CORPORATE CONTROL OF FOOD R US

ALEC Is Now Deciding What You Eat

Tuesday, 19 March 2013 15:07 By The Daily Take, The Thom Hartmann Show | Report

Chickens in battery cages. (Photo: Wikipedia)ALEC is back.
The Conservative corporate-friendly group funded in part by the Koch brothers and responsible for the infamous Stand Your Ground and Voter Suppression ID laws, and a slew of other corporate-friendly laws, now doesn't want you to know about the food that you're eating.
The way they come up with all this is that a couple of times a year they get corporate lobbyists and executives together in a fancy hotel or resort with mostly Republican state representatives and state senators. The ratio is roughly one-to-one of lobbyists to elected officials.
ALEC is now parading around bills in six states that would make it a crime to film animal abuse at factory farms, or lie on job applications in order to get a job in a factory farm with the goal of taking pictures. All of this is to stop animal rights activists who infiltrate slaughterhouses to expose their deplorable conditions.
The bill proposals pushed by ALEC require all evidence of animal abuse at factory farms be turned over to law enforcement authorities within 48 hours, or those who took the pictures face a financial penalty.
The proposals also make it a crime to lie on slaughterhouse job applications, which activists commonly do in order to get documentation of animal abuse.
Right now, according to the Associated Press, the bills to block animal rights activists are under consideration in California, Nebraska, Tennessee, Indiana, Arkansas and Pennsylvania.
Three other states – New Mexico, Wyoming and New Hampshire – have already rejected similar bills this year.
And several states already have laws similar to what ALEC is currently pushing. Utah has a law that bans unauthorized photography in farms, and Iowa has a law that makes it a crime to lie to gain access to a farm's staff.
But despite what ALEC may argue, Americans should have an absolute right to know what's happening to the food they eat.
Take chickens and eggs for instance.
When most Americans eat a chicken's egg, they don't think twice about where it came from.
Or, if they do, they think of the egg coming from a chicken that could mosey around a farm, with free reign to move whenever they wanted to.
Unfortunately, this idealistic view of a chicken farm is the exception, and not the norm.
In reality, according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, chickens are arguably the most abused animal in the world.
In the United States alone, more than 7 billion chickens are killed for their flesh each year, while 452 million hens are used for their eggs.
Nearly 99 percent of these chickens spend their lives in total confinement, from birth until death.
Chickens raised on factory farms in the U.S never have a chance to do what comes naturally to them, like taking dust baths, resting in the sun, and building nests. And baby chicks born on factory farms are never allowed contact with their mothers.
Chickens raised for meat spend their entire lives in dirty sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, and as a result, the intense crowding and close conditions often lead to outbreaks of disease.
These animals are bred and drugged to grow so large that their legs and organs can't keep up with the growth, making heart attacks, organ failure, and growth deformities quite common.
And those chickens used to lay eggs, called laying hens by the agriculture industry, have lives that are just as bad.
Laying hens are crammed together in wire cages, where there's not enough room to move and spread out, and because the hens are so close together, they are forced to urinate and defecate on one another.
In fact, hens are kept in cages above large manure pits, and the cages are stacked so high that excrement from birds in higher cages often falls on those below, who then eat it.
For chickens on the second and third layer down, the chicken poop from above has some nutritional value, because chickens don't have 100 percent efficient digestive systems – something that some chicken factory farms know and use to save money.
Why feed a chicken food when it's cheaper to have it eat the poop of the chicken above it?
The important thing to realize is that these are not wildly abnormal practices when it comes to factory farming in the United States, whether we're talking about chickens, cows, or pigs.
Like the rest of corporate America, Big Agriculture's primary concern is with profit, and everything else comes second, including treating animals with dignity and respect.
And it's because of these injustices that are taking place each and every day that animal activists do what they do, and take the graphic photos and video that they take.
We have a right to know where our food has come from, and what it looks like.
It's time to knock down ALEC's factory-farm abuse cover-up efforts, so every American can see the truth – and the pain – behind the food they eat.
Source:  http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/15214-alec-is-now-deciding-what-you-eat

