Betreff: How About Some Pesticides in Your Organic Food? No? Act NOW!
Von: Natural Solutions Foundation
Datum: Sat, 24 Sep 2005 23:32:32 -0500 (CDT)


Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. 

– Will Rogers

 

Fox to Hen House Security: "It's OK. I'm Here!"

 

USDA Trying to Make Organic Standards Meaningless -- Again!

 

And, Oh, By the Way, the Draft Amendment’s Standards Just Happen to Match the Weak and Meaningless Codex Organic Standards! 

Tell Congress to protect our Organic Standards:

Defeat the

Draft Amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations Bill 

Write Congress 

Call Congress

877-762-8762 toll free

202-225-3121

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!  Where have I heard this before?  Degrading organic standards and making adulterated food the only food available.  Wait, wait! Where have I heard that before? Hmmmmm.... Why does that have a familiar ring?  Where have we heard that before?  Oh yes, Codex!

·        Give farmers the right to use veterinary drugs and calling the resulting meat and milk organic. 

·        Allowe dangerous pesticides and hormones to be used on organic animals. 

·        Require the irradiation of all food. 

·        Convert crops and herds back and forth from organic to non organic and back again. 

Hmmmmmm..... Why does that sound familiar, too?  Right!  Codex.  But the Codex Coma people tell us that we have nothing to worry about because we have all these protective laws and regulations here in the US.  Right?  Right, except for the fact that those protective standards are being chipped away, one by one.

 

Here's the game: whether it is legislative assault on DSHEA or OFPA, or the EPA decision to ban the wildly dangerous pesticides forbidden by the Stockholm Convention but brought back by Codex, each and every protective standard here in the US is being attacked to clear the way for "HARMonization" with Codex.

 

Here's the latest: Our hard-won Organic Standards are being diluted, polluted and destroyed by the US Congress with the help of major food companies like Kraft, Wal-Mart, Dean Foods an, disappointingly, the very active assistance of USDA and the Organic Trade Association.

 

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is in charge of Organic Food Standards with the ongoing advice of the National Organic Standards Board.  Like the FDA, controlled by Big Pharma, the USDA is deeply influenced by corporate food interests.  And, like Big Pharma, they are, with very rare exceptions, focused sharply on the bottom line and nothing else. So there has been continuing pressure for decades to degrade and eliminate meaningful organic standards.  Remember when the USDA was prepared to allow the use of toxic sludge containing heavy metals and other deadly toxins for the fertilization of food?  Well, they are at it again. 

 

Claiming that the Harvey v. Veneman case and its appeal verdict  (in which the USDA was required to bring its rules into conformity with the Organic Foods Production Act [OFPA, 1990]), the USDA and its commercial allies now claim illogically that this case requires a weakening of those rules (!) 

Not surprisingly, the House/Senate Conference Committee is set to accept Draft Amendments currently being circulated which do not accurately respond to the requirements of the Federal Court Decision and its appeal, but contain wording which will:

 

How convenient that these changes in the intent and content of OFPA just happen to conform to the international trade regulations promugated by Codex on Organic foods!  And how convenient that unless the regulations and laws of a country permit them to apply, Codex standards, we are told, do not apply.

 

"Stealth Regulation" is an old, unfortunate and very serious problem in the US Congress. Food is big, big business and our food regulations come both from the FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Last week,  the House/Senate Conference Committee put the final wording together for the 2006 Congressional Agriculture Appropriations Bill.  And, if you want to keep on buying organic food that means anything at all, it's time to get activated to stop the next atrocity. 

If the large corporations involved here, like Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods with the very active help of the USDA,  have their way, the Conference Committee will carry out their will and degrade the organic standards so that they no longer offer a meaningful alternative to genetically modified, pesticide and toxin-rich produce and veggies, meat, milk and poultry which has not been treated with drugs and hormones and products free of synthetics.

Much like the Wellness Industry, the organic foods market share of the food market is growing rapidly (20%+ annual increase each year since 1990).  The Organic Consumers Association says, "After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations are moving to lower organic standards allowing Bush appointees in the USDA National Organic Program to approve a broad list of synthetic ingredients and processing aids that would be allowed in organic production:”. Even worse, according to the Organic Consumers Association,  "these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board’s (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will have near total control over what can go into organic foods and products." 

Send a letter to Congress NOW!

The U.S. Congress will be vigorously lobbied by industry over the next week to vote on a rider in the House/Senate Conference Committee to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that could remove organic standards from the National Standards Board to USDA bureaucrats in the USDA who proposed in 1997-98 to approve that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation on organic farms.  Those same USDA bureaucrats proposed in 2004 that previously  banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs be allowed in organic food

 
By now, this should have a distressingly familiar ring.  Recall that Codex pertains to every food or beverage that can be put into your mouth legally.  Everything. And then recall that Congress remains ignorant about Codex so they do not realize that these assaults on various regulations and laws are part of a program to sweep away all of our protections and leave us open to Codex when it comes around for global implementation on December 31, 2009. 

Remember, in the weird algebra of Congress, a single email, fax or phone call is equal to the opinion of 13,000 voting constituents!

Your voice counts -- 13,000 times!

 

On a slightly different note, I want to thank those of you who have responded so generously to our 30 day Fund Raising Effort.  We are just $786 away from our goal of $10,000!  If you have not already done so, please ask yourself what your health freedom is worth to you and donate to the Natural Solutions Foundation.  Give generously so we can continue to protect your health and health freedom.  And to those of you who have already joined the Health Freedom 400*, we are genuinely grateful to you!

Every penny goes directly into fighting for health and health freedom. That's my promise to you.

* The Health Freedom 400: those donors who have made donations of $25 or more to bring us to our fund raising goal.

Yours in health and freedom,


Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
rima.laibow@healthfreedomusa.org