WA voters: Will you help us reach our goal of 500 signers on our TPP petition? We need 292 more signers! We aim to reach 500 signers before meeting with our Congress-members in June.

The TPP petition is addressed to our WA Congressional representatives, and lays out our concerns related to:
Food Labeling
Food Safety
Food Ethics
Farm to School Programs
Our Climate
Our Democracy

Please sign our petition today!

And then please share on Facebook and Twitter!

Join me to support local farmers by saying NO to the TPP. Sign the petition today! #NoTPP http://350seattle.nationbuilder.com/tpp_foodletter

Join me to support food safety by saying NO to the TPP. Sign the petition today! #NoTPP http://350seattle.nationbuilder.com/tpp_foodletter

Join me to support food labeling by saying NO to the TPP. Sign the petition today! #NoTPP http://350seattle.nationbuilder.com/tpp_foodletter

Thank you!

Sign-up/Renew your CAGJ Membership in May, and your gift will be DOUBLED

Every year in the Spring we rally our community to support CAGJ by pledging money or time.  In celebration of CAGJ’s 15th anniversary, your membership gift to CAGJ in May will go twice as far, helping us hire a second organizer to confront corporate power and fight for food justice for all!

Get your gift doubled today and double our staffing in 2016!

$10,000 Goal to Hire New Organizer: Your gift now will help us meet the growing demands of our multiple campaigns, by hiring a new part-time organizer. For fifteen years CAGJ has confronted corporate power through the collective strength of our members and community organizing together. We have accomplished so much, and with only one full-time staff person!  Now, to effectively coordinate our transnational organizing (which has already made the GM banana a high profile issue – check out this HuffPost piece), we need to expand. Our first goal is to hire a new Co-Director, and later this year we will hire an AGRA Watch Organizer. You can help us double our staffing in 2016 with your Membership donation!

$5000 Matching Grant: With your gift, we can reach this goal, with the generous matching grant from grocery workers’ union UFCW 21, and several CAGJ Members! All donations up to $5000 through May will be matched, dollar for dollar, so donate now to ensure CAGJ can continue our transnational organizing for food sovereignty.

GIVE TO THE GRASSROOTS! 

Please consider becoming a Monthly Sustainer or providing a one-time contribution of $15, $50, or $125. Most of CAGJ’s revenue comes from individual donations.

If you can’t donate funds at this time, but can pledge to participate in CAGJ over the next year, you too can sign up to become a Member (or renew)!

THANK YOU for helping CAGJ thrive in 2016!

Sign-up/Renew today and your gift will be DOUBLED

April showers are here and so is our annual Membership Month! Membership Month is when we rally our community to support CAGJ by pledging money or time.  In celebration of CAGJ’s 15th anniversary, your membership gift to CAGJ will go twice as far, helping us hire a second organizer to confront corporate power and fight for food justice for all!

Get your gift doubled today and double our staffing in 2016!

$10,000 Goal to Hire New Organizer: Your gift now will help us meet the growing demands of our multiple campaigns, by hiring a new part-time organizer. For fifteen years CAGJ has confronted corporate power through the collective strength of our members and community organizing together. We have accomplished so much, and with only one full-time staff person!  Now, to effectively coordinate our transnational organizing (which has already made the GM banana a high profile issue – check out this HuffPost piece), we need to expand. Our first goal this month of raising 10k is to hire a new Co-Director, and later this year we will hire an AGRA Watch Organizer. You can help us double our staffing in 2016 with your Membership donation!

$5000 Matching Grant: With your gift, we can reach this goal, with the generous matching grant from UFCW 21 and anonymous CAGJ donors! All donations up to $5000 through April will be matched, dollar for dollar, so donate now to ensure CAGJ can continue our transnational organizing for food sovereignty.

Please consider becoming a Monthly Sustainer or providing a one-time contribution of $15, $50, or $125. Most of CAGJ’s revenue comes from individual donations. If you can’t donate funds at this time, but can pledge to participate in CAGJ over the next year, you too can sign up to become a Member (or renew)!

