This is a repost of "An Open Letter To Hillary Clinton From A Wellesley College Alumna", by Linn Cohen-Cole
----------------------------------------------

Dear Hillary,

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.

I saw a News Hour piece on
Maharastra, India, about farmers committing suicide. Monsanto, a US
agricultural giant, hired Bollywood actors for ads telling illiterate
farmers they could get rich (by their standards) from big yields with
Monsanto's Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds. The expensive
seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto, again) and
irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had
larger debt than they'd ever experienced

And farmers couldn't
collect seeds from their own fields to try again (true since time
immemorial). Monsanto "patents" their DNA-altered seeds as
"intellectual property." They have a $10 million budget and a staff of
75 devoted solely to prosecuting farmers.
www.grist.org/comments/food/2008/01/17./).

Since the late 1990s
(as industrial agriculture took hold in India?), 166,000 Indian farmers
have committed suicide and 8 million have left the land, and it has
increased since 2002 to an average of 1 every 20 minutes (P.Sainath,
The Hindu). The reasons for suicides are always complex and Monsanto is
not the only giant agribusiness now in India, but it is one of the
largest, and the main one in Maharastra where the suicides are
especially high. Farmers in Europe, Asia, Africa, Indonesia, South
America, Central America and here, have all protested Monsanto and
genetic engineering.

What does this have to do with you?

You
have connections to Monsanto through the Rose Law Firm where you worked
and through Bill 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
(Walmart).

The inbred-ness of Rose's legal representation of
corporations which own controlling interests in other corporations
there and of corporate boards sharing members who are also shareholders
of each other's corporations there, is so thorough that it is hard to
capture. Jon Jacoby, senior executive of the Stephens Group - one of
the largest institutional shareholders of Tyson Foods, Walmart,
DP&L -is also Chairman of the Board of DP&L and arranged the
Wal-Mart deal. Jackson Stephens' Stephens Group staked Sam Walton and
financed Tyson Foods. Monsanto bought DP&L. All represented at Rose.

You
didn't just work there, you made friends. That shows in the flow of
favors then and since. You were invited onto Walmart's board, you were
helped by a Tyson executive to make commodity trades (3 days before
Bill became governor), netting you $100,000, Jackson Stephens strongly
backed Bill for Governor, and then for President (donating $100,000).

Food and friends, in Clinton terms:

Bill's
appointed friend Mike Espy, Secretary of Agriculture, who immediately
significantly weakened federal chicken waste and contamination
standards, opening the door to major expansion of Tyson's chicken
factory farms. Espy resigned, indicted for accepting bribes, illegal
contributions, money laundering, illegal dispersal of USDA subsidies,
.... Tyson Foods was the largest corporate offender.

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.

Genetic engineering is many orders of magnitude
different from "normal" (even polluting) business in its potential
biologic ramifications. The warning myth of Pandora'a Box - letting
irretrievable things rush out into nature - has become real. The
narrowing change to the world from nuclear fission and fusion is the
closest parallel.

What did Bill do?

1. Bill's put
Monsanto people in at the FDA, as US Agricultural Trade
Representatives, on International Biotechnology Consultive Forums, and
more ... (http://www.commondreams.org/headlines/072600-03.htm or http://www.monitor.net/monitor/9904b/monsantofda.html or http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Revolving-Door.htm.

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, USFDA 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" a : genetic engineering of plants and animals, use of
irradiation in food processing and use of municipal sewage sludge as a
fertilizer. The FDA backed down. Had this gone through, Monsanto could
have finally labeled rBGH milk ... as "organic." And animal waste from
factory farms, a pollution nightmare for Tyson and others, could have
been sold as fertilizer.

USDA head Dan Glickman: "This is
probably the largest public response to an [Agriculture Department]
rule in modern history." In fact the response was 20 times greater than
anything ever before proposed by the USDA.

Personally, I resent years of effort to protect my children and now grandchildren, from that crap.

Politically, Bill sided against small farmers and against the public's right to know, and with Monsanto.

