Saturday, January 2, 2016
MOMS ACROSS AMERICA - HEALTHY FOOD ACTION 2015 HIGHLIGHTS
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Tuesday, December 22, 2015
EU SAYS NO TO CONVENTIONAL PLANT PATENTING ON GMOs
European Parliament calls for patents on plants derived from conventional breeding to be stopped | Resolution urges the EU Commission to take action |
In a resolution backed by a large majority of its members, the European Parliament has taken a clear position against granting patents on plants derived from conventional breeding.
In its statement, the Parliament says that these plants, seeds, native traits or genes should be excluded from patentability. Furthermore, plant breeders should not be blocked by patents from accessing biological diversity needed for further breeding. The Members of the European Parliament are further insisting that prohibitions in existing European patent law against patents on plant varieties and conventional breeding must not be undermined by the kind of interpretation currently followed by the European Patent Office (EPO). Not long ago, the EPO granted several patents on tomatoes, pepper and broccoli derived from cross-breeding and selection. The resolution also expresses concerns that patent monopolies are a threat to global food security and may hamper breeders in efforts to tackle climate change. The patents are seen as being against the interests of small and medium breeders. With this resolution, the European Parliament has reaffirmed a similar resolution from May 2012. “The resolution very much comes down on the side of civil society organisations, who are demanding the exclusion of all breeding processes and breeding material, plant and animal characteristics, genes, plants and animals, as well as food derived thereof from patentability”, says Christoph Then for the international coalition of No Patents on Seeds! “Now it is up to the EU Commission and the European Governments to make sure the EPO acts accordingly.” No Patents on Seeds! is an international coalition of civil society organisations. It recently published a report containing an overview of patents granted by the EPO and a legal analysis. The report further highlights the need for more political action. The call made by the international coalition No Patents on Seeds! to stop these patents has the support of several hundred organisations all over Europe. The coalition No Patents on Seeds! is supported by Arche Noah (Austria), Bionext (Netherlands), The Berne Declaration (Switzerland), GeneWatch (UK), Greenpeace, Misereor (Germany), Development Fund (Norway), NOAH (Denmark), No Patents on Life (Germany), ProSpecieRara (Switzerland), Red de Semillas (Spain), Rete Semi Rurali (Italy), Reseau Semences Paysannes (France), and Swissaid (Switzerland). They are all calling for a revision of European Patent Law to exclude breeding material, breeding processes, plants and animals, their characteristics, their genetic components, the harvest and food derived thereof from patentability. The real reason for the current fixation on GMOs held by the seed industry and public research institutions is because they are easy to patent, with the necessary “inventive step” being clear to patent offices worldwide. While the creeping tendency of the EPO to patent the products of conventional breeding may, if it proceeds unchecked, undermine the reason for GMOs’ existence, it also clearly runs counter to the interests of food sovereignty and food security and must be vigorously opposed. Notes The resolution: http://gmwatch.us6.list- The report: http://gmwatch.us6.list- The petition: http://gmwatch.us6.list-
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Sunday, December 20, 2015
REGENERATE! NEW GLOBAL FOOD & FARMING RIGHTS!
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#regenerate!
“The key to the future of the world is finding the optimistic stories and letting them be known.” – Pete Seeger
A number of online fundraising appeals popped up in my inbox this week, most of them alluding to our “troubled times” and “dark days ahead.”
I understand why people feel this way. But I’m an optimist. And I believe most of you are, too. As optimists, it’s our job to do more than just rail against the bad. We must also find—better yet, create—the “optimistic stories” and “let them be known.”
With your help, that’s what we’ll do in 2016. We’ve already started.
Mercola.com and Dr. Bronner’s have once again stepped up to match your donation to OCA. Please help us raise $250,000 by midnight December 31, so we can take advantage of this generous offer. You can donate online, by U.S. mail or by calling our office—details here.
As I write this today, it’s clear your voices have been heard in Congress, at least on the matter of allowing states to enact GMO labeling laws. Thanks to your support this past year, Monsanto couldn’t get a bipartisan version of the DARK Act (H.R. 1599, a bill to preempt GMO labeling laws) introduced, much less passed, in the Senate.
And thanks to a massive mobilization effort, including hundreds of meetings, protests, petition drives and phone banks directed toward Congressional home district and DC offices, we’ve blocked Monsanto and Big Food from attaching a GMO labeling-preemption rider to the year-end federal budget deal. Even better?We forced the FDA to require mandatory labeling of GMO salmon! Until the labeling guidelines are finalized, there will be no frankenfish in our grocery stores.
