"Whats Wrong With Our Food ... The Inconvenient Truths"

U.S. Department of Agriculture Approves Release of GE Trees

2010-05-13T17:09:00.000-04:00

Insanity! What is going on in the heads of these folk who are to "Regulate in the best interest of society"? Or is it that the Arsenic that they have allowed into the food system has mushified their grey matter to a point that a rational thought process is no longer possible? .......cowboss

USDA Approves ArborGen's Request to Plant 260,000 Genetically Engineered Eucalyptus Trees Across U.S. South

Yesterday the USDA's Animal Plant Health Inspection Service issued its decision to approve the mass-release of over a quarter of a million GE eucalyptus trees across seven states in the U.S. South (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina), despite overwhelming public opposition.

"We are very disappointed but not surprised by the USDA's decision, which is likely to have severe social and environmental impacts," stated Anne Petermann, Executive Director of Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator of the STOP GE Trees Campaign. "The USDA's final environmental assessment disregarded concerns raised by thousands of people in comments submitted opposing the release of GE eucalyptus trees."

The STOP GE Trees Campaign, which includes organizations, foresters and scientists from across the U.S. and around the world is preparing its next steps following the USDA decision.

Simone Lovera, Executive Director of the Global Forest Coalition said from her office in Asuncion, Paraguay, "This is not only bad for the U.S. This decision could open the door globally to these cold-tolerant eucalyptus and other transgenic trees which would have serious impacts on Indigenous and forest dwelling peoples around the world and lead to more biodiversity loss."

To read the USDA's final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact, go to: http://www.aphis.usda.gov/brs/biotech_ea_permits.html

For background on the work of the STOP GE Trees Campaign and the threats of GE eucalyptus trees and other GMO trees, go to http://www.nogetrees.org/

Contact:

- Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project and Coordinator, STOP GE Trees Campaign, +1.802.578.0477

- Scot Quaranda, Campaigns Director, Dogwood Alliance, +1.828.251.2525 x 18

Cause of blood sweating in calves still obscure

2010-05-09T20:22:00.001-04:00

Robin, a fellow cowboss, pointed this story out to me today. All I can say is What the hell is going on? Mankind is Mad! Is this Bovine Ebola? ..........cowboss

German researchers investigated 52 calves from 42 farms in Germany, which suffered from a haemorrhagic disease with unknown cause. Similar cases appeared recently in the Netherlands, Scotland, England, and Wales where is spoken of fatal bleeding calf syndrome

Symptoms

At the age of about 2 to 3 weeks, calves had conspicuous, spontaneous transcutaneous petechiae and haemorrhages in mucosal surfaces as well as excessive bleeding associated with trauma.

Results
Blood analysis revealed a marked thrombocytopenia, leucopenia, and granulocytopenia. Severe haemorrhages in the skin and gastrointestinal tract were the major findings at post-mortem examination.

Histological investigation indicated a severe bone marrow hypoplasia/aplasia.

Infections with bacteria, bovine viral diarrhoea virus, or bluetongue virus were ruled out.

Specific toxins such as Furazolidone, DCVC metabolites or mycotoxins were not detected.

Pedigree analysis gave no indication for heredity of this syndrome.

Using a broad-spectrum PCR, a circovirus with high similarities to porcine circovirus type 2b (PCV2b), was detected in several of the affected calves.

Conclusion

The distinct cause of the disease still remains unknown. Potentially, the pathogenesis is complex and includes components such as infection, hereditary disposition, and immune- mediated destruction of blood cell precursors. ..........from http://www.vetsweb.com/news/germany-cause-of-blood-sweating-in-calves-still-obscure-610.html

More info at http://animal-epidemics.blogspot.com/2009/11/circovirus-reaches-british-dutch-and.html

STOP "Days Old" baby calf slaughter in Canada

2010-04-23T20:42:00.003-04:00

Another "dirty little secret" of corporate agriculture exposed. Please sign my petition at care2 to Ban days old calf slaughter in Canada. Thanx..............cowboss

Kevin O'Leary (Mr. "Cheap") of the Lang and O'Leary Exchange on CBC TV loves to make the statement "it's all about the money" and so it may be to many most of the time, but there must be limits as to what will be done in pursuit of the almighty dollar. The practise of slaughtering days old bull calves (a byproduct of the dairy industry) is not only unethical, but also quite possibly one of the most reprehensible and vile of the many questionable practises common on the factory farms of today! Indeed, "it is all about the money". To callously deny these calves the right to "a life" after being party to breeding the cow, knowing that there was a 50% chance of getting a bull calf is unconscionable.

Kendra Keels of Ontario Veal has confirmed that since "there is no market for days old baby fresh or frozen cuts", the meat from these babies goes to what she calls "further processing". Just how low will the industry go? They call it further processing, I call it deliberately hiding what it is they are selling you! Imagine this if you will, it's hidden in your hot dog wieners, it's hidden in the processed lunch and deli meat you buy, and quite possibly even hidden in the beef and beef vegetable baby food you purchase. Imagine that, feeding babies to babies!

Baby Bovine calf slaughter OK in Canada! - Baby seal slaughter banned in Canada! Yes it is illegal to slaughter the baby seals until they change color in Canada. It is great that world pressure has (at least) ended the "white" seal slaughter, BUT where is the human/(humane) outrage about the killing of the baby Bovines??? Or are they "just not cute enough"? Or could it be Cognitive Dissonance? Where are all the "celebs." when we need them? ...........just cowboss musing!

Enough, is enough! It is these scheming, underhanded, and vile practises, that if allowed to continue will, in fact feed the "farm animal abolitionist agenda". The dairy industry, and Canada's government regulators must find another way, it is clear that the current way has little possibility of "a good ending"! The "evil" practise of slaughtering days old calves in Canada must end, and soon.

Barrie Hopkins has it right in his article 'Fear ~ There are those in the know among us who tell us that our entire eco-system is dying. Our style of living must be changed, our actions reversed. Within this new millennium would it not be nice if this creature known as man could take a long look at himself in the mirror and then sit down and rethink his thinking? Would it not be nice to stop cowering in our man-made caves and start living? Living the lives that God intended when he granted dominion. When dominion over was granted did it not include ourselves, our lusts, our cruelty, as well as our greed?

I think it long overdue and definitely not before time, that the naked ape sits down and rethinks that which God has graciously granted.'

Please have a look at cowboss's other petitions at Care2 for the farm animals and food safety. If you agree with me please sign! Thank you for all that have done and will do ~ we are counting on you..............cowboss

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-the-feeding-of-arsenic-to-canadian-chickens

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/14/tell-congress-stop-practise-of-feeding-poultry-feces-to-food-producing-animals

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/end-guantanamo-for-dairy-cows

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Ban-Electroejaculation-of-Bulls

WARNING WARNING --- Sewage Sludge Being Sold at RONA Home & Garden

2010-04-22T12:12:00.001-04:00

Please beware that the Milorganite fertilizer being advertised by RONA Home & Garden in this weeks flyer is made from Sewage Sludge. What is even worse is that the description that goes with it indicates that it is for use on vegetable gardens as well as lawns, flower beds, trees and shrubs. Do what you want!

What Sludge Watch has to say ~ Milwaukee continues to struggle with PCB contamination into Milorganite by Maureen Reilly

While the Milwaukee Municipal Sewerage District brags that they can sell their dried sewage sludge as "Milorganite", the Milwaukee auditors found that turning Milwaukee's sewage sludge into this 'fertilizer' is the most expensive disposal method on their list of possible management venues.Imagine just how much more "Milorganite" is going to cost the taxpayers of Milwaukee as the lawsuits start and the clean up gets underway.

Meanwhile, the lawyers at Milorganite are lobbying the Canadian government to relax the Fertilizer Act to give sludge fertilizers easier passage into this country. With the massive contamination of Milwaukee sewers with PCBs and the closure of countless parks and school fields with contaminated Milorganite, you'd think that Milorganite people would acknowledge the danger posed by their sludge 'product' rather than trying to strip away regulations that protect the public.

The PCB contents in the land spread Milorganite material went undetected until after spreading. Who know what other toxins continue to be found in the sewerage that goes into Milorganite?

In the public interest, and in the name of taxpayer liability, isn't it time to close down Milorganite?

A "Silent Spring" at Wallace Springs Cattle Company ~ Where have all the Killdeers gone?

2010-04-13T21:45:00.004-04:00

Rachel Carson Stated in her 1962 book "Silent Spring" that "These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the “good” and the “bad,” to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called “insecticides,” but “biocides.”"

As a kid, growing up in Southern Ontario on a mixed farm, Maple syrup season was quickly followed by tilling the fields and getting ready to plant the years crops. As sure as sap would run from the maple trees during syrup season, the Killdeers would "protest" when you tilled the soil. As a child I always found their "fained broken wing" fascinating, circling round and round we would go, with the Killdeer never letting me get quite close enough to touch it. Since those early childhood days (without divulging my age, suffice to say it has been many years), every year the "piercing song" of the Killdeers has heralded the coming planting season.

That was, until this year! It is now the middle of April, and the fields are silent, except for the roar of huge tractors and the sound of the metal implements clanging on the stones. Are the Killdeers gone? Are they gone forever? Where have they gone? Is this what Rachel Carson was telling us? Why hasn't anyone else noticed? Or have they? Or, am I just being paranoid? Is this the world according to Monsanto?

Jenipher Appleton wrote in the Grand Bend Strip in 2008

....... "The high-pitched screech of the killdeer is another sign that spring has sprung.

The killdeer, Charadrius vociferous, a member of the plover family, is named for its piercing call. I recently heard the familiar “killdee!” and noted a female killdeer sprinting away from her nest. In an effort to divert my attention, she went into the usual broken wing act, crying in a pitiful voice. Treading carefully, I finally located the nest; a shallow scrape in the gravel, beautifully camouflaged and endowed with four brown speckled eggs. When I glanced away toward the frantic mother, it was very hard to relocate the nest when I looked back, although I had not moved an inch. I took a quick photo and promptly left the mother in peace.

The killdeer offspring are among the cutest of baby birds. Fluffy replicas of their parents, they come out of the egg running and with eyes open. These ‘precocial’ babies are much closer to independence than most newborn birds. They are incubated longer and so are further developed at birth."

What is known, is that they were here last year and every year before. Did something happen on their way to their winter ground in Central America? Or did something happen to them there? Did it happen here last year?

The American Bird Conservancy is petitioning the EPA to put laws in force to protect U.S. and Canadian migratory birds on their wintering grounds by preventing cadusafos, cyproconazole, diazinon, dithianon, diquat, dimethoate, fenamiphos, mevinphos, methomyl, naled, phorate, terbufos, and dichlorvos from being used by preventing these pesticides from being imported on food products. These chemicals are known to be deadly to migratory birds!

I feel so much like one who is waiting at the airport for a loved one, checking his watch, and refusing to believe that "the worst could have happened". Let's hope that this is just me "being paranoid"! I truly hope it is.

cowboss

David Kirby, author of "Animal Factory" is revolted by feces fed beef ........ No Shit!

2010-04-09T15:55:00.002-04:00

Thank you, David Kirby for taking up the battle against US shit fed beef, truly one of the most disgusting and inhumane practises that any human could perpetuate any any other living being. I do believe that it is true that ~ "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."........Frederic Bastiat

One of the most revolting things I learned while researching my new book "Animal Factory" is that some cattle are fattened on rations that include chicken manure. Poultry excrement is loaded with urea, which bovine stomachs are adept at converting into lean, ready-to-grill protein.

We feed chicken manure to cattle because it's cheap; and because we produce far too much of it to properly dispose of as fertilizer.

Today's "broiler" chickens are raised at record speed in massive, mechanized barns that cram tens of thousands of birds into a single confinement. Broilers live just eight weeks. But in that short time, their endless fecal droppings (birds don't urinate) mix into a bedding of woodchips and other material, yielding a thick "cake" of litter that's scraped from the barn after each flock is removed.

What becomes of all that feculence? Its nitrogen and phosphorous content is so high that land application uses are limited. In Maryland's Eastern Shore, litter runoff is helping to fuel fish-choking algal blooms. In Arkansas, traces of arsenic (a growth-promoting feed additive) were found in homes near cropland onto which pulverized litter was spread.

So why not convert that chicken dung into Chateaubriand?

To begin with, cattle were meant to eat grasses, not feces (nor corn, soybeans or other subsidized commodities). But there's another reason why chicken litter should probably be kept away from cattle.

Poultry feed often contains bits of rendered beef byproducts. Chickens are not tidy eaters: they spill copious amounts of food into their litter, which is then fed to cattle. And, as everyone knows, cows that eat cows can go "mad" with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, or spongy cow-brain disease).

In 2004, the FDA proposed banning poultry litter in cattle feed, to avoid the spread of BSE. It was already outlawed in Canada. But days later, the agency postponed its change, citing "troubling feedback" from the agricultural sector. Some foreign countries balked at buying US beef, but the Bush Administration held firm, refusing to commit to a deadline.

Chicken litter is not the only way that American cattle eat cattle. Beef-containing restaurant scraps are often rendered into feed, and a formula for dairy calves (whose mothers' milk is deemed too valuable to "waste") contains bovine blood products.

I imagined that the Obama Administration would complete the work left undone by Bush and enact a universal ban on feeding beef products to cattle. Instead, I discovered that Obama's FDA had ratified what his predecessor proposed: Doing nothing.

Well, not exactly nothing. In April 2008, Bush's FDA published its final rule on "Substances Prohibited From Use in Animal Food or Feed," which took effect under Obama's FDA, in April 2009.

"FDA is amending the agency's regulations to prohibit the use of certain cattle origin materials in the food or feed of all animals," it wrote in the Federal Register. These include: "the entire carcass BSE-positive cattle; the brains and spinal cords from cattle 30 months of age and older; the entire carcass of cattle not inspected and passed for human consumption that are 30 months of age or older from which brains and spinal cords were not removed; tallow that is derived from BSE-positive cattle; (and) tallow that is derived from other materials prohibited by this rule that contains more than 0.15 percent insoluble impurities."

Feel better? The agency insists that BSE "prions" (deadly, deformed proteins) are only found in brains, nerve tissue and spinal cords, and not in muscle or blood. Since none of those are allowed into any animal feed, it's ok to feed cattle to cattle, FDA says, and there's no need to ban litter, table scraps or blood products.........more

Strawberries to Die For : Battle Heats Up Over New Cancer-Causing Pesticide

2010-04-05T19:47:00.001-04:00

Excerpt from the scientific review committee on the fumigant methyl iodide, “It is abundantly clear from basic chemistry that methyl iodide reacts readily with macromolecules, including with DNA, creating long lasting changes. In DNA, the effects of these methylated additions are mutagenic events that ultimately give rise to cancer.”

Translation: This shit causes cancer! That’s really obvious!

Thinking about Strawberries? Think again! .........cowboss

There’s nothing quite like a fresh, juicy strawberry. Our family lives near the central coast of California where most of the strawberries in the U.S. are grown, so we enjoy fresh-picked strawberries nearly year round.

What many people don’t know is that some of the nastiest pesticides are used in strawberry fields. Most non-organic berries are grown in soil that’s been zapped clean with chemicals that kill everything they touch. Fields are covered with huge tarps while pesticides are pumped in and the soil is stripped of all living things before planting. Workers, neighbors and parents sending their kids to school near strawberry fields dread fumigation season.

The good news is, one of these “biocides” (a chemical called methyl bromide) is finally being phased out--targeted under an international treaty because it also happens to deplete the ozone layer.

The bad news? The powers-that-be in California are considering a replacement pesticide that’s such a “good” carcinogen it’s often used in cancer experiments in the lab, where scientists deck themselves in protective gear before they handle tiny amounts with extreme caution.

Fifty of those scientists--including five winners of the Nobel prize--wrote a letter to EPA when the national agency began reviewing the proposed pesticide. They were “astonished” that the chemical--called methyl iodide--would even be considered for use in agricultural fields. “As chemists and physicians…we are concerned that pregnant women and the fetus, children, the elderly, farmworkers, and other people living near application sites would be at serious risk.”

Bush-era EPA officials ignored the scientists’ letter, and approved methyl iodide (trade name: “Midas”) last year. Now California is deciding whether to allow strawberries, carrots and other state crops to experience the Midas touch. A decision is expected before the end of the year.

The company that makes the chemical is, of course, pushing for a “yes.” Arysta is an international corporation with a U.S. base in North Carolina. Since strawberry farmers themselves haven’t pressed hard to register the new carcinogen (not surprising, since farmers and workers are on the front lines for cancer and other health effects), the company has set up their own website and faux “grassroots action campaign.”

Concerned Californians are pushing back, mobilizing to convince their Governor that Midas is a bad idea. A “no” decision could protect the rest of the country as well, since new EPA officials say that if California rejects methyl iodide, the agency will rethink its blessing for use in other states.

More bad news: cancer isn’t the only risk Midas poses. Exposure is also linked to miscarriages and asthma, and can affect the human nervous system, lungs, liver and kidneys. And exposure in rural communities is almost certain, since when a reactive chemical like methyl iodide is put into the soil, it can sink into groundwater or float into neighboring yards and schools. Doesn’t sound like such a good idea.

Fortunately, there’s another round of good news too. Berry farming is possible without using Midas or other pesticides. Farmers are growing organic strawberries in California and around the country by building healthy, living soil and managing pests without risky chemicals.

California activists say calling the Governor really can make a difference. Seems worth the effort if a phone call might help protect workers and rural communities across the country from a powerful new carcinogen plus keep the soil in strawberry fields alive. Choosing organic strawberries at the farmer’s market or in the grocery store will also help. If there’s no market for conventional strawberries, companies like Arysta may just have to find a safer product line. Ladybugs, anyone?

Note: This post was written by Kristin Schafer, Senior Policy Analyst at Pesticide Action Network North America.

Junk food as addictive as cocaine

2010-04-01T20:26:00.000-04:00

In study of rats, the more fattening foods they ate, the more they wanted

When researchers gave the rats unlimited access to a calorie-laden diet of bacon, pound cake, candy bars and other junk food, the rats quickly gained lots of weight. As they plumped up, eating became such a compulsion that they kept chowing down even when they knew they would receive an unpleasant electric shock to their foot if they did so.

Obese people often say they'd like to eat less but feel almost powerless to stop indulging, and now new research suggests that explanation might be all too true, assuming that the scientists are right and humans act as rats.

Rats fed the human equivalent of a well-balanced, healthy diet -- and given only limited access to the junk food -- didn't gain much weight and knew enough to stop eating when they received the cue that a foot shock was imminent.

Even more startling, the researchers report, is that when they took away the junk food from the obese rats and replaced it with healthier chow, the obese rats went on something of a hunger strike. For two weeks, they refused to eat hardly anything at all.

"They went into voluntary starvation," said study author Paul Kenny, an associate professor at Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Fla.

So what might this say about human behavior?

Researchers aren't certain if the results apply to people struggling with their weight. But they say it's possible that a diet heavy in highly rewarding foods -- quite literally, sausages, cheesecake and other highly processed foods -- might cause changes in the brain's reward system for satiety.

When that goes awry, the result is not only that people gain weight, but that they feel compelled to seek out more and more junk food.

The findings were published online March 28 in Nature Neuroscience.

When researchers looked at the obese animals' brains, they noted there were declines in the dopamine D2 receptor that previous research has implicated in addiction to cocaine and heroine.

"A hallmark of drug addiction is that it leads to changes in how the brain's reward system works," Kenny said. "Addiction is a loaded term, but in this case, there is evidence of addiction-like adaptations."

When researchers artificially suppressed the receptor using a virus in the brains of other rats, those rats starting eating junk food compulsively.

"What we think is happening is that, as you become obese over a period of time, the D2 receptors go down, which plays a major role in becoming a compulsive eater," Kenny said, noting there are almost certainly other factors at play as well.

There also could be something in the accumulated fat itself that alters the brain's reward threshold, setting up a "vicious cycle" of overeating yet not feeling satisfied, said Pietro Cottone, an assistant professor in the Laboratory of Addictive Disorders at Boston University School of Medicine.

"The only way to return to normality is probably dieting for a long period of time to lose the body weight and not eating junk food," Cottone said.

This isn't the first study to find commonalities between the brain's reaction to cupcakes and illicit drugs. An earlier study by Cottone and his colleagues suggested that weaning rats off a high-calorie diet might lead to similar, though not identical, effects in the brain as withdrawing from drugs and alcohol.

In that study, researchers gave rats a regular diet for five days and then switched them to a chocolate-flavored food that was high in sugar. When deprived of the sugary food, they showed signs of anxiety and their brains acted as if they were withdrawing from alcohol or drugs. The study was published last November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the current study, the rats were raised on healthy foods, but their preferences quickly shifted when offered junk food. Throughout the day, they snacked and nibbled, rapidly bulking up. And the more they gained, the more they ate.

"That poses a huge conundrum for humans," Kenny said. "It shows you how powerful this behavior can become."...........more

What's Wrong With the Dietitians of Canada

2010-03-29T21:18:00.003-04:00

The Dietitians of Canada's National Nutrition Month Campaign 2010 states that "dietitians are your trusted source of nutrition and healthy eating advice." - Not so fast!

A Case Study

Seems that a person using the name Heidi Boyd and claiming to be a registered dietitian has been posting "advice/information" on Canadian Parents.com which is blatantly wrong. Whether this is from a misinformed person, or from a person with separate corporate agenda is unclear. None the less, Heidi in responding to the a question about the differences between "organic" milk and "conventional" milk, states;

"hormones and antibiotics are not found in any type of milk available for sale in Canada. They are illegal for farmers to use and the system for milk inspection is very strict and thorough."

Hormones and antibiotics ARE in "conventional" milk. It is well known in the industry there are in fact residual levels of antibiotics and hormones in milk, despite Natrel's claims, (and that of Heidi) to the contrary. Growth hormones are not legally used in Canada, BUT many other hormones are regularly used such as Oxytocin (for milk release), Lutilyse (estrus inducing, abortion, calving inducing) etc. While the levels of antibiotics and hormones in milk may well be within the acceptable legal standards as defined by Health Canada (Minimum residual Levels, MRLs), it is NOT accurate or acceptable to say that there are no antibiotics or hormones present. It must be pointed out that these residual levels are present, with perhaps even some test result numbers to make it absolutely clear to consumers. Further, the statement that "They [hormones and antibiotics] are illegal for farmers to use" is, pardon the pun, UDDERLY REDICULOUS!

