, Monsanto lobbyists have bought themselves several anti-regulatory riders that would effectively gut the USDA’s ability to regulate the use of genetically engineered organisms (GMOs). The riders would speed up the review and approval process for new GE crops, and authorize the USDA to consider exempting certain GE crops from any review at all. Now that Congress has returned, both bills are on the agenda. The Agriculture Appropriations could become part of an Omnibus Appropriations Bill and the Farm Bill could be included in a deficit-reduction agreement to avoid the “fiscal cliff. Thankfully, we have at least one friend in Congress. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-OR) is circulating a letter to all of his colleagues in Congress opposing the “Monsanto Protection Act.” By signing our action alert below, you can ask your legislators to sign on to Rep. DeFazio’s “Dear Colleague” letter. You’ll also be asking your legislators to oppose the Farm Bill riders. Don’t let Monsanto get away with this latest attack on farmers, consumers and the environment! TAKE ACTION! SUPPORT THE OCA AND OCF Help Stop the Attacks on Organics                                                               Organics are under attack. From every which way. The USDA, headed by Tom Vilsack, Monsanto’s Man in Washington, is greasing the tracks for approvals of new GMO crops and Biotech-friendly laws that will devastate farmers, consumers and the health of our planet. The FDA, an organization that’s supposed to protect the people but whose real loyalty lies with corporate lobbyists, is being guarded by Michael Taylor, another former Monsanto gun. And lately, Big Media is looking more and more as if it’s on the payroll of Big Ag and Big Pharma, too. In September, the New York Times, Associated Press and CBS News all picked up and ran with a dubiously funded study from Stanford University. The study told consumers that there’s no nutritional difference between organic fruits and vegetables and their conventional counterparts. The study failed to mention that conventional food is loaded with pesticides and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics. But that didn’t stop mainstream media from giving it plenty of play. Even Dr. Oz, once a big promoter of organics, has gone over to the dark side. His latest cover story in Time shockingly contradicts what he’s been telling loyal viewers for years: Eat organic, stay healthy. As more people wake up to the reality of our broken, unhealthy food system, we can expect the attacks on organics to grow louder. And more frequent. We can’t let Big Money destroy the progress we’ve made in the past few years. We have to work harder than ever, in Washington, in the media and on the ground. We’re committed to doing all this and more, but we need your help. Please contribute today. Thank you!                                                                  Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)                                                                  Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund(non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our legislative efforts in California and other states) Action Alert Stop Agent Orange Corn! USDA  Planning Pre-Christmas Approval for Spring 2013 Planting TAKE ACTION Remember Agent Orange? The 2,4-D chemical concoction commissioned by the U.S. Army to defoliate jungles and destroy food crops during the Vietnam War? It could soon be coming to a grocery store near you. Within a week, the USDA could approve Dow’s new “Enlist” brand corn, genetically engineered to resist massive doses of the herbicide 2,4-D. Unless we stop it. The list of reasons to tell USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to reject Dow’s Agent Orange Corn is long. A large body of evidence indicates major health problems result from exposure to 2,4-D, including cancer, reproductive problems, neurotoxicity, and auto-immune disorders. And 2,4-D is devastating to the environment. It’s currently the seventh largest source of dioxin pollution in the US. The use of this toxic herbicide is projected to increase 50-fold if the USDA approves this crop. The USDA has already received more than 450,000 comments opposing Dow’s new GE corn. But it has a long history of avoiding protests and bad press by issuing unpopular decisions right before the holidays. We have one more week to show Sec. Vilsack that the American people are united in opposing dangerous new GMOs that put farmers’ crops and livelihoods, local economies, and the health of farmers, farm workers and rural communities at risk. Sign this petition to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack urging him to reject Agent Orange corn!

