NEW REPORT ON GMO - G.E. CROPS - WE STILL DON'T KNOW JACK ABOUT THEM

Published on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by Think Forward
What We Don't Know About GE Crops

by Ben Lilliston
After 15 years on the market, and constituting 80 percent of soybeans, corn and cotton grown in the U.S., we still know remarkably little about genetically engineered (GE) crops; and some of what we do know is cause for alarm. This is one of the main conclusions of a report released today by the National Research Council.

First, the headline picked up by the New York Times and others: there has been a rapid rise in weeds resistant to the herbicide glyphosate (also known as Roundup) that could rapidly undercut any environmental or economic benefits of GE crops. Glyphosate-resistant crops allow farmers to kill weeds with the herbicide without destroying their crop. To date, at least nine species of weeds in the U.S. have developed resistance to glyphosate since GE crops were introduced. The other primary type of GE crop is designed to produce Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt), a bacteria deadly to insect pests. Thus far, two types of insects have developed resistance to Bt. The loss of effectiveness of glyphosate and Bt crops could lead to increased use of more potent herbicides.

"This problem is growing, it's real, and it's going to get worse," said chair of the NRS committee David Ervin, of Portland State University, at a press conference today.

But just as alarming as growing weed and pest resistance is the dearth of research data on so many fundamental issues surrounding GE crops. The NRC report focused on how GE crops are affecting U.S. farmers. The assessment looked at GE crops through the three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental and social. In the end, the researchers didn't have enough data.

"As more GE traits are developed and incorporated into a larger variety of crops, it's increasingly essential that we gain a better understanding of how genetic engineering technology will affect U.S. agriculture and the environment now and in the future," said Ervin. "Such gaps in our knowledge are preventing a full assessment of the environmental, economic and other impacts of GE crops on farm sustainability."

More specifically, what we don't yet know about GE crops:

* The full extent of weed resistance problems, or what those problems will mean in the future to the environment and farmers' bottom line.
* Little understanding of how the use of GE crops affects water systems—positively or negatively.
* The effects of GE crops on farmers not growing GE crops, including both conventional and organic farmers. The committee reported on anecdotal information that farmers have had trouble finding conventional non-GE seeds. And as Bob Scowcroft of the Organic Farm Research Foundation noted at the press conference, there is little peer-reviewed research on the enormous costs borne by organic farmers for testing to prove their crop is GE-free, let alone farmers who have lost organic certification from GE contamination.
* The impact of consolidation in the seed industry—accelerated by the transition to proprietary GE seeds—on prices and seed choices.
* Other social issues that have been overlooked include the impact of GE crops on labor dynamics, farm structure, farmer and community conflict and property rights.

The White House and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack should take a good look at this report. After 15 years, we still can't fully assess whether GE crops are good for U.S. farmers—let alone consumers. Yet, the White House and Vilsack continue to aggressively push for other countries to use GE crops. As IATP's Dennis Keeney and Sophia Murphy wrote last month in the Des Moines Register, GE crops that are widely used in the U.S. don't make sense for the challenges facing Africa, for example.

Given the NRC report's findings, it's hard to justify the enormous amounts of money spent on the development of new GE crops, and harder still to justify pushing the technology on other countries, until we fill in the enormous research gaps that remain.
© 2010 IATP

Ben Lilliston is the former Associate Editor for the Corporate Crime Reporter, a frequently published writer, and co-author of the book Genetically Engineered Foods: A Guide for Consumers (Avalon).

SAVE STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY SOUTHAMPTON CAMPUS

A CAMPUS DEDICATED ENTIRELY TO SUSTAINABILITY & ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

With 9 Majors - Has been cut from the SUNY (State University New York)budget with no notice. Please help, Please send your support, please become a fan and sign petitions to keep the campus thriving and open!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Stony-Brook-Southampton-Tee-Shirts/109750479057443?v=wall&ref=mf#!/pages/SAVE-STONY-BROOK-UNIVERSITY-SOUTHAMPTON-CAMPUS/106675082705901?ref=ts

http://blog.eastendenvironment.org/post/2010/04/08/SUNY-Stony-Brook-Officials-Announce-Closure-of-Southampton-Campus.aspx

FIX OUR BROKEN FOOD SYSTEM!!

CREDO Action | more than a network. a movement.

Fix our broken food system.
Stop Big Food.

