When OCA International Director Ronnie Cummins was invited by a media group to write an op-ed on GMO labeling, he jumped at the opportunity to make it very clear why OCA and millions of Americans want labels on GMO foods: Because we believe the scientific evidence that GMO foods, and the toxic chemicals used to grow and produce them, are unsafe.
 
So far, Ronnie’s hard-hitting op-ed has been read by millions of consumers in 45 daily newspapers across the U.S.
 
It’s time to stop pretending that consumers just want “the right to know.” It’s time to take a stand, to be very clear about why we want the right to know.
 
The timing couldn’t be better. Last month (October 21, 2015), the Senate Ag Committee held a sham hearing on biotechnology, largely for the purpose of promoting GMOs. The Senate hearing ended exactly the same way the House hearing on H.R. 1599 ended—with everyone present stating that GMOs are “safe.”
 
It’s time to stop pretending. It’s time to speak the truth. Or suffer the consequences.
 
Read Ronnie’s op-ed

If you’re not clear about how genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are regulated in this country, it’s no wonder.

Not one, but three government agencies—the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)—are charged with oversight of GMOs.  Each agency has developed its own regulations and guidance documents to fit within a complex web of laws.

Consumers and scientists have been asking for better oversight, stronger laws and rigorous testing of GMOs for years. In response, President Obama, in July (2015), called for a review—the first since 1992—of the “coordinated framework” for the regulation of biotechnology. The stated goal of the review is to “modernize” the system by clarifying the roles of the USDA, FDA and EPA, and developing a “long-term strategy for the regulation of the products of biotechnology.”

This is our chance to let the White House know what kind of GMO regulations we’d like to see, including: pre-market safety testing (as recommended by the American Medical Association), mandatory labels on all GMOs, protection for non-GMO crops from contamination caused by neighboring GMO crops, and a moratorium on all herbicide-tolerant and pesticide-producing GMO crops. 

Click here to take action: DEADLINE November 13, 5 p.m. EST: Tell Obama You Want Safety Testing, Tighter Regulations and Labels on GMOs

Or text ‘RegulateGMOs’ to 97779 to sign the petition

Kevin Folta isn’t going to take it anymore. But he’s not fighting back. He’s running.

Folta, you may recall, was the subject of numerous recent articles, including in the New York Times, exposing him as one of Monsanto’s “scientists for hire.” The articles resulted from the investigative work conducted by US Right to Know, an independent project funded by OCA.

Here’s what Folta tweeted yesterday:

Hi Everybody. I’ll keep it short. The attacks are relentless, I’m under a lot of pressure on many fronts. I’m taking the opportunity to disappear from public visibility and focus on my lab and my students. It has been a challenging time, I’m grateful for your wishes, but this battle is vicious and one-sided, and I think I’m well served bowing out of the public science conversation for the foreseeable future. Thank you. – Kevin Folta, via twitter, November 4, 2015

Folta is just one of many so-called “scientists” doing the bidding of Monsanto. There are more out there like him. But he was a poster child of sorts. By bringing down Folta, we are doing the critical work, in a very mainstream and public way, of destroying one of the legs Monsanto has been standing on—false science.

Today it’s Folta. Tomorrow it’s Monsanto. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

Please consider a donation to support this work that is vital to the movement. Thank you!

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)
 
Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)

According to this film, 210 million Americans, including children, are dosed daily with fluoride. Because it’s in their drinking water.
 
Fluoride is a waste byproduct. Of the fertilizer industry. Of the aluminum production industry. Of the nuclear waste industry.
 
Fluoride is also an endocrine disruptor. And a neurotoxin. Fluoride does not occur naturally in the human body. And according to a growing body of evidence, there is no “safe level” of fluoride when it comes to human consumption.
 
Yet it’s in our water supply. Without our consent.

“My career has been about making people aware of harmful exposures
and the deception that often accompanies those exposures.
Drinking water fluoridation is harmful, we’ve been deceived to believe it is safe,
and with new found knowledge we must all act now to stop it.” -Erin Brokovich

Watch the video

Sugar makes us (and our kids) fat. But even when it doesn’t, it still makes us sick
 
So says a study in the journal Obesity. According to the study, children didn’t used to commonly suffer from chronic diseases such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and type 2 diabetes. Nor did they exhibit risk factors for cardiovascular disease.
 
But these diseases and risk factors are now prevalent in children.
 
Some of the kids who suffer from these diseases and risk factors are overweight or obese. But some of them aren’t. For those who aren’t overweight, sugar may still be to blame for their poor health. Because as it turns out, sugar causes health problems, even when it doesn’t lead to weight gain.
 
So when Kellogg’s defends its Frosted Flakes because one serving “with skim milk has just 150 calories” but fails to tell you that the second ingredient in its “Tony the Tiger” cereal is sugar, the cereal company is missing (obscuring?) the point.
 
It’s the sugar itself, not just the calories, we should be concerned about.
 
Read the report
 
More here

Massive Scam Threatens Your Health: By Placing Toxic Chemicals on Land, Polluting Industries Are Allowed to Bypass Clean Air and Water Regulations
 
Regenerative Organic Agriculture Puts Soil Health Front and Center

The Human Cost of Cheap Chicken
 
From Watchdogs to Lapdogs: How the Mainstream Media Misleads Us on GMOs
 
Whistleblower Claims Censorship of Research into Pesticide Linked to Bee Deaths
 
Buckle Up: Scientists Warn of Dozens of Global Warming Tipping Points That Could Trigger Natural Disasters

Just about every corporation, including Monsanto, now calls itself “sustainable.” What does that mean?

On October 26 (2015), the paywalled site PoliticoPro reported that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture wants “farmers and agricultural interests to come up with a single definition of sustainability in order to avoid confusing the public with various meanings of the term in food and production methods.”
 
We agree with Secretary Tom Vilsack that the word “sustainability” is meaningless to consumers and the public. It’s overused, misused and it has been shamelessly co-opted by corporations for the purpose of greenwashing.
 
But rather than come up with one definition for the word “sustainable” as it refers to food and food production methods, we suggest doing away with the word entirely. In its place, as a way of helping food consumers make conscious, informed choices, we suggest dividing global food and farming into two categories: regenerative and degenerative.
 
Read the essay