ACT NOW: Email Kansas Gov. Sebelius — No Growth Hormones in Milk!
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This post is a part of Fight Back Fridays on Food Renegade. For more posts about real food and food politics, visit Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays.
We’re not in Kansas anymore. In other words, Kansas is no longer the idyllic land of milk and honey it once was.
Oh sure, they still have milk. But now their milk can be full of drugs — hazardous growth hormones — and they won’t know.
If we don’t act quickly, the labels are coming off in Kansas.
Unless Governor Kathleen Sebelius vetoes it before April 16th, a Kansas bill would restrict any national US dairy from properly labeling their milk products as free from genetically engineered bovine growth hormone (rbGH or rbST).
Oh and by the way, Governor Sebelius wants to be our new Secretary of Health and Human Services. Um, hello! Let’s let her know how we feel about genetically modified hormone-laden milk!
Click the link below to send Governor Sebelius an email to let her know that her job starts now — we don’t want any more drugged milk.
Not sure how important this is? Not sure if you have the time (5 seconds) to click the link and send the email?
Watch this video:
We need to spread the word! Please take another step and do one (or all) of the following:
1. Email 10 or 20 friends and send them the link to the email form. Feel free to just link to this blog — or copy and paste. Make sure to include the link to the email form — and please tell people to FORWARD the email!
2. Post this link on Facebook and/or MySpace.
3. Write a blog post and give out the link to the email form.
4. Don’t have a blog? Ask a friend to blog it!
5. Tweet about this on Twitter – make sure to use the link to the email form.
6. Stumble and/or digg this post and stumble the email form.
C’mon guys, let’s make a difference. Every little thing you do has the potential to make a huge impact. If social media can help get an organic vegetable garden planted on the White House Lawn, we can keep the labels on milk in Kansas.
Here’s that link again:
Spread it far and wide!
If you have other ideas for ways to help spread the word, please post in the comments below. And please post in the comments below if you take action. I think when others see people taking action, it inspires them to do the same (kind of like when you see other people out on the dance floor).
Now let’s get to work. Thanks, everyone!
Photo credit: Farm to Philly
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08/04/2009 at 8:23 pm Permalink
Since the sale of raw milk across state lines is already illegal, a state law prohibiting such labels would really only affect people who live in Kansas. People who drink homogenized/pasteurized milk aren’t likely to give a hoot about hormones.
08/04/2009 at 8:36 pm Permalink
“…Monsanto’s brand of rBST, Posilac, has recently (March 2008) been the focus for a pro-rBST advocacy group called AFACT, made up of large dairy business conglomerates and closely affiliated with Monsanto itself. This group, whose acronym stands for American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology, has engaged in large-scale lobbying efforts at the state level to prevent milk which is rBST-free from being labeled as such. As milk labeled as hormone-free has proved enormously popular with consumers, the primary justification by Afact for their efforts has been that rBST is approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and that the popularity of milk sold without it is damaging what they claim to be the right of dairy producers to use a technology that maximizes their profits…”
Ren’s last blog post..Your Milk on Drugs
08/04/2009 at 8:46 pm Permalink
Hi, Harl,
Respectfully, I don’t think that’s true.
Three things:
1. This will not only affect those in Kansas. They can use this as a precedent. Due to labeling, Monsanto’s growth hormone (Posilac) has gotten a very bad reputation with consumers. If they can get one state to turn over the labeling laws, they can then use that as ammunition to overturn them in more states.
2. This woman is slated to be our new Secretary of Health and Human Services. We need to let her know how we feel about this issue — BEFORE she leaves Kansas for Washington!
3. The majority of people polled say they do NOT want to consume GMOs. However, most people don’t know which foods are genetically modified. They don’t know it’s in the milk. Labeling foods is arguably the first step to informing the public. Raw milk aside, I know lots of folks who feel good about drinking hormone-free milk. But they wouldn’t even know about those hormones if the label wasn’t on there.
08/04/2009 at 9:04 pm Permalink
You’re awesome, Ren — thanks for posting so darn fast! :-*
08/04/2009 at 9:11 pm Permalink
By the way, Ren, GREAT CALL on AFACT.
According to SourceWatch:
The American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology (AFACT) is a grassroots advocacy front group created by the agricultural marketing company Osborne & Barr Communications with support from the chemical maker Monsanto, the manufacturer of Posilac, also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin, rBST or rBGH, a synthetic growth hormone injected into dairy cows to make them produce more milk. Monty G. Miller, a Colorado consultant, was also hired to help organize the group.
Osborne & Barr created AFACT to defend dairy farmers’ use of rBST, and assist Monsanto in fighting the growing number of consumers seeking to purchase more natural products, including milk that comes from cows that have not been treated with rBST.
