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IN THIS ISSUE

• Quote of the Week
• Warning: Latest News on Global Warming May Cause Soiling of Trousers
• Alert: Say NO to Sweatshop "Natural" Beef
• Web Video: Zeitgeist The Federal Reserve
• State Voting Alert: CO, MI, NC, NM, PA, VA, WI
• UN Reprimands Monsanto
• EPA and Bush Administration Busted for Gutting Factory Farm Pollution Laws
• Mad Court
  vs. Mad Cow
• Web Tool: Follow the Oil Money
• Headlines
  of the Week

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Standing Together For Positive Change: Help OCA Fight For Health, Justice, and the Environment

In hard times, nonprofits like the OCA need you help more than ever. Support the OCA today with a tax-deductible donation.

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State Voting Alert: CO, MI, NC, NM, PA, VA, WI

The Organic Consumers Association has joined the Peace Impact coalition to do an intensive voter registration and get-out-the-vote project in seven key states. Please click the state page links below to get more information on registering to vote, registration deadlines, early voting, voting by mail, and volunteering to register others. If you live in one of the above states, please click here. For all others, please follow click here.

Mobilizing Organic Consumers In Your State

Through the Organic Consumers Fund's Grassroots Netroots Alliance project, voters are pressing the politicians to support strict organic standards, mandatory labels for genetically engineered food, and the conversion of U.S. farmland to organic. Find out who's answering the call in your state here.

• Learn more about OCA related action alerts & other news in your state here
• Join State discussion groups in our forum.
• Post events in your state on our community calendar.

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Quote of the Week

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."- Thomas Jefferson 1802

For daily information on the nation's economic crisis, and related news, please bookmark OCA's website as well as two of our favorite news sources CommonDreams and CounterPunch And for an informative, uplifting antidote the the network TV news, tune in to Amy Goodman's daily one-hour video, audio, or print broadcast, DemocracyNow

Alert of the Week

Say NO to Sweatshop "Natural" Beef

Join OCA, UFW, and the Teamsters Union October 4 & 5 to rally for Farm Workers' Rights in Front of Whole Foods Markets

Last week, the Organic Consumers Association put a call out to our network to support the United Farm Workers' ongoing union drive at Beef Northwest, a chain of Oregon cattle feedlots, producers of the popular brand, Country Natural Beef.

Thousands of you have responded, signing our petitions or volunteering to leaflet in front of targeted Whole Foods supermarkets across the country, demanding an end to labor exploitation in the $70 billion "natural" and organic food and farming sector.

OCA believes that a healthy and sustainable food system depends on respect for the workers, animals and the environment. Unfortunately, labor laws in the United States do very little to protect the nation's two million farm workers, some of the most exploited and vulnerable members of our society. Labor unions, like the United Farm Workers, represent one of the few ways that workers can organize and gain economic justice and dignity in a system rife with abuse and exploitation. It's time for Whole Foods to show as much concern for the workers at its Northwest Beef feedlots, as it supposedly does for the animals.

For more information about OCA's Whole Foods Campaign, to join our actions with the UFW and the Teamsters on October 4 & 5, or to learn more about the realities of farm workers in the United States, please visit: organicconsumers.org/ufw.cfm

Million Against Monsanto

UN Reprimands Monsanto for Trying to Take Over the World's Food Supply

The President of the United Nations General Assembly condemned Monsanto for profiteering in his opening remarks last week. President H. E. M. Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann noted that the global food crisis is worse than ever. In his remarks at the UN in New York City, he cited World Bank figures, which now blame 75% of the food crisis on the current mass transfer of food crop production towards biofuels.

According to Brockmann, the world's food supply "has been subordinated to the economic aims of a handful of multinational corporations that monopolize all aspects of food production, from seeds to major distribution chains, and they have been the prime beneficiaries of the world crisis.

A look at the figures for 2007, when the world food crisis began, shows that corporations such as Monsanto and Cargill, which control the cereals market, saw their profits increase by 45 and 60 per cent, respectively."

Learn more

Good News of the Week

EPA and Bush Administration Finally Busted for Gutting Factory Farm Pollution Laws

In 2007, Organic Bytes reported that the Bush Administration had eliminated pollution laws that required factory farm pollutants to be monitored and documented. In place of the old regulations, a new program was created that invited factory farms, which are more specifically known as CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations ), to monitor their own pollution and voluntarily submit those reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Not surprisingly, last week, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report indicating the new factory farm pollution policies aren't really working very well.

According to the report, the EPA "is responsible for regulating CAFOs and requires CAFOs that discharge certain pollutants to obtain a permit." Yet according to the report, the EPA isn't effectively regulating factory farm pollution, because the agency currently has little data on how much and what type of pollution these CAFOs are putting out. Even more embarrassing, the EPA's data is so weak, they don't even know how many CAFOs there are. Given the fact that one of these factory farms can put out as much raw sewage as a U.S. city, the GAO report suggests it might be a good if the EPA considered restarting that whole monitoring and enforcing thing it used to do.

Learn more

Mad Court vs. Mad Cow

A federal court has ruled in favor of the USDA in a long-standing dispute between the agency and a Kansas-based natural beef company that wants to test all of its meat for Mad Cow Disease. The USDA currently tests only a tiny percentage of U.S. beef cows for the fatal disease, unlike the EU or Japan, where basically all cows are tested at slaughter for the disease. The USDA's controversial and dangerous policy, an obvious attempt to cover up the fact that the routine practice of feeding slaughterhouse waste, blood, and manure to animals on non-organic farms has spread Mad Cow Disease a to many cows in the USA, has caused a number of major foreign nations to ban U.S. beef imports.

In an effort to re-establish trade, Creekstone Farms, a natural beef producer, (which does not feed slaughterhouse waste to its animals) responded to the loss of its foreign markets in Japan and Korea by asking the USDA if the company, itself, could pay to have all of its meat tested for BSE (Mad Cow Disease), thereby assuring leery foreign buyers of the meat's safety. In an outrageous move, the USDA threatened the company and its CEO with fines and imprisonment if they were to begin testing the safety of their beef. Creekstone took the USDA to court, claiming food manufacturers should have the right to invest in testing to make sure their food is safe. But a DC Court of Appeals recently ruled against Creekstone, saying the USDA has "broad powers' in interpreting how to enforce food safety laws.

Learn more