Farm Bill | Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health

Will Congress Protect Your Right to Know Where Your Meat Comes From?

Tue, 19 May 2015 17:24:23 +0000

The World Trade Organization wants to keep us in the dark. And what exactly is inside the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement? Action Alert!
The United States currently has had a mandatory country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law in place since 2009. It requires meat to be labeled to indicate where it was born, raised, and processed—even when the meat is exported. Seafood labeling has been covered since 2005.
The World Trade Organization (WTO) previously ruled that this law unfairly discriminates against meat from Canada and Mexico and is an infringement upon international trade obligations, and now an appellate panel has upheld the WTO rulings. As a result, Canadian and Mexican officials could take retaliatory measures against US exports to cover what they argue are billions of dollars in lost revenue as a result of the food label. To forestall this, Congress may cave and rewrite our law.
Some Republicans in Congress have indicated a readiness to amend or repeal the law to avoid a trade war with Canada and Mexico. The top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, Collin Peterson (D-MN), said he would oppose a repeal of the law. Two of the largest trade groups for beef and pork issued statements urging Congress to act swiftly to amend or repeal COOL before economic retaliation from Canada and Mexico begins.
The COOL law, like mandatory GMO labeling, is popular with the public. One poll found that 92 percent of Americans support COOL. Any decision to alter or remove COOL is to surrender to large industrial pork and beef producers in the US, Canada, and Mexico.
Perhaps even more troubling is the precedent this ruling sets. If the WTO can override our law, couldn’t it act similarly against other country-of-origin laws, and then against any future GMO labeling laws? From there it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch for WTO to be telling us what can be on other food labels—or even supplement labels.
The WTO is hardly a democratic institution, either: WTO dispute panels consist of three trade bureaucrats who meet in secret, do not take any input from the public, and are not screened for conflicts of interest.
This isn’t the first time the WTO has made a ruling that undermines consumers. In 1997, the WTO ruled that a European Union (EU) ban on US beef treated with hormones was illegal. Because of that ruling, the US was allowed to slap high retaliatory tariffs on a number of European exports like pork, cheese, chocolate, jams, and fresh truffles, which cost the EU $250 million annually until an agreement was reached in 2011.
This also isn’t the first time that meat industry trade groups have tried to keep consumers in the dark. As we’ve pointed out previously, until 2007, it was illegal for private beef producers to test their own cows for mad cow disease. Larger meat companies feared that if smaller companies tested their meat and could advertise it as safe from mad cow disease, they would be forced to test all of their cows—so they persuaded the USDA to block individual producers from doing the test, until a federal judge stopped this in 2007.
The bottom line is this: consumers should have access to health and safety information about their food so they can make informed choices about what to feed their families. Congress should preserve COOL and not let the WTO eliminate laws made in the public interest.
This story further illustrates how carefully we need to scrutinize the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), when and if the language is released. So far, even members of Congress have been able to see it only in secure rooms, with staff present, and without being able to take any notes! There are rumors that the agreement could shift sovereign decisions about many things—not just labeling—to organizations like the WTO, but nobody knows for sure yet. President Obama should be ashamed about keeping the American public in the dark about this.
Action Alert! Please write your legislators in Congress and urge them NOT to repeal COOL, which gives consumers important information about their food. Also indicate your concern about the secrecy surrounding the TPP. Please take action immediately.

The post Will Congress Protect Your Right to Know Where Your Meat Comes From? first appeared on Alliance for Natural Health USA - Protecting Natural Health.

Why Is Big Biotech Now Supporting a National GMO “Labeling” Law?

Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:04:08 +0000

Could it be because they are worried about real labeling laws at the state level? Urgent Action Alert!

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In November, we told you about the House and Senate conference committee to reconcile two wildly different Farm Bills and fill a $36 billion gap between them. We’ve received word that the committee is likely to complete its work by the end of the month, immediately after which the final bill would be released.
The House version of the Farm Bill still includes the destructive and possibly unconstitutional King Amendment (a.k.a. the Interstate Commerce Amendment), which could undo state-level GMO labeling and animal rights laws—even those that have already been passed. On a more positive note, it also includes Section 11321, which protects small farmers from burdensome FDA regulations. The Senate version of the bill has neither of these provisions. We need for the final, reconciled bill to have Section 11321, but not the King Amendment.
Even worse, the House bill contains Section 1613, which would prevent any agency from disclosing any “information provided by a producer or owner of agricultural land concerning the agricultural operation.” Forget the absurdly broad language—this would make it illegal to report, for example, where GMO crops are planted, or where cross-contamination has occurred. The public would be kept in the dark about any number of vital issues. What about livestock disease outbreak? Antibiotic abuse in farm animals? The possibilities are endless. Big Ag wants blanket immunity, and this amendment is a big fat gift to them—possibly at the expense of your health and safety.
Once the Farm Bill is released, it’s “game over”—this is our last chance to make our voices heard. When the Farm Bill leaves the conference committee, it will go straight to both chambers for an “up or down” vote. Since no amendments can be added to a conference bill and leaders of both parties will push their caucuses to vote “yea,” it’s certain the conference bill will be passed as is.
Thanks to your activism—the thousands of messages you sent your legislators, and the way you spread the word to friends and fellow activists—the movement to strike the King Amendment has gained considerable momentum. Thank you. In addition, for the past two months, ANH-USA has been active behind the scenes on Capitol Hill (working as part of a coalition led by the Humane Society to strike the King Amendment). We want to make sure the Farm Bill that finally gets passed will be a positive for the natural health community.

