CBS46.com (click here for their full story, including video footage) ATLANTA -- A new organic baby formula that is sold in the United States has an ingredient that has been banned in Europe. CBS 46 investigated how the formula is still allowed on our shelves. New mother Renee Ross reached for Similac's Organic Infant Formula for her son Mekhi's first meals. In fact, the newborn gift bag she was given when she checked out of the hospital after giving birth to Mekhi had a can of the formula. "It's organic, so I figured it should be OK," she said.

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USDA weighing compromise proposal In late November, Cornucopia staff arranged a meeting with USDA Undersecretary Bruce Knight to discuss concerns and problems with the now-implemented mandate requiring pasteurization of all raw almonds grown by domestic producers for sale in the U.S. For more than an hour, Cornucopia's two codirectors met in Washington, DC with three high-ranking USDA officials with the bulk of the discussion centered on almonds. Interestingly, we learned that half of all the comments coming into the Secretary's office at this time are on almonds!

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By Jim Riddle On December 28, 2006, the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) at the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Draft Risk Assessment on meat and milk from cloned animals. The FDA concluded that animal cloning, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), "results in an increased frequency of health risks to animals involved in the cloning process." The CVM found that, "surrogate dams are at risk of complications from birth" and "the frequency of live normal births appears to be low, although the situation appears to be improving as the technology matures." (1)

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Is Corporate Do-Goodery for Real? Bill McKibben Mother Jones November/December 2006 Issue Ten percent of a two-year-old's nouns are brand names; by the time an American child heads to school, he or she can recognize hundreds of logos. Disney is now putting its cartoon characters on fresh fruit, arguing (perhaps correctly) that it's the only way to get kids to eat it. If that's the world we're born into, is it any wonder we want corporations to solve our biggest problems as well? Isn't it a parent's job to protect us? And besides, who else has the capital and the power to do what needs to be done in the face of a crisis like global warming?

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