This is your victory. It may be temporary, but it’s huge. Monsanto will come roaring back in January to try to preempt state laws again. But for now, Vermont’s GMO labeling law, set to take effect July 1, is safe.
Safeguarding Vermont’s GMO labeling law, and passing similar laws in other states, are worthy goals. We will not lose sight of these goals in 2016.
But let’s face it. The GMO ingredients in our food represent only 20 percent of the total market for GMO crops. The other 80 percent of GMO crops go into making ethanol and feeding the billions of animals incarcerated, in unconscionably inhumane and unhealthy conditions, in factory farms.
The hundreds of thousands of acres of monoculture crops, sprayed with toxic pesticides like glyphosate, and grown in soil that is degraded by synthetic chemicals, are wreaking havoc with our soils, our waterways, our health, our climate.
We absolutely must win the right to know if our food contains GMOs. But our movement must be bigger than that. We must set our sights on building a new global food and farming system. We must bring down the degenerative, Monsanto-style agriculture system and replace it with one that regenerates—soil, health, economies, climate stability.
Regeneration is the new frontier of the organic food and farming movement. It is our next “optimistic story.” It is a story of healing. Of renewal. Of hope.
And the best part of this story is that we have the power to write it. Our choices as consumers, our choices as activists, our choices as voters will drive the plot.
If we don’t step up to regenerate our food system and our ecosystem, corporations like Monsanto will define the future. Corporations won’t change unless we force them to change. Elected officials won’t listen to us unless we force them to listen.
My optimism has been fueled by this latest victory to preserve states’ rights to label GMOs. With your help, I believe we can move on to bigger and better victories. Our future depends on it.
Please help us raise $250,000 by midnight December 31, so we can take advantage of a matching funds challenge from Mercola.com and Dr. Bronner’s. You can donate online, by snail mail or by calling our office—details here.
Thank you! And happy, healthy holidays from all of us at OCA.
Ronnie Cummins
National Director, Organic Consumers Association and Organic Consumers Fund
P.S. We have until midnight December 31 to take advantage of this matching grant. Please make a generous donation today. Donations made to the the Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) are tax-deductible. If you don't need the tax deduction, please consider making a donation to our 501(c)(4) lobbying arm by clicking here. Thank you!
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Wednesday, December 16, 2015
DING DONG, DARK IS DEAD!
This is huge! With your help and hundreds of thousands of people just like you, we managed to shut down Monsanto in Congress by stopping the Dark Act policy riders that would have killed GMO labeling in America for good.
We've cleared a major hurdle. Many of us feared that the GMA would be successful in inserting a rider to the spending bill, creating the ultimate Monsanto Protection Act, to short-circuit our collective hard work for the past 4 years by taking away states' rights to pass mandatory GMO labeling laws.We're happy to report that Monsanto was defeated - this time!
This means they'll come back stronger than ever after the holidays in January to pass the compromise that Monsanto and the GMA is desperate to achieve, so we won't know if the foods we eat are eating genetically-engineered. We need you today!
Please, don't miss this chance to have your gift matched by pitching in whatever you can. Every dollar counts!
We only have a few weeks to refill our tanks before Congress comes back in session next month - when the GMA and Monsanto will be desperate to end your right to mandatory labeling once and for all.
Incredibly, a provision regarding GMO salmon was allowed in the Omnibus spending bill that won’t allow genetically engineered salmon to be introduced for sale until the FDA determines proper labeling requirements – and while this is not all of what we want regarding GMO labeling – it will slow down the sale of GMO salmon in the United States and elsewhere.
The Vermont law is scheduled to go into effect in July of next year - 2016.When that happens, Monsanto and the junk food companies know it's game over for them!
Please help us continue our work and stop them cold - once and for all!
We're so close! Please stick with us for the final push to defend our democratic rights and protect our food supply and give Monsanto a huge blow.
In the past 4 years, you’ve help build a movement that’s driven the national conversation on GMOs from California in 2012 to DC today.
Be a part of this Grassroots Surge to defeat Monsanto’s lie machine!
This is what happens when we stand up – Together we are unstoppable!
Thank you for participating in food democracy,
Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! team
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
"FEED THE WORLD" BIG AG SLOGANS ARE IMMORAL
Farmers would do better to understand the land than grow GM crops | The rational response to any food or farming dilemma is to test and compare different options to see which is most effective as a solution |
Below is an intelligent article on GM by Julia Wright, Senior Research Fellow, Agroecological Futures, Coventry University.
