The Future of Food

"We used to be a nation of farmers, but now it's less than two percent of the population in the United States. So a lot of us don't know a lot about what it takes to grow food."
- Judith Redmond, Full Belly Farms

"This stylish film is not just for food faddists and nutritionists. It is a look at something we might not want to see: Monsanto, Roundup and Roundup-resistant seeds,collectively wreaking havoc on American farmers and our agricultural neighbors around the world. In the end, this documentary is a eloquent call to action."
-- The Telluride Daily Planet

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America -- a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

Shot on location in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, THE FUTURE OF FOOD examines the complex web of market and political forces that are changing what we eat as huge multinational corporations seek to control the world's food system. The film also explores alternatives to large-scale industrial agriculture, placing organic and sustainable agriculture as real solutions to the farm crisis today.

More Information

The following is a list of websites that have more information about GMOs and how to get involved in various campaigns.

Please note: These resources are available for people to further educate themselves about the issues dealt with in the film The Future of Food including genetically engineered foods, patenting, corporatization of agriculture, etc. OAW does not endorse every statement made by these websites. We hope readers will obtain more information and reach their own conclusions.

The Center for Food Safety
CFS works to protect human health and the environment by curbing the proliferation of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. CFS engages in legal, scientific and grassroots initiatives to guide national and international policymaking on critical food safety issues.

The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods
An organization dedicated to creating a national grassroots consumer campaign for the purpose of lobbying Congress and the President to pass legislation that will require the labeling of genetically engineered foods in the United States.

Organic Seed Alliance
Organic Seed Alliance is a nonprofit public charity that supports the ethical development and stewardship of the genetic resources of agricultural seed. They accomplish their goals through collaborative education and research programs with organic farmers and other seed professionals.

Rethinking School Lunch
This Center for Ecoliteracy program advocates food as the focus for a curriculum that teaches the values, skills, and knowledge to change present practices toward sustainable solutions. It offers a guide to transforming our connection to food and farming, beginning with school lunch.

Say No to GMOs!
A site that offers extensive information on the complex and controversial issue of genetic engineering.

Union of Concerned Scientists
UCS is an independent nonprofit alliance of more than 100,000 concerned citizens and scientists. They aim to augment rigorous scientific analysis with innovative thinking and committed citizen advocacy to build a cleaner, healthier environment and a safer world.

Crop Choice
CropChoice is an alternative news and information source for American farmers and consumers about genetically modified crops, corporate agribusiness concentration, farm and trade policy, sustainable agriculture, wind farming and alternative energy, and rural economic and social issues.

Consumers' Union
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, is an independent, nonprofit testing and information organization serving only consumers.

PANNA
PANNA (Pesticide Action Network North America) works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network.

Organic Consumers Association
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) The OCA is a grassroots non-profit public interest organization which deals with crucial issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, corporate accountability, and environmental sustainability.

Californians for GE-Free Agriculture
The Californians for GE-Free Agriculture Coalition is unique in that it brings together farmer-based organizations with consumer and environmental groups to halt the introduction of economically and ecologically destructive genetically engineered (GE) crops. Our mission is to stop new GE crop plantings in California.

Genetic Engineering Action Network
The Genetic Engineering Action Network (GEAN) is a diverse network of grassroots activists, national and community non-governmental organizations (NGOs), farmer and farm advocacy groups, academics and scientists who have come together to work on the myriad of issues surrounding biotechnology.

University of Northern Iowa Local Food Project
The University of Northern Iowa Local Food Project works to Strengthen the local food economy in Iowa by connecting institutional food buyers with nearby farms and processors. And by attempting to fostering a growing relationship among consumers, grocers, meat lockers, restaurant owners, dining service staff, farmers, local government and economic development officials.

Green.tv
Green.tv is a broadband TV channel devoted to environmental films. It is supported by the United Nations Environment Programme and is dedicated to educating the public on environmental issues that will shape our world in the coming years.

Many Benefits to Eating Organic

The news has been filled lately with outbreaks of disease related to both contaminated meat as well as fruits and vegetables. As more and more of our food is produced corporately, both here in the US and those imported from around the world, the chances of poor food safety and excessive exposure to legalized toxins such as growth hormones and pesticides only increases. It is clear that the only alternative that makes sense as far as gaining maximum nutrition and avoiding dangerous substances in our food is to grow our own or buy locally what we cannot produce ourselves.

