TAKE THE SURVEY: HOW HAPPY ARE YOU WITH OUR FOOD CHOICES?

FOOD DEMOCRACY NOW! HOW'S OBAMA DOING?

Last week President Obama and Secretary Vilsack traveled to the Midwest for a three-day Rural Tour to talk about jobs and economic security for rural America. During the 2007 primary season, then Senator Barack Obama laid out a series of progressive agricultural policies that if enacted would do more to help keep farmers on the land and rebuild rural America than anything he mentioned on his entire trip.

His recent visit here gave us the opportunity to reflect on the campaign promises that he made back then here in Iowa to stimulate rural economies, regulate factory farms and protect farmers from massive food industry consolidation. 

We'd like to know your thoughts on how you think President Obama and Secretary Vilsack have done in the past two and a half years. Please take just a 30 second survey right now? We have over 250,000 members --- letting them know how you feel can send a powerful message.

Click here to let us know if you approve of the job President Obama and Secretary Vilsack are doing to protect America’s farmers and our food supply. Or let us know if you think they can do a better job.

A few of the pending issues...

Organic and GMOs: Coexistence or the Road to Contamination?

While President Obama did make a stop at the Seed Savers Exchange, a famous heirloom seed bank, in Decorah, Iowa, he also made sure to balance that with a stop at a genetically engineered seed corn dealer in Atkinson, Illinois. Clearly, it would appear that President Obama is still hoping to have it both ways. What type of food do you want your family to eat?

Click here to let us know how you think President Obama is doing.

Even so, there are a number of pending decisions on significant structural issues that President Obama and his administration need to make soon and they need to be made right. Compromise can be an important part of a democracy, but not when the livelihood of family farmers and rural America and the integrity of our food supply is on the line.

Antitrust Hearings: Incomplete

Last year the Obama administration held a series of important workshops looking into anti-competition abuses in food and agriculture sectors. That these hearings occurred in the first place were historic, but unfortunately the administration has failed to issue a report or take significant action against powerful corporate interests.

Food Democracy Now! delivered more than 200,000 comments to DOJ antitrust chief Christine Varney last December. Varney was widely praised for her commitment to enforcing antitrust violations, but last month she announced that she was leaving the DOJ for a white glove law firm without finishing the job.

Let us know if you think the Obama administration needs to do more to protect America’s farmers and consumers from massive food industry consolidation and the negative impact it has on our food supply.

Fair Market Livestock Rules: Incomplete

The other key area that President Obama promised farmers during the 2008 campaign was enforcing fair market livestock rules that would protect farmers from abusive contracts and price manipulation. But what seems like a reasonable and common sense solution is being blocked in Washington by the usual cartel of giant agribusiness lobbyists who would rather see the current unfair system continue so they can keep skimming all the farmer’s profits for themselves.

The truth is, Secretary Vilsack and the USDA have done the right thing and written a set of strong and fair rules that would offer livestock farmers legal protections in the marketplace for the first time. And for this, they’ve been vilified by Big Meat lobbyists who used their power to manipulate Congress in an effort to block this vital reform.

In order for America to grow we need to expand the circle so they hear the voice of the American people.

Please take a moment to tell them what you think. We will take the 10 most engaging and inovative responses telling the administration what they can do better and post them on our website. Those that are chosen will receive a FREE Food Democracy Now! t-shirt!

Thanks for participating in food democracy, 

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team

Sources:
1. Politics, Farmers and Change: The End of Rural America, Huffington Post, 08/18/2011
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/406?akid=366.160877.lDZZbw&t=11
2. Food Stamp Usage Across the Country, New York Times, 11/28/11
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/407?akid=366.160877.lDZZbw&t=13
3. The Obama-Biden Plan for Rural America, Change.gov, 10/2007
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/333?akid=366.160877.lDZZbw&t=15
4. President Obama's Wednesday Bus Tour Schedule: Town Halls in Atkinson & Alpha, Illinois, Obama Foodorama, August 17, 2011
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/410?akid=366.160877.lDZZbw&t=17
5. Why Christine Varney Left the Justice Department, Suckerpunched on Anti-Trust, Counterpunch, 07/07/2011
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/408?akid=366.160877.lDZZbw&t=19

ALL "NATURAL" WESSON OIL! - (EXCEPT IT'S GMO) NEW CLASS ACTION SUIT AGAINST CONAGRA

ConAgra Sued Over GMO '100% Natural' Cooking Oils

by Michele Simon | Aug 24, 2011   Opinion

If you use Wesson brand cooking oils, you may be able to join a class action against food giant ConAgra for deceptively marketing the products as natural.

These days it's hard to walk down a supermarket aisle without bumping into a food product that claims to be "all-natural." If you've ever wondered how even some junk food products can claim this moniker (witness: Cheetos Natural Puff White Cheddar Cheese Flavored Snacks - doesn't that sound like it came straight from your garden?) the answer is simple if illogical: the Food and Drug Administration has not defined the term natural.

So food marketers, knowing that many shoppers are increasingly concerned about healthful eating, figured: why not just slap the natural label on anything we can get away with? That wishful thinking may soon be coming to an end if a few clever consumer lawyers have anything to say about it.

While various lawsuits have been filed in recent years claiming that food companies using the term natural are engaging in deceptive marketing, a suit filed in June in California against ConAgra could make the entire industrial food complex shake in its boots. 

The plaintiff claims he relied on Wesson oils "100% natural" label, when the products are actually made from genetically modified organisms. 

