'Tipsy' alcohol gene discovered

Some people can hold their drink much better than others Experts say they have found a "tipsy" gene that explains why some people feel alcohol's effects quicker than others.

The US researchers believe 10% to 20% of people have a version of the gene that may offer some protection against alcoholism.

That is because people who react strongly to alcohol are less likely to become addicted, studies show.

The University of North Carolina said the study aims to help fight addiction, not pave the way for a cheap night out.

Ultimately, people could be given CYP2E1-like drugs to make them more sensitive to alcohol - not to get them drunk more quickly, but to put them off drinking to inebriation, the Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research journal reported.

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesAlcohol 'protects men's hearts''Alcohol worse for female brains'Straight to the head Lead researcher Professor Kirk Wilhelmsen said: "Obviously we are a long way off having a treatment, but the gene we have found tells us a lot about how alcohol affects the brain."

Most of the alcohol people consume is broken down in the liver, but some is metabolised in the brain by an enzyme which the CYP2E1 gene provides coded instructions for.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteAlcoholism is a very complex disease, and there are lots of complicated reasons why people drink. This may be just one of the reasons”

End QuoteProfessor Kirk Wilhelmsen, who led the research People who have the "tipsy" version of CYP2E1 break down alcohol more readily, which explains why they feel the effects of alcohol much quicker than others.

The researchers made their discovery by studying more than 200 pairs of students who were siblings and who had one alcohol-dependent parent but who did not have a drink problem themselves.

They gave the students a mixture of grain alcohol and soda that was equivalent to about three average alcoholic drinks. At regular intervals the students were then asked whether they felt drunk, sober, sleepy or awake.

The researchers then compared the findings with gene test results from the students.

This revealed that CYP2E1 on chromosome 10 appears to dictate whether a person can hold their drink better than others.

Professor Wilhelmsen says more research is now needed to see if the findings could be used to make new treatments to tackle alcohol addiction.

"Alcoholism is a very complex disease, and there are lots of complicated reasons why people drink. This may be just one of the reasons," he added.

Don Shenker, of the charity Alcohol Concern, said that, in most cases, alcohol abuse stemmed from social problems, with alcohol used as a prop.

Professor Colin Drummond, an expert in addiction at London's Institute of Psychiatry, said it was likely to be combination of genes and environment.

"It is well recognised that alcohol dependence runs in families," he said.

He said research suggests having an alcoholic parent quadruples a person's risk of developing a drinking problem.

'More pay' call for sperm donors

Payment for donors is under review Men who donate sperm for IVF should possibly be reimbursed more than women who donate eggs, a leading fertility campaigner has suggested.

Laura Witjens, who chairs the UK's National Gamete Donation Trust and has donated her own eggs, says most people are not aware of the "serious commitment" involved in sperm donation.

She argues it is wrong to see it as less worthy than egg donation.

Continue reading the main story Scrubbing Up 'Why sperm donors should be paid more' 'Cutting targets saves lives' Hidden cuts Interpreting need But fertility experts say donating eggs is invasive and carries greater risks.

Humanity Consuming the Earth: By 2030 We'll Need Two Planets

Too many people consuming too much is depleting the world's natural resources faster than they are replenished, imperiling not only the world's species but risking the well-being of human societies, according to a new massive study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), entitled the Living Planet Report. The report finds that humanity is currently consuming the equivalent of 1.5 planet Earths every year for its activities. This overconsumption has caused biodiversity-in this case, representative populations of vertebrate animals-to fall by 30 percent worldwide since 1970. The situation is more dire in tropical regions where terrestrial species' populations have fallen by 60 percent and freshwater species by 70 percent.

Produced in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Network the biannual report follows the health of nearly 8,000 animal populations across 2,500 representative species. For example, the white-rumped vulture's population has collapsed by 50 percent from 2000-2007, while leatherback marine turtles' population has dropped by 20 percent from 1989-2002. The report finds that there are five major causes for such species' population crashes: habitat loss, over-exploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. All of these threats are linked to human consumption patterns.

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UN Treaty on GMOs Requires "Polluter Pays" Compensation

New rules aimed at exacting compensation from businesses or organizations that allow internationally traded genetically modified crops to spread into the wild were adopted at a U.N. meeting in Nagoya on Friday.

The treaty, which will allow governments in importing countries to pursue those responsible if crops dropped during transportation damage local ecosystems, was adopted amid growing evidence that the existing system for regulating the global spread of genetically modified crops is failing.

Discussions at the Nagoya meeting last week revealed that only 89 of the 158 countries that signed the Cartagena Protocol of 2000 had reported on how they ensured the safety of imported crops. The Cartagena Protocol was a set of international rules intended to improve monitoring in importing nations of genetically modified organisms.

Most of the countries that have failed to report are developing nations, and many are in Africa. Forty-seven countries have not enacted laws based on the protocol.

Developing countries at the Nagoya meeting called for greater support from developed nations in writing legislation and training personnel to do monitoring.

The treaty agreed on Friday is called the Nagoya-Kuala Lumpur Supplementary Protocol on Liability and Redress to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety.

It lays down rules and procedures on how to respond to damage caused to ecosystems by genetically modified organisms.

If seeds dropped during transportation grow in the wild and damage the local environment, that country's government can specify the party responsible and seek compensation and remedy. If the responsible party fails to take action, relevant administrative bodies will be obliged to do so themselves. 

Meat Industry Protests Over Restricting Use of Antibiotics in Animals

For decades, factory farms have used antibiotics even in healthy animals to promote faster growth and prevent disease that could sicken livestock held in confined quarters.

The benefit: cheaper, more plentiful meat for consumers.

But a firestorm has erupted over a federal proposal recommending antibiotics only when animals are actually sick. Medical and public health experts in recent years said overuse and misuse of antibiotics posed a serious public health threat by creating new strains of bacteria that are difficult to treat - both in animals and humans.

"Over time, we have created some monster bugs," said Russ Kremer, a Bonnots Mill, Mo., farmer who speaks nationally about the threat to the food supply.

"It is truly harmful to everyone to feed antibiotics to animals just for growth promotion and economic gain."

The meat industry argues that the draft guidelines from the Food and Drug Administration are premature because a clear link has not been shown between antibiotics in livestock and health problems in humans.

"What FDA is doing, trying to restrict the use of antibiotics and require additional veterinary oversight, goes beyond where the science, their own science, has gone," said Kelli Ludlum, congressional relations director for the American Farm Bureau.  

Ending Africa's Hunger Means Listening to Farmers

Africa is hungry - 240 million people are undernourished. Now, for the first-time, small African farmers have been properly consulted on how to solve the problem of feeding sub-Saharan Africa. Their answers appear to directly repudiate a massive international effort to launch an African Green Revolution funded in large part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Instead of new hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, family farmers in West Africa said they want to use local seeds, avoid spending precious cash on chemicals and most importantly to direct public agricultural research to meet their needs, according to a multi-media publication released on World Food Day (Oct. 16).

"There is a clear vision from these small farmers. They are rejecting the approach of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa," said report co-author Michel Pimbert of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a non-profit research institute based in London.

"These were true farmer-led assessment where small farmers and other food producers listened and questioned agricultural and other experts and then came up with their own recommendations," Pimbert told IPS.

"Food and agriculture policy and research tend to ignore the values, needs, knowledge and concerns of the very people who provide the food we all eat - and often serve instead powerful commercial interests such as multinational seed and food retailing companies," he said.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, backs the need for a fundamental shift in food and agricultural research to make it more democratic and accountable to society. 

Republicans, Agribusiness & Wall Street Trying to Stop California from Reducing Greenhouse Gas Pollution

Darren Goode reported yesterday at The Hill's Energy Blog that, "California  has become the primary battleground for environmental activists this election cycle thanks to a ballot initiative that would stymie a first-in-the-nation cap on greenhouse gas emissions.

"The Proposition 23 measure would suspend California's global warming law - which calls for a reduction in emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020 - unless the state's unemployment rate drops below 5.5 percent. Currently, the state's unemployment rate is 12.4 percent, the third highest in the nation."

The Wall Street Journal editorial board indicated in today's paper that, "Proposition 23 is the number one national target of the green movement this election year. With the failure of cap and tax in Congress, the greens are trying to hold onto this remnant of their anticarbon crusade. Both sides are spending heavily, and the polls show a close vote."

The Journal editorial concluded by saying, "Proposition 23 faces an uphill fight against green moneyed interests, but its passage would give California a regulatory reprieve and save tens of thousands of jobs. If it fails, Nevadans and Chinese will rejoice."

The New York Times editorial board noted today that, "Former Vice President Dick Cheney has to be smiling. With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate - including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning - accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming.

"The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy."

The Times added that, "Nowadays, it is almost impossible to recall that in 2000, George W. Bush promised to cap carbon dioxide, encouraging some to believe that he would break through the partisan divide on global warming. Until the end of the 1990s, Republicans could be counted on to join bipartisan solutions to environmental problems. Now they've disappeared in a fog of disinformation, an entire political party parroting the Cheney line."

