I hesitate to add to the cascade of year-end appeals that you are no doubt receiving from many worthy organizations.  Still, I thought it important to describe what an amazing and historically successful year this has been for CFS and the food movement.

Over the last several years, CFS attorneys and science staff have crafted model state and local laws for the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) foods, the halting of the planting of GE crops, and curbing the use of pesticides.  This year voters and legislatures across the country have successfully voted to pass versions of these bills, despite the chemical industry spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat these efforts. Here are some examples: 

• GE FOOD LABELING:  In an historic effort this May, citizens in Vermont enacted the nation’s first GE food labeling bill that does not require other states to join for the law to go into effect. Meanwhile, Connecticut and Maine also passed mandatory labeling laws, though they require other states to join before coming into effect.

• HALTING THE PLANTING OF GE CROPS: Five counties across the country -- Jackson and Josephine counties in Oregon, Humboldt County in California, and the counties of Hawaii and Maui -- passed bans or moratoriums on the planting of GE crops.  The Maui ballot initiative passed despite an  $8 million campaign waged against it by Monsanto and its allies.  That means the opposition spent about $350 per vote they got, believed to be the most ever spent per vote in a U.S. election, and they still lost!

• PESTICIDE RESTRICTIONS: Kauai County in Hawaii passed a bill requiring disclosure of all restricted pesticide use and GE crop plantings, as well as buffer zones to protect schools and other vulnerable citizens. These restrictions are critical for the health of Kauai’s population and especially its children as the biotech companies have made the island a center of their pesticides and GE crop experiments.

CFS is proud to have been at the forefront of these successful efforts.

But all this democracy has been too much for Monsanto and its fellow chemical and biotech companies.  

Our many successes have created an extraordinary challenge as Monsanto, big agribusiness and the chemical companies are attempting to subvert the democratic process to defend their bottom line and erase our victories. 

Utilizing some of the nation’s highest paid legal guns they have filed federal law suits to rescind the Vermont GE food labeling law, to halt the pesticide disclosure and buffer zone bill in Kauai, and to rescind the GE crop ban in Hawaii County and the moratorium on Maui. A law suit has also been filed against Jackson County to halt its ban.  

But in their biggest move to subvert democracy, these chemical companies are lobbying Congress to support a bill that we call the “Dark Act.”  This Monsanto-backed bill would rescind all current state labeling laws, and preempt any state from enacting a GE food labeling law in the future.  That’s right, this “Dark Act” would nullify the labeling bills that have been passed and would permanently halt the democratic will of the citizens to demand their right to know.  

The chemical companies are gearing up to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees and lobbyists to stop the democratic groundswell against their toxic products. 

But CFS lawyers, with the support of our science team, are in court non-stop, defending these bills in Vermont, Hawaii and in Oregon, and our policy team in D.C. is working hard every day to defeat the “Dark Act.” 
  
Our clients are the communities and citizens who are defending their health, their farmers, their livelihoods, and their land, air and water and their right to choose. We have defeated Monsanto and other corporations many times, and we expect to do so again in these court battles.

However, we do all of our work, including our legal and scientific efforts, without charge.  Instead, we count on donations from our supporters to support these critical efforts.  We need your help to counter this corporate attack.  Please donate what you can during this critical time for the food movement and our very democracy. 

When you give to CFS you also know that you are contributing to a wide range of important food and environmental issues:  

• We are committed to halting the introduction of genetically engineered salmon and just this year we helped secure commitments from top supermarket chains—totaling over 9,000 stores nationwide—to reject GE salmon if the FDA approves it for commercial sale.

• We are devoted to curbing the spread of destructive GE crops and this year we saw our multi-year litigation succeed as  the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service finally agreed to phase out the use of GE crops and ban bee-toxic neonicotinoid insecticides from all national wildlife refuges!
  

• We are saving the bees in other ways, filing a federal law suit against the EPA to ban those neonicotinoid pesticides, and with our allies launching a major grassroots and educational campaign. 
  

• We are also saving the butterflies, filing a petition with the Fish and Wildlife Service to list the monarch butterfly as an endangered species, as it is being threatened by over use of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready herbicide -- sprayed primarily on GE crops.

Thank you as always for your support, your generosity, and your passion.  Working together we will create a new regenerative, humane, and just food future.

   
PS – Your donation to Center for Food Safety is fully tax-deductible. Please make a year-end gift to CFS today and help us fight Monsanto and other biotech and chemical corporations in 2015.

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www.centerforfoodsafety.org