crossposted from unbossed
Today we got good news. The Monsanto astroturf scheme to take away the rights of the citizens of Pennsylvania to know how their milk was produced lost . . . mostly. The Department of Agriculture issued a notice removing the gag rule, but with lots of caveats.
But more important than the milk labeling is what this this battle says about democracy and how fragile it is.
While the citizens of the Keystone State were caught up in the holidays, its status as a democracy hung in the balance. What may seem to be a trivial issue - what a milk label says - was the battleground. Here's what you may have missed.
Pennsylvanians discovered that their department of agriculture is a wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto.
The Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff sees it as his mission to use the power of his office to ensure that Monsanto's product Posilac® Bovine Somatotropin or rBST is as widely used as possible by forbidding the public to have information it wants about how milk is produced.
Wolff covered his trail by creating a faux-citizens committee that was actually staffed with pro-Monsanto people, with only one exception. His department stonewalled the press and refused for weeks to release the names of the people on the committee. Once they were released, it was easy to see why. A bit of sleuthing revealed that this was not a committee that represented our interests or one that would give the issue fair consideration.
There can be no question that Wolff had to know that one of the supposed consumer representatives was actually a lobbyist. Her email address was not that of her astroturf organization - it was for her lobbying firm.
If Wolff did not know her real identity, well, then he is not smart enough for this important job.
And if he did know her real identity and agenda, then he lacks the qualifications for such an important role.
The truth is that Wolff has worked for years to lay the groundwork for banning milk labels that tell us whether rBST was used in producing our milk. Link. That link includes a link to Wolff's address to the Holstein Convention a year ago in which he made the oddest assortment of attacks on people who want to know about their milk.
The whole milk labeling and the "absence labeling" propaganda campaign is just bizarre.
If they are so proud of Posilac, then nothing is stopping the producers who use it from putting on their labels: Milk from cows injected with Posilac / rBST. But you don't see this honest "presence" label.
Why not?
Because they know that they will lose customers. So the true "absence labelers" are those who use Posilac and try to hide it by not revealing its use.
So we haven't yet come to the Commonwealth of Monsantovania - but we've come far too close. Pennsylvania has a governor who, apparently, is quite comfortable with a Secretary of Agriculture who so distrusts the people of Pennsylvania that he resorts to stealth campaigns and faux committees and distortions of the truth. All to benefit Monsanto.
Depend on it - this is not the last battle in this war. There is a lot of money at stake.
Here is a list of links to past stories on this issue