Cornucopia Institute fights fake organic egg farms

from The Cornucopia Institute, www.cornucopia.org:

Organic Egg Business Being Hijacked by Corporate Agribusinesses - Help Reverse this Scandal!

Industrial-scale egg producers are gaming the system with their livestock management shortcuts and are placing family-scale organic farmers at a competitive disadvantage. Some pasture-based organic farmers have already been driven out of the organic egg business.

The organic community has an opportunity to reverse this scandal and support authentic organic agriculture. The USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) will be debating the meaning of outdoor access and stocking densities for organic poultry and other livestock at the upcoming meeting in Madison, Wis., October 25-28.

Imagine 80,000 laying hens in a single building, crowded in confinement conditions, on "farms" with hundreds of thousands or a million birds. Is that organic?

These farms meet the ‘outdoor access’ requirement by offering a tiny enclosed concrete porch, accessible by only 3%-5% of the tens of thousands of birds inside a henhouse.

Show your support for meaningful outdoor access requirements by:

Appearing in person at the NOSB meeting in Madison and giving a five-minute oral testimony in support of strong animal welfare standards in organics.

Or, if you can't attend the meeting yourself, write a letter or sign and return a proxy letter ,
http://www.cornucopia.org/egg-report/Proxy-letter-A10-Q3-W.pdf, which we will hand-deliver to the USDA at the meeting in Madison.

The USDA is hearing from the well-funded and organized industry lobbyists.
We must ensure that they also hear from the organic community!

Please contact The Cornucopia Institute if you are interested in appearing in person for a five-minute oral presentation at the NOSB meeting in Madison, Wis. We will send you a briefing package with detailed instructions for how to sign up to speak, directions to the meeting, and other important information.

Please email us at cultivate@cornucopia.org (preferred), or call 608-625-2042 if you plan on attending the NOSB meeting.

The Cornucopia Institute P.O. Box 126 Cornucopia, WI 54827 608-625-2042
cultivate@cornucopia.org