Capital Press
By Dan Wheat

WATERVILLE, Wash. — Feeling their 1,012 petition signatures to stop genetically modified wheat have been ignored, three Waterville wheat growers may start a new petition drive this winter seeking labeling of any foods containing such products sold in the U.S.

“At a minimum, we’d like to see labeling, but we really want Monsanto to stop developing GMO wheat,” said Tom Stahl, one of the three growers. Labeling would bring about the demise of biotech products because people increasingly don’t want them, he said.

The farmers are concerned that if biotech wheat gets started in north central Washington it could torpedo sales to Japan, the largest consumer of the region’s wheat. They’re also concerned about potential health risks of biotech products.

Japan is opposed to genetically modified wheat but has accepted some modified canola, Tom Mick, CEO of the Washington Grain Alliance in Spokane, has said.

Stahl, Joe Ludeman and Lynn Polson formed the Committee to Save Our Farm Markets last Nov. 20 and gathered the 1,012 signatures during the winter, mainly from posting copies of their petition in businesses in Waterville and Wenatchee.

Some signatures came from other parts of the state. They say they could have gotten more with a better effort.

The petition asks national and state associations to warn farmers against growing genetically modified wheat unless customers agree to buy it. The petition also seeks investigation into the health safety of such wheat and opposes open-air test plots, saying pollen would spread and contaminate conventional wheat.

“If we contaminate our land, warehouses and shipping facilities with genetically modified wheat and our customers reject it, then we could lose our markets and go out of business,” the petition states.

North central Washington produces about 13.5 million bushels of dryland soft white winter and spring wheat annually. About 85 percent of it is exported to Asia, mainly Japan.

Scientists can modify genes in wheat and other organisms to exhibit certain desired traits. Wheat could be modified to tolerate glyphosate-based herbicides such as Roundup, which would allow farmers to kill weeds without killing the wheat. Wheat cultivars could also be modified to be poisonous to pests, resistant to drought or contain other traits.

Monsanto Co., of St. Louis, Mo., has developed and sold much of the genetically modified seed available, including corn and soybeans. It was working on wheat but dropped it in 2004 in the face of grower and trade organization opposition. It resumed work in 2009 with support from the National Association of Wheat Growers and wheat organizations in Canada and Australia.

Stahl believes Monsanto lobbied NAWG board members to soften their opposition.
In an e-mail response to Capital Press questions, Monsanto spokeswoman Kelli Powers said the company has a good relationship with NAWG but isn’t sure it lobbied its board members. She said there has been growing acceptance and interest in biotech wheat to meet future demands and that nine wheat industry organizations in the U.S., Canada and Australia support increased breeding and biotechnology. A NAWG survey in February 2009 showed more than 75 percent of growers support the use of tools like biotechnology to improve wheat, she said.

Monsanto’s near-term focus is on breeding better varieties and it does not expect to introduce biotech wheat until the next decade, Powers said in the e-mail.

In June and July, the Committee to Save Our Farm Markets delivered copies of the petition to Central Washington Washington Grain Growers in Waterville, the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, the National Association of Wheat Growers, U.S. Wheat Associates, the Washington Grain Commission, Capital Press and Wheat Life Magazine.

Tony Viebrock, board president of Central Washington Grain Growers, announced at the co-op’s annual meeting in June that the board made an informal decision to discourage farmers from growing biotech wheat or hosting test plots until customers agree to buy it, Stahl said.

“I asked Viebrock for a copy of the minutes and he said the decision was informal and not contained in the minutes,” Stahl said.

Viebrock verified that and said he thinks the board will leave its position unofficial.
The other organizations did not respond. Stahl called it “thundering silence.”

“There appears to be a certain timidity in facing down Monsanto and opposing the National Association of Wheat Growers … which has endorsed GMO wheat,” Stahl said.

Rather than timidity, Viebrock said, growers and organizations are interested in using biotech products to get grassy weeds out of wheat and improve production. But they are concerned about losing markets.

