Slaughterhouses are More Sanitary when Sanitized

By Christopher Mims

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA'sFood Safety page, Farm Issues page, and our Politics and Democracy page.

Oprah sent an "investigative" reporter into a Cargill slaughterhouse, and the resulting video is, frankly, amazing. If you're the least curious about how cows make the journey from feedlot to your plate, it's worth watching the whole thing.

But why would ag giant Cargill, a company with a record nearly as tainted as the nearly million pounds of beef it was recently forced to recall, allow a reporter into one of its slaughterhouses?

Watch the video and you'll find out. From the almost-quaint feed lot at the beginning of the clip -- which is nothing like the truly gigantic feedlots that are typical of such operations -- to the conscientious Cargill employees interviewed during the segment, it's clear that this is a highly orchestrated visit with a Cargill-friendly moral.

The meat-industry approved "investigative" "report" "uncovers" that unless you've got a problem with mechanization or the ethics of meat eating itself, there's nothing wrong with how the overwhelming majority of America's beef is produced.

It's not like they put bows on the cows, but this is obviously as good as a slaughterhouse gets.

inside the slaughterhouse

View the Original article

With Huffington Post Sold to AOL, NaturalNews Invites top Alternative Health Authors to Join Truly Independent News Network

By Mike Adams

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Health page, and our Politics and Democracy page.

The Huffington Post was sold to AOL for $315 million yesterday, meaning the site, which was once the darling of independent media, is now clearly positioned as institutionalized media. As the editor of NaturalNews, I have, over the last several months, received several concerning emails from credentialed medical writers and natural health authors whose stories were dropped from consideration for publication at Huffington Post. There was a rising sense of frustration long before this sale that seemed to indicate HuffPost was headed in the direction of conventional media.

Yesterday's sale to AOL merely confirms this. AOL, of course, is the recent spin-off of Time Warner, which also owns CNN, Warner Bros., TIME, HBO, Fortune, People, and a long list of other mainstream media giants (http://www.cjr.org/resources/index....). There is a tremendous amount of concern reverberating across the 'net that the HuffPost acquisition by AOL will turn the site into just another conformist, watered-down corporate mouthpiece.

Many of the site's best writers are wondering where they can go to get their alternative medicine stories published. It certainly isn't WebMD, which even the New York Times just called out as being a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical industry, saying "WebMD is synonymous with Big Pharma Shilling". (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/m...) 

It's a good time to be truly independent

As it happens, NaturalNews is, just this month, launching a format change that will make NaturalNews.com more like what the Huffington Post used to be: A collection of stories from independent thinkers, grassroots authors and people who challenge the status quo. A site where intelligence takes precedence over conformity, and where authors and writers who question the status quo are welcomed... and even featured!

Beginning today, NaturalNews is actively welcoming credentialed writers and op-ed authors who wish to be featured on NaturalNews.com as part of our new format which places more emphasis on featured contributing writers. We especially welcome former Huffington Post writers who want to be part of a truly independent, yet well-established health news site that already reaches millions of readers each month.

View the Original article

Partial Deregulation of GM Sugar Beets Appealed

By Dan Flynn

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Millions against Monsanto page,and our Genetic Engineering page.

When you've been running the board in a San Francisco courtroom and you are on the verge of having genetically modified (GM) sugar beets torn up by their roots, do you care if USDA tries to do a little something on its own?

Probably not all that much.

USDA on Feb. 4 said that it was partially deregulating GM sugar beets, allowing plantings in 2011, under certain conditions.

"After conducting an environmental assessment, accepting and reviewing public comments and conducting a plant pest risk assessment, APHIS has determined that the Roundup Ready sugar beet root crop, when grown under APHIS imposed conditions, can be partially deregulated without posing a plant pest risk or having a significant effect on the environment," a top USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) official said.

But that decision is just one more item for Earthjustice and the Center for Food Safety to appeal, probably in U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White's courtroom. That is the same venue where the challengers have been racking up wins.

