October, 18 2016, 11:30am EDT
Amid Controversy, Secrecy, and Lawsuits, 5,000 Organic Stakeholders Calling for New Management at USDA National Organic Program
Secret Documents Released: Reading Room Established for Material Obtained from USDA through Federal Lawsuits
CORNUCOPIA, Wisconsin
The Cornucopia Institute has delivered to the USDA more than 5,000 individually signed letters from farmers and consumers calling for new management of the National Organic Program (NOP). The Wisconsin-based organic food and farm policy research group collected the letters from concerned organic advocates across the country.
"This is one more indication of the growing dissatisfaction with Deputy Administrator Miles McEvoy's direction and oversight of the rapidly growing organic industry," said Mark Kastel, who acts as Cornucopia's Senior Farm Policy Analyst.
The Cornucopia Institute, along with many other public interest groups, has been highly critical of what they describe as a "corporate takeover" of the regulatory process that Congress designed specifically to protect organic rulemaking from the influence of agribusiness lobbyists.
"Under the direction of Deputy Administrator McEvoy, the independence of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), an expert policy panel convened by Congress to act as a buffer between lobbyists, like the powerful Organic Trade Association, and USDA policymakers has been seriously undermined," stated Dr. Barry Flamm, a Montana farmer, scientist, and past chairperson of the NOSB.
In the cover letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, the organization cited several areas where USDA management is failing. These include:
- A serious lack of enforcement activities on major fraud and alleged violations of organic regulations occurring with "factory farm" livestock activities -- all cloaked in secrecy.
- Turning a blind eye towards the questionable authenticity of the flood of organic imports coming into this country from China, India, a number of former Soviet Bloc states and Central America that have effectively shut American organic grain farmers out of the U.S. market.
- Allowing, in violation of the law, giant industrial-scale soilless production of organic produce (hydroponic and other management systems), along with ignoring NOSB prohibitions on nanotechnology, using conventional livestock on organic dairies, and other issues.
- Usurpation of NOSB governance and authority by USDA/NOP staff and other violations of the Organic Foods Production Act (Cornucopia has a federal lawsuit being adjudicated that charges the USDA with appointing agribusiness executives to the NOSB in seats Congress had specifically earmarked for stakeholders who "own or operate an organic farm").
- Unilateral changes to the Sunset review process for synthetic and non-organic materials, making it difficult for unnecessary or harmful substances to be removed from organics when agribusinesses lobby for them (the USDA is currently involved in litigation with Cornucopia and other stakeholders on this Sunset issue).
"We want organics to live up to the true meaning envisioned by the founders of this movement," Kastel added. "For both organic farmers and organic consumers, that means sound environmental stewardship, humane animal husbandry, wholesome and nutritious food derived from excellent soil fertility, and economic justice for those who produce our food. The USDA needs to act to preserve consumer trust in the organic label."
Due in part to the issues that Cornucopia is spotlighting, Consumer Reports has downgraded the credibility of the USDA organic label from its previous top-tier ranking.
"The corporations that are part of the Organic Trade Association, like Driscoll's, General Mills (Cascadian Farms, Muir Glenn, Annie's), WhiteWave (Horizon, Silk, Earthbound Farms, Wallaby) and Clif Bar, have the power to trade the credibility of the organic seal for short-term profit. The USDA needs to step in and protect the public," Kastel stated.
The Cornucopia Institute is continuing to encourage organic stakeholders to join in this campaign by printing, signing, and returning a proxy letter, which can be accessed at https://www.cornucopia.org/2015/09/sign-the-proxy-letter-remove-current-usda-organic-management/.
Nine Lawsuits Filed over Secrecy and Alleged Violations of the Freedom of Information Act
Relatedly, Cornucopia has filed nine federal lawsuits against the USDA concerning the agency's failure to comply with access to public records under the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The documents are now housed on the Cornucopia website in its FOIA Reading Room for public viewing.
"We have, over the years, made FOIA requests to the USDA to learn more about organic fraud enforcement and better understand decision making on organic issues," explained Will Fantle, Cornucopia's Codirector.
Originally passed in 1966 and amended over the years, the Freedom of Information Act pushes the federal government towards transparency, compelling federal agencies to provide the public with documents and communications. The Obama administration had pledged to increase transparency, but they have been harshly criticized for their failure to do so by many civil society groups and transparency advocates.
Over the past several years, Cornucopia's FOIA requests have, the group contends, become increasingly meaningless. According to Fantle, the FOIA requests are characterized by years-long delays in response time, even though the government is legally bound to reply within 20 days. In addition, Cornucopia has found abuse of legal exceptions used by the USDA to essentially "black out" (redact) the majority of text before publicly sharing documents.
One of Cornucopia's unanswered FOIAs dated from 2012. This request relates to a factory farm enforcement action taken by the USDA against Shamrock Dairy in Arizona. The Shamrock case was opened by the USDA in 2008 when Cornucopia filed a formal legal complaint alleging organic law violations, by milking conventional and organic cows in the desert with a modicum of required pasture land. Since filing a lawsuit in early 2016, Cornucopia has received, and is reviewing, almost 2,000 pages of documents related to this request.
While the USDA confirmed that Shamrock Dairy was milking thousands of cows in violation of the organic standards, and proposed sanctions against the operation and its certifier, Quality Assurance International (QAI), both organizations remain in the organic business today.
Cornucopia initially requested documents on the Shamrock scandal because the USDA failed to inform the public as to how they could legally allow this giant scofflaw to continue in operation.
"In a democracy, private citizens and public interest groups should not have to invest their money hiring lawyers to enforce their rights to documents that, by law, they are entitled to," stated Fantle.
Cornucopia said it hopes the current administration will take action to correct the allegations of ethical improprieties and mismanagement at the National Organic Program, bringing in new management that respects Congress's intent to protect the public when it passed the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990.
The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit.
LATEST NEWS
State Department Spokesman Urged to Resign Over 'Despicable' Attack on UN Expert
One critic described Matthew Miller's attack on United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as a "Trumpian smearing of a principled human rights expert."
Mar 28, 2024
U.S. State Department Matthew Miller faced calls to resign Thursday after he accused a United Nations special rapporteur of engaging in antisemitism—an attack that came days after the human rights expert presented a report concluding that Israel's assault on Gaza has met the threshold of genocide.
Asked about the report during a press briefing on Wednesday, Miller said the U.S. has "for a longstanding period of time opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur, which we believe is not productive."
"And when it comes to the individual who holds that position, I can't help but note a history of antisemitic comments that she has made that have been reported," Miller added, pointing to comments that Francesca Albanese—the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories—"made in December that appeared to justify the attacks of October 7."
A new low by the Biden team.
In response to UN Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs new report - Anatomy of a Genocide - concluding that the threshold of genocide has reasonably been met, the State Dep chooses to attack her persona and accuse her of antisemitism :( :( pic.twitter.com/iNpVT3BWQy
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 27, 2024
It's not entirely clear which comments Miller was referencing.
In an interview with Jewish News Syndicate in December, Albanese was asked whether Palestinian militants' killing of Israeli soldiers on October 7 was a violation of international law. Albanese, an Italian attorney and academic, said that "killing a soldier is a tragedy under international law, but when there is an armed conflict, like in this case, killing a soldier is not illegal."
But Albanese stressed in the interview that the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians—including the taking of hostages—were "not legitimate resistance."
"These are crimes and cannot be justified," she added.
Miller's attack on Albanese Wednesday—which echoed earlier attacks on the special rapporteur by U.S. officials and lawmakers—sparked immediate backlash and calls for his resignation.
"Matthew Miller should be forced to resign for trying to endanger the life of a U.N. official with falsehoods," Ashish Prashar, a spokesperson for Gaza Voices, said in a statement. Albanese said earlier this week that she has faced threats following the publication of her report accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, called the State Department spokesman's remarks a "truly despicable, Trumpian smearing of a principled human rights expert."
"Note the lack of substantive rebuttals of her careful analysis, and the resort to ad hominem attacks," Talbot wrote on social media. "Not the sign of a confident administration."
"Israel has a long history of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism to attack and undermine those fighting for human rights for Palestinians."
The Israeli government has similarly attempted to cast Albanese as an antisemite, drawing pushback from human rights organizations and academics who say the claim is a baseless attempt to discredit her work.
"Israel has a long history of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism to attack and undermine those fighting for human rights for Palestinians—and U.N. officials and experts have been among the most consistent victims of those attacks," Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
"Almost 15 years ago Richard Falk," Bennis added, "an internationally respected Princeton professor of international law who had just been appointed special rapporteur, was not only denied access to the occupied Palestinian territory to carry out the terms of his U.N. mandate, but was also arrested and jailed by Israeli authorities."
"Since then every special rapporteur has been similarly excluded, their mandate and their work undermined, and their commitment to international law and human rights attacked as antisemitic," she said. "Francesca Albanese has been among the bravest of these SRs, maintaining her commitment to calling out all violations of international law relevant to her mandate—including when Israel has violated international covenants against apartheid and now, against genocide."
Albanese's 25-page report, which she delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, argues that "the overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group."
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the following acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to groups' members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part," the report states. "Genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials."
Amnesty International praised the report as "a crucial body of work that must serve as a vital call to action."
The Biden State Department has publicly rejected genocide accusations against Israel as "meritless" and said it has not found Israel's military to be in violation of international law during its monthslong war on Gaza—an assessment that conflicts with the findings of leading human rights organizations and U.N. experts.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Horrifying' Footage Shows IDF Killing Two Gazans, Burying Their Bodies With a Bulldozer
"When the Israeli army can do these things and get away with it, it can only then do more of it knowing that it will not meet any punishment," said one analyst.
Mar 28, 2024
Video footage broadcast Wednesday by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers gunning down two Palestinians on the coast of northern Gaza, even as one of them waves what appears to be a piece of white fabric.