Heidi goes on to say;

"Cows producing milk for this [organic] market can not be given antibiotics at all."

Again, Wrongo! - In Canada, under the Organic Production Systems standards it is allowable to give antibiotics to dairy cattle twice/year with the only requirement being that milk from the treated animal not be sold as organic for "a minimum of 30 days or twice the medications withdrawal time, whichever is longer."

And, Heidi I must tell you that the apparent source of your information (the Natrel FAQ post linked to above) is IMO very misleading, and makes statements which based on my farming background, and knowledge of the dairy industry I find unbelievable. Is this, in fact, the source that the cheese folk are using when they are advertising that their cheese is made from 100% Canadian milk which contains no antibiotics and no hormones. - A pretty cheesy story, I would say! How can this be? and where is our advertising oversight in Canada? I have asked "my voice in Ottawa" to address this issue - so far, no response!

Come on! Dietitians of Canada, you can and must do better! Do the Research - Ask the Questions .....cowboss/09

Open Letter to Michael McCain and Maple Leaf Foods

2010-03-17T20:32:00.000-04:00

To: Mr. Michael McCain and the employees of Maple Leaf Foods

It has come to my attention that Bob Calves (days old, bull and freemartin calves) from Canadian Dairy Farms are being slaughtered in Canada with the meat going for "further processing". This fact has been confirmed today by Kendra Keels Industry Development Manager of Ontario Veal, Ontario Rabbit and Ontario Goat Breeders Association What's more, it was also confirmed that the reason that this "Bobby Veal" meat is going for "further processing" is that there is "no consumer market" for "Baby calf veal cuts".

My question to you is - Do you and Maple Leaf Foods use this "ground up baby calf" puree in the manufacturing of sandwich meats, deli meats, wieners, or any products that you manufacture at your plants? And, if you do, will you immediately cease this?

As a cowboss, who cares and has cared for many farm animals, words elude me in describing the utter disgust that I feel about the practise of one, slaughtering baby calves (approx. 2 weeks old) who the cow has spent 9 months and 1 week carrying and giving birth to, and two, the very concept of "hiding" this meat (that customers would not knowingly buy) in processed meats is beyond vile corporate deception! These types of actions by corporations are, IMO, going to be the end of "animal farming" -- "Bring on the "in vitro-meat"!

FYI, some real life comments from Care2 members who have written the "real life" views of many people. If the industry does not take immediate action (if it is not already too late) to clean up their image these "views" will propagate worse than twitch grass!

Lesley B. says "That´s the last hot dog I eat-EVER!"

Jill G. says.......... "I've worked on dairy farms since I was 10 years old, and i can guarantee that modern farming involves a lot of cruelty to animals. In fact I don't work on dairy farms anymore for just such reasons. Look, if you really care about the treatment of domestic animals,..........."

Carol Cook says "it just breaks my heart, these poor babies, I cry for them. The only way to stop it is to stop the demand, it is not only veal but milk. Milk is the main reason, there are so many other alternatives to milk."

Thank you for your immediate attention to this important matter.

cowboss

The Real Reason why Americans (and Canadians) are So Fat! - Food for thought Mrs. Obama

2010-03-15T15:17:00.002-04:00

We’ve got a lot of problems when it comes to our food system, but one of them was clearly articulated with a simple graphic.

Another Round of Canadian Deaths Due to Listeria Contaminated Feces Fed Beef Being Used in Deli Meats?

2010-03-13T14:11:00.001-05:00

Listeria Outbreak in Ontario triggers deaths and hospitalizations – When will CFIA ban the Import of US Feces Fed Beef?

Since January, the province has had 14 confirmed listeria cases (six in Toronto) — well beyond the eight that is typically expected for this point in the year, said Dr. Arlene King, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health.

Two Torontonians were sickened by a strain of the pathogen that matches with the Siena meat, hospitalized and are now recovering, she said. At least seven people across the province have been hospitalized since January from listeria.

Two Ontarians died during the same time the tainted Siena meat was in the marketplace, she confirmed. But provincial officials are still investigating whether there is a direct connection between those deaths and the company’s products.

Rick Holley, a microbiologist and food safety expert at the University of Manitoba and a consultant with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said,

“I haven’t seen improvement. We haven’t seen any reduction, in my view, of the risk. We’re not doing foodborne illness surveillance the way we should. I’m not encouraged that, materially, we’ve got the kind of buy-in by industry we need to move forward with confidence.”

Doug Powell, a Canadian food safety expert at Kansas State University, said,

“There’s clearly some bad stuff going at that plant. I would like (health officials) to be clear about what they know, what they don’t know and what they’re doing about it. I don’t know how these Canadian health types are allowed to operate the way they do and not say anything.”

Excerpted from http://www.barfblog.com/blog/141298/10/03/12/listeria-spike-ontario-triggers-deaths-and-hospitalizations-%E2%80%93-who-knew-what-whe?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+barfblog-latest+%28barfblog%29

New York Times Uncovers "the Hamburgers Secret Ingredient"

2010-01-01T16:43:00.001-05:00

The Bloody Bastards ..... cowboss

Fatty slaughterhouse trimmings that previously could be used only for pet food or for making cooking oil are now being treated with an ammonia bath that produces a "pink slime" that is being used to make a treated product being sold as "hamburger" throughout the United States.

In a report that was difficult for some to read, the New York Times yesterday told the story of how a little known South Dakota company and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety & Inspection Service since 2001 have worked together to allow bacteria-killing ammonia to be used as a "processing agent" to make a mash that is allowed to be used in hamburger without labeling or public warnings.

Spokesmen for McDonald's and Burger King told the Washington Post the fast food hamburger joints plan to keep using the "pink slime" sold by Dakota Dunes, SD-based Beef Products Inc.

Beef Products Inc. was so successful in persuading FSIS of the effectiveness of its pathogen-killing ammonia that the company was exempted from routine testing. However, the New York Times found government and industry records showing the substance Beef Products makes was contaminated with E. coli and Salmonella on numerous occasions.

Beef Products owner Eldon Roth makes big political contributions, mostly to politicians from both parties in South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. He contributed to both former President George W. Bush in 2004 and Sen. John McCain in 2008. His donations total six figures in the last decade, including his support for meat industry political action committees.

Nationally recognized food safety attorney Bill Marler said the New York Times story is one people should read in its entirety. "It will make you look at hamburger differently, " he said. "It will also make you ashamed of corporate America and our own government." from http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2010/01/nyt-discloses-pink-slime-they-call-hamburger/

Beef, pork and love, but most of all love ~ By Kristen Zeiber

2009-12-28T07:13:00.000-05:00

A woman's trip back to her family farm, for cousins, cookies and steaming carcasses

"I went through a period where I was embarrassed to mention that my family butchers its own meat, knowing it marked me as the country girl I am, thinking civilized society would be shocked at an educated girl being part of so base a process. But in the past few years, after moving out and discovering what I'd left behind, I decided that the people who are shocked don't have any business picking up those Saran-wrapped Styrofoam trays of beef at the grocery store. This is the reality of eating meat: The animal has to be killed and butchered."

My sister, a vegetarian of 13 years, walked into the garage. She held a knife; we're adults now, and they need us to do this. The pig was on its back in a trough, its legs tucked up high, pink and rounded. We butcher in the winter to preserve the meat, but that means the animals, dead all of five minutes, steam copiously into the December air. "My dog lays like that sometimes," she muttered to me, readjusting her grip on the knife. Deep breath.

Christmas is important, but Butchering, that four-day event directly after, is sacred. This is not an unusual thing where I'm from in rural Pennsylvania, although it seems families scale back more and more over the years. We definitely have: We no longer make lard; we don't save and scrape out the intestines for sausage, buying premade casings instead; we don't boil down the bones to make scrapple, that delightfully Dutchy, suspicious meat by-product. Family tradition is important, but it only goes so far when dealing with us practical Pennsylvania Germans. We buy our chicken at the store now, like most other Americans.

But the cow and the three pigs, whichever makes it out of the stall first, these are the constant, even more essential than the overabundance of dessert and the annual scuffle over how much coriander to put in the sausage. Five days straight of family members coming and going from my grandparents' crooked log-cabin farmhouse, of endless piles of dishes to be washed, of grabbing handfuls of cookies with hands only perfunctorily wiped on greasy, hand-stitched aprons. It's the time to spend time with cousins, aunts and uncles seen too rarely; a special holiday disguised as everyday life. The point is that we get a yearful of meat out of it, even as it is beside the point.

I've never made it out to the barnyard early on Killing Day: I've tried twice now, and each time get out there to meet my uncle and a cousin-in-law or two. They pick up their guns, and I say, "Um ... I'll just meet you in the garage for the skinning." Maybe next year.

I haven't quite figured out why I want be in that barnyard, rather than contenting myself with the meat wrapping like the other girls. Partially it's because my uncle, the last farmer in the family, is getting older and no one in my generation is stepping up to the plate; partially it's because I feel this is a rare opportunity to really see where my food comes from, from start to finish. Part of it is the individualism that's been bred into me, a stubborn Pennsylvania Dutch self-reliance as ingrained as my polite-yet-distant approach to strangers, my repressed Protestantism. There's a certain allure in saying, with certainty, "Yes, in case of the apocalypse, I can feed myself."

It's more than that, too. I take joy in pulling a white lumpy package of family-farm meat out of the freezer, the same way I take joy in the scarf my sister knit me, the journal I hand-bound. It's about creating something I can use, with my own hands, and finding meaning in the process. In this way, butchering is another form of craftsmanship, just ... bloody.

Back in the garage, we start at the hooves, slicing a shallow ring around the first knuckle and then drawing a line down the back of the leg toward the rump. The first time I skinned a cow, slicing and peeling, I overcame my kneejerk revulsion to delight in thinking, so this is why leather feels the way it does. There are five of us, one on each limb, with my uncle tending to the head. We haul the animal up by its back legs with a winch, finish skinning, and then stand around and munch freshly baked cookies while my uncle eviscerates it. It's family bonding time.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I went through a period where I was embarrassed to mention that my family butchers its own meat, knowing it marked me as the country girl I am, thinking civilized society would be shocked at an educated girl being part of so base a process. But in the past few years, after moving out and discovering what I'd left behind, I decided that the people who are shocked don't have any business picking up those Saran-wrapped Styrofoam trays of beef at the grocery store. This is the reality of eating meat: The animal has to be killed and butchered. If we can do it ourselves, have control over the process, all the better -- especially if we can make some traditions along the way. ...... more

Dieting Ourselves Into Stupidity ~ by George Jonas, National Post

2009-12-23T09:14:00.000-05:00

"thoughts about dieting, body shape and eating may place demands on limited cognitive resources, leaving fewer available for the performance of cognitive tasks."

This is the week of Christmas and dinner parties and people gorging themselves into oblivion. It's just the way it is. Even diet doctors are resigned to it. "You're only human," my doctor said to me, with a leniency remarkable for someone of her calling.

Her diagnosis may be too optimistic, but assume she's right. If I am a human being, is there anything I could do to resemble one more closely?

Well, yes. Starving myself into a stupor would be a beginning.

As a child in Europe, I took part in a nutritional experiment called the Second World War. It entailed, among other things, going without food for certain stretches of time. It was then that I discovered that dieting isn't very good for the brain.

My discovery has since been confirmed by an Australian study I wrote about some years ago. It found that dieting may be smart, but it makes you kind of stupid. Not eating your fill is likely to make you lose interest in mathematical matters, among other things. For people whose interest in mathematical matters isn't very keen to begin with -- me, for instance -- dieting just about puts them on the road to innumeracy.

Dr. Janet Bryan of Finders University's School of Psychology developed a meticulously designed experiment that had 40 middle-aged women in scenic Adelaide compete against each other adding up three-digit numbers. Half were on a diet, half were not. What was going to happen?

The excitement must have been palpable. You could probably hear a pin drop before the starter's gun went off.

Had Dr. Bryan called me, I could have told her the 20 who weren't on a diet would add up numbers more quickly and reliably than the 20 who were. If you're dieting, you're hungry, and if you're hungry, the last thing you want to think about is three-digit numbers. What you'll want to think about is your next meal. Hungry people and three-digit numbers don't mix.

When I was going without food as a child in wartime Europe, three-digit numbers were remarkably low on my list of priorities. If I had to add up some, my performance would have been disappointing.

The Australian researchers came to the conclusion that dieters performed more poorly on mental arithmetic or word pattern problems than non-dieters because they were preoccupied with dieting. In the researchers' own words, "dieters displayed significantly higher levels of preoccupying thoughts surrounding food, diet and body shape."

I don't know if Dr. Bryan and her crew shouted "Eureka!" when they made this discovery, but even if they were too modest for shouting, they had hit the nail on the head. I'd actually go further and say that if the dieters hadn't been preoccupied with their body shapes, they might never have gone on a diet. And once they went on a diet, it became just about inevitable for them to become preoccupied with food. Food, not digits.

Dr. Bryan's study, when it was published in the aptly-named journal Appetite, offered some further findings. It postulated that "thoughts about dieting, body shape and eating may place demands on limited cognitive resources, leaving fewer available for the performance of cognitive tasks." With this, the researchers laid to rest any suspicion that the dieters were slow in adding up three-digit numbers because, relative to non-dieters, their cognitive abilities were impaired to begin with. They demonstrated that one doesn't need to be stupid to go on a diet; just that going on a diet is stupefying. ...... more

An Economy Running On Chickens ~ Zimbabwe Now, Coming to America in 2010?

2009-12-22T09:22:00.001-05:00

Another dam fine reason for keeping "Backyard chickens." ...... cowboss

Mutoko — Every fortnight Makaitei Musakwa, 45, catches one of her chickens, picks up some of the maize she has grown, and sets off for the village mill to have the maize ground into mealie-meal, Zimbabwe's staple food.

"It is difficult for me to raise the money that the miller charges ... I have nowhere to get it from," said the widow who looks after four children of her own as well as two nephews. "He charges a chicken to grind for me twice."

Barter trade has been common practice in Zimbabwe since crippling hyperinflation rendered the local Zimbabwe dollar all but worthless. Economists stopped measuring inflation after it hit 6.5 quindecillion novemdecillion percent - 65 followed by 107 zeros - and in February 2009 the economy was officially "dollarised".

Phasing out the local currency and introducing the United States dollar, South African rand and Botswana pula as legal tender has helped rein in inflation, but those currencies are seldom available in remote areas like Mutoko district, some 70km from the capital, Harare, where Musakwa lives.

A chicken can go a long way
The owners of small businesses in rural areas feel they have no choice but to accept goods in lieu of cash, and a chicken can exchange hands several times. Simplicius Gomo, the miller in Musakwa's village, said he gladly accepted payment in kind because it kept him in business.

"I use the chickens that the villagers bring to me to buy the diesel that powers my grinding mill. If I have a surplus of the chickens, I ask the dealer who brings the fuel to give me some cash that I use to buy spare parts, keep for my children's school fees and uniforms, or buy small items with," Gomo told IRIN.

"Imagine, after my fuel supplier gets the chickens from me, he uses them to buy goats, sheep or any other form of livestock, that he in turn either sells for cash or passes on to the next dealer, who decides what to do with them," he said.

Gomo also sells second hand clothes at the village flea market. He trades the chickens for clothes, which he gets from truck drivers going to and from neighbouring Zambia along the nearby highway, as well as other goods like grain and seed, while some villagers offer to work on his fields.

What is your chicken worth today?
Chickens are also used as bus fare. "Almost every day we hear stories of a passenger being thrown out because they have quarrelled with the driver and bus conductor over the value of the item they have offered," he said.

Barter trade has become "a day-to-day way of coping with the scarcity of cash", but this "inevitably" leads to unfairness and disadvantage to some of the people exchanging the goods ..... more

2010 Food Crisis for Dummies ~ by Eric deCarbonnel

2009-12-20T09:18:00.000-05:00

I love the "there is no alternative to the US dollar for a reserve currency" argument. Every time I hear it, I imagine someone standing on the deck of the Titanic on the night of April 14, 1912, and declaring, "This boat can't possibly sink because there aren't enough lifeboats!

Thanx Robin for sending me this article, Like you say - "can not do any harm to be ready" .... cowboss

If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.

The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon
Over the last two years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented financial crises: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG, Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc… In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly forecasted and feared. However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.

The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions, which have held the financial world together during the last two years, will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.

Financial crisis will kick into high gear
So far the crisis has been driven by the slow and steady increase in defaults on mortgages and other loans. This is about to change. What will drive the financial crisis in 2010 will be panic about food supplies and the dollar’s plunging value. Things will start moving fast.

Dynamics Behind 2010 Food Crisis
Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world experienced a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Meanwhile, China and other Asian exporters, in an effort to preserve their economic growth, were unleashing domestic consumption long constrained by inflation fears, and demand for raw materials, especially food staples, exploded as Chinese consumers worked their way towards American-style overconsumption, prodded on by a flood of cheap credit and easy loans from the government.

Normally food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance. This never happened because the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, adjusted estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china. In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in 2010.

Overconsumption is leading to disaster
It is absolutely key to understand that the production of agricultural goods is a fixed, once a year cycle (or twice a year in the case of double crops). The wheat, corn, soybeans and other food staples are harvested in the fall/spring and then that is it for production. It doesn’t matter how high prices go or how desperate people get, no new supply can be brought online until the next harvest at the earliest. The supply must last until the next harvest, which is why it is critical that food is correctly priced to avoid overconsumption, otherwise food shortages occur.

The USDA—by manufacturing the data needed to keep supply and demand in balance—has ensured that agricultural commodities are incorrectly priced, which has lead to overconsumption and has guaranteed disaster next year when supplies run out.

An astounding lack of awareness
The world is blissful unaware that the greatest economic/financial/political crisis ever is a few months away. While it is understandable that general public has no knowledge of what is headed their way, that same ignorance on the part of professional analysts, economists, and other highly paid financial "experts” is mind boggling, as it takes only the tiniest bit of research to realize something is going critically wrong in agricultural market.

USDA estimates for 2009/10 make no sense
All someone needs to do to know the world is headed is for food crisis is to stop reading USDA’s crop reports predicting a record soybean and corn harvests and listen to what else the USDA saying.

Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be primary disaster areas, including 274 counties in the last 30 days alone. These designations are based on the criteria of a minimum of 30 percent loss in the value of at least one crop in the county. The chart below shows counties declared primary disaster areas by the secretary of Agriculture and the president of the United States.

The same USDA that is predicting record harvests is also declaring disaster areas across half the Midwest because of catastrophic crop losses! To eliminate any doubt that this might be an innocent mistake, the USDA is even predicting record soybean harvests in the same states (Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama) where it has declared virtually all counties to have experienced 30 percent production losses. It isn’t rocket scientist to realize something is horribly wrong.

USDA motivated by fear of higher food prices
The USDA is terrorized by the implications of higher food prices for the US economy, most likely because it knows the immediate consequence of sharply higher food will be the collapse of the US Treasury market and the dollar, as desperate governments and central banks dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports. Fictitious USDA estimates should be seen as proof of the dire threat posed by higher food prices, as the USDA would not have turned its production estimates into a grotesque mockery of reality if it didn't believe the alternative to be apocalyptic.

While the USDA may be the worst offender, the United States isn’t the only government trying to downplay the food situation out of fear. As one Indian reporter writes, governments are lying about the looming food crisis.

… some experts and governments, in full cognizance of the facts, want us not to create panic and paint a picture of parched crops and a looming food crisis. This, they say, would push up food prices unnaturally, lead to hoarding and ultimately result in a situation where many more millions across the world would go hungry. And whether it is the developing world or the developed, it is those at the bottom of the pyramid who are the most affected in such scenarios.

This leads to a confusing divide between reality and government pronouncements, or even between the perspectives of government departments

Confusing divide between reality and government estimates
For months now, the media has been reporting two distinctly, contradicting realities. One of these realities is filled with record crops and plentiful supply, and the other is filled agricultural devastation and ruin. It has been a mad, frustrating experience to read about agricultural disasters and horrendous crop losses in virtually every state combined with predictions of a US record harvest, sometimes in the same article. ....... read the whole story at Market Sceptics

“LOCAL” – A word worth saving! ~ By Mike Callicrate

2009-12-18T09:16:00.000-05:00

It should be impossible for an establishment to proclaim itself “LOCAL” when serving farmed Asian seafood, Tyson chicken, beef from Brazilian corporate giant JBS, Mexican produce and Chinese garlic.

In the newly released food film, Fresh, Russ Kremer proudly proclaims, “They [consumers] want my pigs…they want my product!” Russ is a long time hog farmer who decided that doing what is best for the hogs, as well as the people who eat his pork, is what matters, even though it’s more work and more costly. The day that someone discovers the difference between the pork Russ produces from his family farm in Missouri, considered to be the ultimate in hog heaven, and the industrial factory farms of Smithfield, is a day to celebrate. It has been a long time coming. Since 1980, the struggles have been enormous with more than 90% of our hog farmers and more than 40% of our cattle operations being stomped out of business under the heavy foot of big factory farm conglomerates like Smithfield, Cargill and Tyson and their retail partners.

These global corporations externalize enormous costs onto the public. With their abusive market power they buy livestock far below the cost of production. They don’t pay a living wage to their workers. They use our land and water as an industrial sewer. Farmers and ranchers who care about the land, animals, food quality and the communities they live in can’t compete on price because they pay the true cost of production.

Today, thanks to valuable books like Fast Food Nation and Omnivore’s Dilemma along with compelling and inspirational films such as Food Inc. and Fresh, many more people are making the discovery that good food from real farmers, who they actually know, can make a huge difference in their lives and communities.

More and more people are voting with their forks to support a better food system, and even though the food they are eating costs more than the factory food, it is also more valuable. The food tastes better, is more satisfying and healthier. Also, they can know and trust the farmers and ranchers who grew it.

