Genetifically Modified Alfalfa Officially On The Way

by Barry Estabrook

On Thursday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA) had approved the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa sold by Monsanto Co. and Forge Genetics, despite protests from organic groups and public health advocates and comments from nearly 250,000 citizens asking the department to keep this GMO genie in its bottle. With this announcement, the Obama administration showed whose side it is on in the battle between proponents of sustainable, organic agriculture and the big businesses that profit from conventional, chemical agriculture. Big Ag won. It wasn’t even close.

“Thousands of people spoke out about this contamination,” Fantel said.
“They were ignored”

If you eat meat or dairy, you indirectly consume alfalfa. It is a leading source of hay for cattle. In terms of acreage, alfalfa is the United States’ fourth biggest crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. It is also notoriously promiscuous, and its pollen can be carried by bees and other insects for five miles, making it all but certain that the GMO crop, designed to survive applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, will contaminate much of the country’s conventional alfalfa. Because GMO products are not allowed in USDA-certified foods, it could become all but impossible to produce organic milk and meat in many areas unless organic farmers switch to less desirable sources of forage.

Earlier, the USDA said that it was weighing three options: (1) complete deregulation of GM alfalfa; (2) allowing it to be planted but requiring five-mile buffers between it and non-GM alfalfa; and (3) allowing unrestricted planting except in seed-growing regions to prevent contamination. Vilsack went for the first: the most Big-Ag-friendly choice.

“This is very disappointing,” said Will Fantle, co-director of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute, an organic and small-farm watchdog group that is a plaintiff in a lawsuit brought against the USDA claiming that it did not take the required legal steps before originally approving GM alfalfa in 2007. “Tens of thousands of people spoke out against this contamination,” Fantle said. “They were completely ignored. It looks like the biotech industry has all the political power.”

“This creates a perplexing situation when the market calls for a supply of crops free of genetic engineering,” said Christine Bushway, Executive Director and CEO of theOrganic Trade Association in a press release. “The organic standards prohibit the use of genetic engineering, and consumers will not tolerate the accidental presence of genetic engineered materials in organic products, yet GE crops continue to proliferate unchecked.”

Widespread application of Roundup, Monsanto’s trade name for the weed-killing chemical called glyphosate, has already led to the proliferation of “superweeds” that have mutated and can survive applications of the chemical. Currently, Australia ranks first in the world for weed resistance to herbicides. Speaking to a farmers’ group in January, Stephen Powles, a renowned resistance expert at the University of Western Australia, warned that the United States might overtake his country if present trends continue.

The Obama administration’s decision makes it all but certain that the dubious honor will soon be ours.

Full article available from our friends at Atlantic Monthly

Health testing way down at California beaches

The monitoring is at its lowest level since becoming law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation shows.

By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times

August 30, 2010

Health testing of California’s beaches has slumped to its lowest level since ocean monitoring became law more than a decade ago, putting swimmers, surfers and divers at greater risk of exposure to contaminated water, a Times investigation has found.

Beaches from San Diego to the Bay Area are being tested less often and in fewer locations; some are going untested for months at a time. Statewide, the number of annual tests for bacteria has dropped by nearly half since 2005, according to a Times analysis of state records.

Beach closures and advisories have also fallen dramatically — in part because there’s less pollution, but also because health officials aren’t detecting the dirty water that remains.

At calm, sheltered Baby Beach in Dana Point, which attracts parents with young children but also traps contaminated runoff, health officials did not test for five months earlier this year.

In Long Beach, home to some of the most polluted ocean water in the state, 40% of beach sites are no longer being tested, city officials said. State records show that testing at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro is down 80% and 65% in Santa Monica. At San Onofre State Beach at the northern edge of San Diego County, water at the legendary Trestles surf break was tested only four times last year, down from nearly 70 times in 2005.

The culprit is a familiar one: state and county budget cuts. In 2008, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the $1 million the state had provided each year to test hundreds of beaches for bacteria. Since then, emergency bond funds and stimulus dollars have been tapped to keep the testing program afloat, but the money is expected to evaporate by year’s end.

Overall, water quality at the region’s beaches is almost certainly better than it was in the past, experts say. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to divert and treat runoff and wastewater before it washes into the ocean. Drought conditions have also reduced the amount of runoff reaching the ocean.

Nonetheless, clean-water advocates say the cutbacks have put people at risk. Those who swim in contaminated water are exposed to gastrointestinal viruses and to pathogens that can cause skin rashes and ear, eye and staph infections. Swimmers are most likely to get sick in poor-circulating water near river mouths and sewer outfalls, especially after rain.