NAWG spokeswoman Melissa George Kessler pointed to the organization’s principles supporting biotech wheat with plans for minimal market disruption.

Stahl said that allergies and other health problems are attributed to genetically modified organisms by the Institute for Responsible Technology, an organization opposed to genetically modified organisms.

Viebrock said there’s also information about health benefits from genetically modified organisms.

Ludeman said he initially was most concerned about the potential market loss but has grown more interested in the health aspects. He said he doesn’t like a few giant companies controlling seed production.

“We don’t understand the process of altering genes enough to unleash it on the world,” Stahl said. “Genes can’t be recalled. We’re playing God without the wisdom or power of God to fix what we do.”

About 72 percent of Oregon voters rejected a 2002 initiative that would have required labeling food that had genetically modified ingredients.

The Albany Herald
By Terry Lewis, staff writer

BLUFFTON, Ga. — Will Harris III is a fourth generation “cow man” … So what would his daddy think of what he’s doing on his 1,000-acre farm tucked into this bucolic corner of Early County?

“Oh, he’d have never let me do it,” Harris said, laughing.

What Harris is doing at White Oaks Pasture is spinning 134 years of family tradition on its ear by turning his back on the “Industrial Agricultural Establishment’s” traditional methods of cattle farming.

In 1995 Harris decided to base his farm on the “Serengeti Ecosystem Rotation Model” in which large ruminants are followed by small ruminants then birds to provide a circle of life in the ecologically rich grasslands of Africa.

“We began the transition in 1995, but the truth is we’re still transitioning,” Harris, 55, said.”I just got tired of the excesses of the industrial agricultural system,” Harris said of his decision to transition to organic farming. “We are trying to emulate nature. We’re not perfect, but it’s the better way.”

White Oak is the only on-farm, USDA-inspected grass-fed processing plant in the United States. Harris says basis of White Oak, the state’s largest certified organic farm, is that animal welfare is foremost.

“What we are trying to do is to create a system that allows our animals to follow their instinctive behavior. It’s the silver bullet for animal welfare.” Harris, a 1976 University of Georgia graduate with a degree in animal science, said. “Our cattle is grass-fed. We don’t use hormone implants, subtherapeutic antibiotics and do not confine corn-feed.”

The farm is free-range, meaning the animals are not confined to a particular pasture and are allowed unhindered movement.

Following the Serengeti Model, Harris’ large ruminants are the cattle, the small ruminants are sheep and the birds are chickens and turkeys.

“My cows walk around in the woods and they don’t get sick,” Harris said. “The sheep follow them and the chickens and turkeys aren’t far behind. As you can see we have a lot of calm, happy animals around here.”

White Oak maintains an average of 1,200 cattle, 350 sheep, 3,000 chickens (little Rock Reds) and 1,200 turkeys. You’ll see no 300-foot long chicken houses at White Oak. The birds are grouped in flocks of 600 and roost at night in small chicken houses like our grandparents once had.

Harris is just now stepping into the chicken business, and for the moment his business is beef — lots of it. White Oak currently ships just more than 200,000 pounds of beef per month.

“I’m not blaspheming one type of beef over the other,” Harris said. “I will not say anything negative about industrial beef. I’ll just sat we have a fairly sophisticated customer base, and they can make their own decisions.”

The farm is also unique in that its slaughter facility was designed by Temple Grandin, a professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University. A person with high-functioning autism, Grandin is a best-selling author and a consultant to the livestock industry in animal behavior.

“I think using animals for food is an ethical thing to do, but we’ve got to do it right,’ Grandin says on her Wikipedia site. “We’ve got to give those animals a decent life and we’ve got to give them a painless death. We owe the animal respect.”

