Dear Tiffany (Thanks to Exposing Monsanto!)

Some time ago, you contacted us with concerns about the polystyrene plastic we were using for our yogurt 4-packs and 6-packs. We're happy to tell you we're no longer using polystyrene for any of our packaging. Our multipack cups are now made from plant-based plastic.

This material is approved by the FDA for use in food packaging. But we've gone well beyond legal requirements to uphold our commitment to your safety. We hired Pure Strategies, an independent scientific consulting firm, to develop a list of potentially dangerous additives like BPA, phthalates, carcinogens, mutagens, reproductive toxins and endocrine disruptors, and we signed a contract that prohibits our supplier from using them. We also routinely test the plastic to ensure compliance.

What's more, these plant-based cups have enormous environmental benefits. This one move—from traditional petroleum-based plastic to plant-based plastic-reduces our multipacks' climate change impact by nearly half. Over its life cycle, plant-based plastic uses less energy and emits 48% less greenhouse gases than polystyrene.

To find out more about our new multipack cups made from plants, please read our FAQs and watch our videos at Stonyfield.com/madefromplants.Thanks for sharing your thoughts about polystyrene and for encouraging us on our search for something better. Your opinions of our products and the ways we do business mean everything to us. We hope you'll use this $2.00 coupon toward the purchase of a Stonyfield yogurt multipack. It's good through November 15th.

Please let us know what you think. We'd love to hear from you again.

Sincerely,

The folks at Stonyfield

Petition Against Gates Foundation Monsanto Investment

• Target: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Sponsored by: Gregory Hilbert and Sustainability Education Network

WHEREAS Monsanto's corporate practices and products are infamous for their destructive impact on the health of mankind and the sustainability of all life on earth, and
WHEREAS the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation represents that it's mission is to serve the health needs of mankind,
WE THE UNDERSIGNED do hereby petition the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to immediately divest itself of its investment of $27 million in Monsanto stock and hereafter cease support of any and all programs associated with Monsanto products

