Chemical Industry's Revolving Door to the White House

[Guest guest]

Chemical Industry's Revolving Door to the White House

Tell President Obama to reject Monsanto and Crop Life appointments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ask President Obama to stop the revolving door with the chemical agribusiness industry.

 

 

 

 

 

President

Obama has nominated two chemical agribusiness cronies for high level

positions. It's time to stop appointing people who are going to push

chemical-intensive industrial agriculture, inappropriate biotechnologies and unfair trade deals that put profits before people.

Can

you ask President Obama to withdraw his nominations and replace them

with candidates who have a sustainable vision for U.S. agriculture and

trade?

 

 

 

 

Islam Siddiqui, CropLife's current vice president of science and regulatory affairs has been nominated as Chief Agriculture Negotiator

for the U.S. Trade Representative's office and Roger Beachy, former head of Monsanto's de facto nonprofit research arm

has been appointed as director of the new National Institute of Food

and Agriculture (NIFA). These are two textbook cases of the "revolving

door" between industry and the agencies meant to keep watch; Siddiqui

and Beachy's industry ties demonstrate that both men are too beholden

to corporate agriculture to serve the public interest.

 

 

 

 

 

Siddiqui was a paid lobbyist for three years for Croplife America,

which represents the chemical pesticide industry. Members include

Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta. More recently CropLife launched a

letter-writing campaign urging the First Lady to use chemical

pesticides in the organic White House garden. If

that wasn't enough, Siddiqui's past service at the USDA included

overseeing the initial development of national organic food standards

that would have allowed GMOs and toxic sludge to be labeled "organic"-

until over 230,000 consumers forced their revision.

 

 

 

Beachy's previous career running the Danforth Plant Science Center, a

nonprofit closely linked to and funded by Monsanto, is just as bad.

With this appointment we can expect billions more in government funding

to be funneled into genetic engineering and chemical pesticide

research. Meanwhile the real solutions to our growing agricultural

problems, provided by sustainable and organic agriculture research,

will suffer from a lack of federal funding and attention.