Of course, the professional marketers for the industrial food companies are working to co-opt the new terms and messages. The multinationals have already stolen, misused and redefined words and phrases like natural, sustainable, organic, family farm and humanely-raised. Attempts to bring better food to the table have been frustrated and bankrupted by the power of big agribusiness, big food service and big retail. From the clean Colorado beef of Mel Coleman to the high quality, humanely raised pork of Bill Niman, to the independent produce growers of Colorado’s Arkansas Valley, all such attempts to differentiate the better quality local food are attacked with false and misleading marketing. The only thing that remains of the once authentic and trustworthy brands of Coleman and Niman are their names — the conscientious and devoted ranchers who launched these companies are no longer connected in any way. These “zombie” brands are a ghost of what they once stood for.

These corporations are now trying to do the same with LOCAL. They simply repackage and dress up the same old products and sell them at cut-rate prices to deceived but excited buyers. Some of these disillusioned consumers will revert back to the same old factory food, and others will continue searching in hopes of finding food they can trust. It is time to put an end to the dishonesty that drives the industrial food system.

Looking Local, Buying Global
From Wendy’s “Better than Fast Food” to Chipotle’s “Food with Integrity” to Whole Foods “I’m A Local,” eaters are being played for fools and family farmers and ranchers with better and healthier food alternatives can’t find A FAIR MARKET. ..... read the whole story at No-Bull Food News

New Bedford sues Monsanto, Cornel-Dubilier over buried toxic materials

2009-12-13T12:09:00.001-05:00

"The Bloody Bastards" ..... cowboss

Monsanto Co. and Cornell-Dubilier Electronics, Inc., which manufacture pesticides and electrical capacitors, respectively, have been linked to PCB contamination at three privately-owned properties in the Parker Street neighborhood near Keith Middle School, according to court documents the City of New Bedford filed Thursday in Bristol County Superior Court.

As part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by neighborhood residents against the city, city attorneys are suing Monsanto and Cornell-Dubilier, in addition to other persons and entities, for more than $5 million related to site assessment, clean-up costs, consulting fees, the purchase of private property and future remediation costs, according to court documents.

The "smoking gun" that connects the companies to PCB contamination in the neighborhood is photographs of PCB-containing electrical capacitors marked with the Cornell-Dubilier name, said City Solicitor Irene B. Schall.

The yellowish, 3-inch capacitors, which resemble mini bread pans, were found in a test pit the city dug at 102 Greenwood St. after purchasing the property last fall.

The pit was dug "for the purpose of identifying responsible parties," Schall said.

Asked how the city knew where to dig, Schall answered, "We have a good expert." When zinc, lead and PCBs are found together, they may indicate the presence of capacitors, she said.

Monsanto Co. and additional defendants Pharmacia Corporation and Solutia, Inc. are foreign corporations that manufactured PCBs, lead, zinc, oil and other hazardous materials, which were "manufactured, sold, distributed, stored or disposed of in New Bedford," according to the complaint.

Court documents indicate that from 1935 to 1971, Monsanto Co. and its predecessor Monsanto Chemical Company were the exclusive manufacturer of PCBs in the United States.

In the complaint, the city claims that the two Monsanto companies "knew PCBs were hazardous but manufactured and profited from them for more than 40 years with conscious disregard for the rights of others."

Cornell-Dubilier, a foreign corporation with facilities in New Bedford, manufactured capacitors containing PCBs, lead, zinc, oil or other hazardous materials, which were "sold, manufactured, distributed, stored or disposed of in New Bedford," according to the complaint.

In 1940, Cornell-Dubilier opened a manufacturing plant in New Bedford's South End. By 1950, the company had become "the largest maker of AC, high voltage, mica and aluminum electrolytic capacitors," according to the company's Web site.

The manufacture of PCBs, which are linked to cancer and other health problems, was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1979 ...... read the whole sad story at South Coast Today

Covert Chickens - Why are birds a dirty word?

2009-12-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

A familiar story from Sacramento, it could be from most any town - even your town! Why, or should I say "Who" is behind the "campaign" to keep folk from having access to "Ethical,Wholesome, Clean, Sustainable Food"?
....... cowboss

Sacramento leaders have spent a generation trying to shed the city's cow-town stigma. Now they are facing a movement that wants to turn the capital into chicken city.

Backyard chickens, increasingly popular in urban areas around the country, are illegal within Sacramento's city limits. But a number of residents are pushing to change that. They argue that lifting the ban would put people more in touch with the food they eat and help reduce the city's carbon footprint.

Many are raising chickens already in clandestine coops, sharing cartons of contraband eggs with their neighbors to keep them at bay. They meet in the aisles of local feed stores, giving each other knowing nods. They attend standing-room-only training sessions to glean tips from experts, confessing their civic sin with sheepish grins.

And they gather in a Curtis Park coffeehouse to plot a political strategy they hope will persuade the City Council to let the chickens come out of their closets.

Raising backyard fowl has long been common in some immigrant households of Sacramento. But it's residents of the city's more affluent neighborhoods who are driving the current effort to legalize chickens.

Last year, mayoral candidate Muriel Strand became the brunt of jokes when she campaigned in support of the cause. But now it appears that Strand tapped into a growing civic sentiment – the desire of some urban dwellers to go back to the farm.

"People are increasingly disconnected from their food," Paul Towers of Oak Park, a leader in the Campaign for Legalizing Urban Chicken Keeping (CLUCK), told me last week. "When most children walk into a grocery store now, there is no clear sense of where that chicken came from, where that turkey came from, where that frozen package of peas came from. Part of people growing food in their backyard is re-establishing that connection."

Concerns over the industrialization of farming also play a role. Sacramento is in the heart of California's agricultural heartland, yet the vast majority of the food grown in the Central Valley is exported. Nearly all the food eaten here is trucked in from elsewhere. Fresh eggs look and taste so much better than those that come from factory farms, and they've become a rallying point for the local food movement.

"When you have a chicken in the backyard, the eggs have to travel only a few feet," Towers said. "You don't have to drive to the grocery store and a truck doesn't have to travel from a farm to the store. It's greener, and more sustainable."

Finally, there is the question of nutrition. Advocates argue that home-raised chickens, if allowed to run free, pack more nutrients into their eggs than do the kind that come from industrial agriculture.

Two years ago, Mother Earth News commissioned an independent lab to test eggs from 14 flocks of pasture-raised chickens and compared them to nutrition data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for commercial eggs. The magazine found that the free-range eggs had less cholesterol, less saturated fat, more vitamin A, vitamin E and beta carotene, and more healthy fatty acids. ...... read the story at The Sacramental Bee

"Marketing 101 to the Max" or Meaningful Change at Maple Leaf Foods?

2009-12-11T11:47:00.005-05:00

Yes, Yes and Yes, BUT the Fundamental Question remains -- What have you (Maple Leaf Foods) done about complying with CFIA's warnings and stopping the use of US Feces (Shit) Fed Beef in the manufacturing of your "Processed Meats"?

"CANADA - Maple Leaf Foods yesterday announced the establishment of its Food Safety Advisory Council, a team of independent experts that will increase the Company's access to global knowledge and expertise in areas of food safety practices, microbiology, technology and public health."

The food safety board is comprised of some "BIG names: Dr Harvey Anderson, Professor Colin Dennis, Dr Mansel Griffiths, Dr R. Bruce Tompkin,
and Mr John Weisgerber, all with impressive credentials.

"The primary mandate of the Council is to challenge the status quo of Maple Leaf's food safety programme so we continue to raise the bar ever higher," said Randy Huffman, Chief Food Safety Officer. "These individuals bring immense food safety knowledge to the Council and will support our commitment to becoming a global food safety leader."

Yes, Yes and Yes, BUT the Fundamental Question remains -- What have you (Maple Leaf Foods) done about Banning the use of US Feces (Shit) Fed Beef in the manufacturing of your "Processed Meats"? You and I both know that CFIA has condemned Shit Fed Beef as being a health hazard to the animals as well as the consumers of food products from those animals! To say nothing about how fundamentally Revolting the practise is! FACT (Food Animal Concern Alliance) has done a very informative report on the practise of feeding shit to animals, PLEASE spent the few minutes and read it -- it is well worth your time, since the health of Canadian consumers is, I believe, in your best interest!

‘There is nothing so easy but that it becomes difficult when you do it with reluctance.’ ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thanx

cowboss

Missouri government plots undercover sting operations against families selling raw milk

2009-12-10T13:24:00.002-05:00

"To you, it's just a gallon of milk. But to these farmers, it's their livelihood. Think about that for a minute before you go slapping handcuffs on the very same people who put food on your mama's table."

Imagine being watched by two undercover cops as you engage in an illicit deal in a deserted parking lot. The buyer hesitantly hands you some cash. You flash a look over your shoulder, just to make sure the coast is clear, then you hand over the contraband. Neither of you says a word. You just nod, acknowledging the deal is done, then you head back to your car and buckle up for the drive home.
But before you can even put the car into drive, a screeching formation of police cars, surrounds you, sirens wailing. Armed officers leap from their vehicles, guns drawn and sunglasses glaring. "Come out with your hands up!" they shout.

You slowly open the driver's door of your car and inch out of your seat with both hands raised in surrender, cowering behind the open door. "What did I do, officer? What's my crime?"

Their answer comes back loud and intimidating: "SELLING RAW MILK!"

As the Springfield, Missouri News-Leader paper reports, "Two undercover investigators with the Springfield-Greene County Health Department allegedly caught two of the couple's daughters on two occasions selling a gallon of milk each from a Springfield parking lot. Charges followed in municipal court."

In case you're not yet sure what you're reading here, note carefully that these daughters were not caught selling crack, meth or crank. They weren't dealing second-hand pharmaceuticals to yuppie school kids. They weren't selling e.coli-contaminated hamburger meat, cancer-causing diet sodas (made with aspartame) or canned soups laced with MSG. They weren't even selling broiler chickens contaminated with salmonella -- just as you can find in every grocery store in America. Nope, they were selling raw milk. You know, the bovine mother's milk, unpasteurized, unprocessed, non-homogenized and wholly pure, natural and innocent. The stuff America was raised on. The stuff your parents fed you when you were a kid, if your family was lucky enough to have a cow.

In Missouri today, selling such a natural product is now apparently a criminal act. What's next? A ban on farm-fresh eggs because the Dept. of Health doesn't control their quality? The outlawing of raw broccoli because broccoli contains natural anti-cancer medicine?

Fortunately, the Bechard family is fighting back. As reported by the News-Leader:

"They will not sign a consent order to make the state's complaint go away and they're defending themselves against the city charges, too. They've gotten legal help from the The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, a nonprofit organization made up of farmers and consumers pooling resources to fight for the rights of family farmers trying to get unprocessed food to consumers who want it."

A view from the Missouri-born Health Ranger

I grew up in Raytown, Missouri, just a few miles from Springfield. I spent more than a few summers on a farm near St. Louis, where we would milk the cows, gather fresh eggs from the chickens, and fish for catfish in the pond. I'm not exactly a farm boy, but I'm familiar enough with living off the land to know the difference between real food and processed food (a distinction the Missouri Dept. of Health still hasn't gleaned...)

When I grew up in Raytown, there were fresh-food farms within driving distance where we could get fresh milk, eggs and vegetables from small family operations. It was a way of life for many families living in the suburbs of Kansas City, and none of us could have imagined then that families selling fresh milk would one day be treated like criminal contraband dealers by overzealous law state officials.

Yet another victimless "crime"

The effort to criminalize sellers of raw milk is misguided on so many levels that it just begs to be called out as perhaps one of the worst uses of taxpayer dollars yet dreamed up by clueless bureaucrats. For starters, raw milk is clearly sold as "raw milk" -- there's no mislabeling here. The people buying the milk know very well they're buying raw milk. In fact, they go to great lengths to seek out raw milk in order to benefit from its numerous health advantages over processed, pasteurized milk.

Secondly, any serious crime worth investigating requires a victim. But there's no victim in the "crime" of selling raw milk. The family farms sell their milk at a fair price, and a knowledgeable consumer purchases the raw milk, knowing exactly what they're buying for their dollar. Where's the victim here? (Misty the cow, perhaps? Probably not, as cows on family farms are treated far better than cows in most dairy factories.)

This raw milk persecution attempt is yet another example of a "victimless crime" being invented, then pursued by overzealous state officials who clearly have nothing useful to pursue (or who have a serious problem setting priorities).

In a world where children are being poisoned by aspartame, senior citizens are being drugged into zombie-like states in nursing homes, where school boys are being dosed with "speed" amphetamine ADHD drugs, bacon is laced with a cancer-causing chemical known as sodium nitrite and two-thirds of the broiler chickens sold in grocery stores are contaminated with salmonella, are you telling me that the friendly selling of raw milk in a parking lot is at the top of the list of "crimes" being investigated by the Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster and his overworked staff?

Seriously? ........ read the story at the Ethiopian Review

The Mouse In The House ~ Author unknown

2009-12-09T09:35:00.000-05:00

A compelling story! I Bet You Never Thought About It That Way Before - But "Hopefully" You Will Now! .... cowboss

A mouse looked through the crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife open a package. "What food might this contain?" The mouse wondered. He was devastated to discover it was a mousetrap.

Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed this warning: "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!"

The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me. I cannot be bothered by it." The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The pig sympathized, but said, "I am so very sorry, Mr. Mouse, but there is nothing I can do about it but pray... Be assured you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow and said, "There is a mousetrap in the house! There is a mousetrap in the house!" The cow said, "Wow, Mr. Mouse. I'm sorry for you, but it's no skin off my nose."

So, the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected, to face the farmer's mousetrap . . . Alone. . . .

That very night a sound was heard throughout the house -- the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see it. It was a venomous snake whose tail was caught in the trap. The snake bit the farmer's wife.

The farmer rushed her to the hospital. When she returned home, she still had a fever.

Everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup. So the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient: But his wife's sickness continued. Friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. But, alas, the farmer's wife did not get well... She died. So many people came for her funeral that the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide enough meat for all of them for the funeral luncheon.

And the mouse looked upon it all from his crack in the wall with great sadness.

So, the next time you hear someone is facing a problem and you think it doesn't concern you, remember ---

When one of us is threatened, we are all at risk. We are all involved in this journey called life. We must keep an eye out for one another and make an extra effort to encourage one another.

- REMEMBER - EACH OF US IS A VITAL THREAD IN ANOTHER PERSON'S TAPESTRY. OUR LIVES ARE WOVEN TOGETHER FOR A REASON.

One of the best things to hold onto in this world is a FRIEND.

Story from OnMilwaukee.com with Thanks :-)

FDA Petitioned to Ban Arsenic from Animal Feed

2009-12-08T18:07:00.004-05:00

Groups Urge Government Ban of Common Additives Used in Feed for Chicken, Turkeys and Hogs

You, my regular readers know this is an important issue to cowboss. I am pleased to see that action is being taken in the US, I do hope that the FDA will do the responsible thing and Ban this ridiculous practise! We really need a concerted effort here in Canada to move Harper and his cronies into action on this as well. Please sign my petition at Care2 to Ban the Feeding of Arsenic to Poultry and Pigs. Thanx ...... cowboss

WASHINGTON - December 8 - Today, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) filed a petition with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calling for the immediate withdrawal of approvals for all animal drug applications for arsenic-containing compounds used in animal feed. These additives are commonly used in poultry production to induce faster weight gain and create the appearance of a healthy color in meat from chickens, turkeys and hogs. The petition was supported by a coalition of food and farm groups around the country.

"The fact that arsenic - a known and powerful carcinogen - in these feed additives leads to arsenic residue in chicken is now well known," said the Center for Food Safety's Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell. "FDA's failure to investigate the mounting evidence that these compounds are unsafe is a breach of the public trust, and the use of arsenic-containing compounds in food animal production is a needless and dangerous risk to human health."

"Arsenic can be poisonous. Its use in animal feed, therefore, is unnecessarily risky and has not been shown to be safe given the latest science," said David Wallinga, M.D. of the IATP. "To best protect public health, all avoidable exposures to arsenic should be eliminated. FDA can and should act."

Arsenic-containing compounds have been approved additives to animal feed since the 1940s and are currently used in chicken, turkey and swine production. Most arsenic-containing animal feed additives are not used to treat sickness. Instead, arsenicals are generally approved for "increased weight gain, improved feed efficiency, and improved pigmentation." The European Union has never approved the use of arsenicals in animal feed, acknowledging the lack of science supporting health or safety standards for such use.

Arsenic-containing compounds are most widely used in chicken production, and most chickens receive arsenic-laced feed. In 2004 and 2005, the IATP tested for total arsenic in retail packages of raw chicken and in "fast food" chicken sandwiches and nuggets. Test results revealed detectable levels of arsenic in the majority of both supermarket and fast food chicken with higher levels found in brands of chicken raised conventionally. Lower or non-detectable levels of arsenic were found in certified organic and other "premium" brands where the use of arsenic-containing feed additives were either legally prohibited or claimed not to have been used. These results strongly suggest that use of arsenic-containing compounds in poultry feed leads to arsenic residues in U.S. marketed and eaten chicken.

Two weeks ago, U.S. Representative Steve Israel of New York announced legislation calling for a ban on the use of the arsenical compound roxarsone in poultry feed. His bill, the "Poison-Free Poultry Act of 2009," would prohibit all uses of roxarsone as a food additive in poultry. The groups applaud the bill, but maintain that it does not go far enough. Their petition not only calls for a ban on roxarsone, but also on Arsanilic acid, Nitarsone, and Carbarsone, commonly used compounds which contain arsenicals.

Other groups signing the petition include: Food Animal Concerns Trust, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, San Francisco Physicians for Social Responsibility, Food and Water Watch, Center for Biological Diversity, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, Center for Environmental Health, Institute for a Sustainable Future, Health Care Without Harm and Ecology Center of Michigan.

Read the full petition.

Read IATP's report on arsenic in poultry: Playing Chicken: Avoiding Arsenic in Your Meat.

The Center for Food Safety is national, non-profit, membership organization, founded in 1997, that works to protect human health and the environment by curbing the use of harmful food production technologies and by promoting organic and other forms of sustainable agriculture. On the web at: http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org./

So Baby Jesus says - Don't shop at supermarkets for my birthday? - A Christmas without supermarkets

2009-12-08T12:01:00.000-05:00

A distinctly British story, BUT maybe you could "just substitute the name of your BIG box store" in place of "Tesco" and it will "ring true."

cowboss

If you like Christmas, you probably fancy a good old-fashioned one (the good old postmodern Christmas is so over). Mince pies, wassail, rosy cheeks and Jingle Bells. But can a proper old-fashioned Christmas honestly be done by shopping at those cathedrals of the modern nativity, Tesco, and its clones? I think not.

As witnessed by Tesco's most recent sales figures, Christmas and capitalist enterprise have gone hand in hand ever since the first one, but when you think of corporations that bring peace and goodwill to all men, you don't start with supermarkets. This year, as always, they are celebrating Christmas with a price war - the "most aggressive in a decade", Asda announced proudly in November.

The supermarkets are the Scrooges of our time: mean, hypocritical, deceiving. However they dress it up, Sainsbury's and Tesco's Christmas specials are not acts of seasonal generosity (it may surprise you to learn): they are steely-clawed grabs at market share. The £6 "essential turkey" is not a top-hatted gent's kindness to the nation's Bob Cratchits - it's a marketing strategists' suicide bomb, cruel to the turkey, disastrous for Britain's battered farmers and not great for the environment. Tesco says the £6 turkey is British - from Bernard Matthews - and weighs between 2.6 and 3.4kg. I predict it will taste pretty grim too, as will the same store's 75 sausage rolls for £2.

The nativity, remember, is a story of farming (*puts on surplice and benevolent smile*): shepherds, oxen, mangers and so on. According to a recent Defra assessment nearly two thirds of Britain's farms are essentially economically unviable. Few conventional dairy or pig farmers have made a profit this year. The farmers' troubles are largely due to the relentless forcing down of prices and squeezing of their profit margins by the handful of supermarkets that control 85% of food retail.

There will be more jobs for ex-shepherds behind the tills next year. Waitrose and Sainsbury are both planning hundreds more high street mini-stores. These moves capitalise on the recession in the high street and threaten jobs in convenience shops and independent retailers, of course.

There is an answer. Go off-grid this season and choose a retro (circa 1960) Christmas, from before the rise of the supermarkets. Cater without them, and spread goodwill - and your cash - round local producers and traditional shops. It takes a bit more time and planning, and of course a High Moral Purpose. If you don't have a friendly local butcher there are plenty of top-notch producers listed in the WoM guide to where to buy meat this Christmas (and how to cook it all yourself in our collection of Christmas recipes). .....read the story at The Guardian

Unmasking the Canadian Beef Farm Crisis? What the Hell Did You Think Would Happen?

2009-12-04T11:37:00.010-05:00

Open letter to the Beef Producers of Canada

Forget the inquiry and fix the problems!

December 4, 2009

My fellow beef producers of Canada

"Cow-calf producers and independent feeders are facing the worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930's and increasing numbers of cattle farmers are facing bankruptcy." So says the The National Farmers Union (NFU) in their report, The Farm Crisis and the Cattle Sector: Towards a New Analysis and New Solutions, issued in November, 2008.

It is my belief that this may well be an understatement of the problem, in fact this may be the worst crisis since "farming" as we know it has existed. You and I both know this, so no need to beleaguer the point. The concern that I have is that this report fails to acknowledge the Two Main Causes of the Crisis. It is of little wonder that the NFU report is posted on the Marxist Leninist site, since the report is so anti-corporate and damning of every one and everything except the farmers.

OK - The Two Main Causes of the Crisis

1) The Unfair Dumping of "culls" by the Dairy Industry

Unfair and Unjust "Subsidization" of the "cull cows and heifers" and "bull drop calves" by the "Milk Marketing Boards" to the dairy producers of Canada. It is well known that dairy farmers "care little" what the market price is for these "culls" - so long as all dairy farmers are getting the same price for their "garbage". The Milk Marketing Board will adjust the price of their milk so that these farmers are "getting a good income" no matter if the price of their "culls" is zero. It is most likely not necessary for me to point out that these "cull" animals are going into the Beef Market, BUT what may be more necessary for me to point out is that this massive amount of animals going into any market Will and Do affect the market price! In any other "industry" the practise of the dairy farmers here would be considered "Dumping", I fail to understand why you the farmers, and the "farm Orgs." are So willing to sit back and say "Oh Well - Better find someone else to blame, I Just Cannot Blame My Neighbour"!

