Kids say the darnest things

Yes, my little friend, yes.

Do you know, gasp, that Barak Obama is a chain smoker? Funny, isn't it, that when they want to dish dirt about him they haven't brought that up? Now, as for me, I am a smoker (organic roll your own tobacco) and I think our right to smoke should be preserved (and don't talk to me about the myths, legends and lore about second hand smoke because it is all a lie [oh no, not another lie] to sell nicotine patches, gum, etc. Johnson and Johnson). If Barack is a smoker, well, finally! one reason to like him, afaik.

One more item you should know about. North American Army created with out Congress. And there's no North American Union?

Grassroots Movement

ARKANSAS ANIMAL PRODUCER'S ASSOCIATION
P.O. Box 368, Bismarck, Arkansas 71929
501-620-0326
libertymtn2@yahoo.com
http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com

ANIMAL OWNERS TO MEET IN ATKINS TO PRESERVE THEIR RIGHTS

The Arkansas Animal Producer's Association (ARAPA) will hold a state-wide meeting in Atkins on Sunday, March 2nd from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Atkins High School Auditorium. The press and the public are encouraged to attend. The key note speaker will be nationally respected speaker and writer Doreen Hannes from Mt. Grove, Missouri. Hannes will utilize current federal documents to explain the national status of the USDA proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS), nation-wide resistance to NAIS, legislation preventing a mandatory NAIS, and the expense and failure of similar systems in other countries. Under the proposed system animal owners would be required to register their land with the USDA, thus putting their property under federal jurisdiction, if they wanted to sell or take their animals off of their property. Owners, at their expense, would then be required to electronically identify their animals and report within 24 hours to a data base animal births, deaths, ownership transfers, and animal ingress and egress from their land. All animal owners must understand the USDA proposal in order to make appropriate decisions regarding NAIS to preserve their rights. NAIS is not just about farm animals.

Representative Roy Ragland from Marshall will detail efforts in Arkansas to prevent a mandatory NAIS. Representative Ragland, George, Martin, Norton, Green, Pyle, Burris and Senator Whitaker were sponsors of the FREEDOM TO FARM ACT in 2007. Delays prevented the bill from passing. It will be submitted for consideration in 2009. General Assembly members have been invited to attend and candidates for public office are invited to attend, pass out flyers, and campaign.

Documentary film maker Tim Smith from Fayetteville will discuss property rights issues and Agenda 21 which will affect all property owners. Mary Rivera from Gepp will discuss the resolutions against a mandatory NAIS that Quorum Courts are passing. Talk radio host Drew Raines will challenge the audience to be pro-active in preserving freedoms and liberties and the right to produce and sell animals and plants in the traditional manner.

A business meeting will be conducted to evaluate ARAPA, elect the Steering Committee, and make committee appointments. ARAPA is a grass roots, member controlled organization with no paid employees that organized in July of 2006, to provide independent animal owners with the opportunity to work together for their best interests. Preventing a mandatory NAIS was the first task undertaken. Members have presented documented information about NAIS at meetings of animal owners and those who support them across the state, Quorum Court meetings, and county Farm Bureau meetings. ARAPA sent representatives to Kansas City to the National ID Expo, to Washington D.C. to the Farm Food Voice Lobby Day, and to Cape Girardeau to the Senate Farm Bill Hearing. ARAPA submitted testimony to the Senate Agriculture Committee, at the request of Senator Lincoln, detailing the economic devastation a mandatory NAIS would create in Arkansas. ARAPA President Warren Phillips from Cave Springs hosts the ARAPA Hour each Thursday evening at 8:00 PM at http://www.theamericanvoice.com. The program can also be heard by phone by dialing 712-580-1100 and using the entry code 97524#. Information of interest to all animal owners and supporters is posted on the ARAPA web site at http://arkansasanimalproducers.8k.com.

