crossposted from unbossed

It's an uneven battle for the truth, given Monsanto's money and its stable of people like who will promote Monsanto's profits over our health. Link.  One thing working in Monsanto's favor is that, when things seem complicated, most people will tune out or take the position that the truth likes somewhere between. Another is that Monsanto is well funded, while those who work to publicize the truth are not.

But you can help by being informed and telling others about these shenanigans. And there are other things you can do to support the truth tellers.

crossposted from unbossed

Say you were a blogger and had written, oh, say, 20 or more stories on issues related to the use of Monsanto's rBST in milk. And say each time you wrote about the issue, for example, that the Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture had created a fake consumer committee to assess milk labeling, you were asked: "So what's the story with rBST / rBGH?"

How do you explain why rBST in milk is a problem? Now there is an easy way to explain it all.

I'm against the illegal occupation of Iraq, I gave money to Kucinich, and I voted for Edwards in the primaries. Did I mention that I'm a Republican? I said so, so it must be true. Want more proof? I can put a McCain 2008 bumper sticker on my car if that will convince you.

Why don't you believe me? Shouldn't saying something make it true?

OK, well how about this. Cornell University researchers (oh, and a helper from Monsanto) said that injecting cows with Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) is good for the environment. They are lowering cows' carbon "hoofprint." Come on! That's true too! They said so. It must be.

crossposted from unbossed

Let me see. How many ways has Monsanto used front groups, fake "astroturf" groups, and fake science to get people to (a) stop worrying about the effects of using rBST / rBGH / Posilac / recombinant bovine growth hormone to produce milk and (b) buy more milk produced? And now there's a new one that is a real hoot!

Did you know that injecting dairy cows with Monsanto's recombinant hormones will save the planet for global warming?

Well, if Monsanto says so and uses one of its bought and paid for "scientists" and a Monsanto chemist to do the "study", well, it must be true!

Just because you haven't heard much lately about the Monsanto campaign to take away our right to know how our milk is produced does not mean nothing is happening. In fact, in recent months, in state after state, Monsanto is continuing to push.

This time the state is New York. If you are in New York and want to know whether your milk comes from cows who are not given artificial hormones, then you need to get your comments in immediately. Details below.

Trying still to get attention to rBGH milk, this petition is going around:

http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/...

For those who don't know about it, rBGH is a genetically engineered bovine hormone approved during the Clinton administration when Clinton appointed Monsanto-connected-employees to run the FDA and they then approved Monsanto's own product over scientific objections about increased cancer risk.  Despite those links to cancer, the Clinton administration did not withdraw the hormone or warn the public or label the milk.

To learn how Monsanto pushed its genetically engineered hormone on the American public:  http://video.google.com/...

To learn more about Monsanto, you can see Vanity Fair's green issue this month:  http://www.vanityfair.com/... features/2008/05/monsanto200805

On Friday - April 25, 2008, in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Mark Nolt, a Wenger Mennonite (Horse and Buggy Mennonite) dairyman, threatened for months with arrest for selling raw milk without a permit was removed from his property by state troopers.  

Jonas Stoltzfus, a friend, fellow farmer, and Church of the Brethen, was asked by Mr. Nolt to speak for him, and said of the raid yesterday - "Six state troopers and Bill Chirdon of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture trespassed onto his property, and stole $20-25,000 of his product and equipment."  

Mr. Stoltzfus explained that Mr. Nolt did not have a permit because "he chose to turn his permit back in because it did not cover all the products he was selling.  He felt he was being dishonest selling stuff that was not covered by the permit.  He is a man of great integrity."  

I am not a farmer.  I didn't even pay much attention to farming issues until last year when I found out about Monsanto using Bollywood actors to trick illiterate Indian farmers into buying extremely expensive genetically engineered seeds.  Big yields promised.  No word that the heavy loans for the seeds would need to be followed by more heavy loans for Monsanto fertilizer and Monsanto pesticides.  No word that the seeds needed irrigation.  The package said so but the farmers couldn't read.  And besides, the small print was in English.  The farmers were Marathi.  

Crops failed.  

crossposted from unbossed

Today, April 7, is the deadline to sign up to participate in the Pennsylvania hearings whose main purpose seems to be to go after rBST-free milk, this time via a hearing on milk pricing.

And it is also the day a letter was sent to Ohio Governor Ted Strickland by public interest groups asking him not to bar us from knowing whether rBST has been used in producing our milk.

While Clinton crisscrosses the state, there are others moving across Pennsylvania carrying a hidden, sordid and enormous back story to her campaign.

Yesterday, a group of people with one reporter in attendance gathered in western Pennsylvania on a 143 acre farm, to listen to two disturbing speeches and to watch two riders and a boy traveling with them by bike, set off on an historic mission.  They are carrying news of what is happening to American farming.  

