Jim Gerritsen: ORGANIC FOOD HERO!!!!

Maine Farmer the Face of Organic Growers’ Fight Against Monsanto

by Kathryn Olmstead
Published on Friday, December 9, 2011 by The Bangor Daily News (Maine)

I have wanted to catch up with Bridgewater organic farmer Jim Gerritsen ever since he was named in October to the 2011 list of 25 visionaries who are changing the world by the national magazine Utne Reader. When I finally succeeded last weekend, he was on his way to New York City to give a speech and participate in the Dec. 4 rally and “Farmers’ March” to Zuccotti Park organized by the Food Justice Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Photo courtesy Jim Gerritsen Jim Gerritsen of Bridgewater made his first trip to New York City to address the Dec. 4 “Farmers’ March” to Zuccotti Park organized by the Food Justice Committee of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Gerritsen, 56, who with his wife, Megan, and their family has operated Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater since 1976, is on a mission that has put him in the national — and international — spotlight. As president of Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the trade organization for the organic seed industry, he is the lead plaintiff in a suit to protect growers and consumers of organic foods.

The defendant is Monsanto Corp., world leader in production of genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, intended to increase yields of herbicide-resistant crops — crops that can withstand sprays such as Roundup that kill the weeds around them. Airborne or insect-borne pollen from these transgenic, or gene-spliced, crops can do irrevocable damage to organic seed crops. But loss of crops is only the beginning.

“Farmers lose not only the value of the organic crop, but we are also open to patent infringement lawsuits,” Gerritsen said “Monsanto can contend that the (organic) farm is in possession of a (patented) Monsanto product.”

To date, Monsanto has sued 90 American farmers for patent infringement, receiving an estimated $15 million for judgments in its favor, according to the Center for Food Safety. Many cases have been settled out of court with farmers bound to confidentiality. Monsanto dominates the sale of seed stocks worldwide, especially corn, soybeans and cotton, and sends private investigators to farms suspected of replanting saved seed.

Hence, the legal action, OSGATA v. Monsanto, has captured the attention of international media, but mostly the alternative press in the United States — until Monday, that is, when Gerritsen’s role in Sunday’s Farmers’ March was reported in the New York Times under the headline: “A Maine Farmer Speaks to Wall Street.”

Gerritsen heads OSGATA, based in Montrose, Colo., which is leading 83 plaintiffs in the case against Monsanto. The individual farmers, seed companies and agricultural organizations that have signed onto the case represent about 300,000 members nationwide.

“Monsanto is trying to achieve seed control based on aggressive assertion of patent infringement,” Gerritsen said, explaining that the farmers’ lawsuit has two goals: to protect organic farmers against patent infringement lawsuits and to challenge the validity of patents issued to Monsanto.

“Organic farming is predicated on the concept of crops free of GMO content,” he said, noting the irony of a suit against a farmer by the company that has destroyed that farmer’s crop.

“If organic seed is contaminated, there is no way to grow nongenetically modified crops,” he said. “The outcome will be either seed controlled directly by Monsanto or contaminated by Monsanto.”

If the 83 plaintiffs led by OSGATA are successful, Monsanto would be forced by the court not to sue farmers whose crops are contaminated by the corporation’s product. When lawyers for the farm groups — working on a pro bono basis — requested such a guarantee, Monsanto refused.

“They are reserving the option to go after those farmers,” Gerritsen said, adding that Monsanto filed a motion to dismiss the case last July. “We need to get the court to protect farmers from invasion, trespassing and patent infringement. We are anxious to get into court.”

If the plaintiffs achieve their second goal, the court will agree that the U.S. Patent Office erred in granting Monsanto patents for crops that do not fulfill the “social utility” standard, which requires that a new invention will result in some “social good.”

Gerritsen faults not only the U.S. Patent Office, but also the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which accepted Monsanto’s claim that GMO products are “substantially equivalent” to traditional seed and need not be labeled. Thus, consumers can’t know what foods have been grown using GMO technology.