Please spread the word about this meeting -

A Second Letter to Hillary Clinton on Her Ties to Monsanto

If you are thinking of voting for Hillary (why would you?) read this. Oh, and I am not Linn Cohen-Cole but a huge fan. Wish I did know her, I'd give her a jar of honey from my bees or eggs from my free range hens.

February 21, 2008

A Second Letter to Hillary Clinton on Her Ties to Monsanto

Poor Ohio

By LINN COHEN-COLE

Dear Hillary,

This is my second letter to you. I am writing again because I feel badly for you that you seem not understand what is wrong.

You are going into Ohio soon. The issue is that you don't travel alone.

Your and Bill's history with Monsanto is going with you.

Your campaign strategist, Mark Penn, goes as well, putting Monsanto by your side.

What does Ohio have to do with you and Monsanto?

Did you know that dairy farmers there had the battle of their lives to prevent the banning of rBGH labels on their dairy products?

Let me put that into plain English.

Monsanto tried (and may try again) to make sure dairy farmers in Ohio, and across the country--have no "real" freedom of speech. What simple thing are Ohio farmers denied saying? "We don't put GE crap in our cows."

Dairy farmers want to tell that truth, consumers want it. You'd think that'd be simple. Yet, farmers - the only ones telling the public the truth - are doing so in the absence of governmental help and, in fact, up against it, as it favors Monsanto.

Your friend.

Monsanto, the agribusiness/pharmaceutical giant who made Agent Orange, PCBs, pesticides, nuclear weapons components, and Aspartame - killing or sickening things - now handles food - genetically engineering hormones, making steroids, patenting GE seeds of every kind, cloning animals, blocking "free speech" and fair competition (or it looks like that to me, when someone can't say what's good about their product), suing farmers, ...

You care about Ohio's health, Hillary?

One of Ohio's consumer advocates, who is supposed protect their well-being, used to work where? Guess. And the issue that consumer advocate considers bad idea for consumers? Labels on its milk.

Yet, Monsanto's bovine growth hormone, the thing farmers wish to say they don't use, puts (and has put for years) Ohio citizens at greater risk for breast (7 times greater), colon and prostate cancer.

Where is your support for farmers or consumers?

And what else is Monsanto doing in Ohio?

For farmers who buy GE seeds, Monsanto uses Pinkerton agents to go onto their property to check the farmer hasn't collected GE seeds - Monsanto's patented "intellectual property." Monsanto uses other means as well, to check up on farmers.

For those who collect their own seeds (since time immemorial) for free, Monsanto wants an Ohio law to require:

"seed cleaners to keep detailed records on every seed cleaning transaction, to document the name of the farmer, seed variety names and whether or not the seed is protected by patents or breeders' rights."

In essence, the bill discriminates against farmers who are lawfully saving and re-planting open-pollinated seed varieties," asserts RAFI (Rural Advancement Foundation International)'s Shand."

Monsanto (and USDA and big meat packers) is seeking something similar with animals - NAIS (the National Animal Identification System), tagging of every single farm animal in the US with a global tracking system, to be fed into a "corporate" data base.

Businesses normally oppose regulations Monsanto seeks. These land on small farmers, making saving seeds and raising animals, overwhelmingly burdensome and intrusive. And Monsanto learns exactly what normal seeds or animals still exist and who owns them.

How are you protecting farmers from this crushing?

In the Farm Bill, you support Credit & Crop Insurance, calling on "colleagues to address the serious lack of credit opportunities that is making it almost impossible in

It sounds so good until one learns that:

"the U.S. Department of Agriculture has struck an unusual arrangement with agribusiness giant Monsanto Co. that gives farmers in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota a break on federal crop insurance premiums if they plant Monsanto-brand seed corn this spring."

You and the USDA use their need for crop insurance to help Monsanto trap farmers into a difficult to escape system of GE seed patents and intellectual property laws. If you were truly helping them, you'd be shouting from the rooftops that farmers must have free-and-clear access to government crop insurance, and the USDA must stop making sweetheart deals with Monsanto or other corporations.