GMOs Not Exactly Natural, So Says Monsanto

Ironically, the complaint cites a definition of GMOs by none other than Monsanto, the company most notorious for its promotion of the technology. According to Monsanto, GMOs are: "Plants or animals that have had their genetic makeup altered to exhibit traits that are not naturally theirs." 

The complaint also quotes a GMO definition from the World Health Organization: "Organisms in which the genetic material (DNA) has been altered in a way that does not occur naturally."

Four Wesson varieties are implicated in the case: Canola Oil, Vegetable Oil, Corn Oil, and Best Blend. And it's not just on the label that ConAgra is using the natural claim, but also online and in print advertisements. (Additional silly health claims on the website include "cholesterol free"--vegetable oils couldn't possibly contain cholesterol anyway.)

The complaint describes the extent of ConAgra's deception, alleging the "labels are intended to evoke a natural, wholesome product." And further:

The "100% Natural" statement is, like much of the label on Wesson Oils, displayed in vibrant green. The "Wesson" name is haloed by the image of the sun, and the Canola Oil features a picture of a green heart. 

A green heart -- you just can't get any healthier than that. However, as registered dietitian Andy Bellatti told me: "These oils are high in omega 6 fatty acids, which in excessive amounts are actually bad for your heart." Guess they left that part out of the green heart icon. 

Supermarkets Chock-full of GMOs

But what makes this lawsuit especially intriguing is its potentially far-ranging impact. According to the Center for Food Safety: "upwards of 70 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves -- from soda to soup, crackers to condiments -- contain genetically-engineered ingredients." While it's unclear how many of these products also claim to be natural, given all the greenwashing going on these days, it's likely to number in the thousands. 

Specifically, up to 85 percent of U.S. corn is genetically engineered as are 91 percent of soybeans, both extremely common ingredients in processed foods. Numerous groups including the Center for Food Safety have been calling attention to the potential hazards of GMOs for years. From their website:

A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to humans, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer.

 

Not exactly the stuff that green hearts are made of. The legal complaint also notes that on its corporate website ("but not on the Wesson site that consumers are more likely to visit"), ConAgra implies that its oils are genetically engineered. The company concludes: "Ultimately, consumers will decide what is acceptable in the marketplace based on the best science and public information available." 

But by being told the oils are "100% natural," consumers can no longer make an informed decision as they are being misled. 

Which reminds me of a great quote from Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser: "If they have to put the word 'natural' on a box to convince you, it probably isn't." 

 ------------------------- 

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer specializing in industry marketing and lobbying tactics. She is the author of Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, and research and policy director at Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog group.
Source:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_23832.cfm

ON THE BRINK: PEAK WATER, PEAK SOIL; ORGANIC FARMS OUT-PRODUCE BIG AG BY TWO-TO-ONE!

Approaching the Collapse: Don't Panic, Go Organic

• By Ronnie Cummins
  Organic Consumers Association, August 24, 2011
  
  

So-called "business as usual" is neither sustainable, nor even possible, for much longer. Out-of-control energy corporations, Wall Street, the Pentagon, agribusiness/biotech corporations, and indentured politicians have driven us to the brink. They tell us: don't worry; trust the experts, things will soon return to "normal." But reality and common sense tell a different story.

Extreme weather, crop failures, commodities speculation, land grabs, escalating prices, soil degradation, depleted aquifers, routine contamination, food-related disease, and mass hunger represent the "new norm" for food and farming. The global agricultural system, with the exception of the rapidly growing organic sector, rests upon a shaky foundation. Patented seeds, genetically engineered crops, expensive and destructive chemical and energy-intensive inputs, factory farms, monoculture production, eroding soils, unsustainable water use, taxpayer subsidies, and long-distance hauling and distribution, including massive imports that amount to 15% of the U.S. food supply amount to a recipe for disaster.

A "perfect storm" or "ultimate recession" as described by Lester Brown in his new book, World on the Edge, could develop at any time, precipitated by extreme weather and crop failures on a massive scale. A growing number of nations, including the oil giants and China, are now scrambling to secure overseas farmland to feed their domestic populations. World grocers and supermarkets, including the U.S., have, on the average, only a four-day supply of food on hand. An oil shock, global disease pandemic, prolonged drought in the American heartland, or nuclear meltdown could set off a global food panic. Supermarket shelves and grain silos would be stripped bare within a short period of time. Have you thought about this? Are you and those in your local community ready for this?

Peak Food, Peak Oil, Peak Water, Peak Soil

World grain reserves amount to less than 75 days of supply. Harvests of strategic food grains and cereals have basically leveled off or even decreased, with enormous amounts of acreage now providing fuel for cars instead of food for people. At the same time, affordable fossil fuel energy supplies have peaked (Peak Oil), with the world increasingly dependent on "extreme" oil and natural gas extraction (deep sea and Arctic drilling, tar sands, and fracking), accelerating the prices of petroleum-based farm inputs, as well as food distribution and processing costs. Billions of people in the Global South are now spending 50-70% of their household income on food (although in the U.S. it is only 11%). Hydrologists and agronomists warn that Peak Water is fast approaching, when the already limited availability of water from underground aquifers for crop irrigation exponentially decreases. Peak Soil is also fast approaching, with soil erosion and desertification already degrading 25% of the earth's land. Peak Soil is directly related to unsustainable farming and forestry practices, including heavy pesticide use, chemical fertilizers, genetically engineered mono-crops, and non-sustainable grazing and clear-cutting.  Meanwhile global population numbers (in direct relation to poverty and lack of education for women) and demand for food (especially meat and animal products) are accelerating.