2) CFIA's Failure to Safeguard the Health of Canadian Consumers and Allowing 225 Million Pounds of US Feces Fed Beef into Canada Every Year

Again, You and I know that the "Canadian beef prices" are set in "Chicago", "that is the way it is", and that is the way it will be as long as our border is open to US beef imports! And that, "may well be fine" so long as producers on both sides of the border are "singing to the same song sheet". This, I assure you is NOT the case. Seems that US producers are feeding poultry shit BIG time to their livestock (beef cows, calves, stockers, fats, as well as dairy heifers). Just for one minute, imagine livestock feed at like $10.00/Ton, and how much money you could make from your beef operation (up to 80% of the brood Cows diet, 60% of the Stockers diet, and 40% of the "Fats" diet can be, and is in many cases, poultry shit and bedding). See the Doc. "Filthy Feed" by FACT at: http://www.foodanimalconcerns.org/filthyfeed/ BUT, NO, CFIA has banned the feeding of poultry shit to livestock in Canada - seems they are concerned that it will make the animals and the consumers of food products from those animals sick or die! The following is copied from CFIA's website RG -2 Regulatory Guidance: Feeding of Poultry Manure to Cattle Prohibited http://www.inspection.gc.ca/english/anima/feebet/pol/pd002e.shtml

"There is the potential for residues of microbial pathogens, drugs, and other chemicals which may harm livestock or result in the transfer of violative residues in animal products, e.g. , meat and milk, to humans."

To summarize, why is CFIA allowing the importation of US Shit Fed Beef? Is it somehow that they believe that US shit is somehow superior to Canadian shit? or is it that "our" Government has "caved in" to "Consumer demand" for unrealistically low priced food! or is it just simply the fact that "Politics has Trumped Food Safety"! or just maybe have Canadian consumers become somehow addicted to the Arsenic in the US chicken shit? No matter how you look at it, it is an amazingly sad story. My "back of the envelope" calculations show that this failure of CFIA to enforce it's own rules have cost the Canadian Beef Producers in the area of 6 Billion dollars since 1998! (calculate it how you want, you will come up with a similar #)

Why have beef farmers not launched a class action lawsuit to recoup these losses incurred by Canadian beef producers as a result of being mandated by CFIA to feed far more expensive feed than that of the US producers? Best that I let "others" answer that question "on paper", BUT my guess is that you know the "why" as much as I know it!

Why have beef farmers not launched a class action lawsuit against the "Milk Marketing Boards" and/or the "Dairy Farmers of Canada" to recoup losses incurred as a result of the "unfair subsidization and dumping" of cull dairy animals into the beef market?

Why have Canadian beef farmers not taken their "Protest Tractors" to the Grocery Stores, Restaurants, Institutions (Hospitals, Nursing Homes) that are selling/using US beef (Most all of them are, if not fresh, in processed meats, or prepared food) to make "customers and consumers aware" of the feeding practises of US producers, and what CFIA says about feeding shit to livestock?

Why? Why? and Why? - If you refuse to act, Then please do me a favor and refuse to complain!

Let's call a Farmers' Holiday

A Holiday let's hold

We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs

And let them eat their gold.

"Remember, people will judge you by your actions, not your intentions. You may have a heart of gold -- but so does a hard-boiled egg."

cowboss ...... http://cowbossatwscc.blogspot.com/ "It's time to get down to the nut cuttin'."

One final request, if I may: Please forward this to all of your "Beef Farmer Friends" and I Thank You! ..... cowboss

Sir Paul McCartney and his 'green’ celebrity friends should put up or shut up

2009-12-04T11:15:00.000-05:00

"Actors and rock stars must lead by example and not lecture us on environmental issues", says Charlie Brooks .

Sir Paul McCartney took time out yesterday from appearing at carbon-spewing concerts to drop in on the European Parliament and lecture its members on climate change. I'm not sure I could have felt any more nauseous, unless I'd tried to read Jordan's autobiography while riding the Big Dipper at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

Sir Paul, like a lot of other celebrities, has a pet agenda: he wants the world to eat less meat. And he's figured out, as have many others, that if he presents his chosen cause as a measure to combat global warming, he's on to a winner.

There are two things I find particularly offensive here. First, that he thinks he knows better than I do how I should live. But more important, that he does so by being economical with the facts. While he highlights the amount of greenhouse gases given off by livestock, he conveniently ignores the fact that undrained paddy fields in Asia are huge emitters of methane: I don't recall him proposing Rice-Free Tuesday to follow his Meat-Free Monday.

Of course, Sir Paul wasn't the only eco-celebrity to sound off this week. Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, popped up on Newsnight to talk about the environment, only to receive a classic Paxman roasting. "Do you feel uncomfortable travelling between various homes in various continents at enormous carbon cost?" sneered Paxo, only to be told smugly that the issue was "an amusing red herring".

Sting has, admittedly, done great philanthropic environmental deeds. He can afford to. But if he was on the breadline, he might not appreciate some rock star telling him to pay up for the rainforests. This is what sticks in the throat about "green" celebrities: the subliminal message that because they do so much good, how they actually behave is neither here nor there. Tom Cruise and John Travolta might take their private jets around the skies, and Al Gore own a vast, floodlit mansion in Nashville, but they're redeemed, because their emissions are all offset.

I just don't buy it. If they were true to their beliefs, they would purchase the carbon credits and stop flying around the world. The idea that the consequences of their personal behaviour can be parked to one side while they lecture the rest of us doesn't wash. ..... read the whole story at the Telegraph

Driver unearths giant skull of 6ft 'cow' which roamed the country 7,500 years ago

2009-12-03T09:43:00.002-05:00

"among the factors believed to be behind the extinction of aurochs in the Bronze Age were the clearance of their woodland habitat by people and hunting."

The enormous skull of an ancient cow-like beast that stood higher than a man has been uncovered in a quarry.

Excavator driver John Rutherford was on a routine shift at a riverside pit in Northumberland when he unearthed the incredible bones with his digger.

They belonged to a species of wild cattle called an auroch, that had roamed Britain more than 7,500 years ago.

Aurochs stood 6ft at the shoulder and became extinct in the UK around 4,000 years ago.

The skull has been radiocarbon dated to 5670-5520 BC, when northern Britain would have been sparsely occupied by mobile groups of hunter and gatherer peoples.

Two red deer antlers were also found in the same area as the auroch skull and one produced a similar radiocarbon date.

The startling discovery was made at Thompsons of Prudhoe's Haughton Strother quarry near Humshaugh.

'If the excavator bucket had been 10 centimetres either side it would have smashed the skull,' said Robin Taylor-Wilson, director of Durham-based Pre-Construct Archaeology, who advise Thompson's of Prudhoe.

'It is very rare to find a complete auroch skull, but it came out hanging off the bucket from a wet area as if it was meant to be.

'The find is of an animal which lived thousands of years before that, and one which would have been a prize capture for dinner for the hunter gatherers of the time.'

It is now hoped that the skull will go on show at the Great North Museum in Newcastle.

Ryan Molloy, development and environmental manager at Thompsons of Prudhoe, said: 'The way the skull came out in perfect condition was unbelievable.

'It is a wet working quarry and the skull had been preserved in a peat pocket for 7,000 years. ..... read the story at the Daily Mail.

Top five most shocking food facts from Food, Inc. ~ By Kate Kennedy

2009-12-01T09:03:00.003-05:00

"However, the least we can do is educate ourselves, and for under five bucks you can rent Food, Inc. and see what all my fussing is about. Then go out and find yourself a local farmer and, in turn, a clean steak."

Following a recent birthday barbecue feast, I woke up before the sun with a wretched bellyache and proceeded to hurl my guts out. Nothing reminds you that you aren't 21 anymore like puking bacon cheeseburgers and red wine and going up against a hangover that feels like a jackhammer trying to deconstruct your skull. What's even more horrific is that bacon tastes the same coming up as it does going down. It was the first time in my life that I really thought I would never be able to eat meat again.

The second time was after I rented Food, Inc.

This movie is not a big screen PETA advertisement. It doesn't cram vegetarianism down our throats and it doesn't harass the carnivores for eating foie gras. It does make you question why you eat what you do, and it brings to light something the greater American public seems more than complacent about: the horrific lack of concern as to where the food we nourish ourselves with comes from -- and what it goes through before it hits our mouths.

I wasn't squeamish after viewing this film from the guilt I've got over indulging in corn-fed beef: I was embarrassed by the fact that I'm haphazardly contributing to a repulsively corrupt system that's continually given free reign to compromise something as simple and necessary as food. To add insult to injury, they're doing all of this while totally screwing the underdog--the independent farmer who is capable of producing food and meat that will safely fill our bellies and not morph us into cancerous allergy-ridden lard-asses.

We're the richest country in the world, but maybe it's because we'd rather make a buck using government subsidies for corn and sugar than feed our people with some integrity. God Bless America. I'll step down off of my soapbox now, but not before leaving you with the top five shocking food facts from Food, Inc.:

5. Top heavy Hell: The majority of mass-produced chickens are raised in the dark. Their breasts are so large that they're unable to walk. But that's okay, because they're not allowed to. The antibiotics they are fed to keep them breathing in such conditions end up right there in every bite of your sandwich.

4. Something smells rotten: The USDA is allowed to regulate what constitutes organic food and when your milk is past due, but it does not have the authority to shut down a meat plant if they are selling tainted meat. If the USDA can't stop this, who does? No one, that's who. Creepy.

3. McShit: The average hamburger contains meat from nearly 100 cattle. It gets better. Mass production cows are often raised knee-deep in their own manure. They're butchered so fast that there often isn't enough time to clean them. The end result? Cow pie in your cheeseburger. ...... read the story at Westworld

A culture of mean, thanks to the Internet ~ by SUE HICKEY

2009-11-30T12:24:00.000-05:00

"Welcome to the Internet, the world where the bar of TV's "Cheers," nobody knows your name."

In an ideal world, the Internet commons of opinion give-and-take would hearken back to the days of the ancient Greeks and their forums, where being erudite (or "learned" in non-Rex-Murphy speak) was valued and debate was an art form.

Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world.

Online message boards are probably the best indicator that we're not going in the right direction. For example, we bet that next week's coverage of stories relating to the Montreal Massacre will result not in a rash of thoughtful debate on message boards, but more along the lines of "well maybe those bitches got what they deserved, taking jobs away from men" from some poster called "mightyweasel" or something like that. If you want more examples of what bullies are doing on the Internet, look at a recent CBC story on 28-year-old Amanda Lindhout, the Alberta journalist released after 16 months as a hostage in Somalia. She had been hired by a French media outlet to do stories there; yet she ended up being starved, beaten and tortured for most of that time.

What are message posters saying? Well, some praised the young woman for her strength. But "Chad198125" could only say "she's hot!" and others berated her for not going to Somalia in the first place. Still others ranted against Muslims in general, a totally non-valid statement to make. Yet others said that as a woman she should have known better. Welcome to "blame the victim" mentality, people.

Message boards are becoming crueler. One American paper's website featured a story about an unfortunate man who had to be cut out of his chair after he died because he was more than 800 pounds. Instead of offering compassion for a family and for someone whose metabolism went out of whack, many took the other approach. "The world is better off without pigs like that." In response to a person who said she could relate to someone with such a disability because she had severely disabled twin daughters, another said "too bad about your kids but you could have had ultrasound to see their disability, and then you should have aborted them so they wouldn't be a drain to society."

Nice comment, Miss I Went To the Eugenics School Run By Neo-Nazis.

In this province, one moderately overweight woman only discovered she was pregnant when she went to a hospital and was delivered of a healthy boy. What were the messages saying? Congratulations on the new mom? Not hardly. According to them, she was a stupid fat cow.

How can you take comments seriously from people who use fake names to make them? The rule of thumb should be, if you would not say the same thing to the subject in person, then don't say it at all.

In light of pedophile scandals, it's easy to take potshots, especially when you don't use your real name. Maybe it's because, statistically speaking, you're a child molester yourself. If you have 400 messages on that subject and 90 per cent of them are negative, chances are that at least some of those messages come from people who you wouldn't want to babysit your kids. ...... read the whole story at the GFW Advertiser

"Veggie Libel Laws" Still On Books ~ by Dan Flynn

2009-11-29T09:06:00.000-05:00

"Wart hogs should sue for libel. It is a terrible name and they are fine fellows and devoted family men and it is rare to see one by himself; the little woman and the kiddies are usually close at hand." ~ Ilka Chase

Two more popular television shows have recently disparaged agriculture, according to some who write from rural America.

Broadcasting false and disparaging information about agriculture could still land television personalities in court in 13 mostly rural states. Just ask the departing afternoon television queen Oprah Winfrey who in 1995 used her program to put the "scare" into the Mad Cow story.

She prevailed in a lawsuit that forced her into an Amarillo, Texas courtroom in the best-known test of an agricultural disparagement statute. These laws are sometimes referred to as "perishable product statutes," and that's where the "veggie libel law" moniker came from.

Ag disparagement laws exist because individual states want to "protect their economies by guarding their agriculture industries,' according to lawyer Daniel E. Cochran.

"Disparagement statutes are unique from their oft-cited counterpart, defamation claims, but are part of the same genre of tortuous acts as "injurious falsehood," Cochran adds. "Disparagement is an injury to an economic or property interest based on false statement of fact."

While desires to "protect farmers from food safety scares" were among the motivations of state legislators who wrote the disparagement laws, the statutes themselves contain strict requirements for the sort of proof that would be required to support a successful claim.

"Supporters of agricultural disparagement statutes argue that these statutes are not designed to insulate agriculture from criticism, but to require persons or groups who criticize agriculture to do it truthfully, without lies and innuendo," says Cochran.

The two recent television shows that some in fly-over country are claiming disparaged agriculture were episodes of the Ellen Degeneris talk show and the drama Bones.

A scribe at the Nebraska Farm Bureau provided these reviews:

"Jonathan Safran Foer, author of 'Eating Animals,' said in his interview with Degeneris that 99 percent of U.S. food animals are raised in indoor factory farms, fed unnatural diets, and given antibiotics from birth to death; that food animal production is the number one cause of air and water pollution and is the top contributor to global warming, nearly doubling the warming contribution of transportation, and that H1N1 flu originated in North Carolina swine herds, among other falsehoods. If you want to do one thing to help animals, Foer says, give up eggs."

"In 'Tough Man in the Tender Chicken; episode of Bones, the body of a manager of a chicken 'factory farm' (actually a processing plant) is found with traumatic injuries and mutilations. (Spoiler alert: the security guard did it, because, he said, his wife's health was compromised while working at the plant.) The animal rights group Farm Sanctuary, said it secured undercover video of the chicken facility used in the program at the request of series star, Emily Deshanel, who is a vegan on air and in real life. The chicken facilities and animal care practices are criticized and misrepresented by the program's characters.

"In a parallel story, a continuing charter tries to convince her friends to help raised $1,500 to save one pig from becoming bacon by sponsoring a farm sanctuary."

The Nebraska Farm Bureau is not filing an Ag disparagement lawsuit, but are encouraging people to protest to Warner Brothers and Fox, the studios that produce the shows. .......read the story at Food Safety News

Finding the balance between compassion and consumption, pets and plate. ~ by Geoff Olson

2009-11-28T17:00:00.001-05:00

"We comfort ourselves in our schizoid treatment of animals by making a binary distinction of food and not-food. Yet, today, the world of domesticated animals mirrors the world of domesticated humans. Multimillion-dollar condos tower above the heaps of human refuse in our city streets, just as pet boutiques, pet hotel packages and doggie daycares coexist with factory farms, laboratory cages and puppy mills. We’ve created a heaven and hell for domesticated animals that reflects the human divides of privilege and privation."

The late American writer Kurt Vonnegut once said his greatest joy in life was rolling around with his dog in the grass. We can only imagine what Vonnegut, who lamented his species’ ecologically suicidal behaviour, would have thought about a recent study claiming that dogs have larger ecological footprints than an SUV. In Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living, authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog, including the area of land required to produce its food, translates into twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fuelling a Toyota Land Cruiser. And there’s no reason for cat owners to feel smug. It turns out a feline’s eco-footprint is about as great as building and fuelling a Volkswagen Golf.

Eco-estimates like this have become the middle-class equivalents of medieval hair shirts and knotted whips. Imagine how much it would take to convince people to stop having pets, much less eat them, as suggested by the Vale’s book title. By this argument’s logic, chowing down on Prince and Snowball would only be a start. You and I and all the other ‘useless eaters’ would need to take a pledge to exit the planet early, to reduce our footprints to a dimensionless point. James Lovelock’s Gaia is a vengeful God, after all.

I’ve always found pet people, the ones with a slightly unhinged enthusiasm for their furry dependents, a bit suspect. Yet a large part of the doggy daycare culture, with its organic biscuits and fashionable accoutrements, is the displaced nurturing behaviour of people without kids. What if we took to measuring the eco-footprint of raising children in the First World? I wouldn’t be surprised if raising one kid, from infancy to young adulthood, was the equivalent eco-footprint of a factory floor of Hummers.

I have no children, but I do have a dog and cat. My wife and I discovered Mica in a shelter a year ago, shivering behind wire mesh. A rescue dog from the Kootenays, she was a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an animal shelter – part Black Lab and God knows what else. Possibly Border Collie and maybe some Rottweiler — and if her speed is any indication, a trace of cruise missile.

I’m fully aware of the irony of being one-half of a vegan/vegetarian couple that owns a 60-pound carnivore. In my defence, this dog-owning lifestyle snuck up on me. I had spent most of my adult life petless, killing a succession of houseplants through neglect. In contrast, my wife had never been without an animal. When we met, her two elderly dogs were preparing to shuffle off the canine coil (kindly freeing the planet from their dastardly ecological pawprint). So when they passed on, we both decided it was time to rebuild her furry fan base.

Over the centuries, human beings have bred dogs for size, stamina, speed, hunting, tracking and herding. No matter which obscure character or kink we selected for, the wilderness remained close to their hearts. Look into a dog’s eyes and there’s an ancient connection going back to the Neolithic era, when wolves shadowed the campfires of our ancestors. Two species entered into an unspoken arrangement: one would patrol the perimeter of the camps while the other left scraps in return. Their orbit grew closer and closer and over time the domesticated wolf was spun by artificial selection into dozens of shapes and sizes. The soft clay of Canis lupus was moulded into terriers, hounds, baiters and racing dogs. Today, some breeds look comic, and some just plain scary – from the rat-sized arm candy of rich socialites to the rippled hellhounds of heavily tattooed owners.

Our relationship with other living creatures has been fraught with paradox from the very beginning. Primitive, hunting-gathering people were caught in an existential bind, according to the late American mythologist Joseph Campbell. They regarded wild animals as Gods, but how can you kill a God for its flesh? Campbell believed an entire body of myth and ritual arose to reconcile this thorny situation. Before or after the hunt, animals were thanked for participating in their own death, a ritual that persists today among the globe’s last remaining pockets of hunter-gatherers. .....read the story at Common Ground

Ode to ugly vegetables: Turnips, rutabagas ~ by Melissa Pasanen

2009-11-27T09:04:00.003-05:00

The dowdy turnip

Languishing down cellar, calls:

“Try me! I don’t bite.”

Way back in the 3rd century B.C., the Romans knew how to coax the most sweetness from their turnips by roasting them at high heat. The Chinese did the same, according to Alan Davidson’s “Oxford Companion to Food.”

In Japan and the Middle East, turnips have long been pickled. The French have always preferred them when they are young, small and sweet with just a pleasing hint of their bitter edge.

Leave it up to the Anglo-Saxon culinary tradition to find the worst way to prepare them.

“The habit of serving plain boiled turnips, often large and old winter specimens, seems to have been characteristic of English-speaking countries,” Davidson notes.

As Elizabeth Schneider concurs in her wonderfully comprehensive “Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini”: “Perhaps it was turnips wintered-over in root cellars that diminished people’s taste for turnips? Or perhaps it was a combination of old turnips and old recipes?”

Turnips (Brassica rapa) were apparently one of the earliest cultivated vegetables, Davidson reports. Although there is still some disagreement on the botanical classifications, Brassica rapa is generally used to refer to the common white turnip, which includes the smaller, milder Japanese or Tokyo-style turnips, as well as bigger, more assertively flavored varieties, such as the commonly found purple-shouldered turnips called Purple Tops.

Related — and often labeled yellow turnips — are rutabagas (Brassica napus), which are also sometimes called swedes. They tend to be milder than white turnips, even when large. The famously sweet Gilfeather turnip, a Vermont heirloom that has been selected to the Slow Food Ark of Taste, is actually a rutabaga. .... read the whole story at the Burlington Free Press

.

Don’t Be a Turkey: Get an Obesity Liability Waiver

2009-11-26T09:26:00.006-05:00

A very "sad" commentary on the "times we are living in," however, a very "well done" waiver that you may want to seriously "consider" /cowboss

It’s Thanksgiving time again, and we’re reminding dinner hosts that they should make sure their guests sign our Thanksgiving Liability Waiver. Why? Because you never know when a food feast will turn into a litigation frenzy.

We were on the Fox News and Fox Business channels yesterday, explaining how trial lawyers are looking for their own feast this holiday season, and how our waiver can ensure a lawsuit-free meal. (You can download your very own copy of the waiver here.) As we’re telling the media this turkey day, Americans should cover their bases:

With this waiver, Thanksgiving dinner hosts can keep the nutritional puritans out of their dining room. They can also protect themselves from over-stuffed lawsuits filed by attorneys - ..... read the whole story at Consumer Freedom

America's Increasing Food Waste Is Laying Waste to the Environment

2009-11-25T15:09:00.005-05:00

food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year

Food waste contributes to excess consumption of freshwater and fossil fuels which, along with methane and carbon dioxide emissions from decomposing food, impacts global climate change.

In a new paper published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS One, Kevin Hall and colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases calculate the energy content of nationwide food waste from the difference between the US food supply and the food eaten by the population. The latter was estimated using a validated mathematical model of human metabolism relating body weight to the amount of food eaten.

The researchers found that US per capita food waste has progressively increased by about 50% since 1974 reaching more than 1400 Calories per person per day or 150 trillion Calories per year. Previous calculations are likely to have underestimated food waste by as much as 25% in recent years.

