Re: Open letter to Hillary Clinton re GMO food

[Guest guest]

good letter why not post it to newspapers.

Subject: Open letter to Hillary Clinton re GMO food

>>>>GM WATCH daily list

http://www.gmwatch.org

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EXTRACT: So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black

farmers, or

Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto?

Women

exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto?

Desperate farmers

in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed

factories

there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and

disgusting

feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or

Monsanto?

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An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton From a Wellesley College Alumna

Linn Cohen

http://www.thepeoplesvoice.org/cgi-

bin/blogs/voices.php/2008/02/05/p23068

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman,

white,

liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for

you for

years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my

responsibility to

my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to

protect

them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers

committing suicide.

Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads

telling

illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big

yields with

Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive

seeds needed

expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation.

There is

no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than

they'd ever

experienced

And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again

(true

since time immemorial). Monsanto " patents " their DNA-altered seeds as

" intellectual property. " They have a $10 million budget and a staff

of 75

devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. Since the late 1990s (about

when

industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers

have committed

suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central

America and

here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you

worked and

through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food- related

roles. Your

Orwellian-named " Rural Americans for Hillary " was planned

withTroutman ,

Monsanto's lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all

come

together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE

corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP & L's - now

Monsanto's

- terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the

world's

largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which

own

controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate

boards

sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's

corporations there, is

so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon y, senior executive

of the

s Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of

Tyson Foods,

Walmart, DP & L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP & L and arranged

the Wal-Mart

deal. s' s Group staked Sam Walton and financed

Tyson

Foods. Monsanto bought DP & L. All represented at Rose.

You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow

of favors

then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were

helped by a

Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became

governor),

netting you $100,000, s strongly backed Bill for

Governor, and

then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms: Bill appointed friend Mike Espy,

Secretary

of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal

chicken waste and

contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of

Tyson's chicken

factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal

contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA

subsidies, .... Tyson

Foods was the largest corporate offender.

But what Bill did for Monsanto " genetic engineering " goes beyond

inadequate

concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic

engineering

into the world. And then he helped close off people's escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different

from " normal " (even

polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The

warning myth of

Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature -

has become

real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and

fusion is the

closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade

Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums,

and more ...

(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or

http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill's FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine

growth

hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us

(or did

tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill's FDA did not

recall it or

put warnings on it. Even " a very angry, very vocal nationwide

consumer base " had

no impact. "

4. Bill's FDA wouldn't even label rBGH as " present " in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the

public

could choose, Bill's USDA threatened all dairies that their products

could be

confiscated from stores. , USFDA Deputy Commissioner,

was formerly

Monsanto's counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill's FDA

enforced public

blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill's FDA tried to close

off that

last escape, proposing to include in " organic " standards, " the dirty

three " a :

genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food

processing

and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.)

The FDA

backed down.

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH

milk ... as

" organic. " And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare

for Tyson

and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: " This is probably the largest public response

to an

[Agriculture Department] rule in modern history. " In fact the

response was 20

times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now

grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the

public's right to

know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed

our

children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A

French study

proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity.

Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form

of high

fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops,

soy (90%

GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60%

GMO,

nearly 100% Monsanto traits). " [E] ssentially our entire food supply

is

genetically modified, to the benefit of one company. " The Grocery

Manufacturers

of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM

traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals -

more

weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this

why our

children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill's USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination

standards and

attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more

about

disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this

letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of

IGF-1 in

milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold,

also

increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European

nations,

Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa

ban U.S.

rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, no warning

labels (not

allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.)

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary.

Coincidentally,

American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense

international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food

exports - badly

straining trading relations. Monsanto's " good ole boy, " he betrayed

American

families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health

and their

democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American

family farmers

- backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean

farming.

But, HIllary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product

to sell

it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product

(rBGH), but

Bill's administration didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying

threat -

Mad Cow Disease.

Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted " known TSE-positive

[Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet

food, pig,

chicken and fish feed, " only requiring the label to read " Do not feed

to cattle

and other ruminants " in the US.

Monsanto added to the problem. " There is evidence that rbST use

[Monsanto's GE

bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy

cow. ... Given

that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years

and perhaps

longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor " hidden " BSE. That is, they

might be

infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter. " (My

emphasis.)

http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and

slaughter

and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in

friendship or

favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to

this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole

world, which

tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly

immoral,

beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

" Even for the biggest " winners, " it is like winning at poker on the

Titanic. "

Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Lewinsky. That's " dinky immoral. " That's

chicken feed

immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let

genetic

engineering lose on NATURE itself.

" Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in

the next

several decades than in the previous one thousand years...Tens of

thousands of

novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be

released into

the Earth's ecosystems...Some of those releases, however, could wreak

havoc with

the planet's biospheres. " Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb

ass Southern

boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking

about as much

about the consequences of something this immense and about us human

beings out

here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with .

Just one big

fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP & L, a Rose Firm client, prevent

seeds from

" working " after only one season. Farmers " must " repurchase (patents

and suing

not certain enough control, it seems). Those " killing " genes pose the

apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could

fail, too.

Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species Berkeley

Professor of

Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the

Mexican

government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize

And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO

seeds break

lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds.

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the

technology to

be `widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed

companies.'

" Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one

that feeds

more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the

truth. With very

few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase

sales of

chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers. "

Ehrenfield:

Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Hillary, one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone.

Farmers in

India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers

in India

are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does

these farming

catatrophes say about " industrial agriculture "

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture.

And now

....... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source

of bird

flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the

problem

[just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease], and yet

" initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out

small producers

and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. ...

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp " Of the few

outbreaks

that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial

poultryoperations, not free-ranging flocks. "

Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA to force

small farmers

to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National

Animal

Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto

and others

would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of

small

farmers's livestock.

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not

supply the

feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began)

and then

sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale,

are

significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the

massive

concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit

farmers' right to

choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from

their

communities.

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal

seeds,

immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed,

world-wide bee

colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies,

Superweeds, lawsuits

against farmers, loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing

themselves

in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on

average

... one farmers' suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu

1.30.08) - that

is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural

corporations

in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law

Firm.

Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given

what Bill

did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of

Food Safety

would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected

hands? You talk

tough about labeling food - ah, but " foreign " food - a sleight of

hand tricking

a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but

Bill

degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane

labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a

media

distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children,

are

meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those

groups

profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls,

exposing them to

a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. But you

take donations

from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the

poorest

people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are

forced to eat

the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National

Black Farmers

Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or

Monsanto?

Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women

exposed to 7

times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers

in India and

young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there,

or

Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting

feedlots,

shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our

children

who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney

and liver

toxicity, or Monsanto?

was right about your corporate connections. I just didn't

understand

until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally

affected my

children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have

been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit

themselves to

work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of

animals

and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking

us off a

cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole Atlanta

Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this

subject, and am

including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things I have

learned. I am

expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong. Perhaps things are

swell out

there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced feed is great, and genetic

engineering

is the best thing since manna. But I am scared for my family and I

have not only

a right to say so but an obligation to do so. I am angry that

Monsanto was

allowed the influence it had and has done the things it definitely

seems to

have. I am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and

beautiful part of

our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late

to pull

back.

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