Sustainable Peasant and Family Farm Agriculture Can Feed the World

The 2008 world food price crisis, and more recent price hikes this year, have focused attention on the ability of the world food system to "feed the world." In La Vía Campesina, the global alliance of peasant and family farm organizations, we believe that agroecological food production by small farmers is the agricultural model best suited to meeting future food needs.

The contemporary food crisis is not really a crisis of our ability to produce. It is more due to factors like the food speculation and hoarding that transnational food corporations and investment funds engage in, the global injustices that mean some eat too much while many others don't have money to buy adequate food, and/or lack land on which to grow it, and misguided policies like the promotion agrofuels that devote farm land to feeding cars instead of feeding people. However, we cannot deny that our collective ability to grow enough food - including, crucially, how we grow it -is an important piece in the jigsaw puzzle of ending hunger.

In "The Polluters," Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter Call Out Chemical Industry

With nearly 5 million barrels of BP's crude having gushed into the Gulf of Mexico for months on end, the summer of 2010 will long be remembered for environmental catastrophe. News of the oil spill came close on the heels of the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners in West Virginia -- the nation's worst mining disaster in some four decades. In both cases, most of us couldn't help but wonder how things have gone so terribly wrong. How could corporate safeguards have failed so miserably? How could government regulators have been so feckless? As such questions linger, along comes "The Polluters," a remarkably timely, extensively researched and accessible book offering a fresh perspective as we search for answers.

Most works on U.S. environmental history begin with the watershed publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," the federal Clean Water Act of 1963 or perhaps the crescendo of public engagement on the issue that culminated in the first Earth Day in 1970 and the formation that year of the Environmental Protection Agency. But Benjamin Ross and Steven Amter, two scientists with a small environmental consultancy in Washington and an expansive interest in the history of pollution, take a different approach. Intrigued and presumably frustrated in their professional work by the gaps and limitations in current environmental regulation, the two spent the past decade delving into governmental and corporate archives to exhume the roots of today's environmental regulatory framework.

"The Polluters" documents with well-chosen detail how the chemical industry managed for decades -- since before the 1930s administration of Herbert Hoover -- to avoid and forestall federal environmental legislation despite the increasingly glaring need for it. We meet a rogues' gallery of stridently laissez faire industry executives aware of the pollution they are creating but allergic to federal oversight, along with craven and corrupt regulators unable or unwilling to protect the public.

The authors show how companies blocked the discovery of environmental problems associated with their products and practices, and how research that might have found these problems was "starved of funds." When alarming findings did emerge, such as the threat of lung disease from coal dust or the risk of cancer from vinyl chloride.

For Organic Hops Farmers in Wash., Gov. Obstacles

YAKIMA, WASH. It wasn't until recently that Moxee farmer Pat Smith finished selling a crop of organic hops that he grew two years ago. But he's still sitting on another 100 bales from a more recent harvest. "We'll probably sell them all eventually," he said. "It takes longer than it should." That's because Smith and a small handful of other Yakima Valley organic hop growers are struggling against federal regulations that allow brewers to use less expensive non-organic hops to make beer that can be sold under the organic label.

Now, Smith and the others are petitioning the U.S. Department of Agriculture to require brewers to use organic hops in beer labeled organic. Their petition will be considered when the USDA's National Organic Standards Board meets next week in Madison, Wis. "We suspect if the petition was successful, we'd be able to sell them quite a bit quicker," said Smith, who also farms 700 acres of non-organic hops. Quicker, and at a price that reflects the higher cost of growing organically, said Toppenish hop grower Jason Perrault, who grows both organic and nonorganic hops. Rather than spraying herbicides, workers remove weeds from fields by hand. That costs about $7,000 an acre compared with about $5,000 for nonorganic hops. With nonorganic hops selling for about $6 a pound, organic growers need a price at least double that, Smith said.

At least one craft brewer, Fremont Brewing in Seattle, believes that the state could easily lead the nation's organic hops industry because it's already one of the largest hop producers in the world. "The point of all this is not that we have an angle," said Fremont Brewing owner Matt Lincecum. "The point is that we are in a position and have a responsibility. We're committed to help jump start the (organic hops) industry."

Three years ago, the USDA allowed hops grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides to be used in beer labeled organic, saying organic hop production in the United States wasn't big enough to keep up with demand from organic beer makers. The ruling places hops on a list of about 30 products, including wheat germ and sausage casings, that don't have to be organically produced to be used in food or beverages labeled organic. As a result, many organic brewers - which still only account for a sliver of the brewing market - buy conventionally grown, less expensive, hops.

There are four organic hop growers in the Yakima Valley, including Smith. Their organic crops account for about 100 acres, just a tiny share of the Valley's 30,500 acres of hops. The Valley accounts for more than 30 percent of the world's hops production. Organic production in the Valley has grown from nearly none three years ago to its current 100 acres, but organic growers say they need a better market to survive. "The future is pretty bleak without a commitment from organic brewers," Smith said.

Is the National Organic Standards Board Embracing Nanotechnology?

The idea that engineered nanomaterials (involving the manipulation of materials at the molecular level) would be allowed in certified organic food production seems ludicrous on its face. Allowing nanotechnology would seemingly destroy the credibility of the organic label with consumers. Yet, the National Organic Standards Board Materials Committee issued a proposal for public comment recently requesting that the USDA's National Organic Program hold a symposium on whether nanotechnology in organic production is "possible, practical and legal."

In a comment to the National Organic Standards Board sent earlier this week, IATP's Steve Suppan takes issue with the assumption that federal regulators can effectively regulate engineered nanomaterials in food production-meaning, any kind of food production, organic or not. The nanotech industry has been reluctant to submit product data on the environmental, safety and health effects of nanomaterials in food production. Currently, there are no requirements that the industry submit such data before nanoproducts enter the market. And in fact, according to an explosive report from AOL News earlier this year, they already have already entered the marketplace without regulatory oversight.

UN Conference Confronts Dramatic Loss Of Biodiversity

Delegates from 193 nations have opened a UN meeting in Japan to discuss how to address Earth's dramatic loss of animal and plant species.

The two-week Nagoya conference brings together parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.

At its opening, Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Program, told delegates the meeting is "part of the world's efforts to address a very simple fact -- we are destroying life on Earth."

A key task facing the 8,000 delegates is to hammer out a set of strategic goals to prevent the further loss of species over the next 10 years.

Experts, such as Jonathan Bailie, director of conservation programs at the Zoological Society of London, doubt the discussions will result in an ambitious, comprehensive international agreement featuring binding targets. But Bailie tells RFE/RL that he expects the talks to reveal a growing agreement among governments about the need to place a price on the goods and services that nature provides.

"Traditionally conservationists have focused on moral or ethical reasons as to why we want to save biodiversity," Bailie says. "But it's becoming increasingly apparent that if we don't put a value on things, then often the wrong market decisions are made.

Civil Society Calls for a Moratorium on Geoengineering Experiments

Extreme Risk Demands Extreme Precaution urges Civil Society Group at UN Ministerial

Nagoya, Japan -- One of the hottest issues before the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan is a set of crucial decisions that could bring about a moratorium on proposed experiments in geoengineering, a set of high-risk climate technofixes. At the opening plenary of the conference, the CBD Alliance on behalf of civil society organizations called for a moratorium on geoengineering experiments.

Releasing a critical report on the subject today, the ETC Group called for governments to support the moratorium. The group argues that geoengineering experiments, due to their unprecedented scale, are both beyond the parameters of real-world scientific testing and beyond the scope of current international law. A handful of OECD countries and corporations are pushing for massive "technofix" experiments rather than reducing emissions at home.

"Some of the proponents of these technologies think it's easier to 'manage the sun' than get people to take a bus," said Pat Mooney, Executive Director of ETC Group, in Nagoya.

Earlier this year, the CBD's scientific body proposed a ban on climate-related geoengineering activities that will go beyond the 2008 moratorium on ocean fertilization, to include solar radiation management techniques such as the release of stratospheric aerosols and cloud whitening, until all of the inherent risks and impacts have been fully evaluated.

Civil society organizations gathered this week in Nagoya are urging governments from 193 countries to ratify the proposal and put such experiments on hold. ETC Group's 52-page report, Geopiracy: The Case Against Geoengineering, makes the case for a moratorium, calling geoengineering, "a political strategy aimed at letting industrialized countries off the hook for their climate debt."

Confronted by rising global alarm over climate chaos, nations have the choice of adopting socially responsible policies to dramatically cut fossil-fuel use or to seek silver-bullet solutions. ETC Group's new report offers summaries of the various geoengineering proposals, and details their potential impacts on biodiversity and on equitable climate change solutions.