Urge the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture to break up the agribusiness giants.

take action
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/food_monopoly/?r=5438&id=8593-2187342-xwsuh8x

Dear Friend,

America's supermarket bounty is deceiving. Of those hundreds of brands on grocery store shelves, the vast majority are owned by a handful of industrial food companies like Kraft, Conagra and General Mills.

This concentration of power in the hands of a few large corporations is repeated in all sectors of the food system — from Monsanto's stranglehold on seeds, to Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America's control over our milk, to Smithfield, JBS and Cargill's near total dominance of meat processing. But there was nothing inevitable about this kind of corporate control of our food. Decades of deregulation and governmental inattention to industrial consolidation brought us our broken food system, one that features non-stop food safety recalls, an obesity epidemic and the hollowing out of rural America as family farmers are forced to sell out to corporate interests.

It's time to stop letting Big Food control what we eat. Urge the Obama administration to fix our broken food system.

Fortunately, the Obama administration has taken the first step towards addressing this crisis. The Departments of Justice and Agriculture recently convened a set of "workshops" to discuss potential antitrust practices by the agribusiness giants who control of the food industry. Family farmers were finally able to air some of their grievances against the abusive practices by large food corporations. Though only a baby step, these workshops represent one of the first admissions from the US government that its past policies have weakened, rather than strengthened, our food system.

We can't let this initiative lose steam. As consumers, we have a vested interest in the future of our food system. Tell Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack that that it's time to break up America's corporate food monopolies before they do more harm.

Please join CREDO and our friends at Food Democracy Now in signing the letter thanking Holder and Vilsack for the workshops and demanding they follow up with real action on antitrust enforcement. The era of Big Food must come to an end.

Thank you for working to break up the food monopoly.

Adam Klaus, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Find us on Facebook Did you know CREDO has a Facebook page?
Click here to check it out!
http://www.facebook.com/CREDO

POISON ON OUR PLATES

Published on Saturday, April 10, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Is This Factory Farming's Tobacco Moment?

by Will Allen and Ronnie Cummins

The nation's chemical and energy-intensive food and farming system, Food Inc., is out-of-control, posing a mortal threat to public health, the environment, and climate stability.

Economically stressed and distracted consumers have become dependent on a factory farm system designed to provide cheap processed food that may be cosmetically perfect and easily shipped, but which is seriously degraded in terms of purity and nutritional value.

USDA studies reveal that the food currently grown on America's chemical-intensive farms contains drastically less vitamins and essential trace minerals than the food produced 50 years ago (when far less pesticides and chemical fertilizers were used). As even Time magazine has admitted recently, given the hidden costs of damage to public health, climate stability, and the environment, conventional (factory farm) food is extremely expensive. Much of Food Inc.'s common fare is not only nutritionally deficient, but also routinely contaminated--laced with pesticide residues, antibiotics, hormones, harmful bacteria and viruses, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and toxic chemicals. 1 Like tobacco, factory farm food is dangerous to your health. No wonder organic food is by far the fastest growing segment of U.S. agriculture.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the California Department of Agriculture (CDFA), and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) have shown that many of the nation's favorite foods are contaminated with a lethal cocktail of the most toxic chemicals, putting consumers, and especially children and infants (who are up to 100 times more sensitive to toxic chemicals) at risk. For those living in factory farming communities and working on farms, the constant exposure to the most toxic pesticides poses an even greater risk than the general population for cancer, birth defects, asthma, Parkinson's, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Alzheimer's, liver, kidney, heart disease, and many other ailments. Forty-eight percent of U.S. women now get cancer, as well as 38% of men.

There is now conclusive evidence that exposure to farm and household chemicals (including body care and cleaning products) greatly increase your chances of getting cancer or other serious diseases. This is why there are large and growing clusters of cancers and birth defects in farm and urban communities all over the U.S. These clusters are a direct result of the use of toxic pesticides and fertilizers on our farms, ranches, gardens, and lawns. 2

Several recent French court decisions have determined that farmers are suffering from leukemia, Parkinson's, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and myeloma cancers as a direct result of chemicals they've used on their farms. 3 The chemicals causing these cancers and leukemia are the same chemicals used to grow food in the U.S.