“They can’t have it both ways,” he said, questioning the awards of patents for products because they are new, which then evade labeling because they are not new.

“President Obama promised mandatory labeling of genetically modified products and we must hold him to that,” Gerritsen said, acknowledging a possible challenge: The current deputy commissioner of the FDA, which regulates labeling, Michael R. Taylor, is a former vice president of Monsanto.

Gerritsen said the plaintiffs hope the case will go to trial by late winter or early spring. At this point, they are still awaiting a ruling on the motion to dismiss.

“Once we win the case, one can imagine Monsanto will want to appeal,” he said, predicting a process that could take three to five years and end up in the Supreme Court, where they might face another challenge: Justice Clarence Thomas served as an attorney for Monsanto from 1976-1979 and has failed to recuse himself from other cases involving the corporation.

Meanwhile, Gerritsen is encouraged by the effectiveness of the Occupy Wall Street movement in putting a spotlight on inequity. “It is the new conscience of America,” he said. That’s why he made his first trip to New York City to let the Occupy protesters know that farmers are behind them.

“I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn’t understand the message of Occupy Wall Street,” he told New York Times reporter Julia Moskin. “We have fifth- and sixth-generation farmers up where I live being pushed out of business, when all they want to do is grow good food. And if it goes on like this, all we’re going to have to eat in this country is unregulated, imported, genetically modified produce. That’s not a healthy food system.”

For more information, visit fooddemocracynow.org, pubpat.org, osgata.org, foodintegritynow.org, woodprairiefarm.com and www.i-sis.org.uk/MonsantovsFarmers.

© 2011 The Bangor Daily News

Source:    http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/12/09-1

FRACKING FINDINGS OF THE EPA

EPA Releases Draft Findings of Pavillion, Wyoming Ground Water Investigation for Public Comment and Independent Scientific Review

Release Date: 12/08/2011
Contact Information: EPA HQ: Larry Jackson, 202-564-0236, jackson.larry@epa.gov; EPA Region 8: Richard Mylott, 303-312-6654, mylott.richard@epa.gov

(Denver, Colo. –December 8, 2011) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today released a draft analysis of data from its Pavillion, Wyoming ground water investigation. At the request of Pavillion residents, EPA began investigating water quality concerns in private drinking water wells three years ago. Since that time, in conjunction with the state of Wyoming, the local community, and the owner of the gas field, Encana, EPA has been working to assess ground water quality and identify potential sources of contamination.

EPA constructed two deep monitoring wells to sample water in the aquifer. The draft report indicates that ground water in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing. EPA also re-tested private and public drinking water wells in the community. The samples were consistent with chemicals identified in earlier EPA results released in 2010 and are generally below established health and safety standards. To ensure a transparent and rigorous analysis, EPA is releasing these findings for public comment and will submit them to an independent scientific review panel. The draft findings announced today are specific to Pavillion, where the fracturing is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells – production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country.

Natural gas plays a key role in our nation’s clean energy future and the Obama Administration is committed to ensuring that the development of this vital resource occurs safely and responsibly. At the direction of Congress, and separate from this ground water investigation, EPA has begun a national study on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.

“EPA’s highest priority remains ensuring that Pavillion residents have access to safe drinking water,” said Jim Martin, EPA’s regional administrator in Denver. “We will continue to work cooperatively with the State, Tribes, Encana and the community to secure long-term drinking water solutions. We look forward to having these findings in the draft report informed by a transparent and public review process. In consultation with the Tribes, EPA will also work with the State on additional investigation of the Pavillion field.”

Findings in the Two Deep Water Monitoring Wells:
EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the Agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels. Given the area’s complex geology and the proximity of drinking water wells to ground water contamination, EPA is concerned about the movement of contaminants within the aquifer and the safety of drinking water wells over time.