"Scientists can do research on computer models and in the lab, but they have no right to do real-world experiments on Mother Earth without any prior inter-governmental discussion and agreement that involves the participation of people who will be directly affected," said Neth Dano, Programme Manager for ETC Group in the Philippines.

"Opting for geoengineering flies in the face of precaution," the report states. "Even those who would like to see large-scale investment in the field are quick to acknowledge that we do not know enough about the Earth's systems to risk real-world geoengineering experiments."

A key message of the report is that geoengineering is not simply a cheap technofix for climate change, but a political smokescreen that will be deployed by wealthy nations to avoid undertaking real domestic emission reductions and commitments to help the global South fend off impending catastrophe. Given that only the world's wealthiest countries have the spending capacity to engage in large-scale climate manipulation, the report asks, who will have the right to set the global thermostat?

The report contends that several international treaties could be violated by geoengineering, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UN Environmental Modification Treaty (ENMOD), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Tom Goldtooth, Director of the North America based Indigenous Environmental Network, said, "These kinds of dangerous experiments, promoted by a small group of scientists and rich industrial countries, are a continuation of the technological nightmare that's been imposed on our peoples for five centuries. Contrary to fixing the problems, geoengineering threatens to wreak more havoc on our biosphere and our communities. It needs to be stopped."

Big Food's Blame Game

Corporations spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year marketing a dangerous product to America's children.

No one disputes the danger of the product. No one disputes that the marketing successfully convinces millions of kids to use the product.

Yet these same corporations deny that they're endangering our children. Instead, they're blaming parents. It's mom's fault. Or dad's.

How could this be? If the product were a gun, or drugs, or even a poorly designed toy that could injure a child, the corporation responsible for making it and then marketing it to the most vulnerable among us would be on the hook.

Yet since the product I'm talking about is unhealthy food, corporations expect us to apply a different standard. They want us to blame the victim, or at least the people who love the victim the most.

In the past 30 years, U.S. obesity rates have tripled among children between 12 and 19 years old. A third of children today are now officially overweight or obese. Consequently, these children are more likely to suffer from diseases once limited to grownups, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and Type II diabetes.

Sick children often grow up to be sick adults--and we all pay. Obesity is costing our country $147 billion per year, according to government-sponsored research. As a group of retired military leaders pointed out earlier this year, the crisis even undermines our national security: Being overweight is the top reason military recruits are rejected.

In this context, calls for limiting fast food marketing to children are modest. Such initiatives don't call for banning fast food; they're simply an effort to level the playing field. Each year, McDonald's and its competitors move more than a billion unhealthy meals to kids under the age of 12, primarily on the wings of toy giveaways in its Happy Meals.

A Robin Hood Tax to Pay for the Wars

Two weeks until Election Day, and no-one is talking about the wars, the New York Times reports. (Of course, that's not quite true: as the Washington Post reports, for example, this former Army Green Beret is running for Congress in Missouri on a platform of ending the war in Afghanistan.)

Unsurprisingly, the wars may have slipped down on many people's lists of top concerns in the face of 9.5% officially measured unemployment and the foreclosure crisis. But some people are talking about projected U.S. budget deficits and what to do about them, and since the permanent war is a major cause of projected budget deficits, that means the permanent war is on the table.

Furthermore, a key question hanging over the election is this: in America today, is it politically feasible to make the super-rich pay their fair share of taxes? So far, the answer given to this question by the election season seems to be no. Some Democrats thought that they had a winning issue politically in allowing the Bush tax cuts on the super-rich to expire, but, so far, it seems that they were wrong.

But here's a strategy that has not yet been fully explored: rather than simply urge that the super-rich be required to pay their fair share of taxes to support government expenditures in general, let's demand that particular increased taxes on the super-rich be earmarked to particular government expenditures that the super-rich will have a hard time dodging politically. In Britain, for example, there is a vigorous campaign to tie a particular tax increase on the well-off to a particular set of needed social expenditures. It's called, appropriately enough, the Robin Hood Tax.

SOS: OCA's Ongoing Campaign to Safeguard Organic Standards

Over the last twelve years the OCA and the organic community have been forced to organize a series of national campaigns to safeguard organic standards. While the OCA and our allies have basically been able to prevent the standards from being significantly watered down, constant vigilance and mobilization have been necessary.

1998 - The Organic Consumers Association forms in the wake of our successful campaign, SOS (Save Organic Standards) to stop the USDA from allowing GMOs, irradiation, and sewage sludge in organic production. Arising out of this campaign OCA is able to build a mass circulation website, newsletter, and nationwide consumer network.

October 2002 - National Organic Program (NOP) standards implemented.

February 2003 - A Capitol Hill backroom deal puts a major dent in the organic standards when, with no prior notice, a major industrial poultry production corporation arranges to have a few sentences inserted into a 3,000 page appropriations bill that exempts producers from the organic feed requirement if the cost exceeds twice the conventional price. After extensive media coverage and a successful campaign by OCA and our allies, to pressure Congress, the rider is removed and the organic feed requirement restored.

April 2004 - The NOP issues what it calls "guidance" and "directives" related to antibiotics in dairy production, livestock feed ingredients and allowable inert materials in pesticides. These policy interpretations are drawn up without input from the organic community and are seen as seriously degrading the standards. If implemented, they would allow a host of new synthetic materials into organic production without review and facilitate the recycling of dairy animals between organic and conventional operations. In the wake of a pressure campaign spearheaded by the OCA, Ag Secretary Veneman calls a meeting and announces that the guidance and directives have been suspended.

June 2005 - Fallout from the legal challenge to the NOP by Maine blueberry farmer Arthur Harvey turns the standards upside down once more and splits the organic community like nothing before. The court ruling declares there are technical inconsistencies between the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), passed as part of the 1990 U.S. Farm Bill, and the NOP standards, implemented in 2002. The ruling would prevent the use of 38 synthetic materials (such baking powder, pectin and Vitamin C) in post-harvest handling and processing that had previously been approved by the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB). US Congress steps in and amends the OFPA to retain the national organic regulations implemented in October 2002. Under these standards no new synthetic substances may be allowed in organic production without the review and approval of NOSB, and synthetics originally approved by the NOSB are all supposed to be "sunsetted" after five years, and then re-reviewed.

August 2005 - OCA steps up the pressure in our Coming Clean campaign to eliminate organic labeling fraud in the body care and cosmetics sector.  A lawsuit filed by OCA and Dr. Bronner's Soaps shakes up the USDA so much that the agency partly gives in to OCA's demands and allows the "USDA Organic" seal to be displayed on certified organic body care and other nonfood products.

October 2006 - Multinational food manufacturers pressure Congress to pass an amendment to the 2006 Agricultural Appropriations Bill that undermines organic standards by allowing hundreds of non-organic "food processing aids" and "food contact substances" in organic food. After a massive mobilization led by the by OCA, Congress is deluged with 350,000 email letters and calls. Unfortunately the House/Senate Conference committee ignores consumer objections and approves the rider, requiring OCA to fight a  continuing battle against problematic food contact substances (such as BPA liners in cans) and processing chemicals.

August 2009 - The NOSB passes a recommendation for "Solving the Problem of Mislabeled Organic Personal Care Products." The recommendation urges the NOP to make sure that any use of the word "organic" on a personal care product is backed up by third-party certification to USDA organic standards. The OCA sees this recommendation as a preliminary victory for its campaign to rid store shelves of products that are falsely advertised as "organic."

February 2010 - The USDA rules on Access to Pasture organic certification requirements for all organic livestock producers. National organic standards were designed to ensure that pasture and ruminant animals received adequate access to pasture grass, the primary food their bodies are designed to consume. Unfortunately, the previous requirements were interpreted by industrial-scale dairy operators (Horizon and Aurora) in ways that clearly undermined the ability of these animals to receive the necessary amounts of outside access to pasture. These new rules directly address those earlier deficiencies. The Pasture Rule becomes law on June 17, 2010. Existing operations will have to be in compliance by June 17, 2011. New operations certified after June 17, 2010 must be in compliance before certification. Animals must graze pasture during the grazing season, which must be at least 120 days per year and obtain a minimum of an average of 30 percent dry matter intake over the course of the grazing season. The Pasture Rule is a major victory for the OCA and allies who have been campaigning against "organic factory farms."

Future SOS work - OCA continues to fight for strict organic standards. We are leading the charge in a movement to go beyond the existing standards and tighten up remaining loopholes in order to maintain the integrity of the organic label. The new organic dairy regulations banning feedlots and requiring mandatory pasturing of cows are a good start, but we need to apply similar standards to poultry production. We need an independent NOP Peer Review Board. We need to officially ban nanotechnology from organic production. And we need a number of currently allowed non-organic substances or inputs to be prohibited in organic products, as there are now organic options available. Over the next decade it will take constant vigilance and mobilization on the part of consumers, natural food stores, and farmers to uphold organic standards and prevent a takeover of the organic industry by corporate agribusiness.

