Agriculture
Chair: Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)
- Max Baucus (D-MT)
- Michael Bennet (D-CO)
- Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
- Bob Casey (D-PA)
- Kent Conrad (D-ND)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
- Pat Leahy (D-VT)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
- Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- John Cornyn (R-TX)
- Chuck Grassley (R-IA)
- Mike Johanns (R-NE)
- Dick Lugar (R-IN)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Pat Roberts (R-KS)
- John R. Thune (R-SD)
Appropriations
Chair: Daniel Inouye (D-HI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: Herb Kohl (D-WI)
- Byron Dorgan (D-ND)
- Dick Durbin (D-IL)
- Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
- Tom Harkin (D-IA)
- Tim Johnson (D-SD)
- Ben Nelson (D-NE)
- Jack Reed (D-RI)
- Robert Bennett (R-UT)
- Christopher Bond (R-MO)
- Sam Brownback (R-KS)
- Thad Cochran (R-MS)
- Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
- Arlen Specter (R-PA)
Health, Education, Labor, & Pensions
- Chris Dodd (D-CT)
Agriculture
Chair: B Collin Peterson (D-MN)
V. Chair: B Tim Holden (D-PA)
B Joe Baca (D-CA)
- John Boccieri (D-OH)
B* Leonard Boswell (D-IA)
- Bobby Bright (D-AL)
B* Dennis Cardoza (D-CA)
- Travis Childers (D-MS)
B Jim Costa (D-CA)
- Henry Cuellar (D-TX)
- Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA)
B Brad Ellsworth (D-IN)
- Debbie Halvorson (D-IL)
B Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD)
- Steve Kagen (D-WI)
- Larry Kissell (D-NC)
B Frank Kratovil (D-MD)
- Betsy Markey (D-CO)
B Jim Marshall (D-GA)
P Eric Massa (D-NY)
B Mike McIntyre (D-NC)
- Walt Minnick (D-ID)
B Earl Pomeroy (D-ND)
- Mark Schauer (D-MI)
- Kurt Schrader (D-OR)
B David Scott (D-GA)
B Zachary Space (D-OH)
- Timothy Walz (D-MN)
- Frank Lucas (R-OK)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- K. Michael Conaway (R-TX)
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE)
- Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
- Bob Goodlatte (R-VA)
- Sam Graves (R-MO)
- Timothy Johnson (R-IL)
- Steve King (R-IA)
- Robert Latta (R-OH)
- Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)
- Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
- Jerry Moran (R-KS)
- Randy Neugebauer (R-TX)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Mike Rogers (R-AL)
- Jean Schmidt (R-OH)
- Adrian Smith (R-NE)
- Glenn Thompson (R-PA) *=House Organic Caucus member B=Blue Dog Democrat
Appropriations
Chair: Dave Obey (D-WI) Ag Sub-Committee
Chair: P Rosa DeLauro (D-CT)
- Sanford Bishop (D-GA)
* Allen Boyd (D-FL)
- Lincoln Davis (D-TN)
*P Sam Farr (D-CA)
*P Maurice D. Hinchey (D-NY)
P Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)
P Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)
- Jack Kingston (R-GA)
- Rodney Alexander (R-LA)
- Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO)
* Tom Latham (R-IA) *=House Organic Caucus member
P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Education and Labor
P Chair: George Miller (D-CA)
- Jason Altmire (D-PA)
- Robert Andrews (D-NJ)
- Timothy Bishop (D-NY)
P Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
- Joe Courtney (D-CT)
- Susan Davis (D-CA)
P Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
P Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
P Phil Hare (D-IL)
- Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX)
P Mazie Hirono (D-HI)
- Rush Holt (D-NJ)
- Dale Kildee (D-MI)
P Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)
P Dave Loebsack (D-IA)
- Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY)
P Donald Payne (D-NJ)
- Jared Polis (D-CO)
- Robert Scott (D-VA)
- Joe Sestak (D-PA)
- Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)
P John Tierney (D-MA)
- Dina Titus (D-NV)
- Paul Tonko (D-NY)
P Lynn Woolsey (D-CA)
- David Wu (D-OR)
- Buck McKeon (R-CA)
- Judy Biggert (R-IL)
- Rob Bishop (R-UT)
- Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
- Michael Castle (R-DE)
- Vernon Ehlers (R-MI)
- Luis F Fortuno (R-PR)
- Brett Guthrie (R-KY)
- Peter Hoekstra (R-MI)
- Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA)
- John Kline (R-MN)
- Kenny Marchant (R-TX)
- Tom McClintock (R-CA)
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA)
- Thomas Petri (R-WI)
- Phil Roe (R-TN)
- Todd Russell Platts (R-PA)
- Tom Price (R-GA)
- Mark Souder (R-IN)
- GT Thompson (R-PA)
- Joe Wilson (R-SC) P=Congressional Progressive Caucus
Now, there's nothing wrong with buying stock. My parents hold lots of BP stock, and they are hardly guilty of dumping the 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf. But this is one more step in a long line of actions by the Gates Foundation in which it is advocating policies and agricultural technologies that will directly benefit and profit Monsanto while screwing over the most vulnerable people on earth: hungry subsistence farmers in developing countries.