GLOBAL LAND GRABS A THREAT TO FOOD SECURITY AND SANITY

Land Grabs Spread Throughout Developing World

Hunger and human rights abuses threaten fragile rural communities

by Sophia Murphy

Food Justice advocates have always argued that trade agreements need to respect and promote human rights, not drive a process of globalization that privileges commercial interests and tramples on public interests. In my new paper on land grabs from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, that position is affirmed.(Photo by Limaoscarjuliet under a Creative Commons license from flickr.com)
“Land grabs” are large-scale purchases or leases of agricultural or forested land on terms that violate the rights of the people who live on or near that land. The problem has commanded enormous public policy and media attention for the last few years. In our paper, IATP sets some context for the land grabs phenomenon. We focus on two forces that have contributed significantly to the problem:
Globalization, or the deregulation of trade and foreign investment laws, which has greatly eased cross-border capital flows; relaxed the limits on foreign land ownership; and, opened markets to agricultural imports.
The food price crisis of 2007-08, which highlighted how fragile food systems in many parts of the world have become, and which shattered the confidence of net-food importing countries in international markets as a source of food security.
The situation is compounded by climate change and the resulting destabilization of weather patterns, which in turn has made agricultural production less predictable. Climate change has made domestic food supplies less certain and exports, too. In 2012, The United States, still a huge source of grains for international markets, lost 40 percent of a record large number of acres planted with corn to drought.
The sense of food insecurity has driven some of the richer net-food importers—countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—to invest in growing food abroad for import to their domestic markets. That is one driver of land grabs.
The sense that our food systems are fragile and that supplies are scarce, where for decades they have been abundant, is another driver—companies such as South Korea’s Daewoo are looking to source raw materials directly, rather than buying them on the market.
It’s not that investment in agriculture is a bad thing. Indeed, it’s sorely needed. But unless we have the conversation about what kind of investment, in what kind of agriculture, and in whose interests, then the investment does more harm than good.
Land grabs, as the label implies, have been overwhelmingly negative. They are associated with weak institutional capacity (and sometimes corruption) in the recipient country governments, as well as authoritarian governments in the investors’ home countries, making it hard to bring pressure there for better practices. The communities whose land is leased or bought are not adequately protected.
IATP proposes four linked policy shifts to create a more stable and transparent international food system:
1) Reformed trade rules that ensure export restrictions in times of crisis are subject to transparency and predictability requirements and that allow all countries policy space for food security policies;
2) Publicly-managed grain reserves to dampen the effects of supply shocks;
3) Readily accessible funding for the poorest food importers, which would be triggered automatically when prices increase sharply in international markets; and
4) The development of strong national and international laws to govern investment in land, respecting the principles and guidelines set out in the Voluntary Guidelines on Land Tenure. Tanzania’s recently announced limits on how much land foreign and domestic investors can lease is a hopeful example of a national government taking the initiative to get serious about regulation.
The world, and agricultural production along with it, is getting less predictable. In thinking through how to manage demand given our planetary boundaries and the imperative of social justice, it’s clear that the scale and pace of land investment now underway is a threat to food security and a threat to sane and just outcomes for our planet and its people. Let’s change the rules that make land grabs possible.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Sophia Murphy is a senior adviser at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy where her work focuses on agricultural trade rules, U.S. trade and agriculture policy, and the interests of developing countries in the multilateral trade system.
Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/21-1

