OCA's NAIS Videos

These, from Organic Consumer Association...

Raw Milk Dud

This, in my email recently:

Personal Liberties at Stake in Raw Milk Issue

Sunday, October 12, 2008 2:33 PMBy: Kimberly Hartke

Our constitutional right to liberty is systematically being attacked by government agencies flanked by anti-competitive forces in the food industry.
Nowhere is this more obvious than on the raw milk issue. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed SB201, a bill to preserve consumers’ rights to access farm fresh milk while guaranteeing its safety.

Read full article...

We Can't Afford the Supermarket

And we can't afford to buy organic AT the supermarket. I wanted to buy a normal head of cabbage...at the supermarket.

It rang up at $8.50.

I'm sorry, I'm not paying $8.50 for ANY head of cabbage.

Buying local is not something that's easy here, and with the drive, paying more for long-distance "local" is not in our budget. That's what happened to the pet milk purchases, too...too much gas needed, prices too high.

Now they're too high in the store, too, and we're needing to change from questionable food to REAL food pronto. Learning that anything vegetable or animal out there now could be (and IS) genetically modified, ALL foods with only a few exceptions are permeated with pesticides and herbicides, and anything in a can or package usually has multiple preservatives all up in there ....all those things have tipped the scale for us. No longer do I live where a neighbor can gladly pawn off her excess zucchini or tomatoes (to my glee) on me. I don't have neighbors with dairy goats or cows. I have nothing seasonal growing in my backyard buckets, and have nothing stockpiled, except a modest collection of staples and dry goods.

We even have to buy water...even the water we cook with. For me, the girl from Tennessee, this seems like a budgetary travesty. Buy cooking water???

Simply stated, we can't afford to eat from the store anymore. I can remember when buying chicken thighs, or a whole chicken NOT cut up were the cheapest cuts of meat. Even these I can't afford. Even ground chuck I can't afford.

It literally would be cheaper to raise our own animals...even if not for any other reason than the cost alone. It would actually be cheaper for me to buy a live chicken and slaughter it than it would be to buy the cheapest chicken from the store. The times, they are a-changin'.

We're putting our heads together about what we need to grow to survive, from the bottom up. We will be identifying our own preferences and what our bodies need the most as far as nourishment and disease prevention, and those things will be planned for first.

First will be the staples that would see us through no matter what...what we could survive on even if we had nothing else.

Next will be the nutrition-dense secondary veggies and grains...all the seasonal crops that we could eat fresh and put away for the longer term. The basics to round out the staples.

Alongside these things will be the herbs for flavor, nutrition, and medicinals.

Lastly, the fruits, experimental crops, the veggies and fruits and various plants whose variety that would extend the basics into many different sorts of meals.

Does anyone have lists like this, starting from the Can't-Do-Withouts on up? If so, I'd be really interested in what's worked for you and your family, specifically which crops and plants you most rely on.

The old Victory garden concept has morphed into survival gardens for the long-term far beyond anything that's happening as a result of sending our boys overseas. Now we need because of battles in "progress" -- what's happening in test tubes and bio-tech labs, in China, and in the oil industry. Our "progress" is like the snake that tried to swallow its own tail.

We've just been "progressed" right out of being able to buy a week's worth of groceries at my own grocery store.

It's time to sow for our future, and take it into our own hands. There is now an urgency. Not a panic, but definately an urgency.

Participate in Protecting Schoolchildren's Food

This just in my mailbox from my local chapter of the Weston A Price Foundation:


One mission of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (a non-profit organization) is to protect the constitutional right of the nation's family farms to provide unprocessed farm foods directly to consumers through any legal means. www.farmtoconsumer.org

USDA ACCEPTING TESTIMONY ON CHILD NUTRITION PROGRAMS

The USDA is preparing for the 2009 Reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Programs, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and the WIC Farmers' Market Nutrition Program. The reauthorization process provides Congress with a regular opportunity to examine the operation and effectiveness of the Federal nutrition assistance programs, and consider making improvements to their statutory structure under the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act and the Child Nutrition Act of 1966.
YOUR TESTIMONY NEEDED!

The USDA is accepting testimony on its Child Nutrition Program. Please make your voices heard by going to the following link:

http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main?main=SubmitComment&o=09000064805f 47dd

IMPORTANT POINTS TO MAKE
1. Bring back whole milk to school lunch programs. Children need the butterfat in whole milk for growth and development
2. Abandon the unscientific stricture against use of animal fats in school lunches
3. Recommend against using any soy in school lunches.
4. No junk food in school lunches; no vending machines in schools
5. No use of school lunch programs to promote the unpopular, anti-small farm National Animal Identification Program.

FUTURE MEETINGS--PLEASE ATTEND IF YOU CAN!
There are two more meetings scheduled for citizen input. Please attend if you can and submit testimony. Let's let the WAPF message for nourishing traditional foods in school lunches be heard loud and clear!

