If your vitamin D level is below 40, your health may be in danger—and if you’re pregnant, your growing baby’s health may be at risk too.

Vitamin D insufficiency is linked to multiple conditions including bone, respiratory, and cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, and cancer. People who keep their vitamin D levels up have fewer emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and ICU admissions–for any reason, including due to COVID-19.

Ensuring everyone gets enough is one of the most inexpensive ways to insure mother and babies health andreduce health care costs, but one dose does not fit all when it comes to vitamin D. Testing is the only way to know.

You can do something good for your health by getting your own vitamin D levels tested and using your level to calculate your personalized dose. Also, a portion of the test proceeds will go to the My Health Alliance Lobby Day (described below) advancing our mission to promote health and wellness.

Vitamin D: Test Your Level to Support the My Health Alliance Lobby Day

A decade ago, frustrated by the infiltration of the “natural” sector by the genetic engineering industry, the Organic Consumers Association joined the Organic & Natural Health Association as a founding member.

Over the last ten years, we’ve made considerable progress. Unlike before, most people now know that foods made with Monsanto’s Roundup Ready GMO corn, canola, soy, and sugarbeets aren’t “natural.” But, new threats loom. Fake “milks” and “meats” made from genetically modified microbes in industrial “precision fermentation” factories are entering the “natural” market with the “plant-based” trend.

The Organic & Natural Health Association is redoubling its efforts, hosting a September 10th My Health Alliance Lobby Day reception on Capitol Hill for Members of Congress to focus on the crucial issue of vitamin D deficiency.

We will be asking congress for policy reform to ensure providers monitor pregnant mothers’ vitamin D levels—when most are deficient—given that measuring is the only way to know, and ensuring adequate levels is a low-cost way to improve newborn health and reduce costs these reforms should include:

• Prenatal clinical guidelines
• Insurance reimbursement policies
• Provider education
• Public awareness

TAKE ACTION: Invite Your Member of Congress to the My Health Alliance Lobby Day Reception

You’ve stood with the Organic Consumer Association (OCA) in our fight for clean food, and an organic regenerative food and farming system that works for everyone, not just a few greedy corporations.

Because of supporters like you, we’ve safeguarded organic standards, promoted regenerative organic agriculture, combated misleading advertising and corporate practices, supported fair trade and economic justice, campaigned against GMOs and pesticides and mobilized millions to demand truth in labeling.

This August, during National Make-A-Will Month, we invite you to take one small but powerful step: create or update your will to make an impact.

An up-to-date will ensures your loved ones are protected and can also reflect the values that have guided your life. To make it easy, we’ve partnered with FreeWill, a secure, trusted tool that helps you create your will for free in 20 minutes.

If you choose to include a gift to OCA in your plan, know that you’re sowing seeds for a future where food is honest, farms are organic and health—not profit—comes first. Any gift, large or small, makes a lasting difference on future organic advocates.

Together, we’ve shifted the conversation. With your legacy, we can shift the system. Create your free will now and the impact your will can make.

P.S. If you have already included OCA in your estate plans, please let us know so we can thank you for your generosity.

Have you filled out a healthcare directive for yourself yet?

If not, you can make your wishes known about your future health care now! Don’t be dependent on the government or hospitals to make decisions for you. It reduces the stressful guesswork your loved ones might have to make and can save money on costly healthcare treatments you don’t want.

Take this opportunity to create or update your Advance Healthcare Directive! It’s fast and 100% free!

Kim Willsher, The Guardian:

“In the day French MPs gave themselves a round of applause for approving legislation to reintroduce a banned pesticide last month, a figure rose from the public gallery to shout: ‘You are supporters of cancer … and we will make it known.’

Fleur Breteau made it known. Her outburst and appearance – she lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer – boosted a petition against the ‘Duplomb law’ to well over 2m signatures.

On Thursday, France’s constitutional court struck down the government’s attempt to reintroduce the pesticide acetamiprid – a neonicotinoid banned in France in 2018 but still used as an insecticide in other EU countries as well as the UK – in a judgment that took everyone by surprise. The ruling said the legislature had undermined ‘the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment’ enshrined in France’s environmental charter.

‘We are living in a toxic world and need a revolution to break the chain of contamination in everything … If people don’t react we’ll find ourselves in a world where we cannot drink water or eat food that is uncontaminated, where a slice of buttered bread or a cup of tea poisons us. It will be a silent world, without animals, without insects, without birds.’”

Read Fleur Breteau’s story, and more

TAKE ACTION: Tell the EPA: Keep Chlormequat Off U.S. Grown Food–and Get It Off Imports!

by Yvaine Ye, CU Boulder Today:

“If extreme rainfall wiped out all food growing in Jalisco, a Pacific coastal state in western Mexico, it would eliminate enough calories to feed 765,000 people in the United States. A widespread drought in the Brazilian state of Paraná could cut enough fat to meet the needs of more than 1.7 million people in Egypt. Western Australia’s next major heatwave could knock out enough protein to feed 8 million people in China.