Monsanto's Losing Bet on GM Sugar Beets Has Bitter Repercussions

In 2008, the USDA approved planting of Monsanto's Roundup Ready sugar beet, equipped with a gene that allows them to withstand unlimited doses of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide.

The sugar trade promised to be a big money maker for genetically modified (GM) seed giant Monsanto, as these beets -- a special super-sweet variety, not the kind you find at the farmers market -- account for 44 percent of U.S. sugar production.

Sure enough, Monsanto rapidly conquered the market. By this year's spring planting, Monsanto's patented GM seeds covered a jaw-dropping 95 percent of sugar beet fields. (Monsanto has managed to quietly turn the American sweet tooth into a gold mine -- it also dominates the seed market for corn, the source of the number-one U.S. sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup.)

But back in August, Monsanto suffered yet another of a continuing line of setbacks, when a federal judge effectively nixed the USDA's approval of GM sugar beets. The agency had failed to adequately assess the environmental impact of planting the high-tech seeds, the judge ruled.

On Monday, a USDA economist released a report (via Bloomberg) estimating that the ban on GM sugar beet seeds would cut U.S. total sugar production by 20 percent in 2011, due to the the "limited availability of conventional seed."

Beef Industry Woes May Mean Poorer Meat

In this Great Plains ranching town, cowboys still lasso steers as part of their daily routine and cattle producers like Bob Sears still take pride in the long tradition of raising American beef.

But Sears and many other ranchers say the market for domestic meat has withered to the point where they often receive only a single reasonable bid for their animals - a trend that could eventually mean lesser-quality meat on dinner tables across the United States.

The struggle to get a competitive price, they say, is helping to push thousands of producers out of business and might put pressure on others to sell sicker, weaker cows with less tender, less flavorful meat and smaller rib-eyes, for example.

"When the marketplace is not profitable, the only recourse a producer has is to cut the cost and try to produce more pounds with less money," said Bill Bullard, chief executive officer at R-CALF USA, a Montana-based trade group that represents cattle producers.

The cash market for domestic beef has been declining slowly for years. But The Associated Press interviewed cattle producers in the nation's big ranching states who reported having no choice but to sell the vast majority of their cattle to one buyer.

Producers almost never criticize the industry's leading meatpackers because the companies are valued customers. An AP analysis of shipping logs and sales receipts confirmed their accounts.

"There's actually no market. You either give them to these guys, or you have no market," said Sears, who ran one of Nebraska's biggest feedlots until declaring bankruptcy in March.

The complaints have also drawn the interest of federal regulators, who are investigating possible antitrust violations in the meatpacking industry.

Sears and other cattle producers suspect meatpackers are quietly cooperating to keep prices low in an area that stretches from Kansas to Nebraska and South Dakota, the region that dominates U.S. cattle production.

Turning Asphalt Into Edible Education

When Celia Kaplinsky, a Brooklyn elementary school principal, visited a schoolyard garden project  in Berkeley, Calif. a few years ago to see if it could work back home, something impressed her more than the lush rows of tomatoes and cucumbers.

It was the respectful way, she said, that the children worked together in the kitchen to prepare the food they had just helped grow, and the way that they spoke to one another as they sat down together to eat it.

"They were listening to one another, which unfortunately people don't often do anymore," she said. "It was so meaningful."

It was the garden's ability to apparently change the way the children related to food that won her over. Meanwhile, Alice Waters, the famed chef of the Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, who had founded the garden, decided Ms. Kaplinsky had the enthusiasm to make the project happen in New York.

So the two stood together Friday at the official opening of Ms. Waters's first school garden project in New York City and one of its most ambitious school gardens yet - a half-acre stretch of spongy organic soil behind Public School 216 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, that until a few months ago was a blank stretch of asphalt.

There are already 285 school gardens in New York City, according to a recent state survey, part of a national school gardening trend. Most are small affairs, completely reliant on parent volunteers and teachers' spare time, said Erica Keberle of Grow NYC, which coordinates school gardening projects around the city.

The P.S. 216 project, known as an Edible Schoolyard, is part of a second generation of gardens, which involve things like state-of-the art greenhouses, professional staff, large city grants, and ever-more-ambitious agendas. Ms. Waters's project, for example, aims to find a solution to childhood obesity by integrating the lessons of food growing, food preparation and healthy eating through the curriculum. A recent study found that her projects in Berkeley had made headway toward that goal. 

Eating casualties

The Lees' daughter Helen died following anorexia The first national Service of Dedication for lives lost to eating disorders has taken place in London's Southwark Cathedral.

The charity Beat estimates that eating disorders affect 1.6 million people in the UK. A fifth will die from associated health problems.

About 300 guests were at the service, including those with disorders and families of those who have died.

100 candles were lit in memory of lives lost.

Beat is hoping that the event will raise awareness of mortality rates.

People with eating disorders are more likely to die than people with any other mental illness.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteParents who are even slightly suspicious need to seek help, because things can go downhill very fast”

End QuoteGillian LeeMother Parents of anorexia girl speak out The brother of Sareh Perry who died in 2004 of anorexia gave this tribute to his sister.

"A european diving champion, artist, teacher, alcoholic, anorexic. Sareh we will always miss you and we will never truly understand an illness that took you from us.

"But we will do everything we can to make a positive stance on your memory."

His speech was given an applause and from a few, a standing ovation.

There was also music and hymns including Lord of all Hopefulness and Praise Him.

Andrew and Gillian Lee, from Harrow-on-the-Hill, Middlesex, also attended the service.

Their daughter, Helen, died in 2003 aged 18. She experienced multiple organ failure following a five-year battle with anorexia.

"Helen was a very very happy youngster," says Mr Lee, who is a senior master at a secondary school.

"She was talented, open and a good athlete. Unfortunately that was all destroyed by the illness.

"It's a terrible disease which sets up great battles within the minds of the sufferers and that's very destructive."

'Not bad behaviour'

Experts say bad behaviour is distinct from ADHD

It is a question many parents may have asked themselves about their child or about someone else's.

But experts say if parents think their child may have ADHD, they are probably right.

Bad behaviour is intermittent and often premeditated, experts say.

Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, on the other hand, affects a child in all aspects of its life.

So a child letting off steam and running around the house when they come home from school is not a problem in itself.

But if teachers are also reporting they are failing to pay attention in the classroom, and they do not seem to have many friends it may be that they do need a specialist assessment.

'No clue'

Andrea Bilbow. chief executive of the charity ADDISS, (The National Attention Deficit Disorder Information and Support Service), which helps families affected by the condition, says ADHD "is not about a badly-behaved child".

She adds: "It's about a problem in the brain which means a child can't regulate their behaviour or emotion. They don't learn from their mistakes and they can't plan or organise, and they have difficulties with their short-term memory.

"The bad-behaviour label is just used by people who don't have a clue."

Ms Bilbow, who has a child with ADHD herself, said parents are aware there is something wrong from an early age.

NHS night riders

Getting vital supplies to hospitals is the key aim of the service Steve Parker-James spends his days as a policeman in Berkshire.

But at night and at weekends he pounds a very different beat - as a volunteer motorbike rider for the medical courier firm Serv (Service by Emergency Rider Volunteers).

The volunteer service, which is available in the south-east of England, offers a free out-of-hours service to a number of NHS hospitals and can be asked to carry anything urgently needed from baby milk to blood products and X-ray results.

Steve admits that in the four years he has helped at Serv, he has become an expert in all things medical.

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesBaby milk delivered by motor bikeBiker charity offers NHS delivery "I can be asked to take anything," he said.

"It started off originally with us being asked to take blood. That was a steep learning curve for me. I thought blood was blood, but it is not - there are blood cells, plasma.

"Now we carry baby milk as well, which is donated to babies in the intensive care unit."

Steve said his two most unusual jobs had been getting a rabies vaccine for a hospital in Milton Keynes and getting frozen urine to a London ward for next-day testing.

All Serv volunteers are unpaid, receive no expenses whatsoever and give up a few nights throughout a month to be on call to respond to requests from hospitals.

'Humbling experience'

Prior to Serv, the only way hospitals, doctors and other medical establishments could transport supplies at night were by taxi, ambulance, police, courier or transfusion services vehicle, which were costly or a waste of resources.

"We will also carry X-rays, and medical discs as well as medical equipment - quite a broad spectrum, but not emergency deliveries such as organs," said Steve.

Can cash incentives improve our health?

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People could be given cash incentives to encourage them to give up smoking or to lose weight under proposals being considered by the health watchdog for England and Wales.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) is looking at ways to persuade people to take better care of their health, amid growing concern about the impact that unhealthy habits are having on the NHS.

Cancer appraisal

People are surviving cancers, but there is a cost Millions of people now survive cancer, thanks to better detection and treatment.

But this is placing an ever-growing demand on the NHS system that deals with these patients' aftercare and checks.

