Congratulations to us, well, sort of! We asked you, the Health Freedom NetRoots, to create Push Back against the horrific Food Fascism Bill, S. 510, misnamed, of course, a Food “Safety” Bill. The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP Committee) “marked-up” S 510, getting it ready for speedy, and quite disastrous immediate passage.
This bill gives the FDA yet more dictatorial power over our food, our lives and our deaths, yes, our deaths. We have been fighting this bill back when it was HR 2749 and we defeated it twice during the last days of the Congressional session. But at the last possible moment before the House broke for its August recess, it was rammed through, ready to go to the Senate.
Agribiz, Big Pharma, Big Biotech and Big Medica love this bill because it gives the dangerously corporate-controlled and famously corrupt FDA the power to destroy your ability to access clean, healthy food. You’ll be sicker and more dependant on industrial food while the FDA kills what is left of the farming and growing opportunities that bring you clean, unadulterated, non irradiated food.
Done deal, right? NOT SO FAST! Reuters reported yesterday that because ‘there was too much going on’, the vote would not take place, most likely, until 2010. They can spin it any way they like (“Congress is currently mired in debate about overhauling the U.S. healthcare system”).
But what really happened is that you pumped 486,474 Action Item emails out! Riding your Mighty Freedom Computer Mouse, YOU told the august US Senate that they have a serious problem on their hands. So they are delaying, disseminating, backing-off to our Push Back!
Thank you! But as the old joke goes about the young woman on a first date with a man she had been warned would ruin her reputation by taking serious advantage of her (as they used to quaintly say!) when she told him how surprised and pleased she was by how nicely he had treated her all evening, he smiled and said, “You ain’t home yet!”
We won this battle twice in the House: the bill was defeated in two floor votes. But at the 11th hour, 59th minute and 59th second, it was rammed through by the minions of the industries I have mentioned above. That could happen again UNLESS you and I put forth such a barrage of opposition that the bill must be abandoned.
That means that this Action Item MUST go to your Senators once for every member of your household and MUST be propagated by you, and you alone, to YOUR list because your list trusts YOU.
S 510 has an even weaker Family Farm and Ranch, Community and Home Garden exemption than your protests forced into the bill (HR.2749) which was rammed through the House at the end of July.
We need to rally people immediately to submit this letter to the Senate and contact their Senators to demand accountable voting on this bill.
The Obama administration is pushing new farm controls which will drive small and independent farmers off the land, literally leaving the field to Agribiz, (implementing all of Codex through complete HARMonization and allowing the FDA to declare Marshal law) through Congress as fast as possible. They have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and committee meetings are closed.
The Senate bill actually includes a clause instructing the FDA to advise Congress on how to HARMonize with Codex!
Read more and take urgent action here:
ACTION ITEM:
Protect Farm, Food, Freedom from the US Senate and AgriBiz
to lean how our Push Back forced biotech giant Monsanto take a backward step and pull applications for European approval of two dangerous GMO corn types off the European docket, to the tune of multibillions in profit.
Your continued Push Back can make it unlikely S.510 will pass in the Senate. More Push Back is needed for more protection for farmers, gardeners, community farming, all local food production (including yours!) and food processing.
Or go to this Action Item to stop Farm to Fork Food Fascism from coming to America.
This is your future and your freedom and its on the line, right now. We may have until after Christmas Recess to build the pressure. But suppose the news is merely a feint to get us to back off. That kind of game playing happens all the time and Reuters is hardly free of globalist control. So let’s take the safe path and push back for all that we are worth – we, together ARE the Global Voice of Health Freedom™.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima Rima E. Laibow, MD
Update on the Stop the Shot
Case in Federal Court
Air Force Parents Vitally Needed
Ralph Fucetola, JD Natural Solutions Foundatin Councel and Trustee
Your intrepid lawyers, healthcare experts and legal researchers continue to prepare the second round in the litigation challenging the FDA’s approval of the uninsurable, un-safety tested 2009-H1N1-A “Swine Flu” influenza vaccines. These are the vaccines the Federal Government bought for $6.4 billion and then approved and recommended and is now distributing across the country…
To have standing to challenge the approvals the Court told us we must have Plaintiffs who are at risk of harm from being mandated to take the vaccines. Our original New York healthcare Plaintiffs prevailed in that the regulation which would have forced them to take the vaccines has been suspended, but that meant they no longer had standing in the Federal case.
So we’ve found another State mandating flu vaccines: New Jersey is requiring all toddlers in child care to take a flu shot, starting by the end of this year. A dozen brave NJ families with children in the mandated group have agreed to be Plaintiffs.
But that’s not all… we understand that the US Air Force is requiring ALL children at its schools to take the flu jabs – no exemptions. We are looking for a few Air Force spouses (who are NOT themselves members of the military) who object to their children taking the vaccines and who are willing to join in the legal action against the FDA vaccine approvals. Participation does not have a fee attached.
Please let me know if you fit the criteria, ralph.fucetola@usa.net — we need to act quickly and want to file the Complaint this coming week.
Senator Roberts of Michigan says in this clip that the Health Care Bill will punish us all. And, indeed, he is quite correct. But the punishment is far deeper than he speaks about. It is, simply, the loss of all fundamental freedoms to decide what is right for your body and those of your children. Nothing more, nothing less.
You know we need your help to defray the costs of this Action Item, our Stop the Shot Law Suit against the FDA, attending Codex meetings and keeping up the good food and freedom fight. All donations are tax deductible. Your recurring donations, large or small, make our work possible since we are 100% supporter supported.
While offering lip service to public concerns about protecting family farms and organics, Sen. Tom Harkin, Chairman of the Senate Committee considering the fake Food “Safety” bill, made some interesting comments about Codex and DSHEA:
He confirmed that Codex Alimentarius (the so-called World Food Code) does not trump DSHEA – Dietary Supplement Health and Safety Education Act of 1994 (the law that allows the USA to have the most potent nutrients and most vibrant nutrient market in the world) — “DSHEA … governs the law here, not Codex standards…”
Chairmen Harkin further stated: the provision in S 510 (see above) that requires FDA to “make recommendations including whether and how to harmonize with Codex does not signal any intent to move in a different direction on DSHEA…”
Large or small, each one will mean something special.
