LosAngelesFreePress.com » Food Supply

WWII poster from the US Department of Agriculture

Editor — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:40:23 +0000

From the US National Agricultural Library

July 7, 2010 – Here’s what ties our articles together today

Editor — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:59:06 +0000

Here’s a presentation of articles on stereotyping, immigrants’ rights, employment, military spending, media, and social media – one big bowl of societal change, cultural change, and the coming counter culture.

Piece by piece here’s what it says… for all our talk about freedom for all, it’s too obvious that we are judgmental. And now, damn both the principle and the law, we are going to separate those whom we judge from what we would believe, for ourselves, to be inalienable rights. (Of course I’m serious, it’s just that pun was awaitin’. And the next article is serious, too. It’s an application for an immigrant’s job. Are we really ready to face the consequences of our actions?)

Then a look beyond our borders – but at our military – even beyond the issue of actual war. Can we afford to have them posted away. Should we be the world’s ‘peace-keeper’? Have those days – for all kinds of reasons – gone by? Is it time to re-think our role, and what will happen if we make this change? To societies around the world, and to ours here at home?

Finally, the changes here and coming to the media, and the social media – and why ARE these different? Followed by a look at the incredibly large impact that has already taken place.

Take our Jobs

Editor — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:55:42 +0000

TAKE OUR JOBS

There are two issues facing our nation–high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce–that many Americans believe are related.

Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat – at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) – comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States.

We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the “Take Our Jobs” campaign.

Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field, we will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

Monsanto, Big Brother of the New World Agricultural Order: An Interview With Marie-Monique Robin

Editor — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 08:48:55 +0000

by Mickey Z.

Award-winning French journalist and filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin is the author of “The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Corruption and the Control of Our Food Supply” (The New Press) and the creator of the film by the same name.

In a review of these two projects, Leslie Thatcher writes: “What Marie-Monique Robin most effectively documents are the perverse effects – the moral, social, technological, economic and market failures – of Western society’s economic organization, most specifically with respect to science and the products of science and, ultimately, with respect to the preservation of the public commons and human life on the planet.”

My conversation with Marie-Monique Robin follows:

Mickey Z.: Was there an initial spark that led you to this project that took three years and investigations on four continents to complete?

Marie-Monique Robin: My “story” with Monsanto began in 2003, when I made three documentaries for the Franco-German channel ARTE (to which I pay a tribute for the quality of its programs) about the reduction of biodiversity.

MZ: Please take us through those documentaries and their connection to Monsanto.

MMR: The first, “Biopirates,” told how corporations like Monsanto were holding abusive patents on living organisms which are contributing to a new drastic reduction of biodiversity. At that I time, I heard about a company called Monsanto which already held more than 600 patents on living organisms. The second documentary, called “Wheat: Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” told the story of cultivation of that golden cereal, from the very beginning 10,000 years ago until today and explained how the practices of industrial agriculture that brought the “green revolution,” made thousands of local landraces and varieties disappear, a dramatic evolution which will be accelerated by GMOs [genetically modified organisms]. At the same time the so-called green revolution provoked a huge contamination of the environment through the massive use of chemical pesticides, “biocides,” which “entered into living organisms, passing one to another in a chain of poisoning and death,” as Rachel Carson wrote in “Silent Spring.” Finally, I made a documentary, called “Argentina: The Soybeans of Hunger,” about the cultivation of Roundup Ready soybeans in Argentina, where I depicted the environmental, social and health disasters which the introduction of Monsanto’s GMOs represent. Today, they cover 60% of the area under cultivation in the country.

http://www.truth-out.org/monsanto-big-brother-new-world-agricultural-order-an-interview-with-marie-monique-robin60776

Report: Toxins found in whales bode ill for humans

Editor — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:35:41 +0000

By ARTHUR MAX

AGADIR, Morocco – Sperm whales feeding even in the most remote reaches of Earth’s oceans have built up stunningly high levels of toxic and heavy metals, according to American scientists who say the findings spell danger not only for marine life but for the millions of humans who depend on seafood.

A report released Thursday noted high levels of cadmium, aluminum, chromium, lead, silver, mercury and titanium in tissue samples taken by dart gun from nearly 1,000 whales over five years. From polar areas to equatorial waters, the whales ingested pollutants that may have been produced by humans thousands of miles away, the researchers said.