Besides the damage to human health from pesticide use, chemical agriculture's use of synthetic fertilizers and sewage sludge have polluted the nation's streams, creeks, rivers, oceans, drinking water, and millions of acres of farmland. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Environmental Working Group, two-thirds of the U.S. population is drinking water contaminated with high levels of nitrates and nitrites, caused by nitrate fertilizer runoff from factory farms. Large areas along our coastlines, bays, and gulfs have become "dead zones" as a result of excess nitrogen fertilizer and sewage sludge flowing into them. Serious illness and death are directly attributable to high levels of nitrates and pesticides in drinking water. 4

Factory farming's carbon footprint is also huge. Government officials have consistently failed to regulate agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions or even admit that they are a serious problem. Most official estimates of greenhouse gas pollution of U.S. agriculture range from a ridiculously low 7% to 12% of total U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Recent analysis has demonstrated that U.S. factory farms and industrial agriculture are responsible for at least 35%, and possibly up to 50%, of greenhouse gas emissions. 5 Unfortunately, agriculture is currently exempted from even weak U.S. efforts to control greenhouse gases, including the recent cap and trade legislation passed by the House of Representatives. 6 Hopefully the most recent U.S. EPA directives in December 2009 on curbing greenhouse gasses will apply to agriculture, our most polluting industry. However, "just say no" Republican and Democratic congressmen are doing the bidding of their pesticide, fertilizer, and petroleum clients (instead of their constituents) and have vowed to block any efforts by the EPA to regulate emissions.

The farm and chemical industry may now be as vulnerable as the tobacco industry was in the 1990s. People in the U.S. have finally become suspicious of the safety of the (non-organic) food supply. Millions are wary of home pesticides, weed killers, and synthetic garden and lawn fertilizers. Big agricultural chemical companies are under increasing criticism from consumers, including relatives of those hospitalized and killed by farm chemicals and factory farm contaminated food.

Giant tobacco corporations lied to the public for decades, claiming that cigarettes were safe. Similarly chemical corporations and agri-business have conducted a hundred year campaign to hide the dangers of their farm chemicals. They hired scientists in the 1920s and 1930s to lie to the public about the dangers of arsenic and lead, the most widely used pesticides of the era. They hired scientists in the 1950s and 1960s to counteract the criticism of DDT and the other World War II pesticides and fertilizers. In the mid 1960s and the 1970s corporate agribusiness and chemical giants like Monsanto put enormous resources into debunking the criticisms of toxic chemicals in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and those of other public health and environmental activists.

Chemical companies hired fake laboratories to give their most toxic chemicals a guarantee of safety in the 1980s and 90s. The EPA, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the USDA accepted these bogus reports as valid until independent scientists and safe-food activists exposed the truth. The chemical industry has routinely stalled or neutered any chemical regulations passed in the U.S. Much of the public still believes it is protected because Congress passed several landmark pesticide and chemical control laws in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Unfortunately, the chemical corporations and corporate agribusiness have lobbied successfully against these laws, weakening or repealing them. As a result, only a handful of the 80,000 industrial chemicals or pesticides used in farming or found in consumer products have lost their federal or state registration in the last 40 years. 7

As the co-author of this essay, Will Allen, concluded in his 2008 book The War on Bugs, it is time to conduct a full-scale offensive against factory farming and industrial agriculture. It is time for consumers to stop buying chemical food and using poisonous chemicals on their lawns, gardens, and in their houses. It is time for executives and workers on factory farms to become whistle blowers. It is time for chemically assaulted farmworkers and farmers to sue these killers. It is time for chemical and food industry employees and feedlot cowboys to expose factory farming's dirty secrets, just as high-level tobacco executives and tobacco workers did in the 1990s. It is time for courageous magazines or Internet sites to refuse farm and home chemical advertisements.

In 1905, Colliers magazine refused to publish any more patent medicine ads. Almost immediately, the Saturday Evening Post, and the Ladies Home Journal joined the boycott. This didn't solve the problem of useless patent medicines, but it provoked a public dialogue and the rejection of thousands of dangerous potions. The public exposure of these "snake oil" remedies saved countless lives.

Similar bold moves need to be taken to protect us all from the ravages of Food Inc. Time magazine's recent expose in August of 2009 of our dangerous and costly food system may be a signal that at least some reporters in the media are willing to expose the hazards of factory farms and chemical agriculture. Sadly, other media outlets continue to serve as cheerleaders for GMOs and industrial food. The New Yorker magazine and National Public Radio continue to carry Monsanto's ads claiming that GMO crops use less pesticides and can feed the world's population, when in fact recent research has shown that GMO crops actually increase pesticide use. Other studies have demonstrated that yields of both GMO corn and soy are actually lower than non-GMO varieties. 8

In the European Union (EU), pesticides and farm chemicals have come under increased scrutiny since the EU instituted a rigorous chemical evaluation and registration process, known as REACH (Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals). Many of the most toxic (and profitable) chemicals used in farming and consumer products could lose their registration in the EU within the next few years. U.S. agricultural chemical lobbyists are worried that more aggressive regulations such as REACH are going to limit their sales in Europe and that more rigorous chemical enforcements are headed to the US, following the European example.