These are some of many insights revealed by a newly launched interactive tool called the Global Food Twin. Developed by CU Boulder data scientist Zia Mehrabi and his collaborators at Earth Genome, a non-profit organization, the interactive digital map shows how food moves from farm to table. It offers a first-of-its kind view into the world’s highly connected and increasingly fragile food system.

‘This is a landmark effort, because no one’s ever done this at this scale and level of detail,’ said Mehrabi, assistant professor of environmental studies and founder of CU Boulder’s Better Planet Laboratory, which leverages data science to address some of the leading global environmental and human rights issues. ‘We’re able to represent the complexity of our food system, showing people a window into a world they haven’t seen before.’”

Learn more and check out this fascinating map to find out what is being produced in your location

Check out OCA’s regenerative farm map to find your nearest local, regenerative foods

Sara Keough, Eco Nutrition:

“Tufts University, through its Food Is Medicine Institute, has positioned itself as a leader in this space. However, its programs and recommendations heavily promote a plant-based diet—excluding meat, dairy, and eggs altogether. This same institution developed the Food Compass Score, which bizarrely rated foods like Frosted Mini Wheats as more nutrient-dense than beef.

Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, has written extensively about the bias against animal foods in public health and nutrition science. She argues that many of the studies underpinning dietary guidelines are deeply flawed, often observational, and confounded by variables like socioeconomic status and lifestyle. Yet these same studies influence food policy and FIM program eligibility.

Dr. Frédéric Leroy, a professor of food science and biotechnology, has also been a powerful voice exposing the global anti-livestock agenda that increasingly shapes our food policy and public perception. His research highlights how a small network of ideologically driven organizations—often backed by corporate and philanthropic interests—has successfully influenced dietary guidelines in schools, hospitals, and government institutions. Through detailed investigations, Leroy has demonstrated how this movement infiltrates media narratives, academia, and global policy frameworks, promoting plant-based diets as a universal good while undermining the role of animal-sourced foods in sustainable and healthy food systems.”

Read about another vital layer in this conversation: the future of farming, and more

Paige Bennett reports for EcoWatch:

“A new lawsuit is questioning the ‘microwave safe’ and ‘freezer safe’ claims of Ziploc plastic bags. The lawsuit against S.C. Johnson alleged that these claims for its Ziploc brand products are misleading, and that these uses of the products increase risk of exposure to microplastics.

According to the lawsuit documents, ‘Defendant affirmatively markets its Ziploc bags and containers (the ‘Products’) as ‘Microwave Safe’ and suitable for ‘Freezer’ use, creating the reasonable impression that they are fit for use in the microwave and freezer. In reality, these Products are made from polyethylene and polypropylene — materials that scientific and medical evidence shows release microplastics when microwaved and frozen — making them fundamentally unfit for microwave and freezer use. Relying on Defendant’s false misrepresentations, individuals have unwittingly exposed themselves and their families to undisclosed microplastics during routine kitchen practices.’”

Read how Ziploc is not the only company facing lawsuits

by Lela Nargi, FoodPrint:

“Blocking a too-hot sun with aerosolized particles. Re-freezing melted glaciers. Sucking carbon out of the air, then storing it deep underground. For every current and pending catastrophe being wrought by human-caused climate change, there’s an ambitious workaround touted by tech enthusiasts as our salvation from ourselves. Agricultural systems are not immune, and a cycle of news in which researchers warn that we are on track to produce too little food for a growing population only fans the flames of innovation fire.

By now, decades and billions of dollars have been poured into manufacturing insect-based proteins, tinkering with kelp to reduce cattle methane burps, and developing pepper-picking robots to replace vulnerable human workers. The idea that we cannot grow enough food for our survival is not new. It was the central disputed premise of Frances Moore Lappé’s book ‘Diet for a Small Planet,” first published in 1975.

Even now, ‘This focus on productivity … is a kind of argumentative red herring,’ says her daughter Anna Lappé, executive director of the think tank Global Alliance for the Future of Food. Both Lappés push back against what they call myths about the food system — first, that we are facing scarcity, and that ecological-minded local farms cannot propel us toward abundance. ‘What’s needed,’ says Anna, ‘is a more holistic understanding of how we could feed ourselves.’”

Read how agroecology, too, recognizes the importance of producing food without further imperiling ecosystems. It sees smaller-scale farms as the foundation for this work

Regenerative and organic farmers have never needed you more! TAKE ACTION:
Save Local, Regenerative & Organic! USDA Must Honor Farmer Contracts

The industrial, factory farm, GMO monoculture agricultural model was always intended to benefit a shrinking number of big corporations, mostly chemical and junk food companies.

Who will build a new model, founded on traditional organic regenerative farming practices? Farming practices that work with the Earth’s natural systems, instead of against them? A model that works economically for farmers and local communities, not the Monsanto and Walmart types?

