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?
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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!
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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." |
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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. |