“Water quality absolutely has gotten better during the summer months,” said Mark Gold, president of Heal the Bay. “But the reality is that less frequent monitoring means there’s a much greater chance of someone swimming or surfing in polluted water unknowingly.”

Tourism officials have also expressed concern. They say the cost to monitor beaches is inconsequential compared with the estimated $12 billion in tourist-related revenue California beach towns generate each year.

“California’s coastline is one of our biggest assets as a travel destination,” said Kathryn Burnside, a spokeswoman for the California Travel and Tourism Commission. “What makes sense from a health perspective certainly makes sense for the tourism industry.”

Health and wastewater agencies responsible for beach testing defend the scaled-back monitoring as adequate. Some officials said the amount of testing has been underreported, while others acknowledged severe cutbacks.

Schwarzenegger’s office said the state has continued funding beach water monitoring at a 90% level despite budget difficulties.

“It is not immediately clear why the number of tests taken by counties have declined this much,” spokeswoman Rachel Arrezola said in a written statement. She said the Department of Public Health and the State Water Board are investigating the reason for the declines while they search for a permanent funding source for future testing.

Los Angeles County health officials said their own testing has remained constant and disputed the state’s records for the county’s coastline.

“We continue to do the tests weekly, and we’re not doing less sampling because we don’t have money,” said Alfonso Medina, director of the county’s Environmental Protection Bureau. However, other agencies that test some of the county’s beaches may have cut back.

Public health officials say they are unable to gauge if reduced testing has caused more swimmers to get sick. Cases are rarely reported because they mimic ailments such as food poisoning or stomach flu.

The number of beaches in California closed by health officials has fallen 74% since 2005, The Times found. Postings, which alert swimmers to contaminated water, dropped 44%. State and local officials do not know how much of that decline is attributable to cleaner water and how much to less testing. Many beachgoers, however, assume that the lack of signs means the water is clean.

“If there isn’t a sign posted, I kind of assume it’s safe,” said Susan Thomas, who takes her 16-month-old daughter, MaKenzie, to the beach every other weekend. “We’re obviously taking a risk going into the water anywhere along this coast, but when she swims, she goes under.”

The beach where Thomas spoke, Baby Beach in Dana Point, was busy on a balmy afternoon earlier this month. Dozens of children and their parents splashed in a shallow, roped-off swimming area as a lifeguard watched from a tower nearby.

Historically, the beach has been one of the region’s dirtiest, sliding by with C’s and D’s on Heal the Bay’s annual beach report card. And yet health monitoring at Baby Beach and 38 other beaches in Orange County — including Little Corona in Newport Beach and Main Beach in Laguna — shut down for five months during the winter for lack of funds.

California’s pioneering 1999 law requires health officials to test at least once a week during the long summer beach season. If a beach fails, lifeguards post signs alerting swimmers to the risk. Congress used the law as its national model, and many Southern California beaches expanded to year-round, almost daily testing earlier this decade.

But the California law has a loophole: Testing isn’t required if the program is not fully funded. Without money from Sacramento, health agencies can cut testing or choose not to report results without violating the law, something state officials suspect is contributing to the declining numbers.

In Ventura County, the loss of state funds meant that monitoring of its 42-mile coastline was halted for eight months in November 2008.

“Once the money went away, there was no mandate to sample, so we suspended sampling,” said program coordinator Richard Hauge.

In some coastal areas, nonprofits are taking up the slack as government agencies cut back.

When Santa Barbara County reduced funding for year-round beach testing two years ago, the nonprofit Santa Barbara Channelkeeper raised money to pay interns to collect the water samples at 16 beaches through the winter, when the bigger waves draw more surfers.

Other places, such as Orange County, are collaborating more with sanitation districts, which are required to test ocean water as part of their license to discharge wastewater from sewage treatment plants.

And in San Diego County, which had to drop its monitoring program for half a year last winter, health officials have begun more frequent testing at pollution-prone coastlines, such as Torrey Pines State Beach.

Even with those assists, however, there is less information available for surfers and swimmers like Barry Gardner, a ninth-grade health teacher from Yorba Linda who takes half a dozen surf camping trips a year.

He’s wary of spending too much time in dirty ocean water and avoids a section of Doheny State Beach known as “Dead Bird Cove” because of its supposed toxicity. But for the most part, he prefers to push his luck.