Time for Some Good Old-Fashioned Boycotting

Punish the ‘Natural’ and Organic Traitor Brands: Download Your Boycott Guide

The parent companies of some of our favorite organic and natural brands contributed nearly half of the $46 million spent on the deceitful advertising that sunk Prop 37, the California Right to Know GMO labeling initiative. How do we prevent Pepsi, Kellogg’s and other multinational Junk Food Kings from pouring money into anti-GMO campaigns in Washington, Vermont, and other states?
Millions of consumers need to send these Traitor Brands a clear message: If they continue to side with Monsanto and the rest of the chemical companies, instead of with the consumers who have made them wildly profitable, we won’t buy their organic brands.

Why not just boycott the parent company brands? Those of us who support organics rarely buy products like Diet Pepsi or Kellogg’s Genetically-Modified-Sugar-Coated Frosted Flakes. The only way to pressure Big Food is to boycott the brands we actually buy. Brands like Kashi, Naked Juice, Horizon, Silk, Honest Tea and yes, even Ben & Jerry’s.
Let’s be clear. These Big Food companies are gobbling up organic brands to make money and to greenwash the fact that industrial agriculture, factory farms, and their so-called “conventional” brands are undermining public health and destroying the environment and climate stability. They recognize the huge profit potential in the fast-growing organic and natural markets. They want our business. If we stop buying their organic and so-called “natural” brands, they know there’s a good chance we’ll find alternative brands. We might never look back.
America’s Traitor Brands can redeem themselves. All they have to do is publicly – and financially – support the consumer’s right to know about GMOs, beginning with I-522 Label It WA, a Washington State labeling initiative planned for November 2013. And while they’re at it, they should tell their parent companies to stop opposing our right to know.
Download your wallet-sized boycott guide
Download a poster-sized boycott guide
Join the nearly 15,000 people who have already signed the boycott pledge
Learn more about the boycott
To order printed copies of the boycott guide or poster call 218-226-4164 or email campaigns@organicconsumers.org

If You Thought Round-Up Was Bad….

We have until February 27th to stop 2,4-D Corn Keep this GE genie in the bottleUrge USDA not to approave Dow’s   2,4-D-resistant GE corn. Dear Concerned Citizen, This one is pretty simple: Dow and USDA hope to quietly approve a new genetically engineered seed line that basically swaps RoundUp (glyphosate) out and an even worse weedkiller (2,4-D) in. Bad idea. The pesticide treadmill is catching up with Monsanto, as glyphosate-resistant “superweeds” run rampant and their blockbuster product line nears the end of its life-cycle. Dow wants to drop in an even more toxic herbicide (2,4-D) to keep the treadmill running at high speed. We have until February 27th to stop this. Tell USDA that you want off this ride» USDA opened a public comment period over the holiday break, as they tend to do for controversial decisions they want to bury. But we’re paying attention. Dow aims to get 2,4-D-resistant corn to market this year, soy next year and cotton in 2015. These three crops dominate U.S. agriculture, blanketing over 100 million acres of mono-cropped countryside, driving the pesticide market. As with Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready lines, so too will it be with Dow’s 2,4-D-resistant lines. The herbicide that these seeds are engineered to be used with (then glyphosate, now 2,4-D) will surge in use. Only this time, the fallout will be worse. Here’s why: 2,4-D is a more toxic herbicide, both to humans and to plants. It is a reproductive toxicant, suspected endocrine disruptor and probable carcinogen. Children are particularly susceptible to its effects. 2,4-D does and will drift off of target crops – both through spray drift and volatilization. This will devastate adjacent ecosystems and poses a very real threat to rural economies and farmers growing non-2,4-D-resistant crops. Conventional farmers will lose crops while organic farmers will lose both crops and certification, resulting in an economic unraveling of already-stressed rural communities. 2,4-D-resistant “superweeds” will arise and spread just as RoundUp-resistant “superweeds” have taken over farms and countryside in the Midwest and Southeast. Corn is wind-pollinated, which means that genetic material from 2,4-D corn will contaminate non-GE corn. You cannot put a GE genie back in the bottle. The risks are far too great» This dangerous and antiquated herbicide shouldn’t be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up use. We’ll need to make a lot of noise on this one. Thanks so much for adding your voice!