This calculated progressive increase of food waste suggests that the US obesity epidemic may have been the result of a "push effect" of increased food availability and marketing with Americans being unable to match their food intake with the increased supply of cheap, readily available food. ....read the whole story at the Science Daily

Another article on the same topic, from Science Mag., I am sure you will enjoy /cowboss

Americans' Eating Habits More Wasteful Than Ever

Pass the turkey, hold the arsenic

2009-11-24T17:00:00.003-05:00

A very Special Thanks to the LA Times for "doing this article"! :-) And PLEASE sign my petition to "Ban the Feeding of Arsenic to Poultry and Pigs" at: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-the-feeding-of-arsenic-to-canadian-chickens Thanx ... cowboss

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) would like to remind you that the turkey defrosting in your fridge might be poisonous.

You see, that turkey may contain roxarsone, a food additive that poultry producers use to fight off parasites and help young chicks grow. But it is a derivative of arsenic, which isn’t necessarily the healthiest thing to eat. As the CDC warns:

“Ingesting very high levels of arsenic can result in death. Exposure to lower levels can cause nausea and vomiting, decreased production of red and white blood cells, abnormal heart rhythm, damage to blood vessels, and a sensation of “pins and needles” in hands and feet.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has declared that consumption of arsenic is safe at levels up to 0.5 parts per million in poultry muscle, and that roxarsone is OK to use. But Israel is not convinced. And so he has introduced a bill – the Poison Free Poultry Act of 2009 (H.R.3624).

On Monday, he held a news conference in his Long Island district to emphasize the gravity of the situation. According to a report in Newsday, he pointed to a bird and declared, “There is no good reason to be injecting poison into this turkey.”

Israel noted that the FDA’s safety threshold was set more than 30 years ago, and is in dire need of updating in light of medical research linking arsenic to such health problems as cancer and diabetes.

He has the support of Keeve Nachman, science director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. In a statement published on the center’s blog, he writes that:

“Studies have shown that some of the arsenic fed to chickens remains in the edible portions of the birds. Arsenic has also been found in poultry waste, where it poses environmental and human health risks when the waste is managed, often by spreading on agricultural fields as fertilizer for food crops.” ..... read the whole story at the Los Angeles Times

Food, Kin and Tension at Thanksgiving ~ By TARA PARKER-POPE

2009-11-24T14:49:00.000-05:00

To all my Great American Friends -- Chill Out! and have a great Thanksgiving eh!

cowboss

For Thanksgiving dinner, what side dish would you prefer to accompany your turkey — a serving of well-marinated conflict over how much or how little you eat, or some nice, fresh criticism of your cooking skills?

As families gather around the country this week to celebrate Thanksgiving, many of them are bracing for the intense emotions of the holiday meal. The combination of food and family often brings out longstanding tensions, criticism and battles for control. Simple issues like cooking with butter or asking for seconds are fraught with family conflict and commentary.

“If we had an audiotape of a lot of families talking together, you would hear so much chatter about what other people are eating, who gained weight, who lost weight, who’s eating like a bird, who’s having seconds,” notes Cynthia M. Bulik, director of the eating disorders program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Bulik told the story of a patient whose mother scolded her for not eating her homemade cookies. “You don’t like my cookies?” she asked. As a result, the daughter relented and took a cookie. But when she then reached for a second, her mother scolded her again. “Do you really think you need another one?” she asked her.

In another family, a mother-in-law agreed to show up for Thanksgiving only if she could be assured none of the foods would be prepared with butter. “I’m not doing butter right now,” she said. “If you do butter, I’m not coming.”

Many people have an unhealthy preoccupation with body image or have undiagnosed eating problems that they may then try to impose on others, said Dr. Kathryn Zerbe, professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University and a longtime expert on eating disorders.

A Long Island woman, who like others interviewed for this column didn’t want to be named, said she and her family traveled 12 hours by train for a summer vacation gathering with her husband’s family. When her husband asked for seconds, the sister-in-law said there wasn’t any more food.

“There was all this food around, but she had cut us off,” the woman said. “We were just really shocked we were being told you can’t eat any more after coming all this way. We found out later she really controlled food in the household.”

The woman said that in her own family, she faced a different problem: the pressure to eat more. During holiday meals, her son, who has never been a big eater, was constantly pestered about not eating enough. “There was a lot of pressure on him when he would visit my family,” she said. “To try to get him to eat, my mother would say this terrible thing to him. She’d say: ‘You know you want to be a winner. You want to be a winner.’ ” ..... read the whole story at The New York Times

'Roundup-ready' Thinkers ~ by JOHN MAXWELL

2009-11-22T15:52:00.000-05:00

In vegetation killed by Roundup the normal balance of fungi is upset, penicilliums are killed while toxic fungi of the fusarium family begin to flourish.

By the time you read this it should be official - the end of the Triangular Trade, the traffic in human flesh, sugar and consumer goods between Europe, Africa and the Caribbean, begun 500 years ago. It will soon be transformed by "Globalisation" into a cat's cradle of exploitative relationships in which the exploiters and the exploited will remain the same, only the terms of trade will be transformed to protect the guilty

Europe's trade commissioner, Catherine Ashton, told the world's press on Wednesday that within the next few days the Europeans are close to a deal to end the world's longest-running trade dispute and bolster the World Trade Organisation, whose Doha negotiations to free up global commerce have at times been held hostage by the row.

What Ms Ashton meant was that the former Caribbean, African and Pacific colonies of Europe will at long last lose the tariff protection which kept their lands addicted to producing bananas and sugar as against producing food for their people. It was a serious addiction for these nations, comparable to but worse than addiction to crack or alcohol, distracting the addicts from productive thought and activity and promoting the shortcut, Anancy mentality.

In Jamaica the end of plantation banana and sugar cane may bring enormous benefits to our national health and well-being.

Plantation economics depend heavily on labour-sparing techniques. No longer are weeds eliminated by hoes or harrows, but by spraying ferociously poisonous chemicals which are 'biocides', in Rachel Carson's formulation, enemies of life which kill everything. In plantations such as Jamaica or Central America the biocide of choice is, as in the rest of the 'civilised' world, a Monsanto Chemicals product called Roundup. Roundup is a package deal. The farmer buys soya bean or wheat seeds from Monsanto which has altered the genes of the seed to make the emerging plant resistant to Roundup - or glyphosate as it is known in the world of chemists. Roundup is not a simple product; it contains other chemicals - catalysts - to intensify or accelerate the penetration of glyphosate, thus making it more potent.

The problem with these so-called surfactants and accelerants is that some are even more toxic than glyphosate and they are not simply more poisonous to weeds, they are more poisonous to everything, including fungi, worms, rats and human beings.

A recent article in the journal Toxicology reports that very low doses of Roundup not only disrupt human hormone function, but also kill human liver cells within 24 hours of exposure.

Fusariums turn up even in the grain produced by the Roundup-ready plants, capable of killing innocent people eating breakfast cereal, for instance.

"The toxicity of some of the formulations was independent of how much glyphosate - the active herbicide in Roundup - they contained, suggesting it is other "inert" ingredients that may alone - or in combination with each other and/or the weed-killer - assault the cells. This study's results are similar to prior studies that find human embryo cells are affected more by the Roundup formulations and an inert ingredient than by the active ingredient."

What is even more alarming is that all formulations of the weed-killer - even and perhaps especially those with reduced glyphosate levels - were potent hormone disruptors. Hormone disruptors mimic or suppress the action of human hormones producing premature puberty in young girls, for instance, or feminising boys and deforming their genitalia.

There is worse to come. Soils are composed of organic (living) and inorganic (non-living) material. Worms and fungi are among the organic components of soil; rock and sand are inorganic. In good soils these components are in balance and harmony. In vegetation killed by Roundup the normal balance of fungi is upset, penicilliums are killed while toxic fungi of the fusarium family begin to flourish.

Jamaica is 'Roundup-ready'

The fusarium family includes fungi that kill bananas, and in St Elizabeth melons of all kinds, cucumbers and others of that family. Dr Robert Kremer and other soil scientists at the University of Missouri now believe that fusarium is a natural, secondary characteristic of Roundup use. Fusariums turn up even in the grain produced by the Roundup-ready plants, capable of killing innocent people eating breakfast cereal, for instance.

This little tale of Roundup - the Great Panacea - should allow us to see that we need to be more careful in our decision making. The bean counters, the armies of MBAs, will always be Roundup-ready. Others among us realise that 30 years after the introduction of Roundup we still know very little about it or its long-term dangers. As Rachel Carson said, more than 40 years ago, we should understand that it has taken life on earth hundreds of thousands of years to adapt to most of the chemicals naturally found on earth. We are crazy to believe that - within the lifetime of any human being - we can adapt to the hundreds of thousands of new chemicals introduced annually. .... Read the whole story at the Jamaica Observer

Holidays may be issue for ethical consumerism ~ by Archie Carroll

2009-11-22T11:57:00.002-05:00

Will consumers afford themselves the luxury of buying socially responsible goods or will the economic slump force discount shopping? Will buying for "value" trump buying for "values?"

Will ethical consumerism survive the holidays? Or, will everyone be looking for the cheapest products money can buy? Will consumers afford themselves the luxury of buying socially responsible goods or will the economic slump force discount shopping? Will buying for "value" trump buying for "values?"

Ethical consumerism is the practice of consumers deliberately purchasing goods and services that are produced "responsibly" so they eliminate or reduce environmental or social harm. This practice is sometimes called socially responsible consumerism.

Although basically a small but growing market, the market for ethical products and services includes the following types of segments: ethical food and drink; eco-travel and transport; ethical personal products; and green homes. Many ethical consumers promote broad stakeholders' rights, sustainability and animal welfare.

Each day as we go into the grocery stores, we see evidence of so-called ethical products all around us. Some of the best examples include organic and fair-trade products, free-range eggs, sustainable fish, dolphin-friendly tuna, ethical pet food and all sorts of vegetarian products and meat alternatives. Everywhere you turn today, you find products promoted because of their "eco-friendly" characteristics - their ingredients, how they were made, how they were packaged, and so on.

The New York Times recently reported on a restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., that was socially conscious. The paper reported that the chicken served had previously roamed freely. The vegetables and sprouts were purchased from local farmers. They went on to say (facetiously, I think) that before the steak arrived at your table the chef would make a personal appearance to announce that the cow had been well tended.

Burgerville, a hamburger chain in Oregon and Washington, started losing sales in the '90s while trying to compete with the national chains. In response, the company decided to change its strategy and serve a "burger with a soul." Trying to combine good food with good works, Burgerville adopted the slogan "fresh, local, and sustainable." The company purchases its power from local windmills. It uses "sustainable agriculture" and in cooking it avoids trans fats. It buys its antibiotic- and hormone-free beef locally. The company seems to be prospering. One industry expert says the company's practices are costly. It garners a profit margin closer to 10 percent while McDonald's gets closer to 15 percent.

Is the world ready for a socially responsible hamburger? Today Burgerville has 39 restaurants in Oregon and Washington and plans to build more.

Even customers who do not count themselves among the active ethical consumers often pay lip service to those products and companies that strive to be socially mindful. ..... Read the whole story at The Athens Banner-Herald

France Finds Monsanto Guilty of Lying ~ by: Dr. Mercola

2009-11-21T15:55:00.001-05:00

Monsanto is a very dark cloud hanging over the future of health and food safety in the United States (and Canada). This powerful entity has already managed so many reprehensible acts it boggles the mind!

France's highest court has ruled that U.S. agrochemical giant Monsanto had not told the truth about the safety of its best-selling weed-killer, Roundup. The court confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the soil clean." Roundup is the world's best-selling herbicide.

French environmental groups had brought the case in 2001 on the basis that glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed as "dangerous for the environment" by the European Union.

In the latest ruling, France's Supreme Court upheld two earlier convictions against Monsanto by the Lyon criminal court in 2007, and the Lyon court of appeal in 2008, the AFP news agency reports.

Monsanto is a very dark cloud hanging over the future of health and food safety in the United States. This powerful entity has already managed so many reprehensible acts it boggles the mind, including:

•Leading the world into a new age of potentially hazardous genetic modification of seeds.

•Patenting not only their own GMO seeds, but also a huge number of crop seeds, patenting life forms for the first time -- without a vote of the people or Congress.

•Not allowing farmers to save their seeds to replant the next year -- a practice that has been done for generations. Instead, they aggressively seek out and sue farmers they suspect of doing so.

•Suing farmers who have not been able to prevent the inevitable drift of Monsanto’s GE pollen or seed onto their land for patent infringement!

•Producing two of the most toxic substances ever known -- polychlorinated biphenyls, known as PCBs, and dioxin (Agent Orange).

Now France's highest court has confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto falsely advertised its Roundup herbicide as "biodegradable" and said it "left the soil clean" -- claims that could not be further from the truth.

The Reality about Roundup
Monsanto long used the slogans, “It's Safer than Mowing," "Biodegradable," and “Environmentally Friendly" to describe Roundup -- until the real effects of this toxic herbicide were revealed and they were forced to discontinue their deceptive advertising.

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in RoundUp, is the most commonly reported cause of pesticide illness among landscape maintenance workers in California. Additionally:

•The surfactant ingredient in Roundup is more acutely toxic than glyphosate itself, and the combination of the two is even more toxic.

•Glyphosate is suspected of causing genetic damage.

•Glyphosate is acutely toxic to fish and birds and can kill beneficial insects and soil organisms that maintain ecological balance.

•Laboratory studies have identified adverse effects of glyphosate-containing products in all standard categories of toxicological testing.

In one animal study, rats given 1,000 mg/kg of glyphosate resulted in a 50 percent mortality rate, and skeletal alterations were observed in over 57 percent of fetuses!....... read the whole story at foodconsumer.org

Do we really need so much stuff? ~ By Marisa Belger

2009-11-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

I started by examining my relationship with the word “need.” It’s an easy and careless dynamic — the kind that starts in a dark seedy bar after one too many vodka sodas and ends the next week with a heartless text message.

I’ve moved more than 20 times in the last 10 years. That’s 20 nights spent wrapping plates and bowls in smudgy pages of newspaper, writing “FRAGILE” in block letters on the tops of boxes headed on an uncertain journey. Twenty days spent stuffing T-shirts and tights and worn-out flannel pajamas into suitcases that are always too small; more than 20 hours cursing my collection of purses and my love of shoes.

I’ve given thousands of dollars to movers and pushed the limits of friendship as childhood pals and new neighbors alike lugged armoires up narrow stairways and hoisted crates of books onto weary shoulders. I’ve carted my gear across the country twice and across the Atlantic Ocean four times. I know exactly how many blazers I own (six) and how many bundles of love letters I have from my college boyfriend — three, held tightly together with thinning rubber bands.

Continually packing and unpacking each of my personal belongings has forced me to take a clear inventory of my stuff. I own a lemon zester, 10 white tank tops and three sets of mismatched sheets. I have a DVD player, a computer and a multispeed blender. I also know that that’s quickly becoming good enough for me. After years of chasing happiness with a new dress or — even better! — a slim, shiny iPod or fancy pair of shades, retail therapy began to lose its palliative effects. When sliding on a new pair of boots clearly failed to deliver that requisite thrill, I accepted that it was time to reassess my acquisition of things. And as financial constraints continued to weigh heavy and environmental concerns became increasingly real, I found that I had more motivation than ever to think about what I buy before sliding that debit card out of my wallet.

Evaluating the need

I started by examining my relationship with the word “need.” It’s an easy and careless dynamic — the kind that starts in a dark seedy bar after one too many vodka sodas and ends the next week with a heartless text message. I realized that I had lost sight of what I really needed. When I asked myself if I really needed that pair of colorfully striped knee-high socks, the answer was a cold and unfriendly “no.” I already have five pairs of knee-high socks. When I asked myself if I needed that stylish cherry-red throw rug, it was clearly no — hardwood floors are lovely. New headphones? Nope. The old ones are fuzzy, but they still work. The latest from my favorite author? OK. But I can get it from the library.

Continually refusing to give myself what I desired was initially no fun. But I was inspired. Sure, buying less would save money and lighten the load of my next move, but that was only the beginning. By infusing consciousness into my consumption, by questioning true need — I may need milk and eggs, but I certainly don’t need a sparkly blue turtleneck — I began to seriously consider what I was gaining from the purchase of each new item, whether it was a new belt or new car. Was it comfort? Convenience? Pleasure? An improved image in the eyes of my friends and family?

From there, I thought about what would happen to the things I bought after I’d had my way with them. I pictured myself floating in a sea of beat-up coffee tables, lamps and food processors. I spent one dark evening imagining the giant hunk of plastic that is my son’s Exersaucer — a gift from grandma — sitting for decades in an overflowing landfill (I gave that Exersaucer to a friend who recently had a baby and felt instantly better). ...... read the whole story at msnbc

Farming should be taught in school ~ By Robert Barron

2009-11-18T09:24:00.001-05:00

BRAVO! to Mr. Becker - Ya gotta think that this is a much "superior concept" as opposed to having Peta in the Schools pushing their "Farm Animal Abolishionist Agenda"! ....... cowboss

Lantzville's Dirk Becker wants to see the growing of food incorporated into B.C.'s public education curriculum.

Becker, a farmer and a candidate for the Green Party in the Nanaimo riding in the last provincial election, made a presentation to the education committee in the Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district last week, suggesting that the inclusion of farming in the education system would go a long way to address a number of society's ills, including skyrocketing health costs from leading unhealthy lifestyles.

He said about one in four Canadian children will likely develop diabetes largely due to bad diets and this trend can be stopped if students are educated on how to grow their own food and make healthy eating choices.

While acknowledging that the Ministry of Education sets the province's curriculum and not school boards, board chairwoman Donna Allen said a number of schools in the district that have the space have taken the initiative of starting gardens and teaching students who are interested how to grow their own food.

"Unfortunately, we're raising a whole generation of students who grew up on Kraft dinner and Hamburger Helper and are not being taught basic life skills like the benefits around growing their own food, a skill that was once taught by parents and grandparents but seems to have gone out the window," Becker said.

"I'd like to see our schools include aspects of agriculture in their curriculums and, at the very minimum, schools should be mandated to have community gardens to teach these skills. .... read the story at Canada.com

What You Need to Know About The Beef You Eat ~ By Jo Robinson

2009-11-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

You can’t see it. And you can’t always recognize it by reading the label. But the beef in your supermarket has gone industrial.

Before factory farming took hold in the 1960s, cattle were raised on family farms or ranches around the country. The process was elemental. Young calves were born in the spring and spent their first months suckling milk and grazing on grass. When they were weaned, they were turned out onto pastures. Some cattle were given a moderate amount of grain to enhance marbling (the fat interlaced in the muscle). The calves grew to maturity at a natural pace, reaching market weight at two to three years of age. After the animals were slaughtered, the carcasses were kept cool for a couple weeks to enhance flavor and tenderness, a traditional process called dry aging. The meat was then shipped in large cuts to meat markets. The local butcher divided it into individual cuts upon request and wrapped it in white paper and string.

This meat was free of antibiotics, added hormones, feed additives, flavor enhancers, age-delaying gases and salt-water solutions. Mad cow disease and the deadliest strain of E. coli — 0157:H7 — did not exist. People dined on rare steaks and steak tartare (raw ground beef) with little fear.

What’s in Your Beef?
Today’s industrialized process brings cattle to slaughter weight in just one or two years. But it reduces the nutritional value of the meat, stresses the animals, increases the risk of bacterial contamination, pollutes the environment and exposes consumers to a long list of unwanted chemicals.

The beef contains traces of hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals that were never produced by any cow. That hamburger looks fresh, but it may be two weeks old and injected with gases to keep it cherry red. Take a closer look at that “guaranteed tender and juicy” filet of beef. The juiciness may have been “enhanced” with a concoction of water, salt, preservatives and other additives.

More ominous, the beef also may be infected with food-borne bacteria, including E. coli 0157:H7. Some experts believe this toxic E. coli evolved in cattle that were fed high-grain diets. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef products are recalled. One of the largest recalls to date took place in October 2007 when Topps Meat company recalled 21.7 million pounds of hamburger because of potential E. coli contamination. The massive recall actually put the company out of business.

And now there’s mad cow disease, a mysterious disease that is not destroyed by cooking and has been fatal. You could ingest “prions” (abnormal proteins) by eating even a well-done rib roast. These prions infiltrate your brain, perforate it with holes, and cause death in a few years’ time.

The artificial manipulation of beef begins prior to conception. Many cows are treated with synthetic hormones, such as “melengestrol acetate,” that regulate the timing of conception, allowing all the calves to be born within days of each other — a “more efficient” process. In many ranches, herd bulls have been replaced by artificial insemination, which is a fast (read: more efficient) way to improve herd genetics. The goal is consistent size, tenderness and marbling. But industry insiders predict that many ranchers will be using cloned cattle in five or 10 years. The mass-produced calves will be carbon copies of each other. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted preliminary approval of cloning in December 2006, declaring that the meat is indistinguishable from normal meat, and is as safe for human consumption. In similar circumstances, no labeling has been required...... read the whole story by Jo Robinson at Mother Earth News

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food ~ By Bryan Walsh

2009-11-16T17:36:00.000-05:00

Unless Americans "(and Canadians)" radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste.

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring communities with air pollution and a stomach-churning stench. He's fed on American corn that was grown with the help of government subsidies and millions of tons of chemical fertilizer. When the pig is slaughtered, at about 5 months of age, he'll become sausage or bacon that will sell cheap, feeding an American addiction to meat that has contributed to an obesity epidemic currently afflicting more than two-thirds of the population. And when the rains come, the excess fertilizer that coaxed so much corn from the ground will be washed into the Mississippi River and down into the Gulf of Mexico, where it will help kill fish for miles and miles around. That's the state of your bacon — circa 2009.

