MARCH 11, 2015 PLATE TO POLITICS-CHANGE THE FOOD SYSTEM WEBINAR

Plate to Politics: Changing the Food System

Online Webinar

3/11/15, 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST

Sustainability in our food system is an issue at the local, national and international level. Meet three women who are making the food system more sustainable, and find out what they would do differently if they had it to do all over again!

Faith Winter

Colorado State Representative

Faith Winter is a Colorado State Representative for House District 35, taking office just this year.  In 2012 Winter was named one of the up and coming women leaders to watch by the Denver Post.  Winter loves organizing because she believes the best way to create change is by building power through people.  She has fun doing it, because a job isn’t worth doing unless you laugh once in a while.

Irit Tamir

Oxfam America

Irit Tamir is the Senior Campaigns and Advocacy Advisor for Oxfam America’s Private Sector Department. In her role, she is focused on working with companies to ensure that their business practices result in positive social and environmental impacts for vulnerable communities throughout the world. Most recently, her work has been focused on the food and beverage industry and advocating for better policies and practices

Stefani Millie Grant

Unilever

Stefani Millie Grant is the Manager, External Affairs for Unilever, a food and personal care products manufacturing company. Ms. Grant works with elected officials and NGO’s on Unilever’s sustainability efforts and promoting the company’s Sustainable Living Plan, with a focus on agricultural commodities.

SOURCE:   https://voterunlead.org/events/plate-to-politics-changing-the-food-system/

WHERE IN THE WORLD IS NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC - ON GMOs?

March 2nd, 2015

The War on Genetically-Modified-Food Critics: Et tu, National Geographic

By Timothy Wise
Timothy A. Wise is at the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University. This piece originally appeared at Food Tank.
Since when is the safety of genetically modified food considered “settled science” on a par with the reality of evolution? That was the question that jumped to mind when I saw the cover of the March 2015 National Geographic and the lead article, “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?”
The cover title: “The War on Science.” The image: a movie set of a fake moon landing. Superimposed: a list of irrational battles being waged by “science doubters” against an implied scientific consensus:
“Climate change does not exist.”
“Evolution never happened.”
“The moon landing was faked.”
“Vaccinations can lead to autism.”
“Genetically modified food is evil.” WHAT?
Genetically modified food is evil? First of all, what business does “evil” have in an article about scientific consensus? Sure, some people think GMOs are evil. But isn’t the controversy about whether genetically modified food is safe?
More important, what was such an item doing on a list of issues on which the vast majority of scientists would indeed have consensus? How in the world does author Joel Achenbach define “scientific consensus?” How about 95 percent of the peer-reviewed literature, as in the case of climate change? Near 100 percent, as in the case of the lack of any link between autism and vaccines, or on evolution, or the reality of the moon landing?
There is no such consensus on the safety of GM food. A peer-reviewed study of the research, from peer-reviewed journals, found that about half of the animal-feeding studies conducted in recent years found cause for concern. The other half didn’t, and as the researchers noted, “most of these studies have been conducted by biotechnology companies responsible of commercializing these GM plants.”
In other words, those studies are tainted by the same conflict of interest that the article itself denounced in the case of anti-climate-change research commissioned by oil companies. The only consensus that GM food is safe is among industry-funded researchers.
So why would the respected National Geographic make such a scientific error? And why would respected Washington Post science writer Joel Achenbach include GM safety on his list of “settled” science?

Product placement for GMOs

Call it product placement. You know, the nearly subliminal advertising technique in which Coca Cola pays a movie producer to have the characters all drink Coke. Biotechnology companies and their powerful advocates, like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, are succeeding in a well-planned campaign to get GM safety declared “settled science.”
The article itself hardly touches the GM controversy or the science. It focuses on the interesting and important question of how people, including scientists, interpret scientific evidence in a way tainted by “confirmation bias,” the tendency to more readily believe evidence that confirms one’s existing beliefs. Achenbach could have added science writers to the list. And magazine editors.
Achenbach focuses on climate change and evolution and vaccines, mainly. GMOs? In what amounts to a throw-away paragraph, after he’s made justifiable fun of anti-fluoride scare-mongering, he writes:
“We’re asked to accept, for example, that it’s safe to eat food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) because, the experts point out, there’s no evidence that it isn’t and no reason to believe that altering genes precisely in a lab is more dangerous than altering them wholesale through traditional breeding. But to some people the very idea of transferring genes between species conjures up mad scientists running amok—and so, two centuries after Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, they talk about Frankenfood.”
What? “The experts point out?” Some do, some don’t. “There’s no evidence that it isn’t” safe to eat GMOs? What kind of science is that? Many experts would disagree, and they would certainly object to a safety standard for a new technology that is content with the epidemiologically shabby construct that if there’s no evidence something isn’t safe, it must be safe.
Thalidomide, anyone, with a pinch of DDT? What’s going on here?
Are we “depolarized” yet?
What we’re seeing is a concerted campaign to do exactly what National Geographic has knowingly or unknowingly done: paint GMO critics as anti-science while offering no serious discussion of the scientific controversy that still rages.
An indicator was a quiet announcement in the press last summer that the Gates Foundation had awarded a US$5.6 million grant to Cornell University to “depolarize” the debate over GM foods. That’s their word. The grant founded a new institute, the Cornell Alliance for Science.
“Our goal is to depolarize the GMO debate and engage with potential partners who may share common values around poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture, but may not be well informed about the potential biotechnology has for solving major agricultural challenges,” said project leader Sarah Evanega, senior associate director of International Programs in Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
Got it? The Gates Foundation is paying biotech scientists and advocates at Cornell to help them convince the ignorant and brainwashed public, who “may not be well informed,” that they are ignorant and brainwashed.
“Improving agricultural biotechnology communications is a challenge that must be met if innovations developed in public sector institutions like Cornell are ever to reach farmers in their fields,” added Kathryn J. Boor, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of CALS.
It’s kind of like depolarizing an armed conflict by giving one side more weapons.
So what you’re seeing in National Geographic is the product of improved “agricultural biotechnology communications.”
And not just there. In the last year we’ve seen the New Yorker’s slimy takedown of anti-GMO campaigner Vandana Shiva, and prominent opinion pieces by scientists, researchers, and journalists painting GMO critics as anti-science, the food policy equivalents of climate deniers and creationists.
I saw the PR machine in action in Des Moines in 2013 at the World Food Prize awards, which went that year to three biotech scientists, one from Monsanto. (It was of course pure coincidence that Monsanto had underwritten the renovation of the beautiful old building that houses the World Food Prize empire.)
At a panel discussion there the audience got heavily depolarized. Ann Glover, a European Science Advisor and designated GM bulldog, actually called anyone who still questioned the safety of GM crops “brainwashed.” Journalist Mark Lynas, who has made a career of such demonization, added his own insults.
I was sitting next to former World Food Prize winner Hans Herren, who won the prize in the 1990s for his innovative, cost-effective biological pest-control campaign that saved the African cassava crop. Brainwashed?

