all right we're just going to move on here with a local farmer joel hughes b as a fourth generation farmer in walla walla here's four hundred acre farm it's been certified organic since two thousand and four it was the second farm i'm told that was rescued by the p c c farm land trust it means that that land was saved to grow not g m o food his crops include organic pumpkins butternut squash organic alfalfa hay barley for organic valley one of the sponsors of this g m o free rally he's going to talk about how g m o alfalfa however is contaminating his organic alfalfa if anyone wants to get in touch with him after this please email info at g m o free seattle dot com john hughes be allowed to welcome thank you so much you know i come from the land and i offer my hands as evidence of such so it's great to be here and share a little bit of my story with you and how g m o roundup ready alfalfa has an impact on my farm the fact of the matter is jim oil fell for was released for complete deregulation by the obama administration and secretary of agriculture tom vilsack in january of this year ok this is not a good thing right i grow alfalfa in fact i was even growing some organic alfalfa seed this year but the fact of the matter is i can't really do that anymore because it's already too late in my valley and the reason is cross pollination unlike corn and some of these other crops alfalfa spall unaided by bees and those bees can travel five miles from where their hives are or there be boxes to the crops they don't recognize fence lines they don't recognize property lines now the fact is there's an industry imposed buffer zone between the g m o alfalfa that's in my valley and my field so they say but that's not going to stop the bees or the wind or anything like that from taking that and that alter genetics on to my organic fields i can't grow alfalfa organically in my valley anymore and alfalfa seed is a really big cash crop in the tooshie valley and walla walla ok the second thing i was just talking to a seed buyer the other day about this he says joel even if that wasn't an issue the problem is you cannot clean the harvesting equipment you will not clean the seed cleaning equipment enough at the seed plants to ensure that there is no g m o seed from the fields it's already there and said done deal for me i can't do it that's kind of bad news isn't it you know all right well there's other problems with this and the nasa fact that there's already a state these are economically important we need because they take down yields all right i was just talking down the road the other day to a friend of mine barges manure spreader because i was putting in some spinach and he says you know it was only a few years ago that six to eight ounces around up would take care of those weeds he says today is forty to fifty ounces per acre so when the chemical companies talk about the fact that you now use less chemicals because we're using these g m o crops and everything like that it's not the case we have to apply more and more chemicals know that there's more and more resistance that's more and more dumped into the environment that's the wrong thing so we're losing tools that would have been available to us earlier those things are going now one of the one of the big things that the sea companies tout now is that well you know this is how we feed the planet news this last week seven billion people but the fact is the g e crops don't show any evidence that they increase food production what they've done is created corporate dependency ok because the same company that sells you the damn seed sells you the chemical to do it and i will not be a serf to those companies life will find a way for me i'll have to grow something besides out some point here in the not too distant future because i will not lose my organic status and i'm going to grow crops particularly like it for my livestock pastures and things clover other things that are not already adulterated by monsanto dupont and the like so where does that begin it begins with farmers like me on the land and it begins with eaters like you making choices to know people like me you know your doctor do you know your farmer be glad to meet you i want to i want to take a moment before we end the rally to further recognize some of the heroes before you starting with phil phil has a job of going to again the president and others can't use codex laws to railroad and hurt us so this man has been working on our behalf you know my new show i mean the my new show let's give him a head band  i have basically this guy i mean i show up at bonn germany or in berlin and kuala lumpur malaysia and the area is surrounded by a room of people from n g o s all over the world and he's saying ok so what's the next sentence and he's running the show and he lives here and he's your neighbor and he's working for you so thank you phil phil barrie i know he was a professor of technical communication and women's studies american ethnic studies he's a recognized expert on the ethical and social considerations of technologies it specially genetic engineering including helping to define the idea of genetic discrimination and privacy he's also been an outspoken defender of civil liberties with respect to information technologies he was he received the william o douglas award from the a c l u here in washington state for sustained twelve years ago you would have seen lots of people and you would have seen lots of signs if you were here you would have seen signs about teamsters and turtles remember that one lot of the sign said no patent thing on life no patents on life and those of us who have been involved in issues around genetic engineering were really really amazed and please