September 10, 1-4 pm
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
FNS Midwest Regional Office
GSA Conference Center Room 331
77 West Jackson Boulevard, 20th Floor
Chicago, IL 60604-3507
For more information call (312) 353-1044

September 11, 9 am - 1 pm
DENVER, COLORADO
The Colorado History Museum
1300 Broadway
Denver, CO 80203
For more information, call (303) 844-0300

FURTHER BACKGROUND
For further background information, see the press release on the USDA meeting in Atlanta, August 14, below:

Concerned Parents, Farm-to-School Activists to Testify Before USDA
At Listening Session on Child Nutrition

Atlanta, Georgia, August 14, 2008---USDA may get more than they bargained for at their "Listening Sessions" on Child Nutrition programs, now being held around the country. A number of powerful, grass-roots based organizations are mobilizing forces to bring the voices of parents and children to the next session to be held in Atlanta. This series of hearings about the reauthorization of government school feeding and WIC programs would typically be dominated by testimony from food service providers asking for expanded programs, funding and increased reimbursement rates.

Now, parents and their children also want to be heard. An informal coalition of such diverse groups as Georgia Organics, Les Dames d'Escoffier-Atlanta Chapter, Food & Water Watch, AngryMoms.org, Family Farm Defenders, Georgia Chapter of Sierra Club, National Latino Farmers & Ranchers Trade Association and the Weston A. Price
Foundation of Georgia (a 501c3 nutrition education non-profit), are asking their members to submit comments to the USDA at a session or online, to speak to their concerns about food safety and purity.

In last week's hearing in Baltimore, Sarah Alexander of Food & Water Watch, raised the issue of schools having the choice to purchase artificial growth hormone free and organic milk, as well as non-irradiated food. Food & Water Watch has previously succeeded in getting irradiated food as a separate line item on government order
forms, and since that time, not a single school has chosen to order irradiated meat. Food & Water Watch has also successfully defeated corporate efforts to ban artificial growth hormone-free labeling on milk.

Emboldened by such successes around the country, grass-roots and advocacy groups are now going for more transparency and input on what is being fed to our nation's children. Among the concerns that will be raised by members of various groups to the USDA during their comment period are:

- Parental Consent Before Serving Genetically Modified Food
- Preference for Grass-fed Meats from Small, Sustainable Farms
- Elimination of Artificial Hormones, Antibiotics, Steriods from School Food
- Increased Use of Fresh, Locally Grown Produce
- Affirmative Action on Behalf of Family Farms & Ranches
- Junk Foods Removed from Schools
- Oppose Use of Nutrition Programs to Push the Unpopular National Animal ID System
- Parental Rights in Food Choice

Erin Croom of Georgia Organics' Farm-to-School campaign and Natalie Rogers, Health and Wellness Specialist for the Georgia PTA are slated to testify before the USDA on Wednesday, August 20, 9:00 am - 1:00 pm at the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, 2nd Floor Conference Center, Room D at 61 Forsyth St., SW, Atlanta, GA 30303-8930. There are two other listening sessions remaining, in Colorado and Chicago.

For those unable to participate in a listening session, a notice of the request for comments was published in the Federal Register on May 20, 2008, with details on how to submit comments by postal mail or through a courier, no later than Oct. 15, 2008. You may also submit reauthorization comments electronically through regulations.gov or fax to 703-305-2879.

Media Contact: Kimberly Hartke, Publicist 703-860-2711, 703-675-5557 cell

Monsanto's Genetic Conspiracy: European 3 Video Series

This is a thoughtful documentary that speaks to concerns about Monsanto's culpability in obscuring, falsifying, and manipulating data in regards to GM food safety research...worldwide.

Unlabled GM Sugar Now Here

This is sobering.

Sugar Company American Crystal Now Sourcing from GM Sugarbeets

Here is a clip from Organic Consumers Association website. This site is full of important information we all need in order to stay abreast of these developments.



"GE Sugar Beets to Hit Stores in 2008!

American Crystal, a large Wyoming-based sugar company and several other leading U.S. sugar providers have announced they will be sourcing their sugar from genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets beginning this year and arriving in stores in 2008. Like GE corn and GE soy, products containing GE sugar will not be labeled as such.

Since half of the granulated sugar in the U.S. comes from sugar beets, a move towards biotech beets marks a dramatic alteration of the U.S. food supply. These sugars, along with GE corn and soy, are found in many conventional food products, so consumers will be exposed to genetically engineered ingredients in just about every non-organic multiple-ingredient product they purchase...." read rest of article here

The dangers of unlabeled GM sugar in our food supply has prompted a boycott of Kelloggs and other companies that will not agree to acknowledge the public's concern and fears about GE sugar, which is a primary ingredient in many of their products. Read here for more information about taking action to reverse this rhetoric and to urge these companies that the public does NOT want GE sugar used.

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The BioTech and Corporate Agribusiness Efforts to Pass "Pre-Emption" Laws to Remove Community Resistant to GMOs

Also on the same site is the mention of consumers who are effectively inacting city, county, and local ordinances banning GE crops. As you can imagine, the response from the big GM powers-that-be has been swift and ugly. According to the article,

"15 states have recently passed 'Monsanto laws' taking away the rights of cities and counties to ban GE crops. Now legislators in California, Missouri, Nebraska, and North Carolina are facing the lobbying power of the biotech industry and are threatening to pass controversial "preemption" laws that would take away local rights to regulate GMOs. " read rest of article here

Where does your state stand?

A look at the US map and your state's standing

U.S. Uses Free Trade Agreement to Bully World Markets

Unbelievable....

You just have to read this! This is not just unethical, it's risking all our health on a global scale....deliberately


Food Safety: Rigging the Game
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18076