Findings in the Private and Public Drinking Water Wells:
EPA also updated its sampling of Pavillion area drinking water wells. Chemicals detected in the most recent samples are consistent with those identified in earlier EPA samples and include methane, other petroleum hydrocarbons and other chemical compounds. The presence of these compounds is consistent with migration from areas of gas production. Detections in drinking water wells are generally below established health and safety standards. In the fall of 2010, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reviewed EPA’s data and recommended that affected well owners take several precautionary steps, including using alternate sources of water for drinking and cooking, and ventilation when showering. Those recommendations remain in place and Encana has been funding the provision of alternate water supplies.

Before issuing the draft report, EPA shared preliminary data with, and obtained feedback from, Wyoming state officials, Encana, Tribes and Pavillion residents. The draft report is available for a 45 day public comment period and a 30 day peer-review process led by a panel of independent scientists.

For more information on EPA's Pavillion groundwater investigation, visit: http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/index.html

THEY'RE POISONING THE ENTIRE PLANET, STUPID!!!!

E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas

By KIRK JOHNSON

Published: December 8, 2011

DENVER — Chemicals used to hydraulically fracture rocks in drilling for natural gas in a remote valley in central Wyoming are the likely cause of contaminated local water supplies, federal regulators said Thursday.

The draft report, after a three-year study by the Environmental Protection Agency, represents a new scientific and political skirmish line over whether fracking, as it is more commonly known, poses a threat in the dozens of places around the nation where it is now being used to extract previously unreachable energy resources locked within rock.
The study, which was prompted by complaints from local residents about the smell and taste of their water, stressed that local conditions were unusual at the site, called the Pavillion field, in that the gas wells were far shallower than in many other drilling areas around the country. The shallow depth means that natural gas itself can seep upward naturally through the rock, and perhaps into aquifers.
But the suite of chemicals found in two test wells drilled at the site, the report said, could not be explained entirely by natural processes. The agency’s analysis of samples taken from deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicated the presence of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above standards in the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act standards, and high methane levels.
Also complicating the inquiry is the Pavillion field’s long history. The oldest wells there were drilled 40 years ago or more, and chemicals that might have been used were not required to be listed or reported to anyone.
The energy industry has long stressed that fracking and water contamination have never been definitively linked.
“When considered together with other lines of evidence, the data indicates likely impact to ground water that can be explained by hydraulic fracturing,” the draft study said. And perhaps just as crucially, the evidence also suggested that seepage of natural gas itself had increased around the drilling sites. Natural gas is often mixed with other elements, including methane, which can taint water supplies.
“Data suggest that enhanced migration of gas has occurred within ground water at depths used for domestic water supply,” said the draft study, which will now be sent for scientific peer review and public comment.
A spokesman for Encana Oil & Gas (USA), which bought the Pavillion field in 2004 and drilled some of the approximately 169 wells there, said the E.P.A.’s science was inconclusive. Encana’s parent company is based in Calgary.
“What we have here is not a conclusion, but a probability — and based on the facts, not a good probability,” said Doug Hock, the company’s spokesman. He said that enhanced migration of gas as a result of drilling was unlikely in the Pavillion field, since drilling had reduced pressure in the underlying rock, thus reducing forces that can lead to gas seepage. And finding methane and benzene in two deep test wells drilled for the study, he said, is what you would expect in a gas-rich zone.
“Encana didn’t put those there, nature did,” he said.
The governor of Wyoming, Matt Mead, also said in a statement that the E.P.A.’s conclusions were “scientifically questionable” and not based on enough data. Mr. Mead, a Republican, called for more testing by the E.P.A., in conjunction with a state group of residents, state and federal agencies, and Indian tribes already at work looking into questions about Pavillion’s water supply.
Wyoming, which is dependent on oil and gas drilling, along with coal mining, as anchors of its economy, will also be among the peer reviewers of the E.P.A.’s draft, the governor’s statement said. The chairman of a local Pavillion residents’ group — about 200 people, mostly involved in farming and ranching, who live in proximity to the drilling sites — expressed gratitude to the E.P.A., and perhaps a bit of veiled doubt about the zeal of local and state regulators.
“This investigation proves the importance of having a federal agency that can protect people and the environment,” said John Fenton, the chairman of Pavillion Area Concerned Citizens. “Those of us who suffer the impacts from the unchecked development in our community are extremely happy the contamination source is being identified.”
Gas drilling, using both hydraulic fracturing to release gas and horizontal drilling techniques that can snake underground far from the actual bore holes, is now moving into closer proximity to American population centers than in the past.
From the suburbs of Denver to Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, natural gas reserves, known about but previously unreachable for economic and technological reasons, are being tapped, and anxieties about the hydraulic injection process and its consequences are growing. Wyoming, in 2010, became one of the first states to require petroleum companies or their contractors to disclose the ingredients in their specially formulated fracking fluids. The E.P.A. has also begun a national study on the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 9, 2011, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas.