It is time for the federal government to stop promoting and subsidizing factory farms and junk food. Food Inc.'s "business as usual" practices are destroying public health and the environment, destabilizing the climate, and setting us up for disaster in the coming era of petroleum and water scarcity.

It is time for the Obama Administration and government regulators to place mandatory warnings on dozens of the most toxic foods, similar to the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products. We also need warning labels on pesticides and chemical fertilizers, as well as a wide range of consumer products.

The following are proposed Surgeon General's warnings for a few of the many (non-organic) crops we have analyzed, strawberries, peaches, and carrots:

DANGER! PROPOSED SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING FOR STRAWBERRIES

Average Pesticide and Fertilizer Use on 2006 California Strawberries 9,274,453 pounds of pesticides used at an average of 279.44 lbs per acre on 33,190 acres. THIS IS THE HIGHEST AVERAGE PESTICIDE USE ON ANY FRUIT OR VEGETABLE! Two of top five pesticides are probable carcinogens. All five of the top chemicals cause multiple birth defects. Five pesticides account for more than 90% of use on California strawberries. Most used pesticide was Chloropicrin, or tear gas. Second most used pesticide was Methyl bromide, the ozone destroyer. 92.3% of berries tested had pesticide residues. 69.2% of berries tested had two or more residues. Of the 109 pesticides used on strawberries, 38 were detectable on berry samples. Some strawberry samples had as many as 8 residues. Strawberries were the SECOND most pesticide contaminated fruit in the EWG study Fertilizer use averaged 350 pounds of Nitrogen fertilizer per acre on coastal lands, which drain into the ocean. NITROGEN FERTILIZER IS THE MAIN CAUSE OF NITRATE WATER POLLUTION, DEAD ZONES IN THE OCEAN & GREENHOUSE GAS POLLUTION. PREGNANT WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY ARE MOST AT RISK FROM THE USE OF THIS FRUIT! Sources: California EPA, DPR and CDFA, Environmental Working Group, U.S.EP

DANGER! PROPOSED SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING FOR PEACHES

Average Pesticide and Fertilizer use on 2006 California Peaches 4,676,273 pounds of pesticides used at an average of 76 lbs. per acre on 61,377.95 acres. Two of top five pesticides are probable carcinogens, three cause birth defects, one is an endocrine disruptor, and three damage fish and other aquatic life. 96.6% of peaches had pesticide residues. 86.6% had two or more residues. 42 different pesticide residues were still detectable on the fruit. Some had as many as 9 residues on a single sample.Peaches had the highest percentage of fruit with dangerous residues of all fruit tested. An average of 125 pounds of NITROGEN, 10 pounds of PHOSPHOROUS, and 200-500 pounds of POTASH fertilizer were used per acre-NITROGEN IS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF U.S. DRINKING WATER POLLUTION, DEAD ZONES IN THE OCEAN, AND A MAJOR SOURCE OF GREENHOUSE GAS POLLUTION. PREGNANT WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY ARE MOST AT RISK FROM THESE FRUITS! Sources: California EPA, DPR and CDFA, Environmental Working Group, U.S.EPA

DANGER! PROPOSED SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING FOR CARROTS

Average Pesticide and Fertilizer use on 2006 California Carrots 6,616,796 pounds of pesticides were used at an Average of 102 lbs per acre on 64,870.55 acres. Most used pesticide was Metam sodium (Temik). Temik, Telone II, and Methyldithiocarbamate account for 90% of pesticides on carrots. All three cause birth defects, two are probable carcinogens. 81.7% of carrots had pesticide residues. 48.3% had two or more residues. 31 poisons were detected on the samples. 6 residues detected on a single sample. An average of 250 pounds of Nitrogen and more than 100 pounds of phosphorous and potash fertilizer were used per acre on carrots-NITROGEN IS THE MAJOR CAUSE OF U.S. DRINKING WATER POLLUTION, DEAD ZONES IN THE OCEAN, AND A MAJOR SOURCE OF GREENHOUSE GAS POLLUTION. PREGNANT WOMEN, CHILDREN AND THE ELDERLY ARE MOST AT RISK FROM THIS VEGETABLE! Sources: California EPA, DPR and CDFA, Environmental Working Group, U.S.EPA

The proposed warnings above are not the kind of corporate-friendly regulations that will be tolerated by chemical companies such as Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont or BASF. Consumers will need to fight these corporations to gain their right-to-know what's in our food and other products. But these are indeed the types of warning labels that are needed, similar to the warnings on tobacco products.