Of course, we could go on and on, citing the ever more disturbing information we read every day in the mainstream media and on the Internet. But the life or death question is: what are we going to do about it?

Crash-Resistant and Climate-Friendly: The Organic Revolution

Fortunately, over the past 40 years, a new generation of organic farmers and ranchers have proliferated, building upon the wisdom and practices of indigenous and traditional farmers over the past 10,000 years. A growing corps of organic farmers and gardeners are producing increasing amounts of healthy, nutritious foods without the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, genetically engineered seeds, or animal drugs. At the same time, these 21st Century organic stewards of the land are consuming far less (50% or more) fossil fuels and water. Study after study has demonstrated that organic small farms in the developing world out-produce chemical and genetically engineered farms by a factor of two to one; while in the industrialized nations, sustainable organic yields are comparable in "normal" weather to industrial farms; but far superior (up to 50-70% higher) in times of drought or torrential rain, the types of extreme weather that have become the "new norm."  In other words, not only can organic farming feed the world, but it is in fact the only way that we are going to be able to feed the world in this 21st Century era of energy, water, and climate crisis.

The burning question then becomes how do we build up a stronger Movement that can promote and scale up organic, local and regional-based systems of food and farming (while complimentary green Movements do the same in the energy, housing, and transportation sectors)? How can we, as quickly as possible, build up a critical mass of organic farms, gardens, seed banks, farm schools, and distribution networks in all the local regions of North America and world? We don't have room in this essay to go into all the details, but here are a few things that millions of us are already starting to do, that are moving us forward and preparing us for survival in the likely eventuality of economic collapse.

(1)    Step-up public education and consciousness-raising. We have now crossed a major threshold of raising public awareness: the majority of Americans say they prefer organic food, for a variety of health, environmental, and ethical reasons. After forty years of public education and campaigning, organic foods and products are the fastest growing items in America's grocery carts. Thirty million households, comprising 75 million people, are now buying organic foods and other products on a regular basis. Fifty-six percent of U.S. consumers say they prefer organic foods, citing a wide variety of reasons that we and the Organic Movement have taught them. Millions of young people and urban residents are starting to learn organic farming and gardening techniques.

(2)    Step-up the campaign against industrial agriculture and genetic engineering. The more we educate people about the hazards of chemical and energy-intensive food and farming and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the greater the demand for organic foods and products, and the greater the number of new organic farmers, young organic farm apprentices, and urban organic gardeners (now 12 million-strong). The Achilles heel or weakest link of industrial agriculture is truthful labeling: consumers right to know. If toxic pesticides, chemicals and genetically engineered ingredients are labeled, consumers will not buy them, retailers will not sell them, and farmers will not grow them. Even though Washington has fallen under the control of Monsanto and corporate agribusiness, we can still change public policies at the state and local level, with grassroots-powered ballot initiatives and state legislation. Even though we live in Monsanto Nation, we can still bring down Goliath.

(3)    Link up with other Movements, local to global. Reducing global poverty, eliminating war and stabilizing the climate go hand-in-hand. The best way to reduce global rural poverty and conflict and eliminate war is through land reform and sustainable organic farming practices. With land reform and technical assistance, millions of organic farms in the Global South can develop and prosper, helping the world's poorest people, especially women, to produce far more food with less or no fossil fuel or chemical inputs. This organic revolution will enable several billion peasants and rural villagers to rise up from poverty and reduce the unsustainable population growth that accompanies abject poverty. At the same time, one of the best ways to reduce fossil fuel use and naturally sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases is to change our current land use practices, to go organic. For 10,000 years indigenous people and traditional farmers fed the world with organic farming and animal husbandry practices. By converting the world's 12 billion acres of farmland and pasture land back to organic soil management we will be creating, instead of destroying, soil fertility, as well as restoring the soil food web's amazing ability to permanently sequester enormous amounts of climate destabilizing CO2 through increased plant photosynthesis. With organic soil management spreading across the world's 12 billion acres of farmland and pastureland, and a global mobilization to replant the 10 billion acres of forest that industry and agribusiness have destroyed, we can literally reverse global warming, bringing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 back down to a safe level of 350 parts per million from the current dangerous level of 390 ppm.

The hour is late, but there is still time to prepare ourselves and our communities before the economy collapses. Educate yourself and get active. Start to make preparations for an end to "business as usual." Step up your efforts. Help link the issues and different constituencies in the body politic. Don't panic. Go organic.

Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Source: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_23829.cfm 

A LONG HOT -AGONIZING - SUMMER -USDA to MONSANTO: ROUNDUP RUINS SOILS (DUUUH)

USDA Scientist: Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide Damages Soil

—By Tom Philpott

| Fri Aug. 19, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

CIMMYT/Flickr

August hasn't been a happy month the for the Monsanto public-relations team. No, I'm not referring to my posts on how Gaza and Mexico don't need the company's high-tech seeds—the ones it will supposedly be "feeding the world" with in the not-so-distant future.
Monsanto's real PR headache involves one of its flagship products very much in the here and now: the herbicide Roundup (chemical name: glyphosate), upon which Monsanto has built a highly profitable empire of "Roundup Ready" genetically modified seeds.
The problem goes beyond the "superweed" phenomenon that I've written about recently: the fact that farmers are using so much Roundup, on so much acreage, that weeds are developing resistance to it, forcing farmers to resort to highly toxic "pesticide cocktails."
What Roundup is doing aboveground may be a stroll through the meadow compared to its effect below. According to USDA scientist Robert Kremer, who spoke at a conference last week, Roundup may also be damaging soil—a sobering thought, given that it's applied to hundreds of millions of acres of prime farmland in the United States and South America. Here's a Reuters account of Kremer's presentation:

The heavy use of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide appears to be causing harmful changes in soil and potentially hindering yields of the genetically modified crops that farmers are cultivating, a US government scientist said on Friday. Repeated use of the chemical glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup herbicide, impacts the root structure of plants, and 15 years of research indicates that the chemical could be causing fungal root disease, said Bob Kremer, a microbiologist with the US Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.

