| SUBSCRIBE | DONATE |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stephen Hawking’s Final Warnings Urged World to Halt Climate Change
The Real Reason Pizza Hut Just Rolled Out the Extra-Cheesy
This Creamery Took on Millions in Debt for a Contract with Whole Foods. Then Whole Foods Bailed
What We Found in Trump’s Drained Swamp: Hundreds of Ex-Lobbyists and DC Insiders
What Is Biodiversity and Why Does It Matter to Us?
Monsanto’s Toxic Legacy: An Investigative Reporter Talks Glyphosate
10 Powerful Purple Vegetables You Should Be Eating — and Why
What does the new certification tell you about a product? “Consumers want to know that we nurture the earth, raise our animals humanely, and pay our workers fairly. We will now have a chance to share that and be transparent.” – Julie Morris of Morris Grassfed Beef
If you’re looking for greater transparency around how your food is produced, you can soon start looking for the Regenerative Organic Certification (ROC).
(ROC) was officially launched at the Natural Products Expo West trade show last week, by the Regenerative Organic Alliance, a coalition of organizations and businesses led by the Rodale Institute, Patagonia and Dr. Bronner’s.
What does the new certification tell you about a product?
First, you can rest assured that ROC-certified products meet all of the baseline U.S. Department of Agriculture organic standards. But for consumers who want to support farmers and producers who go beyond organic, the ROC certification assures them that the producer also focused on soil health and carbon sequestration.
Birgit Cameron, senior director of Patagonia Provisions, told Civil Eats that the ROC is “absolutely never meant to replace [organic], but rather to keep it strong to the original intention.” Cameron said it’s an attempt to be the “north star” for the industry as a certification that encompasses the health of the planet, animal welfare and social fairness.
Read ‘What Does the New Regenerative Organic Certification Mean for the Future of Good Food?’
Watch this video on the ROC by Patagonia and featuring OCA’s Ronnie Cummins
The Midwest region of the U.S., sometimes referred to as “America’s breadbasket,” doesn’t just sit at the center of the country—it also sits at the heart of the U.S. agriculture industry.
Lately, the region has been beset by water woes—due in large part to synthetic fertilizer and toxic pesticide run-off polluting major waterways and seeping into city water supplies.
Polluted water is just one of the side effects of an industrial agriculture model that is failing consumers and failing farmers.
What would the future of Midwest agriculture look like if instead of food production being the underlying cause of economic, social and ecological destruction, we redesigned it to be the source of clean water, healthy soil and a toxin-free environment?
What if family farms began to thrive again? What if agriculture became part of the climate solution, instead of the largest contributor to the problem?
Those were the topics of conversation last month at a meeting held during the MOSES Organic Farming Conference in La Crosse, Wisconsin. The meeting, organized by Regeneration International (RI), Main Street Project, Organic Consumers Association (OCA), Regenerate Nebraska and Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA) laid the foundation for a new coalition—the Regeneration Midwest Alliance—whose vision includes a systems-change approach to redesigning how our food is produced.
OCA looks forward to our collaborative role in advancing this new coalition and building a better breadbasket!
Read ‘Plans Take Shape for a Regeneration Midwest Alliance’
Let us know if you’re interested in joining the Regeneration Midwest Alliance
Watch this video from the MOSES meeting
Sign up for the Regeneration International newsletter
Help us support Regeneration International with a tax-deductible donation
It’s widely known and accepted that neonicotinoid pesticides are killing off the bees. But what are they doing to humans?
Messing with our hormone production, according to a team of researchers in Quebec.
Elyse Caron-Beaudoin, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Montreal’s School of Public Health, wanted to know if neonics have a long-term effect on human hormone production. Based on her research, Caron-Beaudoin and her team concluded that because some neonics act as hormone disruptors, they can affect unborn babies during pregnancy, and they can also fuel breast cancer.
Caron-Beaudoin and her team couldn’t experiment on actual pregnant women or breast cancer patients, so they did their research using models they constructed in the lab. What they found was that neonics, at concentrations found in the environment, cause increased activity of an enzyme responsible for estrogen production.
In most types of breast cancer, the proliferation of cancerous cells is driven by increased estrogen production. And according to the researchers, pervious studies show fluctuating hormone levels during pregnancy can harm babies.
The full results of the research will appear in an upcoming issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.
Read ‘New Research Finds Bee-Killing Pesticides May Be Impacting Our Health
TAKE ACTION: Tell the U.S. EPA to ban neonicotinoid pesticides
Eight experts testified in federal court last week that the scientific evidence points to a link between Monsanto’s Roundup weedkiller and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Yesterday, the presiding judge, Vince Chhabria of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, told a Bloomberg reporter that he found the evidence “shaky” and “loosey-goosey.”
We should be surprised. But we’re not.
Monsanto’s influence over regulatory policy and legal issues is legendary. No reason to believe it would be any different this time.
And no reason to believe we—or the hundreds of people involved in the California lawsuits—will give up. Ever.
In case you missed it, there are more than 365 lawsuits pending against Monsanto in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The lawsuits were filed by people alleging that exposure to Roundup herbicide caused them or their loved ones to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and that Monsanto knew the risks.
Before Judge Chhabria will allow the lawsuits to proceed, he’ll weigh the testimony he heard last week. While it doesn’t sound promising, Politico reports that all the judge has to determine is that the evidence isn’t “junk science” and that the experts “reached a reasonable conclusion using reliable methods.”
We’ll hold out hope that Judge Chhabria gives these victims of Monsanto’s poison their day in court until he rules otherwise.
But whichever way this case goes, with your help, we’ll keep up the pressure on Monsanto—in the courts, in the halls of Congress, in the marketplace—as if our lives depend on it. Because they do.
Make a tax-deductible donation to OCA’s Millions Against Monsanto campaign
Make a tax-deductible donation to OCA’s spring fundraising campaign
A few years ago, the United Nations warned that on average, the world has fewer than 60 growing seasons left.
That’s a bleak prognosis for our soils—and just as bleak for our farmers. So bleak, in fact, that experts compare the current situation to the 1980s when bankruptcies and foreclosures contributed to the loss of 296,360 farms.
It’s not too late to turn things around.
This year, Congress will pass the Farm Bill, legislation that determines how $90 billion per year is used to shape our food system.
Congress could continue with business as usual, directing funding to the wealthiest farmers growing genetically engineered pesticide-drenched industrial monocultures that tear up our best soil to produce crops that get burned in car engines, fed to animals in factory farms or processed into diabetes-inducing junk foods.
Or, this year, the Farm Bill could go in a new direction.
Read ‘Food & Farm Act Our Best Hope for Healthy Food, Farms and Soil’
Handsome Brook Farm and OCA have resolved a consumer-protection action OCA filed against Handsome Brook in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on August 29, 2016, concerning Handsome Brook Farm’s “Pasture Raised” egg labels.
The organizations have also resolved a lawsuit filed by Handsome Brook against OCA.
The OCA’s action alleged that some of Handsome Brook Farm’s eggs labeled as “Pasture Raised” were, in fact, from producers not engaged in pasture-raising hens, and that some farms within Handsome Brook’s own farm network did not live up to its internal standards for pasture-raising.
Handsome Brook acknowledges shortcomings identified by OCA, including limited out-of-network purchases of organic eggs from producers in late 2015 and early 2016 that did not meet its pasture-raising criteria.
Make a tax-deductible donation to OCA’s Millions Against Monsanto campaign