August 5, 2024 – Washington, D.C. – Natural Customers Affiliation and Richman Regulation & Coverage filed separate complaints towards West Pak Avocado and Recent Del Monte Produce on August 2, 2024, within the District of Columbia Superior Court docket. The complaints alleges that each avocado importers, in violation of the District of Columbia Client Safety Procedures Act, deceptively market their avocados as “sustainable” and “responsibly sourced” when they’re in actuality driving deforestation within the Mexican states of Michoacán and Jalisco, the place all Mexican avocados bought in america are exported from.

West Pak Avocado, the criticism alleges, misleads customers by claiming that it’s “dedicated to rising avocados with out forest clearing,” and that its mission is to deliver “sustainably, and responsibly sourced avocados to customers.”

West Pak claims to be the “trusted chief in avocados,” and represents on its web site that it “work[s] laborious to make sure [its] avocados are, grown, processed, and delivered safely, pretty, and responsibly . . . [and its] respect for individuals and nature permits [the] firm to develop and prosper over the long run in concord with the wants of communities and ecosystems.”

Regardless of these claims, Mexican authorities delivery information and satellite tv for pc imagery point out that West Pak sources its avocados from a number of orchards grown on illegally deforested land in Michoacán.

Del Monte, the criticism alleges, misleads customers by claiming that its merchandise, together with its avocados, are sourced responsibly and sustainably and that its growers “implement the perfect practices that defend the surroundings.”

Be taught extra in OCA’s Press Launch

TAKE ACTION: Inform Del Monte & West Pak: Cease Deforestation!

Read “US Avocado Sellers Fail to End Sourcing from Illegally Deforested Land in Mexico” (Local weather Rights Worldwide)

Learn “Avocado Goldrush Hyperlinks US Firms With Mexico’s Deforestation Catastrophe” (Reuters)

Try our marketing campaign web page “The Fact About Avocados”

By Regina G. Barber, Berly McCo & Rebecca Ramirez, NPR:

“About ten years in the past, science author Ferris Jabr began considering Earth as a dwelling planet slightly than a planet with life on it. It started when he discovered that the Amazon rainforest doesn’t merely obtain the rain that offers it its namesake; slightly, it helps generate that rain. The Amazon does that by launching bits of organic confetti into the ambiance that, in flip, seed clouds.

He started on the lookout for different methods life adjustments its surroundings, which led to his new e-book Turning into Earth: How Our Planet Got here to Life. He talks to host Regina G. Barber about examples of how life reworked the planet — from altering the colour of our sky to altering the climate.”

Ferris Jabr’ examines the methods life and Earth have formed one another. Take heed to him right here.

Evaluation by Dr. Joseph Mercola:

“STORY-AT-A-GLANCE

* The perfect materials to remain cool when it’s scorching outdoors are cotton and linen

* Cotton is a pure fiber recognized for its breathability and skill to soak up moisture, which helps maintain your pores and skin cool and dry

* Linen is breathable and has glorious moisture-wicking properties; it’s additionally generally utilized in flowy, loose-fitting clothes that received’t maintain sweat trapped in your pores and skin

* Whereas artificial sweat-wicking or moisture-wicking materials are generally really helpful, these technical materials are sometimes constructed from polyester and different artifical supplies, which pose well being and environmental dangers

* After you’ve gotten your every day dose of solar publicity, when you plan to spend extra time open air, carrying lengthy sleeves and pants will help you keep away from sunburn and are a greater choice than poisonous sunscreen”

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By Caroline Tien, Self

“With their colourful exteriors, beets can actually brighten up any dinner plate. However they don’t skimp on substance, both. Seems, there are a ton of well being advantages of beets that scientists are solely simply beginning to perceive—perks that may increase every part out of your coronary heart well being to your subsequent exercise.

‘Beets are actually a extremely nutritious meals,’ Carrie Durward, PhD, RD, extension vitamin specialist and affiliate professor at Utah State College, tells SELF. Sure, they’re full of fiber, however they’re additionally a “nice supply” of minerals like potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, and zinc, she says. In addition they pack a strong quantity of manganese, a mineral that may assist cell and bone well being, replica, immune perform, and blood clotting.”

