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Are those tortillas you’ve been making with Maseca flour toxic?

On October 9, the Organic Consumers Association reported that samples of Maseca white and yellow corn flour tested positive for concerning levels of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.

Testing also revealed that some Maseca flour samples tested as high as 94.15 percent for the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMO). That’s a startling finding, given that GMO crops are not allowed to be grown commercially in Mexico.

Those findings can mean only one thing—Mexico-based Gruma, which owns the Maseca brand, is importing GMO corn from the U.S. to produce its flour, sold all over the world, including in Mexico and the U.S.

Since we revealed our test results, concerned consumers from the U.S., Mexico and Canada have reached out asking what they should do. So we’ve researched some alternative corn flour brands that aren’t contaminated with glyphosate and aren’t made from GMO corn.

Robert Howard, juror #4 in the trial of former school groundskeeper Dewayne Lee Johnson vs. Monsanto, has two questions for the judge who is threatening to undo the jury’s unanimous verdict against Monsanto:

“Do you have any reason at all to believe that myself or my fellow jurors did not follow your instructions?”

Did you assess the credibility of Monsanto witnesses, particularly Monsanto employees, at all?”

Howard is one of four jurors who wrote to Judge Suzanne Bolanos, defending the jurors’ unanimous decision and asking her to uphold it.

Howard also called our office, wanting to vent. He’s discouraged. And angry. He told us that he and others on the jury listened to the evidence, and followed the judge’s instructions to the letter.

Yet, now, that same judge appears poised to undo their work by threatening to overturn the jury’s $289-million verdict for the former school groundskeeper.

TAKE ACTION: Stand with jurors against Monsanto! Tell Judge Suzanne Bolanos to uphold the jury’s unanimous decision!

Today is World Food Day. 

It’s also a day when millions of people are cleaning up after yet another weather-related disaster, this time in Florida. And millions more around the globe are experiencing devastating droughts and crippling storms that are leaving them unable to grow food and feed their families.

We often think that we, as individuals, have little or no power to solve problems as complex and overwhelming as global warming and world hunger.

And yet, we do. The personal choices we make when it comes to our food, and the demands we make of our local, state and federal politicians to adopt climate change-reversing food, farming and and land-use policies give us the power to do something, everyday, to reverse our dangerous course.

TAKE ACTION: Today, on World Food Day, please ask your state leaders to follow the example of California and Hawaii by adopting food- and agriculture-focused strategies to address climate change.

The world’s largest meat packer, JBS Tolleson, is recalling nearly 7 million pounds of beef after an investigation identified JBS as the common supplier of ground beef products sold to people who developed Salmonella Newport, a disease that causes fever and diarrhea, weakness, dyspnea and, potentially, sudden death.

As of October 4, 57 people in 16 states had been sickened by JBS beef.

If that’s not enough to make you swear off industrial factory farm beef, here’s more food for thought: There’s a good chance the JBS beef was contaminated because it contained a combination of cattle raised for beef, and dairy cows sent off for slaughter because they were too sick to produce milk.

World hunger is on the rise. Scientists just moved up the deadlinefor addressing the looming climate crisis. Small independent farms are failing at an alarming rate.

According to three recent studies, one big change could go a long way toward addressing all three of these crises. By transitioning, on a global scale, to organic regenerative agriculture, we could feed more people, sequester more carbon and improve the economic prospects for farmers.

Three crises, one solution—a solution that will require a massive overhaul of food and farming policy, and a paradigm change in consumer behavior.

Can we act in time?