Eat Crap, Get Fat, Get Sick So Big Ag Can Get Rich
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Just to show you how the profession of journalism has collapsed into putrid, pro-corporate propaganda, here’s a story from the once-respected Des Moines Register:
“The naming of an ‘environmental nutritionist’ to a top USDA nutrition post is drawing fire from the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Risk Analysis Division.
“In an op-ed published in the Des Moines Register entitled, ‘Iowan’s USDA Appointment Raises Concerns,’ National Center for Public Policy Research Risk Analysis Division Director Jeff Stier writes, ‘The appointment of Iowa’s Angela Tagtow, a controversial environmental nutritionist and local food activist, to head the United States Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion is causing more headaches for the agency, already facing criticism about politicization of federal nutrition advice and its consequences for public health.’
“Stier earlier criticized the federal Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) and its work to establish new recommendations for federal nutrition policy. Stier’s concerns have been widely echoed over recent months, given the DGAC’s mission creep towards environmental activism. The DGAC is meeting this week in Washington.”
Right—local food activism and environmental nutrition are surely dangerous developments, especially within the USDA, where Monsanto rules supreme. But then Julie Gunlock, the “Culture of Alarmism” Director of the Independent Women’s Forum joined the debate, and she too criticized the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for advocating good food. Her reasoning? Making food good will raise prices and starve people.
So who are the National Center for Public Policy Research and the Independent Women’s Forum? Well, the editors of the Register, if they were actual journalists, could have discovered very easily that the National Center is a right wing think tank supported heavily by conservative foundations and Exxon/Mobil. Among its other activities, last April the NCPRR announced that it would launch a Voter Identification Task Force after the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) caved in to public pressures to dismantle its Public Safety and Elections Task Force. The Voter Identification Task Force was to be used to carry forward voter ID legislation. In case you’re not aware, that’s code for preventing Democrats and minorities from voting.
The Independent Women’s Forum is an anti-feminist organization predominately funded by right-wing foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the Koch brothers’ Claude R. Lambe Foundation. It was put together originally to support the election of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court and counter the allegations of Anita Hill.
And why would the National Center and the Independent Women’s Forum be so against an environmental food activist heading up a USDA agency to promote good food guidelines?
Because they don’t want you to eat good food. They are front groups for Big Business, bought and sold by corporations like Monsanto and other Big Ag companies that want to sell you crap in a box, so that you get obese and they get fat with cash. It’s sickening on so many levels. What’s even worse is that many of our journalists—the profession that is supposed to protect us and set us free by providing us with the unvarnished truth—are derelict in their duties, as this exhibition of malfeasance by the Des Moines Register points out.
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PLANT BREEDER DEVELOPING ANTI-GMO CORN VARIETY
Here’s some good news from the Organic Farming Research Center, written by Karen Adler:
“Amidst the controversy over GMO contamination of organic crops—a growing concern for organic farmers, researchers, consumers, and advocates—plant breeder Frank Kutka has been working to develop an ‘organic ready’ line of corn that will maintain its non-GMO integrity. Corn is one of the top three genetically modified crops, alongside cotton and soy. In 2014, 89 percent of the corn acreage in the U.S. is planted in ‘Roundup Ready’ GMO corn.
“Kutka has just started his fourth year of an OFRF-funded research project, entitled, ‘Developing Organic-Ready Maize Populations with Gametophytic Incompatibility.’ Corn is wind pollinated and readily crosses with other varieties. However, this breeding work uses naturally occurring genes derived from popcorn and the ancient grain teosinte that create a screen against crossing with transgenic, or genetically modified (GMO) corn.” And Kutka does it by hybridization, not genetic engineering.
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USING DRONES TO OVERVIEW FACTORY FARMS
Peggy Lowe reports from National Public Radio that an independent journalist says he’s found a way around the so-called “ag-gag” laws by flying drones over large livestock operations to document animal welfare problems and pollution.
Will Potter, a Washington D.C.-based author and blogger, recently raised $75,000 on Kickstarter to buy the drones and other equipment to investigate animal agriculture in the U.S.
“I was primarily motivated by what’s happening outside of those closed doors, but is still invisible and hidden from the public spotlight,” he tells The Salt. “In particular, I was motivated by seeing aerial photos and satellite images of farm pollution, of waste lagoons, of sprawling industrial operations.”
Potter has cast the project as a way to circumvent regulations in at least seven states that outlaw footage and images gathered undercover by whistleblowers who work in concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. Dubbed “ag-gag” by critics, the laws make it illegal for anyone to videotape or record surreptitiously on farms.
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69 COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD LABEL GMO FOODS
In Europe, 40 of 47 countries require labeling. In Asia, 14 of 44 countries. In Oceana, two of 14 countries. In Africa, nine of 54 countries. In South America, four of 12 countries. In North America, powerful forces are working hard to prevent the U.S. from knowing what’s in our food and so far have succeeded.
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USDA HAS BEEN RIGGING THE ORGANIC STANDARDS BOARD
The Cornucopia Institute has called on USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack to make public all candidates for appointment to fill the four vacancies on the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).
The NOSB, a 15-member board of organic stakeholders representing farmer, consumer, environmental, retail, scientific, certifying and organic food processing interests, was established by Congress to advise the USDA on organic food and agriculture policies and review materials allowed for use in organic food production and processing.
Past investigations by The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research group, found that prior appointments, made during the Bush and Obama administrations, violated the letter of the law, and congressional intent, by appointing agribusiness executives to fill slots on the NOSB reserved for farmers and other independent stakeholders. Public interest groups have suggested that these extra agribusiness representatives on the board have voted in favor of weakening the organic standards.
“Transparency has been a hallmark of organic food and agriculture. We think that letting the organic community know who has applied for the vacant positions will allow for feedback and help the Secretary make the best possible appointments,” said Cornucopia’s Will Fantle, the organic industry watchdog organization’s co-director. “Appointments have been made in the past of individuals who do not meet the legally mandated criteria for a seat on the NOSB. Sunshine on the secretive process could have prevented such ill-advised moves,” added Fantle, very diplomatically.
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SOME ORGANIC DAIRIES SUPPORTING GMO SECRECY
Some of the leading producers of organic dairy products belong to an association that is fighting tooth-and-nail to prevent you from knowing if your food contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs), according to the Organic Consumers Association.
In mid-June, four groups, including the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) filed suit against the state of Vermont in an effort to overturn Vermont’s mandatory GMO labeling law.
As it turns out, some of the leading organic dairy companies, including Stonyfield, Organic Valley, Aurora Organic, and White Wave/Horizon Organic, are members of the IDFA—which not only joined in the lawsuit against Vermont, but publicly supports a federal bill, introduced in April, that would prevent any state from passing a mandatory GMO labeling law.
The OCA called on the leading organic dairy companies to withdraw from the IDFA. They responded by stating that they would not do that, but that they had “collectively and formally protested” the IDFA’s decision to join in the lawsuit against Vermont and were in “continued discussions” with the association regarding reversing that decision.
They also stated that while they had contributed money and resources to pass Vermont’s GMO labeling law, they believe that “one national labeling standard” is preferable to “different state standards.”
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OREGON TO VOTE ON GMO LABELING
It’s official. Oregon’s citizens’ initiative to label GMOs has been certified for the November ballot—despite efforts by the opposition to keep it off the ballot.
Now it’s up to the voters in Oregon to pass a statewide mandatory GMO labeling law, says the Organic Consumers Association (OCA).