Given the regulatory coma of the FDA, the USDA, and the EPA, we need to be careful about what we eat and feed to our families. We must seek out and purchase organic foods and products whenever possible (organic standards prohibit the use of toxic pesticides, chemical fertilizer, and GMOs), but we also need to be aggressive about demanding that the current factory farm system must change. It is, after all, our tax dollars that prop up the GMOs, chemical agriculture, and junk food of Food Inc. Our tax dollars literally subsidize the production of foods that cause diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Recent studies indicate that 68% of the U.S. population is overweight, while 34% is obese. This fattening of America over the last 20 years is a direct result of the highly processed junk foods that we eat, loaded with fat, sugar, salt, and toxic residues. Only our collective voices, votes, purchases, and demands for fundamental reform and regulation can change the nation's dangerous system of food production and distribution. 9

But, don't wait for the regulators to act before you change your food habits. Organic and health-minded consumers are transforming the marketplace with their purchasing power all over the world. You can too!

We need to demand that our presently out-of-control food and farming system be regulated. Like the mortgage, bank, insurance industries, and Wall Street, agriculture has not been properly regulated for decades, if ever. EPA, FDA, and the USDA regulatory practices have been severely weakened by pro-agribusiness, deregulatory administrations since Reagan. It's time to crack down on the hazardous practice of corporate agribusiness.

As long as no one is regulating how many different toxic substances are applied to conventionally grown food, a staggering amount of chemical cocktails and synthetic fertilizer will continue to be used. The scary bottom line is that America's corporate food handlers and processors do not care about your safety. They care about their profits.

All the "conventional" horrors of industrial agriculture are banned on organic and biodynamic farms. Why? Because organic consumers and farmers decided to create third party certification organizations in the 1980s that enforced strict regulations on how organic food could be grown. So, instead of asking: Why does organic food cost more than "conventional" food? We should be asking: How cheap would poisoned ("conventional") food have to be to be a good deal?

The time has come to stand up and be counted, to force the chemical, genetic engineering, petroleum and sewage sludge corporations to bend to the people's will, to endure their own tobacco moment. Only then will Rachel Carson's hopes for a sustainable future be realized. Only then will a 21st Century Silent Spring be averted. 10 Only then will we be able to stop factory farming's assault on public health and all Earth's creatures, large and small.

Footnotes:

1. Will Allen, The Death of Food, Alternet, April, 2008. The Real Cost of Cheap Food, Alternet, June 2008. Organic Consumer's Association Newsletter, April and June 2008. Bryan Walsh, Getting Real about the High Cost of Cheap Food, Time magazine, August 21, 2009

2. The Environmental Working Group's 2008 Dirty Dozen Vegetables and Fruits (with the highest residues). Residue analyses from the United States Department of Agriculture. California EPA, Pesticide Use Reports, 1970-2006. Will Allen, The War on Bugs, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vt., March 2008.

3. Smith, Diana, 2010, Cancer and Pesticides: Victims Fight for Justice. Ecologist, February 4.

4. See: The Environmental Working Group's study of EPA water quality data, and California Department of Agriculture's Fertilizer studies from 1985 to 2006.

5. Shiva, Vandana, 2009, Soil not Oil, Navdanya, New Delhi, India. Allen, Will and Cummins, Ronnie, 2010 Beyond Copenhagen: Building a Green and Organic Future. Huffington Post, Organic Bytes, February

6. Greenhouse Gas emissions were deemed on December 7, 2009 to be deleterious to public health by the U.S. EPA. It will be interesting to see if this ruling allows greenhouse gasses emitted from agriculture to be regulated like other industries

7. The United States Environmental Protection Agency began in 1970. Instead of protecting the public the EPA has aligned itself with Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer, Crop Life and other chemical protective groups. California's Proposition 65, passed in 1983 to regulate Cancer Causing Chemicals in public places. Instead of banning them or regulating them they now only inform you that cancer causing chemicals are present. California's Birth Defect Prevention Act, passed in 1984 was designed to eliminate the most dangerous birth defect generating chemicals. After 25 years almost no chemicals have lost their registration.

