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Wanted: Celebrity Chef to Promote Monsanto

Ronnie Cummins- Organic Consumers Assoc.

Aug. 7, 2014

Cloudy with a Chance of Toxic Water

If crisis provides the impetus for change, the folks in Toledo, Ohio, might just be the ones who force elected officials in the U.S. to connect the dots between chemical-intensive industrial agriculture, climate change and human survival.

For two days this week, more than 400,000 Toledo-area residents couldn’t drink the water in their kitchens. The city gets its water from Lake Erie, part of the world’s largest freshwater system. But a combination of warming temperatures and pollution from industrial farms turned their tap water toxic. So toxic, explains Tom Philpott of Mother Jones, that city officials warned people not to bathe their kids or wash their dishes in it.

What turned the water toxic? Something called algae blooms.

Where did they come from? Philpott cites a Wall Street Journal report:

The Maumee River drains more than four million acres of agricultural land and dumps it into Lake Erie at the Port of Toledo. More than 80 percent of the Maumeee River watershed is devoted to agriculture, mainly the corn-soy duopoly that carpets the Midwest. Fertilizer and manure runoff from the region's farms feed blue-green algae blooms in the southwest corner of Lake Erie, from which Toledo draws its water.

Why did the algae blooms form? An article in the Guardian, aptly titled “Farming practices and climate change at root of Toledo water pollution,” summed it up this way:

The main cause for such algal blooms is an overload of phosphorus, which washes into lakes from commercial fertiliser used by farming operations as well as urban water-treatment centres. Hotter and longer summers also promote the spread of the blue-green scum.

City officials rushed to reassure residents that the crisis is over, even showing a video of Mayor D. Michael Collins enthusiastically chugging a glass of water.

Maybe. But scientists say the crisis is far from over.

Read Tom Philpott’s article

ACTION ALERT

Wanted: Celebrity Chef to Promote Monsanto

In its latest ploy to brainwash consumers, Monsanto is teaming up with a major media conglomerate to bribe nonprofits with money in exchange for promoting GMO foods on TV. And they want a celebrity chef to be part of the equation.

On August 5, Gawker published an email from Condé Nast outlining plans for a Monsanto-sponsored TV panel on “food, food chains and sustainability,” featuring celebrity chef Mo Rocca. Rocca contacted Gawker the next day saying that yes, he had been pitched that project, but before he could say yes or no, a letter went out suggesting he was signed on. “That's not the case. I'm not involved with it,” Rocca said.

That would leave the job open. Until some other celebrity chef takes the bait?

Gawker also published a confidential memo it obtained, jointly written by Condé Nast and Monsanto, soliciting nonprofits to promote—for pay—Monsanto’s genetically modified frankenfoods.

From the memo:

The Condé Nast Media Group is producing, showcasing and distributing a Monsanto sponsored film series entitled “A Seat at the Table” (working title). Hosted and moderated by a well-known media figure, each episode will feature an eclectic mix of industry and non-industry notables with diverse viewpoints about food in this country. Guests from all walks of life (two guests and one Monsanto expert per episode) will be encouraged to engage in spirited conversation . . . .

That’s one Monsanto “expert” per episode. Armed no doubt with an overflowing kettle of propaganda that he or she will spoon feed to the audience. In a “spirited” fashion, of course.

It’s all part of Monsanto’s massively expensive public relations campaign to convince consumers that the Gene Giant manufactures food, glorious food. Instead of what we all know the company actually makes millions of dollars selling: chemicals, toxic chemicals.

TAKE ACTION: Tell Condé Nast CEO Charles H. Townsend: Stop promoting Monsanto’s Frankenfoods!

Call Condé Nast Associate Publisher Christopher Cormier 212-286-7030

Post on Condé Nast facebook page

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ORGANIC TRANSITIONS

Yes, We Can

“A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and of any stable economy. It’s also, when poorly practiced, the most destructive industry on earth.

The World Wildlife Fund estimates that since 1960, a third of the world’s arable land has been lost through erosion and other degradation. Much of the destruction is caused by increased demand for GMO corn, soy, cotton, canola, sugar beet and alfalfa crops, used to feed factory farm animals, to produce highly-subsidized yet inefficient biofuels and to make processed foods.

The perpetual cycle of planting mono-crops, saturating the crops and fields with toxic chemicals, tilling them under and replanting them destroys the soil and degrades the land by depleting soil nutrients and causing erosion. Overgrazing pastures instead of managing livestock herds holistically, using a system of planned rotational grazing, is equally destructive.

Destruction of land and soil by poor farming isn’t inevitable. We just have to connect economic growth to ecological restoration—and restoring ecological function is the only way we will survive.”

How do we do it? In large part through “regenerative agriculture,” in combination with reducing fossil fuel emissions and reversing global deforestation.

Can we do it? Yes. But as Alan Savory (speaking at the Savory Institute international conference in London on August 1) cautioned, regenerative agriculture represents a small minority, probably 3 - 5 percent, of today’s global agriculture. Sadly, 90 percent of farmers, policy-makers and the public still believe in an agricultural model based on chemistry, technology and faulty policy.