But before Oregon voters head to the polls on November 4, they’ll be exposed to millions of dollars’ worth of twisted truths and flat-out lies. Bought and paid for by Monsanto and Big Food. The TV ads, junk mail, and phone calls worked in California and Washington State. Just barely. But enough to defeat voter-led GMO labeling initiatives there in 2012 and 2013. The lie that worked the best to turn voters away from the labeling law was the assertion that labeling GMOs would drastically increase the price of food. That scared people. As a recent story in The New York Times points out, the median net worth of all U.S. families from 2003 to 2013 fell by one third. Oregonians should watch out for the “more expensive food” lie. It will be floated out widely this fall. But don’t believe it. Why would printing “Contains GMOs” on a label cause food prices to rise? Big Food sells products around the world with “Contains GMOs” on the label. If they can do it in 69 countries globally, why not here?
A win in Oregon in November, on the heels of a win in Vermont in May, will be pivotal for the GMO labeling movement. If you don’t live in Oregon, you can’t vote there. But you can help. If you’d like to help, make a donation to the OCA at https://salsa3.salsalabs.com/o/50865/p/salsa/donation/common/public/?donate_page_KEY=11045
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MORE PROOF OF ORGANIC SUPERIORITY
According to research published in the British Journal of Nutrition, scientists found 18 to 69 percent higher concentrations of antioxidants, many of which are linked to reduced risk of chronic diseases, in organic as opposed to conventionally grown food.
They also found that pesticide residues were four times more likely to be found in conventional crops than organic ones. And that levels of the toxic heavy metal cadmium are nearly twice as high for conventionally grown foods.
These were the conclusions of a meta study of over 350 peer-reviewed studies that compared organic and conventional food. So the next time Uncle Willy says that organic food is bunk and not worth the money, refer him to the following. Br J Nutr. 2014 Jun 26:1-18.
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COURT ALLOWS MISUSE OF ANTIBIOTICS TO CONTINUE
Continued FDA inaction is allowed despite the same agency’s scientific findings, the National Resources Defense Council reports.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) isn’t required to ban the practice of regularly feeding antibiotics to animals that are not sick–despite its finding that such misuse of antibiotics threatens the effectiveness of essential human medicines.
The appeals court overturned two district court rulings in cases brought by the NRDC and other groups, which directed the FDA to stop the routine use of certain antibiotics in healthy animals unless drug manufacturers proved the safety of such use.
In his dissent, Judge Robert Katzmann said, “Today’s decision allows the FDA to openly declare that a particular animal drug is unsafe, but then refuse to withdraw approval of that drug. It also gives the agency discretion to effectively ignore a public petition asking it to withdraw approval from an unsafe drug.” Score another victory for Big Pharma.
NRDC brought the lawsuit with its partners, Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), Public Citizen, and Union of Concerned Scientists in May of 2011.
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America Has Lost Its Way
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The source of health is biodiversity. The more participants in any ecosystem, the healthier it is. And this extends past organic gardens and farms to society at large. Inclusivity is healthy. Community is healthy. Compassion is healthy.
Now more than 50,000 Central American women and children have come to us for shelter when their home countries turned into gang-ruled narcostates, where mothers have been told that the gangs are coming for their teenage girls so they can be “girlfriends” for the gang members, when bullets threaten the lives of even very young children.
These people have been met with shrieking, hate-filled Americans who want them deported back to their home countries. We have truly lost our way. Who was it who said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me”? Is it really going to destroy America to give 52,000 refugees in desperate straits a safe haven? I heard some of the protestors say these poor, frightened children and their mothers are bringing lice, scabies, disease, and crime to our land. Ew—cooties! What is this? Middle school? The real crime is the callous, inhuman hearts of the protestors.
The protestors call them “illegals.” The subtext is that they have brown skins and speak Spanish. And it’s the most sickening display of heartlessness I have witnessed in this country since the days of Jim Crow. These are people, people—our brothers and sisters. We should welcome them, adjudicate their cases, deport them if there’s no danger to them if they go back, but give them refugee status if they would return into harm’s way. I mean, put yourself in their shoes.
But that’s not the only instance of how this once-proud country is showing its mean-spirited and callous heart. Over 100,000 impoverished people in Detroit have had their water turned off. And American cities have sought to eradicate homelessness not so much by giving people shelter, but by making it illegal to be homeless. Citywide bans on things that homeless people need to do to survive are on the rise, according to a new report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Key findings: camping bans are up 60 percent since 2011, begging bans up 25 percent, loitering bans up 35 percent, sitting bans up 43 percent, and vehicle-sleeping bans are up 119 percent, according to The Huffington Post.
It looks like our endless wars and violence have curdled our spirit. Once we were a generous, open-hearted, optimistic people. Now we have lost our way. I remember on the night when Barack Obama was elected, he stood on a platform in Chicago and proclaimed, “Change has come to America.” How horribly sad that the change is in the wrong direction.
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WHO WOULDA THUNK? ORGANIC FOOD IS PURE AND NUTRITIOUS
From The New York Times, July 12, 2014:
“Adding fuel to the debates over the merits of organic food, a comprehensive review of earlier studies found substantially higher levels of antioxidants and lower levels of pesticides in organic fruits, vegetables, and grains compared with conventionally grown produce.
“’It shows very clearly how you grow your food has an impact,’ said Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University in England, who led the research. ‘If you buy organic fruits and vegetables, you can be sure you have, on average, a higher amount of antioxidants at the same calorie level.’”
My take on this? This is news? Haven’t we known this for 60 years?
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ATTENTION YOUNG FARMERS
Here are two websites you should be aware of. 1) http://agrilicious.org/
2) www.thegreenhorns.net. If you are a small-scale organic farmer or want to be one, you’ll find a lot of great info and friends galore on these sites.
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CONGRESS THINKS IF YOU’RE ANTI-GMO, YOU’RE AN IGNORAMUS
Mike McAuliff, writing in The Huffington Post, makes this report:
WASHINGTON – It’s pretty rare that members of Congress and all the witnesses they’ve called will declare out loud that Americans are just too ignorant to be given a piece of information, but that was a key conclusion of a session of the House Agriculture Committee this week.
The issue was genetically modified organisms, or GMOs as they’re often known in the food industry. And members of the subcommittee on Horticulture, Research, Biotechnology, and Foreign Agriculture (which, by the way, is the subcommittee in charge of promoting organic farming), as well as four experts, agreed that the genetic engineering of food crops has been a thorough success responsible for feeding the hungry, improving nutrition, and reducing the use of pesticides. (All nonsense, by the way.)
People who oppose GMOs or want them labeled so that consumers can know what they’re eating are alarmists who thrive on fear and ignorance, the panel agreed. Labeling GMO foods would only stoke those fears, and harm a beneficial thing, so it should not be allowed, the lawmakers and witnesses agreed.
“I really worry that labeling does more harm than good, that it leads too many people away from it and it diminishes the market for GMOs that are the solution to a lot of the problems we face,” said David Just, a professor at Cornell University and co-director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics in Child Nutrition Programs. (You might want to give Professor Just your feelings on the idea that GMOs are “the solution to a lot of the problems we face.” He might enjoy hearing from some of the ignorant people who oppose GMOs. His email is drj3@cornell.edu).
Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.) agreed with Just and asked him, “What is the biggest drawback? Is it the ignorance of what the product is, just from a lack of education?”
“It is ignorance of the product, and it’s a general skepticism of anything they eat that is too processed or treated in some way that they don’t quite understand,” Just said. “Even using long scientific-sounding words makes it sound like it’s been grown in a test tube, and people get scared of it,” Just added.