White Oak is a zero-waste facility, getting seven boxes of beef (around 420 pounds) from a 1,000-pound cow. The hides are salted and stored to be sent to a tannery later, the entrails are liquefied and turned into fertilizer and the bones are run through a wood chipper and later spread over the pasture to add calcium to the soil.

Harris sells his beef to Whole Foods, Publix, Cisco, Buckhead Beef, Destiny Organics and Tree of Life among others. His customers range all over the eastern United States.

“There is no doubt we are a niche market, Harris said.

Harris added that White Oak’s goal is “animal welfare, environmental stewardship and maintaining the local integrity of a local, non-centralized food system.”

The farm’s green bent goes beyond its animals. The plant’s entire water supply is heated by solar energy, and some of the its power comes from a $320,000 solar pole barn. The barn is capped with 216 27×28 solar panels which generate 30 percent of the plant’s energy.

Harris say he will eventually convert the plant to 100 percent solar power.

So when will that happen?

“I don’t know, we’ll get around to it,” Harris laughed. “My whole life is a work in progress.”

Proponents of organic farming often speak of nature’s balance in ways that sound almost spiritual, prompting criticism that their views are unscientific and naive. At the other end of the spectrum are those who see farms as battlefields where insect pests and plant diseases must be vanquished with the magic bullets of modern agriculture: pesticides, fungicides and the like.

Which view is more accurate? A 10-year study of an organic coffee farm in Mexico suggests that, far from being romanticised hooey, the ‘balance and harmony’ view is on the mark.

Ecologists John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto of the University of Michigan and Stacy Philpott of the University of Toledo have uncovered a web of intricate interactions that buffers the farm against extreme outbreaks of pests and diseases, making magic bullets unnecessary. Their research is described in the July/August issue of the journal BioScience.

The major players in the system – several ant species, a handful of coffee pests, and the predators, parasites and diseases that affect the pests – not only interact directly, but some species also exert subtle, indirect effects on others, effects that might have gone unnoticed if the system had not been studied in detail.

A key species in the complex web is the tree-nesting Azteca ant (Azteca instabilis). The ants aren’t particular about the kind of tree they live in, but for some reason their nests are found in only about 3 percent of shade trees on the farm, and ant-inhabited trees aren’t randomly distributed – they’re found in clumps.

The researchers believe the clumpiness results, at least in part, from the ants’ vulnerability to a parasitic fly. Ant colonies expand by sending off queens and broods to nearby trees, but when all the trees in an area have ant nests, the flies can more easily find ants to parasitise. So high-density clusters are preferentially attacked and eventually disappear, either because the ants all die or because the ants move to other trees.

The ants have a cosier relationship with the green coffee scale, a flat, featureless insect that is a serious coffee pest in some regions, but not on the farm where the study was done. Azteca protects the scale from predators and parasites in return for honeydew, a sweet, sticky liquid the scale secretes.

One of those predators is the lady beetle (Azya orbigera), whose adult and larval forms both feed on scale. When an adult beetle tries to attack a scale insect, the ants chase it away. But beetle larvae, which are covered with waxy gunk that gums up the ants’ mouthparts, are able to polish off plenty of scale. The ants even aid the murderous larvae, albeit inadvertently. In the course of shooing off parasitic wasps that attack scale, the ants also scare away bugs that parasitise beetle larvae.

The beetles also seem to influence the ants’ distribution patterns by preying on the scale, on which the ants depend for honeydew. The researchers explored the relationship using theoretical modelling and found that if ants take over the whole plantation, the beetle goes extinct because adult beetles can’t get enough to eat.

If the ants disappear from the farm, the beetles go extinct because the larvae starve. But if ants are confined to clusters, due to the influences of both beetles and parasitic flies, the beetles thrive and keep the scale insects under control.

‘The interesting thing is that the beetles could not exist except for the highly patterned ant population, but it could be those very same beetles causing the pattern formation in the first place,’ said Vandermeer, who is the Asa Gray Distinguished University Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. ‘The beetle creates the conditions for its own survival.’

The white halo fungus, a disease of scale insects, also enters in. The disease occurs here and there throughout the farm but runs rampant only where large populations of scale are found, which is only where the ants are protecting the scale. By suppressing the scale, on which the ants depend for honeydew, the fungus indirectly affects the ants’ survival.

But that’s not all: The fungus also attacks coffee rust, a notorious pest that virtually wiped out coffee production in Sri Lanka (previously known as Ceylon), Java and Sumatra in the mid-19th century and has since infiltrated Central and South America but has not caused serious problems in those areas. White halo fungus only works its magic against coffee rust, however, in the process of conducting major assaults on scale, and those assaults happen only where there’s lots of scale – in other words, where the scale is under ants’ protection.

In addition to Azteca, other ant species protect scale, and some of these ants are predators of the coffee berry borer and leaf miner, which are also coffee pests. The researchers are still working out the details of the relationships among the various ants and the other species with which they interact.

As the research team continues to discover more species that are part of the web and more complex direct and indirect interactions among all the members, it’s increasingly clear that the ‘naive’ view of nature working in harmony closely matches the scientific facts.

‘There are many farmers in the tropics who have been on their land for a long time – sometimes many generations – and have seen these things happening and intuitively understand the connections,’ said Vandermeer. ‘The stories they tell about the balance of nature sound almost romantic and religious sometimes, but if you just change the words, they start sounding like what we’re describing.’

Though this study is being done within the confines of a 300-hectare (740 acre) farm in southern Mexico, the researchers believe their approach and findings are more broadly applicable.

‘Our view is that interaction webs of this sort will prove common in agro-ecosystems in general,’ said Perfecto, professor of ecology and natural resources. ‘Although widely appreciated in natural systems, such webs haven’t been seen in agro-ecosystems because the people studying them haven’t looked at them in this way.

They’re looking for magic-bullet solutions; they want to find the thing that causes the problem and then fix it. Our approach is to understand systems that are working well, where there are no problems. By doing that, we can define systems that are more resilient and resistant to pest outbreaks.’

Source: University of Michigan News Service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (NOP) today announced an amendment to the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances. The amendment extends the use of methionine in organic poultry production.

Published in the Federal Register today as an interim rule with request for comments, it extends the allowance for methionine in organic poultry production until Oct. 1, 2012, with the following maximum allowable limits of methionine per ton of feed: 4 pounds for layers, 5 pounds for broilers, and 6 pounds for turkeys and all other poultry. This interim rule is based upon a recommendation by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) on April 12, 2010.

Methionine is an essential amino acid necessary in poultry diets for proper cell growth and feather development. While methionine is naturally present in organic poultry feed, the amount is not sufficient to maintain the optimal health of the birds. The NOSB determined that the loss of the use of synthetic methionine would disrupt the organic poultry market and cause substantial economic hardship to organic poultry operations.

The interim rule will become effective Oct. 1, 2010, and is currently available for comments. Comments must be submitted by Oct. 25, 2010. All comments received by this date will be considered prior to the issuance of the final rule. The interim rule and public comments may be viewed at www.regulations.gov, filed as document AMS-NOP-10-0051.

Under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act, the Secretary of Agriculture can amend the National List based on proposed amendments developed by the NOSB. The National List identifies the synthetic substances that may be used and nonsynthetic (natural) substances that may not be used in organic production. Since being established in 2001, the National List has been amended 13 times, including this interim rule.

For further information about this rule, contact Melissa Bailey, Director, Standards Division of NOP, at (202) 720-3252.

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/usda-extends-the-use-of-methionine-in-organic-poultry-production/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/growers-usda-must-act-prevent-sugar-supply-issue/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/growers-usda-must-act-prevent-sugar-supply-issue/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:43:37 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3123 The Associated Press
By Michael J. Crumb

DES MOINES, Iowa — A judge’s ruling halting planting of genetically modified sugar beet seeds has left growers feeling uncertain as they wait for federal officials to decide the next step for a crop that provides half of the nation’s sugar supply.

