After Japan meltdown, Gulf oil spill, Canadians seek stronger environmental laws

By Ecojustice

Ecojustice is calling for better Canadian safeguards following Japan’s nuclear crisis. Worst case scenarios like nuclear meltdowns, offshore oil spills and major tar sands tailings pond breaches need to be assessed through strong federal laws that ensure Canada remains free from disasters like the ones that have occurred in Japan and the Gulf Coast. [Large size of image]

Federal law must require assessment of worst case scenarios such as nuclear meltdowns, offshore oil spills and tar sands tailing dam breaches says Ecojustice, Canada’s foremost non-profit environmental law group.

Joel Salatin: How to Eat Meat and Respect It, Too

Why this foodie farmer believes sustainable farming includes meat

By Madeline Ostrander
Yes! Magazine

Joel Salatin is no simple farmer. When he speaks, he at times takes on the air of a Southern preacher, philosopher, heretic, businessman, activist, or ecological engineer. Since Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma and the film Food, Inc. brought him to fame as the man who raises meat the right way, Salatin has become a sought-after speaker. But he still spends most of his time on his rural Virginia farm—with the chickens, baling hay, moving cows from one paddock to another. He is a self-described “Christian libertarian environmentalist capitalist lunatic” and has a penchant for perplexingly long catchphrases. It is perhaps Salatin’s unwillingness to compartmentalize that has made him such a compelling moral voice for the food movement. For Salatin, farming is inseparable from ethics, politics, faith, or ecology.

Local is the New “Organic” Co-Opted Food Term

Local is the New Organic Co-Opted Food Term

By Gordon Edgar
Fair Food Fight

I try not to be cranky when working behind the cheese counter but more and more the phrase, “local is the new organic” is pushing my buttons. Increasing corporate hypocrisy and consumer misunderstanding around “buying local” is one of the most frustrating things I run into as a cheese buyer for a cooperative grocery store.  Even though this would seem to be a more accessible and understandable issue than a lot of other food trends, many would-be locavores have just as much misunderstanding about the food system as the average non-rural American.

Why Hide Serious Government Data on Raw Milk Drinkers?

Open Letter to FDA’s Dairy Head, John Sheehan

By Steve Bemis, Esq.
FTCLDF

I have to give you credit, Mr. Sheehan, for playing your cards close to your chest as the chief FDA enforcer out to ban raw milk.  You’ve carefully directed that FDA avoid any semblance of dialogue on the topic of raw milk consumption, and now I think I know why:  FDA knows too much, and doesn’t want to risk having to answer a simple question:  How Many Americans Drink Raw Milk?

The answer to this question is hugely significant to an intelligent evaluation of the supposed risks in drinking fresh, unprocessed raw milk.  This evaluation, this dialogue with the American public, has had nothing but deus ex cathedra pronouncements from FDA and CDC since the earliest crack-downs on raw milk farmers and distributors beginning in the 2006 time-frame.  The number who drink raw milk is the denominator that is missing to give perspective to the several dramatized cases of illness and the drumbeat of CDC reports of total numbers of illness.  Being sick is no fun, and not to be minimized.  But neither should such cases be maximized without a frame of reference – particularly when the “data” are being used to drive public policy and restrict freedom of choice.

Augie on Fluoridation on Ohio Public Square Radio

Ohio Public Square interviews David “Augie” Augenstein to discuss the effects of fluoridation within our water supply and the recent findings by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on The Ohio Public Square. Augie is the publisher of a local bulletin called “Living Food,” with a companion blog, Journal of Living Food and Healing, and iShop.

Dental fluorosis, diminished mental capacity, skeletal fluorosis and thyroid damage are only some of the problems associated with fluoride. He also discusses some of the laws regarding fluoridated water and recommends Fluoride Alert.org.

‘Silent tsunami’ and protection of farmland

By Ralph Surette
The Chronicle Herald (Canada)

The NDP government has blocked a move to develop lands designated as agricultural in King’s County. The reasons given were in the technical language of zoning regulations. But this is no mere local question. Rising food prices and in­creasing trouble in the whole vast reality to which food is central is now one of the world’s biggest problems — a “silent tsunami” as The Economist mag­azine called it — a part of the larger issue of climate change and resource depletion.