In Ohio, people are now watching:

"America's Heartland, a new national public television series about American agriculture, and Ohio Farm and Country, an Ohio Farm Bureau produced television show, are now on the air."

The show is funded by Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, with support from soy, corn, cotton and grain associations, all crops Monsanto primarily owns.

Corporate programs on their own area of activity are commercials and Ohio public television does its public a serious disservice in allowing material that should be labeled honestly as "public relations."

Monsanto won't allow information on its own products, demands detail on farmers' holdings, and is putting out commercials as information about "farming."

You say you care about education.

Are you aware Monsanto is moving to control the land grant colleges and what is taught there?

This is corporation education for GE food which is proving to be dangerous Many people fear and hate it. Even were it wonderful, it shifts ownership of seeds from Ohio's farmers to corporations.

You want Ohio's support? "Get real" Get rid of Monsanto. Denounce what it and Bill did.

People in Ohio and elsewhere need to hear you say:

"I will help get this and other corporations off your farmers' backs and work for a government to help you compete fairly against Monsanto, not one that takes sides with them against you.

"I am sorry for the degrading of and non-labeling of food through Bill and Monsanto's involvement. I will get ALL food labeled clearly, not just with country of origin labels, but with what is "in" US and foreign food: genetically engineered food or not, pesticides or not, antibiotics or not, hormones or not.

"I will not let the USDA dump degraded foods onto nutrition programs and schools anymore. I will make sure known-Mad Cow related material is ABSOLUTELY "banned" from ALL food - stopping its inclusion in pet food, fish feed, chicken feed, pig feed - not just cattle feed. And I will not allow it to be sent overseas to other countries as "food aid."

"I will work to stop the industrialization of animals - including bees - and the torturous conditions they live in. I will stop food scares, here or around the world, from being used to crush small farmers who are not responsible for Mad Cow and Bird Flu and bee colony collapse but connected to the industrialization of land, plants and animals by giant agricultural corporations."

You could also apologize for what Bill's NAFTA and multinational corporations did to Ohio.

That's real, Hillary. Ohio people are not fools. Around the country we all are sick of the slick laws, government lies, and an insane corporate drive for profit, threatening our lives. Devote yourself to reversing what Bill and Monsanto let happen to our food and to farmers around the world.

Being President doesn't matter. Power doesn't matter. Saving a world for Chelsea does.

Linn Cohen-Cole

Linn Cohen-Cole lives in Atlanta. Like Hillary, she is an alumna of Wellesley College. She can be reached at: lcohencole@gmail.com


And the people said, Amen!

Meat Recall Prompts Call for USDA Reform

These words are music to my ears! Maybe USDA is going to be reeled in after all. I know Rep. DeLauro from Connecticut is not for NAIS.

Meat Recall Prompts Call for USDA Reform

By JACOB ADELMAN – 13 hours ago

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. Department of Agriculture's twin mandates of promoting the nation's agriculture and monitoring it for safety are being questioned in the wake of a beef contamination scare that prompted the nation's largest-ever meat recall.

Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA's funding, called Tuesday for the USDA to be stripped of its responsibility for food safety.

"Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe," DeLauro said. [emphasis mine]

She made her remarks during a conference call with reporters about the recall of some 143 million pounds of beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co.

A phone message left for Westland president Steve Mendell was not immediately returned.

USDA officials announced the recall Sunday after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video showing crippled and sick animals at the slaughterhouse being shoved with forklifts.

Officials estimate that about 55 million pounds of the recalled beef went to USDA nutrition programs, the bulk of it for schools, Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle said.

No illnesses have been linked to the recalled beef, health officials said.

DeLauro planned a pair of hearings for early March to examine why federal inspectors did not note the mistreatment and take steps to ensure that "the school lunch program does not become the industry dumping ground for bad meat."

Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who chairs the House Education and Labor Committee, said during the conference call that the U.S. Government Accountability Office had started investigating the safety of the National School Lunch Program, which is administered by the USDA.

Pacelle said he hoped the attention to downer cattle, those that cannot stand or walk unassisted, would prompt lawmakers to pass pending legislation in the House and Senate that would keep all downer cows out of the food supply.

Federal regulations discourage slaughterhouses from processing downer cows into meat because they may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli, salmonella or mad cow disease, but the USDA still permits them to be used with an inspector's approval, he said.

USDA spokesman Keith Williams did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment.

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged the USDA to complete a quick investigation of the apparent mistreatment and offered the support of the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

Schwarzenegger said he supported legislation by state Sen. Dean Florez that would allow California school districts to be reimbursed for beef bought from Westland.

California schools reported ordering 7.4 million pounds beef from the company since July 2007, according to Florez's office.

Deputy District Attorney Glenn Yabuno said prosecutors were also investigating whether Westland's business practices violated any state or local laws. He did not elaborate.

USDA officials were also investigating possible offenses.

Associated Press writer Denise Petski contributed to this report.

Did you hear it scream?

From Australia we hear that USDA's Undersecretary Bruce Knight has said, "At one time, NAIS set a "trigger" for it to become mandatory in 2009 if there was insufficient participation, he acknowledged, "but I took that out behind the barn and shot it to death. It's no longer there."

Umm, yeah. Sorry I don't believe it for a second. If it were truth why hasn't that information shown up in the US media?

Here is a good post about NAIS called Don't Sleep Through The NAIS Attack.

Have you, dear reader, put together NAIS with the other world government programs to see that it is not about disease, traceback or the so-called cry by consumers for information about where their meat came from (aside from COOL - Country of Origin Labeling).

Now let's talk about the sinful waste of food, the latest meat recall. Don't you find the Humane Society culpable for knowing about it for months and only making it public later? And, do you think for a minute that what the video showed wasn't anything that isn't done every single day at slaughterhouses all over the world? This is the difference between ethics and morals when it come to raising and slaughtering food animals. Temple Grandin, must be furious. She is an autistic with a PhD, who has designed humane slaughterhouses for agribusiness. See USDA cover their collective butts here.

Now this next part is a test. It seems that just as soon as I post the name of a senator or representative down there in crazy Congress-land, I get hits within seconds from the Sargent-At-Arms. So, let's see, what can I say? Oh, yeah, Senator Patrick Leahy is starring in a radio ad for Barack Hussein Obama. Senator Bernie Sanders is apparently a friend of Obama's. "...Obama campaigning for openly socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Interestingly, Sanders, who won his seat in 2006, called Obama “one of the great leaders of the United States Senate,” even though Obama had only been in the body for about two years." I guess that makes Obama a Muslim socialist.

End of test. I'll check the blogs stats and see how long it takes for the Sargent-At-Arms to see this page. Last time it was ONE SECOND.

Not NAIS, but sums up the election for me

I'm up, not sleeping, might as well bloviate

The NAIS noose is tightening, ever so slowly, but tightening even so. As it tightens more people are waking up. They are falling into the list groups screaming the sky is falling...must have help now! Like we didn't know it, yeah, for the last three years. Welcome to the world of the awake. We are ready for you to be energetic, because we are getting tuckered out.

Even with all these new people and their new state of awakeness, they still are just internet warriors. Yes, that is my opinion. I fall into the state myself from time to time, but when the chips are down and the urgency of the situation, creeping NAIS getting a snake like stranglehold on local farming that will be felt in local economies as a current example, requires it, I am there. I will do what it takes to 'make it happen', and that means leaving the comfort of my LazyBoy and lap top. Other sacrifices are required, as well; must leave the farm, where my heart is a peace, leave the critters and husband, travel by car (my choice, offers the most personal freedom). But, you know, these sacrifices are nothing compared to the larger sacrifices we will be forced to make, and not under our own will, if we don't DO SOMETHING soon.

