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Groups Call on Consumers to Boycott Large-Scale Meat Producers
Advocates Ask FTC to Investigate Tyson Foods’ Claims
The Fast Fashion Fix: 20 Ways to Stop Buying New Clothes Forever
New Study Tells Why Chicken Is Killing You and Saturated Fat Is Your Friend
Bayer Backs Away From Plan to Contain Future Roundup Cancer Claims
From the “I bet you didn’t know this” department: Without bats, there would be no tequila.
According to the makers of the film, “Growing a Greener World: Bats—Unsung Heroes,” bats pollinate agave, the primary ingredient in tequila, which blooms at night in the Desert Southwest.
So, no bats, no tequila.
Bats have never been embraced as cuddly creatures. But they’ve been especially vilified lately, thanks to those who suggest that COVID-19 originated in a bat in a wet market in Wuhan, China, and subsequently jumped to humans—despite mounting evidence that the virus was created in, and escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab.
You might say, bats are terribly misunderstood.
And that’s a shame. Because, as this video explains, bats are actually ecological superheroes. They pollinate not just tequila, but many of our favorite foods.
Bats—and there are 1,400 species of them!—also dine on pests that can damage food crops, saving farmers hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars each year.
As if working for a toxic-free food and farming system weren’t enough of an uphill battle, what with the massive lobbying power of Big Chemical, Big Food, Big Agribusiness and Big Pharma—now we’re trying to do that work under the crushing weight of a pandemic and a crumbling economy.
Some well-meaning friends have suggested that while our work is well-intentioned, it’s also futile.
After all, Trump’s administration has already reversed nearly 70 environmental regulations in its never-ending quest to enrich corporations. Another 30 laws are on the chopping block.
In an anti-health, anti-clean environment, anti-anything-except-corporate-profits administration, why bother?
Here’s the thing: We have to lay the foundation for positive change now. So we can hit the ground running when the regulatory climate takes a turn for the better.
We’re not naive—even if Biden prevails in November, his ties to Big Pharma, Big Oil and other industries means we’ll still have our work cut out for us.
But there’s an undeniable movement, rising up from the grassroots, to radically transform every aspect of our economy and our society. To start putting people—all people—ahead of corporate profits.
That’s what our work is now. Building coalitions. Working with key lawmakers and movement-building organizations to develop concrete policy reforms. Educating consumers on how they can play a role in this inevitable transformation.
We need to be ready. And we’ll need your help.
Make a tax-deductible donation to OCA
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
Mexico and India are the latest countries to either ban or restrict the use of Monsanto-Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller.
That news comes during the same week that five—that’s right, five—new animal studies emerged linking glyphosate-based herbicides to reproductive issues.
Our friends at U.S. Right to Know (OCA is a major funder) summarized the five studies:
1. “Are Glyphosate and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides Endocrine Disruptors that Alter Female Fertility?” published in Molecular and Cellular Endocrinology
2. “Glyphosate-Based Herbicide Formulations and Reproductive Toxicity in Animals,” published in Veterinary and Animal Science
3. “Neonatal Exposure to a Glyphosate-Based Herbicide Alters the Uterine Differentiation of Prepubertal Ewe Lambs,” published in Environmental Pollution
4. “Ovarian Mitochondrial and Oxidative Stress Proteins Are Altered by Glyphosate Exposure in Mice,” publsihed in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
5. “Perinatal Exposure to Glyphosate or a Glyphosate-Based Formulation Disrupts Hormonal and Uterine Milieu During the Receptive State in Rats,” published in Food and Chemical Toxicology
When will the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency decide it has enough evidence to ban this dangerous cancer-causing chemical?
Never, unless we end the chemical industry’s influence over a taxpayer-funded agency that puts public health and safety at the bottom of its list of priorities.
Read ‘Mexico Bans Monsanto’s Roundup Herbicide’
Read ‘India Set to Restrict Who Can Spray Glyphosate Herbicides in Big Blow for Bayer’
TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress to Ban Monsanto/Bayer’s Cancer-Causing Roundup Weedkiller!
Help us support U.S. Right to Know with your tax-deductible donation
Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Avoid large crowds, especially indoors. All good advice for reducing your risk of getting COVID-19—and all mentioned over and over by mainstream media.
But here’s some advice, taken seriously in the UK and Scotland, that the U.S. media is largely ignoring, and sometimes even suppressing: One of the best ways to avoid the wrath of COVID-19 is to optimize your levels of Vitamin D.
According to this recent Mercola.com article:
“Vitamin D not only helps regulate immune function and prevent respiratory illnesses in general, but mounting data analyses show clear parallels between vitamin D levels and the risk of infection, severity and mortality from COVID-19 as well.”
In the UK, the Frontline Immune Support Team is providing healthcare workers with free nutritional supplements known to bolster and regulate immune function. According to the team’s fundraising page, vitamin D:
“… plays a critical role in your immune defense system, both in reducing flu-like days of illness if your blood level is sufficient, and in helping your immune system respond when under viral attack. It speeds up recovery from pneumonia.
Two in five adults have a level of vitamin D below 25nmol/l, especially in late winter months such as February and March, that is likely to almost double their risk of flu. A vitamin D level above 100 nmol/l correlates with the lowest numbers of flu-like days. The moral of the story is to get your level up as quickly as possible.”
As health officials warn of a potential “second wave” of COVID-19 in the fall, now might be a good time to add Vitamin D to your list of prevention tactics. And a reminder: Studies show that your body needs adequate levels of magnesium to efficiently convert vitamin D to its active form.
Read ‘Bold Action Required to Defeat Second Wave of COVID-19’
MORE ON COVID-19 . . .
Read ‘Evidence Which Suggests This Is No Naturally Evolved Virus’
Watch ‘Multiple Scientists: Coronavirus Altered in Lab to Better Attach to Humans’
Read ‘Reality Bites: How the Pandemic Changed the Way We Eat’
Read ‘Who Is Getting Rich Off the Pandemic?’
SIGN THE PETITION: Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All Biowarfare Labs Now!
On Tuesday this week, we officially kicked off our #BoycottBigMeat campaign.
It’s not as if we haven’t always fought against industrial factory farms. But we’re scaling up. We’re bringing in dozens of organizations willing to collaborate, to join forces and raise voices—and raise hell—together.
Because it’s more urgent than ever that we end the factory farm nightmare.
It’s more urgent than ever that we rebuild an organic regenerative food and farming system that revitalizes our health, and our local communities and economies. A system that is fair to farmers and workers and humane to animals. A system that works with nature to restore the natural resources that sustain life on earth, not exploit and degrade them.
As Ronnie writes in his essay this week:
After the pandemic, lockdown and economic depression, in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter rebellion, there is no healthy, just and climate-friendly “normal” we can go back to. The old red, white and blue normal of Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton et al. was and is degenerate, racist and self-destructive, a 21st Century suicide economy that is dragging us toward climate catastrophe, societal meltdown and what Vandana Shiva has aptly described as a Digital Dictatorship.
Read Ronnie’s essay: “The Regeneration Revolution: Rising Up Against Big Meat and Factory Farms”
Without fail, every time we talk about the Green New Deal as having the potential to rapidly transform the U.S food and farming system, we’re met with skepticism. “Where are the details?” people want to know.
That’s because the GND, introduced in the U.S House and Senate in February, isn’t a law, or a bill or a policy. It’s a non-binding resolution. Congress will vote on it, but it won’t be signed into law by the president. Non-binding resolutions are viewed as a commitment by Congress to a general goal, or in the case of the GND, a set of goals.
Ever since the GND was introduced, and supported by more than 100 members of Congress, we’ve been waiting for a concrete plan of action.
The wait is over.
Last week, Vermont Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders unveiled his plan for fleshing out the GND in order to meet the resolution’s ambitious and urgent goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2030.
Sanders’ 67-page plan lays out a comprehensive $16.3-trillion package of policies and government-funded programs, as well as realistic projections on how these new programs will actually pay for themselves over the next 15 years.
As OCA’s Ronnie Cummins points out in this week’s essay, Sanders’ GND far exceeds what any of the other leading presidential candidates have so far dared to propose—including providing $841 billion in program money to transform our climate-destructive, corporate monopoly-controlled, industrial food and farming system into an equitable family farm-based, regenerative system of farming and ranching.
Sanders’ GND is a radical plan designed to address a radical societal and global emergency, Ronnie writes. Which is exactly why Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Biotech and Big Pharma are attacking it.
Read ‘Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal is a Game-Changer for Food & Farming’