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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’
Any mention of factory farm corporations usually conjures up names like Tyson, Cargill, Koch Foods, JBS, Perdue and, more recently, retailer-turned-factory-farm, Costco.
Some consumers will also think names like Monsanto (now owned by Bayer), Syngenta (now owned by ChemChina) and DowDupont—the companies behind the massive amounts of GMO grains grown to feed imprisoned animals.
Even fewer consumers, however, will think “Big Pharma” when they hear the words “factory farm.” Yet, the pharmaceutical industry is an integral part of industrial factory farming.
Giants like Bayer and Elanco want us to think they’re in the business of “animal health.” But what they’re really doing, is pushing drugs—on farm animals. And as the recent news of Elanco Animal Health’s proposed $7.6-billion acquisition of Bayer Animal Health reveals, a dizzying number of relatively recent spin-offs is leading to monopolization in the world of “Big Farma.”
Read ‘The Big Get Bigger: Elanco’s Proposed Acquisition of Bayer Animal Health Will Create Another Industry Giant’
Over the last two months, 106,431 people have taken the time to educate themselves about glyphosate-based herbicides and share what they’ve learned, posting public comments on the Regulations.gov website.
We’ve got until September 3 to push that number higher.
We know we won’t get glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller, banned during the Trump administration. It’s going to take new leadership in the White House and at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to rid our farms and fields, our parks and playgrounds of this cancer-causing chemical.
But what better way to motivate our next president and her (or his) EPA administrator than by showing them the hundreds of thousands of public comments demanding a nationwide ban on glyphosate?
Before you enjoy the upcoming three-day weekend—if you haven’t already—please write a note to the EPA. Tell the agency that’s supposed to protect you (not Monsanto, now owned by Bayer) why it should ban this very dangerous herbicide.
TAKE ACTION BY TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 3: Tell the EPA why glyphosate should be banned!
After that, please contact your Senators and U.S. Representative to ask them to introduce legislation to ban glyphosate.
The GMO Impossible Burger is so packed with poisons, that if eating it makes you sick, you’ll never be able to figure out which ingredient to blame.
Mercola.com reports that “any or all of the following ingredients in the Impossible Burger could potentially be GMO and/or contaminated with glyphosate:
"… Soy Protein Concentrate … Sunflower Oil, Natural Flavors … Potato Protein, Methylcellulose (possibly from cotton), Yeast Extract, Cultured Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Soy Leghemoglobin … Soy Protein Isolate, Mixed Tocopherols (Vitamin E) … Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Sodium Ascorbate (Vitamin C), Niacin, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12."
Impossible Foods, the Silicon Valley-based maker of the Impossible Burger, admits that consumers could experience adverse reactions to its lab-grown burger.
But in its warning to consumers the company downplays the potential risks associated with the burger’s genetically engineered ingredients, claiming that, hey, people could be allergic to just about any of the burger’s ingredients.
In other words, don’t blame the GMO ingredients!
This GMO lab-grown burger has only one more regulatory hurdle to clear, before it comes, unlabeled, to a supermarket near you. Any chance the U.S. Food & Drug Administration will do the right thing?
TAKE ACTION BY SEPTEMBER 3: Tell the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to safety test the GMO Impossible Burger—before the burger is sold to consumers!
Just when you thought you’d heard the worst about Monsanto, comes this: Monsanto executives and paid shills for the company argued “to beat the shit” out of moms who criticized Roundup weedkiller.
They also declared “organic” to be the “enemy.”
As Monsanto’s new owner, Bayer, gears up to face another round of trials from plaintiffs alleging that exposure to Roundup caused them to get non-Hodgkin lymphoma, more revealing and disturbing internal emails and other documents are surfacing.
They’re ugly. They shed more light on Monsanto’s sinister tactics. And they target you.
As reported in New Food Economy, here’s what Monsanto Bruce Chassy, a University of Illinois biochemist, wrote to Monsanto executive Dan Goldstein, about a letter posted by Zen Honeycutt on the Moms Across America website:
“The funniest part about the letter is how it says my children got better when I fed them organic. There you have it. That’s your enemy. Beat the shit out of them and put them on the defensive and you won’t have this problem.”
Chassy fired back:
“I have been arguing for a week to beat the shit out of them and have clearly lost. We don’t want to be seen as beating up on mothers, nobody will listen to it anyway, it has to be done by third parties, it’s an industry problem not a Monsanto problem … I have heard it all this week.”
There you have it. From the company that brags on its website:
Respect for human dignity and human rights is the ethical foundation of everything we do. We treat people fairly and respectfully, irrespective of their religion, nationality, ethnic origin, culture, gender or sexual orientation. We value and foster diversity.
Well, almost everybody . . . but clearly not moms who have an axe to grind with Roundup weedkiller. And not anyone who supports organic food and farming.
This is the evil we’re up against. It’s our job to keep up the pressure on corporations and politicians until one day, our food is poison-free.
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)
Click here for more ways to support our work
Ecorestoration is “the great work of our time,” according to one of last year’s land-restoration campers at the Vía Orgánica Ranch, a regenerative teaching farm and ranch near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
What’s an “ecorestoration camp?” The best explanation is here, in this video produced by Wil Crombie of Organic Compound Farm for OCA’s Vía Orgánica project in collaboration with Ecosystem Restoration Camps and Regeneration International.
Want to participate?
Join Vía Orgánica and the Ecosystem Restoration Camp Movement in Mexico for the week of Nov. 9th to 17th at the land-restoration camp at Vía Orgánica Ranch.
Volunteer to camp, work, study, connect with the earth and meet new friends in this beautiful ranch near San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Camp activities will include restoration work such as tree planting, composting, seed collecting, earthworks, cooking, listening to music, campfires, making new friends and much more.
Ecosystem restoration is a growing global strategy to naturally draw down and sequester carbon from the atmosphere and store it in our soils, forests and vegetation to reverse global warming.
Learn more and sign up
Watch this beautiful video filmed on site at the last Vía Orgánica Ecosystem Restoration Camp in March
Questions? Email [email protected]
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