More people are also waking up to the way a certain Texas lobbying group seems to mess up every state's legislation when said group gets involved.

One of my personal frustrations is not being able to quantify the numbers of those friendly to our no NAIS cause. People hide behind false names, some post under several names. There are lurkers who never post. There are government eaves-droppers, that's another form of lurking. Sometimes the 'moles' will play as shills and ask questions right out of Locate in 48. Aside from being annoying, I know we annoy them because we give them the facts right out of the documents. What can they say then? Hmmmm.....do you suppose that is why Under Secretary Bruce Knight failed to answer our questions.


So, people, you must be alerted to this fact: The time is at hand. Our window of opportunity is going to be getting ever closer to being shut. What are you doing, outside of your internet warrioring?

Can you do 10 a day?

My friend Doreen Hannes wrote a wonderful piece on NewsWithViews the other day, talking
about the elephant in the room. It brought to my memory an old training tool. It had to do with how people look at a problem, a big problem in our case, and the problem seems so big that it could never be accomplished. In the training they taught us how to see the elephant as it's parts. Maybe you couldn't eat the whole elephant, but you could eat its foot. Get my meaning?

This is why I personally am glad there are new people filled with fire wake in the fight. We've become so used to seeing the elephant, new eyes will be able to see how to break it down into its parts.

Under "10 a day" you would contact 10 people, people in all walks of life, via letters to the editiors, putting up posters someplace (just keep some in your car or at your desk and take them with you were ever you go.) Make up business cards for yourself that has anti-NAIS information on it. There doesn't have to be a big explaination, just something that could start a conversation.
Do all of this out of your house, well, except for writing the letters to the editor. Contact your State Ag Dept. and get a relationship going with somebody. Find out who the Agriculture Policy Adviser is for your Senators and Congressmen. Try to get on television. Upload a video to Youtube. Just spending 10 minutes a day doing something to get the word out, not on the computer but in real life, can have a serious impact. Especially if we all do it together in concert.

Let's be people who have fire in the belly for our cause. The Apostle Paul chided himself before the Lord and said something like, "Why is it I do what I don't want to do, yet don't do what I'd like to do?" It's a question for the ages. I know every single internet warrior against NAIS can relate to the question.

I'm ready for bed now, so I shall close with this.

Time is running out.

It is up to each and everyone of us

to become fully engaged in stopping NAIS.
I've said this before, and make no apologies for anyone's hurt feelings,
If you do nothing and NAIS is mandated,
you will have no one except yourself to blame.
This will take an effort the likes of which we have never seen before in our lifetimes.

Two articles spinning the lies of USDA and Bruce Knight

The first article is Buckeye Ag Radio. Click through the link to read good ol' Andy's comments, including a gloat, "Bruce answered my questions."

I'm Worried About Colorado

As if it wasn't enough that the Colorado Pork Producers Council decided to "unilaterally disarm" on the subject of using gestation stalls, now the state legislature is getting in the mud on National Animal ID. This story goes back to last year's Colorado State Fair, where some students were disqualified for not obeying expo rules regarding having their premises registered. So here's my concern: I'm not necessarily of the opinion that requiring Freddy 4-Her to register his premises as a prerequisite to showing is a good idea, but regardless, if that's the rule, that's the rule. There are a number of rules that you or I may or may not agree with, understand, or like in general, but the rule is the rule is the rule. To whit, the State Fair officials simply followed through on what should have been an implied and understood promise that the students would be disqualified if they did not comply.

Here's my even bigger concern, however: in the reporting on this issue, the headline is never about State Fair Officials enforcing policy. Instead, the mostly misinformed journalists twist the story into the evil monolithic National Animal ID System "heavy-handed bullying... the kids." Regardless of what happens in the actual case in point, the overall situation is a public relations nightmare for Animal ID, which, I should remind everyone, is voluntary and only premises, not individual animal, registration. I just have to wonder what's in the water out there, and where the common-sense producers are to stand up and tell the story... correctly. [View the comments here.]

