Holy Geez. Here we go some more with the fight to keep our food away from Monsanto. If you hadn’t heard about it yet, Bill HR875 is being pushed through Senate now with very little media attention. There’s a lot of misinformation about the bill currently, small wonder since it’s so cryptic to get through, but lots of folks are calling it the “Ban on Organic Food” bill. In truth it is a bill that will regulate food safety standards, testing and labeling even more, potentially creating problems for organic farmers who may not be ‘keeping the food supply safe’ by neglecting to spray their crops with poisons and insecticides. Sigh… Monsanto is backing the bill and (disclaimer: I have not read through the whole thing, please excuse any redundancy and research it for yourself) it would be no great surprise to me if farmers were required to purchase their (sterile) seeds from Monsanto only as a future result of 875 being passed. If you’re a US citizen please take the time to look this over and call your state rep asap, and get all your posse on the phone line too. Let’s keep our food poison-free and full of good healthy insects and natural dirt. Our children will thank us for it.
Facebook group and forums for explanations and discussion:
THE BILL HR875 from Congress’ website
List of US Senators to make a phone call to
I’ll do a post about seed preservation projects… There are actually quite a few going on.. Not just “in case” obscene legislation like this becomes the status quo- But also because one of the many side-effects of our ‘mono-lifestyle’ is that millions of seed varieties are going extinct, being absolutely wiped out by mono-crops, industry farms, development and chemicals. City gardeners can help by planting heirloom seeds and doing ‘seed-swaps’ with others in the city, to create more urban cross-pollination.
Oh nooooo!!!
Keep the food supply safe?! They’re thinking all backwards over there! I sure hope this isn’t on its way to happen over on this side of the ocean. We met yesterday with some other urban gardeners and we’re discussing making our own seed sharing network. It would be terrible if our actions became illegal!