Why not use your gift dollars to make a difference by giving gifts which say you care to your recipient and mean you are helping to keep health freedom free at the same time?
Your gift to your personal or corporate list of health freedom’s very own GMO-free, pesticide-free, toxin-free Valley of the MoonTM Coffee, http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, will give unique, toxin-free pleasure morning after morning to your entire gift list while supporting the Valley of the MoonTM Eco Demonstration Project in the Chiriqui Highlands of Panama, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundatin.org, as we teach farmers and non farmers alike what they have forgotten: how to farm without toxic chemicals.
Nano Silver Liquids, Gels Stocking-Stuffers
That Can Save Lives…
Nano Silver is a universal antibiotic. The last thing Big Pharma wants is to loose the multi billion dollar antibiotic market for humans and animals. And the last thing the genocidalists want is to provide the world with a safe, non-toxic universal anti-viral, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial, anti-parasitic, anti-Morgellon’s and anti-mycoplasma substance that is cheap, lasts for practically ever and cannot be patented. That is why both the National Organics Board AND the EPA are seeking to get rid of Nano Silver.
SUMMARY:
In the absence of public scrutiny, the Obama administration is pushing new farm controls which will drive small and independent farmers off the land, literally leaving the field to Agribiz. More Push Back is needed for more protection for farmers, gardeners, community farming, all local food production (including yours!) and food processing.
HELP Chairman Sen. Tom Harkin, mentioning “public concerns” (namely your Push Back!) and the Committee’s desire to protect family farms and organic agriculture, confirmed (about minute 58.5) that Codex Alimentarius (the so-called World Food Code) does not trump the Dietary Supplement Health and Safety Education Act of 1994 (the law that allows the USA to have the most potent nutrients and most vibrant nutrient market in the world) “DSHEA … governs the law here, not Codex standards…”
Chairmen Harkin further stated: the provision in bill that requires FDA to “make recommendations including whether to harmonize whth Codex does not signal any intent to move in a different direction on DSHEA…”
We are waiting for the “marked-up bill” to find out if it will in fact protect family farms and organic agriculture and only time will tell the value of the Senator’s promises about DSHEA.
——————
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
The Voice of Global Health Freedom™
Farmers, Food and Freedom Under Attack…
Permalink: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4014
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP Committee) will “mark-up” S.510, the Senate version of the (sic) “Food Safety” bill on Tuesday, November 18, 2009. This is the last step before a full Senate vote, which could happen in the next few days.
The Senate bill can be read at: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.510:
This bill has an even weaker Family Farm and Ranch, Community and Home Garden exemption than the bill (HR.2749) which passed the House at the end of July.
NOTE: Even if you have already taken this Action Item, we encourage you, and every member of your family and circle of contacts to do so again since it has been amended to reflect the passage of HR 2749 on July 30, 2009 after two failed attempts on the previous days and recent action in the Senate. Now it is the Senate’s turn: if passed by the Senate, this Food Fascism Bill will guarantee the loss of clean, healthy food and independent farming in the US and the complete industrialization of the US food supply. Now the question is what will the Senate do?
You can email the HELP Committee here:
help_comments@help.senate.gov
(the Action Item also goes to the Committee email address, in addition to your Senators).
We did manage to get some protective exemptions into the bill for small farmers who sell food directly to consumers or to restaurants, but they are, frankly, weak and will not be enough to protect your food or our farmers. But the Senate bill has much weaker protections, just mentioning minor exemptions for restaurants once and farms twice.
We need to rally people immediately to submit this letter to the Senate and contact their Senators to demand accountable voting on this bill.
The Obama administration is pushing new farm controls which will drive small and independent farmers off the land, literally leaving the field to Agribiz, (implementing all of Codex through complete HARMonization and allowing the FDA to declare Marshal law) through Congress as fast as possible and have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and committee meetings are closed.
Transparency, change, undoing Bush’s regulations, giving the public time to comment, grassroots anything? None are visible in the current legislative process. Our entire food system, and thus our health, is being given to the last people with any interest in quality or safety: Big Abgribiz. This is going on in the absence of public scrutiny. Those who do know what is happening, of course, have zero access to the process and to the major media. Meanwhile, the media is absent while Congress is moving at warp speed to sew this up.
There will be no direct, frontal assault on organic farming but an insidious process of “infecting” organic farming with regulations, “traceability” requirements, required practices and prohibitions enforced by truly draconian fines and prision terms for even minor offenses running to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and 8 years in prison for minor offenses.
Example: imagine Joel Salatin’s wonderful organic farm under the direction of the USDA, with detailed instructions on what he must feed and when, how he must medically “treat” his animals and with what, what he must “spray” and when, … you get the picture. These bills will industrialize all farms and insure the farmers are forced to buy chemicals and drugs. Organic is dead. As well as human control over the food supply. As well as health.
H.R. 2749 includes a weak exemption for farmer to consumer or restaurant sales because of the Push Back we generated. But the bill has now passed the House and it is imperative that it NOT pass the Senate. More Push Back is needed for more protection for farmers, gardeners, community farming, all local food production (including yours!) and food processing.
We’ve set up an Action Item for you to send an unmistakable message to your Senators. We must educate the Senate that you value organic farmers and small farming and do not do not want independent farmers regulated out of existence. You do not want “Big Agra” regulations applied to organic and small family farms and ranches or to natural/organic food products, including Dietary Supplements.
We have prepared the below Petition to Congress for you to send to your Senators via the Action Item.
