The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs 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 & 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.

This week, 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, 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.

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 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.

Take action here:
http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/oca/campaign.jsp?
campaign_KEY=1242