There are terms for Professor Just’s casual put-down of anti-GMO people as uneducated, ignorant, frightened luddites who don’t understand the value of genetic engineering and are confused by long, scientific-sounding words. I think the terms are condescension, superciliousness, arrogance, and conceit. God knows that people who are skeptical “of anything they eat that is too processed or treated in some way that they don’t quite understand” need a good education by the learned professors at Cornell. They’ll set us straight for sure. Well, I’ll say this: Professor Just wins my 2014 award for arrogant moron of the year.
Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) agreed with another witness, Calestous Juma, an international development professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, that political leaders had been cowed by misinformed populaces into bending on GMOs, especially in the European Union, where Juma said hundreds of millions of euros have been spent on studies that have found GMOs safe. (He didn’t mention the studies that found GMOs to be harmful.)
“It’s obvious that while the science in the EU is incontrovertible about the health and safety benefits of genetically modified hybrid crops, that because of politics, people are afraid to lead, and inform consumers,” Schrader said. (Rep. Schrader shows his own ignorance here. The science is far from incontrovertible—in fact, one meta study that looked at hundreds of studies of the effect of GMO crops on biological systems in animals concluded that Roundup, the herbicide used in conjunction with GMO corn and soybeans, “may be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment.”)
Also, entirely missing from the hearing was any suggestion that there are real concerns about the impact of genetically engineered food, such as the growth of pesticide-resistant “super weeds,” over-reliance on single-crop factory farming, decreased biodiversity, evidence of inflammatory disease in animals fed GMO feed, and a lack of a consistent approval process.
The issue may soon gain fresh relevance on Capitol Hill, where a bill backed by Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) prevents states from requiring GMO labeling. It could get marked up as early as September. The bill also would allow genetically engineered food to be labeled “100 percent natural.”
The idea of the bill brought Ben and Jerry’s co-founder Jerry Greenfield to Capitol Hill to push back, along with Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), who backs labeling.
Greenfield told HuffPost that labeling is a simple, inexpensive matter of letting people know what’s in their food, and letting them decide what they want to support and eat.
The upshot is that the “experts” and members of Congress concluded that Americans should be denied GMO labels because they are too ignorant.
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TIME FOR A NEW ‘DIRTY DOZEN – PLUS’ LIST
The Environmental Working Group’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ plus annual list of most contaminated fruits and vegetables is out. Print it out and push-pin it to your kitchen bulletin board.
http://www.ewg.org/foodnews/list.php
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CORNELL UNIVERSITY: PROPAGANDIST FOR BIG FOOD
The following information is from Bettina Elias Siegel, a former lawyer, freelance writer, and school food advocate. She now blogs about children and food policy at The Lunch Tray. She writes:
A new study by Dr. Brian Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University and director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, seeks to determine why people — mothers in particular — develop so-called “food fears” about certain ingredients (such as sodium, fat, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, MSG and lean finely textured beef otherwise known as pink slime) and what the food industry and government can do about it.
The study’s ultimate conclusion, that “food fears” can be addressed by “providing information regarding an ingredient’s history or the other products in which it is used,” is hardly controversial. But some other things about this study raise red flags, starting with the fact that what might be entirely legitimate concerns about particular ingredients are uniformly (and patronizingly) characterized as “food fears,” and that the study was funded in part by the Corn Refiners Association, the trade group representing manufacturers of the very “food fear” examined; i.e., concerns about high-fructose corn syrup.
But of greatest concern is how the study’s findings have been mischaracterized not just in the media but in Dr. Wansink’s own public statements about his data. Here’s a sampling.
From the New York Daily News
:
Fear of food containing controversial ingredients may be fueled by Facebook. A new study suggests that people who avoid additives like MSG, sodium benzoate, and pink slime get most of their information from what they see on social media sites and elsewhere on the Internet.
From Today:
“Soy causes cancer.” “Gluten may lead to autism.” “There’s yoga mat material in your sandwich!” “Sugar feeds cancer!” Are your Facebook friends making you afraid to eat? New research in the journal Food Quality and Preference identifies who fears food the most –and it’s probably those of us most addicted to social media.
Despite a troubling lack of scientific support, Wansink seems intent on using his study to paint an unflattering portrait of those who obtain information about food ingredients online. These moms are militant “haters” of soda, candy, and chips. They’re so uninformed that they’re misled by inaccurate online sources, yet they share this false information on social media out of a need for approval.
Wansink is equally critical of the Internet itself, going so far as to say in his promotional video that “Reading about food ingredients on the Web is one of the worst things you can do if you want the facts…”
Why does Wansink seem so intent on demonizing the Internet and social media and those who rely on those outlets for food information? In the end, who benefits from these characterizations?
To the great consternation of the processed food industry, it is becoming ever more apparent that the Internet and social media are extremely powerful tools for advancing various food-related causes, from aiding grassroots activism to spreading viral videos promoting sustainable agriculture or decrying junk food, to making possible online petitions like the one I (Bettina) started in 2012, which garnered a quarter of a million signatures and within nine days led the USDA to change one of its school food policies. Indeed, since my petition victory, online petitions have become a favored tool among some food activists.
The junk food industry would no doubt prefer a return to the days when it alone controlled the narrative about food ingredients and food processing. Now, though, for better or worse, anyone with a computer can write a blog post, post a video or start an online petition about a food-related issue. If I ran a food company these days, I’m sure I would be lying awake at night, worried that the next Internet food campaign could have one of my own products in its sights.
So what better way to combat this growing threat than to delegitimize both the message (concerns about ingredients are “crazy food fears”) and the medium (seeking food information on the Internet is “the worst thing you can do”). It doesn’t hurt to also create an unflattering cartoon of the message’s recipient, the hapless, freaked out “mom.”
But unfortunately for food companies, the Internet genie is out of the bottle and there’s no turning back. So instead of commissioning studies that demonize the Internet, social media and/or “moms with food fears,” food companies should pocket that money and instead take to heart the one simple lesson to be gleaned from the many recent successes in Internet food activism: Consumers want transparency.
If a food corporation is currently engaging in any practice or using any ingredient which would not survive public opinion should it ever come to light, that company is taking a serious public relations risk in this new Internet age. And that, in my view, is the real “food fear” lurking behind Wansink’s latest study.
Now this note from Jeff Cox: Thanks to Ms. Siegel for this enlightening look at the Cornell study. What’s really troubling to me is that Cornell, a highly respected university, jeopardizes that respect when it supports so-called “science” whose obvious intent is to promote the propaganda of Big Food. People have food fears for a legitimate reason. It’s not the researcher’s job to take industry’s side against the public’s legitimate concerns. A more useful route might be to investigate the public’s food fears to see why they exist, in a fair, impartial, and transparent manner. Perhaps Mr. Wansink could have looked at the mounting evidence for the disastrous human health effects of glyphosate herbicide used in the production of GMO crops, rather than impugning the intelligence and education of the people who are reporting these studies.
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PRENATAL PESTICIDE EXPOSURE LEADS TO LOWER IQ IN KIDS
Children born to a group of 265 mothers living in low-income, public housing were studied. By age seven, children born to mothers in the group most exposed to pesticides scored 5.5 percent lower on a common test of working memory and 2.7 percent lower in terms of IQ, compared to children born to mothers in the low-exposure group.