“These contaminants, I think, are threatening the human food supply. They certainly are threatening the whales and the other animals that live in the ocean,” said biologist Roger Payne, founder and president of Ocean Alliance, the research and conservation group that produced the report.

The researchers found mercury as high as 16 parts per million in the whales. Fish high in mercury such as shark and swordfish — the types health experts warn children and pregnant women to avoid — typically have levels of about 1 part per million.

The whales studied averaged 2.4 parts of mercury per million, but the report’s authors said their internal organs probably had much higher levels than the skin samples contained.

“The entire ocean life is just loaded with a series of contaminants, most of which have been released by human beings,” Payne said in an interview on the sidelines of the International Whaling Commission’s annual meeting.

Payne said sperm whales, which occupy the top of the food chain, absorb the contaminants and pass them on to the next generation when a female nurses her calf. “What she’s actually doing is dumping her lifetime accumulation of that fat-soluble stuff into her baby,” he said, and each generation passes on more to the next.

Ultimately, he said, the contaminants could jeopardize seafood, a primary source of animal protein for 1 billion people.

“You could make a fairly tight argument to say that it is the single greatest health threat that has ever faced the human species.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100624/ap_on_sc/whaling

Supreme Court lifts partial ban on GM alfalfa in Monsanto v Geertson Seed

Editor — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:48:45 +0000

Condemns District Court for taking “middle course” instead of “extreme action”

By Rady Ananda

On June 21, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) released its long awaited decision on the first case involving genetically modified crops, allowing the USDA to impose a partial deregulation, should it so choose. This would permit the sale of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa (RRA). However, in its 7-1 ruling, the court also upheld the lower decision to ban complete deregulation.

SCOTUS found that the “District Court abused its discretion when banning a partial deregulation and in prohibiting the planting of RRA pending completion of a detailed environmental review,” known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).

The decision flies in the face of the facts in this case, and subjects us to further contamination of our food supply.

Monsanto expressed glee: “We have Roundup Ready alfalfa seed ready to deliver and await USDA guidance on its release. Our goal is to have everything in place for growers to plant in fall 2010.”

Adversarial party Center for Food Safety also expressed delight in the decision, calling it a “Victory for Center for Food Safety, Farmers.” In its release, CFS asserts:

“The Justices’ decision today means that the selling and planting of Roundup Ready Alfalfa is illegal. The ban on the crop will remain in place until a full and adequate EIS is prepared by USDA and they officially deregulate the crop. This is a year or more away according to the agency, and even then, a deregulation move may be subject to further litigation if the agency’s analysis is not adequate.”

CFS is happy because, as the Court pointed out, “we do know that the vacatur of APHIS’s deregulation decision means that virtually no RRA can be grown or sold until such time as a new deregulation decision is in place, and we also know that any party aggrieved by a hypothetical future deregulation decision will have ample opportunity to challenge it, and to seek appropriate preliminary relief, if and when such a decision is made.”

While CFS may be happy to fight this case again, food freedom suffered a blow by this decision.

An Extremist Court

Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens clarifies the convoluted decision:

“In this case, the agency [U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, known as APHIS] had attempted to deregulate RRA without an EIS in spite of ample evidence of potential environmental harms. And when the court made clear that the agency had violated NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act], the agency responded by seeking to ‘streamline’ the process … submitting a deregulation proposal with Monsanto that suffered from some of the same legal and empirical holes as its initial plan to deregulate.”

APHIS had offered the lower court a partial deregulation plan, which was rejected. That is the portion of the District Court decision that SCOTUS deemed was beyond its authority to impose.

The High Court condemned the lower court for choosing a middle course of action, instead of taking “more extreme actions on either end.” It found the lower court’s ban on future plantings inconsistent with its allowance of current planting:

“The order enjoining any partial deregulation was also inconsistent with other aspects of the very same judgment. In fashioning its remedy for the NEPA violation, the District Court steered a ‘middle course’ between more extreme options on either end…. On the one hand, the District Court rejected APHIS’s proposal … to allow continued planting and harvesting of RRA subject to the agency’s proposed limitations. On the other hand, the District Court did not bar continued planting of RRA as a regulated article under permit from APHIS … and it expressly allowed farmers to harvest and sell RRA planted before March 30, 2007.”

