What if we paid as much attention to our global ecological crisis as we do to our global financial crisis? With this provocative opener, renowned environmental writer Sandra Steingraber treated an audience of more than 300 to a wide ranging but well integrated talk that revealed common threads in the history of her family farm in Illinois, the deterioration of Americans’ health and the threats to the health of our global ecosystems.

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The first step in eliminating toxic chemicals from our bodies is knowing what’s there, and that was the goal of the “Body of Evidence” study conducted in 2007 by the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine. Study participants discussed results of the study at a MOFGA Public Policy Committee Teach-In at the Common Ground Country Fair.

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"Home is where the harm is," said Mike Belliveau at a Public Policy Teach-In about healthy homes at the 2005 Common Ground Country Fair. The executive director of the Environmental Health Strategy Center and organizer of the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine noted that we’ve made a lot of progress in reducing industrial air and water pollution – although much remains to be done – but many materials brought into our homes can harm our health.

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“How do you explain,” asked Sharon Tisher of MOFGA’s Public Policy Committee, “that cancer in this country has increased since 1950 by 35%, excluding lung cancer?” Introducing a teach-in on cancer and the environment at the Common Ground Country Fair in September, Tisher cited a Bangor Daily News article stating that Maine ranks seventh in the country in cancer. “This is a death rate, not an incidence rate,” Tisher explained.

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The Public Policy Committee of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association invited all Maine ballot candidates for Guber­natorial, U.S. Senatorial and U.S. Congressional races to a forum on agriculture at the Common Ground Country Fair this year. Those listed below have agreed to attend.

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How much power does Big Business have, compared with the people, to impact the Maine legislature? That question was foremost on many MOFGA members' minds last March, when MOFGA was involved with its busiest legislative session ever and when Big Business in the form of the biotech industry seemed to wield undue power.

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