to see that because an issue which seems to be like just something for techno angst to deal with had reached a lots and lots of people and people understood we're beginning to understand that issues of labeling g m o's issues of patterning g e and all those issues are exactly a manifestation of what occupy seattle and occupy wall street and all the other occupations are our friend our friend who came up here earlier when les was talking and was agitated about the relevance of what we are focusing on today because he didn't feel that it related to the severe problems and issues that were on his mind we need to carefully explain to him and to everyone that the issues around  are as good an illustration about how the one percent screws over the ninety nine percent as any other is in the nineteen eighties syngenta in a survey of american consumers found that ninety three percent of american consumers want the g e foods to be labeled why aren't g e foods labeled when ninety three percent want it it's for the same reason that we don't have single payer health care even though huge majorities won it for the same reason that we don't have other sensible programs because it's not a majority rules situation we need to understand that we also need to understand that the glass is in fact half full i appreciate the speakers who went before me who talked about the glass being half empty i'm not a pollyanna but you need to also understand we need to understand i need to every day remind myself of how incredibly successful the worldwide movement against genetic engineering has been no other technology at its outset has been opposed so regularly so systemically by so many nuclear weapons were an existing reality in arsenals all around the world before the anti nuclear weapon movement got going but the g e movement the movement around genetic engineering got girl going early and we have stopped them there is no g e we currently not because they didn't want it but because we didn't want it and i could give you other illustrations currently a tiny tiny tiny tiny sliver of farms if you look at all the farms in the world a tiny tiny fraction grow genetically engineered crops we need to remember that the overwhelming majority of food crops that are grown are not genetically engineered and it's not because what month santo wants it's because of what farmers in zambia want it's because of what consumers in germany want it's because of what our network of people in latin america want and finally america is waking up and wanting it  we do live in the belly of the beast we live in the country that develop this technology and that pushes it a white paper of the clinton administration said that genetic engineering was the next bedrock technology that would move this country forward just the way the railroads did and then the automobile did and then the televisions did and the computer did that g e would be the next technology and that nothing could be put in the way nothing could be put in the way to send negative signals to the investment capital is about genetic engineering that's why we have labeling because labeling will send genetic signals because just to use one of the quotes i was going to use ok jose fernandez the state department's a security system secretary for economic energy and business affairs not for consumer affairs but for economic energy and business affairs said that labeling of g e foods would scare consumers away from those foods oh was yes because he knows that as jeffrey mentioned and others an overwhelming majority of people want g e foods labeled so that they can avoid buying them right so much for letting the market govern right no no no the market is only for when they get the advantages of the market when we get the advantage of the market the market doesn't govern we're not allowed to  label because fernandez says quote if you label something there's an implication there's something wrong with it he spoke at a panel organized by crop life international the group that represents monsanto du pont and other biotech firms yes there's an implication now of course they say the f d a formally says you shouldn't label g e foods because they are substantially equivalent to non g e foods and then when the companies leave the f d a office building they go across the street to the patent office and say give us a patent monopoly on this food because it's substantially different it's different now have is this magic occur this is the magic of modern capitalism that something can simultaneously be substantially the same and substantially different at the same time ok in addition of course the biotech industry which clearly is in the one percent not in the ninety nine percent spent over one billion dollars lobbying congress since one thousand nine hundred ninety nine that might have something to do with why we don't have genetically engineered foods labeled a billion dollars over one hundred seventy five countries have joined together in an international treaty called the card to hang a protocol to regulate genetically engineer organisms when they move from country to country the u s is not one of those one hundred seventy five watt because people might be concerned that there'd be something to be afraid of right and it's not good for the business of making and pushing  one further south just whined up with a story a story which illustrates the wisdom in the remarks that the farmer who preceded me just made in two thousand and two in johannesburg south africa i was asked to debate an officer of the usa id program named amy simons on national t v in south africa about genetic engineering and as you might imagine the debate got pretty heated so that when the half hour ran out and