Justice Stevens, however, applauds the ‘middle road’ taken by the District Court. In defending the lower court’s two-part decision, Justice Stevens pointed out that courts must weigh the diverse equities before it:

“At the outset, it is important to observe that when a district court is faced with an unlawful agency action, a set of parties who have relied on that action, and a prayer for relief to avoid irreparable harm, the court is operating under its powers of equity. In such a case, a court’s function is to ‘do equity and to mould each decree to the necessities of the particular case.’

“Flexibility and practicality are the touchstones of these remedial determinations, as the public interest, private needs, and competing private claims must all be weighed….

“Exercising its equitable discretion to balance the interests of the parties and the public, the District Court would have been well within its rights to find that NEPA requires an EIS … yet also to find that a partial stay of the vacatur was appropriate to protect the interests of those farmers who had already acted in good-faith reliance on APHIS.” [Internal quote marks removed.]

Geertson Seed Decision Abrogates Food Freedom

No one denies that gene transfer did occur; that GM crops contaminate natural ones. Instead, like Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan did when defending Monsanto in this case (as Solicitor General), SCOTUS simply ignored this most important fact when deciding to allow partial deregulation.

SCOTUS also ignored that APHIS is unable to monitor for contamination. GE alfalfa is planted in 48 states, and, while under the purview of APHIS, contamination of natural fields occurred. The lower court was realistic when determining “that APHIS lacks monitoring capacity.”

Allowing for the spread of GM crops removes the public’s right to not choose GMOs, because the natural supply no longer exists, or becomes nearly impossible to find or afford. We saw this when Bayer’s GM rice contaminated a third of the US supply. And already today:

95% of all US beets are genetically modified (Greenwire);
91% of all US soybeans (USDA);
71% of US cotton (USDA);
And over two-thirds (68%) of all US corn (USDA).

Today, GMO derivatives are found in more than 70% of the foods in the supermarket,” reports activist and author Jeffrey M. Smith, which includes virtually 100% of our processed food.

There are a number of other problems with GM crops, which the Supreme Court ignores, even when presented with some of these issues.

First and foremost, GMOs are created to tolerate or produce pesticide. North America is losing its natural pollinators, specifically bees, butterflies and bats, because of the enormous tonnage of chemicals sprayed in this nation. If we lose our bees, said Einstein, humans will last about six years. We need our pollinators. The entire web of life depends on them.

Those pesticide chemicals have poisoned all of our waters, damaging the biota, or making seafood toxic for humans. Chemical companies like Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, etc. created GMOs so they could sell chemicals. Those chemicals are bad for the environment and for humans.

Another side effect of our toxic spraying is we now have super bugs and super weeds. The overuse of pesticides has allowed those plants that are pesticide resistant to thrive. Resistant pigweed, for example, is destroying cotton farming in the Southeast US. These biotech companies ignore the science of evolution when pushing their dangerous product on us. We are now suffering for their scientific ignorance.

Weed resistance was considered in Geertson Seed, but SCOTUS dismissed that relevancy because “Respondents in this case do not represent a class, so they could not seek to enjoin such an order on the ground that it might cause harm to other parties.”

Second, GM crops contaminate natural crops by cross breeding with them. Thus, GMOs are destroying biodiversity. The Irish potato famine happened because every Irish family grew them – monoculture is a disaster waiting to happen. When the blight hit, there was no natural way to stop it. Phytophthora infestans spread like wildfire because its food source was everywhere.

When you destroy biodiversity, you invite total destruction from widespread infestation. This is basic natural science. GM crops increase the threat to food safety, food security.

SCOTUS ignored the facts, and science, when lifting the ban on partial deregulation.

Third, GM food is dangerous to animals, including humans. We evolved with the bugs and the natural food that exists on this planet. We did not evolve with these new GM creations of the past fourteen years. When studying evolution, the significance of this statement becomes profound. Evolution takes hundreds or thousands of years (or longer). Instead, those who eat GM foods might as well be eating food from a different planet. They did not evolve with that food and the consequences can be generational as well as immediately toxic to the eater (organ damage, sterility, diabetes and obesity, etc.)

Biotechnology may have its uses, but not in the food supply. The Supreme Court’s ruling abrogates our right to GM free food by paving the way for further contamination.

