NATIONAL OUTRAGE: OBAMA - FULFILL YOUR CAMPAIGN PROMISE TO LABEL GE/GMO FOODS

Published on Friday, January 17, 2014 by Center for Food Safety

Calls Intensify for Obama to Fulfill Campaign Promise on GMO Labeling
Members of congress, farmers and businesses await response from president

by Elizabeth Kucinich

When polled, 93 percent of the American public said they supported the labeling of genetically engineered food and ingredients. Sixty-four countries already have GMO labeling standards. (Image: Center for Food Safety)A morning press conference offered a beacon of hope for farmers and activists on Capitol Hill today as members of Congress and 200 organizations demanded Obama fulfill his 2007 campaign promises to label GMOs.

The appeal had added urgency after the USDA recently published its initial recommendation toderegulate Dow Chemical's 2,4-D resistant corn and soybeans. Perhaps the most pernicious GMO crops yet, 2,4-D crops threaten to severely increase the spraying of 2,4-D, a component in the Vietnam era defoliant, "Agent Orange."

"Right-to-Know Act" sponsor, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR), food and nutrition champion Rep. Rosa Delauro (D-CT), organic farmer Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), and Rep. Ann Kuster (D-NH) gave remarks together with Center for Food Safety, Environmental Working Group and organic food industry leader, Gary Hirschberg of Stonyfield Farms.

"We need the federal government to step up. People across the U.S deserve labeling," said Rep. Kuster. "It's all about the consumer's right to know," Rep. DeFazio explained. "I'm fed up with voluntary initiatives. We need mandatory labeling," added Rep. DeLauro.
Although the FDA doesn't need congressional authorization in order to mandate a federal labeling standard for GMOs, federal lawmakers have become increasingly vocal on the issue. Following former Congressman Dennis Kucinich's lead, Rep. DeFazio and Senator Boxer (D-CA) last year introduced bipartisan companion labeling bills, and Senate committees have voted twice in favor of labeling genetically engineered fish.

When polled, 93 percent of the American public said they supported the labeling of genetically engineered food and ingredients. Sixty-four countries already have GMO labeling standards.

Last year, 26 states considered a labeling bill of some form or another. That number is expected to grow in 2014. According to Center for Food Safety's Colin O'Neil, food manufacturers and the pesticide industry spent nearly $70 million fighting ballot initiatives in just two of those states, California and Washington State.

Given both the cost and the urgency of regulation, the debate has shifted to Washington, D.C., with1.4 million people asking the FDA to implement mandatory GMO labeling. According to advocates at the press conference today, this is the second largest number of signatures on any issue in FDA's history. The highest -- not to deregulate genetically engineered (GMO) salmon!

And it's not just consumers. Weed and soil scientists are giving grave warnings as to the effects of GMO crops on the escalating use of chemicals in agriculture. With the majority of GMO crops designed to withstand pesticide applications, use of the chemicals has skyrocketed.

"This isn't complicated," said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group, "this is a question of whether the government will stand with a few chemical companies, or the 93 percent of the American people who want labeling."

There is ample precedent. As well as basic ingredients, labels also disclose country of origin, irradiation and even, orange juice 'made from concentrate'. FDA's labeling requirements are not based on solely on safety concerns and nutrition, a common myth propped up by the food and chemical industries. A federal labeling standard would give consumers the opportunity to make their own choices about the foods they bring home to their families.

"It's simple. I'm a farmer. I know what I grow. I know what I put on the food I grow. Processors and manufacturers know the same. They know what is in your food. They label ingredients. They can label GMOs," said Rep. Pingree.

"Transparency is essential for public trust," stated Obama in 2007. Now perhaps would be a good time to come true on his pledge?

The White House has not yet responded.

© 2014 Center for Food Safety
SOURCE:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/17-3




Elizabeth Kucinich is policy director for the Center for Food Safety in Washington

NEW FRANKENSEED FACTORY?