Learn this for the intel on the well being advantages of beetroot

Emma Beddington writes for The Guardian:

“Enter “underconsumption core”. It’s the newest barely earnest TikTok development, wherein younger individuals extoll the virtues of shopping for solely what you want. Underconsumers are available varied flavours. Some current primary frugality suggestions (slicing up tubes to make use of the final dregs of product or repurposing jars). Others introduce revolutionary ideas corresponding to “simply having one among a factor” (shampoo, purse), “on the lookout for secondhand options” or “not changing stuff except it’s damaged”.

Client items corporations are highly effective and complex, with big budgets to throw at typical promoting and influencers to make individuals need their stuff. Why not attempt to beat them at their very own recreation? Make it an aesthetic; set it to a dreamy Norah Jones monitor; make consuming appear much less of a great, enjoyable alternative. Underconsumption is a part of a de-influencing fightback towards the dispiriting, damaging churn of hyperconsumerism and it targets influencers’ audiences; it is smart to make use of their codes and conventions.”

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By Laura J. Martin, Noema Journal:

“When are you gonna eliminate these weeds, my father would ask each time he visited my Vermont garden. Splotched with purple thyme, yellow dandelions and white clovers, the garden attracted honeybees and, later within the season, fireflies. He and I noticed the identical crops, however we had discovered to see in another way. The place my father noticed interlopers, I noticed residents.

For many of my childhood, my father was at struggle on his quarter-acre plot, my childhood yard. In a few of my most vivid reminiscences, he struggles with the lawnmower, sweat beading on his arm hair. He curses the crabgrass, he drenches dandelions and clovers with chemical substances from white spray bottles he obtained on the ironmongery shop down the road. It was an limitless battle.

Within the weeks after his loss of life, I regarded up the logbooks of his plane provider, hoping to piece collectively whether or not he would have been uncovered to Agent Orange in Vietnam. I later realized he’d been uncovered to it in our yard.”

Learn in regards to the the origin of biocides and extra

Make Your State the First to Ban Monsanto’s Roundup Weedkiller!

Yousef Aljamal, The Nation:

“When hunger first began to unfold in Gaza on the finish of October 2023, the worldwide group expressed alarm. The World Meals Programme warned that ‘Individuals in Gaza are ravenous to loss of life proper now. The pace at which this man-made starvation and malnutrition disaster has ripped by Gaza is terrifying.’ The European Union and america launched statements urging Israel to open crossings and let in hundreds of support vehicles. The argument then was that hunger ought to by no means be used as a weapon of struggle. Palestinians shouldn’t be starved for political causes, or as a mechanism to push them out of Gaza. Israel, because the occupying energy, has an obligation to make sure an sufficient provide of essential items.

As we speak, hunger is spreading each within the north and south of Gaza, with little outcry from the worldwide group. Regardless of a ruling from the Worldwide Court docket of Justice affirming that Israel’s actions are plausibly genocidal, Israel has confronted no materials penalties. How lengthy will we enable these atrocities to proceed?

The group I work for, the American Buddies Service Committee, nonetheless has workers on the bottom in Gaza. We’ve got continued to offer meals, hygiene kits, and different types of support regardless of large private hardship. We’ve served meals to over half one million individuals, however the support we are able to present is severely restricted by what Israel permits into Gaza, and by the fixed risk of Israel’s navy operations.

President Biden and different allies of Israel want to make use of their leverage—together with withholding weapons and funding—to open these crossings, make sure the protected supply of support, and produce a couple of everlasting ceasefire. The choice is mass hunger and loss of life.”



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TAKE ACTION: Inform Congress! No Extra Cash for Struggle

Share your imaginative and prescient for peace with a FREE Planting Peace “Negotiate Don’t Escalate” bumper sticker!

There’s one talent that Huge Meals and Huge Ag firms have in abundance: taking management of each state of affairs and corrupting it into a possibility for revenue.

For instance, as client curiosity within the phrases “pure” and “sustainable” elevated, industrial agribusiness started to make use of these unsubstantiated phrases to market greenwashed merchandise. These merchandise have been, in reality, simply the alternative—made with pesticide-laden, manufacturing facility farmed, and/or genetically engineered substances. Even the highly effective Natural motion, which truly is based mostly on particular certifiable practices and inputs, has required fixed safeguarding towards company makes an attempt to dilute its that means.

