This diary is long. Sorry. It shows that during Bill Clinton's administration Monsanto got a foot hold in the FDA, and that the serious problems facing rural farmers and dairy cow owners are rooted in decisions dating back to Bill and his relations to Monsanto and the control they had with the FDA through him. These rural farmers and our food safety have been under assault ever since and now Hillary is paying the Monsanto PR man,Mark Penn, several million to run her campaign. Hillary is pushing for a faux 'food safety department' that really is nothing more than a means for Monsanto to gain more control over farmers and the market while doing nothing about food safety. So she continues the Monsanto relationship Bill started. (and this even mentions Monsanto's actions in India that have resulted in many suicides by India's farmers.)
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/6/12851/87143Getting Real in Pennsylvania - about Pennsylvania
by Scaredhuman
Wed Mar 05, 2008 at 10:28:51 PM PST
Barack Obama has an alternative to attacking Hillary Clinton, and one that would have meaning to urban voters in Pennsylvania as well as to its rural people.
Let me explain. But, as I do so, please, keep one thing in mind - Hillary Clinton's campaign strategist and long time advisor, is Mark Penn, who is CEO of Burson-Marsteller, PR firm to Monsanto.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/... First issue:
Recently Pennsylvania survived a Monsanto push to ban labels telling consumers if the milk was rBGH-free or not.
"Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture reversed course today (January 18, 2008?) in deciding that consumers ought to have the right to know how the cows that produced their milk were being raised. Whatever the reason for the choice consumers make, they can't make it without a label defining its meaning.
"This is a victory for free speech, free markets, sustainable farming, and the consumer's right to know," said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist with Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports. "Consumers increasingly want to know more about how their food is produced, and particularly whether it is produced in natural and sustainable manner. There is no justification for prohibiting information about rbGH use on a milk label."
http://www.thedailygreen.com/...But "a victory for free speech, free markets, sustainable farming, and the consumer's right to know," oddly enough, leaves off flesh and blood farmers. Instead, concepts are heralded. But Dailykos readers, in thinking about Pennsylvania, should realize we're talking Pennsylvania dairy farmers - rural people - who cared deeply about this. It affected their ability to sell their products, and in potential lawsuits they faced for trying to tell the truth about their products - all thanks to Monsanto. That battle is going on across the country.
Second issue:
NAIS. Don't know what it is? That, my friend, makes it seems to farmers and ranchers and rural people that liberals have the heads up their ... . Because if they gave a good goddam about what is actually happening to these people - to the gun toting, Bible reading, flag saluting, home-schooling people in the countryside whom many liberals disdain - liberals would know they are up against something as serious as NSA spying.
(Somehow I think "liberals" don't know and are disdainful, and I hope that progressives, who may not know, are at least not disdainful, but it doesn't matter - Democrats should care about all the people in this country and stop being afraid of those who are different, not in color but in beliefs, enough to see their plight and our common concerns.)
NAIS - the National Animal Identification System - is one of the largest overreaches by our government in its history and it threatens to wipe out farmers - through costs, overwhelming red tape, and personal invasiveness so great many are refusing to submit. A global tracking tag will monitor every movement of every animal they own.
http://www.thenation.com/...It is Big Brother on a scale hard for us to conceive and at a personal threat to privacy, that we city people would find impossible to bear.
We worry rightly about our being spied on. These folks are being.
And there was no democratic process that set this up.
***It looks like Big Brother, but it is Monsanto and other Big AG corporations using the USDA to set up a "corporate" data base allowing corporations infinite and immense oversight of all private animal stock in this country.
Before some idiot says that "but oh, that will help make us safer about food," try changing the words just a little and say instead, "oh, but spying helps make us safer from terrorists" and you'll see how this is working.
Just as with the excuses about spying, there are plenty of identification systems already in place to track animals and every one brought to slaughter houses has to be registered with all information, in the first place.
No, this is about (my guess) Monsanto having a way to track its cloned animal "intellectual property" and/or (my guess) their desire to know just who still has normal animals out there and which they are. This is about (my guess) Monsanto happy for a system which overwhelms independent small farmers so badly that they are pushed to the verge of going under, or go ahead. Guesses. But something big and ugly is going on and at the least, it kills the competition.
NAIS is pushed under the aegis of "Food Safety"
- back to that in a moment - but
NAIS does nothing to actually deal with the worsening industrial methods and factory-warehousing and slaughterhouse conditions that the corporations use and which are responsible for Mad Cow and Bird Flu.
It may be being set up to allow corporations to shift liability for sick animals onto farmers - a rancher's guess - though it is the Mad Cow in the feed (still in pig, chicken and fish feed and pet food, thanks to Bill Clinton) and the grotesque holding pens and slaughter houses of the Big AG corporations that spawn the diseases, not steers or sheep out in a farmer's field, eating grass.
By the way, speaking of USDA and FDA and labels and Monsanto, I haven't found out yet which corporations (though I have a sneaking suspicion of one that might be involved), are
pushing for the label "Naturally raised" to include even cloned animals which have never even
seen the light of day outside of an animal factory.
This might scare you as a consumer but keep thinking rural a bit longer, and realize the huge threat to to the livelihoods of those farmers and ranchers who actually raise "free range" animals under good conditions because they then must compete against the giants (who are doing nothing good) as they sell to a public which is willing to pay more for healthier meat from animals living in more humane conditions.
http://www.dailykos.com/... Okay, back to Pennsylvania. They barely fended off the Monsanto-driven push to ban labeling
of milk and they lost entirely on NAIS which is mandatory now in Pennsylvania. Both
Monsanto.
Now, look carefully at "Food Safey" -
"Food Safety" is the boogeyman (not unlike terrorism) Monsanto and the AG industry use to gain more control over farmers and over all aspects of the market while doing squat to actually deal with "food safety."