Now, Kremer has been raising these concerns for a couple of years now—and as Tom Laskaway showed in this 2010 Grist article, the USDA has been downplaying them for just as long. Laskaway asked Kremer's boss at the Agricultural Research Service, Michael Shannon, to comment on Kremer's research. According to Laskaway, Shannon "admitted that Kremer’s results are valid, but said that the danger they represent pales in comparison to the superweed threat."

Advertise on MotherJones.com

So let's get this straight: The head of the USDA's crop-research service agrees that Roundup damages soil and thinks the superweed problem is even more troublesome. In the face of these two menaces, you might expect the USDA to intervene to curtail Roundup use. But Shannon meant his statement as a rationale for ignoring Kremer's work. Meanwhile, the USDA keeps approving new Roundup Ready crops—ensuring that the herbicide's domain over US farmland will expand dramatically.
Kremer commented on his employer's reception of his work in a Reuters article last year:

"This could be something quite big. We might be setting up a huge problem," said Kremer, who expressed alarm that regulators were not paying enough attention to the potential risks from biotechnology on the farm, including his own research…"Science is not being considered in policy setting and deregulation," said Kremer. "This research is important. We need to be vigilant."

Meanwhile, at a conference in Boulder, Colorado, in early August, another mainstream ag expert raised serious concerns about the poison, according to an account in Boulder Weekly. Iowa-based consultant Michael McNeill, who has a Ph.D. in quantitative genetics and plant pathology from Iowa State University, advises large-scale corn and soy farmers on weed control and soil fertility. He's observing trends in the field that are consistent with Kremer's research. Here's Boulder Weekly:

McNeill explains that glyphosate is a chelating agent, which means it clamps onto molecules that are valuable to a plant, like iron, calcium, manganese, and zinc.…The farmers' increased use of Roundup is actually harming their crops, according to McNeill, because it is killing micronutrients in the soil that they need, a development that has been documented in several scientific papers by the nation's leading experts in the field. For example, he says, harmful fungi and parasites like fusarium, phytopthora and pythium are on the rise as a result of the poison, while beneficial fungi and other organisms that help plants reduce minerals to a usable state are on the decline. He explains that the overuse of glyphosate means that oxidizing agents are on the rise, creating oxides that plants can't use, leading to lower yields and higher susceptibility to disease.

According to McNeill, problems with Roundup aren't limited to the soil—they also extend to Roundup Ready crops and the animals that eat them.

McNeill says he and his colleagues are seeing a higher incidence of infertility and early-term abortion in cattle and hogs that are fed on GMO crops. He adds that poultry fed on the suspect crops have been exhibiting reduced fertility rates.

McNeill made an interesting comparison to the Boulder Weekly reporter: "Just as DDT was initially hailed as a miracle pesticide and later banned, researchers are beginning to discover serious problems with glyphosate."
Well, the EPA has been in the process of reviewing glyphosate's registration since July 2009, but I've seen no evidence that the agency has the fortitude to challenge Monsanto and its multibillion-dollar empire. Just last week, Kremer told Reuters that neither the EPA nor the USDA has shown interest in further exploring his research. Maybe Monsanto's PR team doesn't have much to worry about, after all.

Tom Philpott is the food and ag blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Get Tom Philpott's RSS feed.
Source  : http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2011/08/monsantos-roundup-herbicide-soil-damage#disqus_thread

MONSANTO SUED AGAIN- THIS TIME IT'S INDIA'S GMO EGGPLANT

India Sues Monsanto Over Genetically-Modified Eggplant

William Pentland, Contributor

Forbes Magazine  August 12, 2011 

The already-explosive politics surrounding genetically-modified (GM) eggplant (brinjal) in India is getting still more explosive with a government agency’s decision to prosecute the developers of the insect resistant-eggplant eggplant.

In 2009, Indian regulators gave the insect resistant eggplant carrying the Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) gene the green light, but India’s former minister of the environment, Jairam Ramesh, imposed an indefinite moratorium on its cultivation only a few months later.  The National Biodiversity Authority of India (NBA) has decided to sue Monsanto, the St. Louis, MO-based biotechnology power-house, and the company’s Indian partners who developed the Bt eggplant.

The controversial move by NBA is based on a complaint filed in 2010 by the Bangalore-based Environment Support Group (ESG), which alleges that the developers violated India’s Biological Diversity Act of 2002 by using local eggplant varieties in developing Bt eggplant without prior approval from NBA.

While Monsanto has not responded to the charge, the Maharashtra Hybrid Companyin Mumbai, in which Monsanto has a 26% stake, has denied the charge saying it merely incorporated the Bt gene in the varieties provided by the University of Agricultural Sciences at Dharwad in Karnataka state and provided the technology ‘royalty free’. The university told the Nature blog that the question of violating the law had never arisen because it is a public institution and has no commercial mandate.

MONSANTO'S TAYLOR SLITHERS FROM SECT'Y OF AG TO THE HEAD OF THE FDA-FOOD "CZAR"!

