Friday 31 December 2010

Leaked Memo Sheds Light on Mysterious Bee Die-Offs and Who's to Blame

A new leaked memo from the EPA has the beekeeping world buzzing. Bad puns aside, the failure of the EPA to protect the environment -- in this case, bees -- jeopardizes beekeepers' ability to continue in their work. Beekeeper Tom Theobald, who exposed the leaked memo, says that beekeepers now lose 30 to 40 percent or more of their hives each year, and it takes two years to recover each one. Theobald has been a beekeeper in Boulder County, Colorado for 35 years, but now he says he's not sure he can continue. "I can't afford to subsidize this as a hobby. I'll fold the tent," he says. "Commercial beekeepers will work themselves to death," he continues, noting that it's only the passion and commitment of beekeepers that has staved off a complete collapse of the entire beekeeping industry this long.

The leaked EPA memo, dated November 2, 2010, focuses on Bayer CropScience's request to register (i.e. legalize) its pesticide clothianidin for use on mustard seed and cotton. Clothianidin was first registered in May 2003, but its registration was conditional on safety testing that the EPA said should be completed by December 2004. Only, as the latest memo points out, the study, when it was done (long after 2004), was inadequate in demonstrating that clothianidin does not pose a threat to honeybees. Unfortunately, with the EPA's failure to ensure clothianidin's safety before allowing its use on corn and canola, it fell to beekeepers to discover why their bees were dying, and how the EPA allowed clothianidin on the market.

For beekeepers like Theobald, the story starts in the 1990's. During the warm months of the year when flowers are blooming, honeybees forage for nectar and pollen, eating them and storing them for the winter. When all went well, the bees could successfully survive the winter on their stored honey and pollen. Prior to 1995, Theobald and other beekeepers in his area lost about two to five percent of their colonies each winter. In an extraordinarily bad winter, 10 percent of the colonies might not make it. Beginning in 1995, 20 to 30 percent of colonies began dying each winter. At the time, Theobald assumed the cause were varroa mites, a parasitic mite that attacks bees. The mites were first found in the U.S. in 1987, but they did not reach Boulder County, CO until 1995, the same year the winter losses of bees grew 


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Thursday 30 December 2010

State Study: Low Levels of Perchlorate Affect Infants

A new analysis by state scientists found that low levels of a rocket fuel chemical common in Inland drinking water supplies appear to be more harmful to newborn babies than previously believed, prompting calls for a tougher limit for tap water.

Scientists with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment examined records of blood samples drawn from the heels of 497,458 newborns in 1998 as part of a California disease-screening program.

The researchers found that the babies born in areas where tap water was contaminated with perchlorate -- including babies in Riverside and San Bernardino -- had a 50 percent chance of having a poorly performing thyroid gland, said Dr. Craig Steinmaus, lead author of the study published in this month's Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Though perchlorate is in many Inland groundwater supplies, water providers aggressively treat and blend water to meet the state standard for the pollutant. The study's authors, however, said they saw thyroid issues in babies born in areas where tap water met the current state standard.

The finding is important because the thyroid, a butterfly-shaped gland in the throat, produces the hormones fetus and babies need for proper nerve and brain development. Other studies have found that small declines in the production of thyroid hormone may negatively affect intelligence, Steinmaus said. 



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Wednesday 29 December 2010

The FDA Finally Reveals How Many Antibiotics Factory Farms Use - and It's a Load

Animals in factory farms get daily doses of antibiotics, both to keep them alive in their stressful, unsanitary conditions and to make them grow faster. What's the annual volume of antibiotic use on factory farms? The question is a critical one, because the practice has given rise to a novel strain of antibiotic-resistant staph (MRSA), known as ST398, that's widely present in our vast hog and chicken factories.

Well, federal regulators have for years ignored the question and refused to release estimates of just how much antibiotics the livestock industry burns through. But that ended yesterday, when the FDA released its first-ever report on the topic. The answer: 29 million pounds in 2009. According to ace public-health reporter Maryn McKenna, that's a shitload. (I'm paraphrasing her.)

McKenna, author of the important book Superbug: The Fatal Menace of MRSA and once a guest on my podcast show, puts it into context on her blog. She says that in lieu of official accounting of antibiotic use in industrial agriculture, NGOs have tried to fill the void. In 2000, she reports, the Animal Health Institute, a veterinary-drug trade group, estimated total use in livestock at 17.8 million pounds. The industry has been clinging to that number ever since.

Meanwhile, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which campaigns against industrial agriculture, put the figure at 24.6 million pounds in a 2001 study. But the UCS figure focused only on "non-therapeutic purposes" -- i.e.,  in McKenna's words, applications not designed to treat specific illnesses but rather to "make animals grow to market weight faster and to prevent them catching diseases in the close quarters of confinement agriculture." UCS figured the industry used another several million pounds for legit purposes of treating sick animals.

Assuming that factory farmers haven't dramatically ramped up antibiotic use over the past decade, the industry figure is woefully off -- about 40 percent lower than the real one. And the UCS estimate holds up well. I took another look at that classic UCS report, called "Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock." In it, the group estimates that total U.S. antibiotic production stands at 50 million pounds. Assuming that's roughly still correct -- again, the paper came out in 2001 -- that means factory animal farms hog a stunning 60 percent of U.S. antibiotics.

Importantly, McKenna says the FDA's report dovetails with the agency's "new effort to curb antibiotic use in agriculture." The first step to that effort, of course, is scrutiny and transparency. Margaret Hamburg's FDA deserves praise for finally delivering an accounting of how our animals factories are gulping antibiotics. 


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Tuesday 28 December 2010

Oil and Water Don't Mix with California Agriculture

From the "Petroleum Highway" -- a rutted, dusty stretch of California State Route 33 -- you can see the jostling armies of two giant industries. To the east, relentless rows of almonds and pistachios march to the horizon. To the west, an armada of oil wells sweeps to the foothills of the Temblor Range.

Fred Starrh, who farms along this industrial front, has seen firsthand what can happen when agriculture collides with oil. On an overcast February day, he drives his mother-of-pearl Lincoln Town Car down a dirt road through his orchards. Starrh Farms has 6,000 acres of pistachios, cotton, almonds and alfalfa. Starrh proudly points out almond trees planted 155 to the acre with the aid of lasers and GPS. At the edge of his land, he pulls up beside 20-foot-high earthen berms, the ramparts of large "percolation" ponds that belong to a neighbor, Aera Energy.

From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, Aera dumped more than 2.4 billion barrels (or just over 100 billion gallons) of wastewater -- known in the industry as "produced water" -- from its North Belridge oilfield into those unlined ponds, Starrh says. The impact became apparent beginning in 1999, when Starrh dug several wells to augment the irrigation water he gets from the California Aqueduct. He mixed the groundwater with aqueduct water, applied it to a cotton field beside the berms -- and the plants wilted. Eventually, the well water killed almond trees, Starrh says; he points out a few that look like gray skeletons.


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Monday 27 December 2010

An Organic Farmer Takes a Close Look at the Libertarian Politics of Ron Paul

Many of us organic farmers share an aversion to government interference in our affairs.  Although there has been some minor improvement lately, government ag programs and the Land Grants have not done much for organic agriculture.  Few politicians of either major party have ag programs that support local food systems in general and organic farming in particular. Tax laws on both the state and national levels favor corporations over the self-employed. What is even worse, department of agriculture regulations in many states function as discouraging obstacles to the production and sale of food produced by small-scale operations. The ignorance of the US public about microorganisms in particular and biological systems in general makes it easy for proponents of industrial agriculture to manipulate us into ever more regulations in the name of protecting public safety.   So it is not entirely surprising to find advocates of Ron Paul at organic farming conferences this winter.  Paul's rhetoric as a defender of the little guy and critic of big government speaks to our libertarian streak.  I was intrigued enough to check out his website.  I have to report that I am not happy with a lot of what I found there.

Paul is one of the very few politicians who criticizes the so-called "Free Trade" agreements. I congratulate him for publicly calling attention to the way the trade agreements and the WTO take power away from our elected officials and local governments and give them to trade bureaucrats.  But at the core of Paul's warnings lurks a paranoid isolationism that is unlikely to lead to peace and harmony in the world.  Paul denounces the trade agreements for endangering our borders, but offers no analysis of how free trade has allowed the big shippers of ag commodities to hold down prices to US farmers in order to flood markets in countries like Mexico. Paul borders on hysteria about the need to control immigration, but never makes the connection that it is those trade deals that are driving farmers from their own lands to risk their lives seeking work in the US.  Paul does not stop at attacking the WTO - he calls for US withdrawal from all international agreements, including dismantling the United Nations.  Whatever impatience we may feel about the maneuverings for power that go on at the UN, it is the only place where every country, large or small, gets to sit down and talk with all the others about our shared world.  The crisis of global warming and the danger of nuclear proliferation make this communication all the more urgent.  And let's not forget that it is the UN that provides for millions of refugees from every war zone.  Not many people in this country heard about the excellent conference the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN sponsored in May 2007 where the central topic was the contribution of organic farming to food security in developing countries.  

On the War in Iraq, Paul expresses a similar paranoia.  He supports bringing our troops home not to reduce the size of our military or to replace war with diplomacy.  He wants our troops in the US better to defend our borders.

