permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:        [SANET-MG] Fwd: organic foods under attack
Date:   Tue, 1 Nov 2005 07:45:36 -0500
From:   Hugh Joseph <hugh.joseph@TUFTS.EDU>
To:     SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

I found the following info on the organic consumers website. I though
you would find it interesting.

Roman

Despite receiving over 350,000 letters and phone calls from OCA members
and the organic community, Republican leaders in Congress October 27
attached a rider to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill to weaken
the nation's organic food standards in response to pressure from
large-scale food manufacturers. "Congress voted last night to weaken the
national organic standards that consumers count on to preserve the
integrity of the organic label," said Ronnie Cummins, National Director
of the Organic Consumers Association. "The process was profoundly
undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multi
billion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic
community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years. As
passed, the amendment sponsored by the Organic Trade Association allows:
Numerous synthetic food additives and processing aids, including over
500 food contact substances, to be used in organic foods without public
review. Young dairy cows to continue to be treated with antibiotics and
fed genetically engineered feed prior to being converted to organic
production. Loopholes under which non-organic ingredients could be
substituted for organic ingredients without any notification of the
public based on "emergency decrees."

Under pressure from big agribusiness, the USDA is deliberately refusing
to take action against factory farm dairy feedlots who are unethically
selling their products as "organic." This blatant labeling fraud is
compounded by a loophole in federal organic regulations that is allowing
unscrupulous organic dairy farms to import young calves from non-organic
conventional farms /(where the animals have been weaned on cow blood,
injected or medicated with antibiotics, and fed genetically engineered
corn, soybeans and cotton seeds, laced with slaughterhouse waste and
tainted animal fats)/. These confinement and feeding practices are
inhumane, unhealthy, environmentally unsustainable, and unfair to the
majority of organic dairy farmers, who follow strict organic principles
on pasture access and animal feed, and do not import animals into their
herds from conventional farms.

Roman Pawlak Ph.D, RD
Assistant Professor
Austin 316
Department of Nutrition and Hospitality Managment
East Carolina University
Greenville, NC 27858
Ph.: 252-328-2350
Fax: 252-328-4276