It is White who has ordered those GM sugar beets pulled out by the roots, an action now on its own appeal. Those plantings would provide seed for the 2012 growing season.

Challengers to the Round-Up Ready sugar beets fear their pollen might contaminate organic and other non-GM crops.  Monsanto's GM sugar beets are resistant to its own Round-Up brand of herbicide.

Before White ordered USDA to do a full-blown environmental impact statement on Monsanto's Round-Up Ready GM sugar beets, 95 percent of the growers in the dozen states where they are planted had adopted them.

The final EIS is not due until May 2012.  USDA issued the draft last November and it included at option, requested by Monsanto, for a planting option in the interim under certain conditions.

View the Original article

Why Does Clarence Thomas Get Away With Breaking the Law, As His Wife Shills for Wealthy Right-Wingers?

By Nancy Goldstein

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Millions against Monsanto page,and our Politics and Democracy page.

When it comes to the financial and ethical improprieties of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, there is only bad news and worse news. That's true not only in terms of what they've done but because there's so little reason to believe they'll ever be held accountable for their active role in tainting our judiciary with the money and influence of their wealthy, conservative GOP patrons.

The latest outrage is that Ginni Thomas is embarking on a new career: lobbyist for right-wing causes. But that's just the most recent in a string of recent news items concerning the Thomases' fast-and-loose ways with the law. It begins with a January 22 Los Angeles Times piece that reported Justice Thomas' failure to include his wife's source of income on his financial disclosure forms for the past two decades. These forms are essential to assessing whether a justice might face a potential conflict of interest when causes or individuals associated with his/her spouse come before the court. Thomas hastily amended his reports after Common Cause brought attention to the years between 2003-2007 when Ginni Thomas earned $680,000 working for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank funded by, among others, the foundations of the Koch brothers, the Coors family and Richard Mellon Scaife.

View the Original article

Exposure to Pesticides in Womb Linked to Learning Disabilities

By Liz Szabo

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Appetite for a Change page, Environmental Resource page, and our Health Resource page.

Babies exposed to high levels of pesticides while in the womb may suffer from learning problems, a new study suggests.

The study focused on a chemical called permethrin, one of the pyrethroid pesticides, commonly used in agriculture and to kill termites, fleas and household bugs, says lead author Megan Horton of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health. Most of the pregnant women in this New York-based study were exposed by spraying for cockroaches.

Permethrin - among the most commonly detected pesticides in homes - is being used more often today as older organophosphorous pesticides are phased out because of concerns that they harm brain development, says Horton, whose study is being published today in Pediatrics.

Researchers measured 348 pregnant women's exposures by asking them to wear backpack air monitors, Horton says. Researchers followed the women and their children for three years.

Children exposed to the highest pesticide levels before birth were three times as likely to have a mental delay compared to children with lower levels, the study says. Children with the highest prenatal exposures also scored about 4 points lower on an intelligence test, the Bayley Mental Developmental Index. That test has a mean score of 100, with most people's scores falling within 15 points of that range.

View the Original article

Junk Food Diet Hits a Child's IQ, Reveals Major UK Study

By Jenny Hope

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA'sAppetite for a Change page,and our Food Safety page.

Toddlers fed a diet of junk food can suffer lasting damage to their brainpower, researchers warn.

Children who eat more chips, crisps, biscuits and pizza before the age of three have a lower IQ five years later, a study showed.

The difference could be as much as five IQ points compared with children given healthier diets with fruit, vegetables and home-cooked food.

But even if their diet improves, it could be too late as the ill-effects can persist for a lifetime.

This is the first study to suggest a direct link between the diet of young children and their brainpower in later life.

The project at Bristol University took account of factors such as social class, breastfeeding and maternal education and age.

Researchers also allowed for the influence of the home environment, for example a child's access to toys and books.

They said good nutrition was crucial in the first three years of life when the brain grows at its fastest rate.