It’s vital that we defeat the King Amendment—it’s just the beginning of a deceptive new strategy by Monsanto and Big Food to defeat GMO labeling by appearing to champion national GMO legislation.
It would sound bizarre elsewhere, but it’s par for the course on Capitol Hill. The Grocery Manufacturers Association (yes, the same group that illegally spent $11 million to defeat Washington State’s GMO labeling initiative) recently proposed a federal GMO labeling law. Importantly, GMA’s legislation would only require voluntary labeling—Monsanto and other producers would not have to label GMOs. The point of passing such weak “GMO labeling” legislation isn’t to implement GMO labeling—it’s to prevent state governments from doing so themselves, because state laws would actually require labels! Like the King amendment, the GMA’s bill is intended to preempt every single hard-won state GMO labeling bill, including Maine’s, which was just signed into law last Thursday. ANH-USA provided the draft language for the Maine law and worked with state legislators to fine-tune the bill.
Between the King Amendment and the GMA’s dangerous new legislation, it’s clear that the fight for GMO labeling has just begun: more legislative battles are looming on the horizon. But we can take some comfort from the fact that Big Biotech is only offering voluntary GMO labeling because of the progress we have made to date. Big Biotech is clearly worried about all the money they have had to spend to win referenda, and even more worried that, in the future, they will lose no matter how many millions they dump into the battle. Consumers can win this struggle. All we have to do is persevere and pour on the pressure.
We have a copy of the GMA strategy and there have been discussions about it on the Hill, but the bill has not yet been formally introduced. ANH-USA is meeting with congressional leaders now and together we’re working through the best approach, and we’ll let you know the moment it’s appropriate to take action. For now, we’re asking you to focus on the Farm Bill. Urgent Action Alert! Ask Congress to throw out the King amendment and keep Section 11321! Even if you have already done so, please contact your legislators again—help us stand up for small farmers and GMO labeling activists. Please take action immediately!

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Dangerous Pro-GMO Amendments May Be On Their Last Legs—If We Act Now!

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Things are looking up, but it’s important that we keep up the pressure. Action Alert!

You may recall our recent reports on the two riders before Congress that the biotech industry was so excited to get inserted into important bills. The first was in the big House Ag Appropriations Bill, which controls the vast majority of spending on agricultural concerns. The amendment in question would strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of illegal, potentially hazardous genetically engineered crops even while USDA is still assessing their hazards.
Last week, the House passed a six-month spending bill that will keep the lights on in government agencies until March 2013. Happily, the GMO rider in the Ag Appropriations Bill was not included in that spending bill. The Senate will probably get to their version of the Ag Appropriations Bill this week, wrapping up the spending bills for this Congress before heading out to campaign until the November elections. But since the GMO rider was never in the Senate’s version of the Ag Appropriations Bill to begin with, this means the GMO rider is dead!
The 2012 House Farm Bill contains a number dangerous GMO riders we’ve told you about, but the bill is still languishing in the House and is set to expire on September 30. There are a number of possible scenarios:

The Farm Bill is allowed to expire on September 30, whereupon USDA funding levels for farm programs would return to what they were in 1949. Obviously, this would mean no GMO riders! In that case, either the post-election lame duck Congress would attempt to take up this contentious issue again after the November elections—in which case we’d still have to fight the riders—or else when the next Congress convenes in January 2012, the Farm Bill process would start all over again.
Congress might pass a one-year extension of the current law. This isn’t a bad outcome, since this would continue the previous Farm Bill’s funding and policies—which didn’t include the GMO riders.
The most unlikely option, though still a possibility, is that the House would pass its Farm Bill and the conference committee would have done its work of reconciling the House and Senate versions of the bill, all before September 30.

It’s anyone’s guess what will happen, so we encourage you to keep calling and sending your letters to Congress. Ask your representative to reject the biotech industry’s Farm Bill riders! Please take action immediately—even if you’ve done so previously!

Of course, ANH-USA and many other consumer groups believe the Farm Bill is deeply flawed and should be rewritten from scratch. Between 1995 and 2011 taxpayers spent $277 billion on agricultural subsidies. Much of this money subsidizes genetically engineered corn and soy, which is then processed into high fructose corn syrup and other junk food ingredients, accelerating the obesity epidemic in America.
US PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, collected 72,000 petitions from citizens and 532 endorsements from small farmers opposing these lavish subsidies to big agriculture. Their report, Apples to Twinkies, points out that if consumers were paid directly in the same proportions as the federal subsidies, they would receive $7.36 to spend on junk food and 11 cents to buy apples. As Dr. Joseph A. Mercola puts it, “In other words, every year, your tax dollars pay for enough corn syrup and other junk food additives to buy nineteen Twinkies, but only enough fresh fruit to buy less than a quarter of one red delicious apple.”
Big Farma spent $200 million in lobbying and campaign contributions in 2009. Over 50% of farm subsidies went to only 4% of American farms—the huge factory farms, of course. And, as Dr. Mercola notes, “Since 1995, 90% of the $245 billion in agricultural subsidies went to producers of just five crops—and 30 percent went to corn. This is why high fructose corn syrup is found in nearly every single processed food on the shelf.”
On October 6, a conference aimed at healthcare practitioners (but open to the general public) will be held in Los Angeles. The “Seeds of Doubt” Conference will present compelling research from renowned experts and top scientists on the detrimental effects of GMOs and their impact on our health and environment. The conference will also help support the Label GMO initiative in California. There will be live streaming free of charge; info about the viewing site will be made available two weeks prior to the conference on the “Seeds of Doubt” website.

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