“If the surf is good, I’m going to go in the water,” he said. “But if you don’t know what’s in it, it’s tough.”

tony.barboza@latimes.com

Times staff writer Doug Smith and data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this report.

from our friends at the LATimes.com

Vitamin D Council
4/13/2010

Dear Dr. Cannell:

My 71 year old mother is in the hospital diagnosed with Pseudomonas pneumonia. Because she also has COPD along with years of prednisone use, her doctors have given her only a 5% chance of survival. The hospital is against patients taking any supplements without doctors orders (they kind of have a don’t ask/don’t tell policy on supplements), but they have prescribed her Vitamin C and zinc. But they failed to prescribe any Vitamin D.

Under my insistence, six months ago my mother had her vitamin D levels tested and found out she was critically low. So she has been taking 5,000 IU a day since then. But after finding out she had Pseudomonas, unknown to her doctors, I have been giving my mother 30,000 IU of vitamin D for the last 5 days (based on the studies I saw about Pneumonia and Vitamin D). The first few days she had a fever of 99+, but these last 2 days her temperature has returned to NORMAL. Needless to say, her doctors are astounded. They fully expected her to be near death now. But out of fear I am not planning on informing them of her Vitamin D intake unless/until after she fully recovers.

At any rate, I do not want you personal medical advice. But because you have studied Vitamin D so thoroughly, I wanted to ask you, based on the studies and research out there, is 30,000 IU enough for this? Does research show if it is safe or beneficial to take more for this condition? Is there any other cofactors that research shows would be beneficial as well? Really, what has the research shown?

Thank you for any information you can provide. It will be simply wonderful if Vitamin D actually ends up saving my Mother’s life.

Much kind regards and thank you for all you do.

Linda T., New York

Dear Linda:

Increase her dose to 50,000 IU per day and continue that dose until she is fully recovered and then reduce it to 5,000 IU per day. Doses of 50,000 IU per day should only be used by critically ill people; they are safe to take for many weeks. This is to be used in addition to her antibiotics, not instead of them.

There is no direct or even much indirect science to support my advice. However, I cannot fail to give my best advice and let your mother die. As far as co-factors, vitamin D needs many but magnesium, zinc, boron, and vitamin K2 are the ones most people are deficient in.

Good reason exists to think that the antimicrobial peptides that vitamin D upregulates (increases) will be effective in a wide variety of infectious disease that peaks in the wintertime, such as pneumonia and meningitis.

I hope your letter may have the effect of reaching others who may be in similar situations.

John Cannell, MD
Executive Director
Vitamin D Council

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"the earth is a source of life that is to be protected…"

Orville Looking Horse

The New Green Economy

Caroline welcomes Bob Gough, secretary for Inter-Tribal Coup, and lawyer for the Lakota Sioux, indefatigable agent of Red Green Power, the development of Wind Power, allying ancient infinite Power with reverently collaborative new technology on Native American reservations.

Price VS Cost !

from our friends at www.coyotenetworknews.com

brought to us by our friends at KCSM.org

Harvard School of Public Health published a piece in December, 2007 as to why Trans Fats should be banished from the Food system. They intrinsically lead to harmful changes in blood fats, systemic inflammation, and abdominal fat (brown fat) and insulin resistance.This leads to cardiovascular death, diabetes and other chronic disease.There is no reason for the continued use of Trans Fat in food preparation and suggest voluntary or legislated withdrawal. Tens of thousand of heart attacks would be prevented.

J. Joseph Prendergast has been a practicing physician for over 30 years. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine as well as Endocrinology and Metabolism. A graduate of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan he completed his residency at the University of San Francisco.
In 1986, Dr. Prendergast formed a single specialty endocrinology practice, Endocrine Metabolic Medical Center and a non-profit research foundation, The Pacific Medical Research Foundation.

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Amory Lovins is cofounder of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Here in an interview with Charlie Rose, Lovins gives leveled headed information and statistics about energy ideas and solutions.
July 15, 2008, www.charlierose.com

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In this inspiring talk about recent developments in biomimicry, Janine Benyus provides heartening examples of ways in which nature is already influencing the products and systems we build. A self-proclaimed nature nerd, Benyus is the author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature, a book that has galvanized scientists, architects, designers and engineers into exploring new ways in which nature’s successes can inspire humanity.

24 minutes of inspirational ideas!

*Even though this lecture was done ‘way back’ in 2005, all of her ideas are still viable to help us Today !

Or “…It’s time to Stop ignoring the 1.2 Billion Elephants in the room…!”

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In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow, he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right. Gore’s stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates’ climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

August 2008 • 29 minutes of Great information

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Carolyn Raffenperger clearly raps down the Precautionary Principle !

Worth every bit of the 5 minutes !

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Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, really looks into the brain:
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.
I highly recommend this 18 minutes on our brains !