I'm Craig Weakley, and I recently retired from Small Planet Foods after 22 years of working on the Cascadian Farm and the Muir Glen Organic brands. I now operate a consulting business focused on the organic industry, and currently serve on the board of directors of the Organic Trade Association. I believe it's time for the NOP to address the increasing problem of GMO contamination that organic farmers, processors and consumers are dealing with.

Date:   1/2/2013 9:31:43 PM ( 11 y ago)

I was here.
September 20, 2011

I want to work with this a bit later....


PHOTOS FROM THE DAY
http://www.flickr.com/photos/usdagov/6167509370/in/set-72157627715628292/ligh...




USDA HEADQUATERS
WASHINGTON, D.C.


FULL TRANSCRIPT

http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5095829

ORGANIC LISTENING DAY PAGE ON USDA SITE
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/2011organiclistening



MR. MCEVOY: Thank you very much.
Okay, next up before the break is Leslie
Goldman. Okay, Leslie Goldman I guess, Leslie

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Goldman is not here -- is here. Oh, there's
Leslie. Thank you, Leslie.

MR. GOLDMAN: It's an honor to be
here. My name is Leslie Goldman. I'm called
the Enchanted Gardener. I live in San Diego.
On Sundays of every week I wear
this very proudly.

[ I head up a apron from the Hillcrest Farmers' Market...
I never saw it again after that....
Must have left it at the USDA]


Numbers of our farmers
there have the USDA certification label, so I
feel quite at home here at headquarters.
I just want to say that I owe my
allegiance to conventional medicine. I was
crippled in my life, however, if it had not
been for the wisdom of organic, which has
existed for more than 8,000 years, past,
future and through our great friends here in
the organic field.
And to our allegiance to Tom
Vilsack, who did a wonderful job with The
People's Garden I visited yesterday for a
number of hours. I made friends with the
staff.
I just want to say that I'm
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volunteering to be your Enchanted Gardener for
The People's Garden. I'm doing this because
I want to see that program grow.
Tom Vilsack started The People's
Garden by saying it was going to be organic.
There would be no fertilizers. There would be
no pesticides. I was out there yesterday
enjoying the ray.
I want to introduce you to a
couple of my other friends. This is my
solution for the national dilemma. This is
Keep the Beet Media Star, the world's first
talking beet plant.
You get a beet from an organic
farmer, you repot it, you grow the greens, you
regain your confidence that you can grow your
own food.
That is the secret of a nation of
gardeners. This is what we need. We will be
making better decisions. We will be making
better decisions now as we get our beet back
with nature. That in essence is the problem.
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Can I hear a hip, hip, hooray on
that, please?
PARTICIPANTS: Hip, hip, hooray.
MR. GOLDMAN: Okay, I didn't hear
that. Can I hear a hip, hip, hooray?
PARTICIPANTS: Hip, hip, hooray.
MR. GOLDMAN: All right, so that's
what I'm here for. I'm your Enchanted
Gardener. I'm here to honor what we are
doing.
This is the magic box. This
contains the dreams of humanity. In this box,
I've just got to tell you all, it's going to
come out really, really good.
This right here is another friend
of mine. This is organic alfalfa growing in
a container that eliminates Styrofoam. I just
want to tell you everything's going to be
good.
I planted seeds with Dr. Robert
Fraley a couple of years ago at the National
Science Conference. As some of you know, he's
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the father of Roundup Ready.
We said we would have a dialogue
to lessen the tension between organic and GMO
levers. I need to say that Roundup Ready,
they gave it a good shot but GMO cannot save
organic or the world or feed the hungry.
We might as well have an honest
dialogue on science, ethics and food. He's a
great man. I thank him for planting organic
seeds with me, but I'd recommend that my dear
friends at Monsanto get on the program, start
funding some of the organic programs because
that's the future.
I want to leave you with a couple
thoughts. Soil depletion, it was put in a
Senate report, 1936, that our vegetables and
fruits could no longer feed us.
Soil depletion, that's a principle
of organic. We must build up the soil. We
will regain the future by building up the
soil, learning the principles, regaining our
health.
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Page 93
The future is ours and I'm glad to
accept that post and get it out. My niece
calls me Uncle Leslie at Hamilton High School.
There are kids all over this country that want
to be part of the people's project.
I want to salute all of you and
Tom Vilsack and all the great people for USDA.
Let's all work together. The time is now for
our children. Let's move organic forward.


Page 58


MR. WEAKLEY: Good morning, and
thank you for the opportunity to provide
comments to USDA.
I'm Craig Weakley, and I recently
retired from Small Planet Foods after 22 years
of working on the Cascadian Farm and the Muir
Glen Organic brands.

