Would Bernie Make an Organic-Minded President?
Organic Lifestyle Comments Off on Would Bernie Make an Organic-Minded President?
He might.
Bernie is a member of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, both important committees for the environment, green jobs, and wise use of natural resources. His home state of Vermont was the first state in the country to pass a GMO labeling law, and support of labeling is definitely a litmus test for any politician who wants the organic vote.
And yes, there is an organic vote. Millions upon millions of people in this country want a food supply that’s safe and wholesome, and the kind of clean environment from which it comes. Part of the shift America needs to make to reverse climate change is to farm in a way that recycles nutrients, and sequesters carbon in the soil. That’s organic farming. Senator Sanders has been a leading voice on climate change in the government.
Sanders is not only a leading progressive voice on climate change, but also income inequality and campaign finance reform. He rose to national prominence on the heels of his 2010 filibuster of the proposed extension of the Bush-era tax rates for the wealthy. Sanders is also outspoken on civil liberties issues, and has been particularly critical of mass surveillance policies such as the Patriot Act.
Sanders considers global warming a serious problem. Along with Senator Barbara Boxer, Sanders introduced the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act of 2007 on January 15, 2007. In a July 26, 2012, speech on the Senate floor, Sanders addressed claims made by Senator Jim Inhofe: “The bottom line is when Senator Inhofe says global warming is a hoax, he is just dead wrong, according to the vast majority of climate scientists.” He was Climate Hawks Vote’s top-rated senator on climate leadership in the 113th Congress.
Believing that “[we need to] transform our energy system away from fossil fuel,” Sanders voted against the Keystone Pipeline bill, saying, “Unless we get our act together, the planet that we’re going to be leaving to our kids and grandchildren will be significantly less habitable than the planet we have right now…I think it’s a good idea for the president, Congress, and the American people to listen to the overwhelming amount of scientists who tell us loudly and clearly that climate change is one of the great planetary crises that we face.” This all sounds liberal and organic to me. But it’s no cynical ploy to win hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of the rich. Sanders has been speaking truth to power for decades. He is truly incorruptible.
Bernie Sanders’ integrity and honesty were earned over many years of standing up for the working and middle classes in this country. He has earned the trust of the American people. You can’t buy this. Bernie has millions of supporters, and supporters vote, dollars don’t. You want to get big money out of electoral politics? Vote for Bernie next year. If any candidate of either party is going to support organic farming and wholesome food production, it’s Bernie.
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MONSANTO KNEW ALL ALONG HOW TOXIC ROUNDUP IS
Internal Monsanto documents reveal the company knew over 30 years ago that glyphosate, the active ingredient in its Roundup herbicide, caused adenomas and carcinomas in rats its scientists studied, according to Anthony Samsel, PhD. Research shows, he said, that Roundup, in addition to chelating vitamins and minerals, making them nutritionally unavailable, disrupts intestinal bacteria that manufacture amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.
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THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET GOES (MOSTLY) VEGETARIAN
The Mediterranean Diet gets the (mostly) vegetarian treatment in “Living the Mediterranean Diet,” by Rick Nigro and Ray Ewald (Ulysses Press, $21.95).
Combining the healthful diets of the Mediterranean countries with many plant-based recipes is a double dose of goodness, especially when the ingredients are organic. There are some seafood and chicken dishes, too, for us omnivores. And these recipes look wonderful. The Watermelon Gazpacho recipe alone is worth the price of the book. It combines watermelon, cucumbers, tomatoes, celery, mint, ginger, jalapeno chili, lime juice, red onion, parsley, rosemary, salt, and pepper.
Some other recipes: butternut squash and pomegranate hummus, farfalle pasta with sunflower seed pesto, wild salmon with dill-yogurt sauce, eggplant and Kalamata olive rolls, whole roasted apple-rosemary chicken, and…you get the idea. It’s available on Amazon.
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LATEST REPORTS FROM THE ORGANIC CENTER
A new study has found that exposure to pyrethroid pesticides may make some people more susceptible to Parkinson’s disease if they have a common gene. Researchers found that Parkinson’s disease risk significantly increased for individuals with the common gene who were exposed to pyrethroid pesticides. Individuals with the common gene but who were not exposed to pyrethroids did not have an increased risk for developing Parkinson’s. This study is one of the first to find a link between pesticide exposure and genetic risk for Parkinson’s.