For Health and Freedom,
Ralph Fucetola JD
Natural Solutions Foundation Trustee
————————- PETITION
To Amend S.510 or Any Food Safety Modernization Act or Similar Bill
By the Addition of the
Natural and Family Food and Farming Exclusion Amendment
To: The Members of the Senate of the United States of America:
Whereas the proposed Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services should focus its activities on the significant public administration issues involving the capacity of large scale, industrialized agriculture to threaten public safety,
Whereas organic and natural agriculture, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements are not a significant part of the food safety problem, and
Whereas Congress previously provided for an exemption for natural food dietary supplements from the increased agency authority granted by the FDA Modernization Act of 2007, through a rule of interpretation, added as section 1011 of that Act, and has on numerous occasions exempted small and family farms from the same level of regulation as has been deemed necessary in the case of industrialized agriculture,
The citizens ascribing to this Petition therefore hereby request that any Food Safety Modernization Act identical or similar to HR 2749 be defeated, or that it, or any substitute for it be amended to exclude organic and natural agriculture, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements, through a rule of interpretation, as follows:
“Rule of Interpretation
“No provision of this act shall be deemed to apply (a) to any home, home-business, homestead, home or community gardens, small farm, organic or natural agricultural activity, (b) to any family farm or ranch, or (c) to any natural or organic food product, including dietary supplements regulated under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.”
We also note the language of the Fair Labor Standards Act, 29 USC sec 203 (s) (2) which provides, “(2) Any establishment that has as its only regular employees the owner thereof or the parent, spouse, child, or other member of the immediate family of such owner shall not be considered to be an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce or a part of such an enterprise…” Language such as this would be helpful to allay our concerns.
If the FDA Center for Food Safety is to be moved into a new Food Safety Agency, then Dietary Supplements, regulated as foods under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) should be included in such agency, with the proviso that such substances, as foods, are deemed safe when used as directed.
Furthermore, the ascribing citizens Petition the Congress of the United States to declare it the public policy of the United States that organic and natural agriculture, home and community gardens, family farms and ranches, and natural or organic food products, including dietary supplements shall be at all times free from suit, vexation, trouble, penalty, or loss of their goods, for the inestimable values they confer upon the public.
You know we need your help to defray the costs of this Action Item and to keep up the good food and freedom fight.
Please donate here: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189
————————-
[March 7, 2009 - This Petition was prepared by Ralph Fucetola JD, a Trustee of the Natural Solutions Foundation, for educational purposes – www.HealthFreedomUSA.org and modified on July 31, 2009 and November 17, 2009]
Natural Solutions Foundation www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
PUSH BACK Triumph: Biotech Giant Monsanto Forced to Withdraw Application for Approval of Two Types of GMO Corn – Safety Science Simply Not There
Push Back is the only thing that will work to reclaim our rights. Let’s face it: the people involved in taking them away are not going to suddenly see the light and hand them back to us. The production of safe, clean food, to reclaim our Constitutional rights, to reclaim our sovereignty over our own bodies (and those of our children), our rights to privacy and our right to make our own decisions about chipping and poisoned foods and vaccines and all the rest of our fundamental choices and freedoms.
Access to clean, unadulterated food is a basic human right. You know it, I know it and the globalists know it, too. We believe in it, they want to take it away from us. There simply is no better control mechanism than food: who lives and who dies depends on what food they have access to, whether they have access to it and what the condition of the food is. Clear and simple. Starving and weakening people is an ancient method of dominating and eliminating them. Some time ago, the Natural Solutions Foundation, looking, as we always do, for the most profound solution to a problem, realized that farmers were no longer able to grow clean food because of chemical inputs which had replaced ancient knowledge and poisoned the fertility of their land.
It was clear to us that reclaiming the production of food for people, rather than submitting to the distorted, degraded and increasingly industrialized production of food was the next battleground. To fight – and win – that battle, the Natural Solutions Foundation created the International Decade of Nutrition and, as part of it, the Valley of the Moon(TM) Eco Demonstration Project. Visit us at www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org to learn more, and to find out how you can become a participant in this unique and powerful project, already underway at many levels. Visiting this site you will find out how you can volunteer, visit or participate on a long term basis.
One of our reclaimation projects is the growing of chemical free coffee and then teaching local farmers how to do the same. You can support the Foundation and the Valley of the Moon(TM) by drinking health freedom’s coffee. Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee is FREE! Free of GMOs, Free of Pesticides, Free of Herbicides, Free of any contamination. Wake up to health freedom! Click here, to order your Valley of the Moon(TM) Toxin Free Coffee! Oh, and 80% of your purchase is tax deductible! Isn’t this the perfect gift for you, your gift list and your corporate gift list, too?
We looked world-wide for the best possible location for our Eco Demonstration project and, after a 3.5 year search, chose the Highlands of Panama for a large number of reasons. One of them is that Panamanian law prohibits GMOs since their safety has, as the event described below shows, not been proven. Under the Precautionary Principle, which is a part of Napoleonic Code legal systems, but which is absent from Common Law legal systems like the US’s, since their safety has not been demonstrated, they may not be used.
Valley of the Moon(TM) is part of our global Push Back. So is our Food Freedom eJournal, www.FoodFreedomeJournal.org, which will help you to grow your own food in tiny spaces so that you can be part of this food freedom renaissance, too! After all, it’s your food, your freedom, your health and, most importantly of all, your choice!
Push Back is a long, hard slog through the seemingly endless muck and mud of the other side’s amply funded propaganda, smears, attacks and derision.
That’s all part of a day’s work .
And nobody does Push Back like you, the Health Freedom Net Roots! Do you think that Monsanto, the biotech giant which has/owns the ear, the hand and the dinner table of the US as its personal property would have stepped back from its intended dominance of the global food chain without a huge hue and cry from people who know what is right and are not prepared to accept what is wrong as if it were safe, useful, correct or safe.
Is the issue over? Of course not! This is the same corporation which reputedly delivers sacks full of high denomination US currency to officials in countries like Indonesia and Thailand, where it literally bribes its way into tragic ownership of the food supply there (and all exports, as in Thailand, the world’s leading rice exporter). The same corporation for whom the US Department of Justice changed its rules so this blatant bribery and corruption would no longer constitute a criminal offense. The same corporation which has been directly responsible for more than 130,000 Indian farmer suicides after its illegal (ruled illegal by the Indian Supreme Court 3 times!) marketing and crop dissemination activities have deprived them of their livelihoods, their homes, their land and their ability to sustain themselves either in their communities or in the burgeoning hopeless slums. The same corporation which knowingly sells GMO white corn in Africa, where it is a staple of the diet, knowing that the Cauliflower Mosaic Virus used as a promoter in the biotech process, itself, in the absence of any virus, destroyes the immune system so that the diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is, for untold millions of Africans, not the product of sexual behaviors of infection, but of the very food that they are eating, the very food which is literally killing them.