Duane Grant, chairman of the board at the Boise, Idaho-based Snake River Sugar Co., said if a solution can’t be worked out to use the genetically modified seed, his company and its growers fear there isn’t enough conventional seed to plant next year. The company produces about 20 percent of the nation’s beet sugar.

“There has been no incentive, no market, no demand for conventional seed since 2008 and we believe there is not enough conventional seed available for our growers to plant a full crop in 2011,” he said.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in California issued his ruling Aug. 13 that put on hold future planting of sugar beets using genetically modified seeds. White’s ruling allows this year’s crop to be harvested and processed, but the current seed crop can’t be planted until the U.S. Department of Agriculture reviews the effect the genetically altered crops could have on other food.

That could take several years. Until then, genetically modified seeds can be stored.

At issue are seeds developed by St. Louis-based Monsanto Co., used to grow about 95 percent of the sugar beet crop. The seeds are engineered to withstand the weed killer Roundup, allowing farmers to reduce the use of other chemicals and limit the practice of tilling fields to kill weeds.

Monsanto seeds also dominate corn and soybean production, but experts said last week’s decision is limited to sugar beets. Some groups hope, though, that the ruling could prompt the USDA to take a broader look at questions involving genetically modified crops.

Monsanto referred questions to Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugar Beet Growers Association. He said the next move is up to the USDA.

“The message we’re giving people is you have to be patient and let this play out,” Markwart said.

USDA spokesman Caleb Weaver said the agency’s attorneys are reviewing the ruling but haven’t made any decisions.

White’s ruling was the latest step in a lawsuit filed in 2008 by the Center for Food Safety, the Organic Seed Alliance and the Sierra Club challenging the USDA’s regulatory oversight for genetically engineered sugar beets and the potential that the seeds could contaminate other crops.

Sugar beets are planted on more than 1 million acres in 10 states, with Minnesota, North Dakota and Idaho being the top producers.

Robert Green, a North Dakota beet grower, said he didn’t know what would happen next but was confident he would plant sugar beets next spring.

“Sugar beets provide half the sugar for this country, and I don’t believe they will make the requirements so stringent people will go without sugar,” said Green, who farms near St. Thomas in far northeastern North Dakota.

Grant, whose Snake River Sugar Company has about 1,000 growers in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, said the USDA must act quickly so growers can plan for next year.

“We have a limited ability to influence them, and we will be dependent on their timely decision-making process,” Grant said.

The ruling comes two months after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a ban on the planting of genetically modified alfalfa seeds. The USDA still must abide by a lower court’s order to conduct an environmental impact study on use of the seeds.

Representatives of the groups that filed the sugar beet lawsuit said their suit and the alfalfa case shows the USDA hasn’t properly overseen genetically modified crops.

Matthew Dillon, founding director of the Organic Seed Alliance, said he would like the USDA to review of all genetically modified crops.

“We hope the government will sit down and look at what coexistence will look like. And past administrations have skirted the issue, believing that somehow, magically, plants won’t cross and these two types of systems can coexist without contamination,” Dillon said.

But even some who agree with Dillon don’t believe challenges to such crops as corn or soybeans are likely.

George Kimbrell, an attorney for the Center for Food Safety, noted that corn and soybeans are annual crops that are overwhelmingly genetically modified and self-pollinating. Also, he said, farmers typically rotate annually between the two crops. Those factors reduce the risk of contamination, Kimbrell said.

Another issue is that genetically modified corn and soybeans have been dominant for at least a decade, while alfalfa and sugar beat seeds are among the newest to be approved.

“Once it’s deregulated and out there, it’s not easy to do a challenge,” Neil Carman, clean air director of the Sierra Club, said. “The problem is that with some of those crops, the horse got out of the barn before we were ready to file legal cases.”