Horror stories about the food industry have long been with us — ever since 1906, when Upton Sinclair's landmark novel The Jungle told some ugly truths about how America produces its meat. In the century that followed, things got much better, and in some ways much worse. The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans. Those hidden prices are the creeping erosion of our fertile farmland, cages for egg-laying chickens so packed that the birds can't even raise their wings and the scary rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria among farm animals. Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous. A series of recalls involving contaminated foods this year — including an outbreak of salmonella from tainted peanuts that killed at least eight people and sickened 600 — has consumers rightly worried about the safety of their meals. A food system — from seed to 7‑Eleven — that generates cheap, filling food at the literal expense of healthier produce is also a principal cause of America's obesity epidemic. At a time when the nation is close to a civil war over health-care reform, obesity adds $147 billion a year to our doctor bills. "The way we farm now is destructive of the soil, the environment and us," says Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist with the food and environment program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Some Americans are heeding such warnings and working to transform the way the country eats — ranchers and farmers who are raising sustainable food in ways that don't bankrupt the earth. Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair's work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat. Change is also coming from the very top. First Lady Michelle Obama's White House garden has so far yielded more than 225 lb. of organic produce — and tons of powerful symbolism. But hers is still a losing battle. Despite increasing public awareness, sustainable agriculture, while the fastest-growing sector of the food industry, remains a tiny enterprise: according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), less than 1% of American cropland is farmed organically. Sustainable food is also pricier than conventional food and harder to find. And while large companies like General Mills have opened organic divisions, purists worry that the very definition of sustainability will be co-opted as a result.

But we don't have the luxury of philosophizing about food. With the exhaustion of the soil, the impact of global warming and the inevitably rising price of oil — which will affect everything from fertilizer to supermarket electricity bills — our industrial style of food production will end sooner or later. As the developing world grows richer, hundreds of millions of people will want to shift to the same calorie-heavy, protein-rich diet that has made Americans so unhealthy — demand for meat and poultry worldwide is set to rise 25% by 2015 — but the earth can no longer deliver. Unless Americans radically rethink the way they grow and consume food, they face a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs — and bland taste. Sustainable food has an élitist reputation, but each of us depends on the soil, animals and plants — and as every farmer knows, if you don't take care of your land, it can't take care of you.......... read the whole story at Time

A forest of food planned for city ~ By Doug Oster, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

2009-11-15T07:18:00.001-05:00

Two women propose to turn four empty lots in Hazelwood into area of trees, herbs, fruit-bearing shrubs.

Second Avenue in Hazelwood doesn't provide many scenic views, with its broken-down abandoned cars, boarded-up storefronts and other signs of a struggling neighborhood.

But four vacant, adjacent lots in the heart of its business district hold the promise of something better -- a soon-to-be oasis of fresh food. Now the land is covered with tall grasses, scrubby brush and milkweed plants with dried brown pods that have littered the ground with feathery white seeds.

In the center of the field is a tamped-down, cleared space revealing an unlikely sight. Juliette Jones and Michelle Czolba sit on the ground amid the tall weeds strategizing about the details of turning this place into something called a food forest.

Ms. Jones, of Hazelwood, works for REI, the outdoor-equipment store. Ms. Czolba, of Lawrenceville, works with TreeVitalize Pittsburgh, a partnership of community, municipal and nonprofit agencies that plants trees throughout the region.

Both women are using their masters' of science degrees in sustainable systems from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania to make a difference in the neighborhood.

Some of their inspiration comes from the Philadelphia Orchard Project, which since 2007 has worked with community organizations and volunteers in that city to bring orchards to vacant lots.

An Erie native, Ms. Jones learned about Hazelwood from friends who live there and moved to the neighborhood in June. She spotted the vacant lots near the intersection of Second and Hazelwood avenues and thought they would be a perfect place for a similar project.

The nearly quarter-acre site will use new techniques to provide fresh food and green space for the community, using a technique called permaculture, or permanent agriculture.

"It's trying to replicate some of the systems that nature uses to grow food," Ms. Jones said.

Unlike a community garden in which annual vegetables are grown, the food forest will be planted in zones -- one with trees, then smaller perennial fruit-bearing shrubs, hardy ground-hugging herbs and other plants that continue to bloom and produce each year.

The women are considering many plants for the forest, including strawberries, asparagus, rhubarb, fruit trees and smaller bushes bearing such fruits as blueberries and raspberries. One thing they will grow for sure: Hazelnut trees, the neighborhood's namesake tree. The soil is being tested now to prepare for early spring planting.

Ms. Jones and Ms. Czolba also are forming a license agreement with the Urban Redevelopment Authority, which owns the lots. They have obtained an $8,000 grant from the Sprout Fund for plants and other expenses.

The site will include an area for workshops that are already being planned for spring. Ms. Czolba wants to teach residents how to replicate what will be growing in the food forest in their own gardens.

They are connecting with churches, residents and community leaders to help with the project and are looking for volunteers to work on the site and maintain it for the future.

Self-described urban farming advocate Jim McCue, a longtime resident of Hazelwood, said he has watched as his neighborhood has lost important basic resources, such as a grocery store. He doesn't like it.

"We want walkable communities. You don't want a school, library or a grocery store that you have to get into a vehicle to get to," he said.

As a crusader for local food, he has helped create gardens and a farm stand in Hazelwood, and he dreams of building a greenhouse across from the vacant lots. Mr. McCue believes that turning to green strategies and fresh food will help resurrect Hazelwood. ..... read the whole story at The Post Gazette

Forget Paving Paradise, Let's Just Dig a Giant Hole In It

2009-11-14T21:36:00.001-05:00

We need the earth pretty badly, but the earth doesn't really need people. We'd better get our priorities straight."

The farmland of Dufferin County looks exactly the way you'd imagine: softly rolling hillsides, the landscape dotted with old clapboard barns and quaint country houses, wooden fences neatly marking off the lots. Nestled in this terrain, about an hour and half northwest of Toronto, is the township of Melancthon (population 2,895), small communities that have been agricultural centres for many generations-worth of farmers. The soil in this region—Honeywood silt loam—is said by local farmers to be unique in southern Ontario, and is particularly, ideally well-suited for growing potatoes.

This soil, which both holds water very well and drains very well, happens to sit on top of another valuable commodity—limestone. Under the farmland of Melancthon is a rich deposit of Amabel dolomitic limestone, which is prized for its strength and durability. Limestone is what's called an aggregate resource; according to Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR), aggregate resources "include any combination of sand, gravel, or crushed stone in a natural or processed state. Aggregates are used in the construction of highways, dams, and airports, as well as residential, industrial and institutional buildings." The limestone in Melancthon is, by all accounts, both plentiful and of excellent quality, and would be in high demand if brought to market.

Since 2006 a corporate entity called The Highland Companies, which describes itself as "the operating and investment vehicle for a group of private investors based in Canada and the United States," has been buying up parcels of land in Melancthon, purchasing it from local farmers and putting together a consolidated potato farming operation. The company's intentions, however, are more complicated. Sometime in the next few months The Highland Companies will be filing an application to open a 2,400 acre limestone quarry in Melancthon, hoping to turn a significant portion of its farmland (it owns approximately 7,500 acres in Melancthon) over to aggregate extraction.

Carl Cosack ambles over to greet us as we pull up to his cattle ranch. A sturdy, genial, no-nonsense cowboy, Cosack, along with many other local residents, is deeply opposed to the proposed quarry. Worried residents have come together to form the North Dufferin Agricultural and Community Taskforce (NDACT), to try to combat Highland's plans. The concerns are many, ranging from the process by which Highland is pursuing its goals (there have been accusations of bullying local farmers and overwhelming a small, unsophisticated Township Council), to the destruction of prime agricultural land, to permanent damage to the local water supply which will significantly affect not just Highland-owned properties but the entire area surrounding the quarry site. Over coffee, Cosack spends an hour detailing Highland's increasing presence in Melancthon; as our conversation winds down, we ask Cosack what effects the proposed quarry might have on his community:

[In] these small municipalities, we know every kid in town, and you build these communities that have local jobs and local residents there, to support your volunteer fire department, to support your arena, to take the kids to hockey... This sort of stuff, that has generally defined us—people living in an area, sharing reasonable values, knowing how to get along, meeting at church, when you go to the coffee shop in Shelburne and four different people say "Hey, how are you doing? How are your horses?"... People know you, and you know people. This is what defines community—that when you go to commencement night and sixty kids graduate there are three hundred adults there. Where did they all come from? Because they care. Half of them don't have their own kids in the graduating class, but they watched them grow, they watched them play hockey with their own sons, and then they go to commencement night to cheer them on. That's community. And that will be no longer

........ read the whole story at the Torontoist

Great butter in the raw ~ by HUGO ARNOLD

2009-11-14T20:11:00.001-05:00

Raw milk cheeses and butter are a world away from the everyday. They are full-blooded examples of a taste sensation we have been too willing to give away.

THE PACKAGING IS distinctly understated, but boy does it feel good. Old-fashioned, lightly waxed paper, a drawing of somebody sitting astride a stool, milking a cow. Beurre Cru à la Baratte Bois Moulé à la Main written in pale red. What’s this? Raw butter? No pasteurisation? Okay, so at €3.50 per 125g it’s not cheap, but boy does it taste good.

We think of pasteurisation as being a good thing, something that is done to milk to kill any pathogens that might be present. Yet there are many who consider raw milk cheese – that is cheese made from milk that is not pasteurised – to be vastly superior in its ability to deliver, in the right circumstances, a distinctly superior flavour. So, too, it can be with butter (and cream for that matter).

Barratte butter is heavy with herbal notes, hay and sunshine. It is sweet – dairy sweet. Elegant, with depth and attitude. An altogether different experience to any butter I have eaten before. Well, that is not quite true.My grandmother made butter for us in Sligo, from raw milk, and she was not alone. Raw butter is part of our farming tradition. We just don’t do it any more. Or at least very few do. As long as you conform to the regulations, there is nothing to stop a small producer selling raw milk butter, as long as it is labelled accordingly.

Pasteurisation is a form of heat treatment. You might call it zapping, as the idea is to heat the food for a short time. The potted history lesson is high with cases of TB linked to milk and the subsequent discovery by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard (Claude tends to get left out of the lesson) in 1864 that if you heat-treated milk to 71.7 degrees for 15-20 seconds it killed off most of the dangerous pathogens.

Unlike sterilisation, which kills off all pathogenic micro-organisms, pasteurisation is designed to reduce the number of viable pathogens, so they are unlikely to cause disease (and we are talking about the likes of diphtheria, scarlet fever and typhoid here, so no messing about). Total zapping ruins the taste of the milk (think of UHT), and so pasteurisation is a middle ground.

The trouble is that the use of pasteurisation is more widespread than you might think. Wine, beer, fruit juice and maple syrup, for example, can be pasteurised. The majority of ready-meals are pasteurised, as is crab. Think of those nifty packets of picked crabmeat that are so easy to use but, strangely, taste of nothing. Pasteurisation kills flavour – often very subtle flavour, but nonetheless flavour. And why is this done? Not for safety, but because it extends shelf life. A final zap so things are easier for the producer and retailer, but we consumers get something significantly diminished in terms of taste satisfaction...... read the whole story at The Irish Times

Welcome to the clone farm: Do you know what you're eating? ~ By Karl Plume, Reuters

2009-11-14T07:16:00.000-05:00

Most consumers are already consuming meat and byproducts of cloned animals or from offspring of clones — and they don't know it.

"If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror." ~ John Young, former Apollo astronaut

To the untrained eye, Pollard Farms looks much like any other cattle ranch. Similar looking cows are huddled in similar looking pens. But some of the cattle here don't just resemble each other. They are literally identical -- clear down to their genes.

Of the 400-some cattle in Barry Pollard's herd of mostly Black Angus cattle there are 22 clones, genetic copies of some of the most productive livestock the world has ever known.

Pollard, a neurosurgeon and owner of Pollard Farms, says such breeding technology is at the forefront of a new era in animal agriculture. "We're trying to stay on the very top of the heap of quality, genetically, with animals that will gain well and fatten well, produce well and reproduce well," Pollard told a reporter during a recent visit to his farm.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008 approved the sale of food from clones and their offspring, saying the products are indistinguishable from that of their non-clone counterparts. Japan, the European Union, and others have followed suit.

The moves have stirred controversy about whether tinkering with nature is safe, or even ethical, prompting major food companies to swear off food products from cloned animals. But consumers are likely already eating meat and drinking milk from the offspring of clones — which are technically not clones — without even knowing it.

Farmers can now use cloning and other assisted breeding technologies to breed cows that produce bigger, better steaks or massive amounts of milk, and animals that resist diseases or reproduce with clockwork precision. Premier genes can translate to improved feeding efficiency, meaning the ability to convert the least amount of feed into the most meat or milk, which results in a smaller environmental footprint.

"If you don't need as much corn to feed your cattle, you might be able to cut back on the amount of fertilizer put out there on the countryside that might end up in a river. You can cut the amount of diesel that's spent raising that corn," Pollard said. "Just like they improve the genetics of corn, so they can produce more bushels per acre, we're trying to do that same type of thing by using cloning and superior genetics to produce more meat with less input."

Rising food demand

The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has said food production will need to double by mid-century to meet demand from a growing world population, with 70 percent of that growth coming from efficiency-improving technologies. Such forecasts have prompted calls for a second Green Revolution, a rethinking of the movement championed by Norman Borlaug, who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in boosting grain production for starving nations.

Biotechnological advances in grain production will remain at the forefront of the global fight to alleviate hunger, although animal agriculture will likely contribute in the longer term.

"When people talk about feeding the world, reducing or eliminating hunger, I don't think animal agriculture has much of a role to play. But, as people successfully move out of that extreme poverty, that's when you get the growth in demand for animal protein and potentially cloning could have positive benefits," said Robert Thomson, professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois.

Some animal breeds, ideally suited for arid climates, could be propagated to utilize grazing pastures unsuitable for crop production. Others may be bred to resist local maladies, like the Nguni cattle breed, which can develop resistance to ticks and immunity to tick-borne diseases.

Meanwhile, a growing and more affluent population in the developing world is seen boosting demand for meat and dairy products. Meat consumption in developing countries more than doubled from about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) per person per year in the 1960s to around 26 kg near the turn of the century, according to the FAO. By 2030, that was expected to rise to 37 kg per person. Milk and dairy product consumption has made similarly rapid growth...... read the whole story at Mother Nature Network

PETA: Pseudo, execrable, two-faced ‘activism’ ~ Katie Drummond

2009-11-13T17:20:00.001-05:00

For the record, PETA, not all vegans are thin. Nor are they all sexy. And – shock! – some of them are actually sexy despite their beer belly.

Oh PETA, how I dislike you. I admit, it was the photos on your website, circa 1998, that first drew me towards veganism and the idea of animal rights. And yes, I was once a card-carrying member of your organization, receiving your newsletters, free stickers and annual pleas for donations. But PETA, I’ve long moved away from your bizarre, self-serving muddle of sexism, deceit and pseudo-activism, and I hope that your other affiliates do the same.

You are extreme – yes. Sadly for you, and even more sad for the human and non-human animals you get your hands on, that’s not a good thing. Here are five reasons for my loathing, though I’m sure there are many, many more.

1.Your sensationalism is sexist, tacky and counterproductive.

By now, most reasonable PETA-watchers can agree that the organization’s bikini-clad demonstrations or Pamela Anderson promotional videos or full-frontal nudity tactics are all guilty of using sex where sex ought not to be used. The objectification of women raises eyebrows, but it doesn’t raise questions about the treatment of animals: seeing women as meat will not stop the consumption of meat.

Case in point: since the launch of PETA’s nudie-fest “I’d rather go naked than wear fur” campaign in the early 1990s, the fur industry has seen a resurgence in popularity and a younger demographic of purchasers. Congratulations, PETA, on wasting millions of dollars on campaigns that offered up little more than offensive, cliched eye candy.

2. Freezers filled with dead animals kinda negates the idea of animal advocacy.

I was surprised when I found out that PETA voluntarily euthanizes domesticated animals. I was disgusted when I learned that of the 2,200 animals they sheltered last year, only seven were given new homes. The rest? Killed and disposed of, according to PETA’s own “Animal Record” filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Granted, not every animal is healthy enough to adopt – but a 0.32 percent success rate is deplorable.

Even Virginia’s non-profit SPCA can adopt out 70 percent of their animals, so with a $32 million dollar annual budget, you’d think PETA might spend a little more on animal adoption and a little less on bikini-clad models. Then again, why fund animal adoption when there are so many dumpsters waiting to be filled with dead puppies, right?

3. Owning stocks in Dominoes Pizza is a problem.

When the stock market plummeted last year, PETA went on a little spending spree, buying up shares in Dominoes Pizza, Sonic Burgers and several other meat-loving enterprises. According to the organization, the intention is to create a voice for animals at shareholder meetings. Really? Because without actually changing how those shareholders – or consumers – think about animal treatment, that voice will be drowned out pretty quickly. All while the share price of the very companies you protest actually goes up courtesy of your savvy investment.

Among the companies that have benefited from PETA dollars, while continuing to serve up bacon cheeseburgers and shill wool and leather: Denny’s, Target, Tyson’s Meat, Costco, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger’s, Talbots, Hormel and Cracker Barrel.

On a related note, PETA’s website offers tips for members who want to be sure their investments are animal friendly:

“Cruelty-free investing” is investing in companies, mutual funds, bonds, and other investment vehicles that do not support, cause, or contribute to animal exploitation and suffering, including the destruction of natural habitats.

4. You’re in bed with KFC.

Last year, PETA members nearly wet their pants with excitement over KFC’s agreement to abolish battery cages and replace them with “controlled-atmosphere killing” instead. Then they stampeded en masse to the nearest location of the fast-food chain, to pick up a new “faux chicken” sandwich, currently available in 65 percent of Canadian KFC locations.

Now that they’re using a bit of faux meat, KFC must have decided to throw some extra chicken onto another new menu offering: the Double Down all-meat-all-the-fucking-time extravaganza. And it’s worked: since 2007, Yum! Brand, which owns KFC, has seen a 13 percent increase in share price....... read the whole story at Trueslant.com

Pets vs. livestock: Cracking open the myths about backyard chickens ~ By Charlotte

2009-11-12T18:12:00.000-05:00

What, praytell, are all these people who have chickens running around in their house doing about the shit? Do they have servants to follow the chickens around? Please tell me they’re not outfitting them with chicken diapers?

Last spring I decided that this was the year I was going to finally get some chickens. On a snowy Saturday in March I brought home six tiny cheepers that I bought at my local ranch store in Livingston, Montana. Two of them died right off, which didn’t entirely surprise me: those fluffballs didn’t look like they’d really committed to life on the planet. My carpenter boyfriend recycled a big packing crate into a nice tight coop, and we put up a fence. Long story short, the fencing was inadequate and just as they got to laying age, two of my hens were dispatched by the bird dog. Sigh. I was down to one rooster and one hen.

So I made a deal with my milk-and-egg rancher — she took my rooster in exchange for a broody hen, and I bought five professional laying hens off of her. And the boyfriend added a frame upon which I stapled wire fencing (with some recycled twig fencing for shade), then draped the whole thing in bird netting. Voilà — a chicken coop in the backyard.

However, I must admit, there’s a part of me that feels a little queasy about having become part of a trend. I’m not really a trend person. I’d always wanted chickens, but mostly for the same economic-anxiety issues like the ones described in this article. I had a pretty strong hunch that my corporate job was coming to an end, and I figured with a big veggie garden and a bunch of hens, at least I wouldn’t starve to death. But I have to say, I was sort of wigged out by trend articles like this one about artist Hope Sandrow and this other one about the children’s book author, Jann Brett, in which the chickens are described as something between pets and circus freaks.

People! These are chickens! Don’t you know they will shit on everything? And you let them in your house? On your shoulder? In your car? Yuck.

So, my dirty little secret is out. I don’t love my chickens. I haven’t named them, not even the little brown one who is the only survivor from that group of six I brought home in the spring. I wasn’t particularly sentimental about the two the dog killed, although I was quite annoyed with the dog: he’d offed them just as they’d started producing eggs. To me, they all seem pretty interchangeable. They lay enormous brown eggs, with yolks that stand up and are a bright bright marigold color. They are making me very fine compost.

But they are not pets. They’re livestock. Yes, I distinguish between the two. Perhaps it’s growing up on farms, and around people who breed animals for a living, but I do think there are degrees of separation. Call me a species-ist if you want, but I don’t love them, I haven’t named them, and I do not want them in my house.

I have pets. Two spoiled bird dogs who are allowed on all the furniture and upon whom I have lavished much affection and thousands of dollars of veterinary care. The chickens are not pets. They live in a coop out back, and granted, they’re sort of adorable sometimes when they all chase me across the yard in the morning — I’m not taking it as a sign of affection, they know they’ll get kitchen scraps and scratch grains if they return to the coop when their free-range recess is over. But I just don’t get the sentimental attachment that so many people seem to feel for their chickens. What, praytell, are all these people who have chickens running around in their house doing about the shit? Do they have servants to follow the chickens around? Please tell me they’re not outfitting them with chicken diapers?

To each his own, I suppose. If you want your chickens to be pets, then who am I to judge? You want to diaper your chickens… well, people do all sorts of odd things. But don’t go all cranky with me because I think there are livestock animals, which live outside, in barns or coops or sties or whatever, and won’t be bringing mine inside..... read the whole story at the Ethicurean

The fight over the future of food ~ by Claudia Parsons, Russell Blinch and Svetlana Kovalyova

2009-11-10T20:02:00.000-05:00

“To leap to the GM model at this stage, just seems like it's ignoring a lot of the things that make sense locally, that people can do locally without it,”

At first glance, Giuseppe Oglio's farm near Milan looks like it's suffering from neglect. Weeds run rampant amid the rice fields and clover grows unchecked around his millet crop.

Mr. Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques – chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery – in favour of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

Nearly 8,000 km away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Mo., hundreds of scientists at the world's biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.

Monsanto, a leader in agricultural biotechnology, spends about $2 million a day on scientific research that aims to improve on Mother Nature, and is positioning itself as a key player in the fight against hunger.

The Italian farmer and the U.S. multinational represent the two extremes in an increasingly acrimonious debate over the future of food.

Everybody wants to end hunger, but just how to do so is a divisive question that pits environmentalists against antipoverty campaigners, big business against consumers and rich countries against poor.

The food fight takes place at a time when experts on both sides agree on one thing – the number of empty bellies around the world will only grow unless there is major intervention now.

