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HELP STOP ATTACK ON
ORGANIC STANDARDS!
October 6, 2005
The organic consumers community needs your immediate help to stop Congress
and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic standards.
After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up
a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based
upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification
to these standards.
Now, large corporations such as Kraft/Phillip Morris, Dean Foods/Horizon
Organic/Whitewave, Dole, Smucker/Knudson's, General Mills/Small Planet,
Danone/Stonyfield, Aurora Organic, Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and the Grocery
Manufacturers of America (Wal-Mart and the supermarket chains)--aided
and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)--are moving
to lower organic standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a
list of synthetic ingredients that would be allowed in organic production.
Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public
discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board's
(NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this
means is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers,
will now have more control over what can go into organic foods and products.
Over the past week, Organic Consumers Association (OCA) network members
have deluged the U.S. congress with over 90,000 emails and over 15,000
telephone calls. This nearly unprecedented grassroots upsurge has temporarily
rattled Congress and the industry, delaying the initial sneak attack
in the Senate on organic standards, resulting in a compromise
amendment (H.R. 2744) September 21 calling for "further study
of the issue."
Unfortunately another, possibly even more serious, sneak attack in
the House/Senate Conference Committee is expected over the next week
as Congressional members put the final wording together for the 2006
Congressional Agriculture Appropriations Bill. Therefore, OCA is now
calling on consumers and the organic community to apply pressure to
their House of Representatives members as well as their Senators to
stop the Conference Committee from degrading the standards. In addition
we urge everyone to start applying pressure to the Organic Trade Association,
who is unfortunately spearheading this sneak attack.
To contact your members of Congress and learn more about this issue,
please go to the following link:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/sos.cfm
The Organic Trade Association can be reached at (413) 774-7511.
Thank you.
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