A study carried out by U.C. Berkeley scientists, in cooperation with the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas, measured urinary metabolites of insecticides during pregnancy, and then from children at six months of age, and periodically through age five. A variety of intelligence and learning tests were used to measure the mental abilities of 329 children at age seven. Children born to the most heavily exposed mothers had an IQ deficit of seven points, or about 7 percent, compared to the low exposure quintile.
The senior author of this study, Brenda Eskenazi, told CNN.com that the impacts on intelligence found in their study were similar in magnitude to the adverse impacts associated with high lead exposures, in the 1960s and 1970s, and were comparable to a child performing six-months behind average in a school population.
If you want to know more, here are the studies:
Rauh, V., et al., “7-Year Neurodevelopmental Scores and Prenatal Exposure to Chlorpyrifos, a Common Agricultural Insecticide,” Environmental Health Perspectives, online April 21, 2011
Bouchard, M.E., et al., “Prenatal Exposure to OP Pesticides and IQ in 7-Year Old Children,”Environmental Health Perspectives, online April 21, 2011
Engel, S.M., et al., “Prenatal Exposure to OPs, Paraoxonase 1, and Cognitive Development in Children,” Environmental Health Perspectives, online April 21, 2011
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BUSH TAX CUTS GUTTED AMERICANS’ INCOMES $6.6 TRILLION
The following isn’t strictly about organic food and its production, but we are all folks who have to spend money to eat, and money seems in short supply these days.
Remember when George W. Bush took office and instituted the “Bush Tax Cuts” that were supposed to promote prosperity?
According to an analysis by Pulitzer-Prize winning reporter David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times, the Bush tax cuts, touted as a harbinger of prosperity by the Republican Party, actually robbed each American taxpayer of $48,000 in pre-tax personal income during the 12 years of their existence, for a total of approximately 6.6 trillion dollars.
This is more than enough to pay for every student loan, car loan, and credit card debt in the U.S, while still leaving 2.4 trillion dollars in the pockets of Americans. It is the equivalent of an extra 11 dollars a day lost to each American taxpayer over the last 12 years.
Johnston analyzed rates of long term average personal incomes as reported by American taxpayers from 2000-2012, adjusting for inflation and population growth. In 10 of the 12 years when the Bush tax cuts were in effect, the average income shown on tax returns was lower than in 2000. In the two upside years, average income rose modestly, up $504 for 2006 and $1,744 for 2007.
Total those 12 years and the net shortfall per taxpayer comes to $48,010.
He notes that after 12 years of tax cuts, average real hourly wages are now 6 percent less than they were in 1972-1973.
Less than they were 40 years ago! Where did the money go?
Of the total national increase in income in 2012 over 2009, an astonishing one third went to just 16,000 households, almost 95 cents of each dollar went to the top 1 percent, while the bottom 90 percent lost ground.
Lest we forget.
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CNN: a Mouthpiece for Big Ag and Big Food Lies
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on CNN: a Mouthpiece for Big Ag and Big Food Lies
On July 3, 2014, CNN’s website featured a news story about organic food, calling organics “a scam.” The story included the usual talking points from Big Agriculture, the chemical manufacturers, and the big food processors—organic agriculture will mean starvation, there’s no benefit in organic food, organic claims are unproven—talking points that they’ve been using for many decades.
The article’s source was a report by Academics Review, which calls itself “an independent 501©(3) nonprofit organization.” Smelling a familiar rat, I looked up Academics Review and discovered that it is affiliated with the American Council on Science and Health.
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader once said of the American Council on Science and Health, “ACSH is a consumer front organization for its business backers. It has seized the language and style of the existing consumer organizations, but its real purpose, you might say, is to glove the hand that feeds it.”
And who feeds it? According to Mother Jones magazine, “ACSH donors in the second half of 2012 alone included Chevron ($18,500), Coca-Cola ($50,000), the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation ($15,000), Dr. Pepper/Snapple ($5,000), Bayer Cropscience ($30,000), Procter and Gamble ($6,000), agribusiness giant Syngenta ($22,500), 3M ($30,000), McDonald’s ($30,000), and tobacco conglomerate Altria ($25,000). Among the corporations and foundations that ACSH has pursued for financial support since July, 2012, are Pepsi, Monsanto, British American Tobacco, DowAgro, ExxonMobil Foundation, Phillip Morris International, Reynolds American, the Koch family-controlled Claude R. Lambe Foundation, the Dow-linked Gerstacker Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the Searle Freedom Trust.” Oh, and Mother Jones didn’t mention the Koch Foundation, but it has contributed generously in the past.
It’s not surprising that these corporations and foundations would produce propaganda against organics. They’ve been doing it for nearly half a century. They perceive organic farming and food as a threat to their bottom line—and they’re right in perceiving that threat.
What’s frustrating and infuriating is that CNN, which many people think of as an honest and trusted news organization, would put out this industry propaganda and release it to the public as news. It took me about 10 minutes at the computer to find out all about Academics Review and who’s behind it. Does CNN even have editors? What do they do—just correct spelling and punctuation? With a performance like this, CNN should be ashamed of itself. It is not practicing journalism. It is simply being a mouthpiece for Big Business’s lies.
A few years ago, the American Council on Science and Health issued a report stating that organic farming was dangerous to human health because of the use of raw manure to fertilize farm fields. This was picked up and reported in newspapers around the country with headlines like, “Organic Food Can Kill You.”
No newspaper editor, to my knowledge, bothered to check the USDA’s National Organic Program rules for using raw animal manures as fertilizer. Organic farmers not only don’t use it, but have strict rules against it. Even as far back as 1945, J.I. Rodale, the founder of the organic movement in America, in his book, “Pay Dirt,” wrote the following:
“Manure should never be used raw. If you cannot compost it, let it rot under conditions that will preserve most of the nutrients. But for superior crops, make compost of it.”
If so-called news organizations simply print boiler plate propaganda by Big Ag’s PR firms as if it is fact, it’s no wonder people are confused about the value of organic food. I wish I could look every American in the eye and say this simple sentence to them: “Organic farming is just nature’s way of doing things, given a helping hand by people who understand her.”
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LET’S ALL PLAY “WHO’S THE MOLE?”
This recent story in The New York Times is attracting a lot of attention, and many in government are “shocked — shocked…”
“WASHINGTON — Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot (murdered) 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: ‘that he could kill’ the government’s chief investigator and ‘no one could or would do anything about it’ because they were in Iraq, according to department reports.
“An internal State Department memo, filed in August, 2007, by Jean Richter, a special agent for diplomatic security, described the hands off manner in which government officials who nominally supervised Blackwater actually deferred to it and approved invoices without question.
“Blackwater—renamed Xe and then Academi, with offshoot businesses like Total Intelligence and Terrorism Research Center–has been branching out into the field of political and social intelligence and attempting to infiltrate activist groups and trying to sell those services to Monsanto, among others.”
Hmmm. “…attempting to infiltrate activist groups and trying to sell those services to Monsanto…” Now that’s interesting. Then I read this in The Nation:
“Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to U.S. and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto…according to documents obtained by The Nation. One of the most incendiary details in the documents is that Blackwater, through Total Intelligence, sought to become the ‘intel arm’ of Monsanto, offering to provide operatives to infiltrate activist groups organizing against the multinational biotech firm.
“According to internal Total Intelligence communications, biotech giant Monsanto—the world’s largest supplier of genetically modified seeds—hired the firm in 2008–09. The relationship between the two companies appears to have been solidified in January, 2008, when Total Intelligence chair Cofer Black traveled to Zurich to meet with Kevin Wilson, Monsanto’s security manager for global issues.”
