Fanatical Funder

 

In turbulent times it’s important to keep good records. What happened and when? Who said what? Where did the money go? And how did things eventually pan out?

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic we’ve aimed to expose the inconsistencies and the lies surrounding the official story that the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged “naturally,” rather than escaped from a lab. We’ve pointed out the inconsistencies in public policy and—via our Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame—exposed the people whose Franken-science has led us into this mess.

Our Hall of Shame grows all the time but, until now, one important name has been missing: Bill Gates.

Through his near fanatical belief in vaccinating the world and his willingness to spread money around to see that vision come true, Gates has made investments in vaccine companies like Pfizer, BioNTech, CureVac and Vir Biotechnology. He’s also invested in spy tech to help track who has been vaccinated and who has not.

Although Gates pleads that no one could have predicted the virus, in 2019 the Gates Foundation funded a pandemic simulation called Event 201—an eerily accurate modelling exercise that predicted just about every aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic and response.

Was he simply prescient or did he have a hand in shaping the conditions that made the pandemic inevitable?

READ 'Bill Gates: The Billionaire Who Puts Vaccine Profiteering Above Human Life'

VISIT Our Gain-of-Function Hall of Shame

SIGN THE PETITION Stop the Genetic Engineering of Viruses! Shut Down All Biowarfare Labs Now!

Biodiversity Risk

 

A new interim assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows that the hormone-disrupting pesticide atrazine is likely to harm more than 50% of threatened and endangered species and 40% of habitats critical for those species.

By some estimates more than 1,000 plant and animal species could be at risk.

The great irony is that this assessment comes only a couple of months after the EPA controversially gave atrazine a regulatory pass for another 15 years. That review process did result in some restrictions on how much atrazine can be used in residential settings and in water and on safety precautions. But, really, there is no safe level for hormone-disrupting chemicals.

EPA will continue its review of atrazine’s effects on wildlife until January 5. But the harm that atrazine causes wildlife cannot be separated from the harm it causes people. If we can’t trust the EPA to understand this we really are in trouble.

READ ‘Exposure to Common Herbicide Potentially Harms Endangered Species’

Learn more:

READ ‘U.S. EPA Reapproves Atrazine’

READ ‘Atrazine's Dark Secrets Reemerge in Must-See TEDx Talk’

Food Democracy

 

In the future, who will control food and farming, health and medicine, information and communication, law and government, money and commerce?

The corporate cartels began with their GMOs, pesticides and fake foods. Monsanto tried to make seed saving illegal.

Now the monopolistic mafias are using the pandemic as an excuse to shut down small farms. They want their tech tools completely deregulated to execute their plans through unfettered data harvesting, policing and surveillance.

Our most recent webinar tackles these important issues and more. OCA Political Director, Alexis Baden-Mayer hosts a stellar panel including:

• Vandana Shiva, president of Navdanya International

• Hans Herren, president of the Millennium Institute and Biovision

• André Leu, international director of Regeneration International

• Ronnie Cummins, international director of the Organic Consumers Association

Never before have the tech billionaires been poised to take so much power over our bodies, our lives or our future. Let’s rise up for food democracy to protect ourselves and our planet!

WATCH the Facebook LIVE: ‘The People’s Agenda for Food Democracy’

WATCH on YouTube: 'The People's Agenda for Food Democracy'

Gut Punch

 

Glyphosate is the most commonly used broad-spectrum herbicide in the world. Increasingly, campaigners and scientists are coming together in calls to limit its use—or ban it altogether—because of its damaging effects on the environment and on people.

In particular, glyphosate is thought to be harmful to the rich and diverse microbial communities living in soil, on plant surfaces, and in animal guts.

New evidence adds weight to growing claims that glyphosate residues in food may damage the human microbiome—the community of good bacteria in the gut responsible for mediating, among other things, our immune system.

Is it possible that our cumulative exposure to glyphosate through everyday foods and residential and civic uses, is making us more vulnerable to disease—including COVID-19?

The researchers don’t speculate that far but their study does show that 54% of the core bacterial species in the human gut species are potentially sensitive to glyphosate.

We need to get this toxic herbicide out of our fields and out of our food.

READ ‘Glyphosate Exposure Could Disrupt Human Gut Microbiome’

Learn More:

READ ‘Glyphosate and Roundup Disrupt Gut Microbiome, Contradicting Regulator’s Assumptions, Study Says’

Hug a Tree

 

With the coronavirus pandemic driving millions of people into poverty, a new report argues that forests and agroforestry are an under-appreciated way of providing a safety net for some of the poorest people in the world.

More than 1.6 billion people in the world live within 5km of a forest. For the poorest among them, trees are essential to both local ecology and economies.

The report, by the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO), also acknowledges that agroforestry systems can help insure people against risks such as crop losses so that some can avoid sinking into poverty and the already poor do not become destitute.

They can also improve soil fertility, water supplies and other services that support their livelihoods. Agroforestry is also an important way to fight climate change—yet another disaster which disproportionately affects poorest populations.

The report warns, however, that forests and trees risk further degradation and destruction without greater understanding of how to manage them at the local level to ensure that local people reap the greatest benefits.

READ ‘As the pandemic pushes millions toward poverty, forests and trees can safeguard livelihoods’

Learn More:

READ ‘Agroforestry Is Both Climate Friendly and Profitable’

Battling On

 

Much of our work is focused on educating consumers and engaging them in the battle to protect our food and agriculture system. But it’s also a battle to protect our health.

Never has that mission been more urgent than now. COVID-19 has taught us how valuable a healthy immune system is—and how a polluted environment and a highly processed, pesticide-contaminated industrial diet compromise our health and leave us vulnerable.

Our job would be easier if we could focus exclusively on food and agriculture. But unfortunately, the corporations that benefit from corrupting the food system, polluting our waterways and degrading our soil, also corrupt our political system.

As long as food and agriculture policy is written by Big Food and Big Ag, our food, our environment—and our health—will suffer.

Please help us keep the battle going.

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

Click here for more ways to support our work

Essential Reading

 

The High Cost of Salmon Farming

Cleveland Clinic Identifies Melatonin May Be an Important Adjunct To COVID-19 Treatment

Connecting to nature is good for kids—but they may need help coping with a planet in peril

How can we stop using soya linked to deforestation?

Fearsome viruses and where to find them

Black Farmers Have Been Robbed of Land. A New Bill Would Give Them a 'Quantum Leap' Toward Justice