Tag Archives: USDA

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Greenpeace Monsanto & GE

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 Greenpeace
Monsanto’s unapproved genetically engineered (GE) wheat was found growing on an Oregon farm last week. No one knows how it got there.Stop GE crop field tests

Tell the USDA to prevent further contamination of the environment and the global food supply by immediately banning GE crop field tests.

Monsanto’s unapproved genetically engineered (GE) “Roundup Ready” wheat was found growing in a random Oregon field last week.

The farmer doesn’t know how it got there. Neither does anyone else since Monsanto ended field testing this type of wheat eight years ago. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is currently investigating the extent of the contamination.

But in some ways this story isn’t surprising.

www.greenpeaceusa.org

GE crops can’t be controlled. The fact is that environmental contamination is inevitable so long as companies like Monsanto are allowed to experiment with nature and our food supply. Putting an end to the production and use of these unnatural products is the only certain way to stop them from spreading.

Stand up today and tell the USDA that the only way to prevent contamination is to put an immediate ban on field testing GE crops.

Greenpeace and other groups have been warning about contamination of our food and the environment from GE crops for years now.

What’s happening in Oregon is a perfect example of why precautionary policies are necessary: Government and industry mechanisms to regulate and monitor open field tests to prevent contamination simply aren’t working. They never will.

There are so many questions surrounding what happened in Oregon. How did this wheat escape the field tests and end up growing on a farm – eight years later? Who is responsible? Who will pay for the decontamination and damages to farmers? How many other places is this wheat growing?

The one thing we do know is that the field testing of GE crops has to end. Please join me and send a message to the USDA today calling for an immediate ban on field testing GE crops.

Monsanto abandoned testing this GE wheat back in 2005 – due to massive opposition by consumers and farmers in the US and abroad. Now, news of the recently-discovered contamination in Oregon is spreading rapidly around the world, causing countries like Japan and Korea to immediately stop importing US wheat.

No matter what companies like Monsanto try to tell us, it will never be possible to control nature. And there’s too much at stake to continue to allow this type of experimentation to take place.

If we want to ensure our food is safe and that American farmers are not harmed by these kinds of events we need to demand an end to the field testing of GE crops.
For the planet,

Charlie Cray
Research Specialist
Greenpeace USA

P.S. There’s no way to prevent contamination from genetically engineered (GE) crops planted in test fields. Tell the USDA to put an immediate ban on all field testing of GE crops. And then share this with anyone you know who cares about the food they eat.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

About 3,000 Americans die from food-borne illnesses each year.


The USDA wants to cut corners and risk putting unsafe chicken on the market and on your kitchen table with their new “dirty chicken” rule—all to save a quick buck. Meanwhile, billionaires and corporations are getting tax breaks. It’s shocking.

Click here now to sign the petition against the “dirty chicken” rule.

I hope you don’t mind a little salmonella and E. coli in your chicken. Because if the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) gets its way, chicken contaminated with disease, feathers and other really disgusting stuff could be on its way to your dinner plate within the year.

We count on USDA inspectors to help us keep our families safe and healthy. But the USDA wants to save money by throwing about 1,000 of them out of work.

Hurry: Sign our petition against the “dirty chicken” rule today, and tell the USDA inspectors they can count on us, too.

About 3,000 Americans die from food-borne illnesses each year. But instead of doing more to protect our families, the USDA is taking budget cuts out on the inspectors we need. Not only would about 1,000 get the boot—the inspectors who keep their jobs would be told to inspect 175 chickens per minute. That’s more than three chickens per second!

Working people like us, and like USDA inspectors, take pride in our work. We work hard and make a difference. USDA’s “dirty chicken” rule would take that away while endangering our families.

Sign the petition against the “dirty chicken” rule TODAY.

This week, food inspection workers (members of the AFGE) rallied outside the
USDA to oppose this frightening measure—but a rally alone won’t stop this plan. We need massive public pressure.

This new inspection system for poultry slaughter plants is another example of attacks on everyday working people while billionaires and corporations are getting tax breaks. And this time, it’s putting our kids and families at risk while taking jobs away from people we count on. It’s shocking.

 Tell the USDA you won’t settle for dirty chicken. Sign the petition today.

Only by standing together can we save the jobs of hundreds of federal workers who we count on to protect our families.

Thanks for the work you do.

In solidarity,

Manny Herrmann
Online Mobilization Coordinator, AFL-CIO

P.S. In his new book, Rebuild the Dream, Van Jones, a former Obama White House adviser on green jobs and an award-winning human rights activist, maps out how to turn Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the American Dream into reality.

Click here to learn more and order your copy.
~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Pizza is a vegetable? Tell Congress to Promote Healthy School Meals


 

We thought we fixed this when Ronald Reagan  declared ketchup to be a vegetable and most of our country laughed out loud.   But apparently not.

 http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=%2F2w9NMwavBAhxQgjDpoZ9NcufT5FYZsE

Late last night, Congress  unveiled change to the National School Lunch program that will allow a few dabs  of tomato paste to be considered a vegetable which means that a pizza  is back on our kids’ tables and obesity is here to stay.