Stop the Monsanto frankenseed factory

1,250,000
1,032,907

1,032,907 have signed. Let's get to 1,250,000
Posted: 16 December 2013
Monsanto's extending its power over the globe, with a massive new frankenseed factory in Argentina. Sofía Gatica and local neighbours have spoken out, and she has received death threats and a brutal beating. The threat is urgent -- let's stand with them and stop the plant.

Monsanto manufactures the genetically modified seeds that, when combined with toxic pesticides, create the devastating 'monocultures' -- where nothing grows but a single plant -- that increasingly cover our planet. Now they plan to build one of the world's largest GM seed factories in Malvinas.

Sofía, worried about health risks from the plant, has joined the protests, backed by nearly 70% of the area's residents. If 1 million of us join the people of Malvinas in the next 3 days, we can raise the profile of the issue in local media, feature the petition in an ad campaign, and push the unpopular Argentine President to shut down the plant and roll back th

Source:  e spread of Monsanto's toxic agriculture.  Source:  https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_monsanto_in_argentina_global_/?fp   To sign petition

Tell Your Friends

ARE GE (GMO) FOODS SAFE?

MAINE JOINS THE STATE GE FOOD LABELING SIGNATORS LIST

Maine’s loony Tea Party governor signs GMO-labeling law

By John Upton

MaineDOE

Maine on Thursday became the second state in the nation to require food manufacturers to put labels on products containing genetically modified ingredients — sort of.
Gov. Paul LePage (R) signed “An Act To Protect Maine Food Consumers’ Right To Know about Genetically Engineered Food,” which mandates the following:

any food or seed stock offered for retail sale that is genetically engineered must be accompanied by a conspicuous disclosure that states “Produced with Genetic Engineering.”

The law would also prevent any products containing GMOs from being labeled as “natural.” That should seem obvious, but big food manufacturers are currently pressuring the federal government to allow them to use such labels on genetically modified foods.

But Maine’s new law has a catch, similar to the catch in a GMO-labeling law passed in Connecticut last month. The Maine law won’t take effect until at least five nearby states adopt similar rules. That’s because the states are unwilling to go it alone in the courts against Big Ag and Big Food. The Kennebec Journal reports:

Proponents of the bill said the provision would quell concerns about an almost-certain lawsuit by industry groups and Monsanto, which vowed to challenge the laws in Maine and Connecticut on the basis that they violate the free speech and interstate commerce provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Maine Attorney General Janet Mills told lawmakers last year that the bill was almost certain to face a legal challenge, and said she could not guarantee that her office could defend its constitutionality.

The Journal reports that the bill “brought together such factions as libertarian Republicans and liberal Democrats, creating strong support.”
It did more than that: It got approval from “America’s craziest governor,” as Politico called LePage this week, “a man who can make even the most hot-headed conservative talk radio hosts seem reasonable.”
We’ll let you decide whether that’s a good or bad omen for the GMO-labeling movement.

Source

• LePage signs bill to label genetically modified food, Kennebec Journal

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

HUMAN AND HOSPITAL WASTE, "BIOSOLIDS": ARE THESE USED TO GROW YOUR FOOD?

Published on Wednesday, January 15, 2014 by PRWatch.org

Under Pressure, Whole Foods Agrees to Stop Selling Produce Grown in Sewage Sludge