8. Chuck Benbrook, 2009 Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use: The First Thirteen Years. The Organic Center. November 17. Boulder, Colorado

9. Will Allen, We Need Food and Farming Regulation NOW! Chelsea Green Blog, April, 2009., Organic Consumer's Association Newsletter, April, 2009, Common Dreams, May, 2009.

10. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962, Fawcett Publications, Greenwich, Conn.
Will Allen is a famer, community organizer, activist, and writer who farms in Vermont. His first book, The War on Bugs, was published by Chelsea Green in 2008. His website is www.thewaronbugsbook.com. The farm website is www.cedarcirclefarm.org

Ronnie Cummins is an organizer, writer, and activist. He is the International Director of the Organic Consumers Association and co-author of the book, Genetically Engineered Food: A Self-Defense Guide for Consumers. His organization's website is www.OrganicConsumers.org

Zuri Allen Star and Michael Kanter researched the California Pesticide statistics, and the author researched the fertilizer data. Any errors in interpretation, however are entirely the authors'.

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME & WIND

Organic Farmers Report Increasing GMO Contamination with Corn

* By Ken Roseboro, ed.
The Organic and Non-GMO Report, April 2010
Straight to the Source

To Subscribe to the Non-GMO Report call 1-800-854-0586 or visit http://www.non-gmoreport.com/

A group of Midwest organic farmers is reporting increasingly higher levels of GMO contamination of organic corn, which is jeopardizing their ability to sell to organic grain buyers.

A spokesman for the group, which wishes to remain unidentified to protect their organic markets, says, "We're doing more testing and seeing increased low levels of GMO contamination."

The farmer group sells organic yellow and white corn for food use.

The farmers screen their corn for grade, kernel size, test weight, and GMOs. "Buyers will test it too," says the spokesman.

The farmers and buyers both use the lateral flow "strip" test that detects the genetically modified protein in a sample.

Positive GMO tests jeopardize farmers' ability to sell their grain as organic. "If we find there is widespread contamination, organic farmers have a lot of fear about losing their markets," the spokesman said.

The spokesman says that as many as one-third of organic corn loads test positive for GMOs at a low level. "Ears of corn may have a handful of kernels that test positive. All we know is it's becoming an increasingly difficult issue."


Organic Farmers Report Increasing GMO Contamination with Corn


The spokesman says the farmers use non-GMO seed and take precautions to prevent contamination, such as planting later than neighboring GM farmers to avoid cross-pollination, isolating their crops from GM corn fields, and cleaning their harvesting and transportation equipment. But the measures haven't been enough to stop the incursion of GMOs.

"Everyone in the organic sector wants to believe we could control the unintended spread of this. I think it's been a false assumption. Corn pollen is designed to spread as widely as it can," the spokesman said.

GMO-contaminated corn seed contamination doesn't appear to be a big problem. "We had one instance where someone had high level of contamination to indicate seed was contaminated," the spokesman says.

The farmers are seeing similar problems with organic soybeans. "We've seen low levels that we haven't seen before in organic soybeans," the spokesman says.

He also says there is potential cross-pollination with soybeans even though they are self-pollinating plants.

Midwestern organic farmers face a major challenge with GMOs. "To think we will completely control seed and crop genetics is ecologically naïve," the spokesman says.

There have been calls within the organic industry to try to measure levels of GMO contamination in organic corn and soybeans. This may be challenging because farmers, such as the group described in this article, are reluctant to talk about contamination problems for fear of losing their markets.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_20568.cfm

DINE WITH DIGNITY CAMPAIGN - STEP UP TO THE PLATE OF FARMERS' RIGHTS, SODEXO!!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 1, 2010
9:20 AM




CONTACT: Student/Farmworker Alliance and Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Meghan Cohorst, Student/Farmworker Alliance (Immokalee), 239-503-1533, meghan@sfalliance.org
Angela Cisneros, Student/Farmworker Alliance (Florida Gulf Coast University), 239-200-1710
Richard Blake, Student/Farmworker Alliance (University of Florida), 813-767-8512

Students Call On Sodexo to Follow Suit as Aramark Agrees to Work With CIW
NATIONWIDE - April 1 - Responding to an escalating campaign waged by students on campuses across the country, Aramark has agreed to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to directly improve farmworker wages and working conditions in the tomato fields of Florida. The agreement comes a year into the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA)'s "Dine with Dignity" campaign, which calls on major food service providers to take responsibility for the human rights crisis and grinding poverty faced by workers in their tomato supply chains. SFA's Dine with Dignity campaign has also helped to usher in groundbreaking agreements between the CIW and Bon Appetit Management Company and Compass Group. With the ascension of Aramark, Sodexo now stands isolated as the only major food service provider to not yet join this rising tide of social responsibility.