Monsanto and DuPont teamed up, you will recall, not so many years ago, to purchase the patent on a GMO corn that makes spermicide in the body, rendering the animals, including the human animals, which eat it, sterile or, if the animals are females, renders them unable to receive sperm without destroying it with antibodies to the sperm.
So while step forward after step forward of the Biotech industry has been to push us to our knees and our graves, this step was backwards. We must shout, rejoice, and renew our efforts to make sure that all of their steps are back and none of them are forward.
In this directional dance for health and freedom lies our future, our very survival. One voice is lost in the wilderness. Millions of voices create ….PUSHBACK!
Natural Solutions Foundation is 100% supporter supported. Please make your tax deductible donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation to help us with the push back we work on, in this and so many other areas, by clicking here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189. Why not give
Monsanto Pulls GM Corn Amid Food Safety Concerns
Tuesday, 17 November 2009, 12:05 pm
Press Release: Robt Mann
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0911/S00548.htm
Monsanto Pulls GM Corn Amid Serious Food Safety Concerns Applicant’s Dossiers Contained Wide-Ranging Fraudulent Research
Press Notice from GM Free Cymru 9 November 2009
For the first time, a GM multinational has pulled two GM corn varieties from the regulatory and assessment process at the eleventh hour (1), after planning for a future income of several billion dollars per year from global sales (2). Monsanto has abandoned its ambitious plans for a so-called “second generation GM crop” rather than accede to a request from European regulators for additional research and safety data (3).
http://search.scoop.co.nz/search?q=related:WO0911/S00548
Under conditions of great secrecy, Monsanto has informed EFSA that it no longer wishes to pursue its application for approval of GM maize LY038 and the stacked variety LY038 x MON810. Both of these varieties were designed to accelerate the growth rate of animals. Two letters were sent to EFSA from the Monsanto subsidiary company Renessen at the end of April this year confirming the withdrawal of its applications originally submitted in 2005 and 2006. The letters cite “decreased commercial value worldwide” and state that the high-lysene varieties “will no longer be a part of the Renessen business strategy in the near future.” (4) There has been no announcement of these decisions on the Monsanto web site, and there are no mentions on EFSA or European Commission web sites either. In other words, there is a conspiracy of silence involving both the applicants and the regulators.
The two letters sent to EFSA in April requested the return of all dossier material (varietal characterization, experimental protocols, and test results) which was submitted with the applications for cultivation, animal feed and human food (4). EFSA acceded to this request, making it impossible for any future independent researchers to analyse the Monsanto / Renessen data. That in itself is profoundly disturbing.
Scientists who have followed these two applications are quite convinced that the “decisions to withdraw” have nothing to do with commercial considerations and everything to do with food safety. In other words, the varieties are too dangerous to be allowed onto the open market — although they would certainly have been approved by EFSA and most other European regulatory authorities had it not been for the diligence of independent scientists in New Zealand who subjected the application dossiers to very close scrutiny (5). In the absence of such scrutiny in the United States, the varieties were approved in 2005 for cultivation, animal feed and human food use on the other side of the Atlantic (6). Consents for food and feed use were also given in Japan, Canada, the Philippines, and South Korea. In 2007 Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) approved LY038 for food and feed use in spite of strenuous objections from the Green Party and scientists at Canterbury University’s Centre for Integrated Research in Biosafety (INBI) who warned that the new corn was not safe for humans when cooked (7). They also expressed concerns about unpredictable health effects, increased levels of toxins in high- lysene corn, and possible allergies and links to cancer.
It does not appear that the varieties have been grown or “commercialized” anywhere in the world (8), although test plantings probably occurred in the United States.
“Blatant scientific fraud by the applicants”
While INBI’s detailed and devastating analysis of the applicant’s supporting dossiers was dismissed out of hand by FSANZ, EFSA was forced to take it seriously because of concerns from a large number of European countries including Finland and Malta. The scientific bases of those concerns were highlighted by Jeffrey Smith in his book “Genetic Roulette” and by Prof Jack Heinemann in his book “Hope not Hype” (9). The Monsanto dossiers included rigged research and false assumptions in the reported experiments; a failure to offer any test results based on cooked or processed corn; a failure to test the whole GM plant in feeding trials; confusing and contradictory characterizations of the GM varieties and proteins; a fraudulent mixing of GM strains during trials; a pooling of crop data so as to mask undesirable effects in experiments; feeding trials too short to reveal true physiological changes in animal tissues; and the choice of an irrelevant, unrelated corn variety as the control group for comparison with the GM lines, with the clear intention of hiding potentially serious differences in composition or side effects on animals(10). The Codex guidelines for the testing of GM crops were thus comprehensively broken by Monsanto’s subsidiary Renessen, and were not enforced by the regulators in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (11). All in all, this amounted to blatant scientific fraud by the applicants, and a cynical failure to enforce the rules, and to protect the public, by the regulators.
During the assessments of these two varieties in Europe, many countries used the INBI peer review of the applicant’s dossiers to underpin their concerns, and these widely-expressed concerns forced EFSA to ask the applicants for additional studies and for a clarification of their experimental data (12). EFSA also asked — for the first time — for adherence to the Codex rules relating to GM and comparator studies. In the knowledge that their dossiers were now being subjected to an unprecedented level of scrutiny, Monsanto / Renessen simply decided that they would not cooperate in this process for fear of what might emerge. So they wrote to EFSA in April (4) to indicate that they were abandoning all plans for the cultivation and commercialization of the two GM crops.
