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.
José Camacho once worked the fields here in the Salinas Valley, known as “the Salad Bowl of the World” for its abundance of lettuce and vegetables. His wife still does. But back in 2000, Mr. Camacho, who is 63, got an unusual phone call. He was asked if he wanted to work for a new project studying the effects of pesticides on the children of farm workers.
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Three nonprofit groups today jointly announced that they have resolved a consumer-protection action filed by the groups against General Mills on August 24, 2016, concerning General Mills’ labeling of its Nature Valley Granola Bars as “Made with 100% Natural Whole Grain Oats.”
The parties, which were represented by Brooklyn, N.Y- and Washington, D.C-based Richman Law Group, were able to resolve the claims without going to trial. At a time specified by the agreement, packaging for General Mills Nature Valley Granola bars will no longer bear the term “100% Natural Whole Grain Oats.”
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Despite the odds, nature does her best to nurture us. Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, have reported finding nutritious wild greens growing abundantly in poor urban areas of San Francisco, even surviving record droughts. The researchers, led by Philip Stark, collected the edible wild greens from three areas, each equivalent to nine city blocks, in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.
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Our children are exposed to high levels of pesticides and herbicides ingested and inhaled daily, which is negatively impacting the health of an entire generation. Two significant court rulings today in favor of protecting our children and the environment from toxins.
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Every morning at 6:30, Joaquim dos Santos walks across his farm in Parelheiros, a rural neighborhood that feels out of place deep in the southern part of this crowded metropolis. His best sellers are root vegetables. Ginger, yams, purple sweet potatoes, carrots and a yellow root known as mandioquinha dot his 57 acres.
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Nationally-known soil scientist Ray Archuleta presented a practical road map for restoration of farm profitability to about 200 farmers gathered at the Tainter Creek Watershed Council’s ‘Reducing Costs and Flood Impacts on the Farm’ events. The program was held Wednesday, July 25 and Thursday, July 26 at Woodhill Farms in rural Vernon County.
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For thousands of years, people from Sierra Mixe, a mountainous region in southern Mexico, have been cultivating an unusual variety of giant corn. They grow the crop on soils that are poor in nitrogen—an essential nutrient—and they barely use any additional fertilizer. And yet, their corn towers over conventional varieties, reaching heights of more than 16 feet.
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This week, the FDA acknowledged it is investigating whether a nearby massive concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), or factory farm, could be the source of E. coli contamination of romaine lettuce earlier this year. The tainted lettuce resulted in hundreds of illnesses in 36 states and resulted in five deaths.
According to Food & Water Watch’s Factory Farm Map, an analysis of USDA data on factory farms, the density of cattle feedlots in the region where the tainted lettuce was grown is extreme. In Yuma county in 2012, cattle feedlots had an estimated average of over 67,000
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A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping the widely used pesticide chlorpyrifos on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies’ brains. Former EPA head Scott Pruitt violated federal law by ignoring the conclusions of agency scientists that chlorpyrifos is harmful, the court said.
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The Organic Trade Association (OTA) says it’s dedicated to promoting and protecting organics. But the organization, dubbed the Organic “Traitors” Association after it betrayed the consumer-led GMO labeling movement, is moving farther away from its organic roots—and closer to corporate control.
How do we know? The OTA recently admitted two new members: chemical giant BASF, a dicamba manufacturer and leader in genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and Cargill, one of the largest factory farm meat corporations in the world, and a big supporter of GMO crops.
The OTA states that
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