DISASTROUS TESTER ADEMNDMENT SLIPPED IN

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 21, 2013 9:27 AM

CONTACT: Food & Water Watch Anna Ghosh, aghosh(at)fwwatch(dot)org, 415-293-9905

Senate Passes Stopgap Spending Measure Full of Special Interest Favors

Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food & Water Watch

WASHINGTON - March 21 - “[On Wednesday] the Senate passed a continuing resolution that was laden with special interest policy riders. Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) abdicated their responsibility by offering a stale spending bill from last year that is loaded with special legislative giveaways to big agribusiness companies. The heavy-handed and undemocratic process used to force the Senate to accept a deeply flawed proposal allowed votes on only nine amendments.
“The Senate was not allowed to consider two amendments offered by Senator Tester (D-Montana) that would have removed policy riders that favored the largest seed companies and the largest meatpackers. Senator Tester rightly observed that these policy riders were worth millions of dollars to these companies.
“One of Senator Tester’s amendments would have removed a provision that prevents the U.S. Department of Agriculture from implementing livestock marketing and contract fairness rules that were included in the 2008 Farm Bill. Food & Water Watch and hundreds of farm groups worked to include these vital livestock provisions in the 2008 Farm Bill to protect farmers from unfair and deceptive practices by meatpacking and poultry companies.
“Another of Senator Tester’s amendments would have removed a giveaway to genetically engineered seed companies that would allow the continued planting of GE crops even when a court of law has found they were approved illegally. This provision undermines USDA’s oversight of GE crops and unnecessarily interferes with the judicial review process. This favor to the biotech industry was not included in the House-passed continuing resolution and should never have been included in the Senate version.
“One thing that the Senate got right was finding a solution for funding meat and poultry inspection that would avoid USDA inspector furloughs. The funding cuts triggered by sequestration would have required USDA to furlough its meat and poultry inspectors for up to two weeks this summer, causing the plants they inspect to stop operating. The House should maintain this funding for USDA meat and poultry inspection to ensure that this critical consumer protection program can continue to operate.”

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Food & Water Watch is a nonprofit consumer organization that works to ensure clean water and safe food. We challenge the corporate control and abuse of our food and water resources by empowering people to take action and by transforming the public consciousness about what we eat and drink. 

Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/03/21

WILL FDA LISTEN TO GROCERY CHAINS REFUSING TO SELL FRANKENFISH?

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 20, 2013 12:33 PM

CONTACT: Friends of the Earth Eric Hoffman, 443-465-2219, ehoffman@foe.org; Adam Russell, 202-222-0722, arussell@foe.org; Stacy Malkan, 510-542-9224, stacydmalkan@gmail.com

Top Grocery Stores: We Won’t Sell Genetically Engineered Seafood

Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Whole Foods, Marsh among stores that will reject GE fish

WASHINGTON - March 20 - A coalition of consumer, health, food safety and fishing groups today launched the “Campaign for Genetically Engineered (GE)-Free Seafood” by announcing that several major grocery retailers representing more than 2,000 stores across the United States have already committed not to sell genetically engineered seafood if it is allowed onto the market.  
The growing market rejection of GE fish comes as the FDA conducts its final review of a genetically engineered salmon. If approved, the salmon would be the first-ever genetically engineered animal allowed to enter the human food supply. 
Stores that have committed to not offer the salmon or other genetically engineered seafood include the national retailers Trader Joe’s (367 stores), Aldi (1,230 stores), Whole Foods (325 stores in US); regional chains such as Marsh Supermarkets (93 stores in Indiana and Ohio), PCC Natural Markets (9 stores in Washington State); and co-ops in Minnesota, New York, California and Kansas.  
“We applaud these retailers for listening to the vast majority of their customers who want sustainable, natural seafood for their families. Now it’s time for other food retailers, including Walmart, Costco and Safeway, to follow suit and let their customers know they will not be selling unlabeled, poorly studied genetically engineered seafood,” said Eric Hoffman, food & technology policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth.
"Consumers Union has serious concerns about the safety of the first genetically engineered fish, a salmon engineered to grow to maturity twice as fast as wild salmon. FDA decided based on data from just six fish that there was no increased risk to people with fish allergies. However, even these meager data suggest that these fish show increased allergic potential," says Michael Hansen, PhD, senior scientist with Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports.
Consumer opposition to genetically engineered animals is strong. The majority of Americans say they won’t eat genetically engineered seafood, and 91 percent of Americans say the FDA should not allow it onto the market (Lake Research poll). (1) Eighty percent of Americans who regularly eat fish say that sustainable practices are "important" or "very important" to them, according to a 2013 NPR poll. (2)
“We won't sell genetically engineered fish because we don’t believe it is sustainable or healthy. It is troubling that the FDA is recommending approval of AquaBounty’s salmon as a ‘new animal drug,’ subjecting these engineered creatures to less rigorous safety standards than food additives. That’s not a credible safety assessment,” said Trudy Bialic from PCC Natural Markets in Washington State. 
“Simply put, this genetically engineered fish is unnecessary and is a problem masquerading as a solution,” said Heather Whitehead, online campaigns director at Center for Food Safety. “We’re excited to see that grocery retailers agree that there is no need to introduce an unnecessary, unpopular and risky new technology to the marketplace without adequate assessment, posing risks to human health, the environment, wild salmon,  and the sustainable fishing industry.”
The FDA has stated it will likely not label genetically engineered salmon, providing consumers no way of knowing if the fish they are feeding their families is genetically engineered. At least 35 other species of genetically engineered fish are currently under development, and the FDA’s decision on this genetically engineered salmon application will set a precedent for other genetically engineered fish and animals (including cows, chickens and pigs) to enter the global food market. (3)
To avoid confusion in the marketplace and ensure sustainable seafood, a coalition of 30 groups led by Friends of the Earth -- including the Center for Food Safety, Food & Water Watch, Consumers Union and Healthy Child Healthy World -- are asking grocery stores, seafood restaurants, chefs, and seafood companies to join the Pledge for GE-Free Seafood and publicly commit to not knowingly purchase or sell genetically engineered salmon or other genetically engineered seafood. The Pledge for GE-Free Seafood is another way for grocery stores to let their customers know about their purchasing policies. 
“Parents are busy enough without having to worry if they're feeding their kids genetically engineered seafood. That's why we're excited about the Pledge for GE-Free Seafood," said Alexandra Zissu, editorial director of Healthy Child Healthy World, a family advocacy group. "Since the FDA will likely not label genetically engineered fish, this pledge will help parents -- and all of us -- know where we can safely shop to avoid eating the unknown. Then the focus can return to family meal fun, not risk management."
“Most consumers don't want to eat genetically engineered salmon, but without mandatory labeling it will be hard for them to avoid. That's why the stores who have committed to not to sell genetically engineered seafood are making a smart move and giving their customers what they want -- a way to avoid this controversial, unnecessary biotech fish,” said Patty Lovera, assistant director of Food & Water Watch.