Reduce taxes, Paul vociferates, always a welcome notion for us hard-pressed farmers.  Less government is better, Paul insists and attacks liberals and Democrats who inflate government spending and increase regulation. To his credit, he stands up to the Food and Drug Administration and demands unregulated freedom to use herbal supplements and natural medicines. But like his more orthodox Bushian Republican colleagues, Paul says nothing about reducing the largest sector of our government - the military with its huge and ever-swelling budget.  Paul directs his scathing words at spending for social programs, the tattered safety net that our rich society reluctantly hands out to the poor, sick and elderly.   Paul's stirring calls for freedom come down to unshackling corporations from government regulation while leaving ordinary citizens defenseless.  

Paul does stand up for the elderly and our right to the Social Security payments we were promised.  But in his very next sentence he endorses the freedom of younger taxpayers to stop paying into the social security system by choosing individual retirement investments.  Where does Paul think the money comes from to pay the seniors? As it stands, Social Security weighs heavily on the contributions of middle and lower income tax payers and the self-employed. By the most conservative estimates, the system is solvent for at least another 40 years, and the burden on lower income tax payers could be adjusted in a flash by taxing everyone's entire income.  

Paul is a big defender of our Constitution and especially the 2nd Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.  For obvious reasons, like many vegetable farmers, I appreciate the freedom to keep a rifle in my house.  But Paul outshines even the National Rifle Association (NRA) taking this freedom to the extreme of opposing the Brady Bill ban on hand weapons and crazier yet, the ban on assault weapons. At the same time, he would have us believe that he loves every single human life because he opposes women's right to choose abortion.

Like other farmers who have trouble affording health insurance, I enjoy hearing Paul declaim against the high cost of medical care.  His solution - Medical Savings Accounts - still leaves us out in the cold. The half-percent interest on what farmers can save in these accounts might pay for a broken finger, if we hold onto them for many years.  Paul would not like a single payer system like that in Canada or France that provides health coverage for everyone because it might cut into the freedom of insurance companies to scalp the public for every penny they can squeeze out of us.

Our uphill struggle to make a decent living as farmers makes most of us just a little paranoid.  Paul plays into this with his confident attacks on those who threaten to lower our standard of living.  But watch where he puts the blame - on illegal immigrants who raise our taxes by taking welfare and using other services that should be reserved for law-abiding taxpayers.  Deport them all, Paul exclaims.  No amnesty for the adults, no right to citizenship for their children born here.  Does this match the reality we see in the countryside?  The migrants I have seen work hard on our farms.  In Wayne County this past season, apples covered the ground on farms where the migrant workforce had been scared away by the Gestapo tactics of the INS.  A farmer friend rented a van to drive some unemployed people from Syracuse out to work on his farm - they lasted less than one day.  The crowds of US citizens demanding work on farms are some demagogue's fantasy.  Family-scale farmers in the US will not get our freedom by attacking the people driven to our fields by the same forces that make our lives difficult.

When it is hard to tell the difference between the major candidates on the issues that would make a difference for local organic agriculture, I am all for registering a protest by voting for a principled, outspoken candidate who stands no chance of winning. Paul's anti-corporate rhetoric may resonate with us.  When we look closely, however, it turns out to be just more political hot air because it isn't backed up by analysis that gets to the root of our problems.

We do need candidates who stand up for the freedom to opt out of the industrial food system.  Joel Salatin hits the nail on the head:

Our culture's current fear of bioterrorism shows the glaring weakness of a centralized, immunodeficient food system. This weakness leads to fear. Demanding from on high that we irradiate all food, register every cow with government agencies, and hire more inspectors does not show strength. It shows fear. Indeed, official policy views all these minority production and marketing systems that have been shown faithful over the centuries to be instead things that threaten everyone and everything. As a teepee dwelling, herb healing, home educating, people loving, compost building retail farmer, I represent the real answers, but real answers must be eradicated by those who seek to build their power and fortunes on a lie - the lie being that genetic integrity can be maintained when corporate scientists begin splicing DNA. The lie that, as Charles Walters says, toxic rescue chemistry is better than a balanced biological bath. The lie that farms are disease-prone, unfriendly, inhumane places and should be zoned away from people.
As Jim Hightower puts it, "There is no building so tall, even a small dog can't raise his leg against it."  Surely we can find a better little dog than Ron Paul.



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Sunday 26 December 2010

Activists Submit 240,000 Petitions Demanding Action to Curb Food Monopolies

WASHINGTON - On the eve of the final Department of Justice/USDA public workshop examining the effects of corporate concentration in food and agriculture, a coalition of farm and food activists submitted almost a quarter of a million (nearly 240,000) petitions calling on both the Justice Department and USDA to take swift action to curb the abusive market power that a handful of corporations exert over farmers and consumers.

"While we're encouraged by the administration's year-long investigation, it's time to fulfill President Obama's 2008 election promise to end big food's antitrust abuses," said Dave Murphy of Food Democracy Now! "Hundreds of thousands of Americans from across the country stand behind this administration to reign in excessive concentration in agriculture and we expect real action to be taken to break up the biggest offenders."

"The way the current food system operates benefits big agricultural corporations, which are getting bigger all the time-at the expense of ordinary people and the environment," said Nikhil Aziz of Grassroots International. "Small farmers, farm workers and consumers alike are asserting their rights, which ultimately will ensure a more equitable food system and a cooler planet," he added. Over the past year, thousands of family farmers and consumers have packed the workshops on"Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy," hosted jointly by the two Departments. From Ankeny, Iowa, and Normal, Alabama, to Madison, Wisconsin, and Fort Collins, Colorado, ordinary people have come forward to testify on panels and speak out about the handful of companies that control our food supply. The workshops have appropriately focused on farmers and livestock producers, but they are supported by thousands of consumers, food activists, antihunger advocates, and others who want a fair and equitable food system.



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Saturday 25 December 2010

Seattle-Led Coalition Tells Gates Foundation to Change Approach

A coalition of groups led by Seattle-based activists has sent a letter and online petition to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, saying its current approach to agriculture in Africa is unlikely to solve problems of hunger, poverty and climate change, and may make them worse.

The letter, signed by 100 organizations and individuals from 30 countries, was released to coincide with protests at the UN climate talks in Cancun.

Led by the Seattle-based Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ), the coalition said the foundation and its private sector partners are pushing industrialized agriculture and genetically engineered crops at the expense of small farmers and the environment.

The Gates Foundation has made agricultural development one of its priorities in recent years, launching the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) with the Rockefeller Foundation in 2006.

The Gates Foundation spent about $316 million last year on agricultural development, which it says is part of a larger strategy to reduce hunger and poverty by giving small farmers tools and opportunities to boost their productivity and increase incomes.

The groups signing the letter, including environmentalists, academics and groups opposed to genetic engineering of food crops, said they're concerned the foundation's grants are "heavily distorted in favor of supporting inappropriate high-tech agricultural activities, ignoring scientific studies that confirm the value of small-scale agroecological approaches." 



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Friday 24 December 2010

Food Is Not a Partisan Issue

Several much-emailed articles recently have scrutinized how our food choices are deeply intertwined with class and culture. Writing in The New York Times Magazine, Judith Warner weighed the Obama administration's efforts to address obesity in the context of other government programs designed to change behavior, such as the World War II rationing program and the more recent anti-smoking efforts. Former Washington Post food reporter Jane Black and her journalist husband Brent Cunningham wrote a joint op-ed for the Post about moving to Huntington, W.Va. (site of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution show) and how surprisingly easy and affordable it is to eat healthily in "the nation's fattest city."

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Thursday 23 December 2010

Cancun Betrayal UNFCCC Unmasked as WTO of the Sky

Cancún, Mexico -- As representatives of Indigenous peoples and communities already suffering the immediate impacts of climate change, we express our outrage and disgust at the agreements that have emerged from the COP16 talks. As was exposed in the Wikileaks climate scandal, the Cancun Agreements are not the result of an informed and open consensus process, but the consequence of an ongoing US diplomatic offensive of backroom deals, arm-twisting and bribery that targeted nations in opposition to the Copenhagen Accord during the months leading up to the COP-16 talks.

We are not fooled by this diplomatic shell game. The Cancun Agreements have no substance. They are yet more hot air. Their only substance is to promote continued talks about climate mitigation strategies motivated by profit. Such strategies have already proved fruitless and have been shown to violate human and Indigenous rights. The agreements implicitly promote carbon markets, offsets, unproven technologies, and land grabs-anything but a commitment to real emissions reductions.

The Voices of the People Must be Respected Indigenous Peoples from North to South cannot afford these unjust and false 'solutions', because climate change is killing our peoples, cultures and ecosystems. We need real commitments to reduce emissions at the source and to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Because we are on the front lines of the impacts of climate change, we came to COP-16 with an urgent call to address the root causes of the climate crisis, to demand respect for the Rights of Mother Earth, and to fundamentally redefine industrial society's relationship with the planet. Instead, the Climate COP has shut the doors on our participation and that of other impacted communities, while welcoming business, industry, and speculators with open arms. The U.S., Industrialized nations, big business and unethical companies like Goldman Sachs will profit handsomely from these agreements while our people die.

Women and youth in our communities are disproportionately burdened by climate impacts and rights violations. Real solutions would strengthen our collective rights and land rights while ensuring the protection of women, youth and vulnerable communities. While the Cancun Agreements do contain some language "noting" rights, it is exclusively in the context of market mechanisms, while failing to guarantee safeguards for the rights of peoples and communities.

The failures of the UN talks in Copenhagen have been compounded in Cancun. From the opening day to the closing moments of the talks, our voices were censored, dissenting opinions silenced and dozens ejected from the conference grounds. The thousands who rallied outside to reject market mechanisms and demand recognition of human and Indigenous rights were ignored.

The Market Will Not Protect Our Rights Market-based approaches have failed to stop climate change. They are designed to commodify and profit from the last remaining elements of our Mother Earth and the air. Through its focus on market approaches like carbon trading, the UNFCCC has become the WTO of the Sky.

We are deeply concerned that the Cancun Agreements betray both our future and the rights of peoples, women, youth, and vulnerable populations. While the preamble to the Cancun Agreements note a call for "studies on human rights and climate change," this is in effect an empty reference, with no content and no standards, that will not protect the collective rights of peoples. The market mechanisms that implicitly dominate both the spirit and the letter of the Cancun Agreements will neither avert climate change nor guarantee human rights, much less the Rights of Mother Earth. Approaches based on carbon offsetting, like REDD, will permit polluters to continue poisoning land, water, air, and our bodies, while doing nothing to stop the climate crisis. Indeed, approaches based on the commodification of biodiversity, CO2, forests, water, and other sacred elements will only encourage the buying and selling of our human and environmental rights.

The Cochabamba People's Agreement Points the Way Forward There is another way forward: the Cochabamba People's Agreement represents the vision of everyday people from all corners of the globe who are creating the solutions to climate change from the ground up, and calling for a global framework that respects human rights and the Rights of Mother Earth.

If any hope emerges from Cancun, it comes from the dramatic demonstrations we saw in the streets and from the deep and powerful alliances that were built among indigenous and social movements. The Indigenous Environmental Network joined thousands of our brothers and sisters to demand real climate solutions based in the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the rights of Mother Earth, and a just transition away from fossil fuels. We will continue to stand with our allies to demand climate justice. The communities on the frontlines of the problem--those who face the daily impacts of the climate crisis--are also on the frontlines of the solutions. Community-based solutions can cool the planet!

The fight for climate justice continues. We are committed to deepening our alliances with indigenous and social movements around the world as we build in our communities and mobilize toward COP-17 in Durban, South Africa. Social movements in South Africa mobilized the world to overthrow Apartheid and create powerful, transformative change. The same mass-based movement building is our only hope to overturn the climate apartheid we now face. We look forward to working with our African brothers and sisters and tribal communities in Durban.

We only have one Mother Earth. As Indigenous Peoples, we will continue our struggle to defend all our Relations and future generations.

 Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) is a network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions. IEN brought 17 indigenous leaders to Cancun as part of the Grassroots Solutions for Climate Justice -- North America Delegation uniting representatives from fossil fuel impacted communities who are on the frontlines of solving the climate crisis. A complete archive of the delegations statements and activities can be found at http://redroadcancun.com and http://grassrootsclimatesolutions.net



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Wednesday 22 December 2010

Top Organic Food and Farming Trends in 2011

1.  The Economy: Wall Street may be recording record profits, but the job market is lagging. As such, hard-pressed consumers will continue to look for value. Core healthy lifestyles shoppers will be more discerning in their budgets for organic, and low-income families are particularly strained in finding healthful food alternatives. With people looking to save money, coupon redemption is up 25% this past year, and coupon use in the natural sector reflects a similar growth trend. Also, redemption rates for Internet coupons, while still small, account for the fastest growing segment in the business. Private label product sales also increased from 15% of total food sales before the recession to 18% this past year, according to research firm Booz & Company, which also reports that the new frugality may be here to stay, as consumers continue to feel they are on shaky ground. The natural and organic companies that can communicate value as well as benefits will continue to grow in a tough market.

2.  Social Networking: Word of mouth travels fast in the social network, good or bad. Take an active role in making it good. Stay engaged on Facebook and Twitter and build your brand among friends and followers. Sustainable consumers tend to be early adopters on the web and build strong online communities. "Friend" and "follow" other like-minded Facebookers and Twitterers

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Tuesday 21 December 2010

Whole Foods and Trader Joe's Throwing Out Millions of Pounds of Edible Food

Wal Mart is the largest purchaser of organic food in the U.S. surpassing likelier suspects, Whole Foods and Trader Joe's. And the retail giant has one-upped them again by enacting a company-wide donation policy on short-dated or mildly damaged foods while the top two natural food chains let perfectly edible products rot in dumpsters and landfills.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert directed the multi-award winning documentary, DIVE!, about the more than 95 billion pounds of edible food ending up in America's landfills each year.

After realizing his own local area grocery stores, mainly Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, were regularly pitching perfectly edible food in their dumpsters, he set out to see if he could feed his family with this reclaimed food and document it for a film project. What he found was not only could he feed his family, but there was enough food to feed the millions of hungry people in Los Angeles county, and millions more around the country.

In DIVE! Seifert makes repeated attempts to help Trader Joe's and Whole Foods adopt a policy that prevents food from ending up in their dumpsters and instead allocated to area food banks, homeless shelters and soup kitchens. To date, neither organization has made any commitment and both continue to throw away millions of pounds of food; a costly expense for taxpayers and the environment, all while homeless, veterans, children and millions of unemployed go hungry.



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Monday 20 December 2010

WebMD, Not the Independent Health Source You Expected

In a shocking report published earlier this year, BNET exposed how WebMD's online test for depression is rigged for profit:

"Feeling depressed? Cheer yourself up by taking WebMD's comical new depression test.

It's sponsored by Eli Lilly (LLY) - maker of the antidepressant Cymbalta - so they must know what they're talking about, right?

In fact, no matter which of the 10 answers you choose on the test, the result comes out the same:

You may be at risk for major depression."

But that's just the beginning. A number of questions about just how 'independent' a source WebMD is have since surfaced, and the answers are not what you'd expect. Sources: BNET February 22, 2010 BNET February 26, 2010 Policy and Medicine February 24, 2010 Boston.com March 2, 2010

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

This entire story reminds me of the old adage, "with friends like that, who needs enemies?"

If you didn't already know this, WebMD is the second most visited health web site on the entire web. The general belief is that it's a first-rate, trustworthy source of "independent and objective" information about health.

In fact, the only health site more popular than WebMD is the National Institutes of Health (NIH). You also might not realize that earlier this year Mercola.com, moved up to the third most visited health site on the internet. Mercola.com has been the most visited natural health site in the world for the last five years. 


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Astroturf Libertarians are the Real Threat to Internet Democracy

They are the online equivalent of enclosure riots: the rick-burning, fence-toppling protests by English peasants losing their rights to the land. When MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon tried to shut WikiLeaks out of the cyber-commons, an army of hackers responded by trying to smash their way into these great estates and pull down their fences. In the WikiLeaks punch-up the commoners appear to have the upper hand. But it's just one battle. There's a wider cyberwar being fought, of which you hear much less. And in most cases the landlords, with the help of a mercenary army, are winning.

I'm not talking here about threats to net neutrality and the danger of a two-tier internet developing, though these are real. I'm talking about the daily attempts to control and influence content in the interests of the state and corporations: attempts in which money talks.

The weapon used by both state and corporate players is a technique known as astroturfing. An astroturf campaign is one that mimics spontaneous grassroots mobilisations but which has in reality been organised. Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for instance, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country.

But many of them aren't upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays five mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.

I first came across online astroturfing in 2002, when the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek. They had launched ferocious attacks, across several internet forums, against a scientist whose research suggested that Mexican corn had been widely contaminated by GM pollen.



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Sunday 19 December 2010

GE Mosquitoes Soon to be Released in Malaysia


Malaysia is on the brink of field testing GE mosquitoes in a small town in the state of Pahang, a short distance from Kuala Lumpur.

Preparations are said to be underway to release the GE mosquitoes, first, in an uninhabited area and subsequently, in an inhabited area. Another proposed site for the field experiment is in the state of Melaka.

This is despite an outpouring of concern by scientists, civil society organizations, local inhabitants and individuals who have expressed their reservations with regard to the health and environmental effects of this untested GE organism. Furthermore, the lack of transparency with regards the manner in which the process of field testing is conducted is also an issue of concern. As of date it is unclear if the inhabitants of the proposed site have given their consent, which is required under the terms and condition for the release.

Under the field trial, genetically engineered male Aedes aegypti mosquitoes (OX513A) will be released and studied and if the experiment is successful, the GE mosquitoes may later be used as part of a programme to curb dengue in Malaysia, a disease which is currently rampant in the country. The GE mosquitoes are genetically engineered to include two new traits: fluorescence and conditional lethality. The fluorescence trait acts as a marker for the GE mosquitoes. When the GE male mosquitoes mate with females in the wild, the conditional lethality trait will be passed on to the offspring and the resulting mosquito larvae will die, provided this happens in the absence of the antibiotic tetracycline.


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Saturday 18 December 2010

Book Review of "Meat: A Benign Extravagance"

"This book is a masterpiece: original, challenging and brilliantly argued. Simon Fairlie is a great thinker and a great writer."

 -George Monbiot, Environmental and political activist, author and journalist

Meat is a groundbreaking exploration of the difficult environmental, ethical, and social issues surrounding the human consumption of animals, and the future of livestock in sustainable agriculture. Garnering huge praise in the UK, this book answers the question: should we be farming animals, or not? The answer is not simple; indeed, we must decrease the amount of meat we eat (both for the planet and for ourselves), and the industrial meat system is hugely problematic, but Simon Fairlie presents in-depth research in favor of small-scale, holistic, and integrated farming systems that include pastured, free-range livestock as the answer to the pro-meat or no-meat debate. George Monbiot, for example, a well-known environmental activist and supporter of veganism, has retracted his support for veganism after reading Meat. This is a life-changing book. 

 



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Friday 17 December 2010

National List Not Spurring Innovation in Organic Ingredients

For related articles and more information please visit OCA's information page for All Things Organic and our Save Organic Standards campaign page.

The National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances details non-agricultural ingredients that are allowed to be used as ingredients in foods labeled organic or made with organic ingredients, and is reviewed every five years. It includes carrageenan and agar agar (both from seaweed), animal enzymes, mined calcium sulfate, and glucono delta lactone, among others.

The original thinking behind the establishment of a National List was that it would allow a wide range of USDA certified organic foods to come to market without being restricted by scarcity of minor ingredients.

"The NOSB (National Organic Standards Board) and NOP (National Organic Program) assumed that handlers would benefit from a "market incentive" and inclusion in this section would "drive innovation" of organic alternatives," the paper's authors wrote. " The hope was that as the organic food industry grew, demand for these minor ingredients would also grow and organic options would become available."

However, this has not been the case. Even though the organic industry has greatly expanded since the implementation of the National Organic Program, only one ingredient - rice starch - has been completely removed from the National List.

"Collectively, the evidence of this study suggests that the current review and petition process is at best not supporting the development of organic alternatives and at worst may actually be an impediment," the authors wrote.

Their study examines the extent to which non-organically produced agricultural ingredients are used in organic foods, questioning whether the National List works in the way it was initially intended. The authors tapped into Mintel's Global New Products Database for 2008 and found 1,017 food and beverage launches containing organic ingredients. Of those, the researchers examined a final sample of 629 products with full ingredient information. 


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Thursday 16 December 2010

Power and the Tiny Acts of Rebellion

There is no hope left for achieving significant reform or restoring our democracy through established mechanisms of power. The electoral process has been hijacked by corporations. The judiciary has been corrupted and bought. The press shuts out the most important voices in the country and feeds us the banal and the absurd. Universities prostitute themselves for corporate dollars. Labor unions are marginal and ineffectual forces. The economy is in the hands of corporate swindlers and speculators. And the public, enchanted by electronic hallucinations, remains passive and supine. We have no tools left within the power structure in our fight to halt unchecked corporate pillage.

The liberal class, which Barack Obama represents, was never endowed with much vision or courage, but it did occasionally respond when pressured by popular democratic movements. This was how we got the New Deal, civil rights legislation and the array of consumer legislation pushed through by Ralph Nader and his allies in the Democratic Party. The complete surrendering of power, however, to corporate interests means that those of us who seek nonviolent yet profound change have no one within the power elite we can trust for support. The corporate coup has ossified the structures of power. It has obliterated all checks on corporate malfeasance. It has left us stripped of the tools of mass organization that once nudged the system forward toward justice.

Obama knows where power lies and serves these centers of power. The tragedy-if tragedy is the right word-is that Obama, after selling his soul to corporations, has been discarded. Corporate power doesn't need brand Obama anymore. They have found new brands in the tea party, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. Obama has been abandoned by those who once bundled contributions for him by the millions of dollars. Obama and the Democratic Party will, I expect, spend the next two years being even more obsequious to corporate power. Obama clearly loves the pomp and privilege of statecraft that much. But I am not sure it will work. 


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Wednesday 15 December 2010

How Wal-Mart, Google and Other Corporate Giants Are Trying to Trick Progressive Consumers

The signature phrase of America's booming good food movement has been expanded from "organic" to "local and sustainable."

Good! The phrase suggests great quality, strong environmental stewardship and a commitment to keeping our food dollars in the local economy. If you support the local-economies movement, as I do, no doubt you'll be thrilled to hear that a new, local food store is coming soon to your neighborhood. In fact, it's even named Neighborhood Market.

Only, it's not. It's a Wal-Mart. Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with 2 million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a "local" mask. The giant is promising to buy 9 percent of the produce it'll sell from local farmers. Big whoopie. This means that 91 percent of the foodstuffs offered in its "Neighborhood" chain will come from Wayawayland. Wal-Mart is to local what near beer is to beer. Near beer is not beer ... and Wal-Mart is not local.

But even the 9 percent number is a deceit, for Wal-Mart says that it defines "local" as grown in the same state. Excuse me, but in California, Florida, Texas and other such sizable states, that can be a mighty long truck-haul away.

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Tuesday 14 December 2010

Saying No to Monsanto in Manitoba

Monsanto has invited Manitoba Agricultural Minister Stan Struthers along with other government and industry representatives to a free lunch to celebrate the opening of the Monsanto Canada's new $12 million Canola Breeding Centre at One Research Road at the University of Manitoba. Not everyone was invited to the table. A group of citizens gathered outside the facility Tuesday morning to raise concerns about the risks of genetically engineered (GE) crops to farmers, human health, and the environment.

"The University of Manitoba has become home to one of the worst corporate citizens on the planet. Monsanto's operations poison the environment with chemicals, steal from farmers their age-old right to save seeds and threaten biodiversity by proliferating genetically engineered crops. There is nothing to celebrate with the opening of this new facility," said Alon Weinberg, a University of Manitoba graduate student.

Monsanto is the largest producer of GE crops worldwide. Canola is one of Canada's most valuable crops. GE canola has been grown in Manitoba since 1996. Almost all GE canola is herbicide resistant, allowing farmers to spray pesticides on the crops, killing weeds but not the plants. Since the 1990s, accidental crossbreeding between GE and non-GE varieties has become ubiquitous. Because contamination is so widespread, Manitoba farmers are unable to grow organic or conventional non-GE canola. Several markets including Japan, the European Union and much of the Middle East now have restrictions against Manitoba's canola exports.

In 2008, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, a United Nations sponsored multi-year expert study on the future of agriculture found that GE crops will not have a significant role in feeding the world, reducing poverty or protecting the environment. Investments in sustainable agriculture and organic farming will yield much greater rewards. 60 countries, representing two thirds of the world's population signed on to the report's conclusions.

"In light of what scientists and the international community have discovered, Monsanto's GE breeding facility in Manitoba will do nothing to advance the interests of farmers or increase food security. The province and the University should be putting investments into ecological agriculture and making food that Canadians and our export markets actually want to eat," said Weinberg.

GE labeling and tighter environmental and health assessments prevent Canada from exporting GE canola and other GE crops to many important markets around the world. On December 7th, MPs will vote on Bill C-474, a private member's bill to provide assessments of how new GE crops could affect export markets.  


Via Canadian Biotechnology Action Network




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Monday 13 December 2010

Fish Farms Begin Use of New Pesticide

New Brunswick salmon farmers have started the use of a restricted pesticide that fights sea lice on farmed Atlantic salmon.

The aquaculture industry faced questions in recent weeks when it was revealed that companies could use Alphamax to battle sea lice, which are parasites that attach themselves to salmon.

Alphamax, which has been approved for use between October and December of this year, contains a chemical called deltamethrin. Health Canada advises the chemical does not pose a risk to human health or the environment when it's used according to the label directions and under the federal agency's conditions.

Alphamax is restricted to cages that are covered by tarps or contained areas called well boats, where fish are given a bath in the deltamethrin treatment.

The Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association invited reporters out for a salmon farm tour in Passamaquoddy Bay on Wednesday.

At an aquaculture site at Hardwood Island, fish are pumped into a well, where a mixture of the pesticide and sea water is then flushed in.



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Sunday 12 December 2010

Why We Shouldn't Cut Food Stamps to Pay for School Lunch

In the dying days of this Congress, food activists face an awful choice: Should we support the increased funding of children's school lunches, even if it means taking money from a family's food stamps? That is what's on the table in a version of the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill passed by the Senate, in which an improved school meal program will be paid for by cutting back $2 billion in funding for food stamps in 2013.

No one disputes that poor children need to be better fed, but government food stamp entitlements are the last tatters of a safety net for many millions of people. Evidence? Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that 50.2 million Americans were food insecure in 2009, a mere 1 million more than the year before. Although that's still one in six people, the figure was a victory. Given the soaring rates of poverty and unemployment in 2009, there could have been considerably more food insecure people.

When the recession started, over 10 million more people were added to the ranks of the food insecure: The number jumped from 37 million in 2007 to 49 million in 2008. One of the reasons America didn't see another 10 million food insecure people in 2009 was that the stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, boosted the amount of money that poor households received in food stamps.