Food prices are at their highest levels ever and poised to rise higher (eight per cent in Canada, for now). This news was work­ing its way to prominence a few weeks ago when other events washed over it — upheavals in the Middle East (of which food prices are a cause), catastrophe in Japan (of which a compro­mised food supply is a conse­quence), and election uproar in Canada (where this should be an issue, but isn’t).

Will Allen to keynote Urban Sustainability Summit in DC, Apr. 16

International Urban Sustainability Summit

Food Sovereignty, Security & Justice

The University of the District of Columbia’s (UDC) College of Agriculture, Urban Sustainability and Environmental Sciences (CAUSES) celebrates Earth Day by hosting the inaugural International Urban Sustainability Summit. The Summit will take place on Saturday, April 16, 2011, from 8:00 am – 5:30 pm, on UDC’s Van Ness Campus. Registration is free.

The featured keynote speaker for the occasion is “Green” innovator and 2008 MacArthur Fellow, Will Allen, founder of Growing Power – a model urban sustainability program. Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to under-served, urban populations.

Eww – EU to sell cloned meat and dairy without labels

Cloned meat betrayal: Unlabeled dairy and beef products to go on sale after UK minister sabotages Europe’s call for a ban

By Sean Poulter
Daily Mail
 UK

A campaign to put controls on cloned meat and milk was killed off yesterday by the UK Government and Brussels. The move signals the start of a free-for-all in ‘Frankenfood’ – despite claims the technology is cruel and unethical.

Shoppers will be left in the dark because products from the offspring of cloned animals will not require special labels. One MEP warned supermarkets could soon be flooded with their milk.

Huber speaks out on glyphosate threat to agriculture

Plant pathologist Don Huber caused quite a stir with his leaked letter to the USDA calling for a moratorium on genetically modified alfalfa.  (See Scientists warn of link between dangerous new pathogen and Monsanto’s Roundup.) He based his demand on studies linking a newly emergent pathogen with spontaneous abortion in livestock, sudden death syndrome in Monsanto’s Roundup Ready soy, and wilt in Monsanto’s RR corn. On March 24, he spoke with several farmers in Nebraska about these findings, which Steven McFadden describes in this excerpted post. ~Ed.

By Steven McFadden
The Call of the Land

EXTRACTS:

On the morning of March 24, along with about 80 farmers and Extension agents, I listened as Huber discoursed with erudition and eloquence upon industrial farming practices that may be impacting nearly every morsel of food produced on the planet, and that subsequently may also be having staggeringly serious health consequences for plants, animals, and human beings.

These foods are a MASSIVE waste of money

By Dr Joe Mercola

Did you know that even the lowest-priced supermarket is brimming with complete rip-offs? From health foods that aren’t healthy to gourmet foods that aren’t gourmet, every store is chock-full of items that can be a big wallop to your pocketbook, unless you know the secrets to shopping wisely.

A sample rip-off list comes with a couple surprises – for example, did you know that gluten-free bread may not be the bargain you expect or that cereal packages with cartoons on the front are red lights for rip-offs?

The good news is there’s a nice long list of 40 items that not only give you a good bang for your buck, but a boost to your health as well, such as blueberries, cinnamon, and sweet potatoes.

Victory Veggies and Survival Gardening

By Linda Grinthal
NJ Skylands

Food that is trucked and flown thousands of miles to get to us is becoming much more expensive, as it gets less fresh and looses nutritious value. Taste has been compromised for convenience and shelf life. Our remote supply may even eventually dwindle. It’s time for local action. Grow a survival garden, writes Linda Grinthal.

Garden as if your life depended on it, because it does

By Ellen LaConte
Counter Currents

Spring has sprung—at least south of the northern tier of states where snow still has a ban on it—and the grass has ‘riz. And so has the price of most foods, which is particularly devastating just now when so many Americans are unemployed, underemployed, retired or retiring, on declining or fixed incomes and are having to choose between paying their mortgages, credit card bills, car payments, and medical and utility bills and eating enough and healthily. Many are eating more fast food, prepared foods, junk food—all of which are also becoming more expensive—or less food.

How to Boil a Frog – Meet the Filmmaker

By Peak Moment TV

Filmmaker Jon Cooksey is one funny guy, even while presenting the most serious problems facing humanity. In this fast-paced conversation, he gallops all over the map with five big problems, five big solutions, and a playful and heartfelt approach. Wacky, sobering, full of animations, with Jon in dozens of personnas, “How to Boil a Frog” is a film to view and discuss with friends. (www.howtoboilafrog.com).

