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Ohio 
Thu Sep 30, 2010 at 18:32:09 PM PDT
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Remember way back when when several states tried to ban "rbGH-free" claims on dairy? This was a few years ago now. Monsanto, who owned rbGH at the time, helped found a group of rbGH-loving dairy farmers called AFACT. AFACT then pushed to ban any label claims telling consumers which milk came from cows that had not been treated with rbGH. Naturally, that sparked tons of consumer outrage, and ultimately AFACT was unsuccessful in most states where they tried this.
Save for Ohio. Ohio was the one last state where it looked like they might win. Ultimately the fight went to the courts. Today brought BIG news of a court decision in Ohio. The less significant news out of the court is that milk in Ohio can still say "rbGH-free" but it must also contain an FDA disclaimer saying "[t]he FDA has determined that no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rbST-supplemented and non-rbST-supplemented cows."
Now, here's the BIG news. The court challenged the FDA's finding that there is "no measurable compositional difference" between milk from rbGH-treated cows and milk from untreated cows. According to those who have worked on this issue for nearly two decades now (maybe more), the FDA's claim that there was no compositional difference between milk from rbGH-treated and untreated cows was THE MAJOR roadblock to any good regulation. And the court finally struck it down, citing three reasons why the milk differs: 1. Increased levels of the hormone IGF-1, 2. A period of milk with lower nutritional quality during each lactation, and 3. Increased somatic cell counts (i.e. more pus in the milk).
Below, you will find the exact language of the court's ruling, as well as testimony submitted to the FDA's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee all the way back in 1993 by Michael Hansen, Senior Scientist at Consumers' Union. Amazing how it only took 17 years to get the truth legally recognized.
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Tue Nov 03, 2009 at 22:06:54 PM PST
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This is expected but still bad. Issue 2, the ballot measure to put Big Ag in charge of animal care standards, has passed in Ohio with 65% of the vote. The ballot measure was packaged in a misleading way and hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent by major corporations to hoodwink voters into voting for it. The opposition had little chance at winning this one, and lose it we did.
In the waning days of the election, Food and Water Watch put out an ad in Ohio telling voters the truth. The "Ohioans for Livestock Care" PAC tried to pull the ads off the air by filing a complaint that the ads contained "false statements."
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Thu Oct 29, 2009 at 15:12:39 PM PDT
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We're a few days away from Election Day 2009 and in most parts of the country, nobody cares. But consumers in Ohio oughta care. If Ohio's Issue 2 passes, agribusiness will have the constitutional right to make all of the decisions about animal care. This is not just about the welfare of a few pigs and chickens. This is about democracy. And if Issue 2 proves successful in Ohio, other farm states might give it a go. Here's a post from Cleveland entitled "More Opposition to Issue 2" and an email I received said that Eli Lilly donated $25k for the Yes on Issue 2 campaign (yes means corporate agribiz gets control of livestock issues):
In case anyone was wondering if this was about big agribusiness getting control of regulations... Eli Lilly was one of 106 out of state corporate agribusiness interests that have donated over $1.2 million dollars to the Yes on Issue 2 campaign in Ohio.
And if all you folks in other states aren't worried, maybe you should be. Here's a piece on how other farm states hope to copy Ohio's rules. Yikes!
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Mon Oct 05, 2009 at 04:08:53 AM PDT
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John and Jackie Stower run the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio. Last December their organic food coop and homeschool were raided by a SWAT team, who invaded their home with guns drawn, held them and their family captive for six hours, and confiscated a large amount of food. No charges were ever filed. The Buckeye Institute is helping the Stowers sue the The Lorain County General Health District, the Ohio Attorney General's Office and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The trial will open October 8 and 9 at 8:30 am.
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Mon Sep 28, 2009 at 10:29:54 AM PDT
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Ohio's answer to Prop 2 is Issue 2. Prop 2, if you'll remember, was a ballot initiative that passed overwhelmingly in California last year to ban 3 specific cruel animal agriculture practices - sow gestation crates, veal crates, and battery cages for egg laying hens. Now the Humane Society (who was behind Prop 2) has been targeting Ohio for a similar ban on cruel practices. Ohio's Big Ag contingent has responded with Issue 2- a ballot initiative that would put THEM in charge of animal care standards.