And Monsanto wonders why it has a bad reputation when it allies itself with murdering thugs. You’d think that Monsanto doesn’t care about the public’s safety. Oh wait…
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GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD TO DIE FOR
New York City’s Upper East Side has given America many wonderful things—including the Marx Brothers and Orwasher’s Bakery, established 100 years ago on East 78th Street just east of Second Avenue in the heart of what was once a thriving German, Czech, and Hungarian enclave. And if you have been to any or all of those countries, you know that their breads are beyond delicious. In fact, a bread called Landbrot (country bread) that I had in Berlin continues to be my personal standard for how good bread can be.
Orwasher’s, now owned by bread aficionado Keith Cohen, is that kind of bakery. He makes his breads by hand, without compromise, and uses organic ingredients. One whiff of the heavenly bakery’s fresh products will convince you that Orwasher’s bread is worth the trip to the bakery.
But what if East 78th Street is far from where you live? How can you enjoy its bread? The answer is to get a copy of a truly great book, “Artisan Bread—100 Years of Techniques and Recipes,” by Keith Cohen himself. Century-old recipes from Orwasher’s like kosher rye and challahs, but also crusty loaves of all kinds, are adapted specifically to facilitate home baking. There are techniques for making bread from artisan starters, like wine and beer yeasts and indigenous starters. This means you can bake Orwasher’s-type breads at home. The book is filled with photos showing you exactly what to do and photos of what the process looks like at every stage.
It’s available on Amazon, of course, but if you’d like to support your local bookstore, , the ISBN # is 978-1-93799-442-6. It costs $30.
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SCIENTISTS ORDERED TO RENOUNCE THEIR SCIENTIFIC CONCLUSIONS
As those who read this blog know, I’m a firm believer that biodiversity is the nature of good health. The more species in the ecosystem, the healthier it is. Especially when the top predators are protected and encouraged. There is no predator more “top” than the wolverine—or any animal much smarter. So the following article from the Center for Biological Diversity at Ecowatch is deeply disturbing.
“According to a leaked memo obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity, scientists with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have been ordered to reverse their own conclusions and withdraw last year’s proposal to protect American wolverines under the Endangered Species Act.
“Fewer than 300 wolverines remain in the lower 48 states, and global warming over the next 75 years is predicted to wipe out 63 percent of the snowy habitat they need to survive, government scientists have said. In fact changes due to climate warming are ‘threatening the species with extinction,’ the Fish and Wildlife Service said in last year’s announcement of its protection proposal.
“Now the memo—signed by Noreen Walsh, director of the Rocky Mountain Region of the Fish and Wildlife Service—tells federal scientists to set aside those conclusions, even though there has been no new science casting doubt on those findings.
“’The Obama Administration’s own scientists have said for years that global warming is pushing wolverines toward extinction, and now those conclusions are being cast aside for political convenience,’ said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This is a bizarre and disturbing turn, especially for an administration that’s vowed to let science rule the day when it comes to decisions about the survival of our most endangered wildlife.
“Fish and Wildlife Service scientists proposed Endangered Species Act protection for the wolverine in February, 2013. Subsequently state officials in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming raised questions about the degree to which wolverines are dependent on persistent snow and about the degree to which warming will impact their habitat. In response, Fish and Wildlife convened a panel of scientists to review the science behind the proposal, resulting in a report in which ‘nine out of nine panelists expressed pessimism for the long-term (roughly end-of-century) future of wolverines in the contiguous U.S. because of the effects of climate change on habitat.’
“Based on the conclusions of the panel, scientists from the Montana field office of the Fish and Wildlife Service recommended that protection be finalized, but, as shown in the leaked memo, were overruled by agency bureaucrats.
“’The decision to overrule agency scientists and deny protection to the wolverine is deeply disappointing and shows that political interference in what should be a scientific decision continues to be a problem under the Obama Administration, just as it was under George W. Bush,’ said Greenwald. ‘Wolverines and the winter habitats they depend on are severely threatened by our warming world. Only serious action to reduce fossil fuels can save the wolverine, tens of thousands of other species, and our very way of life.’”
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TAKING SEEDS OUT OF THE HANDS OF MONSANTO
The social and environmental activist organization Avaaz reports that just 10 agro-chemical firms own 73 percent of the commercial seed market, and 93 percent of seed varieties are no longer widely planted, if at all. In the U.S. alone, 85 percent of apple varieties have disappeared.
“Farmers are resisting,” Avaaz says, “by saving seeds in banks across the world. Now they have devised a revolutionary project–the first ever, nonprofit ‘eBay of seed’ where any farmer, anywhere, can source a wide variety of seeds cheaper than from the chemical companies. This global online store could re-flood the market with all kinds of seeds and slowly break the monopoly that is putting our food future at risk!
“For thousands of years, agriculture was driven by farmers selecting, replanting, and breeding seed varieties. Then the agro-chemical companies persuaded our governments to promote a corporate system of single crop farms. Companies promise farmers higher yields and bigger earnings, and lure them into multi-year contracts with expensive GMO seeds and pesticides. Then they use patent laws to strong-arm farmers to abandon their traditional practices of seed saving and innovation.
“There isn’t clear evidence this has improved farmers incomes, but it has driven small independent farmers out of business and into becoming corporate seed slaves.
“And the dire consequences go way beyond the farmers. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, more than three-quarters of the genetic diversity of our crops has been lost due to seed consolidation and industrial practices. This matters because when we cover large swaths of land with just one variety, it is wholly vulnerable to a disease of that variety; a field of diverse varieties would not be totally devastated by that disease. Without seed diversity to confront changing environmental conditions our global food security is at risk.
“But this crisis isn’t insurmountable. The takeover is only decades old, farmers have saved seed everywhere, and if supported widely, this online seed market could help. Here’s how:
“By directly supporting seed-saving initiatives in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
“By creating a world class website for the online store that connects farming communities everywhere, allowing them to legally sell seeds and share best practices globally.
“By helping fund legal defense of this non-profit seed market from legal attacks by Monsanto and others.
“By marketing and advertising the exchange so that farmers all over the world join up.”
Contact Avaaz at the following URL if you’d like to contribute or help.
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/seed_exchange_dnr_v2/?fpla
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HILLARY CLINTON’S TIES TO MONSANTO
According to the Organic Consumers Association, Hillary Clinton spoke at a recent Biotech conference where she said that the GMO industry simply needs to put a positive spin on the science behind genetic engineering to relieve the public’s anxieties about the practice. Then that pesky public will stop clamoring for GMOs in food to be labeled. Polls show that 93 percent of the public wants GMOs to be labeled. I don’t know about you, but her support for Monsanto where she had once sold her lawyerly skills, for the Biotech industry, and for GMOs, is a deal breaker. She just lost my vote.
Oh Elizabeth? Elizabeth Warren? Where are you?
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SPEAKING OF MONSANTO…
It has come to light that the U.S. government is withholding $277 million in aid money from El Salvador in order to pressure it to accept Monsanto’s GM seeds, according to Sustainable Pulse, a worldwide anti-GMO organization, which published the following:
The President of the El Salvadoran Center for Appropriate Technologies (CESTA), Ricardo Navarro, has demanded that the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, Mari Carmen Aponte, stop pressuring the government of El Salvador to buy Monsanto’s GM seeds rather than non-GMO seeds from domestic suppliers.