A combination of the food crisis and the global economic downturn has catapulted the number of hungry people in the world to more than one billion. The United Nations says world food output must grow by 70 per cent over the next four decades to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people by 2050.

International leaders are gathering in Rome next week for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization's World Summit on Food Security and will hear competing arguments over how best to tackle the problem. One of the fiercest disputes will be over the relative importance of science versus social and economic reforms to empower small farmers to grow more with existing technology.

Much of Europe has moved away from an agricultural system of small farms to mass commercial farming, but Italy still retains a base of family farmers who produce everything from olives to mozzarella cheese.

Mr. Oglio is one of them. A charismatic 40-year-old, he dropped out of an agricultural school after growing disillusioned with the farming methods being taught there. Today, he lets nature run its course as he grows cereals and legumes on his small family farm in Belcreda di Gambolo, about 20 miles (30 km) southwest of Milan.

He does not use any chemical, or even natural fertilizers or pesticides. He does not weed his fields. “All you need to do is observe nature, listen to it, do what nature suggests and it will take care of everything,” he said.

His fields, in a low-lying plain that has a long history of growing rice used for risotto, replicate patterns found in nature. For example, clover and millet grow together, feeding each other with necessary minerals.

Mr. Oglio said his farm is eco-sustainable. He has slashed operating costs by eliminating expensive commercial products like herbicides and by reducing the use of agricultural machinery to a minimum. Such cheap and low-maintenance farming could be adopted in Africa and other regions hit by poverty and hunger, he said.

“Natural farming will not save the world. But it can feed poor families,” he said. Read the whole story at The Globe and Mail - Yes it is well worth your time!

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain ~ By Natalie Angier

2009-11-09T20:15:00.001-05:00

Pork is among the world’s most popular meats; in many places, pigs are a valuable form of currency. “In parts of New Guinea, they’re so important to villages that they’re suckled by people,”

We’ve all heard the story of the third Little Pig, who foiled the hyperventilating wolf by building his house out of bricks, rather than with straw or sticks as his brothers had done. Less commonly known is that the pig later improved his home’s safety profile by installing convex security mirrors at key points along the driveway.

Well, why not? In the current issue of Animal Behaviour, researchers present evidence that domestic pigs can quickly learn how mirrors work and will use their understanding of reflected images to scope out their surroundings and find their food. The researchers cannot yet say whether the animals realize that the eyes in the mirror are their own, or whether pigs might rank with apes, dolphins and other species that have passed the famed “mirror self-recognition test” thought to be a marker of self-awareness and advanced intelligence.

To which I say, big squeal. Why should the pigs waste precious mirror time inspecting their teeth or straightening the hairs on their chinny-chin-chins, when they could be using the mirror as a tool to find a far prettier sight, the pig heaven that comes in a bowl?

The finding is just one in a series of recent discoveries from the nascent study of pig cognition. Other researchers have found that pigs are brilliant at remembering where food stores are cached and how big each stash is relative to the rest. They’ve shown that Pig A can almost instantly learn to follow Pig B when the second pig shows signs of knowing where good food is stored, and that Pig B will try to deceive the pursuing pig and throw it off the trail so that Pig B can hog its food in peace.

They’ve found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus’s worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more. For better or worse, pigs are also slow to forget. “They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,” said Suzanne Held of the University of Bristol. “They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.”

Researchers have also found that no matter what new detail they unearth about pig acumen, the public reaction is the same. “People say, ‘Oh yes, pigs really are rather clever, aren’t they?’ ” .... read the whole story at The New York Times

Struggling to Buy Local and Resist Factory Farming ~ By Michael Pearlman

2009-11-08T20:34:00.000-05:00

“Industrialized food is killing us. We’ve never had such a food safety problem as we have now.

On Saturday, I attended the annual meeting of the Powder River Basin Resource Council, a conservation and watchdog organization based here in Sheridan. The lunch speaker was Mike Callicrate, an energetic rancher and businessman who’s been an outspoken critic of big agribusiness and factory farming. Callicrate owns Ranch Foods Direct, a Colorado Springs, Colorado meat company that sells his all-natural meats directly to consumers, a feat he can accomplish because he also owns his own processing facility.

Callicrate didn’t mince words when speaking about the current state of the food industry, echoing the observations and criticisms made in the recent documentary Food Inc. Callicrate stated that big agribusiness manipulates the food industry, taking a bigger share of the profits while producers watch their share grow smaller and smaller.

“There are no rules in place and nothing to protect the independent producer,” Callicrate said. “Industrialized food is killing us. We’ve never had such a food safety problem as we have now. The question is, ‘How do you rebuild the infrastructure of a food system once it’s destroyed?’ That’s where we are right now.”

He went on to skewer everyone from Walmart to Archer Daniels Midland to Agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack and the USDA, which overseas meatpacking plants. Callicrate has a vision of a new future for independent ranchers, one where they collectively get together and are given an opportunity to sell their products directly to the consumer, to avoid being controlled by big agribusiness and can collect a higher percentage of what they spend raising cattle.

Callicrate’s talk is only the latest in a barrage of recent reminders of how awful the condition of our industrialized food system is these days. The New York Times recently attempted to follow the trail of a case of e-coli and revealed that the hamburger that led to a young girl’s paralysis was virtually untraceable. This was due to the mixing of sources of “slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin.” There’s no shortage of information available that will tell any interested consumer how bad things are, and some suggestions of how to not play the game. But we all know that it’s much easier to shake our heads, rue the way things are and say to ourselves there’s no good alternative.

This is where I find myself right now. I’m doing my best not to bury my head in the sand, but there’s often a disconnect between what my stomach wants and what I know is good for my body and good for the earth. I’m a proud omnivore who loves a good steak once in a while, hits the drive through sporadically and has no intention of becoming a vegetarian. Of course I’d rather buy locally and support producers directly and I’d like nothing better than to be a conscientious meat eater. The challenge comes when I look at my choices and the accompanying costs. ..... read more at The New West

Comedian reveals unsavoury truth of food production - Virtual cheese, imperishable lamb and almost-beef burgers: TV show's stomach-churning revelations

2009-11-07T21:47:00.000-05:00

'I don't believe what these food companies are getting away with. It's ridiculous'."

With his gangly frame and thick-rimmed spectacles, Alex Riley makes an unlikely assassin. Unfortunately for Britain's £182bn-a-year food and drink industry, his wisecracks about its unsavoury practices in a new BBC TV series are little short of deadly.

In Britain's Really Disgusting Foods, the dry-witted comedian and TV presenter checks out the nutritional content of low-budget meat, interrogates the sourcing of endangered creatures and generally gets in the face of food manufacturers purveying products of dubious environmental and nutritional quality.

Like Morgan Spurlock – the Super Size Me documentary-maker who humbled McDonald's by eating its food – Mr Riley asks awkward questions about what is served up to the public by grocery chains and catering outlets keen to provide products for customers "at a certain price point".

Unlike Mr Spurlock, he engineers products himself in a makeshift laboratory to expose the legal production and labelling tricks used by the food business. In the first show, he demonstrates how it was possible to make a legally saleable chicken kiev with 10 per cent chicken meat and a large amount of breadcrumbs, skin and other animal by-products and, with the help of an industry expert, raised the amount of "meat" on the label to 17 per cent.

He also discovered the secret of a microwaveable lamb shank that lasts for 12 months out of the fridge being sold by a cash-and-carry outlet promoted by Gordon Ramsay. The foul-mouthed chef, who in an episode of Kitchen Nightmares described the meal as "shit in a bag", later explained he no longer endorsed the company.

In a show on dairy products, to be screened tomorrow, Mr Riley looks at the use of hydrogenated fat by a grocery chain and the supermarkets' sale of "singles", which look like processed cheese slices, and are sold in the cheese aisle but contain as little as 6 per cent cheese.

He also tackles the issue of unsustainable palm oil destroying forests. After he arrived at Mars UK HQ with five "orang-utans" and a tanker of "sustainable" palm oil, the chocolate-maker announced it would move to a certified supply by 2015.

In a third show which tackles the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and Nobu restaurants' sale of bluefin tuna, Mr Riley offers to buy Japan's whale meat reserves.

BBC executives commissioned Britain's Really Disgusting Food after the success of an hour-long pilot in 2008 in which the Sheffield-born comic made his own low-budget pie containing a mix of cheap meat, fat, gristle and connective tissue.

By exploiting labelling regulations, Mr Riley's Pies carried a picture of his cloth-capped father, tractors and cows to suggest a wholesome rural image and were blazoned with the words "traditional", "GM-free" and, on account of coming from Reading, "Made in Royal Berkshire". ....... read the whole story at the Independent

Farm and Food: Only the land lasts forever ~ By ALAN GUEBERT

2009-11-07T19:51:00.001-05:00

The latter wasn't just missing a house; it was missing an entire farm-fences, barns, bins, cats, everything. All that remained were gravestones of corn and soybeans and they said nothing.

The final Saturday in October swept me three hours south for lunch with my parents and my nearly-new grandniece and, later that Halloween afternoon, backward about 40 years for visits with some ghosts on the farm of my youth.

It began as an afternoon drive from my parents' home in town to the Bottoms, that black gumbo-and-sand plain mostly on the Illinois side of the Mississippi just south of St. Louis. But a peek-a-boo sun pulled me down the limestone bluffs and into the past.

Like most times, the slow descent raised the haunting voices of the Native Americans, French colonists, British soldiers and American revolutionaries who, over the centuries, laid claim to that land. Upon first seeing it, I reckoned, all must have reveled in their incredible fortune.

This place, I heard them whisper solemnly, is a place of possibilities.

At the base of the bluff I zigged, then zagged through the decaying little village of Modoc. When I was a kid, Modoc had 54 residents and possibilities. It also had two taverns, one general store, a blacksmith shop, a post office, a gas station and the home of the county sheriff (conveniently next door to the tavern he once owned). As such, the little burg fairly hopped.

Few things, and even fewer of its residents, hop there today. One tavern remains because, it seems, Modoc without a tavern would be like Rome without a church.

I followed the bluff south past old neighbors' farms but soon had to slow to get my bearings. I was on the right road yet many of its landmarks had vanished and the ones that still stood were unrecognizable.

The green house that had anchored the Behnken farm was gone. Another mile brought another missing farmhouse. Then another.

The latter wasn't just missing a house; it was missing an entire farm-fences, barns, bins, cats, everything. All that remained were gravestones of corn and soybeans and they said nothing.

The slow passage to my home farm-which was sold, what, 10 years ago already?-did bring warm, familiar voices.

Someone unloading a semi-trailer of corn on the home place brought the sound of my father warning me to stay clear of the tractor power takeoff that drove an auger moving corn to the top of the biggest, tallest bin, all 5,000 bushels of it, in the Bottoms. ..... read the whole story at the Journal Star.

Eat your way to happiness -- Feeling low? Banish the blues with mood-enhancing foods that will give you a lift – and keep you healthy ~ by Amanda Ursell

2009-11-06T17:35:00.000-05:00

Bananas are an excellent source of starchy carbohydrate, which encourages production of the “happy hormone” serotonin.

It’s the season of mists, mellow fruitfulness — and comfort food. But try to resist — or, at least, don’t go for the traditional, stodgy, fat-laden offerings. Research published last week in the British Journal of Psychiatry (BJP) showed that people who ate a Mediterranean-style diet (fruit, vegetables, pulses, cereals and olive oil) were 30 per cent less likely to get depressed than those whose diet was laden with processed and high-fat foods. And since the No 1 rule for keeping your mood on an even keel is to eat regularly during the day, you can take comfort from the fact that the research doesn’t advocate starving yourself.

Just the simple task of eating the right breakfast after a night’s fast will boost not only mood, but also memory, learning power and concentration, probably by increasing production of the nerve transmitter acetylcholine. The key is to stay off fast-release carbohydrates such as croissants with jam, cereal bars, muffins, sugary cereals and sweet drinks. These are digested rapidly, giving your blood glucose an exaggerated spike, which is swiftly followed by a low.

Instead, opt for slow-release glucose found in foods such as sugar-free muesli with berries, porridge or sourdough toast with peanut butter — choices that are more likely to keep moods level by delivering a stable and steady flow of energy to the brain and by keeping you feeling full for the morning ahead.

At lunchtime, concentrate more on protein. This seems to make us feel more mentally alert, and serotonin, the neurotransmitter in our brains that makes us feel happy, is made from tryptophan, an amino acid found in protein-rich foods such as fish and meat. Try a good-sized serving of lean chicken, turkey, fish or pulses with salad or vegetables, rather than your usual sandwich, to avoid that afternoon slump. Fish is particularly good since it contains gamma amino-butyric acid (GABA), which provides mood-elevating effects by blocking anxiety and stress (mackerel has particularly high levels). Sprinkle toasted sesame seeds on your salad and you’ll put an extra spring in your step; these are one of the best sources of the essential amino acid threonine, low levels of which are associated with depression.

Snack on them too, when the inevitable mid-afternoon dip occurs. Try also to have plenty of beautiful, colourful fruits around — a bowl of satsumas on your desk, perhaps. Psychologists believe that merely looking at the bright reds, oranges and yellows of apples, strawberries and bananas can make us feel happier...... read the whole story at the Times

What's really in that burger? E.coli and chicken feces both allowed by USDA

2009-11-06T07:30:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, People were saying things like, "Stop making things up and scaring people!" Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed. ..........cowboss

(NaturalNews) There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what's actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.

This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it's often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.

But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.

Chicken poop in your burgers?

I remember writing about this two years ago. People sent accusatory hate mails to NaturalNews, saying things like, "Stop making things up and scaring people!" Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed.

According to the FDA, farmers feed their cattle anywhere from 1 million to 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species crap-as-food practice worries critics who are concerned it may lead to increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating beef products. So they want to ban the practice and disallow the feeding of chicken litter to cows.

Believe it or not, McDonald's has joined the fight seeking to ban the practice, saying "We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle." Apparently, even they don't want their customers looking at a Big Mac and thinking, "Wow, this is made out of second-hand chicken crap."

CSPI and the Consumers Union have also joined the fight, petitioning the FDA to ban the practice.

Now, you might wonder how chicken feces could pose a mad cow infection risk to cows. And if you're not already grossed out by what you've read so far, you will be when you read the answer to this question: It's because chickens are fed ground up parts of other animals such as cows, sheep and other animals. Some of that chicken feed spills out and gets swept up as chicken litter, then fed to cows.

So now we have a bizarre experiment in animal feed where dead cows, sheep and other animals are fed to chickens, and then chicken feed spills onto the floor where, combined with chicken poop, it gets swept up and fed to cows. Some of those cows, in turn, may eventually be ground up and fed back to the chickens.

Do you see how this might be a problem?

Do not feed animals to each other

First off, in the real world cows are vegetarians. They don't eat other cows, or chickens, or poop from any creature. Chickens don't eat cows in the real world, either. If given free range, they live primarily on a diet of bugs and weeds.

But through the magic of horrific factory food production practices in the USA, dead cows are fed to chickens, and chicken poop is fed to cows. This is precisely how mad cow disease could contaminate this unnatural food cycle and end up contaminating U.S. cattle with mad cow prions..... Read the whole story at Natural News

Pigs and sustainability ~ By MEG MOTT

2009-11-05T17:46:00.001-05:00

The key difference between sustainable agriculture and factory farming is captured in the nature of the relationship between owner and pig.

"So, who can explain what sustainability is?" asked Bob Works of Peaked Mountain Farm.

"Being careful with resources," said one young woman from Massachusetts.

"Sure, that’s part of it, what else?" prodded Bob.

"Leaving something for future generations," suggested a quiet student from New Jersey.

"Okay, that’s good, what else?"

A few other students offered possible definitions. "Staying a manageable size, not getting too big."

It was the last day of a one-week localvore orientation program and the students were all tired. Finally Bob cut to the chase.

"On our farm we became sustainable once we got pigs."

The students suddenly became interested. Why should pigs make a farm, famous for its sheep cheese, sustainable? Wasn’t it enough that Bob and Ann raised their sheep on organic pasture and kept their operation small? Why should pigs tip the farm over into sustainability?

Bob, who was a teacher long before he became a sheep farmer, was ready with answers. First, he explained, they take care of the Whey Disposal Problem. Whey is the cloudy liquid left over once the milk has been turned into cheese. Rich in protein and bacteria, it can’t be poured down the drain unless you want to give your septic system a case of indigestion. You can pour it on the garden, if you’re suffering a drought, but it might be more liquid than a bed can absorb. But you can always give whey to pigs.

In orderto prove it, Bob carried a bucket down to the pigpen and we watched three Tamworths snort themselves into a state of piggy ecstasy.

The second thing pigs do, said Bob, is to push back the forest. We could see traces of the pigs’ orbit around the pasture. Where the pigs had most recently been penned, the ground was torn up and the bracken destroyed. Pigs root up saplings and brush in their search for fat grubs. They snarf up roots and drool over musty things. With all that rooting and drooling, the forest gives way to more pasture, which means more grass for the sheep to eat and more rich milk in the pails. Richer milk produces finer cheese for the cheese-maker and more whey for the pigs.

The third thing pigs do is provide a lovely addition to the cheese platter. Bob sells a succulent prosciutto along with his Ewe Jersey cheese. Once the three pigs have completed their circuit of the pasture, Bob takes them out swiftly in the middle of a frothy, snorty meal. "We give them the best life we can," explains Bob scratching one behind the ears. "It’s only fair since they give us the best they have."

Pigs aren’t just another product of a diversified farm. Pigs improve pasture, turn refuse into a resource, and provide another line of revenue. Farmers need pigs in the same way that professors at large research universities need graduate students: they make it possible to run a more effective operation. Would that graduate students were so well loved!

The relationship between the cheese-maker and his pig is of a very different nature, say, than the pig in an industrialized food lot. Indeed, one could argue that the nature of relationship changes the very notion of property itself. The pig in a feedlot is an abstraction, an unnamed organism that meets its death when its BMI fits market conditions.

The corporate owner of the pig doesn’t know any of the details of the life of this pig, nor do the conditions allow the pig to make a contribution to the running of the factory farm. The pig is a commodity and nothing more. It isn’t a pasture-builder, or a whey disposer, it’s just a unit of breathing flesh on its way to becoming a piece of meat.

But, you say, both the factory farmer and the small-scale farmer eventually kill and eat the pig. Doesn’t that put them both in the category of tyrannical property owner? Sure, the pig may have a happier time on a hill in Townshend than in a feedlot in Kansas but how does that difference undermine the very notion of property?

The key difference between sustainable agriculture and factory farming is captured in the nature of the relationship between owner and pig. The fact that Bob works with his pigs means that, at the end of the season, he’ll know who was felled at the feeding trough. Unlike the factory farmer, he will be affected by their passing, not in a sentimental way, but because their skilled labor is now lost to him. .... read the whole story at The Reformer

Meeting your meat: One woman's farm-to-plate experience

2009-11-04T20:40:00.000-05:00

Very well done Jennifer -- a "Must Read" for those of society that have sadly become disconnected from their food!

cowboss

~ BY JENNIFER OLVERA

From the time I toddled, I dabbled in “cooking,” scrawling recipes with a newly acquired tripod grip. Sure, my early attempts — celery-stuffed, microwave-zapped mushrooms, anyone? — were laughable. But one thing has been true from the start: Food and I are linked.

Later, I pored over cookbooks rather than breezy beach reads. I hosted dinner parties with my husband-to-be, our ramshackle, third-floor apartment transformed by pork roast scents, enlivened by garlicky bruschetta.

As an adult, I wanted to share this world with my son. I toted Hayden, a preemie, along to restaurants, made baby food from scratch and brought him to farmers markets and gourmet grocers. The heartbreaking thing is he has chronic, pervasive digestive issues; consequently, he’s not an eater like me.

We talk about food a lot, though, and he willingly tastes things that would, frankly, frighten most kids. (Raw, tentacle-y octopus comes to mind.) He wants to know where food came from. He smells it; he appreciates the rainbow of colors sprouting from our vegetable garden each year.

I’m always looking for ways to increase his comfort level — and mine. Meat always has been a different story for me, though: Shrink-wrapped or butcher-papered, that’s where I peaked. I finally decided to do something about it.

Committed to land, animals

Word of mouth led me to Grazin’ Acres, an idyllic 140-acre central Illinois farm that raises grass-fed, pasture-raised beef. It’s both hormone and antibiotic-free. Terry and Judy Bachtold, its stewards, graciously extended an invitation to the farm, agreeing to raise and reserve an animal for us.

On a hazy August morning, my husband, son and I joined the Bachtolds as they herded cattle, which were lowing with hungry displeasure, to a fresh field. The sound, so urgent and soothing, brought tears to my eyes. That feeling didn’t ebb as I realized the cows were scared — of us.

When I actually laid eyes on our gentle, soulful-looking gal, who cowered when a pint-sized puppy approached, I had to turn away.

“I’m going to eat you, and I’m sorry,” I croaked, appreciative that her branding tag had somehow disappeared. It felt more anonymous that way.

I thought about all the sweat that went into raising just one cow, much less the 35 the Bachtolds own. They have full-time jobs — he works for the agriculture department, and she’s a full-time postal worker. Until recently, they also maintained the property at a large cemetery in an effort to get by.

The Bachtolds’ free time is devoted to caring for the animals — lovingly, I might add. The farmers move cows from pasture to pasture every few days. They harvest and bundle straw and hay; the former serves as bedding, while the latter sustains the cattle when the grass (which remains green throughout winter) is too icy to eat.

This meat they’re producing is far from average. Unlike conventionally raised, grain-fed cattle, which can be butchered at as early as 14 months of age, grass-fed cows take up to two years to mature.

For all that effort, the Bachtolds receive about $2,400 per 1,200-pound cow, which begs the question, “Why?”

“Terry would rather die than not farm,” Judy says. “He’s a third-generation farmer. It’s who he is.”

That doesn’t mean it has been easy. Improving the herd through bull selection has been a long, costly and arduous process. The Bachtolds are committed to sustainability. They do what they do while surrounded by soybean fields and endless rows of cash-crop corn.

Day of reckoning

I returned alone several weeks later — the rainy, cold morning of the slaughter — to visit the meat locker. Our black, sleek bovine had departed, quite literally, at dawn. The Bachtolds’ home, so warm and welcoming, wafted with the scent of slow-cooked beef.

