permaculture

[sustain_ability@123mail.org]

Fight fire with fire:
Any way to get the health and insurance industries involved - based on
increased health risks to unaware consumers? 
George

On Tue, 01 Nov 2005 11:00:13 -0500, "Lawrence F. London, Jr."
<lfl@intrex.net> said:
> -------- 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

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