Experiments in Biosensing: using synthetic biology to alter the color of yeast cells and bacteria upon exposure to CO and NO2. These are steps towards creating sterile plant sensors which will change color to indicate the level of pollutants in the commun

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) [6] has tried to popularize the term "Biodemocracy" as a key concept or goal in our work, ever since we started organizing a national network back in 1998.

I first used the term "Biodemocracy" on the anniversary of Gandhi's birthday, October 2, 1994, to coincide with a demonstration I helped organize in Minneapolis to protest a World Trade Organization policy allowing corporations like Monsanto, Cargill, and W.R. Grace to obtain monopoly patents on living life forms and indigenous knowledge, including plants, seeds, animals, and even human cell lines.

"Biodemocracy" was meant to describe what the global grassroots stands for: democracy and reverence for all living creatures, in opposition to biotechnology and bioimperialism. Bioimperialism entails rule by the corporate technocrats, who believe that living live forms are just "a bag of chemicals," as the head of the Biotechnology Industry Organization has described us. OCA's first electronic newsletter, which focused mainly on food safety and genetic engineering, was called Biodemocracy News.

Now the OCA network, which started out with 800 people on our email list, has grown to 350,000 subscribers, many of whom forward Organic Bytes [7], our bi-weekly online newsletter, to their friends and family members. As we've expanded our network, we've also expanded our focus and the definition of Biodemocracy. So here's a new working definition of Biodemocracy: democratic control by the global grassroots over the policies and institutions that impact our health and environment, as well as the health and environment of future generations.

Vandana Shiva [8], a leading writer and activist from India, and a member of OCA's international Policy Advisory Board, describes this concept in her new book, Earth Democracy. As Shiva puts it, "Earth Democracy is both an ancient worldview and an emergent global political movement for peace, justice, and sustainability -- a People's Project for a New Planetary Millennium."

We are living in a dangerous and frightening time. Our health, food, water, and climate are under continuous assault by a corporate technocracy that apparently can't tell the difference between a "suicide economy," as Vandana Shiva describes it, and business as usual. Unless we nurture and build up our strength as healthy and sovereign individuals, and build up a powerful online and on-the-ground culture and politics of resistance and affirmation, most likely we, and certainly our children's generation, are doomed.

As Lester Brown from the World Watch Institute [9] bluntly pointed out on January 6, (AFP, French News Service) the growth of a global economy in China and India based upon the hyper-consumer model of the USA spells disaster for the planet. "If China continues imitating the American dream, between now and 2031 its 1.45 billion inhabitants will consume two-thirds of the world's grains and [consume] more than double the world's current paper supplies. At this rate, all of world's forests will be destroyed." Brown adds that India, following a similar path of non-sustainable corporate globalization and industrialization, will likely have an even larger population than China within 25 years. And as other analysts point out, global oil production has peaked, or will soon peak, meaning that there will simply not be enough oil to supply the accelerating transportation, manufacturing, heating, refrigeration, and agricultural needs of the industrialized nations, not to mention the newly emerging economic tigers, China and India.

In the ultimate sense Biodemocracy means survival. As Vandana Shiva explains, Biodemocracy entails embracing "ancient concepts of living together: connected to the Earth locally and globally, reintegrating human activities into the Earth's ecological processes and limits." It means, as OCA's campaign says, "Breaking the Chains" and moving beyond the din of commercial advertising and mindless consumerism to put our money where our values lie, to choose food, products, and lifestyles which are healthy and sustainable.

Yet Biodemocracy also means collectively raising our political voices, and getting organized, as organic consumers and responsible citizens, to stop the out-of-control corporations, politicians, and technocrats who are driving us toward disaster. Increased market share for organic, Fair Trade [10], and green products in this era of Katrina, climate change, and Iraq-style resource wars, will provide little consolation. We are literally in a race against time to turn our nation and the global community toward health, justice, and sustainability. This turning will likely require nothing short of a Second American Revolution, carried out on a global scale.

To get involved in creating Biodemocracy, contact the Organic Consumers Association, 6771 South Silver Hill Drive, Finland, MN 55603, 218/226-4164; www.organicconsumers.org [11].