Katherine's Blog
If ever conditions were ripe for revolution, that time is now—especially for anyone who cares about their health, and the health of planet earth.
President-Elect Donald Trump’s short lists for his environment and agriculture cabinet appointments are dominated by entrenched D.C. insiders, career politicians and industry lobbyists. Not one of these proposed "leaders" supports policies that would lead to healthier food, a cleaner environment or a cooler planet.
So much for “draining the swamp.” And so much for an easy road to forward progress on food, ag and climate policy during the next four years under our future fast-food leader.
We've outlined six of the reasons we'll need to ramp up the #ConsumerRevolution under the Trump Administration.
A word of warning. The new crop of Monsanto's minions in the Trump administration have rebranded Monsanto's pesticide-and chemical-intensive degenerative agriculture as "American" agriculture. Don't be surprised if they brand you "anti-American" for criticizing it.
Sunday, October 16, is World Food Day. It’s also the day that the International Monsanto Tribunal will conclude, in The Hague, Netherlands—and mark the beginning of justice for Earth and its inhabitants.
Monsanto and its friends in the pesticide industry will try to characterize this historic citizens’ initiative as a “kangaroo court.”
But those of us who are already here, preparing for the opening of the People’s Assembly (October 14), and the formal Tribunal (October 15-16), can attest to the fact that there are no kangaroos in sight. There are only distinguished judges and lawyers, people who have been harmed by Monsanto’s products, and concerned citizens from all over the world.
Citizens’ Tribunals are not mock trials. They have a long history of bringing justice to issues where governments either act corruptly or fail to act. It is the legal right of citizens to ensure the carriage of justice, when governments do not.
It’s been about a week since Monsanto and Bayer confirmed their intention to say “I do”—ample time for media, lawmakers, consumer and farmer advocacy groups, and of course the happy couple themselves, to weigh in on the pros and cons.
Reactions poured in from all the usual suspects.
Groups like the Farmers Union, Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth and others didn’t mince words when it came to condemning the deal. (Organic Consumers Association tagged it a “Marriage Made in Hell” back in May, pre-announcement, when the two mega-corporations were still doing their mating dance).
Predictably, the corporate heads of state last week promoted the proposed $66-billion deal as an altruistic plan to improve “the lives of growers and people around the world.” This week, they told Senate Judiciary Committee members that the merger “is needed to meet a rising food demand.”
Is anyone out there still buying the line that Monsanto and Bayer are in the business of feeding the world? When the evidence says otherwise?
Even if that claim weren’t ludicrous, who thinks it’s a good idea to entrust the job of “feeding the world” to the likes of Bayer, a company that as part of the I.G. Farben cartel in the 1940s produced the poison gas for the Nazi concentration camps, and more recently sold HIV-infected drugs to parents of haemophiliacs in foreign countries, causing thousands of children to die of AIDS?
Bayer and Monsanto finally agreed to say “I do” yesterday (September 14), striking a $66-billion deal that Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant tried to sell as a move to improve “the lives of growers and people around the world.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jacob Bunge painted the news in a different light. Bunge implied that behind the Bayer-Monsanto buyout, a similar proposed merger between Dow and Dupont, and the recently approved ChemChina-Syngenta deal, runs the story of an industry in trouble.
“The dominance of genetically modified crops is under threat,” wrote Bunge on Wednesday. Bunge interviewed Ohio farmer Joe Logan who told him:
“The price we are paying for biotech seed now, we’re not able to capture the returns,” said Ohio farmer Joe Logan. This spring, Mr. Logan loaded up his planter with soybean seeds costing $85 a bag, nearly five times what he paid two decades ago. Next spring, he says, he plans to sow many of his corn and soybean fields with non-biotech seeds to save money.
With farmers giving up on biotech seeds, a global public wise to the destruction wrought by poisons like glyphosate (Monsanto) and neonicotinoids (Bayer), and a food industry increasingly under pressure to remove GMO ingredients, the Gene Giants figure all they need to do is get bigger—and more powerful—and they’ll be able to use their clout to step up the bullying of farmers, governments, scientists and the media.
“This is one celebration you don’t want to miss!”
That’s the message leaders of the Organic Trade Association (aka the Organic “Traitors” Association) sent their members recently, in an email inviting them to the OTA’s 2016 Leadership Awards Celebration at Expo East in Baltimore.