A snap shot of our food:
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:
49% of US 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 US food system depends most on two crops,
soy (90% GMO, 90% of traits owned by Monsanto) and corn, the largest
crop (60% GMO, nearly 100% 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 US food contains GM traits.

Meat: Steroids bulk up atheletes.
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
as fertilize crops. I will say more about disease from industrialized
poultry farms waste, at the end of this 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 USFDA 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.

Here, Bill ignored pleas
for labeling. Abroad, Bill ignored intense international objections
over the same issue - unlabeled US food exports - badly straining
trading relations. Monsanto's "good ole boy," he betrayed American
families at the deepest levels conceivable - their family's health and
their democratic right to know. He betrayed our rural life and American
family farmers - backing corporation deceit and control, over honesty
and clean farming.

But, Hillary, it is one thing to not label a
regular ole food product to sell it, and quite another to sell a
suspected-dangerous food product (rBGH), but Bill's administration
didn't label (or stop) a well-known, terrifying threat - Mad Cow
Disease.

Bill's FDA's August, 1997 regulation permitted "known
TSE-positive [Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] material to be
used in pet food, pig, chicken and fish feed," only requiring the label
to read "Do not feed to cattle and other ruminants" in the US.

Monsanto
added to the problem. "There is evidence that rbST use [Monsanto's GE
bovine growth hormone] reduces the useful lifespan of a dairy cow. ...
Given that the incubation period for BSE is at least three to five
years and perhaps longer, rbST-treated cows could harbor "hidden" BSE.
That is, they might be infected but still asymptomatic when sent to
slaughter." http://www.consumer.

Bill
let TSE into our entire food chain. And who owned the feed and
slaughter and genetic engineering corporations which benefitted?

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?

With
genetic engineering itself, Bill did something to the whole world,
which tried to object. Words are inadequate to express how astoundingly
immoral, beyond human bounds and conceit and power, that was.

"Even for the biggest "winners," it is like winning at poker on the Titanic." Jerry Mander: Facing the Rising Tide

He had no right.

Do you hear that?

Bill
had sex from Monica Lewinsky. That's "dinky immoral." That's chicken
feed immoral - excuse the Tyson pun, excuse the TSE-laced pun. Bill let
genetic engineering lose on NATURE itself.

"Our way of life is
likely to be more fundamentally transformed in the next several decades
than in the previous one thousand years...Tens of thousands of novel
transgenic bacteria, viruses, plants and animals could be released into
the Earth's ecosystems...Some of those releases, however, could wreak
havoc with the planet's biospheres." Jeremy Rifkin, Biotech Century

Bill
did this to us, like it was some nothing and he, some big dumb ass
Southern boy, just smiling and getting in good with the Big Boys,
thinking about as much about the consequences of something this immense
and about us human beings out here, as he thought about you, when he
was unfaithful with Monica. Just one big fool getting off on the power
and used to getting away with things.

Terminator genes,
developed by DP&L, a Rose Firm client, prevent seeds from "working"
after only one season. Farmers "must" repurchase (patents and suing not
certain enough control, it seems). Those "killing" genes pose the
apocalyptic risk of breaking out into nature. Natural seeds could fail,
too. Nature could fail.

Far-fetched?

GMO fields are
already contaminating normal species Berkeley Professor of
Microbiology, Ignacio Chapela, wrote an open letter, warning the
Mexican government about just this breaking out phenomenon happening in
maize

And it has already happened with weeds - pesticide
resistant GMO seeds break lose and weeds become pesticide-resistant
Superweeds.

But Bill's USDA spokesman, Willard Phelps saidthe
USDA wanted the technology to be `widely licensed and made
expeditiously available to many seed companies.'

"Genetic
Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds
more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth.
With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to
increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent
farmers." David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University

Hillary,
one third of the world's bee colonies have collapsed. Gone. Farmers in
India are killing themselves. Farmers and bees. Since organic farmers
in India are fine and organic farmers report no colony collapse, what
does these farming catastrophes say about "industrial agriculture"?

