All About Organics
Organic Consumers Association Campaigns, Essays, Headlines, Action Alerts, Downloads and Videos on Organic Food.
Organic food is pure food. It's safer, more nutritious and free of chemical additives. Organic crops are grown without chemical pesticides or fertilizers and organic livestock are raised without antibiotics, growth hormones or other drugs. Organic food isn't genetically modified or irradiated.
After the passage of the 2018 farm bill, which opened the door to industrial hemp production, farmers and business owners started planning for a big year for the crop in 2019. But for now, they will have to wait. Since the government shut down last month, the Department of Agriculture, one of the federal agencies closed by the shutdown, hasn’t been able to approve new hemp cultivation plans.
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The diseases caused by exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals in our food, environment and household and personal care products cost the U.S. $340 billion a year, says children’s environmental health expert Dr. Leonardo Trasande.
Trasande is the author of “Sicker, Fatter, Poorer,” featured on a recent CBS News segment. The book highlights the potentially harmful effects of thousands of endocrine disruptors, also known as hormone mimickers, which can interfere with the body’s endocrine system and cause adverse developmental, reproductive and neurological effects.
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Fresh fruits and vegetables just got a whole lot more affordable for people who use SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program formerly known as food stamps. The 2018 Farm Bill passed both houses of Congress with bipartisan support and was signed into law Dec. 20 by President Trump—although SNAP's funding beyond February depends on Congress and the president enacting a new budget and ending the government shutdown.
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Hans Herren began his farm as a hobby almost 20 years ago. He’s been planting grapes and growing apple orchards on an 11-acre plot of land near Napa Valley in California. Thus far, the venture has been a success, but he knows he needs to make some adjustments soon.
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Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today announced that the District of Columbia Superior Court rejected Ben & Jerry’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit OCA brought against the Unilever-owned brand in July 2018 under the District of Columbia Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA).
“We are pleased that the court agrees that Ben & Jerry’s can be held accountable for the claims it makes about its products, and how the production of those products impacts animal welfare and the environment,” said Ronnie Cummins, OCA’s international director. “This is a major victory for millions of
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Hemp, a species of cannabis plant, has been valued since ancient times for its fibers and seeds, but it’s been illegal to grow in the U.S. for decades. That all changed in late 2018 with the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. It included a section legalizing hemp production, paving the way for what many are calling the next big cash crop.
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As 2018 comes to an end, it is a great time to reflect and look back on everything that has happened during the year. We have had some great moments across the organic sector, from India to the USA. In this post, we highlight just some of the many organic success stories from 2018, and we hope that together we can make 2019 an even better year!
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More than one in 10 of the UK’s wildlife species are threatened with extinction, with numbers of those most endangered falling by two-thirds since 1970, according to the RSPB’s State of Nature 2016 report. The number of farmland birds has declined by 54% since 1970, and butterflies by 41% since 1976.
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“New models are emerging today . . . from the longing in many hearts, the genius of many minds, the effort of many hands to build what we know instinctively that we need.” - Marjorie Kelly, “Owning our Future.”
Last week, the USDA released its final rules for GMO labeling. As predicted, the federal law is full of loopholes. So full of them, that the law can easily be summed up in two words: a joke.
Now, with a roster of newly elected members of Congress who understand that we must connect the dots between food, farming, environmental, climate
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Sewage sludge: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) euphemistically calls it “biosolids.” But what is it really? And why should you care?
As an article from In These Times explains, sewage sludge is:
. . . whatever goes into the sewer system and emerges as solids from municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sludge can be (its exact composition varies and is not knowable) any of the 80,000 synthetic chemicals used by industry; new chemicals created from combining two or more of those 80,000; bacteria and viruses; hospital waste;
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