Even when buying organic it is important to know your sources. Many corporations have jumped on the organic bandwagon, and the powers that be have allowed them to advertise foods as organic when they are not truly organic at all. I encourage everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible and to make sure that the seeds that are purchased are organic and not genetically engineered. Typing heirloom seeds into a search engine will give you a lot of information as well as places to buy seeds. Growing your own produce can be done even if you reside in an urban setting through the use of alternative gardening techniques such as growing veggies in specialized containers on a deck or porch, or even indoors. One particular company is marketing a growing container for vine vegetables or fruits called the Topsy Turvy Upside-down Tomato Planter which looks very easy to use while taking up a limited amount of space. Growing your own food is a great way to eat well and to get the whole family involved in the agricultural process as well.


Want a Nutritional Edge? Buy Organic
by Stephanie Whited

(NaturalNews) A recent UK government report found that chickens raised in the widespread, non-organic fashion, have a 23.4% chance of being contaminated with salmonella, a bacteria responsible for food poisoning. The chance of an organic flock having salmonella? Only 4.4%.

What's the difference between how the chickens are raised?

Organic chickens must have "access to outdoor ranges and pasture, with an emphasis on enabling the animals to express their natural behaviour." Sounds pretty reasonable.

The non-organic chickens are mostly housed in cages which allow each individual bird the space of a standard sheet of paper. Yes, the 8 1/2" X 11" kind. These birds are also given antibiotics, which not only help to create superbugs and weaken the birds' immune systems, but they potentially have the same effect on you when you eat the chicken or its eggs.

So, non-organic animals are likely to be raised under harsh conditions and administered antibiotics and hormones (the run-off of which create mutated fish), but what about non-organic fruits and vegetables?

Non-organic fruits and vegetables are grown with synthetic pesticides and fertilizer. So what? Well, studies are showing that more than 90% of children in the US "have detectable residues of at least one neurotoxic pesticide in their urine." Something is called neurotoxic when it is poisonous to your brain and nervous system.

Pesticides may also be changing our hormones and reproductive systems. They've been found to change the hormones of animals in tests and in the wild, and a lot of our systems are similar, so aren't they probably hurting us too? Visit Mindfully.org for more details.

How can we avoid them? According to a study outlined in a 2003 Environmental Health Perspectives article, children "eating organic fruits and vegetables had six times lower levels of pesticide byproducts in their blood versus children eating conventional produce."

Anytime that pesticide is found on organic produce, it is either because pesticides have drifted from a nearby non-organic farm or the produce has been contaminated by "long-ago banned pesticides that linger in the environment." So the effects of pesticide use are extremely long term!

Besides helping you to avoid dangerous pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones, choosing organics also supplies you with more nutrients. Those organically raised chickens we just discussed lay eggs which, according to a Mother Earth News, contain:

* 1/3 less cholesterol
* 1/4 less saturated fat
* 2/3 more vitamin A
* 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
* 3 times more vitamin E
* 7 times more beta carotene

That's a huge difference! Mindfully.org compared over 30 different studies and found that on average, organic food does have more nutrients than inorganic food. Organic food was found to be far superior in three areas: Vitamin C content, a lower content of carcinogenic nitrates and better protein quality. These are key areas to a higher immunity, avoiding cancer, and cell health. Protein is in every cell of the body!

While it is better to eat fruits and vegetables with pesticides instead of processed foods, those who eat organically will have a healthy advantage. Ask your local stores to buy organic!

http://www.naturalnews.com/z022880.html

Organic Consumers Association's Ronnie Cummins Tells The Truth About Organic Milk That Isn't

For those of us who were concerned when Wal-Mart announced their dive into the organic food industry, the situation has now played out to warrant that concern. The equation of Wal-Mart + organics just doesn't set right with me. What Wal-Mart didn't prepare for is that people who buy organic have usually done their homework. It is very difficult to pull-the-wool-over-the-eyes of organic consumers by cutting corners in order to make a profit. This very week Wal-Mart has decided to get out of the organic business. To that, I say Hooray! The big food conglomerates are trying very hard to smudge the meaning of organic. Why? Because they realize that they cannot make the money they are used to making by offering healthy food. And they realize that Americans are beginning to wake up to the toxic chemicals and junk that is being included in processed food--we are not consuming food, we are consuming chemicals. As the article states below more and more Americans prefer unadulterated food and why shouldn't we? Organic milk is just the beginning--



By: Mike Adams
http://www.newstarget.com/021763.html
Monday, April 02, 2007

With consumer demand for organic products continuing to grow, more large corporations are entering the organic market. To maximize profits, some of these companies don't follow organic standards but still label products as organic.