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Friends of the Earth is the U.S. voice of the world's largest grassroots environmental network, with member groups in 77 countries. Since 1969, Friends of the Earth has fought to create a more healthy, just world.
Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2013/03/20-2

FDA CONTINUES FRANKENFISH ASSAULT ON AMERICAN EATERS

Published on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 by PRWatch.org

FDA Ready to Approve Frankenfish Despite Fishy Science

by Jill Richardson

Some day soon, you might tuck into a plate of salmon without knowing that the fish you are eating was genetically engineered. The so-called AquAdvantage salmon, a salmon genetically engineered to grow faster than normal salmon, just moved one step closer to legalization. If so, (Photo: Andrea Pokrzywinski via Flickr)it will be the first genetically engineered (GE) animal allowed for consumption in the United States. Thus, every part of the regulatory process related to the GE salmon sets a precedent for all future GE animals in the United States – and so far, according to experts, that precedent is a sloppy, inadequate one.
What Is AquAdvantage Salmon?
To create the GE salmon, the Boston-based public company  AquaBounty Technologies inserted DNA from another salmon species and an eel-like fish into the genome of an Atlantic salmon. The new genes make the GE salmon produce growth hormone all year round instead of just for three months a year as they normally would. This helps them grow to market size in 16 to 18 months instead of the usual 30 months required for an Atlantic salmon.
To prevent any GE salmon from escaping into the wild, surviving, and reproducing there, AquaBounty will only produce female GE salmon, each with three sets of DNA instead of the normal two. Triploids, as organisms with three sets of DNA are called, are infertile. Therefore, producing only female, triploid GE fish should provide two mechanisms of preventing reproduction should any fish escape into the wild. (Obviously, it takes a bit of scientific tinkering to create an all-female triploid fish population and the process used to do this might make your stomach turn.)
AquaBounty will produce salmon eggs in Prince Edward Island, Canada. Then it will transport them to an inland facility in Panama, where it will grow the fish, harvest, and process them. The firm claims no live fish will ever enter the United States.
How Are GE Animals Regulated?
The next question one might ask is how the federal government goes about deciding whether or not a GE animal should be allowed in our food supply. Under a 1980s decision, written by anti-regulation ideologues in the Reagan and Bush I era before any GE foods – plants or animals – were ready for commercialization, the government decided that no new laws were needed to regulate GE plants or animals. This decision is called “the Coordinated Framework for the Regulation of Biotechnology,” or the Coordinated Framework for short.
Whereas the European Union debated the regulation of GE foods and drafted new laws to address issues such as safety, traceability, allergenicity and environmental impacts, the U.S. never passed any new laws specific to GE animals or had the kind of public debate passing a new law would require. Instead, they decided to regulate GE animals as “animal drugs,” using laws that are not well-suited to the unique, complex issues posed by GE animals. Specifically, the government considers the extra DNA added to the GE animals as the “animal drug.” New Animal Drugs are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, and they receive input from the Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) – a committee mostly made up of veterinarians, not genetic engineering experts.
When a new animal drug is approved, it is only approved for production in a specific facility. Therefore, if you invent a new pill for cats, you submit data on its production in a specific facility, and you receive approval to produce it only in that facility. If you decide to build eight more factories because your drug is so popular, you must go back to the FDA to receive approval for the eight new facilities.
2010: Sloppy Science on Trial
Back in 2010, the FDA took the first steps to approve AquaBounty’s application to produce the GE salmon. It released a draft Environmental Assessment (EA) and several hundred pages of safety testing data from experiments performed by AquaBounty on the GE salmon. Then it gave the public a mere two weeks to comment on the data, and it convened VMAC to advise it on the GE salmon.
For watchdog groups, this was the first signal that something was, well, fishy. Consumers Union senior scientist Michael Hansen excoriated the safety data as “sloppy,” “misleading,” and “woefully inadequate.” In addition to using small sample sizes and culling deformed fish and thus skewing the data, AquaBounty only provided data gathered in its Prince Edward Island facility, where it will produce GE salmon eggs. But, by law, it must also provide data from its Panama facility, where it will grow the salmon to full size.
The VMAC committee didn’t give a resounding approval either. The New York Times summarized their findings, saying, “While a genetically engineered salmon is almost certainly safe to eat, the government should pursue a more rigorous analysis of the fish's possible health effects and environmental impact.” However, the committee only advises the FDA, and its decisions are not binding.