"This victory is a testament to the power we have as students and young people standing together with farmworkers. The agreement comes in the wake of several successful campus campaigns resulting in Student Senate resolutions calling on Aramark to work with the CIW, including at UF. Thanks to this movement, Aramark has come to understand that the voice and participation of farmworkers themselves are necessary and central components of any real change in the agricultural industry. Sodexo should take note, as all eyes are on them now," said Richard Blake, Student/Farmworker Alliance member at the University of Florida.

"Victory by victory, we're carving out a new world of fair wages, human rights, and dignity from the shameful history of exploitation in Florida's fields. Now that Aramark has come around, Sodexo doesn't have a leg to stand on. If corporations like Sodexo and Publix are to truly embrace social responsibility and guarantee to consumers that the food on our tables is not the product of human rights abuse, they must step up and follow Aramark and several other industry leaders in agreeing to work with the CIW," said Meghan Cohorst, Student/Farmworker Alliance.

"As the daughter of a migrant farmworker and student at an Aramark-contracted campus literally down the road from Immokalee, I had no choice but to be a leader in this fight. Even on a seemingly apathetic and conservative campus, we made a difference and garnered significant support amongst the student body for this campaign. SFA has once again played a crucial role in walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the CIW to another victory. Now, Florida's self-described community grocer, Publix, must come to the table and understand that farmworkers are also part of our communities and deserve to be treated with respect," said Angela Cisneros, Student/Farmworker Alliance member at Florida Gulf Coast University.

Farmworkers picking tomatoes for the corporate food industry toil from dawn to dusk for sub-poverty wages at a piece rate (40-50 cents for each 32-lb. bucket of tomatoes) that has not changed significantly in over 30 years. They perform this grueling, dangerous work with no right to overtime pay, no health insurance, no sick leave, no pension, and without the legal rights to form unions or to demand collective bargaining with their employers, stemming from New Deal-era exclusions of farm- and domestic workers from many of these basic labor and human rights. The CIW-led Campaign for Fair Food, in which SFA is a key catalyst, seeks to transform this reality by enlisting the resources of retail food giants to improve farmworker wages and harnessing their demand to reward growers who respect their workers' rights.



###
The Student/Farmworker Alliance (http://sfalliance.org) is a national network comprised of students and youth across the country organizing in close alliance with the CIW. During the course of the four-year Taco Bell Boycott, which ended successfully in the 2005 CIW-Taco Bell agreement, SFA members organized to remove or prevent Taco Bell restaurants and sponsorships from 25 separate high schools, colleges and universities. SFA has received national recognition for its work including the "2005 Campus Activism Victory of the Year" from Mother Jones Magazine and special honors from the Greensboro Justice Fund, American Rights at Work, Business Ethics Network (2005 and 2009), and the National Latino/a Law Student Association. SFA is also a founding member of the Alliance for Fair Food, a broad network of human rights, religious, student, sustainable food/agriculture, labor, and other organizations working in partnership with the CIW.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (http://ciw-online.org) is an internationally recognized, award-winning farmworker organization based in southern Florida. It has assisted the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI in successfully investigating and prosecuting 6 cases of modern-day agricultural slavery and has been recognized with the 2007 Anti-Slavery International Award and the 2003 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. The CIW's Campaign for Fair Food has won unprecedented support for fundamental farm labor reforms from retail food industry leaders.

FAKE ORGANICS -STILL- BEING BROUGHT TO YOU BY....NO!!!!!?????