Rady Ananda’s work has appeared in several online – including the Los Angeles Free Press – and print publications. She obtained a B.S. in Natural Resources from The Ohio State University’s School of Agriculture in 2003. http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/

ARTI, India, Biogas from food waste – Ashden Award winner

Editor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:30:11 +0000

This video can be downloaded here: http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/arti06

ARTI won an Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 2006. To find out more visit the link above and check out the Ashden Awards Blog http://ashdenawards.blogspot.com

The Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI) in Pune has developed a biogas plant which uses food waste rather than manure as feedstock and supplies biogas for cooking. The plant is sufficiently compact to be used by urban households, and over 700 are currently in use.

Pune is a relatively affluent city in south India, and many people use liquid petroleum gas (LPG) or kerosene for cooking. Waste food is often discarded at the side of the road, as in many cities, attracting stray dogs, flies and rats and creating a public health hazard. The ARTI compact biogas plant is made from two standard high-density polyethylene (HDPE) water tanks: the larger tank acts as the digester and the smaller one is inverted and placed into it to serve as a gas-holder. The plant safely digests kitchen waste, food waste or waste flour from mills, thus reducing the problem of waste disposal. A 1,000 litre plant produces sufficient biogas to at least halve the use of LPG or kerosene for cooking in a household, as well as a small amount of liquid effluent which can be used as fertiliser. ARTI has developed the technology, field tested it, and managed the supply of about 700 biogas plants in Maharashtra. Around 100 plants are now being installed every month.

The first-prize Ashden Award to ARTI recognises the enormous potential for using this compact biogas digester in towns and cities, both to supply cooking gas and to assist in the disposal of organic waste.

Duration : 0:5:26

Shut up and eat your clones

Editor — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 22:58:26 +0000

With the casual admission that meat from cloned animals have entered the Canadian food supply despite a Health Canada ban, we are once again faced with a choice: Will we stand up and demand that this food is clearly labeled or will we allow it to be quietly slipped into the food chain in the same way GMO food was in the 1990s? Once again, a potentially dangerous new biotechnology is threatening us where we are most vulnerable: our dinner plate.

For more information about the dangers of GMO food, please listen to Episode 025 of The Corbett Report podcast:

Shut up and eat your GMOs

http://www.corbettreport.com/index.php?ii=50&i=Documentation

For more information about Codex Alimentarius, please listen to Episode 059 of The Corbett Report podcast:

Codex Alimentarius
http://www.corbettreport.com/index.php?i=Documentation&ii=122

Duration : 0:9:37

Foul Plea: one chicken’s appeal for a smarter food system

Editor — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:44:25 +0000

more @ http://www.asmarterplanet.com/

Duration : 0:1:24

GMO Foods, Genetically Modified Organisms, Wake Up America 3

Editor — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:00:03 +0000

Be My Friend – http://www.myspace.com/psychtruth

GMO Foods, Genetically Modified Organisms, Wake Up America # 3

Are there health risk with GMOs? Are GMOs Good or Bad? How corporations are influencing our food supply.

Wake Up America # 1, Food Supply and Health Care Conspiracy

Wake Up America #2, Science of Profit, Corporate Takeover of Science

Wake Up America # 3, GMO Foods, Genetically Modified Organisms,

Visit Radhia’s Website at

http://www.advancedhealthinstitute.com/

http://www.aimmd.com/

Visit Peter McCarthy’s website

http://www.lifeenergyholisticcenter.com/

Visit Texas Health Freedom Coalition

http://www.texashealthfreedom.com/

Peter McCarthy is the Chief Executive Officer and Wellness Director of Life Energy Holistic Partners, Inc. and holds the degree of Doctor of Naturopathy from Trinity College of Natural Health. He is a Nationally Board Certified Traditional Naturopath and is a member of the Advisory Committee of the American Naturopathic Certification Board.

Radhia Gleis is certified in Clinical Nutrition, C.C.N. She is also a Certified BioNutritional Analyst. She has a Ph.D. in pastoral counseling and a M.Ed. in nutrition. She is a professional member of the International and American Association of Clinical Nutritionists, (I.A.A.C.N), and the American Naturopathic Medical Association (A.N.M.A.) and specialized in complementary and alternative medicine.

Music by John Richter

http://www.injoysolutions.com

This video was produced by Psychetruth

http://www.myspace.com/psychtruth

http://www.youtube.com/psychetruth

http://psychetruth.blogspot.com/

Psychetruth is empowered by TubeMogul

http://www.tubemogul.com

Duration : 0:11:24