Regarding your involvement with Monsanto and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa:
We – the concerned people who have signed this petition – are aware that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are, via your sponsorship of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and your economic cooperation with Monsanto, planning to spread chemical agriculture and genetically modified organisms into the precarious societies and nature of Africa.
Although we assume that your Foundation is supporting this technology in order to alleviate hunger and poverty in Africa, we must respectfullydisagree with your approach, which we find reductionist, purely focusing on technological fixes and economic profit making. This is a limited approach, which we believe cannot give sustainable results. If your Foundation aims to be part of solving global hunger and poverty, we find it necessary that you embrace a holistic approach, hence including in your program concern for women, poor people, and nature.
In the following we would like to explain in detail why we oppose your approach:
While women represent half the global population, one-third of the labor force, and do two-thirds of all working hours, they receive only one-tenth of the world income, and own less than one percent of world property. Owing to this inequality, data show that 70 percent of all absolute poor people are women.
Thus, poverty is a gender related problem. It derives from subordination of women in most societies.
Laws, institutions, social rules, and cultural traditions have throughout history dominated the African women and limited their access to productive resources and markets. Women are also not enjoying much government and donor assistance, and in many places they cannot own land. In spite of these obstacles women are producing 80 percent of the continents food. They are also the main actors in the informal markets from which poor people survive. Due to their prominent role in food production women depend on nature. This relationship has given many Southern women a unique knowledge about their environment. It is an organic and sustainable relation benefitting both: nature helps women to feed their families while women ensure that nature remains healthy and reproductive. This knowledge is diverse, depending on the context, and it has been transmitted from one generation to the next. When the North introduced chemical agriculture and production of cash crop for the formal market, they marginalized women’s food production. The natural resources from which women lived were directed towards cash crop production. This caused scarcity of land for women’s food production resulting in hunger and poverty of women and their children, and degradation of natural resources. Moreover, the purely technological approach from mechanical scientists, dismissed women’s organic agricultural knowledge, which has sustained traditional people and nature for thousands of years.
The “Green Revolution” or chemical agriculture consequently did not benefit women, poor people, and nature. Its mono culture, chemical fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide, its hybrid seeds and extreme water use via irrigation have had tremendous negative side effects for society and nature. This has been researched by various respected scientists. One is Dr. Vandana Shiva who analyzed the “Green Revolution” in India and published her results in the 1989 book “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development”.
The dangers of spreading chemicals in nature were also highlighted in the now famous classic book, “Silent Spring”, written by the late American marine biologist Rachel Carson. There is ample additional evidence, which points to chemical agriculture’s inability to sustainably increase yields, while the method oppositely is polluting nature and people: The artificial technologies have caused serious imbalances to the natural eco-system. Chemicals have tainted soils, poisoned ground water, endangered fish, birds, and other animals. Chemicals have indiscriminately killed insects including those that are supportive to healthy plant development, like bees and worms. Chemicals have caused mineral imbalance in soils, which is draining their health and nutrition. Irrigation has introduced too much water into soils causing siltation and salinisation, making soils salty and muddy and hence unfit for agricultural production.
In addition, chemical agriculture has overused water resources and caused alarming shortage of clean water globally. Hence, introduction of the proposed “Green Revolution” will eventually render the precarious African soils infertile; it will dry out Africa’s scarce water sources, and destroy valuable traditional agricultural knowledge.
Agricultural chemicals also make people sick. Many of the toxics enter the human body where they remain in the tissues, because the immune system cannot dispose of them. Some of the chemicals are causing cancer or birth defects, and contributing to numerous health problems. In addition, people are often unaware of how to handle the dangerous chemicals they are using. Due to inadequate technical knowledge pesticide and herbicide kill 10-40,000 people annually in the South. With all these painful side effects carried by society and nature one should at least expect that chemical agriculture could boost crop production, however that is not the case.
Although chemical agriculture initially increased yields, this improvement quickly diminished, and scientists say that the yield now is lower compared to organic farming. The decrease relates to exhaustion in soil nutrition and increased pest attacks. The persistent use of pesticide has caused pests to mutate, developing resistant strains of pest. This increased invasion of pests can cause crop losses of up to 30 percent. Since the chemicals also have killed the pests’ natural predators the mutated pests will require ever more deadly chemicals causing a never ending vicious circle, like drug addiction. Consequently, introduction of chemical agriculture has not led to food security; instead it has caused severe side effects, hence we must doubt the benefit from using chemicals in nature.
Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are an expansion of the “Green Revolution”. Genetic engineering of the seed has made it ecologically incomplete so that it cannot produce alone. It will need help from purchased fertilizer and pesticide. This will increase the need for chemicals in agriculture hence escalating the above mentioned negative side-effects for society and nature. Due to the modification technique used in the laboratory, the GMO foods cause additional health threats.
Research on animals has shown that GMO food combined with their chemicals are causing liver and kidney damage, reproductive dysfunction, sterility, increased infant mortality, food allergies, asthma, and autoimmune diseases, while also having negative effects in heart, adrenal, spleen, and blood cells.
Genetically engineered seeds have been modified in such a way that they cannot reproduce. This is an economic advantage for the corporations because it requires the farmer to buy new seeds for every planting season, together with the necessary chemicals. Making the seed sterile means that farmers can no longer replant their own seeds from previous harvests. They must buy new seeds every season, which puts an end to their ability to develop new crops. This is devastating in the South where farmers grow 80 percent of their crops from saved seeds. When poor farmers cannot store and trade seed, their agricultural production become dependent on expensive seed and chemical implements from agri-businesses. As a result, only those farmers who can afford it will have food, the rest will be marginalized. Modification of seeds has allowed patenting. In this way the agri-businesses maintain a monopoly on resources for food production. Because of this market monopoly GMO seeds and their chemicals are expensive. This has led poor farmers into debt and poverty. You can hardly be unaware of the thousands of crop farmers who have committed suicides in India, due to bankruptcy caused by Monsanto’s monopoly on agricultural technology.
In addition, the GMO crops are eradicating traditional crops. Nature does not operate in neatly separated boxes, thus cross pollination takes place between the GMO plant and traditional crops, which makes the latter sterile. This is disastrous for sustainable food production because it is the traditional crops that have given local people food security for thousands of years keeping both nature and people healthy. In this way, corporations have taken over plant breeding, which is creating the classical conditions for hunger and famine. History has shown that whenever ownership of resources for food production are concentrated in a few hands and the market is in charge of distributing the agricultural products, then we have the foundation for food insecurity. Consequently, hunger and poverty began when modern chemical agriculture entered the South. The shift from an ecological process of sustainable food production, to a technological process of non-renewable production has reduced biological diversity in agriculture; it has increased farmer’s dependency on expensive patented products; and it has created non-sustainability in agriculture, which will lead to hunger and poverty in the South.
There is yet another reason why GMO cannot eradicate world hunger: although the industry has declared that it will feed the world, the promise has proven empty. Experiments show that GM seeds do not increase crop yields radically; they are also not promising for adapting to climate change. According to the report “Failure to Yield” from July 2009 made by Union of Concerned Scientists, GMOs have, despite 20 years of research and 13 years of commercialization, failed significantly to increase US crop yields. It therefore does not make sense to support genetic engineering at the expense of technologies that have proven to substantially increase yields, especially in many developing countries. In addition, recent studies have shown that organic and similar farming methods that minimize the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers can more than double crop yields at little cost to poor farmers in developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa.
The senior scientist, Dr. Doug Gurian-Sherman concludes that, “If we are going to make headway in combating hunger due to overpopulation and climate change, we will need to increase crop yields; traditional breeding outperforms genetic engineering hands down.”
Research from the Rodale Institute supports these findings. They have an ongoing revolutionary research project that started in 1981 called Farm System Trial (FST) on organic farming. Their research has found that crop yields from organic and chemical farms are similar in years of average precipitation.
However, organic farm yields are higher during droughts and floods, due to stronger root systems in organic plants, and better moisture retention in the soil, which prevents runoff and erosion. The data moreover showed that organic production requires 30 percent less energy than chemical production when growing corn and soybeans; that organic farms create jobs because labor inputs are 15 percent higher; and that the net economic return for organic crops is equal to or higher than that for chemically produced crops because the costs are lower. In addition, organic farming is psychologically and socially supportive because it is labor intensive and community oriented.
The most surprising FST finding of all has been that when soil is cultivated organically its carbon content increases, which contributes to reducing global warming. The carbon increase is so high that if all the cultivated land in the world were farmed organically it would immediately reduce our climate crisis significantly. Organic farming can pull, on an annual basis, thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide per acre right out of the air and keep it in the soil, adding to its carbon stores year after year. Physicist Amory Lovins supports this finding. In his estimates increasing the carbon content of the world’s depleted soils at reasonable rates would absorb about as much carbon as all human activity emits. Conversely, soil farmed by using chemical methods has very little ability to keep or build vital supplies of carbon in the soil. It is oppositely causing global warming. Its nitrogen-based fertilizers are releasing the green house gas nitrous oxide into the atmosphere. Hence, switching to organic food production is the single most critical action we can take right now to stop our climate crisis.
