New film: WWF beds with Monsanto to steal public lands, promote GM crops

By Rady Ananda

“We need to start focusing on food production.  It takes 15 years to bring a genetically engineered product to market. The clock is ticking.  We need to get moving.” ~ Dr Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, World Wildlife Fund, 2010.

A 2011 film by Wilfried Huismann, The Silence of the Pandas, targets the World Wildlife Fund, the largest, most trusted, and best-funded environmental “protection” organization in the world.  Its reputation does not live up to its actions, however, which green wash industries that are destroying the environment as well as indigenous cultures.

Cops kill 3 as farmers protest water project, land seizure near Mumbai

By Rady Ananda

On August 9, police shot nine farmers, killing three, who were part of a mass protest against a water pipeline project in Baur Village, 50 miles east of Mumbai, India.  Police also smashed cars, fired tear gas and threw rocks at farmers as they fled the violence.  This was all caught on video:

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Kantabai Thakar (age 40), Moreshwar Sathe (40) and Shyam Tupe (29) were fatally shot by police.  Over 100 others were injured, and nine vehicles damaged in the lethal attack on protesters, report several news outlets in India.

Permaculture ends meat-vegan debate, promotes anarchy

By Rady Ananda

Review of Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlee (2010, 322 pp.); and

Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale Integrative Farming and Gardening by Sepp Holzer (English version 2011, 232 pp.)

Notice: PBS is rebroadcasting Food, Inc. on Tuesday, August 9 and is kicking off its new Food site. Check local listings here.

While the Bush reign may be described as a war on privacy, Obama’s is clearly a war on food freedom.* As his Monsanto administration arrests organic farmers and distributors, seizing and destroying healthy foods privately contracted and sustainably grown, this tyranny is not unique to the United States.  All over the world, organic, sustainable farmers are under attack by large agribiz actors  who, through government and trade agreements, are regulating them out of business and destroying the environment in the process.

Two farmers arguing against ecocidal hyper-regulation and “conventional” and “orthodox organic” farming are Simon Fairlee of England and Sepp Holzer of Austria. Both have written seminal books that should grace the bookshelves of everyone who gardens, farms or cares about the impact of agriculture on the biosphere.

First-ever National Heirloom Exposition in CA this September

By Rady Ananda

Billing itself as the “world’s fair” of the heirloom industry, the National Heirloom Exposition will be held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds in Santa Rosa, California from Sept. 13-15, 2011.

Supported by firms “passionate about heirlooms and pure foods,” the three-day event will feature over 250 vendors, plus speakers, workshops, films, tours, and, of course, FOOD – the all natural, organic, pure kind that farmers and gardeners have reared or raised for ages.

Controversial ag spending bill defunds local food systems, promotes meat monopoly

By Rady Ananda

Plutocrats aimed another weapon at the nation’s poor and at small and midsized farmers, this time thru the 2012 agriculture appropriations bill, H.R. 2112, which the House passed on June 16. The 82-page bill returns some federal spending to 2006 levels and others to 2008 levels.

Now being reviewed by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, the final version of HR 2112 will lay the terrain on which the 2012 Farm Bill will be crafted. The House Agriculture Committee began preparatory hearings on the 2012 Farm Bill this week, reports NSAC.

Key sections provide deep cuts to domestic food programs, threatening food banks, low-income seniors, women and children, and farmers markets supported by WIC vouchers issued thru the Women, Infants and Children program.

How Safe Is Your Food? GMOs, Foodborne Illness and Trade Agreements

Graph: Data compiled by GRAIN from government and UN sources, 2008-2010 (except Australia=2005)

By Rady Ananda

A research group that supports community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, GRAIN, has released a global report, Food Safety for Whom? Corporate Wealth vs. Peoples’ Health, showing how governments and corporations use “food safety” to manipulate market access and control. Rather than making food safer, domestic and trade rules “force open markets, or backdoor ways to limit market access.”

Big Meat vs. Michael Pollan

A beef industry group crusades to stop the Pollan-ation of America’s college students. MotherJones.com

Nov/Dec 2010         — By Wes Enzinna

Carrin Flores is a cattle rancher’s fantasy come true: An attractive 26-year-old with stylish eyeglasses and glossy lipstick, she’s unabashed about her love of cows. “They are so cute. Their cute little tongues. Oh, and their eyelashes,” she says. “But I also friggin’ love to eat them.” She cooks beef four nights a week and can list dozens of ways she likes it: T-bone, tri-tip, boneless rump roast…Flores, a graduate student in veterinary medicine at Washington State University-Pullman, plans to work in the beef industry when she finishes. But she’s already a graduate of the Masters of Beef Advocacy (MBA), an industry-funded program that trains college students to fight back against critics of big agribusiness, like Michael Pollan.

Patriot Act for Food: A close look at bizarre propaganda for S.510

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Need a good laugh? Check out the bizarre reasoning offered in support of the Patriot Act for Food (S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act), which the U.S. Senate will vote on shortly (likely Monday). From a need to stop food smuggling, to the law is too old, to the terrorists are gonna get us, elites sure are shy on brains when it comes to credible propaganda. They must be drinking fluoridated water and smoking Monsanto marijuana, or hoping you are.

Criminalizing Nature’s Most Perfect Food: FDA’s war on private food contracts

By Rady Ananda

In his latest book, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle over Food Rights, David Gumpert details several cases of malicious prosecution against the natural dairy industry, reporting the myths, exaggerations and deceptions by authorities charged with protecting the food supply.

What you won’t get from the book is a whitewash of the raw milk movement.

GMO Crop Sabotage on the Rise: French citizens destroy trial vineyard

GMO grapevines destroyed (AFP)

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom Aug. 16, 2010

Early Sunday morning, French police stood helpless as sixty people, locked inside an open-air field of genetically modified grapevines, uprooted all the plants. In Spain last month, dozens of people destroyed two GMO fields. On the millennial cusp, Indian farmers burned Bt cotton in their Cremate Monsanto campaign. Ignored by multinational corporations and corrupt public policy makers, citizens act to protect the food supply and the planet.

Watching two scientific paradigms collapse: GMOs and vaccines

By Meryl Williamson

Those promoting genetic engineering have claimed it is the cutting edge of science. Those in opposition are treated as ill-informed. African scientists who reject genetic engineering are treated as a needy, backward underclass and “starved for science.” Vaccines are considered the greatest gift of modern medicine and those opposed are said to be putting others’ lives at risk.

But whatever high ground the biotech and vaccine industries have claimed for themselves scientifically is crumbling. Both paradigms are beginning to collapse.

Over-Drugged Animals, Superbugs and DIRT! the Movie

By Rady Ananda

The Union of Concerned Scientists advises that a recent study reveals “the number of genes for antibiotic resistance in soil microbes has significantly increased over the past 70 years” – fifteen-fold in the case of tetracyclins. Linked below is a petition to support the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, and a discount for DIRT! the movie.

NAIS Moves to the World Stage thru S 510

By Rady Ananda

Animal traceability is gaining governmental support in two key US beef markets, which may reinvigorate the US National Animal Identification System (NAIS), despite a recent funding cut. Japan and South Korea are now moving toward mandatory traceability on imports. South Korea plans to mandate animal monitoring by 2010, and Japan’s new prime minister vowed to mandate it for beef imports, according to a pro-NAIS report at Food Safety News.