No time to plow through the Monsanto Papers? No worries. Now you can watch the movie.

“The Monsanto Papers,” a documentary produced by ABC News in Australia, reveals the secret tactics Monsanto (now owned by Bayer AG) used to hide the toxic truth about its flagship product—Roundup weedkiller.

The Monsanto Papers consist of millions of pages of internal corporate documents and communications that piece together how Monsanto colluded with U.S. regulatory agencies to conceal studies linking glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The documents came to light during the landmark case of Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto. Johnson is a former school groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma after routinely spraying school properties with Roundup. His was the first of now 9,000 similar cases pending against Bayer-Monsanto.

Read ‘The Monsanto Papers’ and watch the trailer

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This is the part of our newsletter where we remind you each week that our work depends on you, and that we need your support.

This week, we’re going to ask for something else: If you care about your health, if you care about safe, pesticide-free food, if you care about clean, safe water and a pollution-free environment, if you care about animal welfare, please, please vote on November 6.

Like it or not, food is political. When your tax dollars are used to subsidize the growing of GMO crops that compromise your health and foul your drinking water, that’s because politicians voted to subsidize a degenerative food and farming system, not a regenerative one.

When factory farms are allowed to pollute your water and air with impunity, that’s because politicians have passed exemptions to laws that others are required to follow.

When yet another factory farm goes up in a poor, rural community, that’s because local politicians wrote zoning laws to allow them, and tax laws to reward them.

When schools use Roundup weedkiller on your kids’ playgrounds, and cities spray Roundup on local parks and roadsides, that’s because elected school board officials and city council members allow it.

You still have time to research who’s running for your local and state offices. If your local candidates are on the wrong side of food and environmental policies, don’t vote for them. Find candidates who share your values, and elect them instead.

Our work is funded by you, consumers who care. So, as always, we ask that you please pitch in to fund our work, whenever you can, and within your means. 

But please, on November 6, get out and vote, as if your health depends on it. Because it does.

Make a tax-deductible donation to the Organic Consumers Association

Support Citizens Regeneration Lobby, OCA’s 501(c)(4) lobbying arm (not tax-deductible)

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If you’ve followed our campaign asking Ben & Jerry’s to go organic, you know that the Unilever-owned brand has played a major role in trashing Vermont’s lakes and rivers.

You also know that Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is contaminated with glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup weedkiller.

Now, a new report from Regeneration Vermont highlights how Vermont’s non-organic dairy industry is contributing to what some researchers say is our most urgent global health crisis: antibiotic resistance.

Michael Colby. executive director of Regeneration Vermont, writes:

Vermont’s non-organic dairy industry is all but ignoring the dire warnings from the World Health Organization to reduce overall antibiotic use in food production, a leading cause of antibiotic resistance, which makes the drugs less effective when necessary to combat human illnesses. While the WHO has called for a complete halt to using antibiotics as a prophylactic in food production—preventing rather than treating animal diseases—Vermont’s dairy industry, with the support of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, continues to allow healthy cows to be routinely treated between lactations

Ben & Jerry’s isn’t the only dairy company in Vermont. But, along with cheesemaker Cabot Creamery, it’s one of the two largest. And one of the two worst when it comes to polluting Vermont waterways and soil.

Read ‘Vermont Negligent on Monitoring Dairy Use of Antibiotics’

TAKE ACTION: Tell Ben & Jerry’s: Go Organic!

It’s tax-deductible! Support our campaign to make Ben & Jerry’s go organic!

We recently reported that samples of Maseca white and yellow corn flour tested positive for glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller.

Some Maseca flour samples also tested as high as 94.15 percent for the presence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). 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.

On the Gruma website, the company claims that the Maseca brand is positioned as a “synonym for quality” and that it is made from “100% natural corn,” and that Maseca brand tortillas are “a natural, healthy and nutritious food.”

If you don’t think glyphosate-contaminated GMO corn is “natural, healthy and nutritious,” please sign this petition.

TAKE ACTION! Tell Maseca: Consumers Don’t Want Pesticide-Contaminated GMO Flour!

When the judge in the Monsanto Roundup trial signaled she might overturn the jury’s verdict, we expected the worst.

In the end, Judge Suzanne Bolanos slashed the amount of money the jury said Monsanto should pay its victim, Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, from $289 million to $78 million.

That may not sound like much of a win, but there was good news in her decision: The jury’s guilty verdict was upheld.

Who, besides Monsanto’s lawyers, didn’t think the decision handed down by Bolanos on Monday, October 22 was good news? Monsanto’s new owner, Bayer—which could end up on the hook for up to $800 billion as thousands more lawsuits like Johnson’s make their way through U.S courts.

Read ‘Decision to Uphold Verdict Against Monsanto Sends Bayer Stock into Tailspin’