For example, Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, sold by Wal-Mart and other retailers, continue to produce "organic" milk under factory-farm conditions that few reasonable people would consider truly organic.

According to the Organic Consumers Association, half of Horizon's "organic" milk today comes from what can only be considered "factory" dairy feedlots -- and much of Aurora's organic milk does as well. Rather than buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on organic farms, these companies seemed to have discovered it's cheaper to buy conventional calves that have been raised on conventional farms, install them in factory feedlots, then milk them and call it organic.

The situation has become so alarming that the Organic Consumers Association ultimately called for a boycott, and many knowledgeable consumers are now avoiding the Horizon brand entirely.

The organic milk controversy extends to organic soy milk as well. Horizon Organic's parent company, Dean Foods, also bought out Silk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States. Dean Foods has pushed for lower organic standards in the United States and to allow industrial-style production to be called "organic."

Meanwhile, major grocery chains import cheap, so-called "organic" soybeans from China, where the workers are treated much like slaves and organic standards are dubious. They are also imported from Brazil where the Amazon rainforest is being bulldozed in order to create more acreage for growing soybeans.

To gain more insight on the details of this emerging battle over organic standards, NewsTarget editor Mike Adams sat down with Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association for some straight talk on organic milk. What follows is the full interview.

Mike:
I am here today talking with Ronnie Cummins, National Director of the Organic Consumers Association. That is at www.OrganicConsumers.org. What's the overview of the situation on organic milk, Ronnie?

Ronnie:
Well, the good news is, there is such a huge demand for organic products across the United States and North America that there is a serious shortage of supply. One of the types of products that are in serious short supply is organic milk. This is already more than a $1-billion-a-year industry in the United States, out of the $15 billion in organic food sales last year.

The problem is that our government - specifically the U. S. Department of Agriculture - takes about $90 billion of our tax money every year, and they give subsidies to all of these factory farms to go organic, but they give no subsidies to help family-scale dairies make the transition to organic. We literally do not have enough family farmers with the wherewithal to achieve organic certification and make the product.

At the same time, we have these giant retail giants like Wal-Mart who have noticed that the public wants organic food and they are willing to pay a premium price for it, so they and the other retail chain stores have moved with a vengeance to dominate the organic market. Wal-Mart is now the number-one seller of organic milk in the country. The problem is that the milk they are selling - Horizon Organic - is not really organic. It is coming from the factory-style dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and the USDA lets them get away with it.

Mike:
Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how they do an end-run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?

Ronnie:
It is a tremendous success. It is attributed to the fact that a lot of us spent the last 30 years building up an alternative food and farming system in the United States. This alternative system has proved to be much better than industrial agriculture, and so now the latest polls show 75 percent of Americans say they are shopping for healthier food. If you look at the statistics, about 12 cents of every grocery store dollar are going for foods that are labeled as either natural or organic.

Mike:
Well, that is a substantial sum. That is growing at, what, about 20 percent a year or something?

Ronnie:
Growing at 20 percent a year, whereas conventional food sales tend to grow about 2 percent a year. This 20 percent-a-year growth has been steady ever since 1991. It appears that it will continue through the end of this decade, so by then most food sold in grocery stores will have a label that says 'natural' or 'organic'.

The question is: If we let these gigantic corporations like Horizon and Wal-Mart take over the industry, will it really be organic?

How the USDA enables big business to corrupt organic standards for profit

Mike:
Let's talk about the definition of organic, then. What should organic really mean in terms of, not only the treatment of the cows, but also what chemicals are not in the milk, for example? What is the real definition?

Ronnie:
There are organic farmers all over the world - in about 100 countries - who are certified organic nowadays. Traditionally, organic has always meant that you raise crops without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers and that you raise animals without drugging them up with hormones or antibiotics. You cannot take sewage sludge and put it on farmlands. You cannot feed animals things like blood, slaughterhouse waste, manure and municipal garbage, and you cannot use untested and hazardous technologies like genetic engineering or fruit irradiation. The animals have to be raised on pasture - which is their natural behavior - where every day of the growing season, weather permitting, they are out on pasture eating grass and foraging as they have evolved to do.

What has happened recently is that Wal-Mart was buying their organic milk from genuine organic dairy farmers that pastured their animals, and then they turned around to that company - Organic Valley - and they said, "Hey, we want a lower price," just as Wal-Mart always does. Organic Valley said no, so Wal-Mart then turned to Dean Foods, the largest dairy conglomerate in the world - which had bought out Horizon Organic - and said, "Would you sell to us?" To which Horizon said, "We will sell you the cheapest organic milk you have ever seen."