International Seed Day Celebrates Patent-Free Seeds, Organic Food and Farmers’ Rights

By INEAS

Organizations and activists from around the world will observe April 26 as International Seed Day (ISD) advocating for patent-free seeds, organic food and farmers’ rights. ISD will be an educational day for the public to learn about genetically modified food, its health hazardous effects and the monopoly over worldwide agriculture by major US and European agribusiness companies.

“Toxic Waste Bubble Gum” recalled for lead contamination

By Rady Ananda

Believe it or not, there is actually a product on the market called “Toxic Waste Short Circuits Bubble Gum.” How’s that for subliminally mind-warping your children into thinking toxic waste is fun and tastes good, too!  Ironically, the Pakistani product has been recalled for “elevated levels of lead,” per the FDA. Only Lot #15070SC12, shipped between January 4 and March 18, 2011, is involved.

The candies look like spent uranium fuel pellets from a nuclear power plant. Isn’t that cute?  Forget that this nuclear waste is more dangerous than the nuclear reactor itself.  Those fuel pellets are stored in rod assemblies that are submersed in cooling pools on top of nuclear reactors, as I detailed in a recent post.

The criminal tale of Monsanto

By Phil Shannon
Green Left

The World According to Monsanto: Pollution, Politics & Power
Marie-Monique Robin
Spinifex Press, 2010.
373 pages, $44.95 (pb)

“What counts for us is making money,” said a Monsanto vice-president to a new employee at an induction session in 1998, reminding the idealistic novice that there is a simple, and crude, capitalist philosophy at the heart of the US chemical and biotechnology giant.

All Monsanto’s talk about the ecological and humanitarian miracles of its chemicals and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is so much hot air, says Marie-Monique Robin in The World According To Monsanto.

The reduction of pesticide pollution, the end of world hunger, plants producing biodegradable plastics, corn containing antibodies against cancer — none of these promised GMO solutions have been delivered.

The Codex Alimentarius Irradiated Food Cover-up

By Brandon Turbeville
Activist Post

In the last article, I briefly discussed a proposal made by the FDA which was very similar to one made by Congress five years earlier. This proposal would have allowed production companies to use terms such as “electronically pasteurized” instead of “irradiated” and, going further, simply allow the food to be categorized as “pasteurized” with no indication whatsoever that the food had been subject to radiation.

The proposal made by the FDA in April, 2007 is an interesting one indeed. In the opening summary of the text, the FDA states that one of the purposes of the proposal is to make it so that “only those irradiated foods in which the irradiation causes a material change in the food, or a material change in the consequences that may result from the use of the food, bear the radura logo and the term ‘irradiation,’ or a derivative thereof, in conjunction with explicit language describing the change in the food or its conditions of use.”[1]

While this may seem like a strengthening of a rule, in reality it is not. This proposal is merely another cover mechanism for the pretense of protecting the consumer with strong regulation, while allowing industry to do just what it wants, i.e. produce high levels of irradiated food to cover up unsanitary manufacturing practices.

Joe Bageant Passes; Review of his last book on agrarian democracy

Joe Bageant, 1946-2011

After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died on March 27 following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas. According to Joe’s wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.

Here’s his last post, on January 4, 2011, announcing his cancer.

Some Fight Back

A Review of Joe Bageant’s Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir

By Michael Donnelly

This book is all about the post WWII shift from Maw and Pap’s agrarian democracy to the urban-dominated/techno/bureaucratic/ military/security/consumer Empire of today, showing how that shift and the resulting class stratification has led us to the brink of economic and ecological collapse, writes Donnelly.

FDA suddenly bans 500 drugs

FDA Suddenly Bans Drugs That Have Been On The Market For Decades

from the perfect-gin-and-tonic-for-fun-and-profit dept

By David Fuchs
TechDirt

Recently, the FDA banned 500 prescription drugs that had been on the market and working for years. To be fair, it was really 50-100 drugs (pdf), made by different companies, but that just highlights how there was actual competition in the marketplace for these drugs, which has now been removed. For all of the drugs, there is either a high-priced prescription version, or all the small manufacturers have been removed, leaving a virtual monopoly for one or more larger companies, writes David Fuchs.

‘Queen of the Sun’ opens tonight in Nevada City, CA

The new feature documentary Queen of The Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? opens tonight, March 25, at the Magic Theatre in Nevada City, CA.

Check here for a list of upcoming screenings.