2012: FDA Readies Its Rubber Stamp
Following the VMAC meeting and a second, public meeting on labeling issues surrounding the GE salmon, the FDA went silent. Over the next two years, it quietly examined the public comments and the input from the VMAC committee. But despite VMAC’s suggestion for a more rigorous analysis, the FDA moved the application one step closer to approval without really addressing the gaping holes in the AquaBounty’s science. In May of 2012, it produced an ever-so-slightly improved Environmental Assessment (EA) compared to the original draft it made public in 2010, and a preliminary “Finding of No Significant Impact” (FONSI).
The preliminary FONSI and draft EA were not made public until they were published in the Federal Register on December 26, 2012. At that point, the FDA began a 60-day period in which the public could review its findings and submit comments.
What happened between 2010 and 2012 to improve our confidence that the GE salmon is safe for human consumption and for the environment? Nothing. There’s no new data whatsoever. The only changes are a few minor additions to the EA – certainly not enough to inspire confidence that the government heard the critiques made in 2010 and addressed them.
After a group of Senators led by Mark Begich (D-AK) sent the FDA a letter asking for a 60-day extension to the comment period, the FDA agreed to take comments until April 26, 2013.
What’s Fishy About the GE Salmon?
“There are still unanswered safety and nutritional questions and the quality of the data that was submitted to the FDA was the worst stuff I've ever seen submitted for a GMO. There's stuff there that couldn't make it through a high school science class,” reflected Hansen in early 2013, after reviewing the newly released documents.
Almost laughing, Hansen remarks on the obvious flaws in AquaBounty’s scientific justification of the fish’s safety, saying, “That's not science, that's a joke!" Becoming more serious, he adds, “There's allergenicity questions and other health questions. It shouldn't be approved. They don't have any data to show that it's safe."
"There are environmental issues as well,” Hansen continues. “Not so much in Panama, but on Prince Edward Island. That's where they're going to producing eggs. Guess what, to produce eggs, you've gotta have fertile adults." Before the wild Atlantic salmon population was decimated, the waters around Prince Edward Island was salmon habitat. An escaped GE fish could easily thrive there. “Yet,” adds Hansen, “they conclude that even if they get out the water's too cold!”
In an interview with Flash in the Pan, environmental risk scientist Anne Kapuscinski also criticized the FDA’s process. Back in the 1990s, she authored the reports on how to perform environmental risk assessment. But, by 2007, her 1990s publications were so out of date that she led a team of scientists to write an updated book on the subject. Despite the updated scientific methods, the FDA opted to use the old, outdated methods from the 1990s to conduct its environmental risk assessment on the GE salmon.
The 2007 publication was rigorously peer reviewed by reviewers from around the world. Yet, the FDA ignored it. Kapuscinski calls their methods unscientific, adding that if the FDA were a student who submitted this report for a grade, it would fail. “Students would get into serious trouble if they were citing really old methods, and there had been huge advances in the methods since then and they ignored that. That would be a reason to fail them.”
She submitted comments back in 2010, but says, “it looks like either they didn’t read our comments or they just decided to ignore them.” She points out that the Panama facility that AquaBounty will use to grow the fish out of is not large enough for a commercial venture. “It’s at a scale to show proof of concept of the commercial viability of this,” she said. “Once the company scales up to selling millions and millions of eggs, the fish will be farmed by producers with all kinds of facilities.” Those facilities might not be as well protected as the one in Panama. Unless the FDA brings its risk assessment methods up to date, we have no adequate, scientific assurance that GE salmon won’t escape into the wild.
Next Steps
Despite the scientific questions, there’s no sign that the FDA will overturn its preliminary decision to allow commercialization of the GE salmon. The best Michael Hansen is hoping for at this point is a requirement that the GE salmon – one legalized – will be labeled as genetically engineered. He calls this “an outside chance.”
Unfortunately, as Hansen notes, "This is to set a precedent. If they let the GE salmon go through, why would any other company that wants to get a genetically engineered animal through bother” producing rigorous, scientifically valid data to prove its product’s safety?
If you don’t want to see GE salmon in your local supermarket in as little as a few years, you can take action. The FDA is accepting public comments until April 26, 2013. You can write your own message and submit it at Regulations.gov or you can join Food and Water Watch’s campaign against the GE salmon here. You can also write your representatives to let them know your point of view.