Horizon conveniently took advantage of the fact that Federal Organic standards say the cows must have access to pasture, and they said, "Oh well, I guess theoretical access to pasture is good enough. We are going to chain up our cows and milk them three times a day, and they will never get out pasturing unless there is a news organization coming to the farm that day. We will still call it organic." They have been doing this for four years, and there have been complaints from the Organic Consumers Association and organic farmers all over the country.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has completely ignored these complaints for four years. However, now this controversy has reached such a state, with the mass media covering it and retail stores across the country starting to drop Horizon and Aurora Organic, that the USDA is finally making noises that they will clear up this situation and promulgate federal regulations that actually require the animals to be pastured.

They will make sure that the animals were not imported from some conventional dairy farm where they were weaned on blood, fed antibiotics, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure and then called "organic." The animals must be raised from birth as organic, and they must be pastured every day during the growing season - a minimum of 120 days a year. This is what organic has always meant in terms of raising cows, and it is what it should mean now.

Mike:
Now, these are pretty serious accusations of Horizon Milk or Dean Foods' behavior. How are you able to support this? Do you have an insider taking pictures, or how did you become aware of this behavior on their part?

Ronnie:
It was called to our attention by a watchdog organization called The Cornucopia Institute, which actually visited some of these factory-style dairy farms that Horizon and Aurora call organic. They witnessed first-hand things like a farm where there are 4,000 animals, but only a few hundred acres of pasture. You cannot possibly pasture animals on that little pasture, especially when they are in semi-arid parts of Idaho, Colorado and West Texas.

Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as whistleblowers. There was a story in the Chicago Tribune about one of these whistleblowers who pointed out that these cows are not put out to pasture. The only time they are put out to pasture is when there is a media organization or an important person coming out.

Yes, it is first-hand information. It is a look at the terrain that these factory-style dairy feedlots are set on. Look at the size of their pasture, and then the fact that there was a national survey of organic dairy farms that came out March 22 - which the unethical dairies did not respond to or they got really low ranks - whereas, the ethical producers were happy to be transparent about their practices.

The good news is, almost all the organic farmers in the country are actually practicing real organic standards. The bad news is that the market leader, Horizon Organic, and their junior partner, Aurora Organic, are flagrantly violating organic standards to the point where we, the Organic Consumers Association, had to call for a boycott. We have never called for a boycott against an organic product before. This was going too far, so starting in early April, we called on consumers across the country to start boycotting the products of Horizon Organic and Aurora Organic, and to boycott the brand names that the leading retailers are selling from Horizon and Aurora at Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, Giant, Publix and Wild Oats.

Mike:
Well, this seems like a clear case in which big business is now seeing dollar signs whenever the word "organic" appears, so they are doing the minimum necessary or even just blatantly violating the rules in order to put that word on their products, regardless of the spirit of the law or the original intent of organics. Is this just corporate greed?

Ronnie:
This is, and the sad thing is, how easy it would be to help 5,000 or 10,000 conventional family farmers make the transition in their dairies to organic. It would not be that hard. It would not cost that much money, and this way we could still have organic standards that were real, animals treated humanely and not damage the environment.

Of course, we have not even mentioned that one of the reasons you want organic animals to be outdoors and pastured is because the quality of the meat and milk is much higher if the animals are raised naturally on grass. The other organic requirements mean that the end product is going to be healthier as well.

They are not going to have antibiotic residues or genetically engineered hormones. They are not going to be spreading mad cow disease and so on. We, right now in the United States, have an excess of milk being produced by family-scale dairy farmers who are not yet organic. It would be very simple to help those who want to make the transition do so if we were to force the government to give us a fair share of our subsidies to help these farmers do that.

Lax standards of corporate manufacturers and retailers affect both organic milk and soymilk products

Mike:
Now, you mentioned that pasture-fed cows are healthier cows. This gets back to something you mentioned earlier that needs to be emphasized, because most people simply do not believe this is happening. Conventional cows, in fact, are being fed chicken litter and other animals.

Ronnie:
Yes, they take it from birth. Cows were traditionally weaned on their mother's milk, but industrial agriculture figured out that it's pretty expensive to wean the calves on milk, so they decided to wean them on blood. That is common practice nowadays on a conventional dairy farm. Then, you feed them primarily grains that are genetically engineered, but mixed in with those grains are things that make the animals grow faster and put on weight, like slaughterhouse waste - basically ground up pigs, chickens, dogs, cats and everything else are
fed to them.

