RUSH: Joanna in Las Vegas. Do you have a job? Are you still working? The unemployment rate out there is very high.
CALLER: No, actually. I was a budget cut last Thanksgiving and haven’t found anything since and we’re about approaching 14%.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: But I wanted to let you know that my children have been raised on you. My youngest is in college right now in sociology and political science and she has to have a healthy dose of you to keep sane. But my main reason for my call is Michelle (My Belle) may not be able to go to her organic market sometime soon to get her goodies because the EPA is beginning a systematic review of anybody who has organic or natural products, and regardless of your stand on how you feel about that kind of thing, that’s going to put tens of thousands of people out of business because they’re not going to be able to defend their labels. What’s going to be is they’re going to review them and they basically have been given the option of: ‘Surrender your certificate or be prepared to defend your claims on your labels,’ and it’s going to cost you anywhere between 300 to half a million dollars per label to do it.
RUSH: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. This has escaped me. (That would be ‘ex-caped’ me, for those of you in Rio Linda.) The EPA or the FDA, which did you say?
CALLER: The EPA. I have a friend in Florida who has a product, and he was notified yesterday by the EPA that he has until the first of the year to produce all of his documentation.
RUSH: To prove that his stuff really is organic?
CALLER: That it’s not poisonous and all sorts of things. Now, he has painstakingly done this over the last six years, spent tens of thousands of dollars doing it with blind and double-blind studies through universities all over the United States. He’s had to be certified in all the states. He’s exporting to eleven countries. On literally a shoestring.
RUSH: Mmm-hmm.
CALLER: He’s a gentleman rancher up in the Panhandle. He does everything very low tech, and last year at this time he had made a million dollars with 92% profit for literally doing everything almost by hand.
RUSH: No, no, no, no, no.
CALLER: And —
RUSH: No. N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no.
CALLER: Go ahead.
RUSH: Profit is bad. He made 92% ‘prosperity.’
CALLER: Okay. Well, this year — after a heart attack last October and almost three months in the hospital, this year — with the recession it’s 800, right now. But the point being is that he’s being told that he’s going to have to come up with anywhere from 300 to a half a million dollars for every one of his six or seven labels by the first of the year to begin to defend what has already been approved by the FDA and the EPA. He has material data, safety sheets that say ‘no known hazard’ on all of his product lines, and the purity standard that he was given was 88% and his has always been above 92.
RUSH: Well, doesn’t this all come down to the seminal question: Is manure a poison or not?
CALLER: Well, the thing is part of —
RUSH: Because that’s what organic means. If you go out and get an ‘organic’ egg it just means it’s been in the barnyard. No pesticides. Manure is the fertilizer. This is like carbon offsets. This whole thing, people… I wouldn’t say it’s a scam and I’m not trying to insult your friend, but here these people think they’re doing something really good and really healthy and here comes the EPA and it sounds like from your story they’re going to veritably shut down over half the people that operate in the business.
CALLER: Right. Well, actually a larger situation, it’s called the ‘codex alimentarius.’ It was organized through the World Health Organization and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in 1963 —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — and it has pursued itself over time to include 163 countries, including the United States. And what they’re doing, talking about the controversy about the codex, it’s basically on the surface the codex alimentarius sounds like a measure to protect the public to ensure food and safety around the globe. However a growing number of health advocacy groups are claiming that the codex is not about safety or protection, but rather about eliminating competition of the pharmaceutical and chemical companies.
RUSH: Exactly. And depleting wealthy countries of their money. It’s a tax grab. Anytime the UN’s involved in anything, this is what this is. I’m just surprised they’re going after one of the favorite industries of the radical left. Organic stuff. I know there’s money there, but I guess the radical left should be targets. Okay, everybody else is being gunned for. You guys, too. Here! Give over half of what you earned to these group of people. I gotta run, Joanna, thanks for the call and we will continue right on.