by Rebekah Wilce

The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) broke the story that the $12.9 billion-a-year natural and organic foods retailer Whole Foods Market had a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to "conventional" -- or non-organic -- produce being grown in fields spread with sewage sludge, euphemistically called "biosolids." Certified organic produce cannot be fertilized with sewage sludge, which is the industrial and hospital waste and human excrement flushed down the drains and later -- in some cases -- spread on some crops.
Since this story broke, nearly 8,000 activists and PRWatch readers have sent emails to Whole Foods executives asking the company to require its suppliers to disclose this information and to label produce grown in sewage sludge so that customers can make informed decisions.
Mario Ciasulli, a semi-retired engineer and home cook living in North Carolina whom CMD profiled in December 2012, blew the whistle on Whole Foods' don't-ask, don't-tell policy. As soon as he found out that shopping at Whole Foods was no protection against this potential contamination unless he could afford to buy only certified organic produce, he worked extensively to engage Whole Foods on this issue. He has insisted that management address his concerns about potential contamination of non-organic produce, price barriers to organic produce for those who are concerned, and the difficulty of finding out what non-organic produce may have been grown in soil fertilized with sewage sludge without labeling and accountability.
In late 2013, Whole Foods announced a new set of standards for the fresh produce and flowers it sells. Sewage sludge was not mentioned in the announcement, but Ciasulli received word from the company that "[p]rohibiting the use of biosolids will be part of our core requirements. All of our suppliers will be compliant with the core requirements by the time we roll out the program." A follow-up email to Ciasulli indicated, "This initial release was meant to be high-level. There are far too many nuances to include on a press release."
This month, Whole Foods Market spokesperson Kate Lowery confirmed to CMD that the new standards will eventually prohibit the use of "biosolids."
Sewage sludge is created by all of the human waste flushed down the toilet and sinks -- which includes all the pharmaceutical residues from all the prescriptions and over-the-counter drugs taken by the men, women, and children in the city using the sewage system -- and all the material corporations flush down the drain, which can include industrial materials like solvents and other chemicals, plus medical waste. The water is removed from the sludge, and it is heated to kill certain bacteria, but the heating of the sewage sludge does not remove dissolved metals like silver, flame retardants (which California recently listed as a carcinogen, or cancer-causing agent), and other chemicals that remain in the sewage sludge sprayed on the fields where some "conventional" food crops are grown.
In addition to flame retardants and metals, sewage sludge has been shown to contain toxic substances and other contaminants such as endocrine disruptors, pharmaceutical residues, phthalates, industrial solvents, resistant pathogens, and perfluorinated compounds. Some of these contaminants can "bioaccumulate" in plants grown in sludge-contaminated soil and remain as residue on vegetables in contact with the soil.
These plants are then eaten by children and adults.
Whole Foods Market's press release states, the chain "will present customers with a three-tier rating system and begin displaying ratings of 'good,' 'better' and 'best' throughout produce and floral departments. With the help of sustainable agriculture experts and with considerable input from suppliers, Whole Foods Market developed a science-based index to measure performance on important sustainable farming topics, including:

• Pest management, including prohibited and restricted pesticides
• Farmworker welfare
• Pollinator protection
• Water conservation and protection
• Soil health
• Ecosystems
• Biodiversity
• Waste, recycling and packaging
• Energy
• Climate"

Whole Food's prohibition against produce grown in fields spread with sewage sludge is a major victory for consumers, CMD readers who contacted Whole Foods, and particularly the tenacious Ciasulli, who illustrates the positive change that one determined person can make.
"I am encouraged that Whole Foods has made the commitment to ban biosolids in their produce in 2014, and that the company will require supporting documentation from their suppliers," Ciasulli told CMD. "We expect Whole Foods to follow through in a real and meaningful way."
You can thank Whole Foods for listening to Mario and other concerned customers, ask Whole Foods to make this announcement public, and tell the company that you’ll be watching to see that these changes are made HERE.

© 2014 Center Media & Democracy

Rebekah Wilce is a farmer with a degree in writing from the University of Arizona. She researches and reports for CMD and milks cows at a local farm. She is the lead writer for CMD's Food Rights Network.

SOURCE:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/15-3

ANTIBIOTIC OVERLOAD - THEY'RE EVERYWHERE

Published on Wednesday, January 15, 2014 by Creators.com

What if Antibiotics no Longer Work?