The second article is from Capital Press.

USDA Undersecretary Bruce Knight makes a case for premises registration and animal identification during a session at the 2008 Cattle Industry Convention in Reno. [Nice picture of Bruce Knight, huh? It surely makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. - Hen] Animal ID and premises registration stressed at cattle meeting Bob Krauter Capital Press RENO, Nev. - Cattle industry leaders and a top USDA official made a strong case for premises registration and animal identification at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association 2008 convention here on Thursday. Citing the need to protect the nation's cattle herd against catastrophic foreign animal diseases and to promote U.S. beef in overseas markets, several speakers drove home the need for traceability. Bruce Knight, undersecretary of USDA's marketing and regulatory programs, laid out reasons why animal identification and premises registration are critical. An outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the United Kingdom last year, he said, was quickly contained because they had an animal ID system in place. The United States, Knight said, is lagging behind other countries in being able to quickly trace the origin of animals in the event of a catastrophic disease outbreak like foot and mouth disease. After trying a run at a mandatory livestock ID system in 2003, federal officials acquiesced to a voluntary program that exists today. Read the rest of it here.

Thinking men thinking deep thoughts

The U.S. Senate is determined to expedite the completion of the 2007 Farm Bill. The Senate named the 2007 Farm Bill Conference Committee. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin will Chair the Conference Committee.

Their phone and fax numbers are provided below. Please let them know that NAIS should not be a part of the Farm Bill.

I'll post the House side once it is announced.

The Senate Conference Committee members are:

Name	Phone	Fax
Tom Harkin (D-IA)	202-224-3254	202-224-9369
Max Baucus (D-MT)	202-224-2651	202-224-0515
Kent Conrad (D-ND)	202-224-2043	202-224-7776
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)	202-224-4242	202-224-3479
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR)	202-224-4843	202-228-1371
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)	202-224-4822	202-228-0325
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)	202-224-3521	202-224-0103
Richard Lugar (R-IN)	202-224-4814	202-228-0360
Charles Grassley (R-IA)	202-224-3744	202-224-6020
Thad Cochran (R-MS)	202-224-5054	202-224-9450
Pat Roberts (R-KS)	202-224-4774	202-224-3514

Can't get no representation

If those congressmen are supposed to be representatives why don't they return phone calls and why, when they do talk to us, treat us like we are complete fools?

Of note, Under Secretary Bruce Knight bailed on a radio show he was supposed to do on Saturday, and if that weren't disrespectful enough, has thus far refused to answer our nine questions.

Senator Patrick Leahy's ag policy advisor has not, for a year now, returned my calls, responded to my emails and, when I knew it was him on the phone refused to tell me his name. He said he was not allowed to tell me his name.

Now, Representative Peter Welch has taken the side of the President of the Board of the St. Albans Coop telling me there is no NAIS or premises registration. When I spoke with Welch's ag policy advisor this morning she actually sighed loudly in my ear as if I was being a huge pain in the butt.

I'm tired of fighting against the federal machine.

Before You Vote for Hillary Clinton Read This

An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Another Wellesley College Alumna

Dear Hillary,

By polling logic, I should be your supporter - Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out.

I saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debt than they'd ever experienced

And farmers couldn't collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as "intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of 75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers. http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./). Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India),166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land.

Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia,South America, Central America and here, have protested Monsanto and genetic engineering for years.

What does this have to do with you?

