OCA's Blog
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved last week the first U.S. facility for production of genetically engineered (GE) salmon.
Though the facility near Albany, Indiana, has now been approved, AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. is prohibited from importing eggs necessary for producing GE salmon due to an FDA appropriations law requiring labeling of imported foods derived from “bioengineered” sources. Once the “import alert” labeling guidelines are established, the company will be given the green light to begin production of its AquAdvantage Salmon in the new U.S. facility.
These fish, approved for commercial sale by the FDA in November 2015, are the first genetically modified animals to be approved for human consumption. The FDA is not requiring the product to be labeled as genetically engineered because, as the agency —stated, the data and information evaluated show that AquAdvantage Salmon is not materially different from other Atlantic salmon.
What if there were one solution that could fix a lot of the world’s problems?
That’s how organic farmer Ben Dobson began his TEDxHudson talk a few years ago. “Appropriate organic farming techniques and properly planned grazing can reverse climate change,” Dobson told his audience.
How do you grow sunflower sprouts? Start your own seedlings without plastic pots? Should you save seeds?
These are just a few of the questions people interested in homesteading ask themselves. They’re also topics that the managers of Vía Orgánica, a regenerative teaching farm and ranch in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, provide instruction on to local farmers and students. (Vía Orgánica is a sister organization of Organic Consumers Association).
Clearly Ronnie Cummins, international director of Organic Consumers Association, is not alone in thinking that “It’s time to step up the attack on factory farms and the entire degenerative food and farming system.”
Two new allies waging war against Big Ag include a small family farm in Minnesota and residents of a rural Delaware community.
Ever wonder if the eggs you eat are really organic? According to a recent PBS NewsHour segment, the answer to that question is: “It depends on who you ask.”
Everything changed for Dr. Tyrone Hayes when in 1998, the largest chemical company in the world asked him to use his expertise to determine if the company's top-selling product interfered with the hormones of frogs.
The company: Syngenta. The product: weedkiller atrazine.
Hayes, an American biologist and professor of Integrative Biology at University of California, Berkeley, discussed in his nearly 16-minute TEDxBerkeley talk the results of exposing African clawed frogs in his lab to atrazine. Hayes explained how after exposure to atrazine, frogs that were genetic males became completely functioning reproductive females. In another frog species, he showed the gonads with “eggs that are bursting through the surface of the male’s testes.”
Hayes took this research to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but they said, “that’s not really an adverse effect that would stimulate us to reassess the chemical.”
What’s one of the biggest problems with the discussion on the climate crisis? “It focuses excessively on emissions,” Kristin Ohlson, author of "The Soil Will Save Us" says in the trailer for the film “Dirt Rich.”
Ohlson explains:
Are you confused on what’s healthy to eat? If so, Dr. Mark Hyman, who has been studying nutrition for 35 years, brings clarity to what you should be putting in your mouth and what you shouldn’t in his book “Food. What the Heck Should I Eat?”
Organic Consumers Association has been touting for more than 20 years the importance of eating a diet that supports organic and regenerative agriculture to improve human health, advance fair trade/fair labor practices, protect the environment and combat global warming. Dr. Hyman’s new book outlines so many of these same principals.
Water. Without it, there would be no food.
Yet food production—that is, today’s industrial food production system—is degrading this essential natural resource faster than any other industry, depriving you of your right to clean water.
As we approach World Water Day (Thursday, March 22)—and near the end of our spring fundraising campaign—I thought it fitting to say a few words about how your're helping us bring down, and replace, America’s factory farms.
And why we your support is so critical.
Your donation will help fund a massive collaborative effort to build an alternative to Monsanto’s failing industrial, GMO-fueled factory farm agriculture model. Please help us reach our quarterly fundraising goal by donating today online, by mail or by phone—details here.
Congratulations to Stéphane Foucart and Stéphane Horel for winning the 2018 European Press Prize for their exceptional research in the The Monsanto Papers.
Foucart and Horel won the investigative reporting award for “uncovering how Monsanto interferes with science, policy and people—to undermine the credibility of the International Agency for Research on Cancer,” according to a press statement.
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