I now operate a consulting
business focused on the organic industry, and
currently serve on the board of directors of
the Organic Trade Association.
I believe it's time for the NOP to
address the increasing problem of GMO
contamination that organic farmers, processors
and consumers are dealing with.
Ten years ago GMO contamination
was a nuisance and a potential threat to our
industry, but today GMO contamination is a
substantial threat to the integrity of the
organic label, the ability of organic farmers
to sell their crops and the ability of organic
processors to obtain adequate supplies of
ingredients.
GMO contamination has also become
a heightened concern of organic consumers who
are increasingly looking to natural foods
retailers to provide assurances that the
products they're buying in their stores are
non-GMO.
I want to recommend three specific
action items related to the problem of GMO
contamination in the organic industry. First,
GMO contamination must be addressed as part of
your new proposed rule on periodic residue
testing.

Periodic residue testing is an
important enforcement tool required by the
OFPA, and GMO testing must be a part of it.
Periodic testing for GMOs is important to
assure compliance with the National Organic
Standards, and GMO testing will also provide
the industry with valuable data about the
magnitude of GMO contamination of organic
crops, ingredients and finished products.
The second action step is that the
NOP must begin to work on incorporating a
maximum GMO threshold into the organic
regulations.
The National Organic Standards
already contain a maximum threshold for
pesticide contamination of organic crops and
ingredients, and the reality is, is that the
organic marketplace has been operating under
a maximum GMO tolerance for many years now.
It's now time for the standards to
match our marketplace and to incorporate a GMO
threshold into our U.S. Organic Standards.

OTA endorses this concept and is ready to work
with both NOP and the NOSB to accomplish this
in the near future.
The third action step is that USDA
must reduce the resources it currently uses to
support and promote the biotech industry, and
redirect those resources to support organic
farmers and organic food companies.
USDA's continued promotion of GMO
crops is folly. Let's consider the facts.
The biotech industry promised reduced
pesticide use, but GMO crops substantially
increase herbicide use, they create insect
resistance and they create super weeds.
The biotech industry promised
increased crop yields, but research conducted
by USDA and others documents that GMO crop
yields are no higher and in some cases
actually lower.
The biotech industry promised no
environmental problems. But science shows
that GMOs decrease biodiversity and are
harmful to beneficial insects, aquatic
organisms and soil-borne organisms.
And the increased herbicide use in
GMO crops makes conventional agriculture even
less energy efficient than it already is.
The biotech industry also promised
to end world hunger. But researchers in
Africa, Asia and Latin America have documented
that organic production systems are far
superior in increasing yields, providing food
security and breaking the chains of poverty.
Finally, the biotech industry
claims that GMOs are safe to eat. There is no
scientific basis for this claim. Adequate
testing has simply not been done on GMOs.
The limited animal research that
has been conducted shows that harmful health
effects occur when animals are fed a GMO diet.
And researchers have recently found the Bt
toxin from GMO crops has contaminated the
bloodstream of adults and unborn children, a
human health concern that the biotech industry
told us simply could not happen.
It's time for USDA to drop its
support of biotechnology's false promises and
marketing rhetoric.
It's time for USDA to lend more
meaningful support to organic farmers who use
food production practices that avoid toxic
pesticides, benefit the environment, sequester
carbon, reduce soil erosion and provide
nutritious, wholesome food to consumers.
It's the right thing to do and now
is the right time to do it. Thanks.


SARAH BIRD OF ANNIE's ON WHEAT CONTAMINATION AND ORGANIC TRADE

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buy GE contaminated wheat because we know our
consumers simply would not accept it.
Such contamination forces a
manufacturer like Annie's to look overseas to
continue, to countries that either have not
deregulated the GE crops or have maintained
necessary safeguards to prevent contamination.
The best picture for a vibrant
organic economy is a vibrant U.S. production
base. Annie's does not want to be forced to
source our business offshore.
For U.S. organic wheat producers,
exports also play a key role in the overall
profitability of farms. GE contamination of
domestic organic crops all but puts a halt to
export opportunities.
The damage currently being done to
the organic brand and the organic marketplace
from GE contamination, as well as the real
possibility for future expansion of this
contamination, needs to be addressed in order
for the U.S. organic agriculture to thrive.
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We ask you to implement your
authority under the Plant Protection Act of
2000, to fully protect public health, the
environment and the economic interest of the
United States.
This authority should be
implemented through comprehensive regulations
to prevent further damage to lucrative and
important U.S. and international markets, to
ensure farmer profitability and rural economic
development and to support environmental
protection and consumer choice. Thank you.



MS. BOUIS-TOWE: Hi, my name is
Karine Bouis-Towe. I represent a new
coalition formed in August 2011, called Farm
Food Freedom Coalition.
We will engage the public through
education, outreach, lobbying and legal
action. We are a group of concerned consumers
and farmers who partner with like-minded
organizations on issues such as the USDA
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Organics Program.
We are concerned with the
standards that the USDA Organic Program puts
out regarding organic animal products. To us
organic stands for natural and natural means
the way nature intended animals to eat and
live.
We believe the current standards
have been compromised to accommodate
industrial agriculture, and need to be
tightened to follow the values that organic
implies and should uphold.
In addition, we are concerned with
the intense scrutiny bordering on
criminalization of independent American
farmers, which is currently taking place
especially for unprocessed or raw milk
farmers.
A documentary called Farmageddon
exposes actions by the USDA that show armed
raids of peaceful family farms. What happened
to civility and diplomacy? Why does our
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government even raid farms, especially armed?
The movie also highlighted that
the justification of the raids on these farms
lacked peer reviewed science and proof of the
allegations, which put at least one farmer
completely out of the sheep business.
We support independent peer
reviewed science that have no association to
the industry under study. Full disclosure of
industry connections should be included in any
publication.
There is excess demand for organic
local foods and a growing consumer demand for
unprocessed, pasture-raised animal products.
Currently the USDA and FDA are
hindering this market expansion when they
should be protecting, preserving and helping
to expand these options, because these options
build local economies and provide well paying,
skilled jobs and they protect our freedom of
choice and ultimately preserve and promote
good health and the environment.
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The Farm Food Freedom Coalition is
currently working with researchers at the
University of Maryland to evaluate the
participants of this market and compare this
niche with the population as a whole.
We have unique access to this
consumer base due to our collaboration with
buying clubs across the U.S. that purchase
food directly from farmers. We would gladly
share these results with you.
We believe that food should be
natural and should promote health. We believe
the organic standards should be tougher, and
we believe that the USDA needs to utilize
their massive resources and expertise to
preserve and promote independent farming, not
just promote centralized food production.
The perceived efficiencies of a
centralized food system ignore the
externalities or true costs to the environment
and human and animal health.
This includes developing programs
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that provide young farmers the opportunity to
purchase or farm when they otherwise could not
afford to.
And by the way, there is a booming
apprenticeship program within the biodynamic
agriculture community. There are lots of
farmers waiting to find land to farm on in a
way that will restore the environment and the
health in that community.
We are deeply concerned about the
human experiment that is taking place
regarding GMOs in our food supply. We know
the impact on animals includes loss of
fertility and strong immune responses.
If that isn't enough to bring
precaution to everyone making decisions at the
policy level, we believe that your group needs
to stay the course to continue to push against
corporations like Monsanto who are so vested
in GMO products that our government officials
are heeding to their quest to dominate all
commodity crops.
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 We are currently losing this
battle, with the latest conversion alfalfa
crops, a crop that has no reason to go GMO.
We shouldn't allow the main source
of nutrition in our animals to be something
not proven safe, never mind the fact that we
shouldn't be feeding these grains to animals
in the first place.
We are already in a dangerous
situation with animal factory farming,
antibiotic-resistant bacteria and virulent
strains of disease that can and will pass to
humans at some point.
Now we are further compromising
these animals with known and unknown effects
of GMOs. We are deeply disappointed in our
government which no longer serves the people
in many aspects.
For today's discussion it's the
feed industry. Our federal and local
government agencies are consistently working
with large industry, and needs to become more
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aware of the independent farmers' needs so
policies can be created fairly for the market
being regulated. One size doesn't fit all in
agriculture.
Furthermore, we feel these
agencies have been compromised by the
revolving door which exists between industry
and government regulators.
The results of this revolving door
are decisions being made with a disregard for
human impact, but rather for bottom lines and
progress.
This results in a failure to
protect our nation's people, environment and
the future. Thank you.
MR. MCEVOY: Yes, excuse me,
Karine.
MS. BOUIS-TOWE: Yes.
MR. MCEVOY: One of the first
points you made was about organic animal
products and the standards. Do you have any
specifics on that of the part of the standard
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that --
MS. BOUIS-TOWE: Well, for
example, the grain feeding, the organic grain
feeding. Since we consider organic to be
natural, many of the animals, especially
ruminants, belong on pasture.
And so, yes, we would accommodate
some grain feeding to do things like more milk
production in some cases, but we don't think
that a majority of their diet should be grain.
It should be what nature intended them.
Ruminants should be consuming pasture.
MR. MCEVOY: Okay, so the pasture
rule that was implemented this past year or so
does not meet your perspective?
MS. BOUIS-TOWE: Do you know what
percent pasture and outdoor time that
includes? Because pasture also implies a
certain amount of outdoor time.
Chickens are another example of
that where they have a window to the outside,
but not living outside.
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MR. MCEVOY: Okay. Well, I guess
I would encourage you to take a look at the
current pasture rule, the changes to that, and
if you have any specific comments on that we'd
love to hear it.
MS. BOUIS-TOWE: Okay, thank you.
I will do that

 

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