The following letter was written by Linn Cohen-Cole and posted to a raw dairy news group. I'm posting it here as I watch the evening news waiting for the California primary results to come in.
The issues presented in the letter regarding Monsanto are real and urgent, and Ms. Cohen-Cole has done a good job discussing the links between Monsanto and the Bill Clinton administration. (Yes, we're talking about the same Monsanto that is most likely involved in the contamination of 56 Superfund sites, wanton and "outrageous" pollution, and has plans to patent a genetically-bred "superpig"), but her discussion focuses on Bill Clinton and not Hillary Clinton. People can determine for themselves how much of the blame should by association go to Hillary.
I wasn't previously aware of any relationship between the introduction of GMOs in our food supply and Clinton administration shenanigans until I read this letter, so it was an eye-opener for me. I did a little bit of investigation tonight and could not find any direct rebuttals to the the letter. But then again, I don't have 12 hours to devote to a proper research effort. Is this a smear campaign? It doesn't seem like it. It seems like a really pissed off mom-citizen who wants people to know what the backstory is. The letter has been published in quite a few places so perhaps a rebuttal is in the offing. Until then, I leave you with the letter and the very compelling links within it so that you may do your own fact-checking and verification. If you discover anything that either confirms or denies the information presented in the letter, please post a comment. ~Carla
An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from a Wellesley College Alumna
by Linn Cohen-Cole
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. 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 with Troutman 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 Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).
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.
Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal contributions,
money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies, .... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.
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
narrowing 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. "
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. The FDA backed down.
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.
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 snapshot of our food:
Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields.
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.
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.
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 m