by Jim Hightower

For decades, corporate lobbying and regulatory meekness have allowed a chemical menace to spread like wildfire, says Hightower. (File)Have you had your daily minimum requirement of triclosan today? How about your dosage of triclocarban?
Chances are you have, but don't know it. These two are antimicrobial chemicals, which might sound like a good thing — except that they disrupt the human body's normal regulatory processes. Animal studies show, for example, that these triclos can be linked to the scrambling of hormones in children, disruption of puberty and of the reproductive system, decreases in thyroid hormone levels that affect brain development and other serious health problems.
Yet, corporations have slipped them into all sorts of consumer products, pushing them with a blitz of advertising that claims the antibacterial ingredients prevent the spread of infections. The two chemicals were originally meant for use by surgeons to cleanse their hands before operations, but that tiny application has now proliferated like a plague, constantly exposing practically everyone to small amounts here, there and everywhere, adding up to dangerous mega-doses.
"Aside from the direct health damage this is causing, the reckless spread of (and profiteering from) antibacterial products is also leading to an even worse nightmare: the stronger, more aggressive bacteria that are immune to — get this — antibacterial products."
Triclosan and triclocarban were first mixed into soaps, but then — BOOM! — brand-name corporations went wild, putting these hormone disrupters into about 2,000 products, including toothpaste, mouthwashes, fabrics and (most astonishingly) even into baby pacifiers! Today, use of the chemicals is so prevalent that they can be found in the urine of three-fourths of Americans. They also accumulate in groundwater and soil, so they saturate our environment and eventually ourselves — one study found them in the breast milk of 97 percent of women tested.
For decades, corporate lobbying and regulatory meekness has let this chemical menace spread. Aside from the direct health damage this is causing, the reckless spread of (and profiteering from) antibacterial products is also leading to an even worse nightmare: the stronger, more aggressive bacteria that are immune to — get this — antibacterial products.
Oh, the irony!
Most ominously, this nightmare is currently ripping through our medical care system in the U.S. and around the globe.
Antibiotic medicines, long hailed as miracle drugs for their ability to battle infections and save lives — are turning out to be too much of a good thing.
Two factors are at work here. First, infectious bacteria themselves (one of the earliest forms of life on Earth) are miracles in their own right, with a stunning ability to outsmart the antibiotic drugs through rapid evolution. Second is the rather dull inclination of us supposedly superior humans to massively overuse and misuse antibiotic medicines. Every time we take an antibiotic to kill bad bacteria infecting our bodies, a few of the infectious germs are naturally resistant to the drug, so they survive, multiply and become a colony of Superbugs that antibiotics can't touch.
Multiply this colony by the jillions of doses prescribed for everything from deadly staph infections to the common cold, and we get the "antibiotic paradox": The more we use them, the less effective they become, for they're creating a spreading epidemic of immune Superbugs.
A big cause of this is the push by drug companies to get patients and doctors to reach for antibiotics as a cure-all. For example, millions of doses a year are prescribed for children and adults who have common colds, flu, sore throats, etc. Nearly all these infections are caused by viruses — which cannot (repeat: CANNOT) be cured with antibiotics. Taking an antibiotic for a cold is as useless as taking a heart drug for heartburn. The antibiotics will do nothing for your cold, but will help establish drug-resistant Superbugs in your body. That's not a smart tradeoff.
In fact, it's incomprehensively stupid. These are invaluable medicines we need for serious, life-threatening illnesses, but squandering them on sore throats has already brought us to the brink of Superbugs that are resistant to everything. That's the nightmare of all nightmares.

© 2014 Creators

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
Source:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/15-4

January 16, 2014: PRESS GE FOOD LABELING - OBAMA CONFERENCE

MEDIA ADVISORY   

For Immediate Release

Contacts:

Sara Sciammacco, Ssciammacco@ewg.org

Abigail Seiler, ASeiler@CenterforFoodSafety.org

Lawmakers, Food Companies, Advocates To Urge President Obama to Require GE Labeling

Washington D.C. – Lawmakers, food companies, non-profit organizations, and advocates will hold a press conference on Thursday (Jan. 16) for accredited journalists to urge President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to require manufacturers to label food products that contain genetically engineered ingredients.