Here’s one thing that OCA and organic consumers will not be celebrating—the fact that the OTA’s “Organic Elite” conspired with Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) to overturn Vermont’s mandatory GMO labeling law, and ensure that food companies will never be required to reveal GMO reveal GMO ingredients in their products, using clear, on-package labels.
As consumers, we think a lot about food brands and food companies, and pay little if any attention to the associations and lobbying groups that represent those brands and companies. If we think about them at all, we aren’t surprised when groups like the infamous Grocery Manufacturers Association spend millions, illegally, to block GMO labeling laws so they can protect the profits of junk food manufacturers.
We expect better of the OTA. But at the end of the day, when Monsanto’s minions in Congress were on the verge of losing, and consumers were on the verge of winning, it was the bureaucrats at the OTA who stabbed us in the back on GMO labeling.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your favorite organic brands and ask them to stand with you—not Monsanto and Big Food, and not the back-stabbing bureaucrats of the Organic “Traitors” Association!
Stephen Colbert made it popular, but the word “truthiness” has been around for a long time.
Webster’s provides a list of definitions for "truthiness," including this one: (noun) : truth level of a statement; and this one: (noun) : The quality of stating what one wishes or feels to be true instead of what is actually true.
Tom’s of Maine, or more accurately, the brand’s majority owner, Colgate-Palmolive, was clearly guilty of “truthiness” when it created a webpage titled “How to Identify Organic Toothpaste.”
On that page, intended primarily to promote the Tom’s of Maine toothpaste brand, the company stopped just short of overtly claiming the brand is organic. But it clearly implied that it is.
We complained, and we asked you to do the same.
You did. And within hours, we were contacted by a manager at Tom’s, and a Colgate lawyer. They apologized, and removed the webpage.
Today, Congress rammed through a bill that is anti-consumer and anti-states’ rights.
And President Obama is expected to sign it very soon.
Why would President Obama sign the DARK Act, a bill that will preempt Vermont’s GMO labeling law and is clearly intended to hide information from consumers?
We can’t think of a single good reason.
Please help us flood the White House with calls today (202-456-1111 or 202-456-1414) asking Obama to veto S. 764.
Please sign here and here. We will deliver these petitions tomorrow, Friday July 15, during a rally at 1 p.m. in Lafayette near the White House.
Monsanto may not be the largest company in the world. Or the worst. But the St. Louis, Mo. biotech giant has become the poster child for all that’s wrong with our industrial food and farming system.
Since the early 20th century, Monsanto has marketed highly toxic products that have contaminated the environment and permanently sickened or killed thousands of people around the world. In a rare exception, Monsanto was recently ordered to pay $46.5 million to compensate victims of its PCB poisoning. Sometimes the company settles out of court, to avoid having to admit to any “wrongdoing.”
But for the most part, thanks to the multinational’s powerful influence over U.S. politicians, Monsanto has been able to poison with impunity.
On October 15 and 16, in The Hague, Netherlands—the International City of Peace and Justice—a panel of distinguished international judges will hear testimony from witnesses, represented by legitimate lawyers, who have been harmed by Monsanto.
In their preparation for the citizens’ tribunal, the tribunal judges will consider six questions that are relevant not just for Monsanto, but to all companies involved in shaping the future of agriculture.
If you participated in the glyphosate test project launched last year by The Detox Project (formerly Feed The World) and Organic Consumers Association, you probably failed.
A staggering 93 percent of Americans tested positive for glyphosate, according to the test results, announced yesterday (May 25, 2016).
What makes that figure even more alarming is that many of you who sent in urine samples for testing probably eat more organic than non-organic food. Which suggests that either your organic food has been contaminated and/or you’re being exposed to glyphosate via unknown sources.
Worse yet? Children had the highest levels.
The testing, carried out by a laboratory at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), was the first-ever comprehensive and validated LC/MS/MS testing project to be carried out across America. According to the results, people who live in the west and mid-west tested higher than those living in other regions of the country.
It's way past time for the world to wake up and smell the poison.
Every 15 years, pesticides come up for review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Last year, 2015, was the year the EPA was supposed to review and either renew, or reject, glyphosate.
We’re still waiting. Meanwhile, glyphosate, the key ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup, was as ubiquitous in the media this week as it is in our environment—and on our food.