“EFSA has been unfit for purpose”
Commenting for GM-Free Cymru, Dr Brian John said: “This is the first time, to our knowledge, that EFSA has sought to enforce the Codex rules relating to the use of isolines in the testing of GM crops, and the first time that it has expressed profound dissatisfaction about the content of an applicant’s dossiers. It is also the first time that a GM multinational has withdrawn a GM product (or two products) at the eleventh hour. It was insane in the first place to seek to pass GM maize crops containing Bt toxins and “growth enhancers” straight into the human food chain (13). In addition, EFSA and the other regulators have been quite irresponsible in the past in assuming that “stacked” events, hybridized from two GM lines, are harmless if the applicant says so, and if the separate lines have been independently approved. That is simply bad science, since it fails to address the likelihood of synergistic effects and even accumulating toxins in the food chain (14).
“Nonetheless, we applaud the fact that EFSA has asked Monsanto some hard questions in this case, having in the past demonstrated, over and again, that its GMO Panel is simply unfit for purpose (15). This represents progress.
“We are quite convinced that Monsanto has been fully aware, from the beginning, that line LY038 and line LY038 x MON810 are both dangerous; and yet they persisted with their applications until the extent of their scientific fraud was exposed to the public. We should not be surprised by this. The corporation pushes dangerous products onto the food market all the time, and does whatever is necessary to hoodwink the regulators into the belief that all is well (16). We are convinced that Mansanto has other in-house studies which show that these varieties are unstable, unpredictable and harmful to health. Will we ever get to see these studies? No way!”
Natural Solutions Foundation
November 16, 2009
Natural Solutions Foundation is the largest and most effective health freedom organization in the world. We are 100% supporter supported. Your tax deductible donations are essential to our work. Click here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189, to set up your recurring donation, large or small.
Donations ending in the number “6″ are earmarked for our legal fund, allowing us to sue the FDA, for example, to stop the deployment of untested vaccines like the dangerous Swine Flu Vaccine.
Natural Solutions Foundation is working hard to end the ravages of the type of industrial agriculture you’ll read about below. Through our Valley of the Moon(TM) Eco Demonstration Project we’re reclaiming the production of food, making them eligible for Friendly Food Certification(TM) because it is friendly to the earth, friendly to the workers and friendly to the consumer. The first Friendly Food Certified(TM) food is our GMO-Free, Pesticide-Free, Toxin-Free Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee grown in the Highlands of Panama and brought to your coffee cup so you can Wake Up to Health Freedom(TM). Click here, http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, to order your Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee and support health freedom and your health. Your gift list, both personal and corporate, will appreciate it. And your accountant will appreciate it, too, because 80% of each purchase of Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee is tax deductible!
Industrial Agriculture is now going global, with its dislocation, its toxic environments, its massive profits and its social destruction under the guise of nations looking for fresh farmland.
Food is the new oil. Corporations are the not-so-new sharks – well, that is not fair to sharks. They have a real place in the biosphere and the multinationals have made it clear over decades and decades of abuse that their place in the economic ecoshphere might be best compared to Darth Vader.
The Natural Solutions Foundation, www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, has identified food sustainable food production, and, of course, land ownership by those producing the sustainable food on it, as a key issue for health, community cohesion and economic success, social strength, freedom and, indeed, peace.
It is for that reason that we have established the remarkable, and vitally important Valley of the Moon(TM) Eco Demonstration Project in the Chiriqui Highlands of Panama. We believe that access to food, clean, unadulterated food, is a basic human right and that restricting that access is a massively powerful way to remove rights and take away basic human needs and, eventually, life.
At VotM we are practicing what we preach and are creating schools for a melding of ancient and modern techniques to reclaim the production of clean, unadulterated food for both farmers and non farmers alike.
In fact, in addition to our Intensive Urban Agriculture classes and courses with children and adults using many of the techniques you can see on our Food Freedom eJournal, www.FoodFreedomeJournal.org, we are now heavily involved in removing the dangerous chemicals from coffee and food production. Cattle production, for example, uses many different toxic chemicals for keeping pests at bay and, in some cases, increasing milk production.
Natural Solutions Foundation has been asked by the government here to help farmers break the dangerous cycle of chemical and drug inputs leading to weaker ecosystems and animals which then require more of the expensive and dangerous inputs.
Add corporate land ownership, where there is zero interest in health, sustainability or cultural cohesion and you have Monsanto’s GMO cotton farming disaster in India where tragically high numbers of farmers, having lost their land to the deceptive practices of GMO cotton companies, see no recourse but to kill themselves after they have lost their land and have no means to sustain themselves and their families.
Why is reclaiming the production of food important to you, today? If you live in the US, about 90% of the food you eat either IS GMO or contains GMO ingredients. GMO foods are now known to cause cancer, autoimmune diseases, infertility, birth defects, loss of CD-4 cells to the point that the criteria for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (yes, that’s right: HIV/AIDS) are met, and a host of serious, permanent diseases and mutations. These altered foods contain material which crosses the placental and blood brain barriers to cause permanent genetic changes, as they do in the bacteria of the GI tract and in every cell in the body.
“But I eat only certified organic food!” you may say. Well and good IF you are growing your own organic food, protected from both pesticide and genetic drift. Otherwise, the US allows 10% or more GMO contamination of organic food without any labeling. Indeed, labeling of GMO foods is actually prohibited in the US because, as Dr. Barbara Schneeman announced at a Codex Meeting in Norway on the topic, since the FDA administratively determined that genetically modified foods are “substantially equivalent” to non modified foods [in the absence of a single shred of scientific support for this concept - if they were substantially identical, they would not be patentable - REL] and since consumers would reject these genetically modified foods if they knew that they WERE genetically modified, the FDA is preventing them from making an error in rejecting them. So, instead, the FDA and USDA are carrying out the world’s largest experiment on every eater on the planet. It is an experiment carried out, of course, without any informed consent. On you. On your children. On the children that you, or others, will never have because of the sterility impact of these foods.
But that is not all, of course. Corporate agriculture pumps poisons (that is a literal description, of course, not a figurative one) into the bodies of the workers, the environment and the bodies of the consumers. If the land becomes too toxic, or the water no longer supports growth and life, the corporation moves on, like a parasite which has sucked the life out of its host and then, when the host can no longer support it, drops off and moves on to another host.