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 31, 2010
9:30 AM

CONTACT: Cornucopia Institute
Mark Kastel, 608-625-2042

Wal-Mart in Trouble Again Over Organic Marketing Practices
Home Pesticide Manufacturer Misrepresenting Products as Certified "Organic"
CORNUCOPIA, Wis. - March 31, 2010- The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based public interest group that focuses on food and agriculture, today filed legal complaints with the USDA alleging that Wal-Mart, and a North Carolina-based company, HOMS LLC, are violating the USDA organic standards by using conventional agricultural oils, and other ingredients, in pest control products that bear the word organic and the green "USDA organic" seal. The pest control products in question are marketed under the Bio Block label (see front of bottle, back of bottle, and company webpage product screenshot).

A debate has been raging for years whether non-food products, such as pet food and personal care products, are included in the strict regulations that determine the use of the word "organic" on packaging. Most of those products at least had organic ingredients involved in their manufacture, whereas Bio Block pest control products contain not a single organically produced ingredient.

However, there has never been any question that the green "USDA Organic" seal can be used only by producers that follow the rigorous standards mandated by Congress and administered by the USDA's National Organic Program.

In addition to using the word organic prominently on its label, HOMS uses the USDA seal on at least one of its Bio Block products without specifying that organic ingredients were used, and without disclosing the identity of the organic certifying agent, which is also required by federal organic regulations.

"This amounts to, allegedly, illegally usurping the value of the organic label," says Mark Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at Cornucopia. "The USDA Organic seal is meaningful to consumers and should not be used frivolously. This places ethical industry participants at a competitive disadvantage."

The Bio Block products that appear to violate the organic standards were discovered on the shelves of Wal-Mart stores, resurfacing concerns long held by The Cornucopia Institute, and others in the organic industry, that the giant corporation has failed to take the organic standards seriously.

For years, Cornucopia has criticized Wal-Mart for inventing a "new" organic-food from corporate agribusiness, factory farms, and cheap Chinese imports of questionable authenticity.

Wal-Mart's store brand organic milk, for example, comes from Aurora Dairy in Boulder, Colorado. In 2007, federal investigators found that Aurora had "willfully" violated 14 tenets of the organic standards, including confining their cattle to feedlots, instead of grazing, and bringing thousands of illegal conventional cows into their organic operation.

Inside Wal-Mart stores, Cornucopia researchers at the time discovered that the company was mislabeling conventional foods as organic, including yogurt, sugar, rice milk, soy milk and produce. Cornucopia notified Wal-Mart's CEO of the problems with in-store signage, but the corporation ignored these concerns until officials of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and the USDA took enforcement actions against Wal-Mart in 2007.

"These instances of mislabeling are emblematic of the company's lack of investment in knowledgeable staff, its inexperience, and its questionable commitment to organics," says Kastel.

While Wal-Mart vowed to solve its false and misleading in-store signage problems, Cornucopia says it has failed to ensure that its store brand organic milk, and some of its other product offerings, come from ethical family farmer following the spirit and letter of the organic law.

Now the organic industry watchdog alleges Wal-Mart is once again marketing organic products fraudulently.

Cornucopia contends that it is not only up to farmers, food processors and certifiers to ensure that foods labeled "organic" are truly organic, but that retailers play an important role as well.

Retailers can and do invest in the resources necessary to ensure organic integrity in their stores. The Wedge, a member-owned cooperative grocer in Minneapolis, handled Bio Block pesticides very differently from Wal-Mart when recently approached by one of HOMS' distributors.

Since the Wedge has invested years in recruiting, hiring and training qualified staff, it came as no surprise that one of their buyers questioned the legality of Bio Block's labels.

The Wedge is one of about 275 cooperative grocers in the country, which collectively helped pioneer the growth in the organic industry. The Wedge was one of the first certified organic retailers in the country and has a full-time Organic Certification and Sustainability Coordinator, Susan Stewart.

"We take the confidence our members and shoppers have in The Wedge very seriously," said Stewart. "Our job is to protect the integrity of the organic label and the authenticity of the food and products we offer in our store."

Cornucopia states that this collaboration between farmers, organic processors and retailers, in partnership with the USDA, makes the organic label the gold standard in helping consumers choose safe and ethically produced food.

"As an organic industry watchdog, we make sure that stakeholders in the organic community, like The Wedge, are not placed at a competitive disadvantage by outfits like Wal-Mart that are attempting to profiteer from the trust consumers have in the organic label," stated Cornucopia's Kastel.

The full Cornucopia news release can be viewed at:

http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/03/wal-mart-in-trouble-again-over-organic-marketing-practices/

###
Seeking economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Through research, advocacy, and economic development our goal is to empower farmers - partnered with consumers - in support of ecologically produced local, organic and authentic food.