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Saturday 11 December 2010

ACTION ALERT: Factory Farm Vegetable Lobbyists Go After Organic/Local Growers in Food Safety Debate


Even though an agreement was reached on the Tester-Hagan amendment last week, by the leadership in the Senate, this issue in the food safety bill is still not over!

The Tester-Hagan amendment would exempt smaller, organic and local growers from expensive regulatory burdens.

For over a year, the big Agribusiness trade organizations have supported passage of S.510, the Food Safety Modernization Act. From agribusiness's perspective, the bill was a win-win: they could absorb the costs of the regulations because of their size; they'd gain good PR for supposedly improving food safety practices, gain some protection from legal liabilities-and hobble the competition-local food producers by crushing them with new regulatory burdens.

Their anti-competitive motivation was only speculation until now. But when the Senators agreed to include the Tester-Hagan amendment in the bill, to exempt small-scale direct-marketing producers from some of the most burdensome provisions, agribusiness revealed its true colors. Late last week, twenty agribusiness lobby groups fired off a letter stating that they would oppose the bill if it included the Tester-Hagan amendment.


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Friday 10 December 2010

If You Knew How Dangerous Cleaning Products Were, You'd Probably Go Back to Soap and Water

They're hiding under your sink, deep in the basement and out in your garage. They seem to be multiplying and most of them are green, for gosh sakes!

They are cleaning products. We have one for every conceivable job: floors, walls, dishes, laundry, windows, bathroom porcelain and ceramic tiles, wooden decks, cement surfaces, silverware, one for car paint and another for the chrome, and on and on.

Whatever happened to just plain soap? Well, it seems it wasn't fast enough for our busy lives. And these new cleaners certainly are fast. Just spray and wipe or swish with a mop and the job is done.

If you want really fast general cleaning products, commercial ones like Formula 409, Simple Green and Windex clean faster than any soap and water could. This is because they contain small amounts, usually in the range of 2-6 percent, of some members of the most powerful grease-cutting class of chemicals known: the "glycol ethers."


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Thursday 9 December 2010

How to Stop the Killing: Livestock and Predators

One of the unquestioned and unspoken assumptions heard across the West is that ranchers have a right to a predator free environment. Even environmental groups like Defenders of Wildlife more or less legitimize this perspective by supporting unqualified compensation for livestock losses to bears and wolves. And many state agency wolf management plans specifically call for compensation to livestock producers-but without any requirements that livestock husbandry practices be in place to reduce or eliminate predation opportunity.

In a sense, ranchers have externalized one of their costs of business, namely practicing animal husbandry that eliminates or significantly reduces predator losses. Most of these proven techniques involve more time and expense than ranchers have traditionally had to pay, in part, because they have been successful in making the rest of us believe it was a public responsibility to eliminate predators and not a private business cost.

This is not unlike how power companies have successfully transferred one of their costs of doing business-namely reducing air pollution from burning coal-on to the public at large and the environment. Ranchers have been doing the same transfer of costs in the West for decades. And it is not limited just to predator control. When livestock trample riparian areas, destroy soil crusts, pollute waters, eat forage that would otherwise support native herbivores, spread disease that harms wildlife (as with bighorn sheep), and spread weeds, the environment, and ultimately the taxpayers and citizens of this country are absorbing the costs, while the ranchers gets the profits.

And so it is with predators. Killing predators to appease the livestock industry is nothing more than another subsidy to an industry that is already living off the public largess, in part, because most predator losses are completely avoidable with proper animal husbandry techniques. 


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Wednesday 8 December 2010

Trailer: Farmageddon, the Movie

For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Raw Milk Action Center, our Breaking the Chains Campaign page, or our Food Safety Resource Center.

Farmageddon is a documentary about the escalating fight for food rights in America.

Farmageddon is truly the documentary movie that we've all been waiting for. It's about raw milk, farm families harmed by the overreach of government, food safety legislation, and consumer food rights. 

Farmageddon Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Farmageddon is anticipated to awaken consumers much as did "Food Inc", which was released in 2009. The 90 minute documentary includes Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund Board Members - Sally Fallon Morell, Gary Cox. Esq, Pete Kennedy, Esq., Judith McGeary, Esq., Tim Wightman, members Joel Salatin, Mark McAfee and raided farm families including the Stowers of Manna Storehouse, Mark and Maryanne Nolt of Nature's Sunlight Farm,  the Smiths of Meadowsweet, the Faillaces of Vermont and many others.

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund attorneys staffing the emergency hot line often receive calls from farmers during raids, and advise them of their rights during the raids.

Read more about farm raids.

Visit Farmageddon Website,  Facebook and Twitter pages.

Read more about Farmageddon.



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Tuesday 7 December 2010

UN Scientists Say Emission Pledges Fall Well Short of Halting Climate Change

UN research shows that the pledges and promises made last year by 80 countries to reduce climate change emissions fall well short of what is needed to hold the global temperature rise to 2C and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year. Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.

If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes.

In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 - roughly what all the world's power stations emit.


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Monday 6 December 2010

The Carbon Ranch: Fighting Climate Change One Acre at a Time

If you are concerned about climate change - and you should be - then these are not the best of times. The decision by the U.S. Senate to postpone climate legislation, perhaps indefinitely, coupled with the failure of the United Nations summit in Copenhagen last winter to produce an international treaty limiting greenhouse gases means Business-as-Usual continues to rule.

Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has risen to 391 parts-per-million (ppm) - 40 ppm above what many scientists consider a level necessary to keep the planet from becoming ice-free. And it's rising at a rate of 2 ppm per year, far faster than at any time in the Earth's paleoclimate record.

What to do? Some see salvation in high technology, including the 'capture' of CO2 at its source, to be stored underground, or the 'scrubbing' of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere by hundred of thousands of boxcar-sized filtering machines. The trouble is, these technologies, even if practical, are years away from deployment. And the climate crisis, as evidenced by recent headlines, is happening now.

Which leads to an idea: what about low technology? As I see it, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities.

There are only four natural sinks for CO2: the atmosphere, the oceans, forests and other perennial vegetation, and the soil. The atmospheric sink is overflowing with CO2, as we well know, and the oceans are fast filling up (and becoming alarmingly acidic as a result). Forests have a habit of being cut down, burned up, or die and decompose over time, all of which release stored CO2 back into the atmosphere. That leaves soils.

The potential for CO2 storage in soils is three times greater than the atmosphere. And since two-thirds of the Earth's landmass is covered with grass, the potential impact on the climate could be gigantic. In fact, NASA's Dr. James Hansen, the nation's leading climatologist, postulates that 50 ppm of CO2 could be sequestered in soils over the next fifty years.

How? By employing the low technology of green plants, which pull CO2 out of the air and fix it into carbon compounds that are stored in the soil.

In my experience in the arid Southwest, there are six strategies that can increase or maintain the carbon content of grass-dominated ecosystems. They include: (1) planned grazing systems using livestock, especially on degraded soils; (2) active restoration of degraded riparian and wetland zones; and (3) removal of woody vegetation, where appropriate, so grass may grow in its stead. Maintenance strategies include: (4) the conservation of open space, so there is no further loss of carbon-storing soils; (5) the implementation of organic no-till farming practices; and (6) management of land for long-term ecological and economic resilience.

Fortunately, a great deal of the land management 'toolbox' required to implement these strategies has largely been tried-and-tested by practitioners and landowners. Over the past decade, these strategies have been demonstrated individually to be both practical and profitable.


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Sunday 5 December 2010

Top 10 Food Additives to Avoid

Food additives find their way into our foods to help ease processing, packaging and storage. But how do we know what food additives is in that box of macaroni and cheese and why does it have such a long shelf life?

A typical American household spends about 90 percent of their food budget on processed foods, and are in doing so exposed to a plethora of artificial food additives, many of which can cause dire consequences to your health.

Some food additives are worse than others. Here's a list of the top food additives to avoid:

1. Artificial Sweeteners
Aspartame, (E951) more popularly known as Nutrasweet and Equal, is found in foods labeled "diet" or "sugar free". Aspartame is believed to be carcinogenic and accounts for more reports of adverse reactions than all other foods and food additives combined. It produces neurotoxic effects such as dizziness, headaches, mental confusion, migraines, and seizures. Avoid if you suffer from asthma, rhinitis (including hayfever), or urticaria (hives).Acesulfame-K, a relatively new artificial sweetener found in baking goods, gum and gelatin, has not been thoroughly tested and has been linked to kidney tumors.

Found in: diet or sugar free sodas, diet coke, coke zero, jello (and over gelatins), desserts, sugar free gum, drink mixes, baking goods, table top sweeteners, cereal, breathmints, pudding, kool-aid, ice tea, chewable vitamins, toothpaste

2. High Fructose Corn Syrup
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is a highly-refined artificial sweetener which has become the number one source of calories in America. It is found in almost all processed foods. HFCS packs on the pounds faster than any other ingredient, increases your LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels, and contributes to the development of diabetes and tissue damage, among other harmful effects.

Found in: most processed foods, breads, candy, flavoured yogurts, salad dressings, canned vegetables, cereals

3. Monosodium Glutamate (MSG / E621)
MSG is an amino acid used as a flavor enhancer in soups, salad dressings, chips, frozen entrees, and many restaurant foods. MSG is known as an excitotoxin, a substance which overexcites cells to the point of damage or death. Studies show that regular consumption of MSG may result in adverse side effects which include depression, disorientation, eye damage, fatigue, headaches, and obesity. MSG effects the neurological pathways of the brain and disengaged the "I'm full" function which explains the effects of weightgain

Found in: chinese food ( Chinese Restaurant Syndrome ) many snacks, chips, cookies, seasonings, most Campbell Soup products, frozen dinners , lunch meats

4. Trans fat
Trans fat is used to enhance and extend the shelf life of food products and is among the most dangerous substances that you can consume. Numerous studies show that trans fat increases LDL cholesterol levels while decreasing HDL ("good") cholesterol, increases the risk of heart attacks, heart disease and strokes, and contributes to increased inflammation, diabetes and other health problems.

Found in: margarine, chips and crackers, baked goods, fast foods



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Saturday 4 December 2010

How Do You Eat Well? Share Your 'Food Rules' With Michael Pollan

By Michael Pollan
Grist Magazine

Last year I published Food Rules, a short book offering 64 rules for eating well. Food Rules struck a chord with many people, who found that it helped them navigate what has become a treacherous food environment, whether in the supermarket or restaurant. Many of the rules were submitted by readers, and since publication I have received a number of excellent new ones. So I've decided to publish an expanded edition, with additional rules and also illustrations, which the painter Maira Kalman has agreed to create.

The premise of Food Rules is that culture has much to teach us about how to choose, prepare, and eat food and that this wisdom is worth collecting and preserving before it disappears. In recent years, we've deferred to the voices of science and industry when it comes to eating, yet often their advice has served us poorly, or has merely confirmed the wisdom of our grandmothers after the fact. "Eat your colors," an Australian reader's grandmother used to tell her; now we hear the same advice from nutritionists, citing the value of including in the diet as many different phytochemicals as possible.

I've also found that many ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry."



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Friday 3 December 2010

6 Ways to Solve the 'Renter's Dilemma' For Home Energy

Watching a skillful home-energyinspector explorea leaky house last week left me with a distinct sensation:envy.

As the inspector wentthrough the process, showing the homeowner how insulation, foam sealing, andother improvements would save money on heating bills, I realized I want some ofthat sweetweatherstripping action for my house. But my wife and I have a simple andcommon dilemma: we rent. We're not going to pay for house improvements becausewe might not live there for long and won't profit from the increased propertyvalue. Our landlord won't shell out for much because he doesn't pay heating andelectricity bills -- we do.

This renter's dilemmais a real barrier to getting more homes weatherized (which, in case you haven'theard, is afan-flipping-tastic policy that helps out cash-strapped residents, savesenergy, and creates building-industry jobs). Renters tend to have lowerincomes, so they could use the savings more.

So I put out acall a few days ago asking for proposals for cracking this nut. Wouldn'tyou know, some decent ideas came back. None of the proposals are a magicpotion, which means it's worth trying out a bunch of strategies. Starting withthree steps tenants can take:

1. Talk to landlords about what they can do. Sounds obvious, butit's an important place to start, and something not all energy-conscioustenants have done (guilty). A coworker got her landlord to pay forweatherstripping of doors simply by asking.

This may work for onlythe cheapest improvements. "Most landlords are looking for ways to recoup theirelectricity costs," Tom Harrison of the efficiency products shop Energycircle.com told me. "A few saythey want to help their residents conserve. And I don't doubt them, but to behonest, of the several I have spoken with directly, they are all Canadian --seriously."

2. Threaten to leave. If you're a desirable tenant, owners mightprefer to pay for some improvements than spend time and money looking for newtenants (The Alliance to Save Energy has a goodlist of specific improvements to consider.)

3. Ask about "green leases." In this arrangement, an owner agreesto pays for improvements (say, $2,000 for attic insulation), then raises thelease ($50 a month) to recoup the cost. If the improvement saves an average $65month in heating costs, the renter comes out ahead and the owner recovers theinvestment in a few years.



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Thursday 2 December 2010

A Warning by Key Researcher On Risks of BPA Plastic Bottles and Cans in Our Lives

The chemical Bisphenol A, or BPA, has been much in the news lately. BPA is the building block for polycarbonate plastic - the sort of hard, clear plastic often used in water bottles - and it is found in everything from linings of metal cans, to the thermal paper used for cash register receipts, to the dental sealants applied to children's teeth. The chemical mimics estrogen, and in studies involving lab animals, exposure to BPA, even at very low doses, has been linked to a wide variety of health problems, from an increased risk of prostate cancer, to heart disease, to damage to the reproductive system.

Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri's Endocrine Disruptors Group, is one of the world's leading researchers on the ill health effects of BPA in humans and animals. He is also one of the most outspoken critics of U.S. businesses and regulators for glossing over, or concealing, the major impact that BPA exposure is increasingly having on human health. Vom Staal is irate that even though BPA is quite similar to another synthetic hormone - DES, or Diethylstilbesterol - that caused myriad health problems in thousands of women in the 1940s and 1950s, federal regulators are only now beginning to take seriously the threat from BPA.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributor Elizabeth Kolbert, vom Saal excoriated the U.S. chemical industry for attempting to quash research showing the dangers of BPA and for threatening him and other researchers. Vom Saal was equally critical of regulators from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, whom he says have relied on outdated studies, often funded by industry, to support claims that BPA is safe.

Vom Saal adamantly believes that BPA should be removed from all products as soon as possible, as was done a decade ago in Japan. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said earlier this year that the health effects of BPA represent "reason for some concern," the chemical still remains unregulated. Vom Saal maintains that the regulatory system has failed to protect U.S. consumers, adding, "It is a lie. It is a fraud. It is absolutely intolerable that this kind of thing is going on."


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Wednesday 1 December 2010

World 'Dangerously Close' to Food Crisis, U.N. Says

Global grain production will tumble by 63 million metric tons this year, or 2 percent over all, mainly because of weather-related calamities like the Russian heat wave and the floods in Pakistan, the United Nations estimates in its most recent report on the world food supply. The United Nations had previously projected that grain yields would grow 1.2 percent this year.

The fall in production puts the world "dangerously close" to a new food crisis, Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said at a news conference last week.

Rising demand and lower-than-expected yields caused stocks of some grains to fall sharply and generated high volatility in world food markets in the latter half of the year. Prices for some commodities are approaching levels not seen since 2007 and 2008, when food shortages prompted riots around the world.

"There is no crisis at this stage, but it could come if we don't act," Mr. Abbassian said. "The numbers are getting dangerously close to what we saw in 2008."

With world stocks depleted, wheat production will need to grow by 3.5 percent and corn production by 6 percent next year to avoid future price shocks, he estimated.

"Just normal production will not do anymore," he said.

Good yields in regions with poor food security like East Africa eased the pain of sharp rises in world grain prices this year, however.

In the long term, however, growing demand for food staples like corn and seed oil for use as biofuels will most likely continue to play a central role in tightening world food supplies, the United Nations warned. Roughly 7 percent of global yields of corn and other coarse grains is being used to make ethanol.

"This is a huge amount that does have an impact on the food markets and on prices," Hafez Ghanem, assistant director general for the Food and Agriculture Organization, told reporters.

In the United States in particular, ethanol production is supported by heavy government subsidies, without which it would be largely uneconomical to manufacture.


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Tuesday 30 November 2010

Cities, States Start to Adopt Climate Change Survival Strategies

As it becomes ever more clear that Congress has retreatedfrom climate change legislation faster than a Greenland glacier, cities andstates are starting to focus on adapting to the inevitable.

A report released this week by the California Adaptation Advisory Panel laid out themyriad threats climate change poses to the Golden State -- as well as strategies toanticipate and prepare for rising sea levels, along with more wildfires, heat waves, andwater shortages.

"Failure to anticipate and plan for climate variability andthe prospect of extreme weather and related events in land development patternsand in natural resource management could have serious impacts far beyond whathas already been experienced," the report states.

In short, California needs to deploy monitoring technologyalong its 1,100-mile coastline and overhaul its approach to land usedecision-making.

Eight cities and counties across the United States,meanwhile, have joined what is being called the nation's first climate adaptationeffort. The participants are Boston, Cambridge, Mass.,  Flagstaff, Ariz., Tucson, Ariz., GrandRapids, Mich., Lee County, Fla., Miami-Dade County, Fla., and the San FranciscoBay Conservation and Development Commission.

Created by the ICLEI-LocalGovernments for Sustainability, a Washington nonprofit, the ClimateResilient Communities program gives the cities and counties planning and database tools to prepare for rising temperatures and sea levels.

"Local governments have a responsibility to protect people,property, and natural resources, and these leading communities wisely recognizethat climate change is happening now, and that they must begin planning forimpacts that will only become more severe in the coming decades," MartinChávez, ICLEI USA's executive director and a former mayor of Albuquerque, saidin a statement.

The idea is to create a standardized municipal planningprocess to prepare for climate change.



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Monday 29 November 2010

Canada's Transgenic Enviropig Coming at Us After GE Salmon?

Canada's transgenic Enviropig is stuck in a genetic modification poke The small herd of pigs in a research barn in Guelph look like ordinary pigs.