© 2013 Center for Media and Democracy

Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board. She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. 
Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/03/20-5

STOP UNCONSTITUTIONAL TESTER AMENDMENT EXEMPTING MONSANTO FROM THE LAW (EVEN FURTHER!)

URGENT Action Alert to Congress—Stop the Monsanto Rider!

March 19, 2013

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Last week we sent an emergency email to our subscribers about a terrible biotech rider attached to the big must-pass Appropriations bill that would let GMO crops be planted even when a court has ordered a stop. The Senate rejected this provision in the past—but now they may be accepting it as part of some back-room deal that was struck.
Since last week, the Senate has been debating a Continuing Resolution (CR) for the big Appropriations funding bill (H.R. 933). Sen. Tester (D-MT) and three colleagues introduced an amendment to strike the biotech rider. Yesterday the Senate voted (63-35) to end debate on its version of the CR. They narrowly met this margin—60 votes are required to end debate on a bill. And unfortunately, the GMO rider is still in this final version of the bill. The Tester amendment to remove the language was not included in the final agreement to proceed and sadly will not voted on.
Now the Senate will hold an up-or-down vote, possibly as early as today, on whether to pass the CR. This means it’s very likely the CR will be passed with the rider in it. This is the same rider we’ve told you about before—the so-called Farmer Assurance Provision (Section 735) of H.R. 933—that will strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of illegal, potentially hazardous genetically engineered crops while USDA is performing an environmental impact statement. If this provision becomes law, it will be a huge blow to the justice system, completely overriding judicial safeguards that protect both farmers and the public, and rendering judges’ rulings irrelevant. This biotech-driven rider is simply an industry ploy to continue to plant GMO crops even when a court of law has found they were approved illegally.
Sad to say, we were thrown under the bus with this amendment. It was included at the last minute and no senator is willing to take responsibility or be accountable for the amendment. The language came from the Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (who has always been our ally on these issues in the past), and we can only guess that this issue was used as a bargaining chip and she got something in return for including the rider. We called the office of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, to find out who is behind the amendment, but they did not comment.
It’s not just that the biotech industry was extraordinarily sneaky to include the rider in this “must pass” funding legislation—the CR is a stopgap bill to avert a government shutdown next week and keep agencies operating through September 30, and this includes funding for the Pentagon. It also shows how much power the industry has— Congress is clearly dancing to their tune to allow the CR to be used this way.
Once the CR passes the Senate, it will move to the House and Senate conference committee to resolve any differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill. Since this rider was not in the House version of the bill, there’s a slim possibility the rider will not be in the final duly passed version.
The general consensus on the Hill is that once the Senate acts, the House Appropriations Committee leadership is prepared to take the modified Senate CR directly to the House floor, possibly as early as Thursday. This is why urgent grassroots action is required to ensure that does not happen.
Action Alert! Send your message TODAY to both chambers of Congress, and insist that the GMO language be removed. It has no place in a must-pass appropriations bill, and it’s a blatant, underhanded maneuver by biotech industry to thwart the protections of our legal system. Please send your message immediately!

