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For Immediate Release
May, 16 2018, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Organic Consumers Association: Katherine Paul, katherine@organicconsumers.org, 207.653.3090
FINLAND, Minnesota
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) today issued the following statement on the announcement by the Global Glyphosate Study that preliminary test results of a single-dose study on glyphosate-based herbicides (GBHs) in rats, using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) guidelines for 'safe' levels, produced adverse health effects in rats.
International Director Ronnie Cummins said:
"For years, the U.S. EPA has dismissed consumer concerns about glyphosate-based weedkillers in their drinking water and in their food, claiming that exposure to the chemical at low levels is harmless. This new pilot study confirms what many responsible scientists have been saying all along: There is no such thing as 'safe' levels when it comes to glyphosate, especially when it comes to children.
"In fact, the EPA established what it calls 'safe' levels without having any scientific evidence to back up its claim because, until now, there have been no long-term, peer-reviewed studies of the potential health impact of glyphosate exposure at levels lower than the EPA's guidelines.
"This new study confirms that consumers should be alarmed when products such as Ben & Jerry's ice cream test positive for glyphosate at any level--despite corporations' claims that these levels are 'harmless.'
"OCA looks forward to the completion of the full Global Glyphosate Study and will continue to test food products for glyphosate and warn consumers when food products test positive for this toxic chemical, no matter how small the amount."
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots 501(c)3 nonprofit public interest organization, and the only organization in the U.S. focused exclusively on promoting the views and interests of the nation's estimated 50 million consumers of organically and socially responsibly produced food and other products. OCA educates and advocates on behalf of organic consumers, engages consumers in marketplace pressure campaigns, and works to advance sound food and farming policy through grassroots lobbying. We address crucial issues around food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability, including pesticide use, and other food- and agriculture-related topics.
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Trump's New Attorney General Pick: A Corporate Lobbyist Who Did Wall Street's Bidding
"We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook," said one consumer advocate.
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President-elect Donald Trump's choice to succeed Matt Gaetz as his nominee to lead the U.S. Department of Justice is a registered lobbyist who has worked on behalf of Amazon, Uber, and other corporate giants.
Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, has lobbied for the same firm as Susie Wiles, Trump's chief of staff pick, according to Senate filings. Bondi also reportedly has ties to the lawyer who represented Trump confidant Elon Musk and Tesla in a federal securities fraud case.
Bondi, who helped represent Trump during his first impeachment trial and took part in the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 election, currently serves as chair of the Center for Litigation at the America First Policy Institute, a far-right think tank that's playing a central role in the presidential transition and in crafting Trump's agenda.
Trump's selection of Bondi to lead the Justice Department prompted renewed scrutiny of her record as Florida's top prosecutor, particularly her favorable treatment of big banks and other firms implicated in the foreclosure crisis.
The American Prospect's David Dayen, the author of an acclaimed book on Wall Street foreclosure fraud, noted Friday that Bondi's victory in Florida's 2010 attorney general election was aided in part by donations from Lender Processing Services and other firms that were facing investigations launched by the office of Bondi's predecessor.
In 2011, Dayen recounted, Bondi fired two attorneys in Florida's Economic Crimes division, June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards, after freezing them out of a national probe of foreclosure fraud despite their extensive knowledge of the issue.
"There's a lot out there about Bondi, including her soliciting a $25,000 contribution from Trump and subsequently scotching an investigation into his fake university, while lying about how many complaints from former students at the university she received," Dayen wrote. "She also became a lobbyist with Trump-whisperer Brian Ballard after her stint as attorney general of Florida ended, seeking sweetheart treatment for clients like Amazon, GM, and Uber."
"But the firing of Clarkson and Edwards, which is detailed further in my 2016 book Chain of Title, is the most emblematic example of Bondi's extreme willingness to do the bidding of anyone who pays her," Dayen added. "The conversion of corporate donations into protection for that corporation, even if it meant firing her own staff, was done without so much as the bat of an eyelash."
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Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, pointed to Bondi's failed legal push to overturn the Affordable Care Act as further evidence that she is "a manifestly unqualified candidate for attorney general."
