SIGN THE PETITION HERE
ON THE FOOD DEMOCRACY NOW SITE
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/leafygreens/?akid=350.183604.p29q-h&r...



COMMENTS DUE
BY 11:59 PM JULY 28, 2011

SUBMIT AND READ COMMENTS HERE
ON THE PROPOSED NATIONAL GREEN LEAFY MARKETING AGREEMENT
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/leafygreensagreement



READ BACKGROUND
AND MY COMMENT HERE
ON THE NEW PLANT YOUR DREAM BLOG
http://plantyourdream.net/?p=2541


10:05 pm




Leslie Goldman, Your Enchanted Gardener, (L) That’s me!
with Dave Murphy, a Giant of a Man Doing Good in the World.
Photo from the Natural Product Expo West, March 11, 2011.
March 11 was a major wake up day for the world. The Tsunami
hit Japan. More than 500 Organic Stakeholders met at NPEW
and were asked to take unified action. Hopefully, we will
get the message soon that we might have a Tipping Point
for an Organic Uprising.


http://plantyourdream.net/?p=2541




7:04 am
July 27, 2011


This Plant Your Dream Blog,
and two others in this series
are is dedicated to Dave Murphy
and Lisa Stokke of Food Democracy Now, a non profit taking on
many good campaigns in the name causes I hold dear:
Food Justice and Sacred Food for All People.
This blog was specifically inspired
by a wake up call that by 5 pm, July 28, 2011, the USDA
was going to end receiving comments on the proposed
National Green Leafy Marketing Agrement.
Dave and Lisa were calling for 20,000 to join with them
in signing a petition to be delivered to USDA.
You can sign this petition here and read some good
arguments against the National Green Leafy Marketing Agreements
(NGLMA).
SIGN THE PETITION HERE
ON THE FOOD DEMOCRACY NOW SITE
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/sign/leafygreens/?akid=350.183604.p29q-h&r...

I have been following this story since before hearings
on July 29, 2009, when it caught my eye that Michael R. Taylor,
our Food Czar, who has the ear of President Obama,
was clearly calling for an alignment between the International
Codex Alimentarius Commission that determines Food Rules.
The CAC gets what it wants from nations by arm twisting them
that if they do not come into alignment with CAC they
will be on the bad end of Trade Agreements.
The CAC is more concerned, as I see it,
in making the world safe for corporate interests
that true Food Safety.
The CAC is basically pro Big Pharma and GMO and is
an organization that some say has been highjacked
by international corporate interests although it has
significant credentials and sponsors including the
UN and World Health Organization.
It’s influence can be traced downloading into the US houses of Congress
as evident to me through the recent passage of S-510,
The Food Safety Modernization Act signed into law
in early January 2011.
The CAC has a fascinating apparent time table.
For example, exactly two years to the day that
Michael R. Taylor went public (see his quote in this blog)
with his intention to align FDA with Codex, we have this National
Green Leafy Marketing Plan closing up its
USDA Comment Receiving period for the NGLMA.
His quote was given on July 28 2009. The comment
period for the National Green Leafy Marketing Agreement
ends July 28, 2010.
Although the time period ends for receiving comments
by 5 PM EST on July 28, the movement to educate goes on.
Basically, our US houses of Congress, and many leaders
in charge of nation’s destiny do not understand that
the foundation of a good economy worldwide is the
Bank of Compost. Pure, whole, natural (by this
I mean Organic), and fresh food are the foundation
of sustainable living, and give the power and will
for provide the internal electrical biochemical
connections that keep the Soul, Mind, Body,
and Emotions a chance to make dreams come true.
The move to educate continues here on
the Plant Your Dream Blog.
Leslie Goldman
Your Enchanted Gardener
July 27, 2011
7:31 am


Support the local food movement. Tell the USDA to stop colluding with Big Ag today!

Dear Leslie,

In the past 10 years the number of farmers markets has more than doubled, from 2,863 in 2000 to 6,132 in 2010. The rise in the popularity of the local, organic and sustainable food movement is the result of the growing awareness of major problems in our industrial food system and the increasing number of massive food safety outbreaks that have resulted from unchecked consolidation and concentration of food production in the U.S.

Today the USDA and Big Ag are conspiring to implement a set of rules that favors giant industrial growers while placing smaller, diversified farms at risk. Known as the National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, this set of rules is designed by industrial producers to protect their market share while harming their main competition, the growing local and organic food movement.

Drafted by the largest vegetable growers’ lobbyists, the Leafy Green agreement is an effort to whitewash their growing food safety problems and implement draconian practices that saddle farmers with one-size-fits-all rules that would drive local and organic farmers out of business with expensive regulations.

We have 3 days to stop this Agreement and we need you. Can you help us get 20,000 signatures to protect local and organic farmers by Thursday?

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/391?akid=350.183604.p29q-h&t=8


If allowed to pass, the Leafy Green agreement would rather “sterilize” fields, wipe out biodiversity and allow for more massive consolidation to take place among our best and most productive farms as it ignores the real causes of food safety outbreaks.

While existing organic standards already contain adequate rules that help prevent food-borne illnesses, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) recently agreed with Big Ag lobbyists to propose national food safety rules for vegetable growers despite the fact that the AMS has no food safety oversight or staff.

This move is yet another sign that the Obama administration and Secretary Vilsack are willing to pay lip service to improving our food system, while secretly working with giant agribusiness interests behind closed doors to undermine the very family farmers that are responsible for growing the food that more and more Americans are demanding.

It’s time that President Obama and Secretary Vilsack got serious about protecting the most vibrant and fastest growing segment of our food supply and stop doing the bidding of Big Ag lobbyists to create “one-size-fits-all” rules that harm family farmers, America’s consumers and our food supply.

If you’ve had enough of the corporate and government collusion in handing over our food supply to agribusiness, then please tell Secretary Vilsack and the USDA that it’s time to put farmers and food safety first.

Click here to: Say no to forcing Big Ag’s Leafy Green Agreement on America’s most productive and innovative farmers.

http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/391?akid=350.183604.p29q-h&t=11


Thanks for being such an important number making up our movement,

Dave, Lisa and the Food Democracy Now! Team


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TALKING POINTS
THAT FOOD DEMOCRACY NOW
WILL SEND WITH LETTERS
TO USDA

A version of the points below will be submitted with your comments to the USDA on July 28th.


To have more impact, please take a moment to write a personalized message about how important it is that the USDA protect America's family farmers and stops allowing Big Ag lobbyists to write the rules.

HOW TO COMMENT:

The USDA is seeking written comments from the public on the National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement proposal by July 28th.

As a farmer/ consumer I strongly oppose the National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement:

1. As a deeply flawed approach to handling food safety. The majority of harmful food safety outbreaks in the U.S. are the result of an overly concentrated, centralized food and agricultural system and not the results of bad practices by America’s family farmers.

2. The National Leafy Green Marketing Agreement creates one-size-fits-all standards that unfairly places an undue financial and regulatory burden on America’s small and mid-sized leafy green producers.

3. By focusing on false “audit metrics” and “control points”, the agreement, designed by agribusiness lobbyists, ignores the true problems of excessive scale and consolidation in our food system, while harming local and organic growers who make up the fastest growing and most vibrant sector of the farm economy.

4. The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service is NOT a food safety agency and is not legally charged with regulating food or agricultural products nor is its staff composed of food safety scientists.

5. The one-size-fits-all standards proposed under the Leafy Green Marketing Agreement harm family farmers and give giant agribusiness monopolies an unfair competitive advantage in the marketplace without making food safer for American consumers.




 

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