The footage shows one of the men walking in the direction of an Israeli military vehicle with both hands raised. Despite the absence of any clear evidence that the man posed a threat, Israeli forces shot him from a short distance away. Another man is seen on the ground not far behind.
Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum said the killings took place near where World Central Kitchen recently dropped off food aid.
The video then shows Israeli soldiers burying the bodies with a bulldozer.
"Probably certain words should be invented for this sort of thing," Marwan Bishara, AI Jazeera's chief political analyst, said in response to the footage. "I am not sure we have the sufficient vocabulary to describe this sort of twilight zone of Israel's fantasy of being the world's most moral army."
"It's a fantasy that meets the reality of a genocide," Bishara added. "An attempt to kill or destroy much of Palestine and Palestinians and hide the evidence and lie about it. When the Israeli army can do these things and get away with it, it can only then do more of it knowing that it will not meet any punishment."
Watch:
مشاهد حصرية للجزيرة لإعدام جنود إسرائيليين مدنيين فلسطينيين أثناء محاولتهم العودة لشمال قطاع غزة#الأخبار #حرب_غزة pic.twitter.com/QER98mv2n6
— قناة الجزيرة (@AJArabic) March 27, 2024
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, toldAl Jazeera that the footage provides "vivid confirmation of continuing Israeli atrocities" and spotlights the "unambiguous character of Israeli atrocities that are being carried out on a daily basis."
"The eyes and ears of the world have been assaulted in real-time by this form of genocidal behavior," said Falk. "It is a shocking reality that there has been no adverse reaction from the liberal democracies in the West. It is a shameful moment."
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, whose board Falk chairs, has documented numerous examples of Israeli soldiers conducting close-range field executions in Gaza since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault following a Hamas-led attack.
In less than six months, Israeli forces have killed more than 32,500 people in Gaza and sparked one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in modern history.
The video footage emerged just days after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S., Israel's leading arms supplier, abstained from the vote and falsely claimed the measure was "nonbinding."
The Israeli government, for its part, immediately signaled that it would disregard the resolution, just as it has ignored orders from the International Court of Justice.
Sophie McNeill, a human rights campaigner, called the footage released Wednesday "horrifying" and demanded that the International Criminal Court "urgently prioritize investigating and charging all those carrying out war crimes in Gaza."
"There just so happened to be a camera here in this moment. What are we not seeing?" McNeill asked. "This impunity must end."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Joe Lieberman, Iraq War Cheerleader and Killer of Public Option, Dead at 82
"Joe Lieberman's legacy will live on as your medical debt."
Mar 27, 2024
While current and former officials across the U.S. political spectrum shared praise for and fond memories of former Sen. Joe Lieberman in response to news of his death on Wednesday, critics highlighted how some of his key positions led to the deaths of many others.
Lieberman's family said the 82-year-old died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital after a fall at his home in the Bronx. He served in the Connecticut Senate, as the state's attorney general, and in the U.S. Senate—initially as a Democrat and eventually as an Independent. He was also Democratic former Vice President Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential election.
"Up until the very end, Joe Lieberman enjoyed the high-quality, government-financed healthcare that he worked diligently to deny the rest of us. That's his legacy," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for universal, single-payer healthcare.
As Warren Gunnels, majority staff director for Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
explained, "Joe Lieberman led the effort to ensure the Affordable Care Act did not include a public option or a reduction in the Medicare eligibility age to 55."
Noting that Lieberman also lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq—which was used to justify the 2003 U.S. invasion—Gunnels asked, "How many people unnecessarily died as a result?"
He was far from alone in highlighting the two defining positions.
The Lever's David Sirota declared, "RIP Joe Lieberman, Iraq War cheerleader who led the fight to make sure Medicare was not extended to millions of Americans who desperately needed the kind of healthcare coverage he enjoyed in the Senate."
The Debt Collective said on social media that "Joe Lieberman killed so many people when he killed the public option. Not to mention all the people he killed by cheerleading every war and every lie that led to war. A truly horrible person with a shameful legacy."
Journalist Jon Schwarz pointed out that Lieberman continued to lie about the WMDs long after the claims were debunked.
FormerMSNBC host Mehdi Hasan noted that Lieberman declined an opportunity to apologize for the disastrous war, sharing a clip from his on-camera interview with the ex-senator in 2021.
And please don\u2019t give me this \u2018don\u2019t speak ill of the dead\u2019 stuff - 1) I\u2019m not speaking ill, I\u2019m stating facts, and 2) public figures are public figures, and their obits reflect their legacies and so we should be honest in our accounts of their legacies. Not offensive but honest— (@)
"We lost a giant today. I often disagreed with Joe Lieberman but he was always honorable in the way he called for American troops to murder people abroad so he could get his jollies," said Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project in a series of sarcastic social media posts.
"Joe Lieberman balanced his love of other people fighting in immoral wars with a commitment to preventing Americans from getting healthcare," Stoller added. "Even after his Senate career, he showed his strong democratic values by lobbying for Chinese telecom firms. We will miss this man."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular