Wall Street Journal By LAUREN ETTER A group of black farmers reached a $1.25 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture over a longstanding civil-rights case that had cast a pall over the agency for decades. In a conference call Thursday, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the settlement would close a "sordid chapter in USDA history." "This is a very historic, emotional day for black farmers," said John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association who once traveled 200 miles in a mule-drawn wagon from Baskerville, Va., to Washington to raise awareness about black farmers. "But the [Obama] administration is going to have to help me finish the job." Thursday's settlement, which remains contingent on the money being appropriated by Congress, stems from a 1997 class-action civil-rights lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, that was filed by three African-American farmers alleging the USDA had discriminated against them and other black farmers.

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University of Wisconsin-Madison News by Bob Mitchell The current financial downturn hasn't spared Wisconsin's organic farmers, but in general they have been able to ride it out, says a new report about the state's organic sector.

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Food Safety News by Dan Flynn When tests for the deadly E. coli O157:H7 pathogen come back with positive results, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) makes sure the product does not reach consumers, but that's about it. Nobody tracks down the source of contamination or figures out if there might be additional meat that is contaminated and making its way to consumers. "Why are they doing these investigations if they're not doing them to put their arms around all the product and finding out what went wrong?" Donna Rosenbaum asked the Chicago Tribune.

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Madison Daily Leader PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- Maine dairy farmers hope their new organic milk, called MOOMilk, becomes as popular among natural-food buffs as Maine lobster is among seafood lovers. Ten dairy farmers formed Maine's Own Organic Milk Co., MOOMilk for short, last year after their contracts weren't renewed by large milk distributor H.P. Hood LLC. A year later, the first half-gallon cartons of MOOMilk have reached dairy cases in scores of supermarkets and natural-food stores in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. MOOMilk gives consumers a new locally produced organic milk while offering farmers a glimmer of hope when the dairy industry is struggling, said dairy farmer Richard Lary, of Windy Acres Farm, in Clinton. In Maine, 200 dairy farms have gone out of business in the past decade, with 300 still in operation.

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The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia GMOs, Health & Disease -- by Dr. Brian Applicant's dossiers contained wide-ranging fraudulent research For the first time, a GM multinational has pulled two GM corn varieties from the regulatory and assessment process at the eleventh hour (1), after planning for a future income of several billion dollars per year from global sales (2). Monsanto has abandoned its ambitious plans for a so-called "second generation GM crop" rather than accede to a request from European regulators for additional research and safety data (3). Under conditions of great secrecy, Monsanto has informed EFSA that it no longer wishes to pursue its application for approval of GM maize LY038 and the stacked variety LY038 x MON810. Both of these varieties were designed to accelerate the growth rate of animals. Two letters were sent to EFSA from the Monsanto subsidiary company Renessen at the end of April this year confirming the withdrawal of its applications originally submitted in 2005 and 2006. The letters cite "decreased commercial value worldwide" and state that the high-lysene varieties "will no longer be a part of the Renessen business strategy in the near future." (4) There has been no announcement of these decisions on the Monsanto web site, and there are no mentions on EFSA or European Commission web sites either. In other words, there is a conspiracy of silence involving both the applicants and the regulators.

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