Food and freedom are intimately intertwined. This theme has been with us for a very long time. Look at the myths of the bible: remember that when Essau was hungry, he sold his birthright to Jacob. When Joseph and his brothers were hungry, they traded their freedom for the fleshpots of Egypt.
Industrial Agriculture can be, if its owners wish it, the newest form of scorched earth policy: stave those whom you do not wish to survive.
Published on Sunday, November 15, 2009 by GRAIN The New Farm Owners: Corporate Investors Lead the Rush for Control over Overseas Farmland
by GRAIN
With all the talk about “food security,” and distorted media statements like “South Korea leases half of Madagascar’s land,”1 it may not be evident to a lot of people that the lead actors in today’s global land grab for overseas food production are not countries or governments but corporations. So much attention has been focused on the involvement of states, like Saudi Arabia, China or South Korea. But the reality is that while governments are facilitating the deals, private companies are the ones getting control of the land. And their interests are simply not the same as those of governments.
“This is going to be a private initiative.”
- Amin Abaza, Egypt’s Minister of Agriculture, explaining Egyptian farmland acquisitions in other African nations, on World Food Day 2009
Take one example. In August 2009, the government of Mauritius, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, got a long-term lease for 20,000 ha of good farmland in Mozambique to produce rice for the Mauritian market. This is outsourced food production, no question. But it is not the government of Mauritius, on behalf of the Mauritian people, that is going to farm that land and ship the rice back home. Instead, the Mauritian Minister of Agro Industry immediately sub-leased the land to two corporations, one from Singapore (which is anxious to develop the market for its proprietary hybrid rice seeds in Africa) and one from Swaziland (which specialises in cattle production, but is also involved in biofuels in southern Africa).
This is typical. And it means that we should not be blinded by the involvement of states. Because at the end of the day, what the corporations want will be decisive. And they have a war chest of legal, financial and political tools to assist them.
“What started as a government drive to secure cheap food resource has now become a viable business model and many Gulf companies are venturing into agricultural investments to diversify their portfolios.”
- Sarmad Khan, “Farmland investment fund is seeking more than Dh1bn”, The National, Dubai, 12 September 2009
Moreover, there’s a tendency to assume that private-sector involvement in the global land grab amounts to traditional agribusiness or plantation companies, like Unilever or Dole, simply expanding the contract farming model of yesterday. In fact, the high-power finance industry, with little to no experience in farming, has emerged as a crucial corporate player. So much so that the very phrase “investing in agriculture”, today’s mantra of development bureaucrats, should not be understood as automatically meaning public funds. It is more and more becoming the business of … big business.
The role of finance capital
GRAIN has tried to look more closely at who the private sector investors currently taking over farmlands around the world for offshore food production really are. From what we have gathered, the role of finance capital — investment funds and companies — is truly significant. We have therefore constructed a table to share this picture. The table outlines over 120 investment structures, most of them newly created, which are busy acquiring farmland overseas in the aftermath of the financial crisis.3 Their engagement, whether materialised or targeted, rises into the tens of billions of dollars. The table is not exhaustive, however. It provides only a sample of the kinds of firms or instruments involved, and the levels of investment they are aiming for.
Private investors are not turning to agriculture to solve world hunger or eliminate rural poverty. They want profit, pure and simple. And the world has changed in ways that now make it possible to make big money from farmland. From the investors’ perspective, global food needs are guaranteed to grow, keeping food prices up and providing a solid basis for returns on investment for those who control the necessary resource base. And that resource base, particularly land and water, is under stress as never before. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, so-called alternative investments, such as infrastructure or farmland, are all the rage. Farmland itself is touted as providing a hedge against inflation. And because its value doesn’t go up and down in sync with other assets like gold or currencies, it allows investors to successfully diversify their portfolios.
“We are not farmers. We are a large company that uses state-of-the-art technology to produce high-quality soybean. The same way you have shoemakers and computer manufacturers, we produce agricultural commodities.” Laurence Beltrão Gomes of SLC Agrícola, the largest farm company in Brazil.
But it’s not just about land, it’s about production. Investors are convinced that they can go into Africa, Asia, Latin America and the former Soviet bloc to consolidate holdings, inject a mix of technology, capital and management skills, lay down the infrastructures and transform below-potential farms into large-scale agribusiness operations. In many cases, the goal is to generate revenue streams both from the harvests and from the land itself, whose value they expect to go up. It is a totally corporate version of the Green Revolution, and their ambitions are big. “My boss wants to create the first Exxon Mobil of the farming sector,” said Joseph Carvin of Altima Partners’ One World Agriculture Fund to a gathering of global farmland investors in New York in June 2009. No wonder, then, that governments, the World Bank and the UN want to be associated with this. But it is not their show.
From rich to richer
“I’m convinced that farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time. Eventually, of course, food prices will get high enough that the market probably will be flooded with supply through development of new land or technology or both, and the bull market will end. But that’s a long ways away yet.”
- George Soros, June 2009
Today’s emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialised farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds, big banks and the like. The pace and extent of their appetite is remarkable – but unsurprising, given the scramble to recover from the financial crisis.
Consolidated data are lacking, but we can see that billions of dollars are going into farmland acquisitions for a growing number of “get rich quick” schemes. And some of those dollars are hard-earned retirement savings of teachers, civil servants and factory workers from countries such as the US or the UK. This means that a lot of ordinary citizens have a financial stake in this trend, too, whether they are aware of it or not.
It also means that a new, powerful lobby of corporate interests is coming together, which wants favourable conditions to facilitate and protect their farmland investments. They want to tear down burdensome land laws that prevent foreign ownership, remove host-country restrictions on food exports and get around any regulations on genetically modified organisms. For this, we can be sure that they will be working with their home governments, and various development banks, to push their agendas around the globe through free trade agreements, bilateral investment treaties and donor conditionalities.