Young children eating a diet packed with fats, sugar and processed foods consume too few vitamins and nutrients, which means their brains never grow to optimal levels.

View the Original article

Neotame Receives FDA Approval But is Not Widely Used Yet

By Dr.Mercola

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Food Safety page, and our Millions Against Monsanto page.

Since 2002 an artificial sweetener called neotame has been approved for use in food and drink products around the world, although so far its use appears to be very limited.

Neotame is a chemical derivative of aspartame, and judging by the chemicals used in its manufacturing, it appears even more toxic than aspartame, although the proponents of neotame claim that increased toxicity is not a concern, because less of it is needed to achieve the desired effect.

Neotame is bad science brought to you by the Monsanto Company.

If Monsano truly had nothing to fear with either of these artificial chemical sweeteners, they would have funded rigorous independent testing for safety. To date they have not, and they won't, because virtually every independent analysis of aspartame not conducted by Monsanto partners has revealed a long list of disturbing side effects, mostly neurological in nature.

Monsanto also has now sold the NutraSweet Company to someone else, but the approval of neotame came under Monsanto's ownership, and was most likely a result of Monsanto's cozy relationship with the FDA. More about that in a minute.

View the Original article

Sweatshops at Sea: Most of Our Goods Arrive Via Ships Where Seafarers Labor in Unfair and Dangerous Conditions

By Stan Cox

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Fair Trade and Social Justicepage, and our Politics and Democracy page.

Late last year, the Danish shipping giant AP Moller Maersk announced robust third-quarter profits of $2.25 billion. To get the good word out, the company's chief operating officer sent a message to his crews aboard ships around the world, inviting them to join him in celebration by having a piece of traditional Danish lagkage, a kind of cream cake.

Mark Dickinson, head of the Nautilus International seafarers' union, scoffed at the boss's invitation, comparing it to French monarch Marie Antoinette's infamous "let them eat cake" comment. Noted Dickinson, "The profits have been achieved on the back of job losses for highly skilled and experienced personnel, and cuts in operating costs that have left some ships with food budgets that would barely run to covering the costs of cooking cream cakes."

The United States is no longer a major seafaring nation, but we have become increasingly dependent on the volatile global shipping industry. Cargo vessels registered in the United States and Canada account for only 1 percent of global shipping capacity; however, a far larger share of world cargo traffic moves to or from our ports. North America laps up 27 percent of all oil traded internationally, and one of every five filled shipping containers worldwide is headed either away from or (more often) toward the United States. And to help reduce our trade deficit, 44 percent of all grain entering international trade is shipped from a U.S. port.

View the Original article

Honey Made Near Monsanto GM Maize May Face EU Limits

By Stephanie Bodoni

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering page, andour Millions Against Monsanto page.

Beekeepers with hives close to fields of Monsanto Co. genetically modified maize can't sell their honey in the European Union without regulatory approval, an adviser to the EU's highest court said.

The unintentional presence in honey "even of a minute quantity of pollen" from the maize is sufficient reason to restrict its sale, Advocate General Yves Bot of the European Court of Justice said in a non-binding opinion today.

"Food containing material from a genetically modified plant, whether that material is included intentionally or not, must always be regarded as food produced" from modified plants, said Bot. The Luxembourg-based EU tribunal follows such advice most of the time. Rulings normally follow within six months of an opinion.

EU rules require prior authorization before genetically modified goods can be put on the market. The bloc's 27 nations are split over the safety of food produced from genetically modified crops. This is slowing EU permission to grow them and has prompted complaints by the U.S. and other trade partners.

Beekeepers "have a real problem," said Achim Willand, the lawyer for the group of producers that brought the case. 

View the Original article

How to Form a Truth-in-Labeling Chapter for Your Congressional District

By Honor Schauland, OCA Causes Admin
The Organic Consumers Association needs 435 volunteers, who will each create an OCA Truth-in-Labeling Chapter for each U.S. Congressional District and to coordinate a drive to gather 2300 petition signatures on our Truth-in-Labeling petition in order to strengthen our national network and to mobilize 1,000,000 people against Monsanto.