"Not being Matt Gaetz does not qualify you to be attorney general of the United States," said Weissman. "We should expect an Attorney General Bondi to let corporate wrongdoers off the hook. As Florida attorney general, Pam Bondi sued to overturn the Affordable Care Act, sued to block the ACA ban on health insurance companies price gouging people with preexisting conditions, and opposed efforts to reduce homeowners' mortgage loans in negotiations with financial institutions that had engaged in fraud and misconduct."
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ProPublica first exposed the committee's findings for Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller in September, sparking a flood of criticism directed at abortion care restrictions and the primarily Republican politicians who impose them. Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, who was running for the White House, even traveled to Atlanta to pay tribute to the two women.
"They didn't like that reporters found out that the state's ban killed two women."
Thurman and Miller's stories, as the news outlet acknowledged Thursday, "became a central discussion" in not only the presidential contest—ultimately won by Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who has bragged about the role he played in reversing Roe v. Wade—but also ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights in 10 states, seven of which succeeded.
In a November 8 letter obtained by ProPublica, Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey wrote that an "investigation was unable to uncover which individual(s) disclosed confidential information" despite state law and confidential agreements signed by panel members barring such disclosures.
Toomey explained that the committee was immediately "disbanded," a replacement panel will be formed through a new application process, and additional procedures are under consideration regarding confidentiality, oversight, and organizational structure.
ProPublica reported that the office of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp—who appointed Toomey—declined to comment and referred questions to the health department, whose spokesperson also declined to comment, saying that the letter, "speaks for itself."
As the outlet detailed:
Reproductive rights advocates say Georgia's decision to dismiss and restructure its committee also could have a chilling effect on the committee's work, potentially dissuading its members from delving as deeply as they have into the circumstances of pregnant women's deaths if it could be politically sensitive.
"They did what they were supposed to do. This is why we need them," said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the groups challenging Georgia's abortion ban in court. "To have this abrupt disbandment, my concern is what we are going to lose in the process, in terms of time and data?"
Other reproductive rights advocates and journalists were similarly critical in response to the new reporting from ProPublica—which has also covered the deaths of two women in Texas: Josseli Barnica and Nevaeh Crain.
"Women died because they received no life-saving care as they were having miscarriages in Georgia and the state responded by simply eradicating the committee that investigated deaths of pregnant women," declared writer and organizer Hannah Riley.
The National Institute for Reproductive Health, an advocacy group, asserted that "when anti-abortion politicians find FACTS inconvenient, they dismantle the systems meant to hold them accountable."
New York magazine senior correspondent Irin Carmon, whose forthcoming book is about pregnancy in the United States, similarly said: "This is how they cover up what abortion bans do—fire anyone who helps tell the stories of harm. Everyone who is or can be pregnant will pay the price."
Jessica Valenti, author of the newsletterAbortion, Every Day and the bookAbortion, also argued that Georgia officials fired the panel members because "they didn't like that reporters found out that the state's ban killed two women."
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The recommendations for charges came after the arrest of four members of the military and a federal police officer earlier this week over an alleged plot to kill Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin before they were sworn in, as well as Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Police said that "a detailed operational plan called 'Green and Yellow Dagger' was identified, which would be executed on December 15, 2022, aimed at the murder of the elected candidates for president and vice president."
According toCNN, "Police reportedly allege that Bolsonaro had 'full knowledge' of a plan to prevent Lula and his government from taking office after his election victory."
Summarizing a conversation with a columnist, Bolsonaro said on social media Thursday that "we have to see what is in this indictment by the Federal Police. I will wait for the lawyer." He also said that Moraes "does everything that the law does not say" and "I cannot expect anything from a team that uses creativity to denounce me."
Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, including with two other pending cases: In March he was indicted for allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination data and in July he was indicted for crimes including embezzlement related to alleged misappropriation of diamond jewelry and other state property. Those indictments came after Brazil's highest election authority last year barred him from running for any public office for eight years over his lies about the 2022 contest.
In addition to Bolsonaro, the other three dozen people indicted on Thursday include "some of the most important members of his far-right administration," The Guardianreported. As the newspaper detailed:
They included Bolsonaro's former spy chief, the far-right Congressman Alexandre Ramagem; the former defense ministers, Gen. Walter Braga Netto and Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; the former minister of justice and public security, Anderson Torres; the former minister of institutional security, Gen. Augusto Heleno; the former navy commander Adm. Almir Garnier Santos; the president of Bolsonaro's political party, Valdemar Costa Neto; and Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro's top foreign policy advisers.
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