After years of single-issue campaigning against America’s degenerate food and farming system, with real but limited success, it’s time for a change of strategy and tactics.

By connecting the dots between a range of heretofore separate issues and campaigns, by focusing on some of the major weaknesses or vulnerabilities of the system, we can speed up our transition to an organic and regenerative food and farming system before our health, environmental and climate crises turn into full-blown catastrophe. 

Surveys indicate that Americans are increasingly alarmed about deteriorating public health, and the pesticides, antibiotics, hormones and GMOs lurking in conventional food brands, restaurant fare and school cafeterias. We obviously can’t count on a corrupt Congress or a Trump/Pence administration to protect our food and our environment. So it’s time to step up our marketplace pressure, with boycotts, lawsuits, brand de-legitimization and direct action.

Our job is to escalate our food fights into what can only be described as a food revolution. Our health, environment and climate stability require that we turn away from our degenerate food, farming and land use system to one which is regenerative.

Recently, Organic Consumers Association, along with Friends of the Earth (FoE) and Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed suit against chicken giant Sanderson Farms for falsely marketing its products as “100% Natural” even though they contain many unnatural and even prohibited substances.

Specifically, Sanderson chicken products tested positive for the antibiotic chloramphenical, banned in food animals, and  amoxicillin, not approved for use in poultry production. Sanderson Farms products also tested positive for residues of steroids, hormones, anti-inflammatory drugs—even ketamine, a drug with hallucinogenic effects.

This is far from the first time unlabeled human drugs have been found in U.S. meat. The New York Times reported that most chicken feather-meal samples examined in one study contained Tylenol, one-third contained the antihistamine Benadryl, and samples from China actually contained Prozac. The FDA has caught hatcheries injecting antibiotics directly into chicken eggs. Tyson Foods was caught injecting eggs with the dangerous human antibiotic gentamicin.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has reported the presence of the potentially dangerous herbs fo ti, lobelia, kava kava and black cohosh in the U.S. food supply as well as strong the antihistamine hydroxyzine. Most of the ingredients are from suppliers in China.

"By federal law, all chickens have to be cleared of antibiotics before they leave the farm," says the folksy, flannel-wearing actor in a Sanderson Farms "Truth about Chicken—Supermarket" video. 

So imagine our surprise when we learned that government testing of Sanderson chicken products uncovered 11 instances of antibiotics for human use in Sanderson chicken—after it had left the farm.

One of those antibiotics, chloramphenical, is not only prohibited in food-producing animals, but according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services National Toxicology Program report (2016), is "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen."

Antibiotics aren’t the only "unnatural" substances in Sanderson chicken. Tests revealed growth hormones prohibited in poultry production, pesticides and prescription drugs—including one with hallucinogenic effects!

Tell Sanderson Farms CEO Joe Sanderson: Stop advertising your contaminated chicken as '100% Natural!'