Colorado Beekeeper, Tom Theobald comments on the EPA’s letter dated, February 18, 2011. Tom’s comments are in blue font.
Bandwagon
Unfortunately, there are many manufacturers claiming to promote organic but are simply hopping on the green bandwagon. Decide for yourself!
Indonesia Cracks Down on Illegal Cyber Trade of Endangered Wildlife
The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced today a successful raid in Jakarta by Indonesian authorities that resulted in the arrest of a suspect found with hundreds of illegal wildlife items, including elephant ivory, sun bear parts, tiger bones, skins, and teeth, and more.
The suspect was trading from an art shop and using the internet to advertise illegal wildlife parts to domestic and foreign buyers. Parts appear to have been sourced from across Indonesia and were being shipped using courier services.
The internet is a growing medium for the sale of illegal wildlife parts and is proliferating in Indonesia, which now has over 30 million internet users and has the world’s second largest Facebook following.
America’s Organic Consumers Are Facing Betrayal
In the wake of a 12-year battle to keep Monsanto’s Genetically Engineered (GE) crops from contaminating the nation’s 25,000 organic farms and ranches, America’s organic consumers and producers are facing betrayal. A self-appointed cabal of the Organic Elite, spearheaded by Whole Foods Market, Organic Valley, and Stonyfield Farm, has decided it’s time to surrender to Monsanto. Top executives from these companies have publicly admitted that they no longer oppose the mass commercialization of GE crops, such as Monsanto’s controversial Roundup Ready alfalfa, and are prepared to sit down and cut a deal for “coexistence” with Monsanto and USDA biotech cheerleader Tom Vilsack.
In a cleverly worded, but profoundly misleading email sent to its customers last week, Whole Foods Market, while proclaiming their support for organics and “seed purity,” gave the green light to USDA bureaucrats to approve the “conditional deregulation” of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, herbicide-resistant alfalfa. Beyond the regulatory euphemism of “conditional deregulation,” this means that WFM and their colleagues are willing to go along with the massive planting of a chemical and energy-intensive GE perennial crop, alfalfa; guaranteed to spread its mutant genes and seeds across the nation; guaranteed to contaminate the alfalfa fed to organic animals; guaranteed to lead to massive poisoning of farm workers and destruction of the essential soil food web by the toxic herbicide, Roundup; and guaranteed to produce Roundup-resistant superweeds that will require even more deadly herbicides such as 2,4 D to be sprayed on millions of acres of alfalfa across the U.S.