AFACT believes that labels stating the absence of rBST in milk mislead consumers by implying that milk from cows treated with hormones is inferior. AFACT advocates the passage of laws that ban or restrict labels that indicate milk comes from untreated cows.
The co-chairman of AFACT is Carrol Campbell, a Kansas dairy farmer who says he became involved with the rBST labeling issue after his dairy cooperative requested that he stop using Posilac. Rather than drop use of the chemical, Campbell joined a different cooperative.
Monsanto hired Osborn & Barr to handle the Posilac brand in 2006. In 2007, Monsanto and several dairy organizations met by phone to plan the formation of a grass-roots organization, and AFACT was created in the fall of 2007. Monty G. Miller, a Colorado consultant, was hired to help organize the group.[1]
Gee… is it any wonder that this bill passed in Kansas… considering that Monsanto’s front group, AFACT is based there?
08/04/2009 at 9:21 pm Permalink
Great article I found from the New York Times on AFACT:
Fighting on a Battlefield the Size of a Milk Label
Excerpt:
A new advocacy group closely tied to Monsanto has started a counteroffensive to stop the proliferation of milk that comes from cows that aren’t treated with synthetic bovine growth hormone.
The group, called American Farmers for the Advancement and Conservation of Technology, or Afact, says it is a grass-roots organization that came together to defend members’ right to use recombinant bovine somatotropin, also known as rBST or rBGH, an artificial hormone that stimulates milk production. It is sold by Monsanto under the brand name Posilac.
Dairy farmers are indeed part of the organization. But Afact was organized in part by Monsanto and a Colorado consultant who lists Monsanto as a client.
Another great quote:
A Consumer Reports survey last summer found that 88 percent of consumers believed that milk from cows not treated with synthetic hormones should be allowed to be labeled as such.
LOVE the closing bit of the article:
In the presentation, Afact also listed “integrity,” “honesty” and “transparent” as “words we wish to embody.”
They could start by being more straightforward about who is behind Afact.
RIGHT on.
Monsanto, how stupid do you think we are?
09/04/2009 at 8:33 am Permalink
Email to Governor Sebelius sent! I’ll help spread the word.
09/04/2009 at 12:04 pm Permalink
My hope is that public outcry can help to rescind this law as it did in Pennsylvania in 2007. If Sebelius fails to veto the law, we have a world of trouble ahead of us for the next few years.
Jenny @ Nourished Kitchen’s last blog post..Save Milk in Kansas
10/04/2009 at 8:10 am Permalink
I sent the email, although I wonder about how effective an email is. Particularly if staffers get hundreds of identical ones. Do you have the phone number for the governor’s office? Now that would get their attention!
Thanks, too, for posting this in Fight Back Fridays. This won’t just affect Kansas — it affects all of us. Can you imagine a national brand removing an “RBGH FREE” label from ONLY the milk being shipped to Kansas? I don’t think so. They’re very likely to remove it from all their labels (at least regionally) and save on costs.
Cheers,
KristenM
(AKA Food Renegade)
FoodRenegade’s last blog post..Fight Back Fridays — April 10th
12/04/2009 at 7:35 pm Permalink
Hi Cheeseslave, it’s Ben from the chocolate chip page.
Again I want to stress that we live in a country where we have the right to make purchases as we wish (supposedly, at least). If we are to ban information on labels because it adversely affects a large industry of farmers selling products that the public considers inferior, then we are stripping away that freedom from the consumers. Again, if these hormones and GM foods pose no safety issues, they should neither pose issues as to allowing consumers to be aware of their presence in food products. Our freedoms are at stake. Nothing should be left out of food labels, regardless. Companies deserve no protection from consumers that might not buy their product. Any product on the market has equal potential to be effective or not based on it’s quality. Quality is up to the consumer to decide, not the government to help cover up. Sink or swim, your product is a projection of your abilities and your word. NO government has the right to help any organization cover up it’s interests so that a product is more viable. That is not a government responsibility.
Cheeseslave, I think you’re awesome.
13/04/2009 at 1:14 pm Permalink
Ugh. As a KS resident, I’m hoping Gov. Sebelius vetoes this law. They tried to pass it through legislature last year but thankfully, it didn’t get enough votes. For the average Joe, it’s very important this label stays on milk. I know members of my extended family who would not go out of their way to purchase the more expensive milk from local grass fed cows, but if they at least had the choice between conventional and hormone free they would opt for hormone free. That may not be much, but it is something in the health of their families.
29/06/2010 at 4:23 pm Permalink
Great story and example