OBAMA APPOINTS MONSANTO'S VICE PRESIDENT AS SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE COMMISSIONER AT THE FDA

by Jeffrey Smith 
Tuesday August 16, 2011

Folks, it just keeps getting more insane.

Michael Taylor was just appointed senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. This is the same man that was in charge of FDA policy when GMO's were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety. He "had been Monsanto's attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA [and then] he became Monsanto's Vice President and chief lobbyist. This month [he] became the senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. He is now America's food safety czar. This is no joke."

Here's the full story:
You're Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It's Not So!
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/858

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Here's the back story.

When FDA scientists were asked to weigh in on what was to become the most radical and potentially dangerous change in our food supply -- the introduction of genetically modified (GM) foods -- secret documents now reveal that the experts were very concerned. Memo after memo described toxins, new diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and hard-to-detect allergens. They were adamant that the technology carried "serious health hazards," and required careful, long-term research, including human studies, before any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be safely released into the food supply.

But the biotech industry had rigged the game so that neither science nor scientists would stand in their way. They had placed their own man in charge of FDA policy and he wasn't going to be swayed by feeble arguments related to food safety. No, he was going to do what corporations had done for decades to get past these types of pesky concerns. He was going to lie.

Dangerous Food Safety Lies

When the FDA was constructing their GMO policy in 1991-2, their scientists were clear that gene-sliced foods were significantly different and could lead to "different risks" than conventional foods. But official policy declared the opposite, claiming that the FDA knew nothing of significant differences, and declared GMOs substantially equivalent.

This fiction became the rationale for allowing GM foods on the market without any required safety studies whatsoever! The determination of whether GM foods were safe to eat was placed entirely in the hands of the companies that made them -- companies like Monsanto, which told us that the PCBs, DDT, and Agent Orange were safe.

GMOs were rushed onto our plates in 1996. Over the next nine years, multiple chronic illnesses in the US nearly doubled -- from 7% to 13%. Allergy-related emergency room visits doubled between 1997 and 2002 while food allergies, especially among children, skyrocketed. We also witnessed a dramatic rise in asthma, autism, obesity, diabetes, digestive disorders, and certain cancers.

In January of this year, Dr. P. M. Bhargava, one of the world's top biologists, told me that after reviewing 600 scientific journals, he concluded that the GM foods in the US are largely responsible for the increase in many serious diseases.

In May, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine concluded that animal studies have demonstrated a causal relationship between GM foods and infertility, accelerated aging, dysfunctional insulin regulation, changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system, and immune problems such as asthma, allergies, and inflammation

In July, a report by eight international experts determined that the flimsy and superficial evaluations of GMOs by both regulators and GM companies "systematically overlook the side effects" and significantly underestimate "the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others."

The Fox Guarding the Chickens

If GMOs are indeed responsible for massive sickness and death, then the individual who oversaw the FDA policy that facilitated their introduction holds a uniquely infamous role in human history. That person is Michael Taylor. He had been Monsanto's attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA. Soon after, he became Monsanto's vice president and chief lobbyist.

This month Michael Taylor became the senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. He is now America's food safety czar. What have we done?

The Milk Man Cometh

While Taylor was at the FDA in the early 90's, he also oversaw the policy regarding Monsanto's genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH/rbST) -- injected into cows to increase milk supply.

The milk from injected cows has more pus, more antibiotics, more bovine growth hormone, and most importantly, more insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). IGF-1 is a huge risk factor for common cancers and its high levels in this drugged milk is why so many medical organizations and hospitals have taken stands against rbGH. A former Monsanto scientist told me that when three of his Monsanto colleagues evaluated rbGH safety and discovered the elevated IGF-1 levels, even they refused to drink any more milk -- unless it was organic and therefore untreated.

Government scientists from Canada evaluated the FDA's approval of rbGH and concluded that it was a dangerous facade. The drug was banned in Canada, as well as Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. But it was approved in the US while Michael Taylor was in charge. His drugged milk might have caused a significant rise in US cancer rates. Additional published evidence also implicates rbGH in the high rate of fraternal twins in the US.

Taylor also determined that milk from injected cows did not require any special labeling. And as a gift to his future employer Monsanto, he wrote a white paper suggesting that if companies ever had the audacity to label their products as not using rbGH, they should also include a disclaimer stating that according to the FDA, there is no difference between milk from treated and untreated cows.

Taylor's disclaimer was also a lie. Monsanto's own studies and FDA scientists officially acknowledged differences in the drugged milk. No matter. Monsanto used Taylor's white paper as the basis to successfully sue dairies that labeled their products as rbGH-free.

Will Monsanto's Wolff Also Guard the Chickens?

As consumers learned that rbGH was dangerous, they refused to buy the milk. To keep their customers, a tidal wave of companies has publicly committed to not use the drug and to label their products as such. Monsanto tried unsuccessfully to convince the FDA and FTC to make it illegal for dairies to make rbGH-free claims, so they went to their special friend in Pennsylvania -- Dennis Wolff. As state secretary of agriculture, Wolff unilaterally declared that labeling products rbGH-free was illegal, and that all such labels must be removed from shelves statewide. This would, of course, eliminate the label from all national brands, as they couldn't afford to create separate packaging for just one state.

Fortunately, consumer demand forced Pennsylvania's Governor Ed Rendell to step in and stop Wolff's madness. But Rendell allowed Wolff to take a compromised position that now requires rbGH-free claims to also be accompanied by Taylor's FDA disclaimer on the package.

President Obama is considering Dennis Wolff for the top food safety post at the USDA. Yikes!