They act like ordinary pigs, and presumably, they would even taste like ordinary pigs if anyone dared to break the law and sample one.

But these are Enviropigs. The transgenic creations of university researchers, they are the world's most controversial environmentally sensitive swine, and they're not legally fit to eat. At least, not yet.

Under development for more than a decade, the University of Guelph's 20 Enviropigs are close behind a Canadian-made supersized salmon in a race to become the first genetically modified animals allowed into the food system.

Starting with the discovery that an E.coli gene could produce a digestive enzyme that regular pigs lack, the Guelph scientists realized they could introduce genetic material from that bacterium into pigs to minimize the environmental impact of the animals' waste, reducing a major pollutant from large-scale production - and allowing pork producers to cut operation costs.

The market may soon need Enviropig. To feed the projected world population of nine billion in 2050, food production will have to increase by 70 per cent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Genetically engineered organisms will have to be part of the equation, according to the globe-spanning community of experts concerned with meeting those looming targets.

"You cannot feed the world at affordable prices without using the modern arsenal of inputs," said Marco Ferroni, head of the Syngenta Foundation, a Swiss-based non-profit established by its namesake seed company to pursue sustainable improvements in farm yields.

Among those "inputs" are controversial genetic modification techniques that enable faster and more environmentally friendly production of food, including intensive aquaculture and livestock, which are blamed for a significant amount of global greenhouse gas emissions. Critics say that genetic modification is a backward solution, one that papers over the problems of industrial food production.

But with mounting pressure to meet the world's food needs, the developers of the salmon and the Enviropig - both Canadian innovations - are taking their technology to countries where demand, commercial opportunities and the chances of regulatory approval are greatest. Although research in this country is responsible for both animals, the first country to commercialize them isn't likely to be Canada. 


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Wednesday 24 November 2010

Making Geography Fun for Little Ones

One of our favorite family activities is locating new countries on our globe and learning about the people and cultures of said countries. Margaret and I hope that our boys grow up to appreciate the beauty and diversity of our world and its living creatures, and what better way to encourage this than to spend family time tracing our fingers all over our globe.

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Tuesday 23 November 2010

How to Prevent and Treat Achilles Tendonitis

As you age, all of your ligaments and tendons become more susceptible to injury. This is just a fact of life. Once you stop growing, you start degenerating; all you can control is the rate at which you degenerate.

One of the most powerful ways to slow down the rate at which you experience degeneration is to regularly stretch your muscles and tendons. Stretching these tissues helps prevent scar tissue buildup and promotes healthy exchange of nutrients and waste products via steady blood circulation.

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Monday 22 November 2010

How to Stretch and Massage Your Inner Hip Muscles

There are many potential causes of hip pain and stiffness, and as anyone who has experienced significant trouble with a hip joint will tell you, inability to walk or even sit cross-legged without pain is a real quality-of-life-killer.

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Sunday 21 November 2010

How to Keep Your Hip Flexors Healthy

If you have tight hip flexors, you can expect to have problems with your hip joints and lower back, if not now, then almost certainly at some point in the future.

Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that enable you to bring your knee up towards your trunk. Though several muscles contribute to this action, the two primary players are your iliacus and psoas major, which come together to form the extremely strong ilipsoas tendon, which attaches your hip flexor muscles to your thigh bone.

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Saturday 20 November 2010

How to Foam Roll Your Hip Abductors

Your hip abductors are muscles that lie on the upper and outer portion of your buttocks. These muscles - called your gluteus medius and minimus - allow you to move your lower extremities out and away from your midline. They also allow you to rotate your legs inward so that the toes of one leg face your opposite leg.



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Friday 19 November 2010

Obama's Cheerleaders Fall on their Faces

The electoral debacle suffered by the Obama Administration and its Democratic Party will be blamed on many things, especially the secret wealth behind the myriad of coordinated campaign front groups dominating TV advertising in the wake of the Supreme Court's horrific decision in the Citizen United case, a Right Wing coup that essentially drove the nail into the money coffin encasing American democracy.

But let the blame be laid instead with the Obama Administration itself, the phony rhetoric of change and populism it embraced to win in 2008, and the betrayal of its promises of fundamental reform, openness and peace, ideals that so excited new and independent voters just two years ago. I've been writing since 2007 about the sell-out of the peace movement by MoveOn and its co-option as a campaign tool by Democratic Party. Web-centric, navel-gazing fundraising operations such as MoveOn and the liberal millionaires behind the Democracy Alliance fooled themselves into thinking that the election of Obama meant the Republicans were vanquished. But the pro-war, pro-Wall Street, anti-Single Payer reform antics of Obama and the Democrats undercut their reform rhetoric and revealed the hypocrisy of Democratic corporate liberals, or "progressives" as they have come to be called.

Obama's great email list of over ten million contributors, controlled by the Democratic National Committee and renamed Organizing for America, and the five million strong list of MoveOn, and the hundreds of millions spent in the past half decade by the elite wealthy funders behind the Democracy Alliance, were futile in this election. The phony health care reform bill and the idiotic and suicidal ratcheting up of the war in Afghanistan, a war doomed to failure in the years ahead, sealed the fate of the Democrats as they labored to paint lipstick on the pig that is the health insurance law, while sitting on their hands in the face of the counterproductive escalating war. The economy was put in the hands of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, a bit like handing Bonnie and Clyde the keys to the bank vault and a new get away car.


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Thursday 18 November 2010

Marijuana Legalization: Not If, But When

California's marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19, didn't win a majority of votes, but it already represents an extraordinary victory for the broader movement to legalize marijuana.

What's most important is the way its mere presence on the ballot, combined with a well run campaign, has transformed public dialogue about marijuana and marijuana policy. The media coverage, not just in California but around the country and even internationally, has been exceptional, both in quantity and quality. More people knew about Prop 19 than any other measure on the ballot this year -- not just in California but nationwide.

The debate is shifting from whether marijuana should be legalized to how. Public opinion polls in California consistently reveal that a majority of the state's citizens favor legalizing marijuana. One "No on 19" campaign spokesman admitted that even his own supporters were divided between those who oppose legalizing marijuana and those who favor legalization but were wary of either Prop 19's specific provisions or the federal government's threats to block it from being implemented.

Prop 19 both elevated and legitimized public discourse about marijuana. It's the small but growing number of elected officials who endorsed Prop 19 or said they'd vote for it -- and the increasingly frequent private expressions of support by candidates and elected officials who said they wished they could be public about their position. It's the growing number of endorsements by labor unions, including SEIU California, and civil rights organizations, including the California chapter of the NAACP and the National Latino Officers Association.


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Wednesday 17 November 2010

Why New GIPSA Rules Support Family Farms

The USDA has a law on the books that levels the playing field between family farmers who raise cattle, hogs and poultry and the large meat packers who purchase their livestock and bring it to market. It's called the Packers and Stockyard Act, and its overseen by the USDA's Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyard Administration or GIPSA. But don't tussle with that mouthful because it doesn't explain what you need to know about the complex livestock market system. Just keep reading. GIPSA makes sure small producers have equal access to market that larger producers do. It's fair competition, which is, of course, the American way.

Sounds great, right? And just in time for the good food revolution. But instead, this law has been gathering dust because the USDA hasn't enforced it. New proposed rules (previously covered here on Civil Eats) amending the act would prevent large meat packers from artificially lowering the price of cattle, hogs and lamb. But four companies control over 80 percent of the U.S. meat market, and these "Big Four" are fighting an effort to strengthen the rule.

For all you urban food geeks who've never ridden the North Dakota range or shoveled chicken manure in central North Carolina, here's some context. When you're raising livestock, timely access to market is critical because a meat animal is a perishable product. When the animal has reached optimal weight, it must be sold in a narrow window of time, typically within two to three weeks. If it cannot be processed, it begins to degrade in quality, and a producer is subject to a significant price deflation. If a packer won't purchase your animals for slaughter, you're stuck selling your animal either too early or too late, competitive bidding isn't possible, and the packer conspires to give you a ridiculously low price for your labors.



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Tuesday 16 November 2010

Taking the 'Waste' Out of Human Waste

We do it every day.

But how many of us think about what happens after we pull the toilet lever?

Increasingly, people in Chicago and across the world are. They're questioning the sustainability of a system built on using clean water and a lot of energy to process waste, and reimagining the possibilities for what we flush away.

Call it taking the "waste" out of human waste - a movement that includes transforming sewage sludge into fuel, heating buildings with it, using composting toilets to produce fertilizer. It all adds up to a major point: Change is on the horizon, even if that horizon seems far away.

The United States used about 410 billion gallons of water each day in 2005, according to a U.S. Geological Survey report. More than 30 percent of those gallons flush our toilets, which we do five times a day on average, according to the nonprofit American Water Works Association and its Research Foundation in Denver.

Dick Lanyon, executive director of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, said it costs $747 per million gallons to treat the water. The district serves 5.25 million people.

Added Reed Dring, operations manager for Stickney Water Reclamation Plant, blowers have to pump almost 500,000 cubic feet of air per minute using 20,000 horsepower. "That takes a lot of energy," Dring said. "Our monthly electric bill is $1.8 million."