It reminds us that the fundamental question to ask when facing any problem in farming is: what is the problem we are trying to solve, and what is the best of the various solutions available? It’s extremely unlikely that the answer to this question would be “GM”. — Farmers would do better to understand the land than grow GM crops
Julia Wright
The Conversation, December 8, 2015 http://gmwatch.us6.list- [links to sources at the URL above] Suppose your relationship is falling apart and you want to save it. To find the best counsellor, you might search online or ask your friends. It’s no different in agriculture. The rational response to any food or farming dilemma is to test and compare different options to see which is most effective as a solution. Except when it comes to genetic modification (GM). I have yet to hear of a research trial where a newly developed GM crop has been compared with other approaches to address the problem it claims to solve. If the goal was to identify the most effective solution, this would be very odd – but if the real goal is to find a use for the technology, it makes perfect sense. Here’s an example from my work in the subtropics (I better not name the country). In the 2000s, one region experienced several consecutive years of severe drought. The worst affected area saw over 3,000 wells dry up, and over 2,000 of its cattle lost. Many farmers were unable to sow their staple maize crop. The easy culprit was climate change, since temperatures had risen half a degree in recent years. What was less frequently pointed out was the poor condition of the soils: 60% suffered from erosion, 40% had low water retention, and 45% had low fertility – all the result of several decades of industrial agriculture. The mainstream agricultural sector proposed constructing a large water pipeline from the wetter part of the country to the drier parts. Yet the government didn’t have the funds. A GM drought-tolerant maize was also suggested, but thankfully wasn’t yet available. I started working with a local research team to develop a low-cost pilot in two communities with a very different approach. It sought to help farmers understand the water cycle and manage water sustainably; and also to experiment with simple techniques to improve soil fertility. These included planting cover crops, which are crops put there primarily to protect the bare soil from high temperatures and from water escaping through plants and Earth (evapotranspiration); as well as adding organic fertilisers; rainwater harvesting and testing numerous crop varieties to see which worked best. Farmers and households were particularly supported to share their own local knowledge and experiences. Reaping benefits After just one year, we saw various intended and unintended results. There was much more crop diversity, and yields and production had increased across the board. Manure had become a valuable resource, which farmers were collecting systematically from livestock. There was more water available for these animals, and the soil’s capacity for water retention had improved too. The farmers were widely using biological fertilisers, and had generally become better at working together and experimenting. Above all, the first vegetable market had opened – previously there had never been any surplus to sell – along with an informal seed market. Family incomes had gone up and there were more nutritious foods for everyone. For an investment of just £15,000, the project seemed to tick all the development boxes. Most telling were the responses from community members who were asked what had changed: “A year ago drought was a worry to us, but now we don’t rate this as important as other concerns.” “The main change? Now we can afford for all the children in our village to wear shoes.” Suppose instead that a GM drought-tolerant maize had been available at the time. Farmers would have had to buy patented seed every year. At best, the crop would have needed slightly less water and the yield might have been maintained or even increased a little. No other crops could have been grown since the soil would have remained degraded, and irrigation would have still been required. (This kind of GM maize has since been developed, at a cost of millions of pounds.) I’m not the only one with these sorts of findings. Previous studies have shown that this kind of agroecological approach produces better results than GM in terms of environmental impact, human health and societal benefits; while it has been convincingly argued that using GM varieties does nothing for biodiversity in agriculture. The industrialised mindset The conventional corporate model legally obliges chief executives – on behalf of shareholders – to prioritise profits over ethics and sustainability, whatever their personal inclination. It is a manifestation of an underlying mindset. This can be seen in Cuba, where until recently there was no private corporate sector, and where the government made several varieties of GM maize available to some parts of the country in 2006. Cuba inherited its agricultural approach from the former Soviet Union, which unwittingly shared a mindset with Western countries that has been dominant for over 300 years. Borrowing from the French philosopher Descartes, this world view breaks down complex processes into smaller parts to be analysed in isolation, and sees nature as a resource to be exploited and conquered. It wasn’t and isn’t always so – as indigenous communities continue to demonstrate with their reverence for nature and their sense of inter-connectedness. The organic and regenerative farming movements attempt to take a similar approach, as did the “drought-proofing” project that I outlined above. GM is simply a manifestation of the same misguided industrial mindset, a mindset that tries to control nature rather than work with it. From a psychological perspective, the need to control is driven by fear, as I found from years of interviewing farmers about why they felt they needed to continue with industrial agriculture rather than switch to organic. Allowing private companies to peddle their wares in the name of development or to “feed the world” is arguably immoral when there are alternatives that can bring much wider benefits. If GM were banned, though, similar problematic technologies would continue to present themselves. It is the mindset from which they emerge that needs reprogrammed. Its not as if there aren’t better ways of achieving the same result.
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Website: http://gmwatch.us6. | |
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
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