Family Farm Defenders Inc

The mission of Family Farm Defenders is to create a farmer-controlled and consumer-oriented food and fiber system, based upon democratically controlled institutions that empower farmers to speak for and respect themselves in their quest for social and economic justice.

FFD began as an outgrowth of two national grass-roots campaigns: demanding a national referendum to end the mandatory check-off on raw milk that funds the lobby and propaganda efforts of the corporate dairy industry; and to defend consumer “right to know” in response to the stealth introduction of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) into the nation’s milk supply.

Family Farm Defenders has worked to create opportunities for farmers to join together in new cooperative endeavors, form a mutual marketing agency, and forge alliances with consumers through providing high quality food products while returning a fair price to farmers.

Current Family Farm Defender issues include:

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs):  The biotech industry should not be allowed to monopolize seeds or patent lifeforms for the sake of profit.  GMOs not only undermine sustainable agriculture, threaten public health, and bankrupt family farmers, bu they also represent a gross violation of food sovereignty.

Food Sovereignty:  Food Sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food, agriculture, livestock and fisheries systems, in contrast to having food largely subject to market forces.

Factory Farms:  Factory farms operations treat animals like machines, exploit farm workers, rely on dangerous inputs such as biotech feedstock and subtherapeutic antibiotics, produce food that is often unsafe for consumers, and also generate massive environmental pollution in the form of manure runoff and toxic fumes.