In this week's Scrubbing Up, cancer expert Professor Jane Maher says the current system is wasteful, ineffective and not the best way to spot many recurrent cancers.

The cancer story is changing - no longer is a cancer diagnosis an automatic death sentence.

Due to advances in treatment, more people are living longer and having to cope with the consequences of cancer.

In the UK there are two million people alive who have survived cancer at any given time.

This figure will grow to four million by 2030 - these millions need comprehensive post-treatment support.

Follow-up

At the moment, cancer patients who survive initial treatment enter what is called the "follow-up" system - regular appointments to check that the cancer has not returned.

Traditionally, follow-up involves out-patient department visits with a consultant, backed up with diagnostic tests.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteThe NHS needs to radically transform the way it provides support for patients following hospital treatment”

End QuoteJane Maher Read your comments But there is surprisingly little evidence that this method is the best way to spot recurrences of cancer or the other possible long-term health consequences of being treated for cancer.

Recent work suggests that around 70% of recurrence of breast cancer could be detected by either patients noticing symptoms themselves or by surveillance testing alone, with a face-to-face appointment if needed.

But this is only possible if patients are helped to understand their illness, can access regular tests and know how and when to contact specialists if problems arise.

The current system is also not meeting cancer survivors' needs.

One in five people living after treatment for cancer will develop long-term emotional, psychological and physical problems that seriously affect their quality of life.

Yet there are few, if any, NHS services specifically for cancer survivors.

Treatment problems

This not only affects their quality of life, but also leads to unnecessary illness that costs the NHS - and the UK - dearly. It means people can't get back to work and may need treatment for other conditions caused by cancer or its treatment, coming on months or even years later. This cannot continue.

The NHS needs to radically transform the way it provides support for patients following hospital treatment.

Continue reading the main story Scrubbing Up Hidden cuts Interpreting need Selling organs 'Risking lives' Doctors need to be able to assess the level of risk, to identify which patients need regular face-to-face appointments and specialist support and which patients could, given the right tools and skills, manage their own condition.

Fundamental changes in the way that aftercare is provided would be cost effective, both to the NHS and to the wider economy.

Macmillan's own research shows 90% of survivors have both physical and emotional needs after treatment, with many unable to return to work as a result.

If patients are equipped with the information to know when they need to see a health professional or when they may need a diagnostic test, this will reduce the need for unnecessary follow-up appointments.

This, in turn, will free up resources which can be reinvested in the new aftercare services for people with cancer. It costs much less to provide a person with the skills and knowledge to self-manage their condition, and provide support if needed from a nurse in the community, than it does to make them travel to hospital for a follow-up appointment that doesn't take into account all of their needs.

Effective rehabilitation services that supported people to get back to work would mean fewer people claiming benefits, more people paying taxes and employers retaining experienced staff. It's a win, win, win situation.

Mid-life crisis 'begins in 30s'

A receding hairline may be the least of a 30-something man's worries Work and relationship pressures make the mid-30s the start of many British people's unhappiest decade, a survey suggests.

Of the 2,000 people quizzed, more aged 35 to 44 said that they felt lonely or depressed than in other age groups.

The survey also suggested that busy parents were using Facebook and similar sites to stay in touch with children.

Relationship advice charity Relate, which is behind the research, said it revealed a "true mid-life crisis".

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesRise of the Mamils (middle-aged men in lycra)Tackle work stress, bosses told Of those surveyed, 21% of men and women aged 35 to 44 said they felt lonely a lot of the time, and a similar percentage said that bad relationships, either at work or home, had left them feeling depressed.

The same proportion said they felt closer to friends than family, and a quarter said they wished they had more time for their family.

Life stress

Claire Tyler, Relate's chief executive, said: "Traditionally we associated the mid-life crisis with people in their late 40s to 50s, but the report reveals that this period could be reaching people earlier than we would expect.

"It's no coincidence that we see people in this age group in the biggest numbers at Relate."

NHS 'turning its back on elderly'

Patients can apply for NHS funding through the continuing care system Vulnerable elderly people are being unfairly forced to pay for health care, the new chairman of the House of Commons health committee says.

Stephen Dorrell said patients with conditions such as dementia used to get free care in NHS geriatric hospitals.

But the number of places has fallen by nearly 80% in the UK over the past 20 years - despite the ageing population.

He said this had pushed people into the means-tested social care system where they were often charged for treatment.

In an interview with the BBC, he said the redrawing of the boundaries had been allowed to creep in without proper debate or scrutiny and urged politicians to face up to the issue.

An expert commission has already been set up by the government to look into the issue of social care funding in England.

But Mr Dorrell was speaking about a specific group of patients whom he believes the NHS has turned its back on.

Ignored

As well as dementia patients this includes people such as stroke victims and those with Parkinson's disease who struggle to get the NHS to pay for medical treatment they receive.

Mr Dorrell, who was health secretary towards the end of John Major's time as prime minister, said: "People are being charged for care that they would have got free from the NHS 20 or 30 years ago.

"In effect there has been a change in the definition of what constitutes NHS care and that has happened without proper debate.

"Unfortunately, it has been ignored because both politically and financially it is tricky for politicians to face up to it. But because it has not been done in a planned way there is great unfairness in the system. We see examples of cost shunting and bureaucracy that cause individuals problems.

"I would not want to see a return to the old system of geriatric hospitals - care is much better now - but you have to question whether it is fair that this group of people are being charged in this way?"

Evidence on the changes to the nursing care home and geriatric hospital sectors lend support to his view.

MS patients may sue banned doctor

Dr Robert Trossel had consulting rooms in London and Rotterdam A doctor struck off by the General Medical Council for exploiting people with multiple sclerosis could be facing legal action by patients.

A firm of solicitors said hundreds of "vulnerable people" who travelled to the Netherlands for treatment may seek compensation.

Dr Robert Trossel treated them at his clinic in Rotterdam, following initial assessments in the UK.

He charged thousands of pounds for unproven stem cell treatments.

The 56-year-old, who trained in the Netherlands, conceded he had been "too enthusiastic" about the treatment.

The GMC found the doctor had breached good medical practice by "exploiting vulnerable patients" and his actions had caused lasting harm.

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesThe doctor who preyed on the vulnerableStem cell doctor denies charges Jill Paterson, from solicitors Leigh Day & Co, said: "We support the GMC's findings that Dr Trossel is no longer fit to practise in the UK.

"We are actively investigating the pursuit of legal proceedings against him to right the wrongs caused to these vulnerable people."

'False hope'

At an earlier hearing, the GMC Fitness to Practise panel said Dr Trossel had exaggerated the benefits of treatment based on "anecdotal and aspirational information".

Pregnant women to get flu vaccine

This year's vaccine provides protection against three strains of the flu virus All pregnant women will be offered the seasonal flu jab for the first time, under plans unveiled by the government.

The one-off move has been sanctioned as the swine flu virus - which is more risky for pregnant women than others - is likely to be still circulating.

The vaccine will offer protection against that and two other flu strains.

As well as pregnant women, it will be offered to the normal target groups - the over 65s, people with conditions such as diabetes and health workers.

This amounts to more than 14 million people, of which pregnant women account for about 500,000.

US gave syphilis to mentally ill

Syphilis can cause blindness, insanity and even death The United States government has apologised for deliberately infecting hundreds of people in Guatemala with gonorrhoea and syphilis as part of medical tests more than 60 years ago.

None of those infected - mentally ill patients and prisoners - consented.

Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom accused the US of "crimes against humanity".

US President Barack Obama has called Mr Colom to apologise and has said the acts ran contrary to American values.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteWe deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices”

End QuoteStatement from secretaries of state and health'Shocking, tragic, reprehensible' Syphilis can cause heart problems, blindness, mental illness and even death, and although the patients were treated it is not known how many recovered.

Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Prof Susan Reverby at Wellesley College. She says the Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests.

No offer of compensation has yet been made, but an investigation will be launched into the specifics of the study, which took place between 1946 and 1948.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday the news was "shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible".

The joint statement from Mrs Clinton and Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said: "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.

"We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices."

Unaware

The study by Prof Reverby shows that US government medical researchers infected almost 700 people in Guatemala with two sexually transmitted diseases.

The patients - prisoners and people suffering mental health problems - were unaware they were being experimented upon.

The doctors used prostitutes with syphilis to infect them, or inoculation, as they tried to determine whether penicillin could prevent syphilis, not just cure it.

The patients were then treated for the disease, but it is unclear whether everyone was cured.

Prof Reverby has previously done research on the Tuskegee experiment, where the US authorities measured the progress of syphilis in African-American men without telling them they had the disease or adequately treating it.

Study 'finds ADHD genetic link'

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Sharon Fuccilo and 13-year-old son Matthew talk about living with ADHD

The first direct evidence of a genetic link to attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder has been found, a study says.

Scientists from Cardiff University, writing in The Lancet, said the disorder was a brain problem like autism - not due to bad parenting.

They analysed stretches of DNA from 366 children who had been diagnosed with the disorder.

But other experts agued ADHD was caused by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.

Continue reading the main storyRelated stories ADHD 'is not bad behaviour'Living with ADHD At least 2% of children in the UK are thought to have attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Affected children are restless and impulsive. They may also have destructive tendencies, and experience serious problems at school and within family life.

The researchers compared genetic samples from ADHD children, with DNA from 1,047 people without the condition.

They found that 15% of the ADHD group had large and rare variations in their DNA - compared with 7% in the control group.

Government defends NHS reforms

An overhaul of the NHS was announced in July The government has rejected a warning by doctors' leaders that its planned health reforms could undermine the long-term future of the NHS in England.

It set out plans in July to give GPs control of much of the budget, while scrapping two tiers of managers.

The British Medical Association said it was not against the whole vision, but had concerns the changes could affect the service's "stability and future".

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said it was right to proceed with the reforms.

Continue reading the main storyRelated storiesQ&A: The NHS shake-upNHS 'to undergo radical overhaul' He said: "There are many GPs across the country who are keen to make the transition quickly, others want to know more about how it's going to work before they implement it," he said.

"This is what the consultation process is about, everyone coming forward to say how can we make this work."

He added that the plans were aimed at making care better for patients.

But the BMA's warning sparks the start of what promises to be a delicate balancing act for ministers.

The union's criticisms - made in its official response to July's White Paper - contrast with its initial response over the summer when it said it was "ready, willing and able".

And they come as the government faces a legal challenge from the union Unison.

The public sector union is seeking a judicial review over the way the government is handling the changes.

The official consultation period will end later this month, after which ministers are likely to start formal talks with BMA negotiators about implementing the changes.

The government wants to start piloting the GP consortiums, which will take charge of the budget from the soon-to-be abolished primary care trusts, this financial year. Full roll-out will follow within two years.

But it is this pace of change which is one of the problems, according to the BMA.

Continue reading the main storyThe key NHS changes GPs - Asked to get together in groups to take on responsibility for spending much of the NHS budget Hospitals - Encouraged to move outside the NHS to become "vibrant" industry of social enterprises Patients - More information and choice, including ability to register with any GP they want to Managers - Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts facing the axe It said the timetable could threaten.

Guatemala calls US tests 'crime'

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President Alvaro Colom: '' I was upset and very angry''

US testing that infected hundreds of Guatemalans with gonorrhoea and syphilis more than 60 years ago was a "crime against humanity", Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has said.

President Barack Obama has apologised for the medical tests, in which mentally ill patients and prisoners were infected without their consent.

Mr Obama told Mr Colom the 1940s-era experiments ran contrary to American values, Guatemala said.

The US has promised an investigation.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteWe deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices”

End QuoteStatement from US secretaries of state and health'Shocking, tragic, reprehensible' Syphilis can cause heart problems, blindness, mental illness and even death, and although the patients were treated it is not known how many recovered.

Evidence of the programme was unearthed by Prof Susan Reverby at Wellesley College. She says the Guatemalan government gave permission for the tests.

No offer of compensation has yet been made, but an investigation will be launched into the specifics of the study, which took place between 1946 and 1948.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Friday the news was "shocking, it's tragic, it's reprehensible".

In an interview with the BBC, Mr Colom said the test subjects were "victims of rights abuses".

Malaria funding 'falling short'

Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes There is a 60% global shortfall in funds for malaria control, according to a report by UK and African experts.

Researchers found only 21 out of 93 countries where malaria is common have received enough money to implement effective control measures.

African countries have seen the biggest funding increases but billions are still needed elsewhere, the experts say in the Lancet medical journal.

The Roll Back Malaria Campaign warned $4.9bn .

Factory Farms: Meat Is Cheap, but at What Cost?

By Monica Eng
Chicago Tribune

If you adjust for inflation and income, Americans have never spent less on food than they have in recent years. And yet many feel we've also never paid such a high price.

U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show the average American spent just 9.5 percent of his or her disposable income on food last year, a lower percentage than in any country in the world.

And although meat consumption has risen slightly over the past 40 years, its impact on the pocketbook is less than half of what it was in 1970, falling from 4.1 percent to 1.6 percent in 2008.

The majority of this cheap protein is delivered by "factory farms" that house thousands of animals in confinement. These concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, produce mass quantities of food at low cost.

"We have found the most efficient way to meet consumer demand for a high-quality, relatively inexpensive product," said Dave Warner, spokesman for the National Pork Producers Council in Washington, D.C. "We're the lowest-cost producer in the world, which is why we're the No. 1 pork exporter in the world."

But the system also has created disasters like last month's recall of half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs. Critics say the consolidation of food production has led to environmental damage, the loss of millions of small independent farms, rising health care expenditures and billions in tax-funded subsidies to produce cheap animal feed.

USA Is Fattest of 33 Countries, Report Says

By Nanci Hellmich
USA Today

The United States is the fattest nation among 33 countries with advanced economies, according to a report out today from an international think tank.

Two-thirds of people in this country are overweight or obese; about a third of adults - more than 72 million - are obese, which is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight.

Obesity rates have skyrocketed since the 1980s in almost all the countries where long-term data is available, says the report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which works on policies to promote better economies and quality of life. Countries with the fastest obesity growth rates: the United States, Australia and England.

"Obesity is a growing threat to public health in all the advanced countries throughout the world," OECD spokesman Matthias Rumpf says. Obesity causes illnesses, reduces life expectancy and increases health care costs, he says.

Obesity increases the risk of heart disease, diabetes, several types of cancer and other diseases. Obesity cost the U.S. an estimated $147 billion in weight-related medical bills in 2008, according to a study by government scientists.

"We have to find the most effective and cost-efficient way to deal with the problem," Rumpf says. "Countries can learn from each other, and the best and most effective policies can be used in all countries."

Senate Ag Committee Hearing- EPA Issues

By Keith Good
Farm Policy

A news release yesterday from the Senate Agriculture Committee stated that, "U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, today called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to provide America's farmers and ranchers certainty and stability, not additional burdensome and costly environmental regulations. Lincoln's comments came during a Senate Agriculture Committee oversight hearing to examine the impacts of EPA regulation on agriculture. The Hon. Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Rich Hillman, of Carlisle, Ark., were among those who testified.

"'At a time when every American feels anxious about his or her own economic future, our farmers, ranchers, and foresters are facing at least ten new regulatory requirements that will drive up their costs and make it more difficult to compete in the global marketplace. These regulations rely on dubious rationales and, as a consequence, will be of questionable benefit to the goal of conservation and environmental protection,' Lincoln said. 'Farmers face so many unknowns - the last thing they need is regulatory uncertainty. Our farmers, ranchers and foresters need clear, straightforward, and predictable rules to live by that are not burdensome, duplicative, costly, unnecessary, or in some cases just plain bizarre.'

"Lincoln pointed toward EPA's Clean Water Act permit requirements for pesticide applications as one example of an expensive and duplicative process that is creating unnecessary hurdles for farmers. She noted that farmers are not only struggling to meet these requirements, but are often left guessing on which requirements to meet."

Yesterday's release added that, "Lincoln also reiterated her opposition to EPA overseeing the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, noting the extraordinary burden it would place on farmers across the nation.

"'I flat out disagree with EPA's regulation of greenhouse gases,' Lincoln said. 'I fear that federal courts will order EPA to regulate small sources of greenhouse gases. This could mean unnecessary regulation for thousands of farms all around the country. We cannot allow this to happen. And as I have said time and again, it should be Congress, not unelected bureaucrats, who should be writing the laws to regulate greenhouse gases.'"

Food That Can Kill You: Meet the Folks Offering a Heart-Attack Alternative to Healthier Eating

By Ari LeVaux
Alternet,

The burgers are free-all day, every day-at the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, AZ. The only catch is you have to weigh at least 350 lbs. The fake nurse who weighs you is young, hot, and female. All guests, regardless of weight, are called "patients," and are "admitted" by the "nurses," who dress them in bibs that look like hospital gowns. Strategically placed mirrors behind the counter provide patients with heart-stopping views of fake-nurse crotch.

The menu includes unfiltered cigarettes and milkshakes reputed to have the highest fat content in the world, but burgers are the main attraction. They range from the Single through the Quadruple Bypass, based on the number of patties they contain, with two pieces of cheese for each patty, between buns shiny with lard. If you finish an 8,000-calorie Quadruple Bypass Burger, a fake nurse will push you by wheelchair all the way to your car. On a recent visit, Zach Fowle of the Phoenix New Times reported watching one customer eat two Quadruples. "The guy has the meat sweats and looks like he might spew at any minute. It's a good thing he's getting wheeled out, because it looks like he can barely walk," Fowle observed. The burgers come with all-you-can-eat "Flatliner Fries," which are cooked in lard and smothered with cheese and/or gravy.