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/growers-usda-must-act-prevent-sugar-supply-issue/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/studies-link-range-of-major-diseases-to-pesticides-new-database-launched/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/studies-link-range-of-major-diseases-to-pesticides-new-database-launched/#comments Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:29:10 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3120 Beyond Pesticides

WASHINGTON — Links to pesticide exposure are being found in a growing number of studies that evaluate the causes of preventable diseases — including asthma, autism and learning disabilities, birth defects and reproductive dysfunction, diabetes, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and several types of cancer.

A new database tracks published epidemiologic and real world exposure studies. The studies challenge the effectiveness of risk-assessment-based regulation which is intended to manage adverse disease outcomes, but is criticized for allowing the uses of chemicals that can be replaced by green technologies and practices.

To capture the range of diseases linked to pesticides through epidemiologic studies, the national environmental and public health group Beyond Pesticides launched in the summer issue of its newsletter, Pesticides and You, the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database to track the studies.

“A read through the scientific literature on pesticides and major preventable diseases afflicting us in the 21st century suggests that one of the first responses called for is an all out effort to stop using toxic pesticides,” said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides.

The database begins an ongoing effort by Beyond Pesticides to maintain this comprehensive database of the studies that the group says “supports an urgent need to shift to toxic-free practices and policies.”

The group is calling for alternatives assessment in environmental rulemaking that creates a regulatory trigger to adopt alternatives and drive the market to go green. “Under risk assessment, we constantly play with ‘mitigation measures’ that the Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database tells us over and over is a failed human experiment,” said Mr. Feldman.

The alternatives assessment approach differs most dramatically from risk assessment in rejecting uses and exposures deemed acceptable under risk assessment calculations, but unnecessary because of the availability of safer alternatives.

For example, in agriculture, where the database shows clear links to pesticide use and multiple types of cancer, it would no longer be possible to use hazardous pesticides, as it is with risk assessment-based policy, when there are clearly effective organic systems with competitive yields that, in fact, outperform chemical-intensive agriculture in drought years. This same analysis can be applied to home and garden use of pesticides where households using pesticides suffer elevated rates of cancer.

Earlier this year Beyond Pesticides released its Organic Food: Eating with a Conscience guide that explains how foods grown with hazardous chemicals contaminate water and air, hurt biodiversity, harm farmworkers, and kill bees, birds, fish and other wildlife even though the finished commodities, often referred to as “clean,” may have minimal or nondetectable residues. The guide can be found at www.eatingwithaconscience.org.

The Pesticide-Induced Diseases Database, which currently contains 383 entries of epidemiologic and laboratory exposure studies, will be continually updated to track the emerging findings and trends. To view the database, go to www.beyondpesticides.org/health.

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/studies-link-range-of-major-diseases-to-pesticides-new-database-launched/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/mobile-slaughterhouses-feed-local-food-movement/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/mobile-slaughterhouses-feed-local-food-movement/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:59:07 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3114 Farmers can have just a few animals killed, then sell the meat nearby

Chicago Tribune
By Steve Mills, Tribune reporter

BONFIELD, Ill.– Kim Snyder built her farm in this small community west of Kankakee on the principles of organic farming and local food. But bringing her livestock to slaughter in a way that helps her maintain her passion for those principles has always been difficult.

Now, the former American Express operations manager hopes to develop a mobile slaughterhouse that would travel the state and help farmers get their livestock slaughtered, while also bringing consumers closer to the food they eat.

“I think every farmer like myself will see value in it. It will be so much easier if they can have the butcher come to them,” Snyder said. “It’s good for people too. They’re more connected with their food, more interested in what they’re putting in their mouth. This gets the farm and the processor closer to their customers.”

Most of the country’s meat is processed in massive facilities where cows, pigs and chickens are slaughtered at dizzying speeds before being shipped across the country. But the new approach Snyder is trying to bring to Illinois is gaining a foothold.