Consequently, organic farming is a relevant, ecological, and holistic technology that would alleviate hunger and poverty. Organic farms are small and owner operated. Farmers sell their products at local markets with a short distance from the farm to the table, saving energy, packing, and at the same time maintaining the food fresh and healthy. Finally, organic farming is successful and efficient. An agroecological project involving 730,000 farm households across Africa resulted in yield improvements of between 50-100 percent. In addition, it decreased production costs while increasing cash incomes up to as much as ten times. Thus, organic farming raises production, gives ecological and social benefits, and it empower farmers, most of whom are women.
In order to give a holistic understanding, it is important to add that hunger is not caused by global food shortage. According to Frances Moore Lappé and her colleagues at the Institute for Food and Development Policy in USA, the reasons for hunger are political. According to her book from 1986, “World Hunger: Twelve Myths” there is enough food supply for all in our world. Increase of food supply has, in the last fifty years, kept ahead of population growth in every region of the world, except Africa. Research also shows that there is no direct relationship between the prevalence of hunger and a country’s population size. Moreover, 78 percent of all malnourished children in the South live in countries with food surpluses. Many of these countries export more agricultural goods than they import. The root causes of hunger are consequently unrelated to food production. Poverty, inequality, and lack of access to food and land are the primary causes of famine. People are hungry because the economic and political elite control the means of producing and distributing food. Thus, world hunger is not a problem that can be solved by chemical technology and GMO; it comes from lack of democracy and economic equality.
If we do not address the root causes - which relate to domination - hunger and poverty will continue no matter which technology we apply. We consequently do not need a “Green Revolution” in Africa. Organic farming methods are more likely to support women, poor people, and nature, and to keep women and poor people in control of productive resources. Therefore, if we should hope to alleviate hunger and poverty control over resources for food production need to return into the hands of the food producers, most of whom are women. They must be empowered to grow their own food by choosing their own technology and using their own knowledge.
This should be supported rather than subordinated.
Conclusively if your Foundation would support women’s organic agriculture it would have the following positive, systemic ripple and trickle-down effects: increase agricultural production, ensure food sustainability, eradicate hunger and thus poverty, improve health of women and children hence reducing child mortality, diminish women’s reproduction thus putting a halt to global population expansion, reduce global warming hence arresting climate change, increase human productivity, make people independent and content, which is boosting social cohesion leading to limitation in crime and violence, sustain a healthy nature with fertile soils and clean waters, which will be supporting life of people and animals, empower women, leading to gender equality, freedom, and democracy. In conclusion, a holistic approach to food production will bring about sustainability and an overall increase in the quality of life for women, poor people, and nature. If the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation would follow this path, you would place your names in the history books as people who truly made a difference in our world.
Oppositely if your Foundation supports AGRA’s and Monsanto’s chemical agriculture and GMO, you may not be part of the solution to hunger and poverty. Your Foundation may oppositely become yet another dominant institution, which is subordinating women and poor people, while exploiting nature by controlling people’s productive resources preventing them from becoming self-sufficient. Since the technology Monsanto is promoting has proven to be dangerous to society and nature, supporting Monsanto economically means that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation indirectly and hopefully unintentionally may harm Africa’s precious people and priceless nature. We therefore urge you to reconsider your support to AGRA and Monsanto, and instead follow a holistic and sustainable strategy for hunger and poverty alleviation.
A holistic development strategy includes not only quantitative economic and technical issues; it needs to integrate concerns for a quality of life for society and nature. History has shown that formal markets, economic growth, and chemical agriculture have failed to alleviate hunger and poverty; we therefore need to try alternative strategies. I would enjoy sharing such an alternative perception with your Foundation.
At the beginning of next year the University Press of America will be publishing my book, “Ecofeminism: Towards Integrating the Concerns of Women, Poor people, and Nature into Development”, which is based on my Masters Degree dissertation obtained at University of South Africa. The book presents a complex critique of the present reductionist, purely economic oriented development strategy.
It is showing that a holistic perception of reality is more likely to end the global crises of poverty, violence, natural destruction, and human rights abuses. As soon as the book is out from print, I will, via the publisher, forward the book to you as a gift. I sincerely hope that the content of the book in some ways will inspire your ongoing work with global hunger and poverty alleviation in the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yours Respectfully,
On behalf of the petition sponsor
Sustainability Education Network, USA, Gregory Hilbert and Suzanne Sparling, CoFounders
And all those who have signed this petition
Mrs. Jytte Nhanenge C.P. 258, Chimoio, Mozambique;  BA Development Studies and Philosophy, Hons BA Philosophy, MA Development Studies