“When asked whether a transfer of foreign, ’superior’, agricultural technology would be welcome compensation for the acquisition of Philippine lands, the farmers from Negros Occidental responded with a general weariness and unequivocal retort that they were satisfied with their own knowledge and practices of sustainable, diverse and subsistence-based farming. Their experience of high-yielding variety crops, and the chemical-intensive technologies heralded by the Green Revolution, led them to the conclusion that they were better off converting to diverse, organic farming, with the support of farmer-scientist or member organizations such as MASIPAG and PDG Inc.”
- Theodora Tsentas, “Foreign state-led land acquisitions and neocolonialism: A qualitative case study of foreign agricultural development in the Philippines”, September 2009
Indeed, the global land grab is happening within the larger context of governments, both in the North and the South, anxiously supporting the expansion of their own transnational food and agribusiness corporations as the primary answer to the food crisis. The deals and programmes being promoted today all point to a restructuring and expansion of the industrial food system, based on capital-intensive large-scale monocultures for export markets. While that may sound “old hat”, several things are new and different. For one, the infrastructure needs for this model will be dealt with. (The Green Revolution never did that.) New forms of financing, as our table makes plain, are also at the base of it. Thirdly, the growing protagonism of corporations and tycoons from the South is also becoming more important. US and European transnationals like Cargill, Tyson, Danone and Nestlé, which once ruled the roost, are now being flanked by emerging conglomerates such as COFCO, Olam, Savola, Almarai and JBS.4 A recent report from the UN Conference on Trade and Development pointed out that a solid 40% of all mergers and acquisitions in the field of agricultural production last year were South-South.5 To put it bluntly, tomorrow’s food industry in Africa will be largely driven by Brazilian, ethnic Chinese and Arab Gulf capital.
Exporting food insecurity
Given the heavy role of the private sector in today’s land grabs, it is clear that these firms are not interested in the kind of agriculture that will bring us food sovereignty. And with hunger rising faster than population growth, it will not likely do much for food security, either.
One farmers’ leader from Synérgie Paysanne in Benin sees these land grabs as fundamentally “exporting food insecurity”. For they are about answering some people’s needs – for maize or money – by taking food production resources away from others. He is right, of course. In most cases, these investors are themselves not very experienced in running farms. And they are bound, as the Coordinator of MASIPAG in the Philippines sees it, to come in, deplete the soils of biological life and nutrients through intensive farming, pull out after a number of years and leave the local communities with “a desert”.
“Entire communities have been dispossessed of their lands for the benefit of foreign investors. (…) Land must remain a community heritage in Africa.”
- N’Diogou Fall, ROPPA (West African Network of Producers and Peasant Organisations), June 2009
The talk about channeling this sudden surge of dollars and dirhams into an agenda for resolving the global food crisis could be seen as quirky if it were not downright dangerous. From the United Nations headquarters in New York to the corridors of European capitals, everyone is talking about making these deals “win-win”. All we need to do, the thinking goes, is agree on a few parameters to moralise and discipline these land grab deals, so that they actually serve local communities, without scaring investors off. The World Bank even wants to create a global certification scheme and audit bureau for what could become “sustainable land grabbing”, along the lines of what’s been tried with oil palm, forestry or other extractive industries.
Before jumping on the bandwagon of “win-win”, it would be wise to ask “With whom? Who are the investors? What are their interests?” It is hard to believe that, with so much money on the line, with so much accumulated social experience in dealing with mass land concessions and conversions in the past, whether from mining or plantations, and given the central role of the finance and agribusiness industries here, these investors would suddenly play fair. Just as hard to believe is that governments or international agencies would suddenly be able to hold them to account.
“Some companies are interested in buying agricultural land for sugar cane and then selling it on the international markets. It’s business, nothing more” Sharad Pawar, India’s Minister of Agriculture, rejecting claims that his government is supporting a new colonisation of African farmland, 28 June 2009
Making these investments work is simply not the right starting point.
Supporting small farmers efforts for real food sovereignty is. Those are two highly polarised agendas and it would be mistaken to pass off one for the other. It is crucial to look more closely at who the investors are and what they really want. But it is even more important to put the search for solutions to the food crisis on its proper footing.
References
1 – It was not South Korea, but Daewoo Logistics.
2 – See GRAIN, “Mauritius leads land grabs for rice in Mozambique”, Oryza hibrida, 1 September 2009. http://www.grain.org/hybridrice/?lid=221 (Available in English, French and Portuguese.)
3 – The table covers three types of entities: specialized funds, most of them farmland funds; asset and investment managers; and participating investors. We are aware that this is a broad mixture, but it was important for us to keep the table simple: http://www.grain.org/m/?id=266
4 – COFCO is based in China, Olam is based in Singapore, Savola is based in Saudi Arabia, Almarai is based in Saudi Arabia, and JBS is based in Brazil.
5 – World Investment Report 2009, UNCTAD, Geneva, September 2009, p. xxvii. Most foreign direct investment takes place through mergers and acquisitions.
West steps of the Denver Capitol, 200 East Colfax, Denver.
Contact Jenny Hatch for more information at: 303-604-1107, or e-mail: JennyMHatch@Yahoo.com
GIVE AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE!
Your Corporate Gifts are 80% Tax Deductible When You Give Valley of the Moon™ Coffee!
http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee is Shade Grown and Hand Picked at the Peak of Perfection
Valley of the Moon™ Shade Grown, GMO-free and Chemical-Free Coffee makes a wonderful corporate gift and for every $25 gift gives your company receives an astonishing $20 tax deduction! That’s a full 80% deduction when you give this meaningful, memorable and mmm…delicious gift!
http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
You’ll know your corporate purchase is supporting health freedom and your accountant knows that it’s supporting your bottom line.
Natural Solutions Foundation Is On Your Side
Lean, Green Giving in Partnership with the Natural Solutions Foundation Supports Your Health Freedom and Your Bottom Line at the Same Time
Corporate Holiday Special – Minimum 10 Gifts
* Direct Shipment to your recipients included. Different addresses no problem.
* Personalized Gift Card from your company direct to your recipients included
* Friendly Food Certificate included
* 80% of each gift cost is tax deductible
We know the challenges facing companies in today’s difficult economy. Our Holiday Gift Program supports your business in several ways:
1. Each 1/2 lb gift of GMO-free, Chemical-free Valley of the Moon™ Coffee http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, shows your customers that you really care about their health, health freedom and the environment! Every gift represents a donation by your company to the Natural Solutions Foundation of $20 in their honor as part of your on-going support for Health Freedom. Your Personalized Card will let them know!
2. We know that every penny in your pocket, rather than Uncle Sam’s, is important in this financial climate. So your gifts support Health Freedom, your recipient’s health, health freedom and your bottom line, all at the same time. For every 1/2 lb gift of Health Freedom’s Own Coffee, GMO-Free Valley of the Moon Coffee, you purchase for yourself or others, your company will receive a $20 tax donation credit to the Natural Solutions Foundation.
Natural Solutions Foundation’s owns and farms its own coffee finca (farm) in the Highlands of Panama as part of its Valley of the Moon™ Eco Demonstration Project, www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org.
We know exactly what touches every Valley of the Moon™ coffee bean!
Like everything else we do at Valley of the Moon™, our coffee production is based around reclaiming the production of food, world wide. After all, that’s why Valley of the Moon™ exists. We grow wonderful coffee, absolutely free from any toxic chemicals and we’re helping our neighbors convert to BeyondOrganic, BioDynamic Zero Emissions™ agriculture, too.
This toxin free coffee is the “first fruits” of our Valley of the Moon™ Demonstration Project, providing you and your recipients with the finest coffee you have ever tasted AND showing local farmers how they can transition to natural solutions with positive economic consequences.
We know Valley of the Moon™Coffee is clean, pure — and grown to protect you, the Ngoble-Bugle Indians who raise it and the Earth. How do we know? Because we raise it ourselves as part of the Valley of the Moon™ Eco Demonstration Project in the pristine Chiriqui Highlands of Panama!
Valley of the Moon™ Coffee, www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, is the first product good enough to be awarded our “Friendly Food Certification” because it’s friendly to your health, to farmers and to the Earth!
Natural Solutions Foundation, www.HealthFreedomUSA.org, is both the largest and the most effective Health Freedom Organization in the world. We depend exclusively on your tax deductible donations, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=196, and purchases to support our work.
Any donation which ends in the number “6″ will be earmarked for our legal fund to Stop the Shot and support legal actions against compulsory vaccination actions and statutes.
An astounding 100% of your tax deductible donations go directly to our work http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=196, protecting your health freedom and personal rights to choose natural health options despite the wishes of the FDA, Big Pharma and their friends. Because we know that you will want your company to give a truly meaningful and memorable, but economical, gift, we are making this exceptional offer available to you and your company as a way of saying, “Thanks for supporting health freedom.”
So whether your company is large or small (or you are a person with a gift list – and who isn’t?), when you purchase our outstanding Valley of the MoonTM GMO-Free, Pesticide-Free, Herbicide-Free, Toxin-Free coffee we’ll send you (or the people on your gift list) a 1/2 lb gift of our full bodied, pesticide free Friendly Food Certified Valley of the Moon™ Coffee, http://www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org!
Get some right now. Give some right now!
Our beautifully packaged, clearly labeled coffee (available in either whole beans or medium grind) makes a wonderful gift. It can be shipped directly to everyone on your gift list with a personalized note letting them know that the gift comes from your company. Just send us your recipients’ info when you place the order in an email to nsfmarketplace@gmail.com with “COFFEE LIST” as the subject line and we’ll make sure the gift, and the card, arrive before December 25, 2009. This offer is good until December 16, 2009. After that we cannot guarantee delivery by December 25, 2009.
What about your personal list? Why not give health freedom’s own coffee, www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org, to everyone on your personal (and business) holiday gift list? Including yourself!
Not a coffee drinker? Not a problem.
Make your selection for your clean, green and health friendly gifts from our Virtual Stores, www.Organics4U.org and www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org or simply make your tax deductible recurring donation, large or small, here, http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189, to help keep health freedom free.
Thanks!
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
Valley of the Moon(TM) Friendly Food Certified Coffee
Valley of the Moon Coffee™ supports your health and your health freedom at the same time! “Friendly Food Certified” means GMO, pesticide and toxin free coffee. Your donation brings you A Little Bit of Heaven in a Cup(c): a 1/2 lb gift of ground or whole eco-friendly, shade grown coffee hand roasted in small batches.
Isn’t it time you had “A Little Bit of Heaven in YOUR Cup”™?
Your Price per 1/2 lb Bag: $25.00
Your Donation per 1/2 lb bag: $20.00
S&H per 1/2 lb bag: $3.60
Valley of the Moon(TM) Coffee is carefully hand grown, harvested, roasted and packed to arrive at your door fresh and fragrant – without chemicals or GMOs! Your tax deductible donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation , http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?page_id=189, supports the International Decade of Nutrition, http:www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org a program of the Natural Solutions Foundation, and your coffee tastes wonderful!
Workers and their families live safe from chemical harm on our Valley of the Moon™ Coffee Farm
PS: Remember, Chemical Free Coffee means no toxic chemicals in your morning cup! Valley of the Moon™ Coffee contains nothing but natural goodness – your donation supports health freedom and the environment, all at the same time!
Check Out How You Can To Get Free Shipping For a Limited Time Only
Donate $100 or more and you’ll receive 4 bags (1/2 lb each) of Valley of the Moon™, an $80 tax deduction AND we’ll throw in the shipping! OR
Make a recurring donation of at least $25 per month and we’ll send you a 1/2 lb bag of Valley of the Moon™ coffee once a month (that’s a $20 tax deduction for each $25 you donate!) AND we’ll cover the shipping costs as an extra “Thank You”. This offer makes a great corporate gift!
"I am so thankful for all the work you and Bert have done! Love your updates and video blogs. We are always working here to educate others using your CODEX NUTRICIDE and other materials. Always stressing the importance of growing our own foods and medicines."
