Organic Agriculture is under attack!

Genetically engineered crops are contaminating organic crops and the U.S. Department of Agriculture is doing nothing to stop it.

So what are we going to do about it?

Do we sit back and let this contamination continue, damaging what so many good people in the organic movement have created through years of hard work?

Or do we take action, and ensure a prosperous future for organic farmers and a continuing supply of nutritious, organic foods for the American people?

 
 
 

Take Three Action Steps Now!

1) Send ACTION ALERTS e-mails and letters
It is essential to let members of the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees, your House Representative and two Senators, and the USDA know your concern over the contamination of organic foods from genetically engineered crops. We make it easy to send instant e-mails online and print out letters to mail.

2) Join the Save Organic Food coalition
Become a part of the effort to fight the contamination of organic foods by joining our effort to get Congressional hearings on this important issue. Membership in the Save Organic Food coalition is FREE!

3) Tell Your Friends
If you tell your friends about the effort to Save Organic Food, and they tell their friends, who in turn tell their friends, etc., etc., we will be successful in putting enough pressure on the U.S. Congress to address the issue of organic contamination from GMOs. The power of duplication is key -- so tell your friends!

The problem: "There's no wall high enough"

In 1999, Terra Prima, an organic tortilla chips manufacturer from Wisconsin, was forced to destroy 87,000 packets of corn chips after European importers discovered traces of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the chips. It was the first time a food manufacturer had to pull a product because of genetic contamination. Terra Prima lost $147,000. "It just devastated us," company president Chuck Walker says. "We had to throw all the chips away."

"The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender."

In 2002, Ontario farmer Alex Nurnberg had tests conducted on his 100-ton harvest of organic corn. Twenty tons were found to be contaminated by GMOs, which Nurnberg believes were blown by the wind from the corn on a neighboring farm. "I was not ready for it. I feel such a wrath about it," says Nurnberg.

"We have found traces in corn that has been grown organically for 10 to 15 years," says Arran Stephens, president of Nature's Path Foods, an organic producer of breads and cereals in Delta, British Columbia. "There's no wall high enough to keep that stuff contained."

Some people believe that the biotech industry is intentionally trying to damage organic food.

"The hope of the industry is that over time the market is so flooded [with GMOs] that there's nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender," food industry consultant Don Westfall, a food consultant who has worked with the biotech industry, told the Toronto Star in 2001.

"They're hoping there's enough contamination so that it's a fait accompli," noted author Jeremy Rifkin, a longtime critic of biotechnology, told the New York Times. "But the liability will kill them," he said. "We're going to see lawsuits across the Farm Belt as conventional farmers and organic farmers find their product is contaminated."

In addition to putting the purity of organic foods at risk, genetic contamination is raising the price of organic foods. Last year, the Organic Farming Research Foundation reported that 11 percent of organic farmers responding to a survey revealed that they are paying for expensive DNA tests

According to the Associated Press news wire, "It's all adding up to cost increases for organic foods, which command premium prices because of their promise to be free of biotechnology, pesticides and other unnatural tinkering. Worse, some U.S. farmers are losing sales to European competitors, who can better ensure that their crops are free of genetic engineering."

"It's the bane of the organic industry," says Nell Newman of Newman's Own.

The solution: Applying citizen pressure on the U.S. Congress to hold the USDA accountable

This web site offers you a variety of ways to get involved in the effort to save organic crops from contamination by genetically engineered crops.

The single most important step to take is to send ACTION ALERT e-mails and letters to members of the U.S. House and Senate Agriculture committees, your House Representative and two Senators, and the USDA.

We also encourage you to read our primer on U.S. government. The more you know about how the government is structured, the more effective you will be in your political activist activities.

If you want to learn more about the specific threats genetically engineered crops pose to organic agriculture, be sure to visit the Information section of this web site.

If you make a donation to Save Organic Food, you may request to be listed on the Support page of this web site. (See further details on the Support page.)

If you'd like to give us your feedback or share some of your own thoughts on the information presented on this web site, we'd love to hear from you! Please visit the discussion forums we have set up for this purpose.

Save Organic Food is a project of The Campaign. Please visit The Campaign's web site at www.thecampaign.org for in-depth information about the health and environmental threats from genetically engineered crops and why mandatory labeling of these experimental foods is so important. You can also sign up to receive e-mail newsletters The Campaign puts out weekly and monthly.