With a mobile slaughter unit, usually built on a flatbed truck, a local farmer can have small numbers of animals slaughtered on or near the farm, then sell the meat to neighbors or at farmers markets. Many supporters argue that mobile slaughter units, which might handle only five cows a day, better promote food safety than slaughterhouses that process thousands of animals.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm for this,” said Arion Thiboumery of Iowa State University, who has studied mobile slaughter units. “In large plants, the animals go by real fast. This is much smaller, so it’s slower. Many people say it’s safer.”

The nation’s first federally inspected mobile slaughter unit — the units travel with an inspector — started in Washington state. Today, Thiboumery said, there are about 20 mobile slaughter units for poultry and a half-dozen for cattle around the country.

In Kentucky, a unit that moves between three locations has been serving poultry farmers as well as fishermen who raise and catch shrimp, bass, catfish and other fish.

“It’s made a big difference for farmers,” said Steve Skelton of Kentucky State University, who is in charge of the unit. “They’re making money again.”

Snyder sells meat to Chicagoans from her Web site, http://www.faithsfarm.com; runs a booth at the farmers market at 61st Street and Woodlawn Avenue; and supplies the Park Grill at Millennium Park and other restaurants. She said she has gotten interest in the mobile unit from a butcher as well as from financial backers. A start-up mobile slaughter unit can cost $250,000 or more.

“If we can get this going, I see it growing very, very quickly,” Snyder said. “How cool would it be for a chef, or just for anyone, to walk out here and choose an animal, then have it slaughtered and pretty much ready to go?”

smmills@tribune.com

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/mobile-slaughterhouses-feed-local-food-movement/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/monsanto-spent-2-18-million-lobbying-govt-in-2q/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/monsanto-spent-2-18-million-lobbying-govt-in-2q/#comments Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:55:30 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3111 Bloomberg Businessweek

WASHINGTON — Monsanto Co. spent $2.18 million in the second quarter to lobby the federal government on a proposed changes to U.S. patent law and other issues that could affect the world’s largest seed company, according to a disclosure report.

The company lobbied the U.S. Department of Justice and Congress on antitrust and consolidation issues in agriculture. Monsanto’s use of patents is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. At issue is whether Monsanto has violated antitrust laws though its tight control of patented genes.

That’s up from the $2.08 million Monsanto spent during the period a year earlier, but down slightly from the $2.46 million it spent in the first quarter of 2010, after the DOJ launched its investigation.

Monsanto also lobbied the federal government on the USDA’s approval of genetically engineered crops, according to the report filed July 20 with the House clerk’s office.

In April through June, Monsanto lobbied Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House, U.S. Trade Representative and the U.S. Departments of State, Interior, Commerce, Defense and Agriculture, according to the report.

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/monsanto-spent-2-18-million-lobbying-govt-in-2q/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/raw-almond-producers-fight-fed-rules/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/raw-almond-producers-fight-fed-rules/#comments Thu, 19 Aug 2010 19:59:37 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3107 [The Cornucopia Institute is helping coordinate the legal strategy for the almond growers challenging the raw almond pasteurization mandate. But the farmers need your financial help to continue this expensive fight. Please consider making a donation to our raw almond legal defense fund. You can earmark your donation using the note field.]

Associated Press
By Trevor Hunnicutt

FRESNO, Calif. — Glenn Anderson decided to make a change when he followed in his father’s footsteps by growing almonds near the Central Valley town of Hilmar — he stopped using pesticides and pasteurizing the nuts.

He said it’s paid off in happy customers and sold-out harvests, but Anderson, 76, said he fears federal regulations could ruin his business selling raw, organic almonds. He’s hopeful an effort by a dozen California almond growers and retailers to challenge the U.S. Department of Agriculture over its rules will succeed.

The USDA adopted the regulations requiring that nuts be steamed or treated with a chemical in response to salmonella outbreaks in 2001 and 2004 blamed on raw almonds that left some sickened.

Anderson, who isn’t among the plaintiffs, called the USDA rules misguided.

“We are as clean as or cleaner than a pasteurized product,” said Anderson. “My customers are willing to take that risk.”

Those challenging the USDA scored a legal victory last week when a U.S. Court of Appeals judge ruled they could proceed with a lawsuit challenging the regulations.

The almond producers, not all of whom are organic, said the rules have sabotaged their businesses by not allowing them to compete with foreign-produced raw almonds.

They also objected to requirements that they steam the nuts or spray them with propylene oxide, which is widely used but concerns some farmers because it has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as a probable carcinogen. The EPA allows the use of PPO, as it is known, in small amounts not believed to harm human health.

Michael Jarvis, a spokesman for the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Services, said the federal government is reviewing the Aug. 3 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Jarvis declined to comment further.

The Modesto-based Almond Board, the trade group that recommended the rules, defended the regulations.

“The food quality and safety program, including pasteurization, went into effect in 2007, and was developed after an extended, transparent process involving all segments of the almond industry,” the board said in a statement.

Anderson said he is able to continue producing his almonds naturally — for now — because he is a small business and often sells directly to consumers. But other farmers said the rule has hurt them and left many customers agitated.

“Yes, people are incensed,” said Jesse Schwartz, whose Berkeley, Calif.-based Living Tree Community Foods makes organic almond butter. “People want their almonds back.”

Raw foods comprise most of the 67-year-old entrepreneur’s diet, and Schwartz describes almonds as a “gift of the California earth, air and water.” He thinks it’s the most healthful nut.

“I feel I have all the energy that I need to accomplish whatever I have to do,” said Schwartz.

Growers note that while their almonds must either be chemically treated or heated by steam to about 200 degrees to kill salmonella and other contaminants, their products share the shelves at organic-friendly supermarkets such as Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and Fresh and Easy with foreign-grown almonds that are not treated with steam.

Some people believe the steam compromises the taste and possibly nutritional value of the nut — a claim disputed by public health experts — and farmers said it adds cost as well.
California produces nearly all of the nation’s almonds and 85 percent of the world’s supply, according to the Almond Board. Organics represents a small percentage of that total, but it has been growing.

Some public health experts said even if raw organic almond producers don’t subject their almonds to pasteurization, the nuts might be safer than conventionally produced almonds because the organic farms don’t use pesticides and often are careful about exposing their crop to contaminants such as animal waste because that could threaten their organic certification.

Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said studies have shown that under 1 percent of almonds are contaminated by a variety of salmonella strains. He compares that to much higher percentages in some meats.

“If the rest of our food supply were that safe, we’d be shouting for joy, so I can appreciate and sympathize with the producers who are asking to be relieved of this burden,” said Lawrence.

]]> http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/raw-almond-producers-fight-fed-rules/feed/ 0 http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/more-chickens-seattle-approves-urban-farming-bill/ http://www.cornucopia.org/2010/08/more-chickens-seattle-approves-urban-farming-bill/#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:18:31 +0000 The Cornucopia Institute http://www.cornucopia.org/?p=3103 Seattle Post Intelligencer

The Seattle City Council on Monday passed legislation designed to encourage urban farmers.

People would be allowed to keep up to eight chickens per house; roosters would be prohibited. The Council allowed a grandfather clause that lets existing roosters remain in the city. The ordinance, which passed unanimously, also paves the way for urban farms and taller greenhouses. Specifically, it would allow:

1. Urban farms of up to 4,000 square feet in residential zones. Food grown on site can be sold on site. There are limits on sales hours, amount of farm equipment allowed, and size of signs.
2. Greenhouses dedicated to food production to extend 15 feet above height limits in certain zones.

“This is something most major cities are talking about,” Councilwoman Sally Clark said. “It’s exciting for people who want to see community gardens go to the next level.”

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