Mad
Cow Disease is another direct result of industrial agriculture. And now
....... transnational poultry factories are implicated as the source of
bird flu. ... Small scale poultry farms and wild birds seem not to be
the problem [just as small farmers are not the issue in Mad Cow
Disease], and yet "initiatives are multiplying to ban outdoor poultry,
squeeze out small producers and restock farms with genetically modified
chickens. ... http://www.ens-newswire.com/
"Of the few outbreaks that did occur in [Laos], more than 90% broke out
in commercial poultry operations, not free-ranging flocks."

Monsanto
(and others) is currently working with the USDAto force small farmers
to tag every animal with a global tracking device (NAIS - National
Animal Identification System). Allegedly related to food safety,
Monsanto and others would be creating a vast corporate digital library
on every move of small farmers's livestock.

But small farmers do
not create the contaminated environments, do not supply the feed, do
not grind up diseased animals into feed (how Mad Cow began) and then
sell it. In fact, their farming methods, free range and small scale,
are significantly healthier and safer for animals and food than the
massive concentration of animals by corporate industrial agriculture.

Monsanto
is also aggressively pushing for state laws to limit farmers' right to
choose what to plant and the public's right exclude GE plants from
their communities.

Cattle bloated by steroids, lapse and loss of
10,000 year old normal seeds, immense pollution from factory farms,
deadly-disease-ridden feed, world-wide bee colony collapse, poisoned
soil and depleted water supplies, Superweeds, lawsuits against farmers,
loss of family farms, and ... India farmers killing themselves in what
may be the largest mass suicide in recorded human history (on average
... one farmers' suicide every 30 minutes since 2002 - The Hindu
1.30.08) - that is industrial agriculture.

Monsanto and Tyson
are two of the largest industrial agricultural corporations in the
world. Industrial agriculture is represented by your Rose Law Firm.

Your
claim to care about food safety is terrifying double-speak given what
Bill did and who you take donations from. Your idea of a Department of
Food Safety would centralize control of food - in whose corporate
connected hands? You talk tough about labeling food - ah, but "foreign"
food - a sleight of hand tricking a public desperate for safe US food.
You talk about food safety but Bill degraded food in every imaginable
way and prevented minimally sane labeling.

I am a person before
I am a woman. Your gender means nothing. It is a media distraction.
Your policies on health and food and women and children, are
meaningless in the face of connections that have threatened those
groups profoundly, connections you have never denounced.

Monsanto
uses child labor in India, primarily very young girls, exposing them to
a lethal pesticide 13-14 hours a day, for pennies in pay. But you take
donations from their lobbyists. You say you care about black people but
as the poorest people in this country, they are least able to buy
organic and are forced to eat the contaminated foods Bill let into our
food system. The National Black Farmers Association has a boycott out
on all Monsanto products.

Do you eat organic?

So, who are
you with, hapless black consumers and black farmers, or Monsanto?
Mothers left to give their children rBGH milk, or Monsanto? Women
exposed to 7 times greater risk of breast cancer, or Monsanto?
Desperate farmers in India and young children forced into child labor
in cottonseed factories there, or Monsanto? Animals suffering from
lives in filthy cages and disgusting feedlots, shot up with steroids
and hormones and antibiotics, or Monsanto? Our children who eat candy
with high fructose Bt corn syrup associated with kidney and liver
toxicity, or Monsanto?

Edwards was right about your corporate
connections. I just didn't understand 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.

Linn Cohen-Cole
Atlanta


Disclaimer. I am not a scientist. I have read for months on this
subject, and am including only a tiny portion of the horrifying things
I have learned. I am expressing my opinion as person and may be wrong.
Perhaps things are swell out there and rBGH is fabulous and TSE-laced
feed is great, and genetic engineering is the best thing since manna.
But I am scared for my family and I have not only a right to say so but
an obligation to do so. I am angry that Monsanto was allowed the
influence it had and has done the things it definitely seems to have. I
am disgusted by industrialization of every tender and beautiful part of
our world and hope, for all our children's sake, we are not too late to
pull back. The letter is reposted from Speaking Truth to Power.