From the February 2008 Idaho Observer:


Clintons poison the cake and then pass laws to make us eat it, too

Hillary is really a one-issue politician. Her methods are texbook Hegelian dialectics: Create the problem then offer the solution. The problem is epidemic acute and chronic illness from a chemically and genetically adulterated food supply, contaminated water and pharmaceutical drugs; the solution is mandatory healthcare. The company she keeps stands to gain a lot from this sinister combination.

A 2,200-word Open Letter to Hillary Clinton from Linn Cohen-Cole of Atlanta dated Feb. 2, 2008, asked the NY senator to justify her relationship with U.S. agrigiant Monsanto. Cohen-Cole, qualified her concerns by stating that, "By polling logic, I should be your supporter—Democrat, older woman, white, liberal. I was even in a dorm with you in college. I have pulled for you for years. But something this past summer fundamentally changed my responsibility to my children and grandchildren. In the time I have left in my life to protect them and others, I need to speak out."

Cohen-Cole explained that she saw a News Hour piece on Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide because Monsanto had used Bollywood [India’s equivalent to "Hollywood"] actors to "sell" illiterate farmers on the idea they could get rich from the big yields that come with planting Monsanto’s Bt (genetically engineered, or "GE") cotton seeds. "The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had larger debts than they’d ever experienced," Cohen-Cole explained.

The farmers could not collect seeds from their own fields to try again the following season because Monsanto "patents" its DNA-altered seeds and the company has a $10 million budget to prosecute patent-violating farmers. According to Cohen-Cole, "Since the late 1990s (about when industrial agriculture took hold in India), 166,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land."

"What does this have to do with you?" Cohen-Cole asked Hillary in the letter.

As a caveat to the "advisers" article (see page 11), Cohen-Cole explains the Clinton/Monsanto influence-peddling connection. "You have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked and through Bill [Clinton] who hired Monsanto people for central food-related roles. Your Orwellian-named ‘Rural Americans for Hillary’ was planned with Troutman Sanders, Monsanto’s lobbyists.

Genetic engineering and industrialized food and animal production all come together at the Rose Law Firm, which represents the world’s largest GE corporation (Monsanto), GE’s most controversial project (DP&L’s—now Monsanto’s—terminator genes), the world’s largest meat producer (Tyson), the world’s largest retailer and a dominant food retailer (Wal-Mart).

Cohen-Cole goes on to explain a complex web of relationships between the Clintons, friends of the Clintons, Monsanto, Tyson and Walmart that are in the public record. "But what Bill did for Monsanto ‘genetic engineering’ goes beyond inadequate concepts of giving corporate friends influence: He unleashed genetic engineering into the world. And then he helped close off people’s escape from it."

She then lists, with references and weblinks, what "Bill" did for the biotech industry that has caused farmers and consumers from every continent to come out in organized protests that are getting louder and louder as the world begins to reap the whirlwind of frankenfoods.

1. Bill put Monsanto people in at the FDA, as U.S. Agricultural Trade Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and more ...

2. Bill’s FDA gave Monsanto permission to market rBGH (a GE bovine growth hormone), the first genetically engineered product let loose on us (or did tomatoes with fish DNA get there first?).

3. Despite reports of bovine illness and death, Bill’s FDA did not recall it or put warnings on it. Even "a very angry, very vocal nationwide consumer base" had no impact.

4. Bill’s FDA wouldn’t even label rBGH as "present" in milk.

5. When dairy farmers tried to label their own milk rBGH-free so the public could choose, Bill’s USDA threatened all dairies that their products could be confiscated from stores. Michael Taylor, FDA Deputy Commissioner, was formerly Monsanto’s counsel.

6. How were consumers to protect their family, given Bill’s FDA-enforced public blindness, except to buy only organic? But Bill’s FDA tried to close off that last escape, proposing to include in "organic" standards, "the dirty three": Genetically engineered plants and animals, irradiated food and food grown with "biosolids" as "fertilizer" (treated sewage sludge).

Had the FDA not refused to comply, rBGH-containing milk and irradiated food could have been labeled "organic" and drug, chemical, vaccine and antibiotic-containing animal waste from factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have been sold as "organic" fertilizer.

Under these circumstances, Cohen-Cole does not believe that Hillary’s concern for Americans’ health and the health of America’s children is sincere. The frankenfoods she and her husband have participated in unleashing on the world are making us sick.

A snap shot of our food:

Cohen-Cole pointed out to Hillary how pervasive the GM nightmare has become in so short a time:

Oils: Sheep died in India after feeding on Bt cotton fields. We feed our children Bt cotton, as cottonseed oil in peanut butter and cookies.

Grains: Forty-nine percent of U.S. corn acreage was planted in Bt corn in 2007. A French study proved Monsanto’s GMO corn causes kidney and liver toxicity. Soft drinks and candy have highly concentrated Bt corn, in the form of high-fructose Bt corn syrup. The U.S. food system depends most on two crops, soy (90 percent GMO, 90 percent of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest crop (60 percent GMO, nearly 100 percent Monsanto traits). "[E]ssentially our entire food supply is genetically modified, to the benefit of one company."

The Grocery Manufacturers of America in 2000 estimated that 70 percent of U.S. food contains GM traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up athletes. Monsanto steroids bulk up animals—more weight, more profit. We feed our children steroids in meats. Is this why our children are fattening like Hansel and Gretel?

Poultry: Bill’s USDA-weakened chicken waste and contamination standards and attempted to allow sewage sludge to fertilize crops [As this letter is excerpted, Cohen-Cole says more about disease from industrialized poultry farm waste in the full-length version of her letter].

Milk: Over 30 scientific publications have shown increased levels of IGF-1 in milk with rBGH increases risks of breast cancer by up to seven-fold, also increasing colon and prostate cancers risks. Canada, 29 European nations, Norway, Switzerland, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa ban U.S. rBGH dairy products. Bill’s FDA put no restrictions, no warning labels (not allowing labels at all).

American children eat that food and drink that milk, Hillary. Coincidentally, American children are increasingly fat and sick.

Please, tell me, Hillary, what he could possibly have gotten in friendship or favors, that could ever justify his exposing millions of people to this?

The letter goes on to describe the biotech link to mad cow disease, bird flu, "colony collapse disorder" among bees and how GM plants are cross pollinating with nature to produce pesticide-resistant "superweeds" and heirloom crop varieties are being adulterated with frankengenetics. Cohen-Cole also describes how gene patenting by agribusiness plays into the highly controversial National Animal Identification System and the efforts of the powerful biotech lobby to force farmers and ranchers to exclusively raise GM crops and livestock.

I just didn’t understand your corporate connections until I saw that PBS show and read about Monsanto, how personally affected my children and grandchildren, and all people around the world, have been.

I will not vote for you. I will vote for someone who will commit themselves to work on behalf of small farmers and real food and decent treatment of animals and to end this industrialized agricultural nightmare that is taking us off a cliff, Cohen-Cole concluded.