ESSAY OF THE WEEK

Zombie Viruses

Right now research labs in the U.S. and elsewhere are using risky gain-of-function experiments to create viral ghouls.

Mad scientists are mixing and matching deadly diseases like anthrax with the coronavirus. They are re-engineering the Ebola virus to make it airborne and resurrecting dangerous viruses from the bodies of dead soldiers.

The threat to all of us is obvious. These viruses can, and do, leak from so-called secure laboratories—and, as COVID-19 has shown, once they are out in the world they can be deadly and hard to control.

We still don’t know the full extent of the gain-of-function ghouls our government is funding today. 

But from the work of a few dogged investigators we know that, in the name of health, scientists are mutating many different viruses to make them more infectious, deadly and more able to jump species—and then creating vaccines that can be administered by spraying them in the air. 

The history of virology and bioweapons is long, dark and full of deadly secrets and dumb mistakes. It’s time to change the course of that history.

READ Gain-of-Function Ghouls: SARS-CoV-2 Isn’t the Scariest Thing That Could Leak From a Lab

GET THE FACTS: Read more about our COVID-19 campaign 

VISIT our Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame

TAKE ACTION! Sign the Petition to Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All Biowarfare Labs Now!

TAKE ACTION! Ask the scientists, lawyers and policy experts you know to sign our international Open Letter: “Why We Need a Global Moratorium on the Creation of Potential Pandemic Pathogens (PPPs) Through Gain-of-Function Experiments”

ACTION ALERT

Hell No, Joe!

Why on earth is Joe Biden considering former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp as a potential Secretary of Agriculture?

Heitkamp’s close ties with corporate agribusiness should worry everyone. She voted in favor of the DARK Act to drastically weaken GMO labeling requirements. She voted in favor of the Keystone XL oil-sands pipeline and a bill to overturn a key EPA clean water rule.

Heitkamp was the first Democratic Senator to endorse Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue—a cheerleader to GMOs, pesticides and industrial agriculture.

In her 2018 re-election campaign for the Senate, she received more campaign contributions than any other Senator from the “Crop Production and Basic Processing” industry which represents the sugar, cotton and corn industries—all of which rely primarily on GMO crops.

Heitkamp also received big contributions from the “Agricultural Services and Products” industry which represents contributors such as Monsanto and Koch Industries. 

America needs a Secretary of Agriculture who understands and is up for the challenges that lie ahead for food and farming. In every way, Heidi Heitkamp is the wrong person for the job.

SIGN THE PETITION Tell Joe Biden: Reject Heidi Heitkamp for the Next Secretary of Agriculture

NEW REPORT

Greedy Gates

Bill Gates is one of the richest people on earth and the founder of the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Now a new global citizens report, published by Navdanya International, shows that behind the do-gooding image of the Gates Foundation lies a toxic philosophy of philanthrocapitalism that relies on the corporate takeover of our seed, agriculture, food, knowledge and global health systems and on manipulating information and eroding our democracies. 

Written by an international panel of contributors, “Gates to a Global Empire…Over Seed, Food, Health, Knowledge and the Earth” shows that over the last 30 years, the Gates Foundation has emerged as a major force.

It uses its money and influence to promote failed GMOs, fake foods and disinformation about organic, regenerative and agroecological farming, and is willing and able to derail the international sustainability agenda and push the future of humanity and the planet towards extinction and ecological collapse.

READ and download the report for free

WATCH A recorded video of the launch conference

More about how Bill Gates dictates global food policy

Bill Gates' Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life

Bill Gates Secretly Dictates Global Food Policy Too

SUPPORT OCA & CRL

Positive Change

Everybody knows we need a change.

Our climate-destructive, corporate-controlled, factory farm system is broken and the longer we let it limp along the more broken and destructive it becomes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we can imagine a better future we can build it. We can achieve the large-scale transition we so desperately need to an organic, regenerative food and farming system.

With the right policies—and people—in place agriculture can become a force for good. It can clean up the environment, advance social justice, restore urban and rural food and economic security, and restabilize the climate.

We work everyday to create the conditions in which that grassroots-driven change can become a reality.

