Fresh Organic Links

Time for another in-no-particular-order roundup of things organic for the previous week or so:

• The Organic School Project, founded in 2005:

reconnects school children to their food source through organic gardening, wellness education and healthy eating. We have encouraged healthy lifestyles for over 3,500 kids and thousands of families since our founding in 2005 and are continuing to improve the ways in which children interact with, think about and consume food.

They can help schools develop healthy food implementation strategies for cafeterias:

I wish my grade and high schools had had something like this! We had soggy canned vegetables and pizza slices. Interested in helping Organic School Project out with a donation or volunteering your time? You can contact them at info@organicschoolproject.com, or check out their "Get Involved" webpage. (Hat tip to Organic Guide for letting me know about this organization via Twitter.)

• Apparently, Forage Genetics International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Land o' Lakes (the butter people) helped Monsanto produce its Roundup-Ready genetically-modified alfalfa. If this kind of thing irritates you, and it should, simply stop buying Land o' Lakes products, and let your grocer know why. Not buying something doesn't cost you a cent!
• The State of Oregon has a reimbursement program for farmers' costs associated with becoming organically certified, which can, unfortunately, be substantial. A number of Southern California organic-method growers have told me that, while their food is organically-grown, it's not certified because the certification process is on the costly side. It would be nice if California could afford a similar program!
• Professor Don Huber of Perdue University warns of a "new organism" pathogen infecting primarily Roundup-treated crops:

Huber has written to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack warning that a newly discovered and widespread “electron microscopic pathogen appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings.” He said the pathogen appears to be connected to use of glyphosate, the key ingredient in Roundup.

In his letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Huber said the organism has been found in high concentrations of Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, which are used in livestock feed. He said laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of the organism in pigs, cattle and other livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility.

It's not clear what's going on yet, as (apparently) no data has been published or peer-reviewed, and the nature of the "new organism" is still speculative and, at this point, hearsay. We'll keep a watch out for further developments, however.

• Organic Consumers' Association has a short opinion piece on the link between Cairo and Wisconsin:

None of the world-shaking protests of recent weeks - in Tunisia and Egypt, in Libya, Bahrain, Iran, in Wisconsin and around the U.S. - ostensibly have anything to do with the wars on this planet, except the ones that governments, including those in various state capitals, are waging against select segments of their own populations. What makes the current protests different from the protests that briefly flickered around the globe eight years ago is that they aren't really protests anymore. They're acts of self-defense. And that's the link between Cairo and Madison.

• Forbes magazine helpfully argues that any law requiring GMO foods to be labeled as GMO foods, so as to warn customers of ingredients they might not want to ingest, would violate the producers' First Amendment rights:

On the constitutional side, mandatory labeling arguably treads on food processors’ First Amendment right to not speak. Mr. Bittman’s Opinionator column makes the ironic point, “They [GE foods] are arguably different, but more importantly, people are leery of them.” This is ironic because in the constitutional context, it is more important that the enhanced product is different.

Courts have evaluated government’s authority to impose labeling on products under the jurisprudence of commercial speech. A key part of this jurisprudence is to determine what is the state’s interest in restricting or requiring certain speech. In the 1996 U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruling IDFA v. Amestoy, the court held that a Vermont law requiring milk producers to affix a label if the milk came from herds given bovine growth hormone (rBST) violated the First Amendment. The court explained that Vermont’s stated interests in adopting the law – strong consumer interest and the public’s right to know – were not substantial enough to justify “the functional equivalent of a warning about a production method that has no discernible impact on a final product.” Had Vermont advanced a public health or safety purpose for the labeling law, the court would likely have held it to be substantial. But the state could make no such case, as FDA had definitively concluded that rBST “has no appreciable effect on the consumption of milk.”

The situation in Amestoy parallels the GE food labeling matter. If FDA or the Agriculture Department had determined that genetically enhanced foods were different, then such a finding would provide the substantial interest government needs to compel a “warning.” But that is not the case, and the fact that people may be “leery” of GE foods would be, under the reasoning of Amestoy, an insufficient justification for mandatory GE labels.

In keeping with the organic nature of this post: what a load of manure. The Second Circuit issued a deeply stupid decision in Amestoy, given that corporations, as legal fictions and creatures of the several states that allow their creation, have no God-given rights "endowed by our creator," and never should have been granted the same rights, such as First Amendment rights, as actual people.

Amestoy, and decisions like it, as well as Forbes, clearly favor fictitious corporations over consumers--real people. But that appears to be the trend these days--the power of corporations is on the rise, much as Communism and Nazism was in the 1930's, and the power of individuals to decide their own fate is being similarly diminished.

Your only power, as a consumer, is to be more aggressive about your choices, and to find out where your food comes from. And insisting on organic is one way to do it.