Leave My Organics Alone
They just never quit, do they. Monsanto dreams of having a world eating genetically engineered food, grown with seeds purchased from Monsanto. Large food corporations want everyone to believe that gobbling down junk food made with cheap and toxic ingredients is good for you. And to all of these businesses, “organic” is a dirty word.
And so they attack again. As the demand for healthy organically grown foods mushrooms, they become desperate to stop the trend. This very disturbing bit of news is just in from the Organic Consumers Association. If you value what you eat, pay close attention.
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs your immediate help to stop Congress and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.
Now, large corporations such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods–aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are moving to lower organic standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients that would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over what can go into organic foods and products. (Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm)
Tomorrow, Tuesday, Sept. 20, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Senate will vote on a “rider” to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that will reduce control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be OK?).
For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of the Senate not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act—OFPA), but rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our voices. (Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here: http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm)
In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the “fix is already in.” So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S. Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic integrity.
What is with these people? People buy organically grown food because they don’t want to eat the toxic crap in the standard fare. They want produce free of pesticides, meat free of hormones and antibiotics (and from animals that are not fed parts from other animals–cannibalism is a no-no), and if they consume dairy–most definitely do not want Monsanto’s beloved bovine growth hormone in their milk. I should add that we are the only nation that permits the bovine growth hormone in milk. It was banned in Canada and the European Union, despite intense pressure from both Monsanto and the US government. And why was it banned? Not only has it not been proven safe, as Monsanto would like us to believe, but the EU stated that evidence showing that it may be harmful was deliberately concealed by the US FDA and Monsanto.
Doesn’t that make you feel good? That the FDA is watching out for your interests and health?
Anyway, I want these goons to get their fingers out of my organic food. If I want to eat toxic waste products, I know where to find them, thank you. But if I buy a product labeled organic, then I want to be sure that it is held up to the highest standards of purity.