“I would like to tell the U.S. Ambassador to stop pressuring the Government (of El Salvador) to buy ‘improved’ GM seeds,” said Navarro, which is only of benefit to U.S. multinationals and is to the detriment of local seed production, Verdad Digital recently reported.
The U.S. has been pushing the El Salvadoran Government to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact. One of the main conditions on the agreement is allegedly for the purchasing of GM seeds from Monsanto.
At the end of 2013 it was announced that without ‘specific’ economic and environmental policy reforms, the U.S. government would not provide El Salvador with $277 million in aid money through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC).
It is now clear that by ‘specific reforms’ the MCC means reforms that allow GM crops and their associated pesticides to be forced on El Salvador’s Government and citizens.
Is it a coincidence that the MCC delayed its initial agreed aid payments following the announcement by the El Salvador Government that they were banning the use of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide and 52 other dangerous chemicals in September, 2013?
Sales of glyphosate, the active killing agent in Roundup, are the main money earner for the Biotech industry worldwide and the chemical is also the base of the whole system that allows GM Crops to be grown. It is also a potent endocrine disruptor that causes havoc with the hormonal system that instructs the human embryo and fetus how to grow.
The El Salvadoran government’s decision came amidst a mysterious kidney disease that is killing thousands of the region’s agricultural laborers. Central America’s health ministries signed a declaration in March, 2013, citing the ailment as a top public health priority and committing to a series of steps to combat its reach, the Center of Public Integrity has revealed.
Over the last two years, the Center for Public Integrity has examined how a rare type of chronic kidney disease (CKDu) is killing thousands of agricultural workers along Central America’s Pacific Coast, as well as in Sri Lanka and India. Scientists have yet to definitively uncover the cause of the malady, although emerging evidence points to toxic heavy metals contained in hard water or pesticides as a potential culprit.
Sri Lankan scientist, Dr. Jayasumana, recently released a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health that proposes a link between Roundup and CKDu. Here’s the link to the story:
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-weedkiller-linked-global-epidemic-fatal-kidney-disease
“There is a harmful corporation on the planet called Monsanto…it is truly disturbing that the U.S. is trying to promote them…” concluded Navarro, who hopes that the El Salvadoran Legislative Assembly does not accept any manipulation by the U.S.
Monsanto reminds me of Bogart’s private eye in The Maltese Falcon who tells Peter Lorre, as Bogey is slapping the crap out of him, “You’ll take it and you’ll like it.”
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Why It’s So Important to Eat and Grow Organic Food
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on Why It’s So Important to Eat and Grow Organic Food
Many people think it’s important to eat organic food for their personal health. The food is clean, produced without chemicals. It’s more nutritious in many cases. It tastes better. All those reasons are valid.
But the chief reason is much broader than that.
Look around the world. We’re wrecking the place. Species are going extinct at a rate that’s not been seen for 65 million years, when a huge asteroid killed off the dinosaurs and huge numbers of other species. Farmland around the world is being drenched with life-destroying chemicals. Our pollinators, like the honeybees on which our food supply depends, are dying. Our blood contains well over 100 toxic chemicals. Pesticides are causing autism and birth defects. Farms are places where only a single crop may grow—everything else, animal and vegetable, must die. We’re mucking about in the control panel of life, creating organisms never before seen in nature, creating superweeds and superbugs. Our antibiotics are causing the evolution of hard-to-treat diseases. Animals are raised in cruel conditions and treated with sex hormones that are delaying puberty in boys and advancing it in girls. The list goes on and on.
The problem is simply stated: we think we know better than nature how to grow our food. But we’re part of nature, not her overlord. Can the part be greater (or smarter) than the whole?
Believe it or not, natural methods of farming and growing food not only work, but they work best. Organic farming and gardening teaches that we should simply learn nature’s methods and follow them. She doesn’t destroy life. She encourages it. Have you ever seen pristine wilderness, like up in Alaska? You can’t imagine a healthier or more beneficent landscape. The streams jump with fish. The meadows are loaded with ripe berries. The hills are trod by sheep, moose, elk, and bear. The birds are so thick they darken the sky. This is nature in her climax ecosystemic fullness. Our farms and gardens could be as fecund as wilderness—nature’s farm and garden–if we follow her laws, tendencies, suggestions, and methods.
So why aren’t we following her?
Greed, primarily. You can’t sell nature like you can Roundup. You can make a profit selling chemical fertilizers, but not to farmers who recycle farm wastes into compost and use it to stimulate the life in the soil. The rapacious desire for money, and power, and control of nature: that’s one big reason we don’t follow nature’s rules on our conventional farms.
And don’t forget fear—fear of insects, fungus, plant diseases, weeds; loss of money, influence, and power; hunger and starvation. “You can’t feed the world with organic farms,” goes the Big Lie. “Which 50 percent of humanity do you want to see starve if we go organic?” This is sheer rubbish. Many studies, including a 30-year study at the Rodale Institute’s 300-acre organic farm in Maxatawny, Pennsylvania, have shown that organic yields are close to, equal to, and in many cases surpass conventional yields of major crops—cleanly and with improvement to the soil and the farm ecosystem as an added benefit.
Another negative aspect of fear is that it drives people away from their humanity. As fear builds in people, so do atrocities. A fearful populace is always under the control of a police state. The Iraq War after 9/11 was sold to the American people on the basis of fear. Weapons of mass destruction! Mushroom clouds on the horizon! It was America’s huge misfortune that the administration in Washington at the time was controlled by neocon sociopaths. They read history. They knew how to gin up fear. And look what followed: nearly 5,000 American dead and 100,000 Iraqis. Torture at Abu Ghraib and black sites around the world. Blackwater running amok. Mass surveillance in total secrecy by the NSA. The militarization of America’s hometown police forces. And most disheartening of all, the destruction of America’s reputation for being fair and decent people who root for the underdog.
The destructive methods of conventional farming are set up to maximize profit for large corporations, using fear as the tactic for strategic control of the world’s food supply, and therefore its people.
As Hermann Goering, second in command to Adolph Hitler, famously remarked, and I’m paraphrasing, “It’s easy to control people. Just tell them they are under attack and you will protect them. They’ll do anything you want.” Remember the technique that Big Food used to defeat GMO labeling laws in California and Washington State? “Labeling GMOs will cause food prices to rise.” Like the Big Lie about organic farms, this is nonsense. What it is, is scary talk. Famine! Hunger! Death!
But we are fast approaching our environmental and ecological limits. Climate change has us at a tipping point. Sea temperatures are rising. Feedback loops threaten human life. Oceans are rising. Intense weather of all kinds is predicted to be on the way—and we’ve seen a lot of it already.
It looks like human beings are going to have to rediscover nature and her laws. Reconnect. Clean up our act and stop fouling the planet. And how do we do that when we live in a downtown duplex and work all day to make the money to buy crap that we don’t need? How do we find nature when we eat the contaminated food produced by Big Ag and Big Biotech and spend our few hours of leisure watching HBO? Where is nature in this American life?
She’s right where she’s always been—in the garden. That might be a little patch in your backyard. Or, if you don’t have a backyard, in a community garden. Or, if there’s no community garden, there may be a local arboretum or botanical garden or even a municipal park that could use a volunteer—especially an organic-minded volunteer.
