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ACTION ALERT: Bush Administration moving to allow corporate
takeover of organics!
Over the past few weeks America's organic standards have once again
come under heavy attack. First the USDA's National Organic Program (NOP)
announced on April 14 that they would no longer monitor or police "organic"
labels on non-agricultural products, literally opening the door for
unscrupulous companies to put bogus organic labels on products such
as fish, body care products, pet foods, fertilizer, and clothing.
In the case of seafood and body care products, the marketplace is already
starting to become flooded with products bearing the organic label,
even though the production methods (industrial fish farms) or content
("organic" shampoos with organic claims based upon added water)
in many of these products violate traditional organic principles. Besides
giving the green light to bogus organic labels the new USDA "scope
policy" penalizes genuine organic companies that have begun sourcing,
certifying, and labeling their products as organic.
Corporate agribusiness and the biotech lobby have apparently decided
that strict organic farming practices and the booming organic market
constitute a threat to their bottom line, and have called on their friends
in the Bush administration USDA to degrade organic standards and prepare
for a restructuring of organic production so as to facilitate the use
of industrial agriculture practices such as pesticides, antibiotics,
non-organic feed, growth hormones and even genetically engineered animal
drugs.
USDA's NOP announced on April 28 controversial new directives/guidance
statements on national organic standards including:
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"Organic" Crops Raised with Pesticides?
The USDA has now stated that as long as the farmer and the organic certifier
don't know the specific ingredients of the pesticides applied to the
"organic" plants, the crops can be sold as "organic".
To make matters worse, it is not required by law for pesticide companies
to list the ingredients on their products (it's considered proprietary
information), so the farmers rarely know what the specific ingredients
are.
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"Organic" Dairy Cows Injected with Antibiotics and Synthetic
Hormones?
The USDA has announced that individual cows can be treated with any
kind of drug at any time, including synthetic growth hormones, but milk
can only be sold from that cow 12 months after that treatment. The problem
with this directive is that it opens up the door for split operation
factory style dairy farms, whereby organic and non-organic dairy operations
are carried out simultaneously, and hundreds if not thousands of "organic"
dairy cows are kept in intensive confinement. Not only are industrial
sized dairy farms bad for the environment, but they inevitably give
rise to sick cows who have to be treated with drugs. Of course many
of these drugs build up in the body fat and are released in the milk
and meat from these animals.. If this new directive is allowed to stand,
organic milk could potentially contain residues of drugs and hormones.
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Mercury and PCBs Allowed in "Organic" Beef?
The USDA also stated on April 28 that non-organic fishmeal can be fed
to cattle and the beef can still be sold as "organic". Fishmeal
is used as a protein supplement on conventional cattle ranches, but
it frequently contains mercury, PCBs and other synthetic chemicals.
Mercury and PCBs are "bioacculmulators" meaning they are concentrated
and stored in the "meat" of the animal.
For more information on organics
with pesticides, hormones, mercury, pcbs etc. ..click here
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