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Anti-food defamation laws, a new threat to free speech in the USA
``` Date: 08/15/95 From: Purefood@aol.com (Purefood@aol.com) Subject: Anti-food defamation laws, a new threat to free speech in the USA
Anti-food defamation laws a new threat to free speech in the USA
By Ronnie Cummings USA Coordinator of the Pure Food Campaign 1-800-451-7670
"Food Slander" laws, now in force in at least 11 states, make it a civil crime to denigrate or criticize food products without a "scientific" basis. Industry lobbyists admit that these laws are probably unconstitutional in most states, but that their real purpose is to intimidate activists, journalists, and concerned consumers.
Something stinks. And it's not just left-over junk food or bacteria and feces-contaminated meat from filthy slaughterhouses and hog and poultry factories. It's not just the scent of chemical pesticides on non-organic fruits and vegetables. It's not just the pus, antibiotics, and growth hormones souring the public attitude toward rBGH dairy products and other unlabeled, untested genetically engineered foods. It's more than this. It's in the tap water, the topsoil, the air. In the alarming statistics on increasing cancer, food poisoning, chemical hyper-sensitivity, antibiotic resistance, allergies, sterility, and immune disorders. No wonder 80% of the public in a recent poll ranked "food safety" as a "very important" issue. But now perhaps the most putrid smell of all seems to be wafting out of the halls and backrooms of Congress, where a bipartisan effort is underway to weaken already inadequate food safety laws.
Further smells emanate from state capitals in South Dakota, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Idaho, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Colorado, and Louisiana--and perhaps soon other states--where indentured legislators are busy passing so-called "food disparagement" laws designed by ag-chemical- biotech industry lobbyists. Laws intended to curtail your right to free speech. To make it illegal to hand out a leaflet like this one, or to dump "suspect" rBGH milk where it belongs--in the gutter.
Instead of government and industry dealing with the evermore serious crisis of food and environmental contamination and deteriorating public health and nutrition, we are being slapped with cutbacks in food and environmental safety, and threatened with food defamation laws.
Instead of giving us what we want: affordable, healthy, natural, clean food--safety-tested and clearly labeled to enable consumers to exercise free choice--the powers that be seem intent upon taking away our right to know what's been done to our food and instead delivering another message: Let them eat hormones, feces, chemicals, dioxin, antibiotics... Government and corporation hacks use so-called "risk assessment" and "cost accounting" to tell us it's "too expensive" to clean-up food industry practices, even as the Centers for Disease Control admit that 20 to 80 million people a year get food poisoning; and published data indicate that environmental and food-related cancer rates are steadily increasing.
The chem-pharm industry and their indentured politicians know we want mandatory labeling for genetically engineered foods, but they also know that new technologies such as genetic engineering are potentially "too profitable" to allow the squeamishness of the public to stand in the way of progress.
Eighteen months after the introduction of America's first major genetically engineered food product, Monsanto's synthetic Bovine Growth Hormone, the Pure Food Campaign and allied activist groups have all but destroyed rBGH economically. Recent statistics indicate that 95% of the nations' dairy farmers are boycotting the drug, while a full 80% of consumers still want it taken off the market or labeled--so that they can avoid it.
To defend consumers and family farmers, the Pure Food Campaign has sued Monsanto and the FDA in Federal Court. We expect the court to rule in our favor this summer, either by revoking approval for rBGH or by requiring mandatory labeling, which in practical terms will kill the product. Europe has banned rBGH at least until the year 2000, while Canada appears poised to extend their ban also. Meanwhile the only other genetically engineered foods now for sale in grocery stores, the Calgene Corporation's "Flavr Savr" tomato, and DNAP Technology's "Endless Summer" tomato, appear destined for a similar fate. Calgene recently was saved from bankruptcy only by being bought out by Monsanto, while DNAP's "Endless Summer" mutants also seem to be failing. However the FDA, EPA, and USDA continue to license new genetically engineered foods on a regular basis (a dozen approved since rBGH first went on sale) with no special pre-market safety testing nor labeling required. So the boycott of genetically engineered foods must continue. ?6c In terms of contaminated meat, fish, and poultry; and chemical and pesticide residues on fruits, grains, and vegetables; things appear just as bad, if not worse, than ever. In 1993 Pure Food's lawyers sued the USDA over the fact that fully one-third of all ground beef sold in the U.S. contains animal feces and potentially harmful bacteria. Similar statistics have been noted for pathogens in poultry. Rather than lose in court, the government agreed to start placing "warning labels" on all two billion packages of meat sold in the US annually. The government also promised a "zero tolerance" for feces in meat--a policy which has not been enforced.
Since 1993 E-coli and other forms of food poisoning appear to have grown worse. Promises by the USDA to do more than just visually inspect beef and poultry carcasses (for one to nine seconds each) have for the most part gone unfulfilled. Recent studies show that the majority of feedlot cattle are regularly being dosed with antibiotics in their food, despite an emerging antibiotic resistance problem in both children and adults. Pesticide residue levels in fruits, vegetables, baby foods, and grains remain high, with the National Academy of Sciences warning in 1994 that children may be ingesting dangerous levels of carcinogens--even under the current EPA "allowable limits."
Since NAFTA, suspected pesticide contaminated fruits and vegetables are pouring largely uninspected over the border from Mexico. And finally, as independent scientists point out, there are still no reliable safeguards or limits protecting consumers from ingesting multiple pesticide residues simultaneously, nor on protecting consumers from ingesting dioxin (spewed out of incinerators burning PVC plastics)--known to concentrate in fish, meat, and dairy products--said to be "the most dangerous substance ever produced by man."
The Pure Food Campaign and allied activists around the country ask you to:
Organize a milk dump and anti-food disparagement law protest in front of a supermarket or appropriate government building in your community. Try to get media coverage.
Organize a telephone tree and call every dairy, supermarket, legislator. Demand that state Food Disparagement Laws be revoked.
Continue the fight against rBGH and genetically engineered foods.
Make copies of this leaflet and circulate them. For help in organizing your August protests call the Pure Food Campaign at 1-800-451-7670 or (218)-226-4164.
Pure Food Campaign 860 Highway 61E Little Marais MN 55614 ```
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