You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named "Rural Americans for Hillary" was planned withTroutman Sanders, Monsanto's lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world's largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE's most controversial project (DP&L's - now Monsanto's - terminator genes), the world's largest meat producer (Tyson), the world's largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart, DP&L - is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000). http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:

Bill's appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson's chicken factory farms (www.financialsense.com/ editorials/engdahl/2006/0828.html). Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, .... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender. http://www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net/GMO/Monsanto/monsanto.html

But what Bill did for Monsanto "genetic engineering" goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people's escape from it.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude different from "normal" (even polluting) business in its potential biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora'a Box - letting irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The harrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ... (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm) or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm

2. Bill's FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill's FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even "a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base" had no impact. " http://www.wafreepress.org/14/Envirowatch.html

4. Bill's FDA wouldn't even label rBGH as "present" in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill's USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, USFDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto's counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill's FDA enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill's FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in "organic" standards, "the dirty three" a : genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a fertilizer. (My emphasis.) The FDA backed down. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DEED91E31F933A1575AC0A96E958260

Had this gone through, Monsanto could have finally labeled rBGH milk ... as "organic." And animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: "This is probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department] rule in modern history." In fact the response was 20 times greater than anything ever before proposed by the USDA. http://www.orpheusweb.co.uk/john.rose/orglab.html

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public's right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields (http://btcotton.blogspot.com/). We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: 49% of US corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto's GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4790.cfm). Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high fructose Bt corn syrup. The US food system depends most on two crops, soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% Monsanto traits). "[E]ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company." The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of US food contains GM traits. http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9716.cfm

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals - more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening, like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill's USDA weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized poultry farms waste, at the end of this letter.

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill's USFDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all). (My emphasis.) http://www.sustdev.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2127&Itemid=35

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Here, Bill ignored pleas for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining trading relations. Monsanto's "good ole boy," he betrayed American families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health and their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty and clean farming.

But, HIllary, it is one thing to not label a regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill's administration didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow Disease.

Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted "known TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed," only requiring the label to read "Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants" in the US.

Monsanto added to the problem. "There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. ... Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor "hidden" BSE. That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to slaughter." (My emphasis.) http://www.consumersunion.org/food/bgh-codex.htm

Bill let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and slaughter and genetic engineering corporations whch benefitted?

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

With genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world, which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

"Even for the biggest "winners," it is like winning at poker on the Titanic." Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That's "dinky immoral." That's chicken feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

"Our way of life is likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades than in the previous one thousand years…Tens of thousands of novel transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into the Earth's ecosystems…Some of those releases, however, could wreak havoc with the planet's biospheres." Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys, thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes, developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from "working" after only one season. Farmers "must" repurchase (patents and suing not certain enough control, it seems). Those "killing" genes pose the apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail, too. Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are already contaminating normal species (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/2002/sp02v8n2.html. Berkeley Professor of Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in maize (http://www.slogefree.org/newsletters/News_Item.2004-12-21.4353/).
And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-not-uncommon.html).

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps said the USDA wanted the technology to be ‘widely licensed and made expeditiously available to many seed companies.’
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20060827&articleId=3082

"Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Hillary, one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what does these farming catatrophes say about "industrial agriculture"?

Mad Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now ....

... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of bird flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow Disease], and yet "initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry, squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified chickens. ... http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp "Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks." http://www.birdflubook.com/a.php?id=75

Monsanto (and others) is currently working with the USDA (http://www.farmandranchguide.com/articles/2006/01/30/ag_news/updates/update01.txt)
to force small farmers to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety, Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library on every move of small farmers's livestock. http://goexcelglobal.he.net/~natpropg/nonais.html

But small farmers do not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale, are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers' right to choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from their communities http://www.rense.com/general65/righto.htm

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of 10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms, deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1882-geneticallymodified-superweeds-not-uncommon.html), lawsuits against farmers, loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing themselves in what may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average ... one farmers’ suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu 1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.

Your claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but "foreign" food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food. You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction. Your policies on health and food and women and children, are meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. http://www.indiaresource.org/issues/agbiotech/2003/monsantounilever.html But you take donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto? Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto? Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate connections. I just didn't understand until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta