Biotechnology Giant Fails to Provide Binding Legal Protection; Farmers Threatened by Contamination from Genetically Modified Organisms

NEW YORK: New threats by Monsanto have led to the filing of an amended complaint by the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) in its suit on behalf of family farmers, seed businesses, and organic agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed.

“Our clients don’t want a fight with Monsanto, they merely want to be protected from the threat that they will be contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed and then accused of patent infringement,” said PUBPAT Executive Director Daniel B. Ravicher. “We asked Monsanto to give our clients reassurances they wouldn’t do such a thing, and in response Monsanto chose to instead reiterate the same implicit threat to organic agriculture that it has made in the past.” Read Full Article »

Posted in Cornucopia News

USDA, Agricultural Research Service

Every year, a hefty dairy cow tucked away in a snug barn produces more than 20,000 pounds of milk, along with an impressive amount of manure and an array of gases. New modeling work by an Agricultural Research Service team in University Park, Pennsylvania, suggests that a dairy cow living year-round in the great outdoors may leave a markedly smaller ecological hoofprint than her more sheltered sisters.

Agricultural engineer Al Rotz led a team of scientists at the ARS Pasture Systems and Watershed Management Research Unit through a modeling study that evaluated how different management systems on a typical 250-acre Pennsylvania dairy farm would affect the environment. “If we try to reduce one environmental factor in this complex production system, we can end up increasing others,” Rotz says. “So there’s a real need to look at all the environmental aspects together.” Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

The vast majority of tested U.S. canned goods were tainted

Science News
By Janet Raloff

Federal chemists have confirmed what everyone had expected: that if a bisphenol-A-based resin is used to line most food cans, there’s a high likelihood the contents of those cans will contain at least traces of BPA. A hormone-mimicking compound, BPA is the monomer — or chemical building block — used in making the resin. Earlier studies had shown that this resin tends to shed BPA.

In their new paper, Gregory Noonan, Luke Ackerman and Timothy Begley of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition in College Park, Md., acknowledge that BPA had turned up in the limited studies that had sought it out. But those studies had tended to look at a narrow range of products, such as baby food, infant formulas or soft drinks — or to have assayed foreign foods.

“It was clear that there were no large scale studies of the U.S. market,” they note, “and that there were significant data gaps for highly consumed canned foods, such as chili, pastas and pork and beans.” So they focused their survey on the most widely consumed U.S. canned goods. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News

Vermont Coalition for Food Sovereignty

Quietly slipping under the radar last week the Town of Barre was the second municipality in the state to pass a measure supporting food sovereignty. The first was Barre City on March 4, 2011. In both towns food sovereignty was expressed as the “right to save seed, grow, process, consume and exchange food and farm products.” Read Full Article »

Posted in Talking Points

The New York Times
Guy Calaf

When Lufa Farms began selling produce to customers in Montreal in late April, it signaled what could be the beginning of a tantalizing new era in the gastronomic fortunes of that Canadian metropolis.

In all but the short summer season, the availability of fresh, locally grown fruit and vegetables has been little more than a pipe dream for Montreal residents.

But Lufa Farms, founded by Mohamed Hage and Kurt Lynn, turned an unassuming office rooftop into a 31,000-square-foot greenhouse that grows tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and other produce year-round and is a working example of a developing trend known as urban rooftop farming.

It has taken a timely convergence of technologies and consumer attitudes to bring rooftop farming to the fore. Read Full Article »

Posted in Media/News