After looking into some different options, OCA has decided that the easiest way to organize this campaign into chapters in each congressional district is by using Facebook. Specifically, the Facebook Causes Function, because it provides an easy way for OCA to communicate with all of you, a way to easily create and attach petitions, and Cause/chapter members can communicate with each other directly, without OCA getting in your way. All of these features will help you get the ball rolling on this campaign in your area and get OCA closer to our goal of 2300 petition signers in each congressional district.

View the Original article

Farmworkers Bear the Brunt of New Mexico Chile Crisis

By Kent Paterson

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering page, Farm issues page, and our New Mexico Resource page.

For centuries the chile trade bound together the remote Hispano villages of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, provided the culinary glue for fall family get-togethers and gave linguistic flavor to countless conversations on the topic of chile across the state.

In the late 20th Century, a large commercial chile industry boomed in the southern part of the state near the Mexican border, drawing in thousands of immigrant farmworkers who earned a seasonal if precarious living from hand-picking the spicy pods that delighted connoisuers everywhere.

Nowadays, the fortunes of New Mexico's cherished chile crop are on the downside. Just ask Jose Rocha. A veteran farmworker with nearly four decades of experience in the fields of New Mexico and the US, Rocha says he once worked "first class fields" in a wide swath of the borderland chile-growing belt.

Today's  farm is very different than the one before, according to Rocha. "Sometimes the land gives, sometimes it doesn't," the Mexico-born worker says. "There are bad (chile) rows and and good rows." Nowadays, Rocha encounters slimmer pickings, job-killing machines that methodically pluck rows of ripe chile where humans once treaded and fewer dollars in his pocket.

View the Original article

Whole Foods - Major Betrayal of Organic Food Movement- Dr. Mercola Interviews Ronnie Cummins

If You Eat Organic Food, You Have Just Been Betrayed
By Dr. Joseph Mercola Organic consumers and producers in the U.S. are facing betrayal. A self-appointed group of "Organic Elites", including Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, are surrendering to Monsanto.

Top executives from these companies publicly stated several weeks ago that they support the so-called "coexistence" of organics with genetically modified (GM) crops.

Whole Foods sent a misleading e-mail to its customers on Jan. 21in which they gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the "conditional deregulation" of Monsanto's genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. However, after sharp criticisms from the OCA and their customers, and in the wake of USDA's unrestricted approval of GE alfalfa and sugar beets, the leaders of the organic industry seem to have changed their tune, issuing strong statements against the USDA approval last week.

According to the Organic Consumers Association:

    "The main reason ... why Whole Foods is pleading for coexistence with Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, Syngenta, BASF and the rest of the biotech bullies, is that they desperately want the controversy surrounding genetically engineered foods and crops to go away.

View the Original article

GM and Organic Co-Existence: Why We Really Just Can't Get Along

By Paula Crossfield
Huffington post, Febrauary 9, 2011
Straight to the Source

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering page, Millions Against Monsanto page,and our All About Organics page.

Last Friday, the USDA announced the partial deregulation of genetically modified sugar beets, defying a court order to complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in advance of a decision. This move follows on the heels of the full deregulation late last month of genetically modified (GM) alfalfa, the fourth most common row crop in the United States, which is most often used as feed for cattle.

If you eat beef, or take milk and sugar in your coffee (and even if you don't), here is why you should care: The move could put organic foods at risk for contamination and make it more expensive.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has attempted to stave off further litigation and quell the mounting antagonism between farmers growing GM seed and organic farmers by proposing "co-existence" between the two.

Part of Vilsack's plan for co-existence includes using buffers between organic and GM fields and even placing geographic restrictions on the growth of GM seeds. This is the first time such a discussion had been broached by the USDA. New York University professor and food movement leader Marion Nestle called the move a "breakthrough," and we also ran an op-ed pushing for co-existence as the lesser of two evils here on Civil Eats.