What: Press conference for accredited journalists to call on President Obama to require GE labeling.
When: 9:30 a.m. EST Thursday Jan. 16, 2014
Where: Cannon House Office Building, Room 421

Who:

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH)
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME)
Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm
Scott Faber, Environmental Working Group and Just Label It
Colin O’Neil, Center for Food Safety


Please RSVP Ssciammacco@ewg.org or ASeiler@CenterforFoodSafety.org if you plan to attend.
Sara Sciammacco
Environmental Working Group Director of Communications
ssciammacco@ewg.org
(202) 939-9122

Follow me on Twitter: @EWGFoodNews

DRYEST 100 YEARS - CALIFORNIA FOOD CROP LOSSES SOAR

Published on Tuesday, January 14, 2014 by Common Dreams

Major California Drought Could Spell 'Catastrophe' for Nation's Food Supply

'Possibly hundreds of thousands of acres of land will go fallow' in California

- Jacob Chamberlain, staff writer

(U.S. Drought Monitor)A major and unyielding drought in California is causing concern in the nation's "food basket," as farmers there say the U.S. food supply could be hit hard if the conditions in their state don't rapidly improve, Al Jazeera America reports Tuesday.
"This is the driest year in 100 years,” grower Joe Del Bosque told Al Jazeera, expressing concern that the hundreds of workers he employs for each year's harvest could be without a job this season.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 2013 was the driest on record for most areas of California, "smashing previous record dry years" across the state, including regions where approximately half the fruits, vegetables and nuts in the U.S. are grown.
Those conditions have not relented as 2014 begins with most of the state experiencing official 'severe' or 'extreme drought' conditions.
And as Al Jazeera reports, reservoirs, which store water that flows from the snow pack in the Sierra Nevada mountains, are at less than 50 percent capacity—20 percent below average for this time of year.
“That’s rather dismal,” said Nancy Vogel, spokeswoman for the California Department of Water Resources. “If we don’t get big storms to build up that snow pack, we can’t expect much in reservoirs.”
Additionally, earlier this month firefighters were forced to Northern California to battle wildfires that were unprecedented for the time of year, and officials are concerned more fires could be on the way.
Fire experts in the state are worried, The San Francisco Chronicle reported earlier this month, "because January is a time of year when the northern reaches of the state normally are too wet to ignite."
"It's unprecedented for us to do this in January," said Battalion Chief Mike Giannini, whose Marin County Fire Department is one of the first to be called upon to send aid north.
"We've sent crews this early in the year in the past to Southern California, because their fire season never seems to end," Giannini said. "But not up there. Not to places like Humboldt, which has coastal, high-humidity, forested types of conditions we would normally equate with low fire danger."
All of these conditions, particularly those in mid-to-nothern California, where a large percentage of U.S. food is produced, have implications far beyond the state. As the Al Jazeera report continues:

The drought’s effects will ripple far beyond the fields. Consumers can expect tighter supplies and higher prices for some fruits and vegetables by summer. And farm suppliers will feel the pinch.

“We’re in the middle of what potentially is looking like a huge catastrophe,” said Ryan Jacobsen, chief executive of the Fresno County Farm Bureau. “We’re looking at some very harsh realities, as far as water allocations.”
“Possibly hundreds of thousands of acres of land will go fallow,” Jacobsen said.

_______________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Source:   http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/01/14-5

SUPREME COURT ALLOWS THOMAS - FORMER MONSANTO ATTORNEY - TO RULE -RATHER THAN RECUSE HIMSELF - AGAINST ORGANIC FARMERS

Published on Monday, January 13, 2014 by Common Dreams

Supreme Court Sides With 'Notorious Patent Bully Monsanto'

'Monsanto's reign of intimidation is allowed to continue in rural America,' says Food Democracy Now!'s Dave Murphy

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied a group of farmers the right to challenge Monsanto's seed patents, a decision critics charge allows the biotech giant's "reign of intimidation" to continue.

(Photo via OSGATA.org) The plaintiffs in the suit, Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA) et al v. Monsanto, sought to protect themselves from lawsuits by the corporation for patent infringement should Monsanto's genetically engineered seed contaminate the farmers' crops.

Monsanto has sued over 100 farmers for patent infringement.
Jim Gerritsen, president of lead plaintiff OSGATA, previously explained, "We are not customers of Monsanto. We don't want their seed. We don't want their gene-spliced technology. We don't want their trespass onto our farms. We don't want their contamination of our crops. We don't want to have to defend ourselves from aggressive assertions of patent infringement because Monsanto refuses to keep their pollution on their side of the fence. We want justice."

