Sunday, October 16, 2011

From The Nation's What's next for the global food movement? volume, dated October 3, 2011: "President Obama ordered " the EPA to delay new regulations on ozone emissions because rules pose undue 'burdens' on corporate polluters." The president has also created fuel efficiency standars that "will significantly lower air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. But he has done bad things as well, including opening vast tracts of the West to coal mining and providing much more funding to nuclear and fossil fuel than to green alternatives." "sustenance has become a health hazard-with the US diet implicated in four out of our top ten deadly diseases." "Just four companies control at least three-quarters of international grain trade; and in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations-with boards totaling only 138 people-had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales. Conditions for American farmworkers remain so horrific that seven Florida growers have been convicted of slavery involving more than 1,000 workers. Life expectancy of US farmworkers is forty-nine years." "roughly half-billion small farms worldwide (...) produce 70 percent of the world's food." In the United States "The largest 9 percent of farms produce more than 60 percent of output. But small farmers still control more than half our farmland, and the growing market for healthy fresh food has helped smallholders grow: their numbers went up by 18,467 between 2002 and 2007." "Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta- control about half the proprietary seed market worldwide." In 2002 the Supreme Court allowed the patent of life forms. The opinion was written by once Monsanto attorney Clarence Thomas. In 1992 the Food and Drug Administration stated that "the agency is not aware of any information showing that [GMO] foods...differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way" while in 40,000 FDA file pages GMO's can contain "unexpected toxins, carcinogens or allergens." "(...) now most US corn and soybeans are GMO, with genes patented largely by one company: Monsanto.(...) they could be in 75 percent of processed food."

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