Rumor has it that the reason why Pennsylvania's governor is supporting Wolff's appointment is to get him out of the state -- after he "screwed up so badly" with the rbGH decision. Oh great, governor. Thanks.

Ohio Governor Gets Taylor-itus

Ohio not only followed Pennsylvania's lead by requiring Taylor's FDA disclaimer on packaging, they went a step further. They declared that dairies must place that disclaimer on the same panel where rbGH-free claims are made, and even dictated the font size. This would force national brands to re-design their labels and may ultimately dissuade them from making rbGH-free claims at all. The Organic Trade Association and the International Dairy Foods Association filed a lawsuit against Ohio. Although they lost the first court battle, upon appeal, the judge ordered a mediation session that takes place today. Thousands of Ohio citizens have flooded Governor Strickland's office with urgent requests to withdraw the states anti-consumer labeling requirements.

Perhaps the governor has an ulterior motive for pushing his new rules. If he goes ahead with his labeling plans, he might end up with a top appointment in the Obama administration.

To hear what America is saying about GMOs and to add your voice, go to our new non-GMO Facebook Group.

Jeffrey M. Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Engineered Foods You're Eating and Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods from Chelsea Green Publishing. Smith worked at a GMO detection laboratory, founded the Institute for Responsible Technology, and currently lives in Iowa—surrounded by genetically modified corn and soybeans. For more information, visit Chelsea Green.

Source: http://networkedblogs.com/lMhWu 

GET YOUR ANITBIOTIC-RIDDLED CHINESE HONEY IN THE USA! (BANNED IN DOZENS OF NATIONS)

Honey laundering: tainted and counterfeit Chinese honey floods into the U.S.

by Tom Laskawy

18 Aug 2011 1:58 PM

Mo' honey, mo' problems.Photo: Kathryn HarperIf it's possible to write a blockbuster story about honey, Food Safety News has done it:

A third or more of all the honey consumed in the U.S. is likely to have been smuggled in from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. A Food Safety News investigation has documented that millions of pounds of honey banned as unsafe in dozens of countries are being imported and sold here in record quantities. ...
Experts interviewed by Food Safety News say some of the largest and most long-established U.S. honey packers are knowingly buying mislabeled, transshipped or possibly altered honey so they can sell it cheaper than those companies who demand safety, quality and rigorously inspected honey.

This is a serious issue because China has a monumental problem with its honey industry. A bee epidemic in China several years ago led beekeepers there to use an antibiotic that the U.S. FDA has banned in food and that has been linked to DNA damage in children. And as FSN observes, though China has a state-of-the-art honey processing industry, its beekeeping has not kept up -- resulting, for example, in some Chinese honey being contaminated with lead from the use of improper storage containers.
Even worse, Chinese honey brokers have been known to create counterfeit product made of "a mix of sugar water, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, jaggery [a type of unrefined sugar], barley malt sweetener or other additives with a bit of actual honey." A label is slapped on the container and the adulterated honey is shipped through another country -- for the most part, India -- before finally making its way to the US.
Much of this came out two years ago during a major government investigation into "honey laundering" (that's when I first heard the term). But the resulting arrests didn't do much to halt the illegal activities.
For all of the above reasons, honey from India is already banned in the European Union, and it's supposed to be illegal to import food into the U.S. that's been banned in other countries. However, the FDA response has been muted. A representative told FSN that the agency "would not know about honey that has been banned from other countries," but experts and other federal agencies believe that's because the FDA refuses to look. Indeed, the FDA appears to have adopted the policy the Pentagon just dropped: Don't ask, don't tell.
And it's not just outside experts who are alarmed at FDA's lackadaisical approach to honey laundering. FDA is supposed to be working with U.S. Customs officials to crack down on this practice. Yet, according to FSN, Customs investigators claim that:

... the cooperation is more on paper than in practice and that the FDA continues to be the weak link. They say the FDA either doesn't have the resources to properly do the job or is unwilling to commit them.
ICE and the border patrol can and do go after the honey launderers by enforcing the anti-dumping and tariff violation laws. But protecting consumers from dangerous honey, identifying it as adulterated and therefore illegal for importation, falls to the FDA. And many of its enforcement colleagues say the food safety agency doesn't see this as a priority.

There's much more to the story, so I highly recommend reading FSN's deep dive in full.
But this article raises major questions for me about the role of U.S. honey packers and distributors. Why don't they care more? Domestic honey production only meets about half of U.S. consumer demand, so it's clear they feel the pressure to find honey somewhere. But at a certain point, you have a moral obligation to the consumer that should trump the profit motive.
"Everyone in the industry knows" about the illegal smuggling, says one industry insider. He claims that four or five of the 12 major U.S. honey packers are responsible for most of the illegal purchases. It's no surprise, then, that executives from those companies refused to comment on the story. Clearly, they are unable to ensure the quality and purity of the product they are selling. What else is there to say?
What's most concerning is that consumers are limited in their ability to avoid tainted honey, since 65 percent of honey sold in the U.S. goes into processed food. So certainly, you should buy local honey from small producers you trust. And if you can't find good honey, don't buy what's on supermarket shelves. But we're also at the mercy of food processors' willingness to ensure the ingredients they put into their products are pure.
The U.S. government could act aggressively to stop honey laundering, as the E.U. already has. But that kind of action could throw the U.S. food processing industry into turmoil. No matter the risks, the feds don't generally consider that an option. So, unless the FDA displays a sudden willingness to trade wrist slaps for perp walks when it comes to food company executives, honey laundering appears here to stay. The FDA did not respond to our requests for further comment.
When I wrote about this two years ago, I said, "This story is really about a food system that's diffuse, international, and impossible to regulate -- in other words, broken." It's still all too true.