Please note: Comments posted below WILL NOT be sent to Congress. To send a message to your representatives, please click on the “Take Action!” button above.
Source:  http://www.anh-usa.org/urgent-action-alert-to-congress-monsanto-rider/

NYT MISSES THE POINT Letter To Editor GMO FOOD LABELING

Letter to the Editor: Labeling GE Foods

By: Just Label It
Posted on March 16, 2013

 

By Gary Hirshberg (Chairman, Just Label It)

I appreciate the Times’ encouraging citizens who wish to buy foods free of genetically engineered ingredients to buy Certified Organic foods.  And while it would be completely self-serving for me as an organic foods producer to rest on that conclusion, in fact it misses the point that all citizens have the right to know what’s in all of our foods.
In concluding that there is no reason to label GE ingredients because they have not been proven to pose safety concerns, the Times fell into the same trap that has paralyzed the national debate over labeling GE foods since they were introduced in 1996.
Safety is not the only reason to label. When the FDA determines that labeling is required for additives or processes, it is not because they have been found unsafe.  The FDA’s most important food statute, the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act, establishes that the consumer has a right to know when something is added to food that changes it in ways a consumer would likely not recognize. If an ingredient poses a food safety hazard, we don’t label its presence, we take it out of our food.
The FDA did not require labeling of irradiated foods because they were hazardous.  Rather they found that the PROCESS of irradiation caused concern to consumers. The same determination was made with Orange Juice from Concentrate, Country of Origin, Wild vs. Farmed, and many labels.
Yet while the FDA has mandated labeling for these processes, they have held firmly to the view that, even though GE crops are patented, they are not materially different from conventional counterparts. This is despite the fact that 62 other nations around the world including all of the EU, Russia and China and even Syria have required labeling when approving these crops.
So the question is not about safety. It is about what is material to the consumer.  And a lot has changed in 20 years.  Here is what is material today.
First, particularly because of their dominance in soy and corn, over 70% of the processed foods we eat contain genetically engineered material.  The data is clear that the vast majority of Americans do not know that.
Independent polls show that 92% of Americans want to know if our foods contain genetically engineered ingredients, with no meaningful difference between men or women, republicans, democrats or independents. And while the reasons vary from religious concerns to the simple desire to have the same rights granted to 3 billion citizens around the world, I see three primary reasons to bring US policy into line with the rest of the world.
First, these crops have been patented because they add bacterial genes, proteins, and gene fragments never before seen in foods. While it is true that we don’t yet know, and we probably won’t know for a generation, about the health impacts of today’s first-generation-GE crops, there is very strong and growing concern over the lack of independent testing by scientists not funded nor influenced by the patent holders. Our government’s approval of these crops has been based almost exclusively on studies conducted or funded by the chemical companies who own these patented crops to prove that GE food is “substantially equivalent” to its non-GE counterpart.   In fact, last week, the Russian National Genetic Safety Association called for independent public scientific research.
It would be fine to rely on the patent holders claims, but they have been repeatedly shown to be false.
When GE corn was introduced with an insecticide built into its DNA, the patent holders said the insecticide would not survive more than a few seconds in the human GI tract, and that it would be broken down in saliva.  However, a study published two years ago revealed that the insecticide was detected in the umbilical-cord blood of pregnant women.
Several National Academy of Sciences studies have affirmed that genetically engineered crops have the potential to introduce new toxins or allergens into our food and environment. Yet unlike the strict safety evaluations for approval of new drugs, there are no mandatory human clinical trials of genetically engineered crops, no tests for carcinogenicity or harm to fetuses, no long-term testing for neurological health risks, no requirement for long-term testing on animals, and limited assessment of the potential to trigger new food allergies.
