WESTON A. PRICE FOUNDATION

ACTION ALERT
September 20, 2005

Help Stop Congress and the Bush Administration from Seriously Degrading Organic
Standards!

We need your immediate help to stop Congress and the Bush administration from
seriously degrading organic standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S.
organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial
agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control
over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations such as Kraft, Wal-Mart, & Dean Foods--aided and abetted
by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are moving to lower organic
standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients
that would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory
changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the
National Organic Standards Board's (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in
setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and
industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over what can go
into organic foods and products.

(Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here:
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=435082\
14&u=400589)

Today, Tuesday, Sept. 20, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S.
Senate will vote on a "rider" to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that
will reduce control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and
put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the
USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and
food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that
heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be
OK?).

For the past week in Washington, the Organic Consumers Union (OCA) has been
urging members of the Senate not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that
governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act-OFPA), but
rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve
our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then
proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be
listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our
voices. (Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here:
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=435082\
14&u=400590)

In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have
been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This
time Washington insiders tell us that the "fix is already in." So we must take
decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S. Senators today. We need you
to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also
desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come.
Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over
organic standards and preserve organic integrity.

(Send a quick letter to your Congressperson online here:
http://en.groundspring.org/EmailNow/pub.php?module=URLTracker&cmd=track&j=435082\
14&u=400591)

Thank you.

**********************************************************

Bill Sanda
Executive Director
Weston A. Price Foundation
bsanda@...