Take Action: Stop Monsanto's GMO alfalfa today!

Image by Timothy Valentine via Flickr

Before you do anything else today, please take two minutes to sign this petition to Agriculture Secretary Vilsack. Here's why. Food Democracy Now! says that if the secretary deregulates GMO alfalfa this week,

Organic dairy and livestock farmers will lose more than $1.4 billion in sales and consumers can say good-bye to organic dairy products forever. Already, Monsanto's cronies in Congress and agribusiness lobbyists are pressuring Vilsack to issue a “partial” deregulation so GMO alfalfa can be planted this fall and next spring. The ball is now in Vilsack's court. He needs to hear from you today!

Food Democracy Now!

Butterfly and Alfalfa
Image by cdw9 via Flickr

You know why this stuff is bad, right? Once it's planted in fields, the pollens can be carried by wind and critters to other fields. Organic fields become infected with the GMO. Before long, we won't have a choice to buy organic anymore. We'll all be eating genetically modified food whether we like it or not.

Plus, Monsanto sues farmers who haven't bought their seed when the megacorp finds some of their GMO plants mixed in due to pollen transfer from nearby Monsanto fields. Need another example? Here's a good one: Who Owns Life?

So far, the courts have sided with Monsanto, even though the farmers would rather not have had their fields contaminated by the stuff! More, no farmer to date has had the financial resources to sue the other way and win.

Need a little more persuasion? This video is just about guaranteed to raise the hair on the back of your neck. Take a look.



For fact sheets, a shopping guide and more, check these links.

• Genetically engineered alfala (pdf), one page background fact sheet published by the National Organic Coalition
• Non GMO Shopping Guide
• Top 10 Reasons to Label Genetically Engineered Foods

This is one of those days I nearly despair of ever living in the world of Ordinary. Thankfully, there are organizations like those listed above working diligently to help build it one fact sheet, one action, one vote at a time. Have you signed the petition? Please do your part. It is perhaps the most important thing you'll do today, and will only take a moment.

P.S. The urgent need to act preempted my usual post on becoming a zero waste household (formerly War on Garbage) today. If time permits, I'll post it this evening or tomorrow morning.

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We make peace in a million small ways every day.

All text and images, unless otherwise noted, copyright L. Kathryn Grace. All rights reserved.