the cameras stopped rolling we were still going and after the cameras were off she looked at me and virtually her finger at me and she said before long we will have introduced enough genetically engineered crops into south africa that the whole continent will be contaminated and then you won't be able to do anything and that's what it's all about ladies and gentlemen it's about contamination and a waste and a lack of democratic control we need to organize to make sure that this technology is under democratic control under the control of the ninety nine percent and not the one percent thank you we need to protect them we need to love them we need to hug have we to hand our farmers close to us and not let monsanto take over our land to talk about less over here less is a physician you don't like he's really a blunt again g m o activist now is like texting me at one in the morning at three in the morning and like working all of his life without terms of he's got it he if you want to control people control the food and vanish even says if you want to control the food contrary to see this is the biggest gamble of our lives  they want to eliminate seed saving in the one point four billion farmers so that every farmer on earth buys the limited genetics available in the catalogs at a time of global climate change it's the diversity that is our protection they are willing to risk the entire food security for their profits so less is like waking up and going oh my god this is the issue and he hasn't stopped working and he's like he is now creating an organization so everyone who runs to be involved could just go over sign it and plug in and do really important work so thank  want to give you an excuse i want to give you an excuse to do a little bit of work on g m o's just a little bit of work that little going to work may be a click and send revolution you may just want to take stuff put it on your facebook put it in your head how people have an email address book how many people know anyone else all right now most americans ninety five percent of those labels most american said they would have only jimbo's if label if we need to create a tipping point we could do it without convincing anyone who's resistant when you give someone a shopping guide when they say they say thank you can i have more it's giving people what they want so don't think about trying to convince someone who's a biotech guy as your activism your activism is helping people do what they want to do and easing the other guys just out of the picture most americans will never know that they're eating g m o never know we got rid of it for them we don't need to convince those who don't realize that food relates to health we just g information to people that want to know parents of young kids health care professionals people who are sick health conscious shoppers religious groups that think means god move over so here's some excuses to get involved and then we'll wrap up ron this is the time we have never seen this level of activism with a general issue before this was predicted by supermarket knew they saw the trends it's being now shown by the nielsen survey which shows the fast rapid adoption of g m free labels this is being seen in over one hundred events because this is news now every action you take is multiplied it's multiply with leverage because now people are waking up it's in the air ten years ago you talk about g m o as ten minutes later you got through to them now they're saying oh yeah i got ten things in my email box what is that about oh yeah ok what can i do that's what's happening now another excuse imagine being welcomed up in the middle of the night by your great great great grandchild saying what did you do when you found out that they were taken over the food supply with g m o's so you ready excuse can be the future generations your excuse can be your current children and your excuse can be your living beings or even the living beings in the gut bacteria inside you as we said the yearly human feeding study ever  published the only human feeding study of a published shows that part of the gene inserted to serve beans to make them round up ready transferred into the d n a of the bacteria inside us if anybody's had any turkey and a chicken any beef that's not been organic or if any of the food has ingredients that contain corn canola soil or sugar ninety percent of the food has been genetically modified that can affect your d and it's like they've been spread sprayed with round up ninety percent of our food supply the reason occupies the allies here is to take back we are the ninety nine percent whether it's a personal issue whether it's  environmental issue whether it's a future generation issue whether it's protecting farmers whether it's keeping the freedom of the food supply out of the hands of a few multinationals this is the time to act so we welcome one of the simplest things to do is to call your friends over have a gathering at your home if you go to the institute for responsible technology there are download videos there that will help you have a conversation if you need some coaching it's a fine way and as with all things everything goes better when we sit and eat with friends think about it th though many many people are consuming this type of genetically manipulated seed and the things that grow there brown without realizing that they're not being by an organization called center for good safety and it was brought by over four hundred organic and non governmental organizations including consumers sure that policy makers understand the devastating health environmental financial and social consequences of all chemically dependent and concentrated corporate and industrial agriculture