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/epa-says-hydraulic-fracturing-likely-marred-wyoming-water.html?_r=2&hpw

OCCUPY OUR FOOD SUPPLY: PLANET EARTH!!

Put the Fat Cats on a Diet: Stop Buying Tainted Food From Billion Dollar Corporations  

• By Ronnie Cummins
  Organic Consumers Association, December 7, 2011
  
  

"I have not spoken to one farmer who doesn't understand the message of Occupy Wall Street, the message that so many people keep saying is nebulous. It's very clear. Because of business and corporate participation in agriculture, farmers are losing their livelihoods   And if it goes on like this, all we're going to have to eat in this country is unregulated, imported, genetically modified produce. That's not a healthy food system." - Jim Gerritsen, a Maine organic farmer.

"A Farmer Speaks to Wall Street," The New York Times, December 5, 2011 For the first time since the late-1960s, the American elite and their indentured politicians are losing legitimacy, part of a deepening global crisis that is simultaneously political, economic, and ecological. In the powerful wake of the 2011 Arab Spring, the European Summer of the Indignados (the indignant ones), and the Occupy Wall Street movement, rebellion is in the air. As protestors in New York put it "The one thing we all have in common is that we are the 99% that will no longer tolerate the greed and corruption of the 1%."

Across the U.S. and planet, the corporate elite is under attack. An emerging army of indignados are starting to act on the premise that minor policy adjustments in corporate boardrooms, or a cosmetic reshuffling of faces in Washington, are not enough. What the Earth and the 99% underclass need, including consumers and farmers, is a grassroots revolution - a fundamental transfer of power from the corporatocracy to the people. What is required in the face of economic meltdown, deteriorating public health, and climate disaster is a full-scale mutiny on the USA Titanic, a radical change of course before the 21st Century suicide economy of Wall Street and Corporate America puts an end to the human species and life on Earth.

Perhaps the first order of business on the USA Titanic is to stop stuffing money in the pockets of the greedy 1% who are steering us toward disaster. This is why a million consumers, and thousands of community organizations, unions, and churches, have started to strike back against the "banksters," staging sit-ins and protests and moving billions of dollars out of Wall Street and the big banks into community credit unions and local banks. As the internet campaign MoveYourMoneyProject.org proclaims, it's time to "invest in Main Street, not Wall Street, and to lend a hand to local businesses."

Following a similar trajectory a debtors' campaign is gathering steam among students and ex-students to stop paying their onerous student loans, which now total one trillion dollars, and demand the implementation of a federal program of free college tuition and jobs for youth and the unemployed.  Approximately 11% of student loans in the U.S. are already in arrears. Similarly, millions of Americans are turning away from Big Pharma's drug pushers and embracing holistic, preventive medicine.

The time has come for America's 300 million food consumers to join the mutiny. Our trillion dollar food and farming System has been corrupted and manipulated by Wall Street, Corporate Agribusiness, and Big Food Inc. into what can only be described as a weapon of mass destruction, severely damaging public health, the environment, and the climate; torturing animals in filthy, disease-ridden factory farms; exploiting immigrant farm workers and food industry workers; and destroying the livelihoods of small farmers and rural communities.