The farmers' and seed producers' battle to preemptively to protect themselves began in 2011 with a case filed in a federal district court in Manhattan. Then, as we previously reported,

Their case was dismissed in February 2012 by Federal Judge Naomi Buchwald, but attorney Dan Ravicher of the not-for-profit Public Patent Foundation [which is representing the plaintiffs] said, "The District Court erred when it denied the organic seed plaintiffs the right to seek protection from Monsanto's patents."
In July of 2012 the group filed an appeal to reverse the lower court's decision.

In June of 2013, a three-judge panel at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dealt the farmers a blow in dismissing the case.
"In light of the Court of Appeals decision, Monsanto may not sue any contaminated farmer for patent infringement if the level of contamination is less than one percent," Daniel Ravicher, Executive Director of the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) and lead counsel to the plaintiffs, said in a statement on Monday. But the Supreme Court's decision is "disappointing," Ravicher said, and "it should not be misinterpreted as meaning that Monsanto has the right to bring such suits."

"This high court which...under Citizens United in 2010 gave corporations the power to buy their way to election victories, has now in 2014 denied farmers the basic right of protecting themselves from the notorious patent bully Monsanto."

—Jim Gerritsen, OSGATAOrganic dairy farmer and plaintiff Rose Marie Burroughs of California Cloverleaf Farms adds that "GMO contamination levels can easily rise above 1% and then we would have zero protection from a costly and burdensome lawsuit."
OSGATA's Gerritsen slammed the Court's decision as putting a "notorious patent bully" above family farmers.

"The Supreme Court failed to grasp the extreme predicament family farmers find themselves in," stated Gerritsen. "The Court of Appeals agreed our case had merit. However, their safeguards they ordered are insufficient to protect our farms and our families."

"This high court which gave corporations the ability to patent life forms in 1980, and under Citizens United in 2010 gave corporations the power to buy their way to election victories, has now in 2014 denied farmers the basic right of protecting themselves from the notorious patent bully Monsanto," Gerritsen stated.

Dave Murphy, founder and executive director of Food Democracy Now!, another plaintiff in the case, added, "Once again, America's farmers have been denied justice, while Monsanto's reign of intimidation is allowed to continue in rural America."

________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

ORGANIC CHICKEN - HOW MUCH LESS CONTAMINATED THAN CONVENTIONAL?

Organic Chicken Carries Almost As Many Superbugs As Conventional

—By Tom Philpott
| Wed Jan. 8, 2014 3:00 AM GMT

Caution: hazardous material JaBB/Flickr

Correction: In the original version of this post, I reported that a Consumer Reports' study found that chicken labeled organic and no-antibiotic had just as much antibiotic-resistant bacteria as conventional chicken. In fact, Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, has informed me, "We found slightly fewer multidrug-resistant bacteria in the no antibiotics/organic pool compared to conventional. That difference was even greater when we pulled Purdue out of the conventional pool. The issue was really that we didn't see the bigger difference we expected, not that it was exactly the same." I've corrected the text below.

As a student of the meat industry and its practices, I wasn't surprised by the recentConsumer Reports finding that nearly half of all chicken samples it plucked from supermarket shelves nationwide carried "at least one bacterium that was resistant to three or more commonly prescribed antibiotics." Factory-scale poultry facilities have relied on daily antibiotic doses for decades, contributing to a surge of life-threatening pathogens, and the Food and Drug Administration has only recently taken tentative steps to rein in the practice.

What got me was that chicken samples labeled "organic" or "no antibiotics" (list of all brands tested here) were almost as likely to contain these potentially deadly, drug-defying pathogens.* Notably, organic and antibiotic-free chicken both carry substantial premiums over conventional—at my local H-E-B supermarket in Austin, organic boneless chicken breast is fetching $7.97 per pound—vs. $4.99 for no-antibiotic and $1.97 for regular.

