The Meat Debate And More We Should Be Having

[Cassandra Lista]

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ESSAY OF THE WEEK

Changing the Meat Debate

For the first time since the advent of industrial agriculture, the federal government is considering advising Americans to eat “less red and processed meat.”

That advice is the outcome of studies conducted by an independent panel of “experts” which was asked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for recommended changes to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines.

The February 19 “eat less red and processed meat” pronouncement by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) was reported widely in mainstream media. It set off a heated debate about whether or not consumers should eat meat, a debate that included the standard name-calling by factory farm front groups, including the Farm Bureau, denouncing consumers and environmentalists (and their alleged pawns on the DGAC) for being “anti-meat” and “anti-farmer.”

Unfortunately in its recommendations, the DGAC didn’t really come out and tell us the whole truth. If it had, we would be having a different debate­the one we really ought to be having.

Read Ronnie’s essay

ACTION ALERT

Waste Not

Organic agriculture has a dirty little secret.

Waste from factory farms, or Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calls them, is being used and marketed as an “organic” fertilizer.

That’s a problem, because factory farm waste is contaminated with hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, disease organisms, heavy metals and other undesirable substances, including some disease-causing agents, such as e.g.Salmonella and E. coli bacteria, that may survive the composting process.

Fortunately, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) is discussing plans to address the problem. We need your help to convince the NOSB that factory farm waste should be banned from organics.

TAKE ACTION: Deadline April 7: Tell the National Organic Standards Board: Get factory farm waste out of organic!

ACTION ALERT

Chicken Little vs. Chicken Big

Not all organic chickens and eggs are created equal.

The best organic farmers raise their meat chickens and egg-laying hens on pasture, in compliance with organic rules that require animals to spend time outdoors in the sunshine. Chickens raised outdoors on pasture eat a natural diet of insects and worms, grasses and other greens, sometimes supplemented with organic feed. This diet provides them with a sufficient source of methionine, critical to their health.

But the biggest organic producers don’t follow the rules. They confine their chickens indoors, just like the factory farms do, or provide outdoor access but with no access to pasture­both of which deprive the birds of a natural diet that would include methionine.

The big organic producers who supplement their birds’ diets with synthetic methionine say they need the supplement in order to keep their birds healthy­a justification they wouldn’t need if they raised their birds on pasture, and/or supplemented with organic alternatives.

But the real reason the big organic poultry farms use synthetic methionine is because it acts as a growth-promoter. This allows the farms to squeak by with an “organic” label when in fact their operations, and products, are far more similar to those of the non-organic factory farms.

TAKE ACTION: Deadline April 7: Tell the NOSB: Organic Chickens Need Pasture, Not Synthetic Growth-Promoters!

ACTION ALERT

We Will Not Settle!

Now that the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared Monsanto’s Roundup a carcinogen, it’s more critical than ever to convince state and federal lawmakers that we need mandatory, not voluntary labeling of GMOs.

What we really need is to ban glyphosate. But until that happens, shouldn’t consumers have a right to know if the food they eat was grown with the help of a chemical known to cause cancer?

What we for sure don’t need is a government-run program to voluntarily certify non-GMO foods. But that’s exactly what Congress is considering, thanks to Rep. Mike Pompeo’s (R-Kan.) reintroduction of his Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015, (we call it the "Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act") last week.

Pompeo’s bill would also strip states of their century-old right to pass food labeling laws, including GMO labeling laws like the one passed in Vermont in 2014.

OCA will continue to focus on passing more state GMO labeling laws, in order to make it more difficult for Congress to take Pompeo’s bill seriously. This year, we are focusing heavily on New England states.

But we also encourage consumers to pressure their members of Congress to support a mandatory labeling bills introduced in the House, by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and in the Senate, by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). It’s critical that Congress hear from consumers that we will not settle for voluntary or non-GMO labeling guidelines. We want the right to know if our food has been genetically engineered and grown with a cancer-causing chemical.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Congress: Support the Boxer-DeFazio Bill for Mandatory Labeling of GMOs!

TAKE ACTION: Tell Your Representative: Don’t Support Big Food’s Bill to Kill GMO Labeling Laws!

SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF

Thank You!

"Resistance… because if we fight we might lose but if we don’t we’ve already lost."

Every time we hit a fundraising goal we’re grateful. Thank you.

We’re also reminded that raising money is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

We would love to say that we’re reached the end. The end of corporations being allowed to poison our food and natural resources. The end of a political system that answers to corporate money, not individual citizens or the voice for the common good.

We would love to be celebrating the end of Monsanto’s reign of toxic terror.

We aren’t there yet. But thanks to the millions of you who are willing to keep the pressure on, the end is no longer a pipe dream. As more and more scientists and journalists step up to challenge a system that is as poisonous as it is unsustainable, the end is coming into view.

Thanks to you, we are not afraid to lose as often as we need, in order to finally win. Thank you!

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)

Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our GMO labeling legislative efforts)

VIDEO OF THE WEEK

The (Biotech) Emperor Has No Clothes

The video of pro-GMO Patrick Moore claiming Monsanto’s glyphosate is “safe to drink,” then walking out of an interview when asked to prove it, has been making the cyber-rounds. But perhaps no one has framed it better than Jeffrey Jaxen, a writer for Before It’s News.

Jaxen calls the Moore interview a “Big Tobacco Moment,” comparing it to the publicly televised statement in 1994, by William Campbell, then-CEO of tobacco giant Phillip Morris, who told Congress, “I believe nicotine is not addictive.”

Jaxen wrote: “When paradigms shift, tyrants fall, or corporations lose their market it is often not from some spectacular event, but by a single, humanizing display.”

And then he offered this advice to readers:

There has never been a better time for citizen journalists and independent thinkers to press this debate. If nothing else, Patrick Moore’s bumbling shows the world that small stones can topple genetically modified giants and that the biotech emperor officially has no clothes.

Watch the video

NEW STUDY

A Mouthful of GMOs

Are you feeding your baby GMO snacks, laced with toxic pesticides?

Yes, if you feed them Gerber Graduates Lil’ Crunchies Veggie Dip Baked Whole Grain Corn Snack. That’s a mouthful to say­and as it turns out, it’s also a mouthful of pesticide-drenched GMO corn.

The folks at GMO Free USA sent a package of Gerber Lil’ Crunchies to a certified lab to test for the presence of GMO material. Here’s what the group learned:

The quantitative PCR test verified, by DNA analysis, that 100% of the corn in the Lil’ Crunchies Veggie Dip was GMO. All of the corn has been genetically engineered to be herbicide tolerant (Roundup Ready) and the corn contained DNA sequences known to be present in Bt insecticide-producing GMO corn.

More here

LITTLE BYTES

Essential Reading for the Week

Simple Solutions to Many Problems on Grass-Fed Dairy Products

Why You Should Grow Heirloom Seeds

10 Reasons to Avoid School Lunches Like the Plague

This Drug, Banned in Europe, Russia and China, May Be in Your Lunch

EPA Agrees to Regulate Novel Nanotechnology Pesticides after Legal Challenge

Why Leftover Pasta Might Be Healthier Than Fresh

The Case against Aluminum in Vaccines

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