Congress chose to look past the straightforward  recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences‘ Institute of Medicine and  the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and instead get in bed with the  American Frozen Food Institute and the National Potato Council to gut major  policy recommendations from the bill.   This unhealthy serving of  corporate special interests will hurt America‘s children — all 55 million of  our kids, particularly poor and disadvantaged kids who have to count on school  for their lunches.

Our nation’s schoolchildren deserve better. Tell  Congress to support the USDA’s work to improve schools meals. The health of our  nation’s schoolchildren is simply too important to be left to special interest  groups like the American Frozen Food Institute or the National Potato Council.

But don’t just listen to Earth Day Network on  this one. Over 100 retired generals and admirals recently declared that the  dire state of our nation’s school food is a national security concern. Why?  One-third of all applicants to the U.S. military are turned down because they  are simply “too fat to fight.”

The USDA had proposed school nutrition standards  that would have doubled the overall amount of fruits and vegetables and would  have increased whole grains and low-fat dairy, while reducing sodium, unhealthy  fats and excess calories. Yet, lobbying from special interest groups has once  again derailed some of these critically important improvements-improvements  that would have given our kids a fighting chance. 

Let the USDA finish its job of helping schools  improve the nutritional quality of their meals. Tell Congress to get off the  payrolls of those FAT cats and back on the side of our children.  http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2qyDe9WZrcbUkgWGnKl%2FONcufT5FYZsE

– The Earth Day Network Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Tell eBay to stop selling puppy mill dogs


 Tell eBay to shut down its sales of cruelly treated puppies and all live animals

“Puppy mills” are large-scale commercial operations where dozens of dogs are kept in small cages for their entire lives, forced to give birth to litter after litter until they’re no longer fertile, at which point they’re usually killed. Puppy mills are unsafe, inhumane, and produce thousands of puppies with serious health problems every year.

Now, puppy mills have found a national vendor: eBay.   www.change.org

A few years ago, eBay had plans to sell animals via online auction. Responsible breeders would never sell dogs via online auction, so this would ha ve resulted in the site becoming a haven for puppy mills. eBay users and anti-cruelty activists spearheaded — and won — the fight to prevent eBay from selling live animals.

But now all that’s changed.

Despite eBay’s claims that it “do[es] not condone unethical treatment of animals,” eBay now allows puppy mills to sell dogs in its classified section.

This practice enables flagrant cruelty to dogs, and it has to stop. Tell eBay to shut down its sales of cruelly treated puppies and all live animals.

Puppy mill dogs spend their entire lives in small wire cages, without companionship, and often without vet care, exercise or shelter from the elements. As far as puppy mill owners are concerned, the dogs have one purpose: to supply the pet trade.

The USDA recently admitted that they’ve failed to effectively monitor commercial breeders and puppy mills. When it comes to sites like eBay Classifieds, it’s even worse: Breeders who sell directly to customers online aren’t subject to any USDA regulations.

The best chance we have to shut down puppy mills is to hold vendors accountable.

Click here to tell eBay to shut down all live animal sales immediately: www.change.org

Thanks for taking action,

Judith and the Change.org Team

~ politics petitions pollution and pop culture

Does Monsanto tell you what to eat?


CREDO Action | more than a network. a movement.
Fix our broken food system. 

Stop Big Food.
sign up 

Urge the Department of Justice and Department of Agriculture to break up the agribusiness giants. 

 

take action

Note: Along with our allies, CREDO has gathered over 240,000 comments against consolidation in the food industry. Our friends at Food Democracy Now! are delivering them at a special meeting with the USDA this week. As consumers, we have a vested interest in the future of our food system. Can you help us get to 250,000?

America’s supermarket bounty is deceiving. Of those hundreds of brands on grocery store shelves, the vast majority are owned by a handful of industrial food companies like Kraft, Conagra and General Mills.

This concentration of power in the hands of a few large corporations is repeated in all sectors of the food system — from Monsanto’s stranglehold on seeds, to Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America‘s control over our milk, to Smithfield, JBS and Cargill’s near total dominance of meat processing. But there was nothing inevitable about this kind of corporate control of our food. Decades of deregulation and governmental inattention to industrial consolidation brought us our broken food system, one that features non-stop food safety recalls, an obesity epidemic and the hollowing out of rural America as family farmers are forced to sell out to corporate interests.

It’s time to stop letting Big Food control what we eat. Urge the Obama administration to fix our broken food system.

The Departments of Justice and Agriculture have convened a set of “workshops” over the last few months to discuss potential antitrust practices by the agribusiness giants who control of the food industry. Family farmers were finally able to air some of their grievances against the abusive practices by large food corporations. Though only a baby step, these workshops represented one of the first admissions from the US government that its past policies have weakened, rather than strengthened, our food system.

Please sign the letter thanking Holder and Vilsack for the workshops and demanding they follow up with real action on antitrust enforcement. The era of Big Food must come to an end.

Thank you for working to break up the food monopoly.

Adam Klaus, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets