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Covid Antifragility: Trusting Our Strength in Uncertain Times
Paper Ballots Played a Key Role in Defending the Integrity of the 2020 Election
‘Buy It or Else’: How Monsanto and BASF Forced a Toxic Weed Killer on Farmers
Vitamin C Treatment for COVID-19 Being Silenced
COVID-19 Vaccination May Be Difficult To Avoid
The Local Foods Movements Has Made Half a Revolution. For the Other Half, We Need a Green New Deal
After a Smooth Start, Biden Faces Frustration Over Cabinet Picks
As the days and weeks and months roll on, it gets harder to remember a time when the words “COVID” and “pandemic” didn’t permeate every aspect of our daily lives — or at least didn’t dominate mainstream media headlines.
Early on, as panic-buying set in and grocery store shelves were stripped by nervous consumers, Big Meat titans like Smithfield, Tyson, Cargill and others also made headlines . . . and not in a good way.
After years of claiming they and their industrial factory farm practices were ‘the only way to feed the world,’ Big Meat corporations were exposed for failing at even that.
As the pandemic disrupted Big Meat’s supply chains, local, independent, organic and regenerative farmers stepped in to fill the gap.
As Big Meat corporations were called out for grabbing millions in emergency relief funds while failing to protect their workers at processing plants, consumers flocked to local producers for meat produced in or near their communities.
Big Meat had its 15 minutes of fame. But the headlines soon faded. The media moved on.
OCA has been “covering” the Big Meat story for decades.
And we have not moved on.
We recently filed an FTC complaint against Cargill for falsely claiming that its Honeysuckle turkey products come from turkeys raised by “independent farmers.”
This week, the courts ruled that, just as we alleged in our lawsuit against Smithfield, consumers might reasonably expect pork products advertised as “the safest” in the world wouldn’t contain antibiotic-resistant germs, carcinogenic drugs — and wouldn’t be produced at facilities where outbreaks of COVID-19 had occurred.
We may not be making headline news with our sustained campaign against Big Meat’s industrial factory farms.
But thanks to you, we are making headway against the corporations that are polluting our waterways, degrading our soils, torturing animals and selling products that contribute to a massive public health crisis.
It’s our job to be a constant thorn in the side of Big Meat. Your donations help us do that.
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
We are happy to report this week a victory on the food safety and labeling front.
On December 15, a court rejected Smithfield Foods’ motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of OCA against the pork producer in May 2020.
“We are pleased that the court agrees that Smithfield, a producer of industrial factory farm pork, should be held accountable for claims the company makes about the safety of its products and production practices,” said OCA International Director Ronnie Cummins.
The lawsuit, filed by Richman Law Group in D.C. Superior Court, accuses Smithfield of falsely advertising its pork products as being the “safest” of U.S. pork products.
But what consumers may not know is the USDA warned Smithfield slaughter plants on multiple occasions that their pork was more likely to be contaminated with salmonella than similar products in slaughter plants of the same size.
The suit also alleges that many disease strains detected in Smithfield products have been found to be resistant to antibiotics that are designated by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration as “highly important” or even “critically important” for human health.
For a comprehensive overview on what’s wrong with industrial pork production, read ‘The FoodPrint of Pork’
SIGN THE PETITION ‘It’s Time for Radical Reform: No More Factory Farms!
What better way to kick off the New Year than with inspirational interviews from experts on all things organic?
The Real Organic Symposium, hosted by our friends at the Real Organic Project, is your go-to virtual place to get inspired and to learn more about soil health, organic agriculture and climate change solutions that work.
Starting each Sunday in January 2021, the symposium will premiere interviews with more than 60 prominent organic farmers, scientists and climate activists. Here are some of the speakers who will be featured in the real-time gathering:
• Al Gore, former vice president, co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, and the founder and chairman of The Climate Reality Project, a nonprofit devoted to solving the climate crisis
• Vandana Shiva, author, food sovereignty activist and founder of Navdanya, a national movement to protect the diversity and integrity of living resources, especially native seed, the promotion of organic farming and fair trade.
• Paul Hawken, an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author and activist who has dedicated his life to environmental sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment.
• Bill McKibben, founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont.
• Allan Savory, regenerative solutions pioneer and co-founder of the Africa Centre for Holistic Management in Zimbabwe and the Savory Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
• Alice Waters, champion of local and sustainable agriculture, chef, author, food activist, and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California.
The Real Organic Project represents farmers who want to provide food the right way. That means no cutting corners with toxic pesticides. The certifying organization is dedicated to reclaiming the word “organic,” a word stolen by big lobbyists and big agricultural corporations.