Now, we additionally diligently must defend the up-and-coming Regeneration motion towards makes an attempt by agribusiness firms to co-opt it and undermine its transformative energy.

Prior to now few years, Huge Meals and Huge Ag firms corresponding to Bayer/Monsanto, Cargill, Walmart, General Mills, Danone, Unilever, and others have jumped on the bandwagon and publicly offered themselves as leaders within the regenerative agriculture motion. However one thing smells fishy. For one, these corporations are fully leaving out natural practices of their definition of regenerative agriculture. So long as a farm makes use of sure conservation practices corresponding to diminished tillage or cowl crops, these corporations appear to assume that poisonous pesticides, artificial fertilizers, biotechnology, and company management of farms and farmers are all A-okay.

Collectively, we now have the facility to uphold the narrative that true Regeneration is natural, holistic, locally-controlled, decentralized, small-scale, and democratic.

True Regeneration relies on agroecology, relocalization of meals methods, and respect of Indigenous data.

It nourishes well being, tradition, native economic system, and group.

Please assist assist us, with a donation, in our ongoing efforts to inform the reality, get the phrase out, take motion and assist true Regenerative and Natural practices.

Make a tax-deductible donation to Natural Customers Affiliation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

Make a tax-deductible donation to Regeneration International, our international sister organization

Considering a gift from your IRA? 

By Tambra Raye Stevenson, M.P.H., M.A., Consuming Effectively:

“We’ve been conditioned to assume that conventional Black meals will not be nutritious, however that couldn’t be farther from the reality. Historical past and meals are a supply of empowerment to alter the narrative relating to vitamin and well being throughout the African diaspora.
In quest of my Black meals roots, I launched into a visit in 2016 to reclaim my African heritage and well being. Because of African Ancestry for the DNA clues, I turned the primary in six generations to return to my ancestral land, residence of the Fulani individuals in northern Nigeria. After a six-hour drive from Abuja, Nigeria, to the ruga (‘village’ in Hausa) in Kano, I used to be greeted with fura de nono (fermented milk and millet)—a standard dish. The ladies ready for me kuka and tuwo—which is baobab leaves and rice balls, together with zobo (a hibiscus drink). I walked the streets with Fulani herdsmen and their cattle and petted child goats within the ruga, reminding me of life in Oklahoma. As soon as there, the values that spoke to my cultural well-being have been clear: religion, household, freedom and, above all, meals. I felt belonged, reworked and renewed in my soul.”



Examine protect our heritage and wellness by meals, WANDA (Girls Advancing Vitamin, Dietetics and Agriculture) and extra

Dr. André Leu, Worldwide Director of Regeneration Worldwide:

“All agricultural poisons are scientifically examined to make sure protected use.”

One of many best pesticide myths is that each one agricultural poisons are scientifically examined to make sure that they’re used safely. In line with america President’s Most cancers Panel (USPCP), that is merely not the case: “Just a few hundred of the greater than 80,000 chemical substances in use in america have been examined for security.” The actual fact is that the overwhelming majority of chemical substances used worldwide haven’t been subjected to testing. Provided that in accordance with the USPCP nearly all of cancers are attributable to environmental exposures, particularly to chemical substances, this oversight exhibits a critical degree of neglect by regulatory authorities.

Pesticides have been subjected to extra testing than most chemical substances. Nevertheless, the place chemical substances, together with pesticides, have been subjected to testing, many main scientists regard it as insufficient to find out whether or not they’re protected for or dangerous to people. The USPCP report states: “Some scientists keep that present toxicity testing and publicity limit-setting strategies fail to precisely characterize the character of human publicity to doubtlessly dangerous chemical substances.”

There are a number of key areas particularly wherein many specialists and scientists imagine testing has not sufficiently established that the present use of pesticides and different chemical substances is protected.

Read about chemical cocktails in food and water

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Psilocybin Triggers “Inside Therapeutic” Mechanisms in Melancholy Sufferers, Research Suggests

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