Tom covers food and agricultural policy for Grist.

ANYTHING BUT SUSTAINABLE: TUNA FISHING KILLS UNINTENDED "BY-CATCH"

Four dirty secrets hiding in your tuna can

by Casson Trenor

19 Aug 2011 7:00 AM

Cross-posted from Sustainable Sushi.
Seafood isn't only sold in the seafood section. Americans buy a tremendous amount of our seafood from the shelves of our local grocer rather than from the freezers, including one particular item that we put in everything from sandwiches to casseroles to salads: tuna fish.
For decades, tuna was the most widely consumed seafood product in the United States. Although it has recently lost pole position to farmed shrimp, it is still massively popular, and even though it's in a can, it is still fish, and thus merits scrutiny in terms of sustainable practices -- or, in this case, its total lack thereof.
Here's the issue: Catching tuna in a manner that keeps the price hovering around $1-$2 per can is difficult. It's a challenging process for a number of reasons, not least of which is that most species of tuna are constantly on the move across the vastness of the open ocean. Chasing these schools around is a time- and resource-intensive process -- especially with oil prices on the perpetual upswing -- but the tuna industry has found a way to cut some pretty significant corners. Unfortunately, this has led to any number of nasty consequences, and those smiling bumblebees and luxuriating mermaids on the tuna cans at your neighborhood grocery store have done a great job covering them up ... until now.
The tuna industry's got a dirty little secret -- actually, it has four of them. And here they are.
A juvenile bigeye killed in a skipjack seine, and hundreds more under my feet.1. Fish aggregating devices
Fish aggregating devices (aka FADs) are floating objects that tuna vessels cast adrift in the open ocean. They are generally attached to a radio beacon and can relay their position back to a given tuna boat. FADs work because fish in the open ocean find random flotsam absolutely captivating. Small plants and polyps anchor themselves to the physical body of the FAD, small fish use it as a hiding place, and larger animals flock to it as a source of shade and as a fertile hunting ground. After a few weeks at sea, a FAD can develop an entire ecosystem around it -- which is wiped out entirely when the tuna boat returns and scoops the whole thing up in a seine net.
The problem here is that FADs don't just attract the target species of tuna (usually skipjack). They are similarly mesmerizing to sharks, billfish, and other animals -- most notably juvenile yellowfin and bigeye tuna -- that come swimming by wondering what all the fuss is about. By then, it's generally too late. FADs increase bycatch in the skipjack tuna industry by between 500 and 1,000 percent when compared to nets set on free-swimming schools (FAD-free seining.) To make matters worse, between 15 and 20 percent of the total catch of a FAD-associated skipjack seine is actually juvenile yellowfin and bigeye -- two species of tuna that are in serious trouble and cannot afford to have their young purloined before they ever have a chance to breed. The total content of bigeye and yellowfin in FAD-free skipjack seines is less than 1 percent.
I'll put this plainly -- if we don't stop using FADs, we will run out of yellowfin and bigeye tuna because we will kill all of the juveniles.
Rule No. 1 for sustainable canned tuna: When shopping for "light" tuna, buy pole-and-line or FAD-free seined skipjack.
A turtle caught and killed by a longline.2. Longlines
Cans of "white" tuna contain albacore, a temperate tuna species that is only popular in canned form in North America. Albacore isn't caught with purse seines as often as it is caught on longlines -- an equally destructive practice that incurs a tremendous amount of bycatch.
Longlines are just that -- long lines set by fishing vessels that stretch from buoy to buoy across the open ocean, sometimes for multiple miles at a stretch. Every few yards, a long lead ending in a baited hook dangles from the main line. When the ship circles back to reel in the longline and assess its catch, it contains far more than albacore tuna. This indiscriminate fishing method is one of the greatest killers of turtles (which get hooked nibbling on the bait, can't return to the surface to breathe, and drown), albatross and other seabirds (which dive on the glinting hooks thinking that they're fish and are subsequently snagged), and other non-targeted animals.
The total bycatch rate of this massively destructive operation is estimated to be somewhere just shy of 30 percent of the total take ... that means nearly one-third of the total global catch of the albacore fleet -- thousands upon thousands of tons per year -- is turtles, sharks, sea birds, and other casualties of the industry's callousness and greed.
Absolutely unacceptable.
Rule No. 2 for sustainable canned tuna: When shopping for "white" tuna, buy pole-and-line albacore.
Mortality in a seine net operation approaches 100 percent.3. Unregulated fishing on the high seas
Outside of the boundaries of a country's exclusive economic zone (EEZ), which stretches 200 miles into the ocean beyond the shores of any given state, there exists a lawless, oceanic "Wild West" known as the high seas. When it comes to fishing, most anything goes out there as there are no universally acknowledged enforcement bodies that can serve to protect our common resources.
Tuna vessels regularly park just shy of this 200 mile line, inside what are often referred to as the "high seas pockets" -- four areas of unregulated ocean that are fully encircled by the EEZs of any number of island states in the western and central Pacific that depend on tuna stocks for their economic livelihood. Tuna, of course, know nothing of international boundaries, and pass freely back and forth over these lines until they are netted up by a nearby predatory seiner. Since these vessels are operating in what are technically high seas areas, they have no rules to follow -- no quotas, no maximum limits, etc. -- and they don't have to pay dues or access fees to the countries that actually own and manage the resources. Activities like transshipping (transferring fish from one vessel to another to allow for longer fishing times and less resource expenditure) are common, which further reduces the abilities of these nearby states to manage their tuna stocks sustainably.
Rule No. 3 for sustainable canned tuna: Tuna should be caught in managed waters. Buy tuna from companies that refuse to fish in the high seas pockets.
4. Stolen fish, stolen future
Following on the above point, might tends to make right when there aren't any overarching laws offering protection to those involved. The tuna industry has been the scene of an infuriating amount of bullying over the past decades, mainly by larger, more wealthy nations -- countries like Taiwan, Spain, the United States -- that have ransacked the waters of the independent Pacific Island states. Countries like Kiribati and Tuvalu have virtually no resources aside from tuna, and without a modicum of international law and market support to enable them to draw a fair and honest living from it, the established international tuna barons -- companies like Thai Union (which owns the well-known U.S. brand Chicken of the Sea), Fong Chin Formosa, and Dong Won -- are able to pillage their waters with near impunity. Recently, a number of tuna-rich but cash-poor Pacific island states have banded together in an effort to take charge of their fisheries and to keep the tuna pirates out of their watery backyards. These states are known collectively as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), and they represent one of our best chances to foster a sustainable and equitable tuna industry that protects both the ocean's tuna populations, and the peoples that depend on them.
For more information about the PNA and their struggle to wrest control of their own resources back from outside forces, please take a moment and watch this video.
Rule No. 4 for sustainable canned tuna: Buy tuna from companies that support the PNA.