Though the plant offsets some of its costs by using methane gas generated by sewage sludge to heat its buildings, receiving less water would make the job easier, Dring said. "The less (wastewater) to pump, the less motors I have to run."

Rose George, author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters," said one of the problems with the current sanitation model, one she and others believe is unsustainable, is thinking of "human waste as waste and not a resource."



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Monday 15 November 2010

How the Places We Live Make Us Sick, and How They Could Heal Us Instead

The news came out a couple of weeks ago, and then it got swept away in the ongoing torrent of information: The Centers for Disease Control projects that by 2050, one in three American will have diabetes.

One. In. Three.

If we needed any more of a wakeup call about the catastrophic state of American public health, this should provide it.

Why is this happening? According to the report, "These projected increases are largely attributable to the aging of the US population, increasing numbers of members of higher-risk minority groups in the population, and people with diabetes living longer."

Fair enough. But why are people -- minority or otherwise -- getting diabetes in the first place? Scientists have proven the link between diabetes and obesity. And we have become a society where the road to obesity is quite literally built into our environment. Studies have shown that more vehicle miles traveled result in more obesity. Our broken food system is another huge contributing factor, but even there, the built environment factors in -- our inner cities are quite often "food deserts" where no healthy nutrition is available.

So if the places we live are making us sick, could they heal us instead -- if only they were designed better?

That's the fascinating question being raised by the Healing Cities Working Group of planners and health professionals in Vancouver.



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Agribiz BFF Bill Northey Defeats Reformer Francis Thicke for Iowa Ag Secretary

Republican Bill Northey was reelected Iowa secretary of agriculture, defeating organic farmer Francis Thicke 63 to 37 percent, despite being roundly criticized for his handling of the Wright County Farms 500 million salmonella-tainted egg fiasco.

As I wrote here in September, if Thicke (pronounced "TICK-ee") managed to unseat Northey, it would have been a huge win not only for sustainable agriculture in Iowa, but for the nation as we begin gearing up for the next Farm Bill. "The triumph of a reform candidate like Francis Thicke would demonstrate to Washington that a change in agricultural policy would in fact be welcome in much of the farm belt," Michael Pollan, food-system journalist and UC Berkeley professor, told me by email.

Well, with a margin that wide, it's safe to say that the opposite message has been sent. Agricultural reform may have been collateral damage from a different kind of cultural war, however: Iowa voters turned out in droves to remove three state Supreme Court judges who had ruled that same-sex marriage was legal. But while they also elected a Republican governor, they mysteriously voted in three Democratic congressmen in contested districts and approved an environmentalist-backed constitutional amendment.

The ag-sec race seems to have been about preserving the status quo. Incumbent Northey is a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer whose reelection campaign was endorsed by the Iowa Farm Bureau (his grandfather was its president) and also, at the last minute, a Democratic Party power broker and former Monsanto lawyer. Thicke, meanwhile, was endorsed by such sustainable agriculture bigwigs as Pollan, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower, along with Robert Kennedy, Jr. -- which may have ended up hurting him in the eyes of Iowa voters.



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Sunday 14 November 2010

Plenty Of Foods Harbor BPA, Study Finds

Some communities have banned the sale of plastic baby bottles and sippy cups manufactured using bisphenol A, a hormone-mimicking chemical. In a few grocery stores, cashiers have already begun donning gloves to avoid handling thermal receipt paper out of fear its BPA-based surface coating may rub off on the fingers. But how's a family to avoid exposure to this contaminant when it taints the food supply?

It's a question many people may start asking in response to data posted online November 1 in Environmental Science & Technology by a team of university and government scientists. Indeed, the last author on the paper is Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

In recent years, she's teamed up with toxicologist Arnold Schecter of the University of Texas School of Public Health on market-basket analyses of foods for various potentially toxic pollutants. Like Birnbaum, Schecter initially gained renown for studying dioxins. Now, both have moved into the BPA arena.

In their team's new paper, the Texas contingent locally purchased three samples of each of 31 types of canned or plastic-packaged foods. Another four examples of fresh meat and eight different types of pet food were also collected. All were analyzed for BPA - and 60 percent of the different food products hosted measurable quantities. Ironically, pet food contained less of the pollutant than did most of the items destined for human consumption.



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Saturday 13 November 2010

Where Has All The Water Gone?

Mankind is moving buckets and buckets of water from land to the ocean.

Sometimes science moves slowly and sometimes quickly. This is an instance of quick.

A couple of weeks ago TheGreenGrok covered a paper by Tajdarul Syed of the University of California, Irvine, et al who used hydrologic data to estimate the rates at which water flowed from the continents to the sea. They found that the rate rose over the study period from 1994 to 2006 and that the strongest component of that increase was an increase in evaporation over the ocean. The authors noted that such trends, if they continue into the future, would be evidence of an intensification of the hydrologic cycle, in which increased evaporation over the ocean leads to increased precipitation over the continents and subsequently more river discharge into the ocean.

While I had some reservations about the study -- recognizing, as the authors did, that the time period wasn't sufficiently long enough to draw conclusions about changes in the hydrologic cycle, and finding there were uncertainties in the numbers they derived -- I generally saw the paper as but another confirmation of the fact that our climate is changing. (To be clear, the findings of Syed et al were and are in no way central to the climate change issue but in line with it.)

But a new piece of the puzzle has been added with a report just out in the journal Geophysical Research Letters by Yoshihide Wada of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and colleagues. And that new piece calls into question the conclusions of Syed et al.

The Wada et al paper is about groundwater, but before we get to the specifics, a little background.



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Friday 12 November 2010

What the Midterms Mean for Federal Ag-Policy Reform

The House and Senate ag committees, that two-headed monster that dominates federal ag policy, both have a new look after the midterms.

In short, the Senate committee is getting a new chair, while the rest of it remains largely the same. The House committee's transformation is much deeper -- not only has it shifted from Democratic to Republican leadership, but more than a third of its members were ousted by the electorate.

What does this mean for farm policy ahead of looming 2012 Farm Bill negotiations? First, the details.

The Senate: Power struggle at the top

Senate Committee chair Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), a Blue-Dog Democrat with fierce loyalty to her state's industrial meat and cotton interests, is out (as expected).

Associated Press is reporting that her likely successor is either Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) or Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), the subject of speculation last week, now has only an "outside chance" of grabbing the gavel, AP reports.


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Thursday 11 November 2010

Reducing Urban Water Use Around the World with Compost Toilets

Theodore Roosevelt once noted that "civilized people ought to know how to dispose of the sewage in some other way than putting it into the drinking water." But that's what we're still doing every day.

The one-time use of water to disperse human and industrial wastes is an outmoded practice, made obsolete by new technologies and water shortages. Yet it is still common around much of the world. Water enters a city, becomes contaminated with human and industrial wastes, and leaves the city dangerously polluted. Toxic industrial wastes discharged into rivers and lakes or into wells also permeate aquifers, making water -- both surface and underground -- unsafe for drinking.

The current engineering concept for dealing with human waste is to use vast quantities of water to wash it away, preferably into a sewer system, where it may or may not be treated before being discharged into the local river. The "flush and forget" system takes nutrients originating in the soil and typically dumps them into the nearest body of water. Not only are the nutrients lost from agriculture, but the nutrient overload has contributed to the death of many rivers and to the formation of some 405 "dead zones" in ocean coastal regions. This outdated system is expensive and water-intensive, disrupts the nutrient cycle, and can be a major source of disease and death. Worldwide, poor sanitation and personal hygiene claim the lives of some 2 million children per year, a toll that is one-third the size of the 6 million lives claimed by hunger and malnutrition.

Sunita Narain of the Center for Science and Environment in India argues convincingly that a water-based disposal system with sewage treatment facilities is neither environmentally nor economically viable for India. She notes that an Indian family of five, producing 250 liters of excrement in a year and using a water flush toilet, contaminates 150,000 liters of water when washing away its wastes.


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Wednesday 10 November 2010

How Lead Gets Into Urban Vegetable Gardens

If you're a vegetable gardener in a lot of older cities, there's a fair chance you have a significant amount of lead in your soil. One common mitigation approach is to build a raised bed and fill it with freshly composted, low-lead soil from elsewhere, right? Maybe not, according to researchers studying the mysterious case of the lead contamination found within raised beds in community gardens in the Boston communities of Roxbury and Dorchester.

"Raised beds are surrounded by a sea of contaminated soil," said Daniel Brabander of Wellesley College. Brabander, his students and colleagues have been studying the lead in 144 backyard gardens in coordination with The Food Project, an organization committed to food security, nutrition and sustainable urban agriculture. Eighty-one percent of the gardens they studied were found to have lead levels above the U.S. EPA limits of 400 micrograms of lead per gram (µg/g) of soil.

To solve that problem, raised wooden beds with freshly composted soil were installed in backyard and community gardens by the Food Project. But the researchers have found that the soil in raised beds that starts with as little as 110 micrograms of lead per gram of soil rose to an average of 336 µg/g of lead in just four years.

Just how this is happening is the focus of a Nov. 1 presentation by Emily Estes at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

"We're trying to get a better handle on the mode of transport and the source," said Estes. That means some pretty detailed monitoring and chemical analyses of the minerals in the soils as well as the kind of lead that's in the soil.


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