Gardening organically is about nurturing things, not killing things. This is good for the soul. This is about giving yourself away to small, innocent plants that need you to help them grow big and strong so that they can nurture you. Take off your shoes and socks and feel the earth on your feet and in your hands. Feed the soil and watch it turn from worn out dust into dark, crumbly, sweet-smelling, humusy loam. Say hi to the earthworms that will come back. Watch that robin tugging a worm out of the rich garden soil. Eat a ripe tomato that you planted and helped into fruitful life. Now your cogs and wheels are turning with nature’s wheels. It doesn’t have to be on a grand scale. The whole is present in each of its parts.
The point is that nothing else is going to save us from environmental disaster except a universal consciousness of our connection to nature—and that doesn’t even mean going into the wilderness to commune with nature. It can also mean going within ourselves to see that nature’s laws are operative there, too. How could they not be? We are built by nature. We embody nature and all her rules. Not only that, but there is within us a fundamental consciousness from which nature arises. It is the dispassionate, unchanging, eternal, silent, uncritical witness of our lives. We all have a superficial consciousness focused on and bound up with the circumstances of our daily existence. It changes as we age, maybe it grows in wisdom, maybe it figures out how to enjoy life. But deeper than that is our true self that has been with us since we were born, that witnesses and observes our lives as they progress. When the surface consciousness that’s enthralled with the world reconnects to this true self, it puts solid ground under our feet. Our true self is divine and it sees the divine in everything we encounter, especially other living creatures. When we make this reconnection, it is that crucial moment in any life when a person suddenly knows who they are.
That’s the great internal gift that makes us human: when we know who we truly are, we feel the impulse toward compassion, kindness, and devotion to our fellow creatures. Anyone who has loved and cared for a dog or cat knows they will return that love a thousand-fold. Yes, it’s important to connect with the natural world outside of our bodies, but inside, in our hearts and souls, we can also find the freedom of the wilderness, the natural warmth of love, the tender inclusiveness for those who are different from us and the steadfast caring that characterizes the best part of our human nature. Our true nature is what we must connect with. When that connection is made, we can see how precious our mother, nature, is, and how devoted we should be to her welfare. Then we’ll know to put away the pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, antibiotics, chemical fertilizers produced from and by fossil fuels. We’ll stop swapping genes willy nilly among different classes of plants and animals and leave evolution to the natural rules that have brought us here.
Can you imagine if all farming was organic, what that would mean for all life on earth? It would mean fields safe for all life to enter, waterways without poisons, babies developing in a clean environment, the return of all organic waste to the soil as life-giving compost, and the humane treatment of farm animals so we can regain our humanity. We can reorganize our societies in a more natural way, not only in farming, but in all aspects of our lives.
Will this mean that the oligarchs, the one percenters, the banksters, and the captains of industry will be left behind? I think these people will disappear through natural attrition, although their money will continue to wreak havoc as it passes down through the succeeding generations. But they are the dinosaurs, and the great extinction we are passing through now will carry them off eventually.
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THE GMO-CCD CONNECTION
The following is a transcription of the radio program Living On Earth for June 28, 2014. Host Steve Curwood interviews Professor Alex Lu of the Harvard School of Public Health about Colony Collapse Disorder of beehives.
CURWOOD: Well, pesticide exposure isn’t just a problem for humans. Many scientists think that their widespread use could be contributing to the collapse of honeybee populations around the globe. Professor Alex Lu of the Harvard School of Public Health recently published a paper in the Bulletin of Insectology probing the connection between pesticides called neonicotinoids and honeybee die off. He noticed that the first signs of Colony Collapse Disorder corresponded perfectly with the rise in 2005 of these new pesticides, the neonicotinoids.
They can save money for farmers, as there is no need to spray. Instead the chemicals can be used to coat seeds or added to irrigation water, making these insecticides systemic in plants and residual in plant products.
LU: The link is high fructose corn syrup. GMO corn (whose seed is treated with neonicotinoids) is used to make high fructose corn syrup, and the pesticide residues show up in high fructose corn syrup that those beekeepers use to feed their hive–and that led to CCD.
CURWOOD: Colony Collapse Disorder?
LU: Colony Collapse Disorder. Yes. So we used this observation in the field to formulate our hypothesis, and then we designed a scientific study to see whether we can replicate CCD in our experimental site.
CURWOOD: So what you did was that you took sugar-water and in some cases you added neonicotinoid to that and in others you didn’t.
LU: That’s correct.
CURWOOD: And what did you find?
LU: So we found for those hives that we didn’t give neonicotinoids, they survived. They survived over the winter. One hive actually died, but died from disease, like mites or nosema parasites. Wheres in our first year study, fifteen out of sixteen colonies that we treated wth neonicotinoids died. And the post-mortem observations are consistent with CCD, which is the abandonment of the hive by the adult bees.
CURWOOD: So what happens? The bees just leave the hive in the middle of the winter?
LU: This is a very interesting scientific question because the pesticide fundamentally changed their neurological behavior. By the time winter arrives, bees don’t go outside. The cold temperature actually kills the bees right away, so they form a cluster inside the hive so they survive through heat generation by each individual bee. Somehow the neonicotinoids change this aspect of the biology of honeybees, so by the time the beekeeper finds out their hive is empty, it’s too late.
CURWOOD: So it changed the behavior of the bees.
LU: Exactly. At least, that’s the hypothesis so far.
CURWOOD: Now, Professor Lu, you mentioned that you came to the Harvard School of Public Health to study human health and exposure to pesticides. What does this research about neonicotinoids tell us about possible risks to humans from this?
LU: Well, I think the direct impact to human health is the shortage of food, if we keep losing those bees. One-third of the agricultural production relies on honeybee pollination. And those foods are the foods that we all like, and very important to our health because of nutrition. So not having enough bees to pollinate definitely will affect the price of food and eventually will harm people’s health. The second effect to human health, which is unknown at this moment, is the impact of those residues in the environment over a longer period of time. Neonicotinoids are almost identical to DDT that we had in the 60’s and 70’s. So we now know that 20 to 30 years later, DDT affected reproductive systems. And whether neonicotinoids have other health affects to human beings we don’t know, because they are still relatively new. But I’m sure down the road, we will find out exactly how human health could be impacted by a little bit of residue in the environment—in the water, in the food and so on.
CURWOOD: President Obama recently announced that he’s going to start a pollinator task force—take a whole bunch of federal agencies and departments to come together to deal with the pollinator crisis. What’s your understanding of what the task force would do?
LU: Well, I think they’re going to set up a habitat or gardens in the Midwest states, so the bees can get their food from those clean gardens or habitats so they can survive. The other aspect of the initiative, as you said, is to gather experts across the agencies to have independent review within the next six months to see whether neonicotinoids do actually cause CCD. But I have to say, though, the initiative might be ill-advised.
CURWOOD: Why?
LU: Because if you think about it, why would you only set up those habitats in the Midwest states? Why not in California? Why not in Florida? So already we can see there’s a problem with the Midwest states. What do we grow in those Midwest states—nothing but GMOs. So obviously the government knew that the relationship between the GMOs and the use of neonicotinoids in those GMO seeds has something to do with the Colony Collapse Disorder. But they don’t want to say that. Instead they say, “We’re going to set up those gardens or habitats in the Midwest states.” They are not really looking at the fundamental question that caused the CCD.
CURWOOD: So, what do we need to do then to save bees?
LU: We need to take these pesticides away from where bees go. Bees don’t know which plant or flower has been treated with neonicotinoids. They go after nectar; they go after pollen. So, if neonicotinoids have been used in those areas, then those bees will be exposed. So the only way to prevent bees from being exposed to those pesticides, is not to use those pesticides. Throughout my career, I never called for a ban of any pesticides because I do value pesticides in public health. But for neonicotinoids, I think we are looking at the situation we faced with DDT right now. I mean, the way we dealt with DDT was to ban it. I think neonicotinoids fall into the same category.
Final note:
A recent study found that “bee-friendly” plants sold at major garden centers in the U.S. were contaminated with neonicotinoid pesticides.
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NO MORE NATIONAL ORGANIC STANDARDS BOARD?
The Organic Consumers Association reports:
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack is at it again, chipping away at the integrity of organic standards. This time, it looks as if he may be setting the stage to get rid of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).
Twenty organizations, including Beyond Pesticides, the Organic Consumers Association, and the Cornucopia Institute, are trying to stop him. They’ve filed a legal petition asking that Vilsack reverse changes made May 8, 2014, by the USDA, to the NOSB charter—changes that undermine the authority of the NOSB and suggest that the USDA may dismantle it altogether.
The NOSB was created by Congress under the Organic Foods Production Act and enacted under Title 21 of the 1990 Farm Bill. The 15-member advisory panel is made up of independent farmers, environmentalists, consumer/public interest advocates, food handlers, one retailer and one scientist. The board meets twice a year to vote on recommendations to the Secretary of Agriculture (that would be Vilsack) regarding the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP).
But apparently, Vilsack thinks he doesn’t need any advice. So little by little, he’s undermining the NOSB’s authority. Last month, the USDA made a change in the organic law that makes it more difficult to get synthetics off the list of materials allowed in organic production. It’s all part of a power grab that threatens organics. And it’s just plain illegal.
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NEWS FROM THE ORGANIC CENTER IN WASHINGTON, DC:
The American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a resolution in June calling for the ban of antibiotics used in animal farming for growth promotion. This large-scale, inappropriate use of antibiotics has led to the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which are quickly becoming a devastating epidemic. “Use drives resistance, and overuse drives resistance even faster,” said David Wallinga, a physician on the Keep Antibiotics Working steering committee, adding, “As much as 70 percent of the use in agriculture is unnecessary or overuse.” Last year the Center for Disease Control released a report showing that antibiotic resistance was responsible for over 2 million illnesses and 23 thousand deaths, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared that antibiotic resistant superbugs have reached global epidemic proportions. Currently, the only way to ensure that the animal products you consume were not raised with antibiotics is by choosing organic!
Organic agriculture is better for the birds
A new article published in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment shows that organic farming could be beneficial for songbirds. Many bird species have been experiencing population declines due to intensive conventional farming practices. One of the reasons linked to these declines is the lack of food for young songbirds unable to leave their nests, or “nestling food.” Researchers found that because organic farming does not use synthetic pesticides and has longer, more diverse crop rotations, organic farms result in higher availability of nestling food than conventional farms. This publication adds to the body or research showing that organic agriculture plays an important role in the maintenance of biodiversity, and may be key in preventing populations of farmland birds from continuing to decline.
Nutritional benefits of organic tomatoes reaffirmed
Tomatoes are well known for being a vegetable with high antioxidant capacity. They contain carotenoid pigments including lycopene, associated with such health benefits as bone health, reduced risk of prostate cancer, and decreasing sun damage by UV radiation. Several studies have shown higher antioxidant levels in organic tomatoes when compared to conventional tomatoes. A new study published in the IOSR Journal of Agriculture and Veterinary Science supports these previous findings by showing that organic tomatoes have significantly higher antioxidant ability than conventional tomatoes.
Herbicide exposure linked to non-Hodgkins lymphoma
Researchers at the International Agency for Research on Cancer recently published a study in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health documenting three decades’ worth of epidemiological research on the relationship between occupational exposure to pesticides and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Examining 44 studies from high-income countries covering 80 active ingredients in 21 pesticide groups, the scientists found several strong links between pesticide exposure and development of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. For example, phenoxy herbicides, carbamate insecticides, organophosphorus insecticides and lindane (an organochlorine insecticide) were all associated with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. The organophosphorus herbicide glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, was associated with the non-Hodgkins lymphoma subtype called B cell lymphoma, as were phenoxy herbicides. These findings are especially worrisome because the use levels of several of these pesticides have dramatically increased over the past decade, and may continue to increase with expanded planting of herbicide-resistant genetically modified crops. Make sure to limit your exposure by choosing organic!
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DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE ‘DARK’ ACT?
The Center for Food Safety reports:
We alerted you back in April when the Grocery Manufacturers Association, along with allies like Monsanto and Dow, teamed up with Koch-backed Congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas to introduce a federal bill that would deny your right to know what is in your food.
This bill, (HR 4432), which has been called the “Denying Americans the Right-to-Know Act” (DARK Act), is on the march and has just gained 20 new Republican co-sponsors, bringing the total up to 25. That’s 25 members of Congress who stand with industry in an effort to keep consumers in the dark.
This backwards bill would prevent states from adopting their own GE labeling laws, block any attempt by states to make it illegal for food companies to put a “natural” label on products that contain GE ingredients, and prevent the Food and Drug Administration from requiring companies to label GE ingredients and instead continue a failed “voluntary” labeling policy.
GE labeling is important to Americans, with over 90 percent of those polled consistently supporting transparency in the marketplace through mandatory GE labeling. In 2013 and 2014 there were over 70 GE labeling bills and ballot initiatives introduced across 30 states, with laws being passed in Maine, Connecticut and Vermont. The DARK Act would shut down these efforts and replace them with an undemocratic, hollow “voluntary” labeling scheme. In the 13 years that FDA has allowed companies to voluntarily label GE foods, a total of zero companies have done so. This is not the solution consumers have been demanding.
Even though Americans overwhelmingly support labeling, there is a disastrous momentum behind the DARK Act. Instead of joining the 64 countries across the world that require GE labeling, these 25 co-sponsors are actually promoting consumer confusion. While countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Brazil, South Africa and the entire European Union care about their citizens’ right to know what is in their food, some in Congress are instead working on keeping Americans in the dark.
Here are the sponsors and cosponsors of this bill. See if you are represented by one of them. If so, as voters, don’t you think it’s time to give these people the heave-ho?
Rep. Butterfield, G. K. [D-NC-1]
Rep. Matheson, Jim [D-UT-4]
Rep. Blackburn, Marsha [R-TN-7]
Rep. Whitfield, Ed [R-KY-1]
Rep. Stutzman, Marlin A. [R-IN-3]
Rep. Campbell, John [R-CA-45]
Rep. Cramer, Kevin [R-ND-At Large]
Rep. Schock, Aaron [R-IL-18]
Rep. Long, Billy [R-MO-7]
Rep. Latham, Tom [R-IA-3]
Rep. Cook, Paul [R-CA-8]
Rep. Luetkemeyer, Blaine [R-MO-3]
Rep. Ellmers, Renee L. [R-NC-2]
Rep. Rogers, Mike D. [R-AL-3]
Rep. Byrne, Bradley [R-AL-1]
Rep. Terry, Lee [R-NE-2]
Rep. Rokita, Todd [R-IN-4]
Rep. Barr, Andy [R-KY-6]
Rep. Ross, Dennis A. [R-FL-15]
Rep. Nunes, Devin [R-CA-22]
Rep. Shuster, Bill [R-PA-9]
Rep. Valadao, David G. [R-CA-21]
Rep. LaMalfa, Doug [R-CA-1]
Rep. Crawford, Eric A. “Rick” [R-AR-1]
Rep. Simpson, Michael K. [R-ID-2]
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