Issue 2 would create a Livestock Care Standards Board to make the rules on how animals are to be treated. It will be on the November ballot in Ohio, and it is backed by the Ohio Farm Bureau and the Ohio Pork Producers Council. Since we already know how the agricultural establishment thinks that animals should be treated, there's no reason to assume that a Livestock Care Standards Board would come up with anything different. In other words - battery cages for hens are A-OK! Debeaking, forced molting, providing hens with no more space than the size of a sheet of paper... all of this is OK. For comparison, I've heard a recommendation that each hen should get 2 to 4 square feet.
If you live in Ohio, it's time to get active. Start by telling your friends and neighbors about Issue 2 and by making sure you're registered to vote. If you wish to get more involved, my hunch is that the Humane Society is the place to go for that.
UPDATE: Check out the website http://www.ohioact.org/ to get active on Issue 2 in Ohio.
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Tue Jun 23, 2009 at 16:02:17 PM PDT
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Prop 2 passed in California last November, but that wasn't the end of the fight for animal welfare laws. The animal ag industry got their butts kicked and they are trying to gain grown after the fact. Now the egg industry saysa literal interpretation of Prop 2 allows them to keep hens in cages. The Humane Society disagrees. And the California State Assembly is considering a bill (AB 1437) to require all eggs sold in the state (not just the eggs laid within the state) to comply with Prop 2. That's a great idea, actually, because it puts CA egg producers on a level playing field with egg producers outside the state.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the animal ag industry has a brand new tactic to prevent Ohio from passing its own "Prop 2." They want to create a state board that determines animal welfare standards, a measure backed by the state's Democratic Governor. One thing I've learned is that industry doesn't support ANYTHING if it's not in their best interests. That makes me tend to believe the Humane Society's criticism of the creation of a state animal welfare board:
Big Agribusiness' attempt to amend Ohio's constitution by creating an industry-dominated council to oversee farm animal treatment is poor policy and an attempt to thwart meaningful reform. This proposed council is a blatant attempt to stall efforts to halt inhumane confinement practices for veal calves, pigs and other animals on factory farms - systems that are so restrictive that the animals are often prevented from engaging in basic movements such as turning around and extending their limbs.
We have been asking the Ohio Farm Bureau to engage in serious dialogue on these issues for months, but not only have they refused to respond to our initial proposal, but they now want to enshrine their favored oversight system into the state constitution...
It's a special interest power grab that is designed to circumvent the input of all Ohioans into the process and divert attention from serious reform.
This is a fight that will continue to play out around the country and in Washington, DC. Animal ag is spending a lot of money to lobby against animal welfare laws at the federal level, even though there is absolutely no momentum to do anything on the issue in Washington. New York, California, and Ohio seem to be the big battleground states for animal welfare at the moment, and Ohio is the next place we will probably see a ballot measure similar to Prop 2.
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Wed May 06, 2009 at 09:00:00 AM PDT
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Last year, Californians overwhelmingly voted to pass Prop 2, thus outlawing three of the cruelest agricultural practices (like veal crates). The three affected animals were veal calves, breeding sows, and egg laying hens.
For me, the best effect of Prop 2 was getting factory farm conditions covered on shows like Oprah where people who perhaps never wondered where their meat came from got a look at footage of factory farms. I think the real value of measures like this is not the actual improvements in animal welfare achieved (although I don't dispute that that part is good - it's just not enough by a longshot) but the public discourse that happens when we examine and debate how we treat our livestock.
The hope of animal welfare advocates was that after Prop 2 passed, other states could successfully pass similar measures. Obviously, Prop 2 barely scratched the surface of cruel livestock practices (which are often bad for the environment and bad for food safety as well) but it's a start. And now, it seems that the Humane Society - the group that made Prop 2 happen - is looking to do a Prop 2 redux in Ohio. The choice of Ohio is significant because Ohio is the #2 egg-producing state in the nation (behind Iowa). Details below.