We drove to Chenoa Locker where, shakily, I put on a brave face and strapped on boots and a cap. After getting the go-ahead from the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector, I was allowed to see everything.

I watched workers break down the meat; pushed (with no shortage of effort) past my just-butchered cow, which aged in the cooler, and breathed deeply in the curing room, where crackly-skinned ham hung. In a separate area, I saw the hog scalder that removes pigs’ bristly hair, and I stepped into the sub-zero freezer lined with bounty.

And, yes, I witnessed a slaughter. ..... read the whole story at The Chicago Sun Times

Reform the food industry — for the sake of the planet ~ by Dr Rosemary Stanton

2009-11-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

A special Thank you to the Crikey and Dr Rosemary Stanton for this insightful essay

cowboss

Swedish food labels already list the greenhouse gases embedded in the product and the government has accompanied this with an educational campaign to help people make more environmentally sound choices.

The Australian Food and Grocery Council, the lobby group for the big end of food town, has persuaded the Coalition’s negotiations on an Emissions Trading Scheme to exempt agriculture and food processing — forever.

If that sounds like something you’d expect from the minerals industry, it’s worth noting that Mitch Hooke, from the Minerals Council, spent seven years as chief executive of the AFGC, and then swapped roles with Dick Wells. Kate Carnell then replaced Wells.

If the negotiations between the government and opposition give in to the demands of the AFGC, we will miss a great opportunity to reform the food industry and the health of Australians.

Our food supply is abundant, but 30,000 food items in the average supermarket don’t come cheaply in the energy stakes. Our highly processed food supply with its sugars, fats, refined starches, artificial sweeteners, preservatives, colours, flavours and other additives — all packaged, transported and stored for out-of-season eating — creates vast quantities of greenhouse gases. Added to that, we have emissions from intensive animal rearing, methane burps from ruminant animals and the greenhouse gases (including more methane) produced from food wastes dumped as landfill and discarded packaging. Omitting food from the ETS is absurd.

The vast array of foods ensures we over-eat. The average supermarket now stocks 1800 different snack food lines, more than 150 breakfast cereals (some more accurately described as confectionery), and an absurd choice of junk in aisles stocked with packet soups, sauces, biscuits and sugary drinks. Does it really make us happier or healthier to have 45 varieties of milk or hundreds of choices of yoghurt?

There’s no mystery as to why the majority of Australian adults are overweight or obese and about a quarter of our children carry too much body fat.

Sure we’re inactive. Passive entertainment, changes in the type of work we do (or don’t do), the widening distances between home, work, schools and shops and the car culture have a lot to answer for. So has the fear that has driven people (especially children) inside to avoid perceived dangers from people and outdoor play equipment — including trees!

Our kids have swapped the occasional broken arm for obesity-related problems including sleep apnoea, type 2 diabetes a higher incidence of asthma and problems with their knees, back and feet. Among adults, type 2 diabetes has tripled over the past 20 years and excess body fat increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, cancer, osteoarthritis, asthma and Alzheimer’s disease.

Over-consumption is expensive. In 2008, costs to the Australian society and government were estimated at $58.2 billion.

There is an urgent need to reduce the national girth. The most popular call is for more physical activity. No one would argue with that. But we also need to find a way to encourage people to eat less.

The usual cry of “they should be educated” doesn’t work in the face of so much abundance and strong marketing campaigns to get us to eat more. Food industry profits depend on us eating more.

The food industry’s solution of more choice increases profits, but does nothing for obesity. When lab rats are offered a “cafeteria diet”, they eat more. So do we. The more on offer, the more we buy, the more we waist and the more we waste.

Better labelling with red dots on foods high in saturated fat, sugar and salt could help warn people off buying these items too often. Protecting kids from junk foods ads on television and highly sophisticated marketing on internet games would reduce the pester power that leads parents to happy meals and supermarket trolleys full of junk foods and drinks. We need these protections — and more.... read the whole story at the "Crikey"

Free Enterprise: Unsustainably Subsidized by Your Government

2009-11-02T20:24:00.001-05:00

So, Whats Wrong With Our Food? An Excellent documentary of possibly one of the answers, also shedding a ray of light on "The Inconvenient Truths"

cowboss

By Robert Singer

Free enterprise, also called free market, is an economy governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy.

Command economy is basically a slave enterprise where supply and price are regulated by the government rather than market forces.

The only thing I will agree with about the “law of supply and demand” is that supply at a downward-manipulated price, can create demand.

Downward manipulation is an uneconomic aberration first discovered in the precious metals market by the noted silver analyst, Ted Butler.

We are conditioned to believe free enterprise supply and demand would lead to inflated prices so the greedy corporations can make more money, but Ted Butler’s research in the silver market concludes the opposite.

The beneficiaries of this type of manipulation are the consumers because corporations can sell their products affordably and still make a profit.

Butler’s investigation has identified JP Morgan Chase, one of the founding members of the Federal Reserve, as the prime suspect, in the “ongoing intentional, not accidental” great crime of keeping the price of commodities low so the middle class can afford the American dream, a nightmare for the planet. [1]

I’ll get right to the point: McDonalds in the 1950s made a profit by selling a product for less than the competition, but a not-so-invisible hand produced cheap calories in great abundance so Ray “Crock” could sell a cheeseburger, fries and a large Coke for a price equal to less than an hour of labor at the minimum wage — and still make a profit. [2]

You don’t eat the hamburger at McDonalds because it’s a dollar: It’s a dollar to get you to eat it.

How did we get a food system that produced what should be a $35 hamburger downwardly manipulated to $1? [3]

"Taxpayer subsidies basically underwrite cheap grain, and that's what the factory-farming system for meat is entirely dependent on," Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist in the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). [4]

In other words, the Scoundrels behind the Federal Reserve, Rothschild, Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and JP Morgan Chase, underwrite cheap grain and the factory-farming system for meat, so you can get a hamburger for a dollar.

Our current food system—characterized by monocultures of corn and soy in the field and cheap calories of fat, sugar and feedlot meat on the table—is not the product of any free market but rather the result of a specific set of governmental and monetary policies (from those Scoundrels at the Fed) and the free gift of fossil fuels from the world’s richest man in history and another founding member of the Federal Reserve, John D. Rockefeller.

He didn’t just give dimes away, he gave away his oil so you could get inexpensive fuel and food.

If you fly over Iowa from October to April you will notice the land is completely bare— black—because you are seeing an agricultural landscape created by cheap oil from John D.

Cheap energy enabled the creation of monocultures and vastly increased the productivity both of the American land and the American farmer but at the same time, subsidized monocultures of grain also led directly to monocultures of animals.

Since factory farms could buy grain for less than it cost farmers to grow it, they could now fatten animals more cheaply than farmers could.

So America’s meat and dairy animals migrated from farm to feedlot, driving down the price of animal protein to the point where an American can enjoy eating a hamburger or chicken McNuggets for a dollar.

Taking the animals off farms made no economic, environmental or ecological sense: their waste, formerly regarded as a precious source of fertility on the farm, became a pollutant—factory farms are now one of America’s biggest sources of pollution.

As Wendell Berry has tartly observed, to take animals off farms and put them on feedlots is to take an elegant solution—animals replenishing the fertility that crops deplete—and neatly divide it into two problems: a fertility problem on the farm and a pollution problem on the feedlot. The former problem is remedied with fossil-fuel fertilizer; the latter is remedied not at all.

After World War II, the US government pursued a monetary policy, at the direction of the Fed, subsidizing commodity crops by paying farmers (money created out of thin air) by the bushel for all the corn, soybeans, wheat and rice they could produce. One secretary of agriculture after another implored them to plant “fence row to fence row” and to “get big or get out.”

The chief result was a flood of cheap grain that could be sold for substantially less than it cost farmers to grow because a government (Scoundrel) check helped make up the difference.

As this artificially manipulated cheap grain worked its way up the food chain, it drove down the price of all the calories derived from that grain: the high-fructose corn syrup in the Coke, the soy oil in which the potatoes were fried, the meat and cheese in that burger until the price reached a dollar. [5] Read the whole story at MWC News

Life and Death on the Ranch

2009-11-01T17:09:00.000-05:00

Another "Must Read" Story by Bill Niman and Nicolette Hahn Niman published in The Atlantic. Thank you Bill and Nicolette for your insight!

cowboss

"It's probably hard for some people who haven't spent time on real farms to understand why both of us cried when we found Eve that morning. After all, this cow was being raised for meat. How could we feel a genuine attachment for her? We can only say that we did. And that we think the world would be a better place if all farm animals were cared for by people who feel true sorrow when one dies prematurely."

We prefer focusing on the enjoyable parts of farming but there are tough days, too. Even painful ones. Like last Friday. The morning started well. We began our chores as the sun burned through early fog, and moisture wafted up from the earth. Then we found one of our best cows lying by the water trough. She looked peaceful, her legs folded beneath her and her head on the ground, as though she'd simply taken a drink and laid down to rest. But she wasn't sleeping; she was dead. She'd been struggling with an illness for several weeks and we had been desperately attempting to heal her. Her name was Eve and she will be deeply missed.

Eve's mother is Nicolette's favorite cow, a longtime resident of the ranch we call Girlfriend, a black cow with a white face and black band across her eyes. When Girlfriend was eight years old our vet told us that she was not pregnant that season. Cows have only one calf each year, so a ranch cannot afford to keep infertile cows. Normally, when an older cow comes up "open," she is sent to town. But because Girlfriend is such a gentle and beautiful animal, Nicolette had a special appreciation for her and pleaded the case for clemency. This happened again the following year and, for the second time, she was granted a reprieve. By this point, our ranching peers were saying that this cow would definitely never give birth to another calf.

But miracles have a way of happening on the farm. After two years of barrenness--and having reached the ripe age of ten--our vet announced that Girlfriend was pregnant. We were jubilant. A few months later she gave birth to a handsome red calf with a white patterned face. Like her previous calf, it was a male. That disappointed us a bit because we figured it would surely be Girlfriend's last calf, with no cattle on the ranch to carry forward her noble lineage.

Then Girlfriend amazed us by coming up pregnant again the following year. When she looked ready to calve, we kept her under close watch, checking her several times daily. One morning she had disappeared into the brush. She'd gone off to find a quiet, private place to give birth, something she knew well how to do. Nicolette put on a long sleeved shirt and anxiously began patrolling the large pasture, fighting her way through 10-feet-high patches of poison oak, worried that the old girl might have difficulty calving. But when she finally discovered the cow, she was calmly standing and chewing her cud, as is her habit. At her side was a beautiful calf who looked nearly identical to her, only in miniature. It was black-bodied with black and white markings like her mother's on her face. Nicolette cautiously approached and discovered, with great joy, that the calf was a female.

This pleased us enormously. Bill had recently left Niman Ranch, Inc. and, as part of the separation, had lost the cattle herd he'd spent decades developing. There were protracted negotiations to buy the herd back from the company, but they fell through. We ended up buying just two animals--Girlfriend and an orphan steer who had also made a special place in our hearts. In other words, two animals that were unlikely to ever have any offspring. So Eve was our great hope for the future. A healthy, beautiful calf, we saw her as the foundation of our new herd and our new life. It never occurred to us that just two years later she would predecease her aging mother..... more

FDA urged to ban feeding of chicken feces to cattle

2009-11-01T07:22:00.000-05:00

Many of you will know that this is an issue that cowboss has been working on for a "very long time" now! It is so good to see that it has gotton to this level of exposure.
cowboss

By Jerry Hirsch

Food and consumer groups say the practice increases the risk of cattle becoming infected with mad cow disease. A beef industry trade group say a ban isn't needed.

A fight is brewing over the practice of feeding chicken feces and other poultry farm waste to cattle.

A coalition of food and consumer groups that includes Consumers Union and the Center for Science in the Public Interest has asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban the practice. McDonald's Corp., the nation's largest restaurant user of beef, also wants the FDA to prohibit the feeding of so-called poultry litter to cattle.

Members of the coalition are threatening to file a lawsuit or to push for federal legislation establishing such a ban if the FDA doesn't act to do so in the coming months.

Farmers feed 1 million to 2 million tons of poultry litter to their cattle annually, according to FDA estimates.

Using the litter -- which includes feces, spilled chicken feed, feathers and poultry farm detritus -- increases the risk of cows becoming infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union.

That's because the spilled chicken feed and the feces contain tissue from ruminants -- cows and sheep, among other mammals. The disease is transmitted through feeding ruminant remains to cattle.

"It takes a very small quantity of ruminant protein, even just 1 milligram, to cause an infection," said Steve Roach, public health program director with Food Animal Concerns Trust, a Chicago-based animal welfare group that is part of the coalition.

Although it is rare, people can contract a fatal form of the disease by eating meat from cows with BSE.

The National Cattlemen's Beef Assn., the beef industry's main trade group, said the ban was not needed and that several FDA reviews had determined that the chance of cattle becoming infected with mad cow disease from eating poultry litter was remote.

"Science does not justify the ban, and the FDA has looked at this now many times," said Elizabeth Parker, chief veterinarian for the trade group.

Parker noted that the FDA this year banned the use of certain types of tissue from any form of animal feed, even that eaten by chickens. Those tissues include brain, spinal cord material and other high-risk tissues where the pathogens believed to cause mad cow disease typically are found. The tissue ban greatly reduces chances that prions, implicated in mad cow, can find their way into the food chain, Parker said. She also said the disease was not a threat to public health.

"We have tested 800,000 cattle in recent years and have not found any evidence of BSE circulating in the herd," Parker said.

But others remain concerned.

"I still think you need to totally restrict using any ruminant protein in feed that gets back to ruminants," said Linda Detwiler, a food safety consultant and former U.S. Department of Agriculture veterinarian.

Prohibiting high-risk tissues as a feed source makes the chances of transmitting mad cow disease through poultry litter low but does not remove all risk, Detwiler said.

The practice also makes McDonald's, one of the nation's biggest beef purchasers, nervous. "We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle," it said in a statement....... Read the whole story at the LA Times

The Carnivore’s Dilemma

2009-10-31T15:09:00.002-04:00

A "Must Read" Thank you New York Times and Nicolette Hahn Niman!

cowboss

By NICOLETTE HAHN NIMAN

IS eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headline that blared: “Give Up Meat to Save the Planet.” Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

It’s true that food production is an important contributor to climate change. And the claim that meat (especially beef) is closely linked to global warming has received some credible backing, including by the United Nations and University of Chicago. Both institutions have issued reports that have been widely summarized as condemning meat-eating.

But that’s an overly simplistic conclusion to draw from the research. To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.

So what is the real story of meat’s connection to global warming? Answering the question requires examining the individual greenhouse gases involved: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxides.

Carbon dioxide makes up the majority of agriculture-related greenhouse emissions. In American farming, most carbon dioxide emissions come from fuel burned to operate vehicles and equipment. World agricultural carbon emissions, on the other hand, result primarily from the clearing of woods for crop growing and livestock grazing. During the 1990s, tropical deforestation in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Sudan and other developing countries caused 15 percent to 35 percent of annual global fossil fuel emissions.

Much Brazilian deforestation is connected to soybean cultivation. As much as 70 percent of areas newly cleared for agriculture in Mato Grosso State in Brazil is being used to grow soybeans. Over half of Brazil’s soy harvest is controlled by a handful of international agribusiness companies, which ship it all over the world for animal feed and food products, causing emissions in the process.

Meat and dairy eaters need not be part of this. Many smaller, traditional farms and ranches in the United States have scant connection to carbon dioxide emissions because they keep their animals outdoors on pasture and make little use of machinery. Moreover, those farmers generally use less soy than industrial operations do, and those who do often grow their own, so there are no emissions from long-distance transport and zero chance their farms contributed to deforestation in the developing world.

In contrast to traditional farms, industrial livestock and poultry facilities keep animals in buildings with mechanized systems for feeding, lighting, sewage flushing, ventilation, heating and cooling, all of which generate emissions. These factory farms are also soy guzzlers and acquire much of their feed overseas. You can reduce your contribution to carbon dioxide emissions by avoiding industrially produced meat and dairy products.

Unfortunately for vegetarians who rely on it for protein, avoiding soy from deforested croplands may be more difficult: as the Organic Consumers Association notes, Brazilian soy is common (and unlabeled) in tofu and soymilk sold in American supermarkets. Read the whole story

Scientists Link GM Crop Weed Killer to Powerful Fungus

2009-10-29T20:54:00.000-04:00

Do we have another "Agent Orange here? Leave it to Monasanto!

cowboss

By Jeremy Bigwood

WASHINGTON, Aug 20 (IPS) - Scientists are expressing alarm after finding elevated amounts of potentially toxic fungal moulds in food crops sprayed with a common weed killer widely used with genetically engineered (GE) plants.

Roundup, produced by food-industry giant Monsanto, contains a chemical called glyphosate that researchers are blaming for increased amounts of fusarium head blight, a fungus of often very toxic moulds that occurs naturally in soils and occasionally invades crops, but is usually held in check by other microbes.

If true, the allegations could not only call into question the world's number one weed killer, but they also jeopardise global acceptance of Monsanto's flagship line of genetically engineered Roundup Ready crops.

Those crops are themselves unaffected by the Roundup weed killer, which kills all competing plants, such as weeds, in the same area.

Monsanto has been producing a series of GE Roundup Ready seed stock for various crops, including cotton, soybean, wheat and corn, to be used exclusively with their successful glyphosate weed killer Roundup. But because they are genetically engineered, the crops have not found easy acceptance in many countries outside the United States, and they are still banned in Canada and Europe.

A four-year study found that wheat treated with glyphosate appeared to have higher levels of fusarium than wheat fields where no glyphosate had been applied, said Myriam Fernandez of the Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre in Swift Current, in Canada's Saskatchewan province.

"We have not finished analysing the four years of data yet or written up the study," she added in a recent interview with IPS.

While Fernandez' research recently made headlines throughout Canada, it was not the first to discuss the relationship between glyphosate-containing weed killers and increased levels of potentially toxic fungi, but it was the first to report on the possibility of potentially toxic damage in wheat and barley, two of Canada's most important crops.

A Monsanto spokesman was critical of the findings.

"It appears to be that Dr. Fernandez did a field survey looking at levels of Fusarium and then the factors that might be related," Harvey Glick, head of the company's scientific affairs division, told IPS.

"So, from what I can gather, that was not a cause and effect. It's just that they saw in the study area some fields that had higher levels of fusarium, for whatever reason, and then they looked at a list of factors that might be related and one of them was there was Roundup used in those fields the previous year."

Over the last two decades, several scientists from New Zealand to Africa have noticed and investigated the glyphosate-fusarium relationship through small-scale experiments in the relative obscurity of their labs and reported the results in academic journals.

The result of all of this work is almost 50 scientific papers, says Robert Kremer, a soil scientist at the University of Missouri. Overall, they describe an increase in fusarium or other microbes after the application of glyphosate.

Kremer's ongoing research deals with the glyphosate-fusarium relationship on soybeans, including a Roundup Ready variety.

His experiments with Roundup Ready and regular soybeans revealed that glyphosate seems to stimulate fusarium in the plants' roots, to such a degree that he considers the elevation of fusarium levels to be glyphosate's secondary effect.

While Kremer found enhanced fusarium colonies in the roots of the plants, which could potentially reduce the harvest, he did not find them in the harvested soybeans themselves. But he said he still worries that fusarium could accumulate in the soil at such levels to produce an epidemic that would move from field to field throughout a wide area.

He also noted: ''We didn't see enhancement of fusarium when other herbicides were used" without Roundup. But according to contracts, farmers planting Roundup Ready crops must use Roundup weed killer exclusively or in combination with other chemicals.

Monsanto's Glick rejected Kremer's suggestions. "Roundup is almost 30 years old, and scientists have been looking at all aspects of its use for at least that long. So there is a tremendous amount of information available."

"And that is why there is such a high level of confidence that the use of Roundup, based on all of this earlier work, does not have any negative impacts on soil microbes ... And a lot of it has been published."

In a recent article titled 'GM Cotton Blamed for Disease', Australia's 'Farm Weekly' predicted that up to 90 percent of the country's cotton belt could be inundated by a fusarium epidemic within the next decade due to Roundup Ready cotton.

Fusarium contamination of cereals, such as the fusarium head blight (FHB) in wheat and barley that Fernandez is studying, has been responsible for serious crop losses.

About one-fifth of the wheat crop in Europe each year is lost to FHB, and in Michigan during 2002 it was estimated that 30-40 percent of crops were destroyed by the infestation.

When the mould passes into the food-chain undetected, fusarium epidemics on cereals can have even worse impacts: such an epidemic was considered responsible for thousands of deaths in Russia during the 1940s, and in 2001 it caused a series of deadly birth defects among tortilla-eating Mexican-Americans in Brownsville, Texas, after the blight infiltrated corn.

Minute amounts of fusarium continually enter commercial food products; it is at the higher levels that it can become a serious problem.

The fusarium fungus can produce a range of toxins that are not destroyed in the cooking process, such as vomitoxin, which as its name suggests, usually produces vomiting but not death. More lethal compounds include fumonisin, which can cause cancer and birth defects, and the very lethal chemical warfare agent fusariotoxin, more often referred to as T2 toxin.

During 2000, the U.S. Congress planned to use fusarium as a biological control agent to kill coca crops in Colombia and another fungus to kill opium poppies in Afghanistan.

Those plans were dropped by then-president Bill Clinton, who was concerned that the unilateral use of a biological agent would be perceived by the rest of the world as biological warfare.

Andean nations, including Colombia, banned its use throughout the region.

According to Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, "the U.S. has supplied tens of thousands of gallons of Roundup to the Colombian government for use in aerial fumigation of coca crops."

That operation has "been using a fleet of crop dusters to dump unprecedented amounts of high-potency glyphosate over hundreds of thousands of acres in one of the most delicate and bio-diverse ecosystems in the world."

"This futile effort has done little to reduce the availability of cocaine on our streets, but now we are learning that a possible side-effect of this campaign could be the unleashing of a fusarium epidemic in the Amazon basin."

Because of the glyphosate-fusarium link, Canada's National Farmers Union is already opposing Monsanto's application to introduce GE Roundup Ready wheat into the country. The federal government is expected to make its decision within months

From http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=19754 with thanx.