The consensus: There is no consensus

The consensus on the safety of GM food is perfectly clear: there is no consensus. That’s what the independent peer-reviewed literature says. And that’s what the National Geographic’s beautiful exhibit on its food series, in its Washington headquarters, says: the “long-term health and ecological consequences are unknown.“ And that is an accurate statement of the consensus, or the lack of it.
The paid shills for the petroleum industry undermined a growing consensus on climate change that was inconvenient for industry, backed by a well-funded PR campaign sowing doubt about that scientific consensus. In this case, the biotechnology industry and its allies are declaring a consensus where there is none in order to silence their critics.
The debate is over what level of precaution we should apply before allowing the large-scale commercialization of this new technology. And anyone stating that there is a scientific consensus on GM safety is coming down squarely against precaution. Reasonable people disagree, and that does not make them “science doubters.”
Are you feeling depolarized yet?

Source:  http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/the-war-on-genetically-modified-food-critics-et-tu-national-geographic/

500x DICAMBA INCREASES ON GMO FOOD CROPS - USDA SAYS LET AMERICANS EAT IT

USDA ignores farmer opposition, approves Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant seed

Mon 16 January 2015.

The USDA has approved Monsanto’s soybean and cotton varieties genetically engineered to withstand applications — and drive up sales of – the company’s drift-prone herbicide, dicamba

EXCERPT: Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, one of the nation’s largest full-line tomato processing companies, testified before Congress in 2010: "I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the Midwest."

USDA ignores farmer opposition, approves Monsanto’s dicamba-resistant seed

Pesticide Action Network North America, January 15, 2015
http://www.panna.org/usda-ignores-farmer-opposition-approves-monsantos-dicamba-resistant-seed

Despite receiving thousands of comments in opposition, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) today approved Monsanto’s newest seed products — soybean and cotton varieties genetically engineered to withstand applications — and drive up sales of the company’s drift-prone herbicide, dicamba.

With USDA’s approval, growers can expect use of dicamba to increase dramatically in both crops. According to USDA data and Monsanto projections, dicamba use in cotton is expected to increase by 14 times current levels, while use in soybeans is expected to surge by up to 500 times current levels.* Farmers predict that such a dramatic increase in use of dicamba — a highly drift-prone chemical known to be extremely toxic to most plants — will result in more frequent and devastating damage to vulnerable crops and increased pesticide exposure for rural families.

Most at risk are fruit, nut, and vegetable growers in the Midwest. As Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, one of the nation’s largest full-line tomato processing companies, testified before Congress in 2010:

"I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the Midwest."

Meanwhile, Monsanto’s response to farmers’ concerns about crop damage has been to develop exceedingly complex and demanding protocols for applying and disposing of the herbicide cocktail, including a ten-step triple rinse of sprayers that is likely to take more than an hour and then entails proper disposal of the contaminated rinse water. This ‘solution’ puts all responsibility on farmers, and sets up the company to escape liability for crop damage.

As PAN’s Dr. Marcia Ishii-Eiteman says,

“Monsanto’s newest product is the latest in a slew of bad ideas — bad for farmers, bad for rural communities, bad for American agriculture. USDA’s approval today signals their continued contempt of farmers’ concerns, and their allegiance to the largest pesticide corporations. We stand with farm families in opposing this decision and call instead for public policy that protects rural communities and promotes agroecology.”

***

* Projected increases of dicamba use in soybeans are based on current use levels (USDA-NASS 2013 published data, referenced in EIS Appendix Table 4-1, p. 4-4) and  Monsanto’s anticipated use patterns (EIS Appendix Table 4-9, page 4-17).