URGE STRICKLAND TO DO THE RIGHT THING REGARDING MILK regardless of Monsanto/Clinton Connections

[mod mom]

FROM CREDO:? 

Ohioans, don't let Monsanto restrict our rights to know what's in our milk
Got Milk with Artificial Growth Hormones?
Dairy farmers that don't use recombinant bovine growth hormone want to let their customers know. Is the Ohio Department of Agriculture going to do Monsanto's bidding and stop them?

?
Consumers overwhelmingly support the right of dairy farmers who don't inject their cows with artificial growth hormones to publicize that fact on their milk labels. So why is the Ohio Department of Agriculture moving forward with rules that will make it much more difficult for them to do so?

Tell Gov. Strickland and the Agriculture Department: preserve dairy farmers' rights to tell the truth.

Recombinant bovine growth hormone (also known as rBGH or rBST) is manufactured by Monsanto under the brand name Posilac. More and more, consumers are worried about what's in their food, as well as the health of farm animals injected with artificial substances to increase production. RBGH is known to cause health problems for cows, and rBGH milk has been demonstrated to contain elevated levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) -- a possible carcinogen.

So now, Monsanto is trying to push through state laws all over the country to silence farmers who want to label their milk as coming from cows not treated with rBGH. Monsanto's latest effort is in Ohio, where the Ag Department is considering new rules that would make life very difficult for farmers who want to label their milk as rBGH-free.

Click here to submit a comment opposing these new rules.

Consumers have a right to know what's in their food and how it's produced. Dairies and farmers have a right to tell them.

Write to Gov. Strickland and the Ag Department with a clear message: reject the new rules.

MONSANTO IS ONE OF MARK PENN'S CLIENTS:

Penn, who had previously worked in the business world for companies like Texaco and Eli Lilly, brought his corporate ideology to the White House. After moving to Washington he aggressively expanded his polling firm, Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB). It was said that Penn was the only person who could get Bill Clinton and Bill Gates on the same phone line. Penn's largest client was Microsoft, and he saw no contradiction between working for both the plaintiff and the defense in what was at the time the country's largest antitrust case. A variety of controversial clients enlisted PSB. The firm defended Procter and Gamble's Olestra from charges that it caused anal leakage, blamed Texaco's bankruptcy on greedy jurors and market-tested genetically modified foods for Monsanto. Penn invented the concept of "inoculation," in which corporations are shielded from scandal through clever advertising and marketing. Selling an image, companies realized, was as important as winning a legislative favor.
Burson-Marsteller is hardly a natural fit for a prominent Democrat. The firm has represented everyone from the Argentine military junta to Union Carbide after the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, in which thousands were killed when toxic fumes were released by one of its plants, to Royal Dutch Shell, which has been accused of massive human rights violations in Nigeria. B-M pioneered the use of pseudo-grassroots front groups, known as "astroturfing," to wage stealth corporate attacks against environmental and consumer organizations. It set up the National Smokers Alliance on behalf of Philip Morris to fight tobacco regulation in the early 1990s. Its current clients include major players in the finance, pharmaceutical and energy industries. In 2006, with Penn at the helm, the company gave 57 percent of its campaign contributions to Republican candidates.

A host of prominent Republicans fall under Penn's purview. B-M's Washington lobbying arm, BKSH & Associates, is run by Charlie Black, a leading GOP operative who maintains close ties to the White House, including Karl Rove, and was former partners with Lee Atwater, the political consultant who crafted the Willie Horton smear campaign used by George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988. Black regularly disparages the Clintons; he has called Hillary a "martyr figure" and said Bill "tearfully embraced...government preferences for homosexual lifestyle." In recent years Black's clients have included the likes of Iraq's Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neocon right in the run-up to the war; Lockheed Martin; and Occidental Petroleum. In the summer of 2005 he landed a contract with the Lincoln Group, the disgraced PR firm that covertly placed US military propaganda in Iraqi news outlets. The agreement, according to Intelligence Online, allowed the Lincoln Group to "tap into BKSH's extensive contacts in the Republican administration." When asked by The New Yorker if there was too much cronyism in Iraq, Black responded, "I just wish I could find the cronies."

-SNIP
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070521/berman


AND MONSANTO HAS TIES TO "RURAL AMERICANS FOR HILLARY"

Yee-haw

October 18, 2007 10:06 AM

So later this month, according to THIS INVITATION, the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, is holding a "Rural Americans for Hillary" lunch and campaign briefing at the end of this month….

..but she's holding it in Washington, DC….

…at a lobbying firm…

… and specifically, though it's not mentioned in the invitation, at the lobbying firm Troutman Sanders Public Affairs…

…which just so happens to lobby for the controversial multinational agri-biotech Monsanto.

You read that right: Monsanto, about which there are serious questions about its culpability regarding 56 Superfund Sites, wanton and "outrageous" pollution, and the decidedly unkosher (and quite metaphoric) genetically-bred "Superpig."

-SNIP

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2007/10/yee-haw.html

[MeDeMax]

1. Monsanto has wiped out the genetic seed stock in several 3rd world countries

I don't think you can stop them by writing to your congressman or your governor.

Even if you succeed they would put their lobbying $s in an adjacent state like Wisconsin or Indiana. Once you are tired and bankrupt they will return to Ohio and finish the job by bankrolling the entire legislature & changing the laws.

Remember the banking reforms of 2003-2006, passage of trade agreements and pharmaceutical reforms.

You need to join forces with powerful environmentalists and anti-GM (genetically modified foods) groups to rein in Monsanto. Ralph Nader's activist groups may be a good to place to start.

In my humble opinion.

[MeDeMax]

2. links

http://www.ethicalinvesting.com/monsanto/

http://www.organicconsumers.org/monlink.cfm

Apparently they have set up shop in Iraq and hope to get the Iraqi farmers addicted to GM seeds.

http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=6

It kinda makes sense that some people want us to stay in Iraq, the corporations like Haliburton, KBR & Monsanto.

[mod mom]

3. I would really like to hear Clinton DENOUNCE Monsanto's Action! Wonder what Strickland will do?

[MeDeMax]

4. Groups protest milk labeling rules

Groups protest milk labeling rules

Dix Capital Bureau

COLUMBUS -- Groups opposed to new milk labeling rules protested outside the Ohio Statehouse Tuesday and delivered a letter to Gov. Ted Strickland urging him to reconsider an executive order on the issue.

http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/3451381

I can't find any mention of Monsanto anywhere in the report though.

[MeDeMax]

5. Dispute on milk labeling goes on

http://www.the-daily-record.com/news/article/3459062

...
In the meantime, Gov. Ted Strickland issued an executive order implementing the rules on an emergency basis, meaning they are in effect at present.
...
"The ability for Ohio's farmers to use approved technology is at stake," said Connie Finton, whose family owns and operates a dairy farm in Tuscarawas County. "We were forced to sign an affidavit that said we did not use a government-approved product in order to maintain the fluid market for our milk. I did not like that, and, as of today, I have not seen an extra penny in value, even though retailers are charging consumers more for the product."
...
Bill Donaldson, from Holmes County, thinks farmers should be allowed to use artificial growth hormones in their production. But those consumers who are concerned about rbST and rbGH should have labels disclosing that usage.