February 17, 2009 at 01:36:51
Monsanto bills being rushed through Congress, set to destroy organic farming.

by Linn Cohen-Cole

www.opednews.com

Here are the facts:

UN/FAO Now Promotes Organic Agriculture - The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) has come out in favor of organic agriculture. Its report Organic Agriculture and Food Security explicitly states that organic agriculture can address local and global food security challenges. more


UN/FAO Urges Protection of Livestock Diversity urging the international community to adopt a Global Plan of Action to stem erosion of the worlds farm animal diversity and protect the global food supply. Around 20 percent of the worlds breeds of cattle, goats, pigs, horses and poultry are currently at risk of extinction, according to FAOs State of the Worlds Animal Genetic Resources report, the first global assessment of livestock biodiversity and of the capacity of countries to manage their animal genetic resources. to report


The Wilderswil Declaration on Livestock Diversity - Comments on the UN/FAO Report on Livestock Diversity: "The FAO Report on the State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources squarely points to the industrial livestock system as one of the main forces behind this destruction. However, in the UN's Global Plan of Action there is nothing that addresses these causes." to the Declaration from Via Campesina

And here is what we have to save. It is the America we all believe in. It is being stolen out from under us.

IN 1961, William and Lucille Salatin moved their young family to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, purchasing the most worn-out, eroded, abused farm in the area near Staunton. Using nature as a pattern, they and their children began the healing and innovation that now supports three generations.

Disregarding conventional wisdom, the Salatins planted trees, built huge compost piles, dug ponds, moved cows daily with portable electric fencing, and invented portable sheltering systems to produce all their animals on perennial prairie polycultures.

Today the farm arguably represents America's premier non-industrial food production oasis. Believing that the Creator's design is still the best pattern for the biological world, the Salatin family invites like-minded folks to join in the farm's mission: to develop emotionally, economically, environmentally enhancing agricultural enterprises and facilitate their duplication throughout the world.

The Salatins continue to refine their models to push environmentally-friendly farming practices toward new levels of expertise.

Polyface Guiding Principles

TRANSPARENCY: Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime. No trade secrets, no locked doors, every corner is camera-accessible.

GRASS-BASED: Pastured livestock and poultry, moved frequently to new "salad bars," offer landscape healing and nutritional superiority.

INDIVIDUALITY: Plants and animals should be provided a habitat that allows them to express their physiological distinctiveness. Respecting and honoring the pigness of the pig is a foundation for societal health.

COMMUNITY: We do not ship food. We should all seek food closer to home, in our foodshed, our own bioregion. This means enjoying seasonality and reacquainting ourselves with our home kitchens.

Now comes the industrial side.

It has language in it that appears to turn our farms into food
production facilities and allows them to decide our feed ratios and
types as well as our animal health regime and whether or not and with
what we can fertilize our ground ....


Translation:

turn our farms into food production facilitys and [Industrialize farms.]

allows them to decide our feed ratios and types [GMOs.]

as well as our animal health regime and [Drugs sold by Big Pharma]

whether or not and with what we can fertilize our ground, [Contaminate organic farms.]


A mouse from the control set [fed] on a common vivarium [controlled environment] ration
A mouse from the sample group that ate isolate of GM soy within five months



I have written here many times about NAIS and now the Obama government, having promised people would have 60 days to comment, having promised transparency, having promised it was in support of small farmers, is pushing through as rapidly as humanly possible, bills that will mean the end of organic farming.
How? By Monsanto entering into the body of organic farming like a disease and morphing organic farms into industrial facilities, the farmer being forced to "treat" the land with chemicals and the animals with drugs, trapped into paying for what is unwanted, unsafe, unneeded, unconstitutional.

This is monopoly at the most extreme degree - not just unfair competition but total control of every aspect of the competition to the degree of making them laborers for the monopoly.

Here is the senate version.

www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd

The bill has been referred to the following committees:

Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. Sent to committee on February 9, 2009 we are not allowed to know what happens in committee. For some reason these things are secret and we can't most times even know how anyone voted. As this site points out, if you do not have a rep or senator on the committees…….they don't' want to hear from you.

In the House: www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd

A bill in the US Congress: To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health………….

Referred to committee on February 4, 2009

House Energy and Commerce

House Agriculture

The bills in both the House and Senate are virtually identical. This means this whole deal was decided at the same time Smart Grid was inserted into the Stimulus Package. The house and Senate bills will lay the groundwork for NAIS and other programs, and Smart Grid will make them operable.

Both these bills appeared simultaneously in both houses, having been planned before the fact. This speeds them through committee and brings them to the floor to be calendared. Since both bills are identical, there will be motions to suspend the rules on debates. Meaning none will be allowed. We will have to watch these closely as they will appear suddenly on probably the same day with the House voting first in the morning and the Senate in the afternoon.

Not one rep or senator has denied, refuted or argued even one of our articles or any of our statements. Not one major paper has covered any of it.

This is all part of the Smart Grid System of controlling everything in our lives and us – to me it is the Patriot Act gone ballistic, digitizing every aspect of our lives and leaving no area of privacy or true freedom whatsoever. Do people even remember anymore how different life used to be, how it belonged to us and only us?

Found here: rfdamerica.com/

Last paragraph.

One of the largest components of Smart Grid is already being implemented by the USDA; it's called the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) it requires farmers to implant a RFID tag into the body of all of their livestock–cows, pigs, goats, chickens, sheep, all livestock. The NAIS threatens to destroy small-scale family farms. If you're not familiar with the NAIS, here are a couple of resources: Downsize DC, NAIS: Too little too late? and NAIS: Let's do some fuzzy math. Coupled with Smart Grid, the NAIS strengthens the ability of Government officials to control rural Americans as completely as they control people in the cities.

President Obama believes implementing Smart Grid is urgent. He wants the program to expand quickly, with all of us on the thinking grid by 2011. All of us.

Notice the great rush to do this. The great and unjust and non-transparent and immensely UNDEMOCRATIC rush - to force on the entire country something they know nothing about.

We are talking about one of the most massively controlling laws in the history of this country and one affecting the health and thus existence of every single person. We are talking about the take over of the US food supply by industrial forces and the contamination and thus death of organic farming through stealth.

Everything green, healthy, anti-global warming, local, decent, environmental, community building, independent, free thing that organic farming is, we need. But the corruption of our government and politicians by Monsanto and especially the Clinton influence on behalf of Monsanto, is bringing us horror.

Obama must be held accountable. The bum's rush is not grassroots anything. The implementation of plans laid during Bush's regime is not change. This, no matter how you cut is, is fascist.


"Food and nourishment are right at the point where human rights and the environment intersect."
Alice Waters

21 formal requests to Congressmen, the Secretary of Agriculture and USDA staff; all refused to answer in a 60 day period.

Thanks for the research Steve.