Casson Trenor is the author of Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time, designed to enable consumers concerned about environmental and health issues to dine with confidence at the sushi bar. He also owns and maintains Sustainable Sushi, a popular blog and reference website concentrating on sushi and ocean conservation.

NY TIMES A FEW DECADES BEHIND ON GMO'S: ( TRY SOME CURRENT RESEARCH!)

Why GMOs won’t save the world (despite what you read in The New York Times)

by Anna Lappe    20 Aug 2011 9:27 PM

With all due respect, Nina Federoff’s New York Times op-ed reads like it was written two decades ago, when the jury was still out about the potential of the biotech industry to reduce hunger, increase nutritional quality in foods, and decrease agriculture’s reliance on toxic chemicals and other expensive inputs that most of the world’s farmers can’t afford.

With more than 15 years of commercialized GMOs behind us, we know not to believe these promises any longer.

Around the world, from the Government Office for Science in the U.K. to the National Research Council in the United States to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N., there is consensus: In order to address the roots of hunger today and build a food system that will feed humanity into the future, we must invest in “sustainable intensification”—not expensive GMO technology that threatens biodiversity, has never proven its superiority, even in yields, and locks us into dependence on fossil fuels, fossil water, and agrochemicals.

By definition, sustainable intensification means producing abundant food while reducing agriculture’s negative impacts on the environment. Water pollution from pesticide run-off and soil degradation from synthetic fertilizer use are just two examples of the costs of industrial agriculture. And, mind you, nearly all of the GMO crops planted today rely on synthetic fertilizer and pesticides.

Sustainable farming has many other co-benefits as well, including improving the natural environment by increasing soil carbon content, protecting watersheds and biodiversity, and decreasing the human health risks from exposures to toxic chemicals. In its policymaker’s guide to sustainable intensification, the FAO states clearly that the “present paradigm” in agriculture—of which Federoff’s beloved GMOs play a starring role—“cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium.”

So while we hear from GMO proponents about the wonders of these crops, the proof is in the fields. According to the FAO, sustainable practices have helped to “reduce crops’ water needs by 30 percent and the energy costs of production by up to 60 percent.” In one of the largest studies [PDF] of ecological farming, in 57 countries, researchers found an average yield increase of 80 percent. In East African countries, yields shot up 128 percent.

What about the specific claims that GMOs confer much-desired benefits: nutritional improvements, drought resilience, or fewer pesticides?

A much-touted effort in Kenya to develop a genetically engineered virus-resistant sweet potato failed after 10 years, millions of dollars, and countless hours of effort. Not only did it fail, but researchers in Uganda [PDF] have developed varieties of sweet potatoes resistant to the same virus and with greater levels of beta carotene (aitamin A)—not with genetic engineering, but with conventional breeding.

Federoff boasts that GMOs reduce pesticide usage, but an analysis of 13 years of commercialized GMOs in the United States actually found a dramatic increase in the volume of herbicides used on these crops that swamped the relatively small reduction in insecticide use attributable to GMO corn and cotton during that same period. On the other hand, an FAO ecological farming program in six countries in West Africa helped farmers reduce chemical pesticide use as much as 92 percent while increasing their net value of production by as much as 61 percent.

Perhaps most gravely, Federoff’s message that GMOs are the key to addressing our planet’s food needs ignores the political and economic context of agricultural interventions.

What’s unique to sustainable interventions is that they build farmer and community capacity and strengthen social networks. “Social capital”—as development wonks would say—is created. In a study of sustainable farming projects involving 10 million farmers across the African continent, researchers found that adopting sustainable intensification techniques not only upped production significantly, but, more importantly, increased the overall wealth of farming communities, encouraged women’s participation and education, and built strong social bonds that have helped these communities strengthen their economies and continue to learn, develop, and adapt their farming practices.

In a world rocked with volatile markets, a volatile climate, and diminishing natural resources, we need to turn our attention to investing in the proven sustainable intensification techniques that create resilient communities, not to the still-hollow promises of GMO promoters.

Cross-posted from Civil Eats.

Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author, sustainable food advocate, and mom. The founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, her latest book is Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It. Anna is also the co-author of Hope's Edge, with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen, with Bryant Terry.