They found out all these factory poultry farms around the country were producing billions of pounds of manure that pollute the environment. What can we do with all this manure? Presto, they feed it back to cows. They sweep up the manure, the feathers and the dropped bits of cattle that are fed to chickens in their feed. They sweep that all up, turn around and feed it back to cows.

Most people in the United States are shocked when they hear that 80 percent of the drugs and antibiotics made in this country are not fed to humans to cure them of some illness, but fed to animals in their feed every day to make them grow faster. Scientists do not totally understand why, but they do know that if you cram thousands of animals together in unsanitary or unhygienic - not to mention inhumane - conditions, they all get sick and die.

The only way to keep them alive is to constantly feed them antibiotics. Of course, what that means is you turn around and drink a glass of dairy milk from a conventional farm, and you are getting residues of antibiotics in every drink. They also figured out, "We could use our genetically engineered hormone to shoot up these cows with this hormone produced by Monsanto, even though it is banned in just about every industrialized country in the world except for the United States." If you shoot up dairy cows with this hormone, you can force them to give more milk, and you can keep milking them even past their lactation period. You can actually milk a cow not for a year, but for up to a thousand days. Of course, the cow will drop dead after that, but they do not care.

For all these reasons, there is a huge movement on the part of American consumers and especially concerned parents and concerned grandparents - if they drink milk and if their kids and grandparents drink - to switch to organic.

Mike:
Is it fair to say, Ronnie, that the organic-labeled Horizon Milk on the shelves in Wal-Mart right now comes, at least in part, from cows that were at one point in their lives fed blood, manure, chicken litter and some other things you mentioned? Is that accurate?

Ronnie:
Yes, half of Horizon Organic's milk today comes from these factory dairy feedlots. One hundred percent of Aurora Organic's milk comes from these factory dairy feedlots. It is cheaper to not buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on an organic farm, but to buy conventional calves that have been raised as cheaply as possible on a conventional farm. The routine practice today on a conventional farm is feeding the animals blood plasma as a milk replacer.

You feed them genetically engineered grains, slaughterhouse waste and chicken manure. That is industry standard. Why? You can make more money doing it that way.

Mike:
Okay, so for those reading this, take a closer look at that bowl of cereal next time. If you are pouring cow's milk in there, you might want to buy genuine organic and not the cheap stuff.

Ronnie:
Here is another point that you might think about: for those people who do not drink dairy milk, but who buy organic soy milk, the leading organic soy milk brand in the United States is Silk. Many consumers have no idea that Silk - just like Horizon Organic Milk - was bought out by this giant conglomerate, Dean Foods.

Silk used to buy their organic soybeans from U.S. and Canadian organic soybean farmers, and they paid them a decent price - $16 to $21 a bushel - for these organic soybeans. Well, now that Dean Foods has bought out Silk, they are starting to import cheap, so-called organic soybeans from China, where the workers are treated like slaves and organic standards are dubious. Or, they are importing soybeans from Brazil where there is a huge uproar over the fact that
people are whacking down the Amazon - the lungs of the planet - in order to plant export crops, specifically soybeans, to export.

Even if we think this does not affect us, because we do not eat meat or we do not eat dairy, we have to see the effect of these big corporations like Dean Foods coming into organic. Wal-Mart wants to sell you stuff that is cheaper than their competitors, and the only way they can do that is to outsource it from overseas - places like China and Brazil - where worker rights and
environmental standards are routinely violated, or else lower standards in the United States and allow industrial-style production to call itself organic.

Mike:
Now, this is obviously a very important story for consumers to follow. How can they continue to get updates from you on this story?

Ronnie:
Every day on our news site, www.OrganicConsumers.org you will find updates. We have a whole section of our website called "Safeguard Organic Standards," where you can take action and send a message to what we are calling the "Shameless Seven." These are the large corporations trying to defraud consumers and put ethical organic farmers out of business by labeling factory farm production - and slave labor production, in the case of China - as organic.

Mike:
I want to thank you, Ronnie, for taking the time to give us all of this shocking information today.

Ronnie:
Thank you.

Related Resources
Organic Consumers Association ( www.organicconsumers.org )
The Cornucopia Institute ( www.cornucopia.org )
USDA's National Organic Program ( http://www.ams.usda.gov/NOP )