My surprise wasn't based on some romantic notion that organic food is cleaner. Bacteria develop the ability to withstand antibiotics by being exposed to them regularly. US Department of Agriculture code forbids antibiotics in organic meat production, and the "no antibiotics" label means just that, and isalso regulated by the USDA.

And there are recent peer-reviewed studies showing that, on actual farms, antibiotic-resistant strains are much less common in organic facilities than in conventional. In this 2011 paper, University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, and Penn State University researchers compared 10 conventional poultry houses with 10 that had recently gone organic. They found that both types of houses were full of a bacteria called Enterococcus—but that strains it were between four and five times more likely to "multidrug resistant" (able to survive three or more antibiotics) in the conventional facilities. A 2010 paper by University of Georgia, Ohio State University, and North Carolina State University researchers found similar results.

So if resistant strains appear to develop much less frequently on organically managed chicken farms, why do they show up at the similar rates in organic chicken on the supermarket shelf? Urvashi Rangan, director of consumer safety and sustainability for Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, says no clear explanation has emerged. "If you don't use the agent that is accelerating resistance, then you will create less resistance," she said. Other factors must be coming into play, she said. One possibility is cross-contamination at the slaughterhouse—often the same facility will process conventional and organic birds alike.
To get the USDA label, chickens need to be raised under organic rules only from the "second day of life" (PDF)—meaning that they can and commonly do receive antibiotics while at the hatchery.

Another possible factor is the one antibiotic loophole in organic poultry production: To get the USDA label, chickens need to be raised under organic rules only from the "second day of life" (PDF)—meaning that they can and commonly do receive antibiotics while at the hatchery. So it's possible that nonorganic chicks could grow into organic chickens with plenty of antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains on their meat at the supermarket.

But that, of course, wouldn't explain why researchers have not found an abundance of antibiotic resistance on organic chicken farms—if the chicks came on to the farms with antibiotic-resistant material, presumably it would show up in the on-farm studies. And what's more, chicken labeled "no antibiotics" doesn't enjoy the same hatchery loophole—the USDA requires that it come from birds never exposed to antibiotics, even in the egg. Yet in the Consumer Reports study, "no antibiotics" chicken (like organic) tended to carry nearly as many resistant strains as organic and conventional.*

Rangan told me that her organization plans to drill down and look at more stages of the production process to figure out why antibiotic-resistant strains are appearing at higher-than-expected rates on chicken raised without antibiotics. In the meantime, consumers should treat all chicken they buy with great care, washing their hands thoroughly after handling it raw, cleaning all surfaces it contacts immediately, and cooking it completely.

But while the industry repeats such warnings as if they were largely sufficient to protect public health, clearly they're not. It's one thing to risk coming down with a chicken-borne bug that antibiotics can cure if it gets out of hand. It's another thing when the bug raises the specter of what the DC calls "treatment failure"—i.e, death.

Home cooks get distracted—say, getting a phone call or text message after cutting chicken and forgetting to wash the knife before slicing an apple for a snack. And even professionals have a tough time handling chicken as essentially hazardous material. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study last year found that 40 percent of restaurant managers "never, rarely, or only sometimes" use separate cutting boards for raw meat—including chicken—meaning that the same surface could come into contact with raw chicken and, say, vegetables for a raw salad. A 2005 survey from the Environmental Health Specialists Network found that nearly a quarter of workers don't wash their hands after handling raw meat. (My colleague Dana Liebelson has more on a trove of recent CDC survey data on this important and appetite-killing topic.)

And remember last fall's outbreak involving a particularly virulent strain of multidrug-resistant salmonella-laced chicken? It even affected even rotisserie chicken from a Costco store in California. How does well-cooked chicken get infected with a nasty salmonella superbug? The USDA reported at the time that "it appears that the problem may be the result of cross-contamination after the cooking process in the preparation area."

No wonder that when the CDC analyzed US outbreak data from 1998 to 2008, it found that "more deaths were attributed to poultry than to any other commodity."

Source:  http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2014/01/organic-chicken-carries-just-many-superbugs-regular