Perhaps Gates thinks he is doing something good for the world with his advocacy of biotechnology and industrial agriculture. No doubt all of the executives from Monsanto and other biotech and chemical companies tell him that every day. He should instead listen to the 400 scientists who spent 3 years performing the most comprehensive study of agricultural knowledge, science, and technology in the history of the world, the IAASTD report. The report recommends agroecology - what many in the U.S. would refer to as "organics" (even though the term is more nuanced than that).
This diary series covers my trip to the Mexican state of Jalisco to study the effects of NAFTA and the Green Revolution on subsistence farmers in rural areas. The trip began with a few days in Guadalajara, the largest city in the state. On the fourth day of the trip, we traveled through the countryside to the small town of Cuquio, where we would spend the rest of our trip.
It depends on who you listen to. According to the New York Times, this was a clear win for Monsanto. And, worse, it was a 7 to 1 vote. But the Center for Food Safety says otherwise. In the decision, it is STILL illegal to plant Roundup Ready Alfalfa until the USDA deregulates it (again). And, if they want to deregulate it (and they do), they must complete an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The lower court decision that the Supreme Court overturned was a two-part move against Monsanto. There was the vacatur, which nullified the USDA's decision to deregulate GE alfalfa, and there was an injunction, which banned most planting of GE alfalfa until the USDA did a proper EIS. The court removed the injunction BUT said that the vacatur alone (which stands) was enough to keep GE alfalfa illegal for now, until the USDA does its EIS. The EIS is a year away from completion.
Also important is this (from the Center for Food Safety):
The Court further recognized that the threat of transgenic contamination is harmful and onerous to organic and conventional farmers and that the injury allows them to challenge future biotech crop commercializations in court.
The wonderful Rep. Peter DeFazio and Sen. Pat Leahy are circulating a letter to Tom Vilsack opposing the USDA's decision regarding GE alfalfa. The issue is currently before the Supreme Court, so even though the USDA deregulated GE alfalfa some years ago, a lower court halted the planting of most GE alfalfa until the proper environmental impact study could be performed. DeFazio and Leahy are currently looking for more members of Congress to sign their letter before they submit it to Tom Vilsack.
Below, see the letter they are circulating to members of Congress asking for sign ons as well as the letter to Vilsack himself. If you want your representatives to sign on, give them a call about this or email them and ask them to please sign on.
In the past few days since I've returned from the Land of No Internet, there's been much buzz about Monsanto's "generous" donation of hybrid seeds to Haitian farmers. I have just witnessed agricultural success in Haiti's nearest neighbor - Cuba - and I saw firsthand that in most cases, farmers use open-pollinated (not hybrid) seeds, and they save their own seeds from one season to the next. I'd imagine it may be different on large sugarcane or tobacco operations, but those places would be growing crops for export. The places I saw grew food to feed their communities, which will be of the utmost importance in Haiti.
I must admit I'm quite pleased to see this headline: "Haitian Farmers Commit to Burning Monsanto Hybrid Seeds. Hybrid seeds cannot be saved, and saved seeds have a limited shelflife, particularly in a humid, tropical environment. Thus, a donation of hybrid seeds can be like a donation of an addictive drug from a drug dealer. You get your first bit for free, and then you're hooked. You need to buy the next batch yourself. Of course, Haitians can accept the donation and then buy open-pollinated seeds the next year, but that doesn't negate the fact that hybrid seeds are a very short term gift because they don't produce seeds you can save.
Here's the key paragraph from the HuffPo piece, which tells of Haiti's rejection of genetically engineered seeds but acceptance of hybrid seeds treated with rather potent pesticides:
Haitian social movements' concern is not just about the dangers of the chemicals and the possibility of future GMO imports. They claim that the future of Haiti depends on local production with local food for local consumption, in what is called food sovereignty. Monsanto's arrival in Haiti, they say, is a further threat to this.
"People in the U.S. need to help us produce, not give us food and seeds. They're ruining our chance to support ourselves," said farmer Jonas Deronzil of a peasant cooperative in the rural region of Verrettes.
Thus, Haiti's Peasant Movement of Papay has called on Haitian farmers to burn Monsanto's seeds and march in opposition to Monsanto on June 4, World Environment Day. All I can say (besides hallelujah!) is that I hope Haiti's next door neighbor Cuba comes through with agricultural help, both open pollinated seeds adapted to the local climate and technical expertise. Haiti is truly lucky to be located next door to one of the world's best example of food sovereignty in the making.
(Utterly predictable to everyone except Monsanto execs and the USDA. - promoted by Jill Richardson)
Biological life is amazing stuff. Over the last billion years or so it has tenaciously held through a wide variety of ecological conditions. From multiple glaciations to impacts of huge meteors, life goes on. Some species die; while others change and adapt to the new conditions no matter how bizarre or harsh. Where there are open niches existing life mutates and finds a way to move into the niche. This is the greatest trick of DNA, the ability to throw out changes or express old genes in new ways to address new challenges.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard Monsanto's Roundup Ready Alfalfa case. Roundup Ready Alfalfa is a genetically engineered alfalfa plant that does not die when you spray it with Monsanto's herbicide Roundup. The intended use of Roundup Ready Alfalfa is that farmers plant it, spray their entire fields (including the alfalfa) with Roundup, and the weeds die but the alfalfa lives. I read the transcript, which is available here and FULL of legalese.
The Association for the Advancement of Science is converging in San Diego this week, including a Monsanto Vice President who will be speaking. The San Diego Union-Tribune printed a (mostly) rah-rah biotech piece called "Bioengineering to crop up when science group meets." It's impossible to say all that needs to be said in one 150-word Letter to the Editor, but here's what I came up with:
The "titans of agribusiness" have delivered up decades of diet-related illness and unprecedented environmental destruction, not to mention a record number of hungry people (despite a simultaneous increase in the per capita amount of food produced), so why would we trust what they say now? We've had 30 years of biotech promises with little to show for it besides herbicide-tolerant and insecticide-producing traits that result in an overall increase in pesticide spraying and don't even increase crop yield. A 2008 UN/World Bank sponsored report written by over 400 scientists (the IAASTD report) found that biotech was incompatible with the needs of smallholder farmers who make up the majority of the world's hungry. Their recommendation for feeding the world was going organic, which would increase developing world crop yields by an estimated 80 percent. Yet, for some reason, even the U.S. government continues to listen only to the biotech industry and not to independent scientists who raise concerns about biotechnology.
I'd also like to rebut the idea in the article that we need a soybean with extra omega-3s. Our problem is not a lack of plants with omega-3s. Flax seed has plenty. But omega-3s are not very shelf-stable. Flax oil has to be kept in a dark bottle in the fridge and it still has a short shelf-life. THAT is why we don't get enough omega-3s in our diet. A GM soybean won't solve the problem, as any omega-3 added to a crop will make the crop less shelf-stable and thus less attractive to food manufacturers. Of course, omega-3's and shelflife are trade offs with one another that must be balanced, but there's nothing a GMO will accomplish that existing plants don't already do.
If other folks in San Diego want to submit letters to Letters at Uniontrib dot com, please CC me and I will publish them on this blog in a future post. Remember to keep your letters under 150 words and include your full name, address, and phone.
Washington, D.C. - Pioneer Hi-Bred is joining with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help scientists in Africa develop genetically engineered corn varieties that would allow poor farmers increase their yields with less fertilizer.
The aim of the project is to increase corn yields by 50 percent over the average now reached by African varieties, said Paul Schickler, president of Pioneer, a Johnston-based unit of DuPont.
The project represents the latest effort by U.S. seed giants to promote their products as being potentially beneficial to small-scale farmers in Africa, a continent with chronic food shortages but where countries have been reluctant to permit genetically modified crops.
With a few exceptions, every single plant-based food you eat comes from a seed. And the animal products you eat came from animals that ate plants that came from seeds. In fact, the only foods you eat that don't come from seeds are fungi or ferns. Those come from spores. The average American might not give a lot of thought to seeds, but seeds play a pretty big role in his or her life nonetheless. As a sustainable food activist and writer over the past several years, I've had to learn quite a bit about seeds. But it didn't really hit home until I started gardening.
Starting Monday, Monsanto is selling a new, special brand of onions called "EverMild." As far as I know, these onions are NOT transgenic (i.e. NOT developed using genetic engineering). And for now, they are only sold in one grocery store in St. Louis. These are sweet onions that are grown domestically in what is normally the off-season. Therefore, if you're interested in buying USA and you like sweet onions (and you think Monsanto is awesome), these are for you!
