Fwd: GRACE Press Release on PBS Letter

[Guest guest]

Dear friends:

 

Below is a copy of a press release we distributed to about 3,000 press contacts

yesterday regarding the letters we sent to every PBS station manager. Those

letters were sent last week and should be in the hands of station managers now.

We also copied the letters to the heads of American Public Television and the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

 

Individuals can help support this effort by doing any or all of the actions

listed on our action page here: http://www.factoryfarm.org/action/pbs.php

 

Thank you for your support. We’ll try to keep everyone informed of any progress

on this issue.

 

Thanks again,

 

Chris Cooper

Public Relations Director

GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment)

--

 

 

For Immediate Release July 18, 2005

Contact: Chris Cooper – ccooper; 212-726-9161

 

Groups Decry New PBS Series Funded by Big Ag

Letters to All PBS Station Managers Warn of Bias

 

[New York, NY] – A group of nearly 70 organizations concerned about the undue

influence of corporate agriculture on public television sent letters to every

public television station manager registering their concern about a new

television series – America’s Heartland – that is being funded by the Monsanto

Company, the American Farm Bureau Federation and several other groups associated

with large-scale industrial agriculture. The 20-part series, being offered to

PBS stations for airing this fall, is billed as “a celebration of America’s

agricultural heritage” and will feature a dynamic website with links directly to

the sites of major agribusiness sponsors. Bob Vice, retired president of the

California Farmers Bureau and former member of the executive committee of the

American Farm Bureau Federation, serves as a program consultant.

 

“Public television has lost its soul if it can be so easily bought and sold by

corporate agribusiness,” lamented Alice Slater, president of GRACE (the Global

Resource Action Center for the Environment), the group spearheading the letter

campaign. “For decades, Americans have relied on public television to give us

the full story about issues that affect us all. The full story of America’s

agricultural heritage includes the many communities devastated by large-scale

factory farms that pollute the air and water, blight the countryside and crush

America’s struggling family farmers. For a growing number of American families,

industrial agribusiness is nothing to be celebrated. Every week, the United

States loses more than 300 independent family farmers, while nearly 62 percent

of the nation’s agricultural production is now concentrated in the hands

industrial farms representing only 3 percent of America’s farmers.”

 

According to the letters, “policies promoted by Monsanto and the American Farm

Bureau, if successful, will place the U.S. food supply into the hands of a few

major corporations. This would devastate independent family farmers who will be

priced out of the market not because they can’t compete, but because corporate

farms are specifically structured to capture government subsidies.”

 

“American Farm Bureau works hand-in-hand with corporate agriculture,” said Chris

Petersen, President of Iowa Farmers Union, one of the groups that signed on to

the GRACE letter. Petersen, who raises hogs near Clear Lake, nearly lost his

farm when an industrial facility moved in nearby and priced him out of the

market. “Farm Bureau is really just a huge insurance agency masquerading as a

farmers’ interest group. Farm Bureau sells insurance to struggling farmers, and

then turns around and invests its assets in corporate facilities that are

putting those same farmers out of business. This PBS series may be its latest

attempt to sell the American people a pile of manure and conceal the truth about

how industrial agriculture is devastating America’s rural communities.”

 

The GRACE letter warns PBS station managers that there is a growing backlash in

both rural areas and urban and consumer markets against the practices advocated

by Monsanto and Farmers Bureau and that America’s Heartland may be part of a

“strategy to silence this backlash by making American consumers think that

corporate farming practices are harmless and inevitable.”

 

“It appears that the series will only tell a small part of the story,” said

Slater. “By omitting any information about the negative effects of industrial

agriculture on rural landscapes and economies, we fear that the series will

distort the true story of America’s struggling heartland. It’s a sin of

omission.”

 

As alternatives to America’s Heartland, the letters recommend five other

programs that the groups say present a broader perspective on the state of rural

agriculture. According to the letters, “there is another side to this story and

the public deserves to hear it.”

 

Full text of the letters and the signatory list is below.

 

To interview Alice Slater or Chris Petersen, please contact:

 

Chris Cooper, Public Relations Director

ccooper; 212-726-9161

 

--

Dear Sir or Madam:

In the next few weeks you will be solicited to carry a television program

produced by KVIE Public Television entitled America’s Heartland. We are

concerned that this program, underwritten by those who make their money from

corporate agriculture - the Monsanto Company, the American Farm Bureau

Federation, the American Soybean Association, National Corn Growers Association,

National Cotton Council, United Soybean Board and U.S. Grains Council – may

present a limited perspective on the effect of industrial agriculture on

America’s rural communities.