A growing army of organic regenerative farmers, around the world, who will feed their local and regional populations—and who will reap the profits and good will of their hard work, instead of seeing their livelihoods eroded by corporate greed.

Who will help those farmers? Conscious consumers who will reject Big Ag and Big Food, and support the farmers and producers who grow healthy food, without fouling the environment.

Because it’s up to all of us to create a food and farming system that works for everyone, not just a few greedy corporations.

Please consider a donation today to fuel our work for a healthier, more just, local, and organic regenerative way to produce and eat our food.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Organic Consumers Association, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Keep in mind August is nationally recognized as “Make a Will Month”. Make your will or health directive for free and please consider a legacy gift to OCA or Regeneration International

Stephanie N. Del Tufo, The Conversation:

“Whether reading a book or listening to a recording, the goal is the same: understanding. But these activities aren’t exactly alike. Each supports comprehension in different ways. Listening doesn’t provide all the benefits of reading, and reading doesn’t offer everything listening does. Both are important, but they are not interchangeable.

Your brain uses some of the same language and cognitive systems for both reading and listening, but it also performs different functions depending on how you’re taking in the information.

When you read, your brain is working hard behind the scenes. It recognizes the shapes of letters, matches them to speech sounds, connects those sounds to meaning, then links those meanings across words, sentences and even whole books. The text uses visual structure such as punctuation marks, paragraph breaks or bolded words to guide understanding. You can go at your own speed.

Listening, on the other hand, requires your brain to work at the pace of the speaker. Because spoken language is fleeting, listeners must rely on cognitive processes, including memory to hold onto what they just heard.”

Read how many people assume that listening is easier than reading, but how ‘easier’ is relative – and contextual

Frey Vineyards has generously stepped up to help OCA with our fundraising efforts through a special offer to our network.

Discover Frey Vineyards — Nestled in Redwood Valley, CA,  they are America’s first Organic and Biodynamic Winery! Their wines feature no added sulfites, native yeasts, and regenerative farming practices, capturing true, earth-driven flavor. The Frey family are stewards to nearly 1,000 acres of wildlife corridors around and through their vineyards, preserving the native habitat, a home for bears, mountain lions, and pollinators. Thank you, Frey Vineyards, for your long time commitment to organics and for your support of OCA.

Use the code, ORGANICCONSUMERS at checkout to enjoy a 15% discount to your Frey Wine purchase—plus, 25% of that sale directly supports the Organic Consumers Association and our mission to protect and advocate for consumers’ right to safe, healthful food and other consumer products, a just food and farming system, and an environment rich in biodiversity and free of pollutants.

Visit Frey Vineyards online to join us in supporting planet-positive wine. Savor every sip, make every purchase meaningful. Visit our Facebook page to join the conversation.

Biden’s EPA found toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” in sewage sludge can cause cancer and other diseases in people who live near farm fields where toxic sludge is spread–or those who consume tainted milk, beef, or other foods from these farms–including kidney and liver cancers, decreased birth weight, increased cholesterol, and diminished immune system function.

Will Trump’s EPA finalize these findings? It already decided to “rescind” and “reconsider” regulatory limits on PFAS in drinking water, and Republicans in Congress have let Trump know they want the toxic sludge health risks determination stopped.

TAKE ACTION BY AUGUST 14: Tell the EPA to Ban Toxic Sludge from Farmland!

Bayer (Monsanto)’s Dicamba herbicide is meant to be used on its genetically modified Dicamba-tolerant crops, but when it gets sprayed, it drifts away from the GMO farms and causes extensive injury to cultivated and wild landscapes, insects, animals and humans. There has never been a weed killer that has been more destructive in terms of crop damage.

TAKE ACTION BY AUGUST 22: Tell the EPA to Ban Bayer’s Crop-Killing Dicamba Herbicide!

Low Vitamin D Symptoms: 9 Signs You Might Be Deficient

‘No Safe Level’: Babies Are Harmed by Even Tiny Amounts of Nitrate in Drinking Water, Study Finds

Eggs. Toast. Soup? What Breakfast Looks Like Around the World.

Common Ground: Protecting Our Public Lands

Sleep Apnea Relief Comes by Blowing Through This Iconic Shell

Outrage in Iowa – Residents Demand Action To Clean up Dangerously Polluted Water

Arizona Acorns Have Fed Indigenous People for Millennia. Here’s How They Become Flour

A Brilliant Community Farm Rises from Brambles

What Are Tonka Beans And Why Are They Illegal In The US?

The Case for Returning U.S. Public Lands to Indigenous People

Veterans’ Care at Risk Under Trump as Hundreds of Doctors and Nurses Reject Working at VA Hospitals

Pesticide Giants Want To Make It Impossible for You To Sue

Three Major Chemical Companies Agree To Pay $875M to New Jersey Over PFAS Claims

The London Rapper Who Fell in Love With Farming