URL: Petition Against Gates Foundation Monsanto Investment

After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto (New York Times)

After Growth, Fortunes Turn for Monsanto

By ANDREW POLLACK

As recently as late December, Monsanto was named “company of the year” by Forbes magazine. Last week, the company earned a different accolade from Jim Cramer, the television stock market commentator. “This may be the worst stock of 2010,” he proclaimed.
Monsanto, the giant of agricultural biotechnology, has been buffeted by setbacks this year that have prompted analysts to question whether its winning streak of creating ever more expensive genetically engineered crops is coming to an end.
The company’s stock, which rose steadily over several years to peak at around $140 a share in mid-2008, closed Monday at $47.77, having fallen about 42 percent since the beginning of the year. Its earnings for the fiscal year that ended in August, which will be announced Wednesday, are expected to be well below projections made at the beginning of the year, and the company has abandoned its profit goal for 2012 as well.
The latest blow came last week, when early returns from this year’s harvest showed that Monsanto’s newest product, SmartStax corn, which contains eight inserted genes, was providing yields no higher than the company’s less expensive corn, which contains only three foreign genes.
Monsanto has already been forced to sharply cut prices on SmartStax and on its newest soybean seeds, called Roundup Ready 2 Yield, as sales fell below projections.
But there is more. Sales of Monsanto’s Roundup, the widely used herbicide, has collapsed this year under an onslaught of low-priced generics made in China. Weeds are growing resistant to Roundup, dimming the future of the entire Roundup Ready crop franchise. And the Justice Department is investigating Monsanto for possible antitrust violations.
Until now, Monsanto’s main challenge has come from opponents of genetically modified crops, who have slowed their adoption in Europe and some other regions. Now, however, the skeptics also include farmers and investors who were once in Monsanto’s camp.
“My personal view is that they overplayed their hand,” William R. Young, managing director of ChemSpeak, a consultant to investors in the chemical industry, said of Monsanto. “They are going to have to demonstrate to the farmer the advantage of their products.”
Brett D. Begemann, Monsanto’s executive vice president for seeds and traits, said the setbacks were not reflective of systemic management problems and that the company was moving to deal with them.
“Farmers clearly gave us some feedback that we have made adjustments from,” he said in an interview Monday.
Mr. Begemann said that Monsanto used to introduce new seeds at a price that gave farmers two-thirds and Monsanto one-third of the extra profits that would come from higher yields or lower pest-control costs. But with SmartStax corn and Roundup Ready 2 soybeans, the company’s pricing aimed for a 50-50 split.
That backfired as American farmers grew only six million acres of Roundup Ready 2 soybeans this year, below the company’s goal of eight million to 10 million acres, and only three million acres of SmartStax corn, below the goal of four million.
So now Monsanto is moving back to the older arrangement. SmartStax seed for planting next year will be priced about $8 an acre more than other seeds, down from about a $24 premium for this year’s seeds, Mr. Begemann said. The company will also offer credits for free seed to farmers who planted SmartStax this year and were disappointed.
Monsanto has also moved to offer farmers more varieties with fewer inserted genes. Some farmers have said they often have to buy traits they do not need — such as protection from the corn rootworm in regions where that pest is not a problem — to get the best varieties. This issue has surfaced in the antitrust investigation.
Monsanto’s arch rival, DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred, has also capitalized on the lack of options under a campaign called “right product, right acre.”
“If they don’t have a need for rootworm then we won’t have that trait in that product,” Paul E. Schickler, the president of Pioneer, said in an interview.
After years of rapidly losing market share in corn seeds to Monsanto, Pioneer says it has gained back four percentage points in the last two years, to 34 percent. Monsanto puts its market share at 36 percent in 2009 and says it has remained flat this year. In soybeans, Pioneer puts its share at 31 percent, up seven percentage points over the last two years; Monsanto puts its share at 28 percent last year and said it had dropped some this year.
Monsanto had a similar problem with lower-than-expected yields on Roundup Ready 2 soybeans last year, when the crop was first planted commercially, forcing it to slash its premium.
But this year, the yield appears to be meeting expectations, said OTR Global, a research firm that surveys farmers and seed dealers. That could bode well for SmartStax next year.
One reason is that the Roundup Ready 2 gene is now offered in more varieties, making it better suited to more growing conditions. The yield of a crop is mainly determined by the seed’s intrinsic properties, not the inserted genes. An insect protection gene will not make a poor variety a high yielder any more than spiffy shoes will turn a slow runner into Usain Bolt. In the first year of a new product, few varieties contain the new gene.
Still, Monsanto is bound at some point to face diminishing returns from its strategy of putting more and more insect-resistant and herbicide-resistant genes into the same crop, at ever increasing prices. Growth might have to eventually come from new traits, such as a drought-tolerant corn the company hopes to introduce in 2012.
“Technologically, they are still the market leader,” said Laurence Alexander, an analyst at Jefferies & Company. “The main issue going forward is do they get paid for the technology they deliver. The jury is still out on that one. It’s going to take a year or two of data to reassure people.”

URL of Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/business/05monsanto.html?_r=3&th&amp%3Bemc=th

Monsanto Indian Farmer Suicide

Just remember this: 125,000 Indian farmers to date have committed suicide due to the failed promises of Monsanto.

One hundred and twenty-five THOUSAND families have been broken because of their goddamned lies.

Check out http://www.saynotogmos.org/ for more ways to keep yourself free of Monsanto's FrankenFoods.

The TRUTH Is NO DEFENSE - MONSANTO Tries To Bury The Truth

Stop Monsanto, Cargill, et al, From Outlawing Organic Produce

Stop Monsanto, Cargill, et al, from outlawing organic produce

Started by Ani L. Schwartz

Educating Congress: Do Not Supress Organic and Small Farmers and Ranchers; Natural Food Products

Farmers Under Attack...
This urgent message is from our correspondent, Linn Cohen-Cole:

We have just weeks to stop the take over of family farms and ranches,organic and natural foods.

H.R. 875 and S. 425 [and similar bills such a H.R. 759]
We need to rally people immediately. 
The new administration is pushing new farm controls through Congress as fast as possible and have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and the committee meetings are closed.  

Transparency, change, undoing Bush's regulations, giving the public time to comment, grassroots anything?  Our entire food system and thus our health is being decided without the public knowing and those who do know have zero access and the media is absent and they are moving at warp speed to sew this up.

Would you put these out, in this order, showing the article as you do so people are more likely to read it?  They are imperfect but the closest I've come to explaining how the game is going to be played.  No direct, frontal assault on organic farming but an insidious process of "infecting" organic farming...  

Example: imagine Joel Salatin's wonderful organic farm under the direction of the USDA, with detailed instructions on what he must feed and when, how he must medically "treat" his animals and with what, what he must "spray" and when, ... you get the picture. 

These bills will industrialize all farms and insure the farmers are forced to buy chemicals and drugs.  Organic is dead.  As well as human control over the food supply.  As well as health.

Schoolmarm approach to punishing farmers out of farming. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-and-the-Schoolmar-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090214-935.html

Bills being rushed through Congress, set to destroy organic farming.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-bills-being-rushe-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090217-758.html
 
Linn Cohen-Cole is a dedicated researcher and "Paul Revere" of health freedom. At her urging, we've set up an Action Item for you to send an unmistakable message to your representatives in the Senate and the House. We must educate Congress that you do not want organic and small farmers regulated out of existence. You do not want "Big Agra" regulations, perhaps necessary to protect the public when dealing with large scale agra business, applied to organic and small family farms and ranches or to natural and organic food products, including Dietary Supplements.

LINK: Send a message to Congress.  
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-criminalization-of-see-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090301-82.html     

EDITABLE PETITION:
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Protecting Organic and Small Family Farms and Ranches; Natural Food Products

Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, as part of its efforts to educate Congress regarding the inestimable benefits of health care freedom of choice, asked its hundreds of thousands of supporters to let our Congressional representatives know about our concerns for the protection of organic and small family farms and ranches from new legislation and regulation that is more properly applied to large-scale agricultural businesses.

Our concern focuses on pending legislation to establish a “Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services.” This bill is H.R. 875 and the Senate is considering a similar bill, S. 425. While we do support DIVESTING THE FDA and USDA of their often mis-used food authority, we do not support these bills. AS MY CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE, I WANT YOU TO VOTE AGAINST THESE BILLS and any substitutes, such as H.R. 759.

If Congress insists upon passing these bills, it is very important that Congress write into these bills specific language protecting organic and small family farms and ranches. These enterprises and all natural products, including organic and natural food products and Dietary Supplements, must be exempted from the controls of these bills.

Such products and such farms and ranches are not part of the food safety problem. The problem is with mega-farms and agra business facilities.

We demand that our natural and organic food products, Dietary Supplements and their producers be protected from the increased regulation of food producers provided in these pending bills and any similar enactments.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Health Freedom was one of the Top Ten Social Issues on Change.org and was added to the President's Briefing Book on Change.gov - “Health Freedom is Our First Freedom!”

Addendum: Kindly accept this PETITION requesting that Congress amend the pending bills to include a specified Rule of Interpretation:

PETITION

To Amend the Food Safety Modernization Act
H.R. 875 [and Substitutes]

By the Addition of the

Natural and Family Food and Farming Exclusion Amendment

To:  The Members of the Congress of the United States of America:

Whereas the proposed Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services should focus its activities on the significant public administration issues involving the capacity of large scale, industrialized agriculture to threaten public safety,

Whereas organic and natural agriculture, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements are not a significant part of the food safety problem, and

Whereas Congress previously provided for an exemption for natural food dietary supplements from the increased agency authority granted by the FDA Modernization Act of 2007, through a rule of interpretation, added as section 1011 of that Act, and has on numerous occasions exempted small and family farms from the same level of regulation as has been deemed necessary in the case of industrialized agriculture,

The citizens ascribing to this Petition therefore hereby request that the Food Safety Modernization Act be defeated, or that it, or any substitute for it, such as H.R. 759, be amended to exclude organic and natural agriculture, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements, through a rule of interpretation, as follows:

“Rule of Interpretation"

“No provision of this act shall be deemed to apply (a) to any home, home-business, homestead, small farm organic or natural agricultural activity, (b) to any family farm or ranch, or (c) to any natural or organic food product, including dietary supplements regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.”

We also note the language of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USC sec 203 (s) (2) which provides, "(2) Any establishment that has as its only regular employees the owner thereof or the parent, spouse, child, or other member of the immediate family of such owner shall not be considered to be an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce or a part of such an enterprise..." Language such as this would be helpful to allay our concerns.

If the FDA Center for Food Safety is to be moved into a new Food Safety Agency, then Dietary Supplements, regulated as foods under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) should be included in such agency, with the proviso that such substances, as foods, are deemed safe when used as directed.

Furthermore, the ascribing citizens Petition the Congress of the United States to declare it the public policy of the United States that organic and natural agriculture, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements shall be at all times free from suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of their goods, for the inestimable values they confer upon the public.

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This action is shared between food, healthcare, global health, humanitarian aid, fair trade, poverty, genocide ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

This is an ongoing pledge that should be fulfilled as often as possible

Keep Vigilant - If We Lose This Battle, Our Lives Will Be Forfeit!

I have been remiss in keeping up with this blog, so here's a list of links that should keep you all vigilant in regards to the dangers of genetically-modified foods:

http://www.gmwatch.org/latest-listing/1-news-items/12342-volunteers-and-resistant-weeds-hitting-us-farming - Volunteers and resistant weeds hitting US farming

http://blog.cosmicegg.net/2008/05/review-controlling-our-food.html - Controlling Our Food


The link above comes from Cosmic Egg, and below is a link to the video Controlling Our Food:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6262083407501596844


http://www.rense.com/general79/seedsa.htm - Reviewing F. William Engdahl's "Seeds of Destruction" - Pt 3


http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=14570 - GMO Scandal: The Long Term Effects of Genetically Modified Food on Humans

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GMDangerousFutile.php - GM is Dangerous and Futile

http://www.ijsaf.org/contents/16-1/lotter1/index.html - The Genetic Engineering of Food and the Failure of Science – Part 1: The Development of a Flawed Enterprise
http://www.ijsaf.org/archive/16/1/lotter1.pdf

Abstract: A major conflict has developed in science and society between promoters and opponents of transgenic foods. Food, feed, and fiber products derived from transgenic agricultural crops are presented here as a different case from bacterial, industrial, and pharmaceutical crop transgenics and should be parsed from the larger transgenics industry for comprehensive re-evaluation and market roll-back. Reviewed is the development of the crop transgenics industry; the early influence of the biotechnology industry over the US federal regulatory agencies in the context of the development of minimal regulation; the basic technology of plant transgenics; the main transgenic crops, traits, and producing countries; consumer resistance to transgenic foods; industry problems with shrinking investments; the worldwide promotion of transgenic crops; and ecological issues of transgenic crops. Flaws in the one gene–one protein model, the foundation of transgenics, are reviewed in the context of the recent and ongoing restructuring of the science of genetics. Research on the mutational consequences of plant transgenics and its phenotypic ramifications such as allergens and novel proteins is discussed. Major research findings and ‘red flag’ incidents in the history of transgenic foods and feeds are reviewed that reflect the flaws in the genetic foundations of transgenics.

I am a scientist. I understand that many past scientific achievements have improved the lives of human beings worldwide, but one thing that should not be tampered with is our food supply. This is dangerous in the extreme - the fact that scientists have created "terminator genes" that turn off the reproductive power of seeds is horrifying, and should be to you as well. Let's liken this possible catastrophe to the disaster currently taking place in the Gulf; witness BP's absolute lack of ability to stave off the leaking of millions of gallons of oil. Before they were allowed to drill underneath a mile of water, shouldn't they have had a plan, if and/or when things went awry?

They DIDN'T...and now, denizens of those gulf states are paying with their livelihoods.

You may have read about the farms that were taken from the farmers whose livelihoods depended on them, all because of cross-pollination of GM seeds with their crops. In no way should those companies ever been able to take away some farmers' crops; but that is exactly what has happened. Percy Schmeiser is a great example of the evil side of GM.

There is a great video called The World According To Monsanto - it looks like the full video has been removed from Google Video, but you can find it elsewhere. Here is a 30-minute excerpt.

WideEyeCinema has the full video.

I think we've a long way to go before GM foods are actually safe for consumption; and at this point, GM foods are strictly a profit-making venture, regardless of what the companies' mission statements may read. Until those two points are addressed, I see no reason why GM foods should NOT be labeled as such, and We The People can make an informed decision about what it is that we are ingesting.