Organic Bytes writes about Monsanto

ESSAY OF THE WEEK OCA and Our Allies Pressure 10 Senators Who Voted Against States' Rights to Label GMOs Seventy-one senators voted against the Sanders Amendment to the Farm Bill, an amendment to uphold states’ rights to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food. It’s time to take action. Phase I: We’ve selected 10 of the 71 senators. With help from several of our ongoing allies in the GMO labeling battle, along with MoveOn.org, and some of the state GMO campaigns, we’re launching a campaign to pressure these 10 senators to support their state’s right to enact a GMO labeling law. How? By organizing meetings at their Washington D.C. and home district offices. By submitting op-eds to their state newspapers. If your Senator is on the list, we need your help. We’ll be sending you an invitation soon to a meeting with your Senator. Please sign up to attend! In the meantime, you can start calling and emailing your Senator, posting on his or her facebook page, and writing letters to the editors of your local newspapers. Let’s find out why these Senators voted against states’ rights to label GMOs. More important, let’s get a commitment from each one of them that they will not support any legislation that would stomp out states’ rights to label GMOs. Read the essay ACTION ALERT Join the Twitter Rally Tonight! Tell Congress to Uphold States’ Rights to Label GMOs! TAKE ACTION: Tell Your Congress Member: Reject the King Amendment and any other rider or amendment to the Farm Bill that would take away states’ rights to label GMOs! Monsanto hoped that by pouring $46 million into defeating California’s ballot initiative to label GMOs last year, other states would be discouraged from launching similar campaigns. It didn’t turn out that way. GMO labeling laws have advanced in Vermont, Connecticut and Maine. Washington State voters will decide the issue in November, at the ballot box. Rather than try to defeat one state campaign after another, is the Biotech Bully looking to Congress for another handout? In the form of a sweeping ruling that would preempt states’ rights to label GMOs? On Wednesday, May 15, the House Ag Committee passed the King Amendment, a measure that some say, if it survives to the final version of the farm bill, could take away states’ rights to label GMOs. The jury’s still out on whether or not the King Amendment could be interpreted that broadly. But when it comes to Monsanto and its willingness to bend the law for its own purposes, the verdict is guilty. OCA is hosting a Twitter Rally tonight to let Congress know that we expect them to uphold states’ rights to label GMOs! Join us on twitter tonight, June 6 at 5 p.m. PST. It’s easy. Just login to your twitter account and type #LabelGMOs into your twitter search browser. From there you can follow the rally conversation and join in by adding #LabelGMOs to the end of your tweet. If you’ve signed our petition, thank you! Could you forward it to five friends today? ACTION ALERT Never Say Never: Monsanto’s GMO Wheat Goes Rogue TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA: No More Field Trials of Unapproved GMO Crops! For years, Monsanto has said “Don’t worry” about their open-air field tests of unapproved genetically engineered (GE) crops. PR flacks and Monsanto-funded scientists all but guaranteed us that the biotech giant’s frankenseeds wouldn’t escape. But they did escape. And now the company’s Roundup-resistant wheat – never approved for planting in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world – has turned up on an Oregon farm. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s predictable response? “Don’t worry.” The (illegal, untested) GE wheat is “safe to eat.” You gotta ask: If GMO wheat is supposedly safe to eat, what are the so-called "safe" residue levels of Monsanto's toxic pesticide, Roundup, that the EPA will allow on this wheat, if it were to be approved to market? And why is it banned in every single country in the world? Hoping to downplay the discovery that its GE wheat is growing in places it shouldn’t, Monsanto initially told reporters that the company had ended field tests of the unapproved crop in 2005. Not so, said Bloomberg, which reported that Monsanto continues to conduct open-air field tests of GM wheat in North Dakota and Hawaii. That’s on top of the hundreds of tests conducted before 2005, in 16 states, including Oregon. And the hundreds of tests still being conducted on other crops, in other states. The discovery of Roundup-resistant wheat in Oregon is troubling. But what’s a whole lot more troubling is that it may just be the tip of the iceberg. That’s why we’re calling on consumers to tell the USDA: No more open-air field testing of unapproved GMO crops! Read the press release TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA: No More Field Trials of Unapproved GMO Crops!