Contact the White House – Don’t Let Lobbyists Weaken New Organic Dairy Standards

Farmers and consumers concerned with the integrity of organic dairy farming need to contact the White House (IMMEDIATELY) and urge the President to support a strong pending standard governing organic livestock and dairy management practices.

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is nearing the end of its critical review of proposed new regulations clarifying the requirement that dairy cows and other ruminants consume a meaningful amount of feed from pasture and grazing. Powerful factory farm interests opposed to the rule – who want to continue to principally confine animals in feedlot style operations – have privately met with OMB officials and are seeking to weaken the new rule. Read Full Article »

Posted in Completed Action Alerts

Farmers Appeal to OMB, President Obama for Justice

WASHINGTON, DC: Family farmers from around the country, who produce organic milk, are petitioning president Obama, and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), for the swift adoption of new strict rulemaking that will rein in the abuses of a handful of factory farms they claim are violating both the spirit and letter of the federal organic law.

The pending rewrite of the organic livestock standards, with an emphasis on assuring compliance with provisions that require that ruminants, like dairy cows, be grazed, is currently under review at OMB, where the administration is being heavily lobbied by industrial farming interests to water down the rules. Read Full Article »

Posted in Cornucopia News

TIME
By Lisa Abend

On a farm in coastal Maine, a barn is going up. Right now it’s little more than a concrete slab and some wooden beams, but when it’s finished, the barn will provide winter shelter for up to six cows and a few head of sheep. None of this would be remarkable if it weren’t for the fact that the people building the barn are two of the most highly regarded organic-vegetable farmers in the country: Eliot Coleman wrote the bible of organic farming, The New Organic Grower, and Barbara Damrosch is the Washington Post’s gardening columnist. At a time when a growing number of environmental activists are calling for an end to eating meat, this veggie-centric power couple is beginning to raise it. “Why?” asks Coleman, tromping through the mud on his way toward a greenhouse bursting with December turnips. “Because I care about the fate of the planet.”

Ever since the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization released a 2006 report that attributed 18% of the world’s man-made greenhouse-gas emissions to livestock — more, the report noted, than what’s produced by transportation — livestock has taken an increasingly hard rap. At first, it was just vegetarian groups that used the U.N.’s findings as evidence for the superiority of an all-plant diet. But since then, a broader range of environmentalists has taken up the cause. At a recent European Parliament hearing titled “Global Warming and Food Policy: Less Meat = Less Heat,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, argued that reducing meat consumption is a “simple, effective and short-term delivery measure in which everybody could contribute” to emissions reductions. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

Capital Press
By MATTHEW WEAVER

PULLMAN, Wash. — Michael Pollan believes farmers may eventually solve three of the world’s biggest problems — the crises centered on energy, health care and climate change.

The author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” outlined his “sun food agenda,” advocating a return to a diversified agricultural system, during his lecture at Washington State University on Wednesday, Jan. 13.

“It might be possible to once again harness the power of the sun to feed ourselves and wean ourselves off this diet of fossil fuel,” he said, referring to the oil and natural gas required to make fertilizer, fuel and pesticides.

Today’s food system more closely resembles a factory model, Pollan said. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

The Organic Center

Glyphosate-Resistant Weeds Threaten Future of Herbicide-Tolerant, Genetically Engineered Crops

BOULDER, CO — A new study entitled “Gene amplification confers glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus palmeri” from a research team including Monsanto scientists Dafu Wang and Douglas Sammons echoes conclusions from The Organic Center (TOC) report “Impacts of Genetically Engineered Crops on Pesticide Use in the United States: The First Thirteen Years”. Published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in December 2009, the Monsanto-funded research states that “evolution of resistance to the widely used, nonselective herbicide glyphosate in weedy species endangers the continued success of transgenic glyphosate-resistant crops and the sustainability of glyphosate as the world’s most important herbicide.” Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News