In multiple legs, filled in by volunteers, whether on horseback, by truck, by wagon, by buggy, by bike or on foot, "the Ride for Farmers" has now begun crossing Pennsylvania on a trip that will go on for 20 days from the 2nd to the 21st, the day before the primary, to tell the American people about the destruction of their farmers and their food and their alternative health care system.

OK, I'm totally having a cow about a few issues. Yes, it's a bad pun in this case... the topic at hand is milk. It's a dairy diary. Go ahead and TR me for obnoxious use of puns if you must :)

In some ways this is the same old stuff I've been blogging about forever (and I hate sounding like a broken record and repeating topics but these darn UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS who are spreading lies to our politicians and newspapers are making me) and then there are also a few new things here.

One new thing in this diary? I interviewed a dairy farmer. Enough of me trying to figure this out on my own based on Wikipedia articles and such. I went straight to the source.

Another new thing going on? In addition to the rBGH issue that - I'll say it again - UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS are lying about, there's a rather pressing issue about "ultrafiltered" milk. That is, milk with all of the nutrients filtered out. They want to call that shit milk and sell it.

There are action steps to take for each topic, so please follow me below the flip.

crossposted from unbossed

When Wal-Mart decided to go rBST-free last week,  Monsanto knew it was in big trouble. So it's pulling out the big guns.

Yes, when the going gets tough, Monsanto's astroturf groups get going.

crossposted from unbossed

You read it at here months ago. Amidst the victory celebrations when the harshest form of milk labeling ban failed in Pennsylvania, I predicted that this was not the end. I predicted that Monsanto and its wholly owned subsidiary army of minions would continue to push in many and insidious ways to make the world safe for rBST.  Here are some links you will find useful if you are new to this issue. link here  and here  and here  and here

So, Pennsylvanians, get ready again. The newest attack on your right to drink milk produced by cows not injected with rBST is on.

I'm on the winning side of an issue! What happened? Am I dreaming? <pinches self> No. Am I becoming a Republican? OK, absolutely not. And yet... an issue I care deeply about, the freedom to label rBGH-free milk, seems to be going my way. How could that be?

I should be upfront about a few things here. First of all, you don't have to wait for the stars and the moon to all line up before progressives win on issues among regular Americans. How many people out there want affordable health care for all Americans? And how many of them want mercury in their tuna fish? On the issues, we win.

But then, why is albacore tuna so full of mercury you can take your temperature with it? The public sides with us - but we do not get the government on our side nearly enough. And that's what's different now. In state after state, it appears that governments (even conservative ones!) are siding with the people! And with me! WOW!

Disclaimer:  In all these diaries, I speak as a mother.  I am horrified by what I am learning about Monsanto and about what it is doing to farmers and to food.  Harking back to women's role over millennia, I have a familial and a societal (society being the larger family) obligation to warn.  In that role, I am free to err in the direction of too much caution but I may NEVER err in the other direction - acceptance of things as safe if there is ANY signal at all that suggests there even MIGHT be a problem. Common sense trumps the nitpicking parsing of science in this obligation.  Illogical things, greedy things, cruel things, massively controlling things,  send up flares.  And for those, mothers warn.  

Monsanto is pushing the USDA to institute NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, which is a global tracking system for every farm animal in the country. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/...  

How should anyone who loves animals feel about this?

Looking closely at what Monsanto is doing to animals already may help add some clarity.

Hillary Clinton's' long-time adviser, including for PR, and her chief campaign strategest, is Mark Penn, who works for Burson-Marsteller - Monsanto's PR firm, which represents some of the worst corporations in existence - including Blackwater. http://www.sourcewatch.org/...   And DC Lobbyist and McCain campaign "senior advisor" Charlie Black also works for Monsanto:  http://rawstory.com/...

I do not know about Obama's connections to Monsanto.

Dearest Residents of the Buckeye State,

As reported this past Sunday in the NYTimes business section, Monsanto's sales of Posilac have been dropping off recently.  So guess where they're turning for relief now?  That's right, your very own Ohio Department of Agriculture.  (See below for the details.)

I manage our activism efforts here at CREDO Action (from Working Assets), and have been working with shirah and some other activists in recent weeks to stop Monsanto's plans state-by-state.  (Shirah, by the way, has an excellent diary posted today on media coverage of this issue... here.)

crossposted from unbossed

The Philadelphia Inquirer was the first to sound the alarm about Monsanto's campaign to censor milk labels and take our right to know how our food is produced. The story was picked up and moved forward by local independent papers such as Voices of Central Pennsylvania and the Williamsport Guardian.

But the newspaper that has really dug into the subject has been the New York Times. So here in chronological order is the story as carried by the Times this past year. Interesting where it has been carried as opinion or as news.