But Vilsack's co-existence plan seemed to put President Obama's pro-business agenda at risk. In fact, David Axelrod put the kibosh on the idea with a bad pun, encouraging "everyone to 'plow forward' on a plan for genetically produced alfalfa," according to Maureen Dowd.

View the Original article

Raging Debate in Australia as Monsanto's GE Crops Contaminate Organic Farms

By Elizabeth Farrelly

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Genetic Engineering page, andour Millions Against Monsanto page.

The West Australian Minister for Agriculture, Terry Redman, wants to redefine "organic" to accommodate genetic engineering. Well he might wish it, since the legal battle brewing there over contamination of organic crops by genetically modified ones could easily blow right back onto his turf. Far scarier, though, is the environmental blowback, which could knock all these little old floods and cyclones into a cocked hat.

Steve Marsh is an organic farmer in Kojonup, four hours south-east of Perth. Or that's what he thought he was. So did the certifiers. Then, last December, the nightmare came true. Marsh's wheat and oats began testing 70 per cent positive for novel DNA and he was stripped of certification. A year earlier, following approval by the Gene Technology Regulator, the WA government approved commercialisation of GM, or ''Roundup Ready'', canola - although their own fact sheet at the time cited a United Nations report that "since the advent of GM canola in Canada farmers can no longer grow organic canola in western Canada."

They also admitted that GM canola can cross-pollinate with a number of other species, and eating such resulting crops would decertify organic livestock as well. Yet they broke their promise to publish a list of GM farmers so that non-GM growers could take evasive action.

View the Original article

Clorox Comes Clean: Company Discloses All Ingredients in All Products

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's All About Organics page.

The maker of bleach, Pine-Sol and other popular cleaning products announced Tuesday that it will disclose the specific preservatives, dyes and fragrances it uses in its cleaning, disinfecting and laundry products sold in the U.S. and Canada.

The Clorox Co. announcement builds on the ingredient communications program the corporation launched in January 2008, which disclosed the active ingredients in its natural Green Works line on a dedicated Clorox website. In 2009, Clorox also began listing the active ingredients of its more traditional products.

The new disclosures mark the first time a mainstream cleaning product manufacturer has disclosed all the ingredients used in all of its products -- about 200 items.

"This additional information about our products is a natural next step to take ... as we continue to drive transparency and industry leadership in the area of product ingredient communication," Clorox Chairman and CEO Don Knauss said in a statement.

 

View the Original article

WikiLeaks Peak Oil Bombshell: Saudi Arabian Reserves Overstated by 40%, Global Production Plateau Immiment

For related articlesand more information, please visit OCA's Organic Transistions page.

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.

 The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels - nearly 40%.

That we are close to a peak in global oil production should not be a surprise to anyone (see World's top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action: "We have to leave oil before oil leaves us" and German military study warns of peak oil crisis and Peak oil production coming sooner than expected).

The bombshell is that the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh understands this and that it "now questions how much the Saudis can now substantively influence the crude markets over the long term."  Who persuaded them of this is equally remarkable - Sadad al-Husseini, "a geologist and former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly Aramco," who says he isn't in the peak oil camp but sounds on awful lot like those of us who are.

Consider the first cable, from December 2007:

 On November 20, 2007, CG and Econoff met with Dr. Sadad al-Husseini, former Executive Vice President for Exploration and Production at Saudi Aramco. Al-Husseini, who maintains close ties to Aramco executives, believes that the Saudi oil company has oversold its ability to increase production and will be unable to reach the stated goal of 12.5 million b/d of sustainable capacity by 2009. While stating that he does not subscribe to the theory of "peak oil," the former Aramco board member does believe that a global output plateau will be reached in the next 5 to 10 years and will last some 15 years, until world oil production begins to decline. Additionally, al-Husseini expressed the view that the recent surge in oil prices reflects the underlying reality that global demand has met supply, and is not due to artificial market distortions.

View the Original article