In every fiber of its being (perhaps fiber is the wrong word), the Heart Attack Grill is a one-fingered salute to the health food movement. That's the idea anyway, according to owner Jon Basso.

Hershey's Markets To Kids But Is Likely Implicated In Child Labor, Trafficking And Forced Labor

By Peter Boaz
Alternet,

Hershey, one of the largest chocolate manufacturers in the U.S., is lagging behind other companies in taking steps to ensure decent working conditions in its supply chain, charges a new report.

"In the United States, Hershey conjures up innocent childhood pleasures and enjoyable snacks," according to "Time to Raise the Bar", a report released this week by four labour rights and fair trade groups.

"However, halfway across the globe, there is a dark side to Hershey. In West Africa, where Hershey sources much of its cocoa, the scene is one of child labor, trafficking, and forced labor."

For the last decade, U.S. chocolate companies have been pressured to take responsibility for abuses in their supply chains. Competing companies like Cadbury/Kraft, Mars and Nestle have made efforts to combat poor conditions in cocoa- growing countries. But Hershey, which claims 42.5 percent of the U.S. chocolate market, has been slow to initiate adequate measures against abuses, the report says.

Obama's Massive Power Struggle with the American War Machine

By Pepe Escobar
Alternet

As that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama's Wars - conveniently leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times - the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shelling out the moolah for its own, 3,000-assassin-plus Murder Inc to roam in AfPak. These paramilitary - brigade-size - outfits, "elite and well trained", have been branded Counter-terrorist Pursuit Teams (CPT).

Much is being made in US corporate media that this shady CPT posse is able to "cross-over" to the tribal areas in Pakistani territory and, like in that famous Heineken ad campaign, reach the parts US intelligence are not able to reach. Aware Latin Americans - with a shrug - will see this as Bad Joke redux: the "Salvador option" is back. As much as these Afghan assassins have been flown to the US for training, the infamous School of the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s trained death squads of natives to kill their compatriots from Chile to El Salvador. The CIA not exactly excels on thinking outside the box.

Old Afghan hands will also be thrilled; this is a small-scale remix of the Afghan mujahideen fighting the anti-Soviet 1980s jihad. Everyone knows what happened afterwards to those bad asses Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters"; they turned against the US. Maybe some enterprising CIA analysts should share a kebab with their old pal on a payroll, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin "bomb, bomb Kabul" Hekmatyar, an eternal mujahid today on Washington's most wanted list.

UN Warned of Major New Food Crisis at Emergency Meeting in Rome

By John Vidal
Common Dreams

The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.

In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces back to the early noughties.

"

School Food Wars

By Ruth Conniff
The Progressive

My kids' school is awash in fresh fruits and vegetables this year.

As one of a handful of schools in our community that received the federal Fresh Fruits and Vegetables grant--available through the USDA for largely low-income schools--we are spending Sunday mornings buying produce at the local farmers' market, a few blocks from our school. Monday nights a group of parents gets together at a church across the street from the school building and washes and chops the produce, then loads it in the school fridge so the fourth and fifth graders can pass it out three mornings a week.

As labor-intensive as this whole process is, it is intensely rewarding. Watching the kids gobble up watermelon on the playground, or try cherry tomatoes for the first time in class, and hearing the comments about snack: "Cool! Green beans!" is a big lift.

It is especially gratifying since so many of the kids who are getting this snack are not familiar with fruits and vegetables. Many have never seen a fresh tomato before, let alone some of the more exotic veggies we are trying this year, like jicama and kohlrabi.

Certainly they are not getting that sort of thing at lunch in school.

For years, parents in our school district have been complaining about the deep fried French toast sticks and cocoa puffs in the breakfast program and the hot dogs and fries and cheese sauce at lunch.

Save American Democracy, or What's Left of It

By Kevin Zeese

This is the first election after the Citizens United decision which gave corporations complete freedom to spend as much money as they want to influence the outcome of elections.

Citizens beware.  Citizens get active.  Citizens get organized. Our fragile democracy is at grave risk.

We've seen in Obama's time in office (and before) how corporations dominate Washington, DC.  The health care "reform" turned out to be a re-enforcement of the insurance-company-dominated health care industry.  And finance reform had to get the approval of Wall Street and the Federal Reserve before moving forward. Corporate welfare to the weapons, coal, nuclear and oil industries have continued or even grown under Obama. The housing crisis, which should have ended with the bailout of Wall Street, is getting worse, with record foreclosures last month. But that is not enough for the oligarchs who control government through concentrated corporate power.  They want more, and they are using massive spending on elections to get it.

A coalition of organizations has come together to expose groups spending hundreds of millions on the mid-term elections in secret, unlimited donations that avoid campaign finance laws.

Whole Foods Dumps So-Called 'Natural' Silk Soy

By Waylon Lewis
The Huffington Post,

Whole Foods will no longer carry Dean Foods' Silk Soy milk--instead goes with organic brands.

Last year, Silk Soy--while continuing to offer a somewhat higher-priced organic option--pushed the majority of its soy milk to "natural" (the beans still weren't genetically modified

Home Canners Wield Pickles Against Food Giants

By Keith Goetzman


Is food preservation a political act? Many of the people surveyed by two social scientists for their academic study "Saving Food: Food Preservation as Alternative Food Activism" think so, according to The Irresistible Fleet of Bicycles, the blog of the hard-hoeing young farmers known as the Greenhorns.

For their study (pdf), Melissa Click and Ronit Ridberg collected survey results from 902 respondents in 42 of the 50 states after reaching them through gardening and food networks. Here's their "participant profile":

Our survey respondents reported behaviors that are consistent with the rhetoric of alternative food activism, indicating that they frequent farmers markets (80.5 percent), buy local food (79.9 percent), buy organic food (77.6 percent), and maintain their own vegetable gardens (72.7 percent). Respondents' answers to an open-ended survey question, "describe how your views about food have influenced the way you spend money on food," consistently demonstrated that our survey respondents believe that the way they spend their money is a political act. For instance, survey respondents offered the following: "As consumers we have a voice and our dollars speak volumes"; "The way I spend my money is the best representation of my morals in this society"; and "We vote with our dollars, so I am OK with spending more money on food that I know was produced within my community with love and sustainable methods."  

Fewer survey respondents directly connected their views about food with behaviors considered more traditionally political, some arguing that they wanted government regulation out of food altogether   and some asserting that they did not see a connection between food and politics   . Other survey respondents saw a direct connection between food and environmental policy (e.g., "Food and the environment are inseparable, so I always vote for the candidate most likely to approve or make legislation to protect the environment"); between food safety and government regulation ("The federal government needs to provide adequate funding for regular and thorough inspections of food processing facilities in the USA and of imported food products to ensure public safety"); and between food and specific government policies ("I pay attention to the Farm Bill and to agricultural and food policy in general. I favor policy and candidates that support a diversified agriculture and more local and regional food systems"). 

Norman Solomon: Higher Consciousness Won't Save Us

By Norman Solomon


Autumn 2010 is a time of disillusionment for many who deplore the USA's current political trajectory. Some who've been active for progressive causes are now gravitating toward hope that individual actions -- in tandem with higher consciousness, more down-to-earth lifestyles and healthy cultural alternatives -- can succeed where social activism has failed. It's an old story that is also new.

From economic inequities to global warming to war, the nation's power centers have repulsed those who recognize the urgency of confronting such crises head-on. High unemployment has become the new normal. Top officials in Washington have taken a dive on climate change. The warfare state is going great guns.

When social movements seem to be no match for a destructive status quo, people are apt to look around for alternative strategies. One of the big ones involves pursuing individual transformations as keys to social change. Forty years ago, such an approach became all the rage -- boosted by a long essay that made a huge splash in The New Yorker magazine just before a longer version became a smash bestseller.

The book was "The Greening of America," by a Yale University Law School teacher named Charles Reich. In the early fall of 1970, it created a sensation. Today, let's consider it as a distant mirror that reflects some similar present-day illusions.

The FDA and Frankenfoods

By Jeff Deasy


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has sent enforcement letters warning food makers that they cannot label their products as free of genetically modified or genetically engineered ingredients.

The letters were sent as a heated debate is taking place over whether the agency should approve a genetically engineered (GE) salmon that grows at twice the rate of salmon in the wild.

Sarah Alexander of the nonprofit Food & Water Watch says, "The FDA has a flawed process for approving these GE salmon and unfortunately for us, the process isn't focused on what happens to people who eat genetically engineered animals. If the FDA moves forward, these salmon would be the first GE animals approved for human consumption."