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Sat Apr 25, 2009 at 16:30:00 PM PDT
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- From The Ethicurean, a great piece on community-food partnerships in downtowns throughout Ohio.
- A North Carolina-based group, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, is gathering a list and seeking to save from extinction heritage chicken breeds, 19 of which are already listed as "critically threatened" (fewer than 500 left in the world). This quote really makes you think -
Since the arrival of industrialized agriculture, more than 95 percent of vegetables that had been grown in the world have disappeared, according to the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture.
- I gotta go on one of these! Local Portland foraging expert John Kallas is doing especially well with his wild food tours these days...
- Whither the days of syrup-drenched styrofoam-containered pre-sliced peaches in hospitals? More and more U.S. hospitals are taking the common sense measure of serving patients more fresh, healthy whole foods.
- At Civil Eats, Nina Fallenbaum writes about her experiences participating in a recent sustainable agriculture-experience program in Japan; and Jerusha Klemperer reviews the new book "Righteous Porkchop".
- From The Nation, a piece on increasing racial diversity in the environmental movement reminds us of this important point -
For decades ordinary citizens of color have become environmental activists when they organized to resist the siting of toxic waste dumps in their neighborhoods, to force regulation of polluting industries in fence-line communities, and to bring attention to the negative health impact of particulate emissions near their homes. But these largely decentralized, locally led movements were rarely understood as central to the conservation and climate change environmentalism that dominated federal policy and the national imagination. So despite their efforts, the contributions of black, brown, and poor communities have often been ignored in the story of a greening America.
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Thu Feb 12, 2009 at 12:08:07 PM PST
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Ohio seems to have been hit particularly hard by the criminal actions of Stewart Parnell and Peanut Corporation of America. The Ohio Department of Health has confirmed that an unidentified woman from Medina County's death last month was from salmonella typhimurium -
A second Ohio woman's death has been linked to peanut products from a Georgia plant now under fire for sending tainted food to manufacturers across the country.
An elderly woman from Medina County died after contracting Salmonella typhimurium, the strain of the bacteria associated with a nationwide outbreak that has prompted widespread food recalls, said Ohio Department of Health officials.
Out of the 9 deaths and over 600 reported sicknesses currently linked to this outbreak, 2 deaths and at least 90 sicknesses have so far been confirmed in Ohio. Ohio leads the nation in confirmed cases.
In other peanut news today - for the families of PCA's victims, file this one under too little, too late -
The Senate Agriculture Committee unanimously approved a plan that would require food makers to alert state inspectors within 24 hours if a plant's internal tests show its products are contaminated.
[...]
"If this bill had been in place six months ago, a red flag would have been raised," said Republican state Sen. John Bulloch, the committee chairman and the measure's sponsor. "I think we could have identified this plant had a problem."
Food safety experts, government groups and industry lobbies say they don't know of any other state that requires food manufacturers to share internal data.
What have these 'regulators' been 'regulating' all along, anyway?
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Thu Oct 02, 2008 at 08:00:00 AM PDT
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Robert Boggs, the Ohio Department of Ag Director was raised "on a small dairy farm" according to his bio on the OH Dept of Ag website. He served as a state representative and in the state senate before his appointment to head the dept of ag in 2007. Recently, he visited a county fair and made some provocative comments on rBGH.
Boggs said the state produced 5 billion pounds of milk with only 275,000 cows in the past year, compared to the 555,000 cows it took to reach that amount in the 1960s. Fewer cows producing more milk is a big success, he explained, but one that is also challenged.
He referenced the past year's battles with the hormone rBST as an example, stating that 20 years of tests on the hormone have never revealed any problems, yet some groups are opposed to it.
"If there's anything at all that's unsafe about it, we will take action. But to try to limit farmers from using proven technology in order to produce the food that we need is just simply asking for trouble," he said.
More choice quotes below the flip.
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