As the article notes, this is Monsanto's first attempt to brand a vegetable for consumers in the U.S. We can expect to see more in the future.
Two large and odious companies just went head to head in court: Monsanto and DuPont. In this round, Monsanto won... but the door is open for DuPont in the future, if Monsanto gets nailed by the Dept of Justice on antitrust grounds later.
Recall that Monsanto owns the Roundup Ready trait and other seed companies are only allowed to engineer it into their own seeds if they sign contracts with Monsanto. DuPont previously got a license from Monsanto to develop a line of Roundup Ready corn and soybeans. However, they've now developed a NEW line of seeds called Optimum GAT that adds a new DuPont gene along with the Monsanto genes... and Monsanto sued them over it.
The U.S. District cout in St. Louis ruled that DuPont did NOT have the right to do this, according to Monsanto's licensing agreement with DuPont. However, this decision only holds IF Monsanto's licensing agreement isn't ruled to be illegal. DuPont is challenging Monsanto's licensing agreement on antitrust grounds, saying that it represents anticompetitive behavior. In other words, Monsanto may have won Round 1 but buckle up for a long ride:
"This litigation is just beginning; we will now vigorously pursue our antitrust, license and patent fraud claims," DuPont Senior Vice President and General Counsel Thomas L. Sager said in a statement Saturday.
Meanwhile, Monsanto's also in court over its GM alfalfa.
The biggest question for me is: Are the American people a population of lab rats? Apparently so. These varieties are legal in the U.S. MON810 goes by the trade name YieldGard Corn Borer and MON863 goes by the trade name YieldGard Rootworm Corn in the U.S. and Canada. NK603 sells under the name Roundup Ready corn. If I understand things right, many farmers I met in Iowa used "triple stacked" corn, which means that all 3 of these traits were engineered into the same seeds.
As of 2009, according to the USDA, 17 percent of the corn grown in the U.S. is "Bt" corn, 22 percent is "RoundUp Ready," and 46 percent has more than one trait stacked into it. Altogether, GM corn makes up 85 percent of the corn we grow. Translation: Unless you eat organic (and probably even then because of genetic pollution), congratulations! You are a lab rat! Enjoy the organ damage.
(Of course, Monsanto's already claimed that this study isn't true and that their products do not cause organ damage. I'd like to see further study happen - ASAP! And, in the meantime, how about pulling Monsanto's GM corn off the market until the science is conclusive one way or the other? I, for one, do NOT want to be a lab rat, thankyouverymuch.)
A rant I wrote this morning on my blog with a link to an amzingly interesting interview with Jeffery Smith
I have a subscription to acres USA and in this month's issue is a chilling interview with Jeffery Smith, author of Seeds of Destruction. A book that takes on the lies of the biotech industry
Here I present to you in a format that allows you to read this interview in your web browser of this interview
After reading this I have decided I can no longer eat from the industrial food stream. I am lucky in that 85% to 90% of my diet is already local and organic (i.e. GMO free) so cutting out the monthly fast food trips won't be that hard to do (though eating at unenlightened friends' homes is another issue). Also I have long been a label reader and have been aware how pervasiveGMO's are in the conventional industrial food stream.
But what can you do? Start by buying more of your food from local sources. Find a farmers market or if you want to do more, join a CSA. I happen to know of one near Eaton, OH that is taking members right now-Boulder Belt Farm Share Initiative-that serves members in Dayton, Oxford, Fairfield/West Chester/Northern Cincy.
Read labels and if it has corn, coy, cotton seed or canola assume it has GMO ingredients. And learn what words mean such things are in the food. For example, lecithin means there is soy, vitamin C means corn, etc., etc.. Oh and if there are partially hydrogenated oils or high fructose corn syrup (and Soda pop has both) do not eat it-this is poison they are serving us
Finally, don't be the victim-take back the responsibility from the corporations over what you put in your body. For too long we have allowed them to call the shots and they have returned the favor by serving us poisons that make us sick (but hey, that means big bucks for the drug industry), obese (big bucks for the weight loss industry) and now we are seeing that GMO's may well cause our kids to be sterile. So now is the time to stand up and just say no to GMO's
Gates Foundations = Monsanto now even more than ever. I should refine that statement. Gates Foundation = in favor of a pro-biotech, for-profit, unsustainable, scary, powerful approach to "feeding the world" (a.k.a. lining corporate pockets). And they have many ties to Monsanto including a brand new one. They just filled Rajiv Shah's old job with Sam Dryden. Dryden's resume is enough to make me throw up.