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences shows that organic farming is more profitable to farmers than conventional farming. While this study did not include environmental costs or benefits of conventional or organic farming in the economic analysis, the authors note, “If we also put a price on the negative externalities caused by conventional farming, such as soil erosion or nitrate leaching into groundwater, then organic agriculture would become even more profitable because its environmental footprint has been shown to be less than that of conventional agriculture.” They added, “We found that, in spite of lower yields, organic agriculture was significantly more profitable than conventional agriculture, and has room to expand globally. Moreover, with its environmental benefits, organic agriculture can contribute a larger share in sustainably feeding the world.”
The Agricultural Health Study investigated the relationship between the use of the organophosphate pesticide diazinon and cancer risk in pesticide applicators. A recent study published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine suggests that exposure to diazinon significantly increases the risk of lung cancer in applicants who used the pesticide the most. Organic regulations protect farm workers health because synthetic toxic pesticides are prohibited.
A recent study published in Agronomy for Sustainable Development has confirmed that organic farming is beneficial for soil organisms. The study compared soil organisms among fields that had been managed using different farming practices for 14 years as part of a long-term study. The scientists found that abundances of larger soil animals increased from 100 to 2,500 percent and microorganisms increased from 30 to 70 percent over the conventional field, with conservation agriculture demonstrating the healthiest and most diverse soils.
A new study in the Journal of Applied Ecology has found that tachinid parasitoids, a group of flies that prey on crop pests, are positively affected by organic farming. Organic farms had both higher abundance and species richness of parasitoids than conventional farms. “To restore parasitoid diversity, the promotion of organic agriculture should aim to increase both the total extent of organic farming and the connectivity of individual farms. As the benefits of organic farming to biodiversity clearly spread beyond individual farm boundaries, any assessment of organic farming should consider these positive externalities,” the authors concluded.
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SOIL BASICS IN E-BOOK FORM NOW AVAILABLE
There’s a new book from Organic Connections magazine titled, “Soil and Your Health,” that you can download for free. Here’s a link to the download site:
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HOW BIG FOOD, AG, AND BIOTECH FRONT GROUPS MANIPULATE US
A new report sheds light on the covert tactics used to shape public opinion about what we eat, according to Anna Lappe in “Spinning Food,” a new report detailing the way public opinion about food and farming is manipulated in favor of big corporations.
“At the turn of the last century,” she writes, “the father of public relations, Edward Bernays, launched the Celiac Project, whose medical professionals recommended bananas to benefit celiac disease sufferers. Those pitched on the sweet fruit’s miraculous properties didn’t know the project was actually created for the United Fruit Co., the largest trader of bananas in the world.
“The creation of front groups — independent-sounding but industry-backed organizations — as a public relations strategy dates at least as far back as Bernays’ day. But a new report by Kari Hamerschlag, a senior program manager at the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth; Stacy Malkan, a co-founder of the food industry watchdog U.S. Right to Know; and me (Anna Lappe is a food activist) shows that such tactics are continuing with ever more scope and scale today.
“The report exposes the growth of food-industry-sponsored front groups and other covert communication tactics in the past few years. While food industry spin is not new, we’re seeing an unprecedented level of spending and deployment of an ever wider array of PR tactics. We argue this rise of industrial food spin is a direct response to mounting public concerns about industrial agriculture as well as a growing interest in sustainable food and groundswell for organic products.
“Increasingly, the American public is raising questions about toxic chemicals used in farming, routine antibiotics used in livestock production and genetic engineering in agriculture. The booming organic food business is one sign: Sales of organic food and products in the United States are projected to jump from $35 billion in 2013 to $170 billion in 2025 — a direct threat to the profits of the processed food, animal agriculture, and chemical industries engaging in such spin. According to a recent Fortune article, since 2009 the 25 biggest food and beverage companies — selling nonorganic processed and junk food — lost an equivalent of $18 billion in market share. ‘I would think of them like melting icebergs,’ the article quotes Credit Suisse analyst Robert Moskow as saying. ‘Every year they become a little less relevant.’
“In the face of this threat, we argue that the industrial food sector — from the biotech behemoths to the animal agriculture industry — is working overtime to defuse these concerns with well-funded communication efforts and a rash of new front groups. From 2009 to 2013, just 14 of these front groups spent $126 million to shape the story of food while presenting the veneer of independence. There’s the Alliance to Feed the Future, which produces Common Core–vetted curricula on healthy food for public schools. Its members include the Frozen Pizza Institute and the Calorie Control Council, which promotes the benefits of Olestra and saccharin, among other artificial sweeteners and fats. You don’t need to be an expert in food security to be skeptical about advice for how to feed the world from the trade council for fake sugar and fat.
“We detail groups such as the U.S. Farmers and Rancher’s Alliance (USFRA) — whose goal, it says, is ‘to enhance U.S. consumer trust in modern food production to ensure the abundance of affordable, safe food’ and whose lead partners include animal pharmaceutical company Elanco, biotech giant Monsanto and chemical companies DuPont, Dow and Syngenta. Among the USFRA’s communication priorities since its launch in 2011 has been to combat growing public concern about the routine use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. Its Antibiotics Working Group has developed educational materials, hosted public conversations and trained media representatives to downplay the risks of antibiotics. But the group’s messages contradict well-documented evidence of the widespread misuse of routine antibiotics. Today 70 percent of medically important antibiotics sold in the United States are used not in humans, according to the Food and Drug Administration, but in livestock animal production to promote growth or prevent disease, leading to the threat of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
“But it’s not just front groups. We describe a plethora of other communication tactics, many of them so under-the-radar that often people don’t realize the stories are being crafted behind the scenes. We describe how the industrial food sector targets female audiences and co-opts female bloggers, how industry groups pay for advertisements to look like editorial content and how the industry infiltrates social media. In one example, the Biotechnology Industry Organization hired PR firm Ketchum to develop GMOAnswers.com, populated with industry-approved answers about genetically modified organisms. The firm even won a prestigious advertising award for this campaign, particularly for its success in tracking negative tweets about GMOs and engaging users directly, urging them to visit the website.
“The trade groups for the industrial food sector also reach into their deep pockets to shape how the media report on our food system. In our analysis, we found that just four major trade associations for the chemical, biotech and animal agriculture sectors had expenses totaling half a billion dollars from 2009 to 2013, including communications and marketing campaigns.
“These are just some of the tactics we describe. While it is far from a comprehensive documentation of every front group or tactic, we hope the report inspires everyday Americans, public officials, and journalists to be critical consumers of the stories we hear about food and farming. Particularly at a time when mainstream media outlets are hemorrhaging, cutting back on the resources available for the investigative pieces essential to accurate reporting on and exposing industry malfeasance, it’s increasingly important that we know where our food information comes from and who is behind it. There’s new indication of the importance of this every day. Consider how the food industry is already busy pushing back in the media against the sound recommendations from the scientific advisory committee for the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans, set to be finalized later this year.
“We must ensure these PR strategies don’t leave us in the dark about the real story of our food. Because as we debate one of the biggest questions of our time — how to feed ourselves safely and sustainably — it’s essential we base critical policy decisions and consumer choices on substance, not spin.”
You can learn more about Spinning Food by following this link: http://www.foe.org/news/archives/2015-06-new-report-exposes-how-front-groups-shape-story-of-food
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CAN A TEST KITCHEN BE TOO CREATIVE?
Hey, this burger shack is offering cricket and beef jerky milkshakes. Better get yours before they run out. Here’s info from its PR person, Amanda Quinn:
“Wayback Burgers has announced the launch of two new, unique, high-protein milkshakes made with crickets and beef jerky: the Oreo Mud Pie Cricket Milkshake and the Jerky Milkshake!
“The new Jerky Milkshake masterfully captures the essence of the fabulously dehydrated meat, in milkshake form. Oreo Mud Pie Cricket Protein Milkshake is made with hand-dipped vanilla bean ice cream, Oreo Cookie Crumbles, Peruvian Chocolate Cricket Protein powder (chirp!), chocolate and coffee flavors masterfully blended to deliver 24 grams of protein. The milkshakes will be available at all locations nationwide July 1 – September 30.”
When are they going to offer a Soylent Green Milkshake?
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