 

The destruction of America’s rural communities and the disappearance of its

small farmers is an important story that needs to be told. This story, one of

rural depopulation, dwindling economic opportunities, industrial levels of

pollution and their attendant health and social concerns, is the ugly reality of

the excesses that come from the unregulated large-scale industrialized

agricultural system promoted by corporate America. We are concerned that

America’s Heartland is being produced to put a friendly face on the very forces

that are causing these problems.

 

Policies promoted by Monsanto and the American Farm Bureau, if successful, will

place the US food supply into the hands of a few major corporations. This would

devastate independent family farmers who will be priced out of the market not

because they can’t compete, but because corporate farms are specifically

structured to capture government subsidies.

 

Lobbyists for corporate agriculture and the Farm Bureau use political pressure

to direct federal subsidies to corporate farms where a significant part of these

subsidies then flows directly to Monsanto from the purchase of genetically

modified seed and artificial hormones (to increase milk production at mega

dairies) that put small farmers out of business. The American Farm Bureau,

which sells insurance, supports this strategy by investing its assets in

corporate agriculture while claiming for lobbying purposes that its 5 million

insurance policyholders are active Farm Bureau members. (There are less than 2

million actual farmers in the US and many don’t belong to the Farm Bureau).

 

There is a growing backlash in both rural areas and urban and consumer markets

against the practices advocated by Monsanto, the Farm Bureau and the owners of

factory farms. Shoppers are flocking to organic products in an effort to escape

the health consequences of the kind of agriculture these groups promote.

Traditional family farmers are working to expose the corporate whitewashing of

industrial agriculture. The program you are being asked to show is an important

part of a strategy to silence this backlash by making American consumers think

that corporate farming practices are harmless and inevitable. Nothing could be

further from the truth.

 

We ask you to please make a fully informed decision about America’s Heartland

and either not air it or, if you elect to show it, schedule it alongside a

program presenting the alternative point of view as you would for any other

piece of propaganda. We have included a list of programs that present a broader

perspective on the state of rural agriculture. There is another side to this

story and the public deserves to hear it.

 

Sincerely,

GRACE (Global Resource Action Center for the Environment)

American Grass-Fed Association

Animal Welfare Institute

California Safe Food Coalition

Center for Sustainable Community

Chicago Media Watch

Citizens Against Mega Dairies (Ohio)

Citizens for a Sustainable Planet (Duluth, MN)

Clean Water Action Alliance of Minnesota

Community Food Security Coalition

Concerned Citizens Against Hog Factories (Lee County, Illinois)

Diocese of Jefferson City, MO (Office of Social Concerns / Rural Life)

Earth Charter USA Communities

Eco-Spirit Group of St. Leo Parish (Tacoma, WA)

Episcopal Peace Fellowship of SW Washington

Family Farms for the Future

FARM (Families Against Rural Messes)

Farm Sanctuary

FoodRoutes Network

Friends of the Earth

Fresh Farm Rhode Island

Fulton County Citizens for Responsible Agriculture (Fulton County, OH)

GE Free Maine

Genetic Engineering Action Group of Vermont

Global Recognition Campaign

Government Accountability Project

Great Plains Environmental Law Center

Green Hill Citizens for a Clean Environment

Hardy Groves, Inc.

Husbandry Institute

Illinois Stewardship Alliance

Iowa Farmers Union

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Just Dairy

Just Food

Kansas City Food Circle

LOKOJ Institute (Bangladesh)

Minnesota Voices for Choices

Missouri Environmental Action Network

MoreOnBush.com

National Catholic Rural Life Conference

Native Nutrition-Central Texas

New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (Lowell, MA)

New York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group

Nocobalt-4-food

Organic Consumers Association

PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)

Pennsylvanians for Environmental Protection

Public Citizen

RAGE (Regional Action Group for the Environment)

Rhio’s Raw Energy

Rural Vermont

Saint Peter Damian Fraternity of the Secular Franciscan Order

Sierra Club

Small Planet Institute

Soil Born Farm Urban Agriculture Project

Sojourner Truth Farm School

SOS Food

Superior Wilderness Action Network

The Community Nutrition Institute

The Humane Society of the United States

The People-Centered Development Forum

United Steelworkers District 11 (Iowa)

Urban Farming Initiative

Waste Information Network

Waterkeeper Alliance

Wisconsin Green Party

Wood County Citizens Opposed to Factory Farms (Wood County, OH)

 

 

cc: Cynthia Fenneman, American Public Television

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, Corporation for Public Broadcasting

 

 

 

 

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