Below is the text of an email I received from Keith Post ND; I am on his mailing list. I find it really disturbing, and unfortunately, not being American or living there, I cannot do anything specific about it.

I have emailed it to all the Americans in my address book, and am posting it here in the hopes that some others may find it, and sign the petition. I am also going to try and find the appropriate tribes in which to post it.

Anyone who reads this, please feel free to pass it on.

You may not care about organic food, or standards (and if not, why the hell not?!), but this has bigger ramifications.
Today, Big Business is attempting to mess around with an issue that is dear to me ; tomorrow, it could be something that is close to your heart. The less power "they" have, the better.

Read the piece below, and please go to the website and sign the petition.
Thank you
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs your immediate help to
stop
Congress and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic
standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has
built
up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based
upon
strict organic standards and organic community control over
modification to
these standards.

Now, large corporations such as Kraft & Dean Foods--aided and abetted
by the
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are moving to lower organic
standards
by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients
that
would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed
regulatory
changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away
the
National Organic Standards Board's (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction
in
setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA
bureaucrats
and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over
what
can go into organic foods and products.

This week, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Senate will
vote
on a "rider" to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that will
reduce
control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and
put
this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember
the
USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic
sludge,
and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions
in
2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and
animal
drugs would be OK?).

For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of the
Senate
not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic
standards (the Organic Food Production Act - OFPA), but rather to let
the
organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve our
differences
over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then
proceed to
a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be
listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to
raise
our voices.

In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic
consumers
have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic
standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the "fix is is
already
in." So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S.
Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it
to
everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this
attack in
the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we
will
take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic
integrity.

Take action here:
www.demaction.org/dia/organ...mpaign.jsp

Take action now at
www.democracyinaction.org/oca/c...gn.jsp


Keith Post, ND
Natural Health Services
(503) 244-5708
keithp@pcez.com
www.pcez.com/~keithp
"Argue for your limitations and they're yours."
---from "Illusions," by Richard Bach