Because GMOs are not labeled in the U.S., they might be causing acute or chronic effects, but scientists would have a very hard time recognizing the linkages between GE food intake and unexplained problems.
The second argument for labeling that is subject of serious debate in the Ag research community is the explosive increase in herbicide use because of the introduction of these crops.  This is because the primary genes that have been introduced into GE crops enable increased insecticide or herbicide resistance.  Despite assurances to Congress and regulators over the last two decades that crops engineered to be herbicide resistant would lead to less chemical usage, a peer-reviewed paper published last summer by Washington State University professor Dr. Charles Benbrook showed that the three major GE crops in the U.S. – corn, soybeans, and cotton – have increased overall herbicide use by more than 527 million pounds between 1996 – 2011, compared to what it likely would have been in the absence of GE crops.    In 1996, the year GE crops were introduced, about 14 MM pounds of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicides, were sprayed on the three major GE crops, corn, cotton, and soybeans, accounting for about 4% of total pesticide use on these crops.  In 2012, nearly 300 MM pounds were sprayed, a remarkable three-quarters of total pesticide use on these three crops.
Such a grossly excessive level of reliance on a single pesticide is profoundly unsustainable, and is why glyphosate-resistant weeds are spreading across America’s farmland too fast to accurately track, placing farmers in a costly jam.
The U.S. Geological Survey has reported that glyphosate is now a common component of the air and rain in the Midwest during spring and summer, with levels rising in many aquatic ecosystems. New studies are raising serious safety concerns about this level of glyphosate usage.
But it gets worse. At least 23 species of weeds are now resistant to glyphosate.  Called “superweeds,” they are emerging at an alarming rate, and are present in 50-75 million acres where GE soy, corn, and cotton crops grow in 26 states.  Several chemical companies are responding by designing GE seeds that tolerate multiple herbicides.
To combat weeds that have developed resistance to Roundup (glyphosate), Dow is seeking approval of GE crops that are resistant to an older, high-risk phenoxy herbicide known as 2,4-D.  Other companies are working fast to gain approvals for another, even more dangerous phenoxy herbicide, dicamba. Many university weed scientists are speaking out against the dangerous notion that the best way to combat resistant weeds is to spray more herbicides on them – especially herbicides with a proven, negative environmental and human health track record.
Because these chemicals were used previously, weeds resistant to them are already widespread. In the US, there are already eight important weeds resistant to 2,4-D. And 28 species worldwide are resistant to 2,4-D and/or dicamba.  So this strategy is like pouring gasoline on a fire to put it out. By 2019, it could cause enormous increases in herbicide use, including a many-fold increase in the pounds of 2,4-D currently applied to the American corn crop.
Many more GE crops are in the approval pipeline.  And some of them may very well turn out to offer yield or nutritional benefits, like soybeans with higher levels of heart-healthy omega 3 fatty acids.  But for now, while the technology is so young and there is apparently so much to learn, consumers need to have the same rights held by citizens around the world, to choose whether or not to buy these foods and indirectly support this cycle of increased overall chemical usage.
Just Label It is not arguing for the elimination or cessation of genetic plant engineering. We are merely arguing that it deserves the same consideration as irradiation or many other processes where labeling is mandated.
The FDA can label. The vast majority of consumers want them to label.
In short, this is more than a fight for federal labeling. It is a question of whether our government is of, for and by the people, or of, for and by a handful of chemical companies.
Source:  http://justlabelit.org/letter-to-the-editor/