An article in the Washington Post quotes Marion Nestle, a professor in the Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health Department at New York University. She said, "The public wants to know and the public has a right to know. I think the agency has discretion, but it's under enormous political pressure to approve

GM Food Battle Moves to Fish as Super-Salmon Nears US Approval

By Jamie Doward


Buried in a prospectus inviting investors to buy shares in a fledgling biotech company is an arresting claim attributed to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

"Commercial aquaculture is the most rapidly growing segment of the agricultural industry, accounting for more than $60bn sales in 2003. While land-based agriculture is increasing between 2% to 3% per year, aquaculture has been growing at an average rate of approximately 9% per year since 1970."

And then the prospectus for the US company AquaBounty offers this observation to tantalize prospective investors: "The traditional fishery harvest from the ocean has stagnated since 1990."

So what is to be done to satisfy the world's seemingly insatiable appetite for fish? An appetite that will see the consumption of farmed fish outpace global beef consumption by nearly 10% within five years, according to the UN?

AquaBounty, whose shares are sold on London's Alternative Investment Market, thinks it has the answer. And if, as looks increasingly likely, the US government agrees, the implications for global food production will be enormous. Welcome to the new world heralded by the "GM salmon".

The company's dream of selling genetically modified salmon eggs that allow the fish to grow to maturity in half the normal time received a giant fillip last week when it announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was close to granting approval.

A positive FDA response would see salmon become the first GM-engineered animal marketed for human consumption. Dramatically speeding up the time it takes to harvest a mature salmon could stimulate a huge rise in production, making salmon plentiful and cheaper, GM enthusiasts say.

Misguided FDA Opposition to Labeling Could Leave Public Permanently in the Dark About GE Animals

Recent Poll Shows 91% of Americans Oppose GE Animals; CFS calls for clear, mandatory labeling


After a two-day public hearing on the approval of the first genetically engineered (GE) animal intended for human consumption, the AquAdvantage GE salmon, FDA held a public hearing today to discuss whether or not these GE fish should be labeled as such should they be approved. A 60-day public comment period on the labeling issue will be open until November 22, 2010.

"This transgenic salmon is the first GE animal intended for food, yet the human health impacts of eating these GE fish are completely unknown," said Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director at the Center for Safety  (CFS). "These GE fish also pose unacceptable risks to wild salmon and the marine environment." These "unknowns" were raised repeatedly at yesterday's Veterinary Medicine Advisory Committee (VMAC) hearing, and the Committee was unable to come to any conclusion as to the safety or efficacy of the GE salmon.  The hearing on labeling is premature given that the VMAC has not approved this salmon for human or animal consumption.

The public has not been quiet about the possible approval of GE salmon. In fact, over 300 environmental, consumer, health, and animal welfare organizations, along with salmon and fishing groups and associations, food companies, chefs and restaurants signed joint letters to the FDA opposing the approval of AquaBounty's GE salmon.  CFS and a coalition of allied groups also submitted 172,000 comments from individuals opposing the approval and urging clear, mandatory labeling should the fish be approved despite overwhelming public opposition (CFS comments to the VMAC and the joint letters can be found on our website).  

Announcements by FDA officials and speakers today suggest that the Agency may not require labeling of GE salmon should it be approved. While FDA is operating under the fiction that transgenic animals are "new drugs," the Agency does not feel that they need to be labeled in the same way that drugs are.

A Lake Research Partners poll  commissioned by Food & Water Watch and released yesterday found that 91 percent of Americans believe FDA should not allow genetically engineered fish and meat into the marketplace; 83 percent felt strongly that it should not be allowed.  Additionally, a 2008 Consumers Union nationwide poll  found that 95 percent of respondents said they thought food from genetically engineered animals should be labeled, and 78 percent strongly agreed with this.

In his comments today, CFS Senior Staff Attorney George Kimbrell asserted that "labeling in the 21st Century cannot be based on 20th Century policy decisions."  The FDA currently uses its 1992 interpretation of "material" to inform its decisions on labeling, an interpretation that occurred prior to commercialization of any transgenic animal. 

The Food Crisis is Not About a Shortage of Food

By Jim Goodman


The food crisis of 2008 never really ended, it was ignored and forgotten. The rich and powerful are well fed; they had no food crisis, no shortage, so in the West, it was little more than a short lived sound bite, tragic but forgettable. To the poor in the developing world, whose ability to afford food is no better now than in 2008, the hunger continues.

Hunger can have many contributing factors; natural disaster, discrimination, war, poor infrastructure. So why, regardless of the situation, is high tech agriculture always assumed to be the only the solution? This premise is put forward and supported by those who would benefit financially if their "solution" were implemented. Corporations peddle their high technology genetically engineered seed and chemical packages, their genetically altered animals, always with the "promise" of feeding the world.

Politicians and philanthropists, who may mean well, jump on the high technology band wagon. Could the promise of financial support or investment return fuel their apparent compassion?

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation supposedly works to achieve a food secure and prosperous Africa. While these sentiments and goals may be philanthropy at its best, some of the coalition partners have a different agenda.

One of the key players in AGRA, Monsanto, hopes to spread its genetically engineered seed throughout Africa by promising better yields, drought resistance, an end to hunger, etc. etc. Could a New Green Revolution succeed where the original Green Revolution had failed? Or was the whole concept of a Green Revolution a pig in a poke to begin with?

Monsanto giving free seed to poor small holder farmers sounds great, or are they just setting the hook? Remember, next year those farmers will have to buy their seed. Interesting to note that the Gates Foundation purchased $23.1 million worth of Monsanto stock in the second quarter of 2010. Do they also see the food crisis in Africa as a potential to turn a nice profit? Every corporation has one overriding interest--- self-interest, but surely not charitable foundations?

Food shortages are seldom about a lack of food, there is plenty of food in the world, the shortages occur because of the inability to get food where it is needed and the inability of the hungry to afford it. These two problems are principally caused by, as Francis Moore Lappe' put it, a lack of justice. There are also ethical considerations, a higher value should be placed on people than on corporate profit, this must be at the forefront, not an afterthought.

Retribution for a World Lost in Screens

By Chris Hedges


Nemesis was the Greek goddess of retribution. She exacted divine punishment on arrogant mortals who believed they could defy the gods, turn themselves into objects of worship and build ruthless systems of power to control the world around them. The price of such hubris was almost always death.

Nemesis, related to the Greek word némein, means "to give what is due." Our nemesis fast approaches. We will get what we are due. The staggering myopia of our corrupt political and economic elite, which plunder the nation's wealth for financial speculation and endless war, the mass retreat of citizens into virtual hallucinations, the collapsing edifices around us, which include the ecosystem that sustains life, are ignored for a giddy self-worship. We stare into electronic screens just as Narcissus, besotted with his own reflection, stared into a pool of water until he wasted away and died.

We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We believe that money, rather than manufactured products and goods, is real. We believe in the myth of inevitable human moral and material progress. We believe that no matter how much damage we do to the Earth or our society, science and technology will save us. And as temperatures on the planet steadily rise, as droughts devastate cropland, as the bleaching of coral reefs threatens to wipe out 25 percent of all marine species, as countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh succumb to severe flooding, as we poison our food, air and water, as we refuse to confront our addiction to fossil fuels and coal, as we dismantle our manufacturing base and plunge tens of millions of Americans into a permanent and desperate underclass, we flick on a screen and are entranced.

We confuse the electronic image, a reflection back to us of ourselves, with the divine. We gawk at "reality" television, which of course is contrived reality, reveling in being the viewer and the viewed. True reality is obliterated from our consciousness. It is the electronic image that informs and defines us. It is the image that gives us our identity. It is the image that tells us what is attainable in the vast cult of the self, what we should desire, what we should seek to become and who we are. It is the image that tricks us into thinking we have become powerful-as the popularity of video games built around the themes of violence and war illustrates-while we have become enslaved and impoverished by the corporate state. The electronic image leads us back to the worship of ourselves. It is idolatry. Reality is replaced with electronic mechanisms for preening self-presentation-the core of social networking sites such as Facebook-and the illusion of self-fulfillment and self-empowerment. And in a world unmoored from the real, from human limitations and human potential, we inevitably embrace superstition and magic. This is what the worship of images is about. We retreat into a dark and irrational fear born out of a cavernous ignorance of the real. We enter an age of technological barbarism.

To those entranced by images, the world is a vast stage on which they are called to enact their dreams. It is a world of constant action, stimulation and personal advancement. It is a world of thrills and momentary ecstasy. It is a world of ceaseless movement. It makes a fetish of competition. It is a world where commercial products and electronic images serve as a pseudo-therapy that caters to feelings of alienation, inadequacy and powerlessness. We may be locked in dead-end jobs, have no meaningful relationships and be confused about our identities, but we can blast our way to power holding a little control panel while looking for hours at a screen. We can ridicule the poor, the ignorant and the weak all day long on trash-talk shows and reality television shows. We are skillfully made to feel that we have a personal relationship, a false communion, with the famous-look at the outpouring of grief at the death of Princess Diana or Michael Jackson. We have never met those we adore. We know only their manufactured image. They appear to us on screens. They are not, at least to us, real people. And yet we worship and seek to emulate them.