PS: Respond to the Raw Milk Raid

The recent state and federal raid on a private food buying club in California that was selling raw milk is explained more thoroughly HERE where you can also respond by contacting your Senators and Representative. Please help support the right of every American to participate in a private food club that sells raw milk (or other natural farm grown food regardless of whether the mainstream finds the food strange or supposedly dangerous).

If You Use Nutritional Supplements: Please Read!

The FDA is working towards further regulation of the US nutritional supplement industry in such a way that could easily make supplements both harder to purchase and more expensive. Please check out the following articles for more detailed info and action steps. Thank you!

Alliance For Health article here which talks about how the FDA is emulating Europe’s strategy of making herbs and supplements difficult to purchase and why, as well as 2 earlier articles which are linked, giving the political details (this all came down just before the 4th of July holiday).

An opinion piece by a respected health educator here which goes into the bigger picture and lots of detail. Both articles contain action steps that I recommend you take (and pass the word along) if you wish to continue purchasing and using nutritional supplements. We stopped the FDA in 1994 when they wanted to make nutritional supplements equal to drugs. Time for us to stop them once again as they try to limit out health freedom.

Boycotting Fake Organics

When I was in my twenties I helped start a small town buying cooperative for those of us “hippie-types” who lived in the Appalachia/Big Stone Gap, VA area. We wanted food the local Piggly-Wiggley wouldn’t/maybe couldn’t offer. So 4 times a year all the “back to land folks” and the “urban political folks” gathered together and tried to mix a 5 gallon tub of peanut butter so that everyone got sorta the same consistency….you can imagine how that turned out. Bags of brown rice, lots of laughter, and everything organic…and grown by family farms or manufactured by family businesses,  as those were the only folks interested in the “weirdness”of organics back in the early 70ies.

When I left for the big city (Atlanta, GA) in 1977, I joined the local food co-op (Sevananda), and by early summer of 1979 was somehow its produce manager…talk about learning on the job! And what a great time to be getting up before dawn: driving the produce truck to the (genuine) Farmer’s Market, where, in the summer, one could buy 3 kinds of peaches and watermelons, corn, and lots of other fruits and veggies, so fresh the dew still sparkled on the green leaves….and though none was organic, at least it was from the farmer who grew it, or an independent agent who worked all night going from farm to farm picking up cases of delicious, ripe food.

As I learned my job, I found out a lot of people were asking for organics, and discovered that some of the hippie-type back to land folks in California were growing organic food on a scale that was, though still family farm (or cooperative farm), large enough to send me a one ton air freight container of fruits and vegetables every week. Since the Gerson Diet for cancer treatment was starting to become popular, I easily sold every morsel of that incredible food.

So that’s what I “grew up” considering organic; and sold it, purchased it, and ate it, despite the larger culture’s less than welcoming attitude…that is, until all us hippie types, in our innocence and idealism, launched what is now a juggernaut of profit so mind boggling that most of those family farms/manufactures have “sold out” to large multi-national corporations….who are hell-bent on cutting any and all corners to squeeze another ounce of profit…which means organic that isn’t really organic.

If you’d like to learn more, please check this out:

Organic Spies Strike Again: Exposing the Shocking Links Between the Biotech
Industry and the Organic Trade Association

After the success of “Organic
Spies Find Lies,” the organic industry’s most diligent muckrakers,
the Organic Spies, are at it again with a new documentary, this time exposing
the connection between Horizon, Dean Foods, Land O’ Lakes and Monsanto.

Watch the
Video and Take Action

So it’s time to boycott the “fakes:” Horizon Dairy (with their imaginative spin on “free-range”) and all the other companies above. It’s time we consumers paid a wee bit more attention to what we are consuming…and from whom.