All funds raised through the Real Organic Symposium will help further the organization’s work to offer its add-on to USDA organic certified farms at no cost.
It seems there is no better time—than in the midst of a global pandemic—to talk about the importance of a healthy immune system. Yet, this is not the narrative most of us have been hearing.
Instead, our government and the mainstream media have chosen to focus on spreading fear about the virus, enforcing worldwide lockdowns and convincing the general public that we are so fragile that our only chance out of this mess is through Big Pharma in the form of a vaccine.
But are we as vulnerable to COVID-19 as our public health authorities want us to believe?
Nate Doromal, a specialist in strategic marketing and systems engineering, recently wrote something that really resonated with us. We think it might resonate with you, too.
“The message of our fragility is everywhere. We are told, ‘you’re fragile—don’t go out, stay inside, and follow the rules. Presume you’re already sick and that you caught the virus.’ There it is again. You’re weak and fragile.”
Perhaps the most dangerous thing about Covid is that we “lose faith and forget our strength and power,” says Doromal.
“We were always a resilient people, both individually and as a community. Covid has shown us the need to utilize our strengths to become more resilient, more antifragile in the face of stress and trying circumstances.”
It’s true. Humans are incredibly resilient, both mentally and physically.
Our bodies have a resilience that allows us to quickly bounce back from injury. We are also built with a powerful (and extraordinarily complex) immune system, one that is key to warding off disease. As Doromal points out:
“Something that has become clear with the Covid-19 data is that the overall health status of the individual is an important marker for how serious a Covid-19 infection can become.”
This means that living a healthy lifestyle has never been more important, and having the confidence to make healthy choices, matters.
Next time the doom and gloom narrative of Covid gets you down, take action for your health. Go for a walk. Get some sun on your face. Eat a healthy, organic meal. Drink lots of water and get plenty of rest.
Lastly, do not forget your strength. Our bodies are often stronger than our minds give us credit for.
READ ‘Covid Antifragility: Trusting Our Strength in Uncertain Times’
In our recent profile of Bill Gates, we questioned whether the Microsoft co-founder eerily (and accurately) predicted the COVID-19 pandemic or if he actually had a hand in creating the current pandemic.
After further research, we learned that Gates is not just involved in the collection and manipulation of deadly viruses—virus hunting is one of his passions.
When Anthony Fauci decided to fund research on the H5N1 bird flu virus that was akin to weaponization, Gates directed grants from his foundation to support Fauci’s hand-picked scientists and their gain-of-function experiments.
Today, Gates employs America’s top virus hunter, Dr. Scott F. Dowell, the Gates Foundation’s deputy director for surveillance and epidemiology.
Our new report, “Meet Scott Dowell: Bill Gates’ Virus Hunter,” spotlights Dowell and his role in performing risky gain-of-function experiments that closely mirror the work of virus hunters who are likely responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
For more than two decades, Dowell worked for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, leading the department’s global infectious disease surveillance. He partnered with the Pentagon on his CDC work to create a vast global network of laboratories for virus hunting and gain-of-function research.
Dowell’s work has helped position the U.S. military as the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.
This dangerous work of hunting viruses, and manipulating them to be more deadly and more transmissible, must stop now.
It’s time to bring the perpetrators of this pandemic to justice and put them on trial at an international Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal.
It’s time to strengthen the International Bioweapons Protocol to ban so-called “gain-of-function” experiments forever.
There’s mounting scientific evidence the COVID-19 pandemic is not a natural occurrence in which a relatively harmless bat virus (with limited transmissibility) mutated, became aerosolized, and began infecting humans on a mass scale.
What millions of people now understand is that SARS-CoV-2 is a genetically engineered Frankenvirus, the product of a disastrous, but unfortunately predictable lab accident that occured in Wuhan, China in late 2019.
This weaponized virus is the genetically engineered, offspring of a decades-long biological arms race, disguised as “gain-of-function” biomedical, or biosafety research.
Scientists all over the world—funded by Big Pharma, tax dollars and the military-industrial complex—are collecting viruses, bacteria, and microorganisms and taking them into poorly regulated, accident-prone labs where they are engineered to be more virulent and infective.
This dangerous research is all being done under the guise of “biosafety” and vaccine research.
It’s time to put an end to this madness.
It’s time to bring the perpetrators of this pandemic to justice and put them on trial at an international Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal.
It’s time to strengthen the International Bioweapons Protocol to ban so-called “gain-of-function” experiments forever.
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