Again, like how we deal with terrorist threats.
******** So, who is pushing a "Food Safety Deparment"? Whose husband put Monsanto in charge of his FDA which approved the first genetically engineered product "ever" and then wouldn't label it (rBGH)? Who has Monsanto running her campaign?**********
*Hillary Clinton.*
**All the anti-farmer things mentioned above come home to roost with her, given Bill's actions and Monsanto at her arm.
To give a neat example of how it works:
** Hillary supports the Farm Bill's Credit & Crop Insurance, talking about it being "almost
impossible in some cases for coming generations to make a career in agriculture."
http://www.senate.gov/... It sounds so good until one learns that
*** "the U.S. Department of Agriculture has struck an unusual arrangement with agribusiness giant
Monsanto Co. that gives farmers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota a break on federal
crop insurance premiums if they plant Monsanto-brand seed corn this spring."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...***For farmers who buy its GE-seeds, Monsanto sends Pinkerton agents onto their property to make sure farmers don't collect GE-seeds - Monsanto's patented "intellectual property." Monsanto also uses planes and helicopters to surveille farmers.
http://www.patentprofits.com/...***Has Hillary ever said a thing critical about the way farmers are being crushed or moved to protect them?
Can we just agree that Monsanto is the devil incarnate (some think that understates the case) and that Bill was its eager agent for years, and that Hillary is now its hand-maiden, already showing signs - with the crop insurance and the "Food Safety Department" - of what she will do for Monsanto if she gets into office?
Progressives have MISSED that NAIS and the ban on labeling are immense, frighteningly undemocratic threats to farmers. Some Amish dairy farmers have even turned in their herds to escape NAIS.
Progressives have missed forming alliances with angry farmers and ranchers who hate Monsanto and are doing their level best just to survive as farmers. Progressives have missed that the yin to that yang of angry farmers are "consumers" (your city/country split right there) who are afraid about food and want to know what the hell is in their milk.
Got milk? Milk got .... what?
Instead, when Ohio went for Clinton, people on Dailykos people had some harsh words for Ohio's people, talking about them like they were nobodies, rather than realizing that Obama hadn't touched what they care about, failing to make even the points about Bill literally deconstructing the state with NAFTA.
Progressives miss that farmers and ranchers and rural people are facing unbelievable threats while corporate media is quick to stir hatred of immigrants as a diversion from the reality of who is really hurting them. These are not people who have the resources progressives do and they feel embattled.
If you missed the whole thing about NAIS, give them room to miss some things as well.
They certainly know what is happening on the ground out there which involves our food and they have been doing their damnedest to tell us the truth, even facing being sued by Monsanto for doing so, even fighting for their right to plant non-GE-seeds, and all the while US agriculture is collapsing out from under them.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/... So, by all means, let's get real, but let's get real not about number counts and possibilities of winning on some state but about what is actually going on in Pennsylvania and who needs our help - our farmers. And who helps us - our farmers.
Obama doesn't have to attack. He only needs to do what Hillary can't legitimately do - call up the farming groups in Pennsylvania, and hold a rally, and tell them he will stop NAIS nationally, and he will insist on honest labeling of all foods, including GE-crops and cloned meats - even ours
Hillary "bravely" pushes for "Country of Origin Labels - but we want to know what's "in" the damn food, including ours. Another sleight of hand, like crop-insurance, and one she often uses.
Obama should tell Pennsylvania farmers that he will review USDA statutes and laws that are crippling small farmers across the country and reshape them with the advice of family farmers, to help them survive, and not allow them to be discriminated against in competition with corporations.
He should tell them he knows they, in fact, have the most clean and safe conditions for raising animals in the country and that "Food Safety" needs to start with the inspectors at meat packing plants and with industrialized "confinement" facilities for animals.
There are 32,000 hogs a day slaughtered at the Smithfield Tar Heel plant in North Carolina and they want to speed the line up to 39,000 with no increase in the 5000 workers. It is the "fast kill line that leads to E-coli contamination of meat, as the viscera are cut in such a way that the contents spray on the meat, unavoidable at times with such haste." Stephen Bartlett, farmer.
Obama needs to say flat out he knows he doesn't look who the farmers might have expected as their friend, and that even his name is a little odd out in the country, but he intends to put American family farms back on their feet and make farming something they can hand down to their children and grandchildren again.
By the way, since Monsanto and friends moved into India in the last 1990s, 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land. The suicides are continuing at the rate of 2 every hour. Farmers here would understand that - many killed themselves during the 1980s, their land bought up by corporate agriculture. Monsanto's impact around the world has been devastating and their control is increasingly rapidly, using bribery, corrupting of government, lawsuits against farmers, take over land grant colleges, misleading media, etc.
So,
Hillary's corporate connection isn't just to any corporation. It is to perhaps the most
threatening corporation to all human beings and plants and animals on earth,
more so than nuclear power which is being somewhat monitored. No one is watching genetic engineering or controlling Monsanto's take-over of food sources around the world. I can't remember where I saw the figure but Monsanto and 3 -4 other corporations now supposedly controls 80% of all food sources in the world and it is privatizing water as well.
******This issue connects urban and rural areas of this country. Farmers and consumers. Hillary is in deep doo-doo because of Bill's actions during his administration with Monsanto and against farmers, and her silence and now Monsanto traveling with her but no one is noticing.********
No, forget that. Forget Hillary Clinton. Forget the election. Someone needs to save our farmers. Barack Obama ought to help because he ought to. If he starts in Pennsylvania, maybe we get to see Amish farmers getting their dairy herds back.
More>>>
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/6/12851/87143 
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