THANK YOU for helping CAGJ grow stronger in 2016!

Pictured in photo: Emma Shorr, Bill Aal and Phil Bereano of AGRA Watch deliver petitions to Gates Foundation. Photo credit: Jonathan Lee

Photos
-See professional photographer Jonathan Lee’s photos on Facebook here.
-See CAGJ’s photos on Facebook here.

Delivering over 57,000 signatures gathered through CREDO Action’s online petition, AGRA Watch and Iowa State University graduate students had a successful simultaneous action on Monday, Feb. 15 at ISU in Ames, Iowa, and at the Gates Foundation in Seattle.  The petition asks the University and the Gates Foundation to cease supporting the transgenic banana study, including human feeding trials, and to change the trajectory for this type of research conducted at public universities. For more information, please read the press release.

In Seattle we delivered the petitions in the form of a prop to represent the 57,000+ signatures on the petition – a box filled with the 1600+ pages of names we received from CREDO – along with the actual file on a thumb-drive. We were pleased that, unlike at past demonstrations, Gates Foundation staff, including the head of media relations, met our delegation, and, while TV news cameras filmed, accepted our prop while we laid out our concerns.

We rallied outside the Foundation for an hour, 3 of us wearing banana costumes, and carrying signs while chanting, “Hey hey! Ho ho! Gates stop funding GMOs!” and “What do we want? Food Sovereignty! When do we want it? Now!”.  We had hoped to share our concerns in-person before the action with Chris Elias, head of Global Development, however he was out of the country, and his staff did not propose an alternate meeting time.

Meanwhile in Iowa, 7 grad students and 1 community member gathered on the steps of Curtiss Hall, home of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, to take a group picture before heading inside the Dean’s office (Wendy Wintersteen), and dropping off the petition.

Proving that our work is not being ignored by the biotech industry, the action provoked a lot of interest from GMO advocates.  Through what appears to be a coordinated response, multiple negative comments were made on the AGRA Watch Facebook page, and both CAGJ and AGRA Watch’s Facebook pages received several negative reviews this week. (You can counter these posts by reporting offensive ones, and offering a more favorable review if you feel inspired!) Kevin Folta, the University of Florida professor whose ties to Monsanto were recently revealed by the New York Times, wrote a post on his blog Sunday before the action, attacking the students involved in this campaign. Later, a well known troll created two offensive memes with AGRA Watch action photos, and filed a public-records request for one of the ISU students (who recently got her PhD and is teaching), which we consider to be an act of harassment.

Media Round-Up

PRINT/ONLINE:

-Ecologist: Gates Foundation: stop ‘biopirated’ GMO banana feeding trials

-Iowa State Daily: Genetically Modified Bananas Spark Controversy

-Business Insider: A group of scientists plans to pay young women $900 to eat genetically modified bananas

-Des Moines Register: ISU still plans GMO banana trial, despite controversy

-CNBC/AP: Iowa researchers to pay students to eat GMO bananas

-Iowa Farm Bureau: Hypocrisy of the anti-GMO crowd on display at Iowa State

-Iowa Meets Maui Blog: Privileged Students Protest Vitamin A Rich Bananas

TV:

-KIRO 7 TV, Seattle, WA interview with CAGJ Director Heather Day (starts at 17:08), and also King 5 TV (link not found).

-KCCI Des Moines TV News: Demonstration planned Monday at ISU over banana research

RADIO:

–Free Speech Radio News, New GM banana bound for Uganda set for human testing at Iowa State. Also aired by Green ACRE Radio and on KBCS 91.3 FM.

-KIRO Radio Jason Rantz Show, Bananas Descend on the Gates Foundation in Protest, interview with Phil Bereano and Chris Feise, AGRA Watch

-KHOI 89.1 Ames, IA Community Radio, DonnaLonna Kitchen Show interview with Gabrielle Roesch, ISU student, (begins at 4:33).

-KOPN 89.5 Columbia, MO Community Radio, Farm & Fiddle interview with Phil Bereano, AGRA Watch, and Rivka Fidel, ISU student (link will be posted).

-WRFG Radio Free Georgia-Atlanta, GA 89.3FM, Just Peace interview with Bill Aal, AGRA Watch and Gabrielle Roesch, ISU graduate student (link will be posted).

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Ames Contact: Hannah Dankbar  515-867-1731
Seattle Contact: Heather Day  206-724-2243
Salk Institute Contact: David Schubert  858-453-4100 x1528

Over 57,000 Express Concern with Human Feeding Trials of GMO Bananas
Simultaneous demonstrations in Ames and Seattle highlight controversy surrounding Gates Foundation-funded Transgenic Banana Study at Iowa State University

Ames, IA and Seattle, WA:  On Monday February 15th, Iowa State University graduate students will deliver 57,309 petition signatures to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at ISU while AGRA Watch members deliver the same petition to the headquarters of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington. (The petitions will be delivered at 9:30am PST and 11:30am CST.) The petition asks the University and the Gates Foundation to cease supporting the transgenic banana study, including human feeding trials, and to change the trajectory for this type of research conducted at public universities.  Petition signatures were collected by ISU graduate students, AGRA Watch and CREDO Action.

With the purported goal of reducing Vitamin A deficiency in Uganda and other parts of the world, genetically modified bananas are enriched with beta carotene. The study examines the extent to which the bananas’ beta carotene is converted to Vitamin A in the body and absorbed by consumers.  The study is funded by the Gates Foundation.

The CREDO petition is a follow-up to a petition launched in 2015 by ISU graduate students who, in partnership with AGRA Watch, collected over 1000 signatures, that were delivered in December. These petitions respond to an email that was sent to the ISU student body in April 2014 inviting young women (ages 18-40) to eat genetically modified bananas in return for $900.

This study is one of the first human feeding trials of a genetically modified product, and there has been no prior animal testing of this product. Thus, ISU students are being asked to be the first to consume a product of unknown safety. The study is not being conducted in a transparent manner, and concerned ISU community members have not been able to receive answers about the research design, risks, nature of the informed consent given by the subjects, and the generalizability of the study.

The safety concern is not limited to students or activists. Dr. David Schubert, a molecular biologist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, said, “Beta carotine is chemically related to compounds that are known to cause birth defects and other problems in humans at extremely low levels, and these toxic chemicals are possible if not likely by-products of plants engineered to make large amounts of beta carotene.  Since there is no required safety testing of the banana or any other GMO, doing a feeding trial in people, especially women, should not be allowed.  It is both unethical and immoral, particularly because there are several naturally occurring varieties of banana that are safe and have higher levels of beta carotene than the GM varieties.”

Beyond the possible harm to students, the banana may have negative long-term impacts on Ugandan agriculture.  Many banana varieties serves as staples in Ugandan diets. Ugandans have the right to have access to safe, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food. A coalition of over 100 U.S., African and international organizations expressed concerns in an Open Letter that genetically-modified bananas are not meant to serve such a purpose, and that this crop will have an adverse affect on Ugandan agriculture, food security and food sovereignty.

Bridget Mugambe, a Ugandan campaigner with Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, declared, “What is eluding the Gates Foundation is the existence of diverse alternative sources of Vitamin A rich foods that are easily planted and readily available in Uganda. The need for this Vitamin A rich GM banana is clearly assumed, and may sadly end up destroying a food that is at the very core of our social fabric.”

The demonstrations come on the heels of a widely-reported new critique of the Gates Foundation, commissioned by UK-based Global Justice Now. In the reportentitled “Gated Development”, the organization argues that “big business is directly benefitting, in particular in the fields of agriculture and health, as a result of the foundation’s activities.” The report goes on to claim that the foundation creates “a corporate merry-go-round where the [foundation] consistently acts in the interests of corporations”.

Mariam Mayet, Director of African Centre for Biodiversity (South Africa) stated, “We in Africa vehemently oppose the introduction of GM crops plants into our food and farming systems that is being carried out in the name of the public good. Once again we would like to draw attention to the conclusions of the 400 global experts of the IAASTD report, who are under no illusion that the current obsession with yield and productivity (personified in the extreme by GMOs) is a panacea for a more ecologically sustainable and equitable food system.”

CAGJ is following this lawsuit closely! Brought by many of our partners, including Friends of the Earth, with whom we coordinated closely on our 2015 Costco campaign, it represents an important challenge to the FDA’s recent approval of GE salmon.

By Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice | March 31, 2016

A broad coalition of organizations sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today for approving the first-ever genetically engineered (GE) food animal, an Atlantic salmon engineered to grow quickly. The man-made salmon was created by AquaBounty Technologies, Inc. with DNA from three fish: Atlantic salmon, Pacific king salmon and Arctic ocean eelpout. This marks the first time any government in the world has approved a GE animal for commercial sale and consumption.

“FDA’s decision is as unlawful as it is irresponsible,” George Kimbrell, senior attorney for Center for Food Safety and co-counsel for the plaintiffs, said. “This case is about protecting our fisheries and ocean ecosystems from the foreseeable harms of the first-ever GE fish, harms FDA refused to even consider, let alone prevent. But it’s also about the future of our food: FDA should not, and cannot, responsibly regulate this GE animal, nor any future GE animals, by treating them as drugs under a 1938 law.”

In approving the GE salmon, FDA determined it would not require labeling of the GE fish to let consumers know what they are buying, which led Congress to call for labeling in the 2016 omnibus spending bill. FDA’s approval also ignored comments from nearly 2 million people opposed to the approval because the agency failed to analyze and prevent the risks to wild salmon and the environment, as well as fishing communities, including the risk that GE salmon could escape and threaten endangered wild salmon stocks.

“It’s clear that the market has rejected GE salmon despite FDA’s reckless approval,” Dana Perls, food and technology campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said. “Major retailers including Costco, Safeway and Kroger won’t sell it and polls show the vast majority of people don’t want to eat it. Yet under this approval it won’t be labeled, violating our fundamental right to know what we are feeding our families.”

AquaBounty’s GE salmon will undertake a 5,000-mile journey to reach U.S. supermarkets. The company plans to produce the GE salmon eggs on Prince Edward Island, Canada. The GE salmon will then be grown to market-size in a facility in Panama, processed into fillets and shipped to the U.S. for sale. That complicated scheme is only for the initial approval, however. AquaBounty has publicly announced plans to ultimately grow its GE fish in the U.S. rather than Panama and sell it around the world. Despite this, FDA’s approval only considered the current plans for the far-flung facilities in Canada and Panama, leaving the risk of escape and contamination of U.S. salmon runs unstudied.

The lawsuit challenges FDA’s claim that it has authority to approve and regulate GE animals as “animal drugs” under the 1938 Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Those provisions were meant to ensure the safety of veterinary drugs administered to treat disease in livestock and were not intended to address entirely new GE animals that can pass along their altered genes to the next generation. The approval of the GE salmon opens the door to other genetically engineered fish and shellfish, as well as chickens, cows, sheep, goats, rabbits and pigs that are reportedly in development.

The lawsuit also highlights FDA’s failure to protect the environment and consult wildlife agencies in its review process, as required by federal law. U.S. Atlantic salmon and many populations of Pacific salmon, are protected by the Endangered Species Act and in danger of extinction. Salmon is a keystone species and unique runs have been treasured by residents for thousands of years. Diverse salmon runs today sustain thousands of American fishing families and are highly valued in domestic markets as a healthy, domestic, “green” food.

“Atlantic salmon populations including our endangered Gulf of Maine fish are hanging on by a thread—they can’t afford additional threats posed by GE salmon,” said Ed Friedman from Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, one of the parties who successfully petitioned to classify most Maine Atlantic salmon as endangered. “The law requires agencies like FDA, who aren’t fisheries biologists, to get review and approval from scientists with that expertise. FDA’s refusal to do this before allowing commercialization of GE salmon is not only irresponsible, it violates the law.”

When GE salmon escape or are accidentally released into the environment, the new species could threaten wild populations by mating with endangered salmon species, outcompeting them for scarce resources and habitat and/or introducing new diseases. Studies have shown that there is a high risk for GE organisms to escape into the natural environment and that GE salmon can crossbreed with native fish. Transgenic contamination has become common in the GE plant context, where contamination episodes have cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars over the past decade. In wild organisms like fish, it could be even more damaging.

“Once they escape, you can’t put these transgenic fish back in the bag. They’re manufactured to outgrow wild salmon, and if they cross-breed, it could have irreversible impacts on the natural world,” Dune Lankard, a salmon fisherman and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Alaska representative, said. “This kind of dangerous tinkering could easily morph into a disaster for wild salmon that will be impossible to undo.”

The world’s preeminent experts on GE fish and risk assessment, as well as biologists at U.S. wildlife agencies charged with protecting fish and wildlife heavily criticized the FDA decision for failing to evaluate these impacts. FDA ignored their concerns in the final approval.

“The FDA has failed to adequately examine the risks associated with transgenic salmon,” Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said. “The long term effects of people eating genetically modified foods have never been adequately addressed—and this GE salmon is no exception. This fish is unnecessary, so why take the risk?”

The plaintiff coalition, jointly represented by legal counsel from Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice, includes Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Golden Gate Salmon Association, Kennebec Reborn, Friends of Merrymeeting Bay, Ecology Action Centre, Food & Water Watch, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Cascadia Wildlands and Center for Food Safety.

CAGJ invites you to join us on the picket line!

Saturday March 12
10:00 am – 11:30 am
Location: Columbia City PCC – 3610 S Edmunds St, Seattle, WA 98118

The Seattle Boycott Committee and CAGJ are holding an informational picket on Saturday March 12 in support of ​Familias Unidas por la Justicia at PCC Markets in Seattle. We are continuing to demand that PCC stop carrying Driscoll’s berries until the Sakuma Bros Farms owners sign a contract with the farm workers. No experience necessary with pickets! You will be sharing a flyer with shoppers, who are generally very supportive of this cause.

Bring signs if you have them, and weather appropriate clothing as we will be out rain or shine!

RSVP or send questions to CAGJ’s Food Justice Project: fjp@cagj.org

In solidarity,
Seattle Boycott Committee

More information:
-Updates and additional info can be found on the Familias Unidas por la Justicia Facebook page.
-To learn more about the history of the worker’s struggle at Sakuma Brothers berry farm, check out this blog post and this resource list.
-Read PCC’s official stance regarding Driscoll’s berries here.

Originally posted to FOOD FIRST BLOG

By Ahna Kruzic, Angie Carter and Rivka Fidel    | 03.07.2016
The authors are currently graduate students at or recently graduated from Iowa State University. CAGJ’s AGRA Watch campaign coordinates closely with the students on our GM Banana campaign.

Ames, Iowa – A recent controversy about an upcoming genetically engineered (GE) banana study at Iowa State University (ISU) highlights public universities’ reluctance to engage with students in critical dialogue. Several graduate students, over the course of the last year, have raised critical questions about the claims made by ISU administrators and others that the GE banana study will save lives. The research will test the bioavailability of beta carotene in bananas genetically engineered to contain more of the Vitamin A precursor. The study recruited 12 female ISU students (ages 18-40) to eat GE bananas in return for $900. This study is one of the first human feeding trials of GE products and the first feeding trial of the GE banana.

The students also recently delivered 57,309 petition signatures to ISU in conjunction with a parallel delivery to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle by AGRA Watch and the Community Alliance for Global Justice. Critics of the initial questions and subsequent petition delivery use an increasingly common argument that critical questions about GE technology are somehow “anti-science.” Several GE proponents also accused students and activists involved in the delivery of using their white privilege to keep Africans hungry and malnourished.

Yes, students are privileged to ask these questions. The opportunity to engage in a scientific dialogue is a powerful privilege. This privilege compels us to ask difficult questions about the ethical dimensions of this GE banana research process, as well as its impacts and other viable alternatives.

Last year, the concerned ISU graduate students drafted scientific questions investigating how the study would be conducted and potential effects the GE bananas could have on Ugandan food systems. Their questions are not about whether the use of biotechnology is morally right or wrong, or if the researchers are good or bad people. At their heart, these questions are about social, economic and environmental impacts that this kind of research will have upon real people in real places. Hunger and malnutrition are not only biological challenges, they are social problems rooted in inequality.

The questions boil down to four main queries: (1) How will GE bananas impact nutrition and hunger in Uganda, or how will ISU and/or the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation address this question? (2) How was the technology determined to be a culturally appropriate intervention? (3) Who will own or control this technology upon its development? and (4) How should public universities be involved in GE biofortification and testing?

These questions highlight the need for a public dialogue on our campuses about the role of power in the scientific process. Claims made by ISU officials that this research will save lives are premature and a smokescreen to deflect students’ questions. These claims are made without any grounding in research or recognition of the power differential between their privileged positions as tenured faculty, deans, or department chairs and the would-be recipients of their GE hunger “solutions.” The claims ignore the ways in which the incessant battle to convince communities across the world to accept GE technology as a one-size-fits-all solution to complex social problems is itself a privileged perspective. Such far-reaching claims are not only unscientific but may lead to dangerous assumptions. These claims have also falsely implied that students, in asking their questions, attempted to directly malign the study’s primary researcher. Aligning the ISU students’ critical questions with attacks on the researcher is a sabotage of the scientific process itself.

GE proponents’ over-simplified approach poses risks to us all. Genetic engineering, in some cases, may be an appropriate technology that helps to solve agricultural and human health problems. Yet, for this approach to be scientific, it must incorporate – and take part in dialogue about – the social, economic, and environmental consequences associated with this technology.

No scientific study is free from the social, political, and cultural context in which it is conducted. We must be able to have meaningful critiques, pulling from multiple scientific disciplines, that challenge GE technology, including its potential uses, as well as interrogating who controls, owns, and benefits from it.

Science is a negotiation – an iterative process rooted in asking questions, in testing hypotheses and counter-hypotheses. Thus it is crucial that scientists and students of science – regardless of status, expertise, or background – be able to ask critical questions regarding each other’s work without fear of vitriolic retribution or retaliation.

We need a long view that takes into account social inequality and includes space for critical dialogue. No single crop, GE or otherwise, will solve the fundamental problems of hunger and malnutrition. There is a great deal of evidence that a more diversified agriculture – a system that places women’s empowerment and food sovereignty at its center – is likely to be more successful in the long term in achieving these ends. Many in agriculture and food systems scientists acknowledge that we need more research and development in alternative agricultural solutions.

To raise questions about the safety, utility, as well as the social and ecological consequences of GE is scientifically valid, and not akin to wanting people to go hungry or become malnourished. While administrators at public universities, philanthropic organizations, and private corporations talk about “saving lives,” many others want to talk about rebuilding their lives on their own terms, through agroecological methods and food sovereignty. As such, we should be investing in these endeavors just as we invest in GE technology.

It is essential that there is a space at public universities, with large philanthropic organizations, and in broader society where students, academics, and activists can ask difficult questions in the name of a more sustainable and equitable food system without being labeled as unscientific or accused of misusing their privilege.