Is there anyone reading this who doesn’t know about the dirty deal done
by Nathan Deal, R-GA, last month? He succeeded in slipping a filthy, little
rider into the massive Appropriations bill that would enable agribusiness
operations to feed non-organic feed to their animals, and still call the
food organic. The rider effectively gutted the USDA Organic Standards
that were 12 years in the making. The bill passed and will soon become
law-but that assault on Organic Standards is now itself under siege. Responding
to an outraged public, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and
Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, co-sponsored the Organic
Restoration Act. “I had complaints from 200 producers and processors –from
a small Vermont farmer on the Canadian border to General Mills–saying
that we cannot have a multi-billion industry go down the tubes by changing
the standards,” said Leahy. The bill to repeal Deal’s deal now has 60
co-sponsors in the Senate and 48in the House and will be voted on in the
coming weeks.

Read all about it: http://organicconsumers.org/organic/030703_organic.cfm