We know that even if the November election brings us a new president, Joe Biden’s ties to Big Oil, Big Pharma and other corporate interests could be real obstacles to building a better world.

We know that we have our work cut out for us and we are ready to meet the challenge. 

We’ll never stop fighting for a better world—but we need your help and your support to make change happen.

Your donations, to either Organic Consumers Association or Citizens Regeneration Lobby, will help us win this battle for the future of food.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit  

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

Donate $100 or more and we’ll send you a copy of Ronnie’s new book

Click here for more ways to support our work

HEALTH NOTES

Toxic Smoke

The wildfires still raging on the West Coast of America may have dropped from the front pages of our newspapers, but their legacy will be with us a long time. Satellite pictures of smoke spreading all over the country, and the world, show just how far-reaching—to people, to nature and to property—the damage is.

Now, studies of what’s actually in all that smoke are telling the story of our times. Even in areas of natural beauty the soil can be saturated with toxic chemicals from fertilizers and pesticides from farms, waste and sewage from factories and communities and vehicle exhaust.

This pollution can be taken up through the roots of trees and other plants. 

Pollution from pesticides and fertilizers as well as vehicles and factories can drift in the air and coat surfaces. When they burn, these toxicants are released back into our atmosphere.

This is a major health disaster and one more good reason why we keep campaigning to stop toxic chemical-dependent farming and switch to organic and regenerative methods that take the toxins out of our farms, our plants and our soil.

READ California Wildfires Pass 4 Million Acres Burned, Doubling Previous Record – That’s a Lot of Toxic Smoke

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Let’s Beat Big Ag

In order to build a better food and farming system—one that is healthy for people, animals and the planet—we must first break up Big Ag and its stranglehold on agriculture. How do we beat Big Ag? More small-scale organic and regenerative farmers.

Through a regenerative Green New Deal, we can support small family farms and reward farmers who grow nutritious food, promote biodiversity and build healthy soils that draw down carbon and sequester it in the ground.

This was the topic of the #BoycottBigMeat campaign’s Facebook Live that streamed on October 13. The online "farminar" discussed the potential of a Green New Deal to transform our climate-destructive, corporate-controlled, factory-farm food and farming system into an equitable family farm-based, regenerative system of farming and ranching.

Guest speakers included:

• Garrett Blad, Sunrise Movement
• Seth Watkins, Farmers and Ranchers for a Green New Deal
• Shawn Sebastian, People’s Action
• Mackenzie Feldman, Data For Progress Fellow & Herbicide-Free Campus

If you were unable to join us, you can watch the Facebook Live here.

Not on Facebook? Watch the video on YouTube here.

TAKE ACTION! Sign the petition: It’s Time for Radical Reform: No More Factory Farms!

BOOK CORNER

Heal the Earth

We can change things—if we want to.

In her new book, “The Reindeer Chronicles,” award-winning science journalist Judith D. Schwartz offers an eye-opening global tour of some of the most ecologically damaged places on earth—and her observations of how a passionate group of eco-restorers is leading the way to their recovery.

Schwatrz’s journey takes her to the far corners of the world from China’s Loess Plateau, to Norway, to the Middle East.

Along the way she stops in Mexico where a Regeneration International meeting shows her that a better future is within our grasp—if we can imagine it.

In our fear-based culture, she reminds us, imagining the worst inevitably means that’s all we ever get.

But by imagining and asking for a better future, solutions to seemingly intractable problems can come from the unlikeliest of places—and people.

The book explores regenerative solutions across a range of landscapes: deserts, grasslands, tropics, tundra and the Mediterranean—and reveals how much we can achieve, if we can find a way to work together and follow nature’s lead.

Read an excerpt from “The Reindeer Chronicles” 

Buy the book

LITTLE BYTES

Essential Reading

Bayer's Monsanto Headache Persists

COVID-19 Was Created in the Wuhan Laboratory and Is Now in the Hands of the Chinese Military

Essential Oils Could Help Protect Organic Fruits Crops

Bill Gates on Track to Grow His Fortune Through Foundation’s Ties to Vaccine Makers

Intensive Farming Worldwide Threatens Paris Climate Accord, Report Says

The Plastic Pandemic—COVID-19 Trashed the Recycling Dream