As the first official Declaration of Occupy Wall Street explained on September 29: "They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization."

Food Democracy or Corporatocracy?

Did you ever vote to allow corporate agribusiness to spray a billion pounds of toxic pesticides, and dump 24 billion pounds of climate-destabilizing chemical fertilizers on U.S. crops and farmlands every year? Did you give the OK for factory farms, so-called Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), to feed billions of hapless creatures massive amounts of genetically engineered grain, antibiotics, hormones, steroids, blood, manure, and slaughterhouse waste? Did you give Monsanto, Dow, and Dupont permission to "modify" so-called "conventional" supermarket, school cafeteria, and restaurant food with genetically engineered bacteria, viruses, foreign DNA, and antibiotic-resistant genes? Did you sign a permission slip for the USDA or your local school system to feed students, including your children, greasy, fatty, unhealthy, chemical food in the cafeteria?

If we intend to break the stranglehold of the corporatocracy over the economy, including what and how American farmers grow and what most people eat, it's time to stand up. If we believe that a healthy, organic, and equitable system of food and farming are essential to our health and the health of the planet, we need to think twice before we pull out our wallets at the supermarket or sit down for a meal in a restaurant or a fast food joint. Do you want to be supersized by Monsanto, Wal-Mart, or McDonald's, and allow biotechnocrats, factory farms, and chemical food manufacturers to dictate your food choices?

It's time to vote with our food dollars at the grocery check-out aisle. It's time to rein in elected public officials who take money from corporate agribusiness and Monsanto in the voting booth. It's time for the Great Boycott of Big Food Inc., and a culinary strike against all of their chemical, genetically engineered, sugar, and fat-laden processed foods and beverages. It's time to put the fat cats on a diet, shrink the profits of Wall Street,  and drastically reduce the collateral damage of chemical agribusiness, Big Box food stores, and billion dollar junk food restaurants. It's time to Occupy our food chains, kitchens, lunchrooms, and school cafeterias, and transform our $30 billion local and organic food and farming system from being the niche alternative to being the norm in the nation's trillion dollar food economy.

The good news is that most people already know that chemical food is bad for them, bad for their children, and bad for the environment. No one wants to eat Big Ag or Big Biotech's pesticide residues, antibiotics, hormones, or feces-tainted meat. No one is enthusiastic about food that has been irradiated, genetically engineered, or grown with municipal sewage sludge. A recent national poll found that 54% of Americans prefer organic food, especially locally-produced organic food. Millions say they'd buy more organic products if only they had a decent paying job, or less mortgage, medical, or school loan debt. That's partly why millions of us are becoming backyard organic gardeners, or small "market farmers" growing our own. That's why a new generation of food lovers and health addicts are swearing off corporate food and marching to the kitchen, cooking from scratch and celebrating the joys of home-cooked fare with our friends and our families.

Millions of us are starting to break the chains of corporate control in our lives, by supporting organic, fair made, and locally produced products and businesses.

Tired of the quality and range of our daily essentials being dictated and degraded by a powerful network of Brand Name Bullies and Big Box chains? Tired of profit-at-any cost, Wall Street-traded corporations "outsourcing" from sweatshops in the factories and fields, cutting corners on public health and the environment, and sucking up billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies? " Basta," enough already.

Make your pledge today to put the fat cats on a diet. Buy organic and fair made/fair trade products, preferably locally produced. Boycott factory farmed meat and animal products. Eat more raw food, dairy, and vegetables. And if you can, start growing some of your own, even if for now, your "garden" only consists of potted herbs or tomatoes on your window sill or a sprout-making machine in your kitchen. And finally, keep in mind that where you buy a healthy, sustainable product has a very large impact on the economy, the environment, and climate stability. Do you really want to buy your organic food or your fair trade coffee from a multi-billion dollar corporation like Wal-Mart, Safeway, Starbucks, or even Whole Foods Market and Trader Joes?


Ronnie Cummins is the co-founder and National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.
Source:  http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_24448.cfm