“We’re not even at the table,” Savory said.

But we could be. One of the key ways to do that, Savory said, is to convince consumers, who far outnumber producers, that agriculture has to change. Our failure to do so will not only lead to hunger and poverty, but it will represent a huge missed opportunity to help reverse global warming.

Read more

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SUPPORT THE OCA & OCF

Raindrops Keep Fallin.’ Please.

“Floods begin as drops of rain. We are those drops, swelling until we produce a flood of movement.” – Alan Savory, London, August 1, 2014, Savory Institute international conference.

World agriculture is in trouble. Vast tracts of chemically-damaged and poorly-farmed lands have turned to desert. And deserts, along with climate-induced floods and extended droughts, lead to poverty, famine and war, as we've seen in what was once called the "Fertile Crescent" of Syria and Iraq.

Monsanto and the Gene Giants would have you believe that they hold the key to feeding the world.

But Monsanto and the Gene Giants are the problem problem, not the solution. Mono-crops grown using massive amounts of toxic chemicals may feed billions of animals on factory farms. But they won’t feed the world. And those factory farms come at great cost—to public and environmental health.

We already have enough food to feed the world. We just don’t get it to where it’s needed. And we waste over half of it.

The U.S. has 36 million acres of lawn. We raise horses for recreational use on another 35 million acres. On those acres alone, using common-sense organic and regenerative farming practices, we could feed the world.

How will we turn things around? Not by waiting around for someone else to solve the problem.

Corporations will be happy as long as consumers buy their products.

Politicians won’t change agricultural policies as long as voters keep electing them.

That leaves us. You. Me. Millions of “raindrops” pouring down on Monsanto and on state and local and federal policymakers. Until the flood we create washes in a new wave of organic, regenerative agriculture capable of nourishing the earth and everyone on it.

Donate to the Organic Consumers Association (tax-deductible, helps support our work on behalf of organic standards, fair trade and public education)

Donate to the Organic Consumers Fund (non-tax-deductible, but necessary for our legislative efforts in Oregon, Vermont and other states)

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VIDEO OF THE WEEK

Why Don’t We Do This?

Every school child in Vietnam is required to watch this video. It’s the story of the vulnerability of humans to climate catastrophe. The story of how we can reverse global warming, and at the same time feed the world, simply by changing the way we treat the land.

And it asks a simple and striking question: Why don’t we do this?

Watch the video

CAMPAIGN UPDATE

Inch by Inch

Sometimes it seems we’re just crying in an industrial, toxic wilderness, planted as far as the eye can see in GMO corn and soy.

And then along come a few victories to remind us why we—and we mean you—do what we do.

On the GMO labeling law front, Right to Know Colorado activists on August 4 delivered 167,950 signatures—almost double the required amount—to the Secretary of State. The signatures are in support of Initiative 48, a citizen-led campaign to pass a GMO labeling law in Colorado. Coloradoans, sign up here for more news!

On the Save the Bees front, consumers scored a win-win when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced it will ban neonicotinoid insecticides from all wildlife refuges in the U.S. by January 2016, and will also ban the use of genetically engineered crops to feed wildlife. (Which means unless you’re buying non-GMO certified organic food, America’s wildlife will have a healthier diet than you)!

On the Monsanto’s glyphosate and Roundup front, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected an emergency plea by Texas cotton-growers to use a highly toxic chemical called propazine to battle weeds that no longer respond to massive doses of Monsanto’s Roundup. The predicament cotton-growers found themselves in is just one more instance of crops that become resistant to increasingly toxic chemicals, in increasingly high doses. A slippery slope.

On the 2,4-D “Agent Orange front, more than 21,000 of you responded to our plea

to ask your Congress members to sign on to a letter by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), asking both the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to deny approval of Dow’s new 2,4-D “Agent Orange” corn and soy crops, and the chemical company’s deadly herbicide, Enlist Duo, which contains a toxic mix of both 2,4-D and glyphosate. DeFazio and Pingree turned in the letter last week, signed by more than 50 colleagues. It’s not a win yet, but it’s a start. Thanks to all of you who contacted your state rep.!

SAVE THE BEES

Save the Date. Save the Bees.

Love bees? Want to see them protected? Want to protest the companies that are killing them? Or just learn more about the critical role they play in sustainable gardening?

On Aug. 16, beekeepers, gardeners and activists will gather in cities from the west coast to the east coast—and everywhere in between—to celebrate National Honeybee Day.

Urban beekeepers will lead an event in Los Angeles. Visitors to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, Ga., will get to tour recently added hives—just like the ones Carter’s father used to keep.

From Portland, Ore. to Portland, Maine, there are great opportunities to take action for honeybees on August 16.

Complete list of National Honeybee Day beekeeper events.

Bee Against Monsanto protests against producers of chemicals responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder