Food Safety Action: Don’t Let Agribusinesses Write Their Own Rules

19 Sep, 2012

The U.S. Capitol Building. Photo by: www.GlynLowe.com

Tell Congress to Dump the Biotech Riders for Good!

This week the Senate will pass a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the gov­ern­ment for the next six months. Thanks to peo­ple like you, the CR that passed out of the House last week does not have the con­tro­ver­sial “Monsanto rider” or any pol­icy rid­ers in it.  However, a suite of dan­ger­ous biotech rid­ers remain in the House Farm Bill.  With only a few days left for Congress to pos­si­bly resolve the Farm Bill before it leaves town to resume the elec­tion sea­son, it’s time to tell Congress to dump the biotech rid­ers for good!

As you will remem­ber, the Senate passed its Farm Bill (which does not con­tain the biotech rid­ers) in June. The House’s ver­sion of the bill was passed by the House Agriculture Committee but never brought to a vote on the floor because the House Republicans did not have the votes to pass it. The cur­rent Farm Bill is set to expire on September 30th and to make mat­ters worse this is likely the last week that Congress will be in town until the elec­tions.  With the dead­line to pass a Farm Bill loom­ing, the fate of the biotech rid­ers could be decided dur­ing secre­tive “closed door” nego­ti­a­tions this week between a hand­ful of Representatives and Senators who will try to strike a deal on a pos­si­ble 3-month Farm Bill exten­sion while the rest of Congress waits.

Together, these industry-promoting “rid­ers” in the House seek to erode USDA over­sight of GE crops, gut USDA analy­sis require­ments, cre­ate a forced back­door approval of “Agent Orange” corn and other GE crops and to com­pel a first-ever pol­icy for allow­able lev­els of trans­genic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in America’s crops and food sup­ply. If passed, these rid­ers would under­mine the few laws that are cur­rently in place to pro­tect farm­ers’ rights, our health and our envi­ron­ment from the many adverse impacts of GE crops.

Please con­tact Congress today to make sure the con­tro­ver­sial biotech rid­ers stay out of the Farm Bill!

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