Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

American food:  
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/21/164330/061/295/461425

Oils:  Indian sheep died eating from Bt cotton fields.
http://btcotton.blogspot.com/...  Our children eat Bt cottonseed oil in
peanut butter, cookies.  

Grains:  49% of corn acreage planted in Bt corn in 2007.
www.ers.usda.gov/Data/BiotechCrops/adoption.htm   French study indicates it
causes kidney and liver toxicity. http://www.organicconsumers.org/...
Monsanto controls US's two main crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits "belong"
to Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto
"owned" traits).  http://www.organicconsumers.org/...

Meat:  Steroids bulk athletes, Monsanto steroids fatten animals, our
fattening children eat steroid-laced meats.  FDA allowed "known
TSE-positive (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy Mad Cow Disease)
material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed."  Monsanto's
GE-hormone increases risk sick cows are entering US food chain.
http://www.consumersunion.org/...

Poultry:  USDA weakened waste/contamination standards.  Waste from
transnational poultry industry is now implicated as the source of bird flu.
 http://www.globalresearch.ca/...  The poultry industry is using the crisis
to push out small farmers.  http://www.ens-newswire.com/...  

Milk:  Scientific studies indicate Monsanto's rBGH increases risks of
breast cancer by up to seven-fold, increases colon, prostate cancers risks.
 Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand,
Australia, South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products.  Bill's USFDA put no
restrictions, warning labels, or any labels.   http://www.sustdev.org/...  

Monsanto makes moves to increase its control:

Monsanto's Terminator genes make plants sterile after one season, which
would require farmers to repurchase.  But the genes pose an apocalyptic
risk of breaking out into nature.  GE breakouts have contaminated maize
http://www.slogefree.org/...
and weeds, already.  http://www.newscientist.com/...

Monsanto, meat-packers, and USDA
(http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2006/01/30/ag_news/updates/update

01.txt)
are pushing NAIS (National Animal Identification System), a corporate
database tracking small farmers' livestock.
http://goexcelglobal.he.net/...  .

Monsanto is also pushing state laws taking control from farmers,
communities, over GE planting.   http://www.rense.com/...

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that
feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the
truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is
to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent
farmers."  David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University
www.innvista.com/society/education/students/simpson.html

But Industrial Agriculture has given us:

Cattle living in filth, 12,000-year-old seed loss, poultry industry
implicated in bird flu, Mad Cow disease, bee colony collapse, poisoned
soil, depleted water, Superweeds
(http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-n

ot-uncommon.html), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms
throughout the world, ...  farmers committing suicide.  Industrial
agriculture.  

Bees and farmers, dead.  They are our canaries in the mine.

You and Food Safety:

Your proposed "Department of Food Safety" centralizes control over food,
but into whose hands, HIllary?  You talk tough on labeling ... "foreign"
food, but Bill degraded US food and prevented even minimally sane labeling.
 You never objected.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, http://www.indiaresource.org/...  You
take Monsanto donations.  
Blacks, our poorest group, have to eat Monsanto's
steroid/hormone/antibiotic-filled GE food.  You take Monsanto donations.  
Latinos' central food is corn; its GE version is toxic to the kidney and
liver, and has contaminated normal corn in Mexico.  You take Monsanto
donations.

Who are you with?  

National Black Farmers Association, boycotting Monsanto?  Babies drinking
rBGH milk?  Women fearing breast cancer?  Suffering animals?  Children
eating Bt-corn in processed food, soft drinks, and candy?  Despairing
farmers?

Or Monsanto?

I am a person before I am a woman.  Your gender is irrelevant.  Given
deadly threats to my grandchildren's future by your corporate connections
(Edwards was right), I don't believe your talk of "caring" about
women/children/health/food.

I will vote for someone committed to small farmers - our ONLY real food
safety.  Your friends, though, are the heart of an international industrial
agricultural nightmare.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta