DuPont Joins $20 Million PR Campaign to Defend Biotech and Chemical Ag

DuPont today joined an effort to bolster the image of agriculture and enhance public trust in the U.S. food production system. The initiative is led by the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance (USFRA), a new initiative represented by more than 40 of the leading farmer- and rancher-led agricultural organizations.

The USFRA was established in October 2010 and represents farmer and rancher organizations that reach nearly all aspects of U.S. agriculture. The Alliance will work to increase the role of U.S. farmers and ranchers as the voice of animal and crop agriculture on local, state and national food issues. It also will serve as a resource to food companies on the benefits of modern production agriculture and work with leading health, environmental and dietary organizations.

"DuPont is proud to support the U.S. Farmers & Ranchers Alliance as they bring together an unprecedented group that crosses all boundaries in modern agriculture with a single goal of building understanding about the dependable, abundant supply of food produced by today's farmers and ranchers," said DuPont Executive Vice President James C. Borel. "There is an increased need to reinforce the importance of agricultural contributions and its value to society, and promoting the merits of a career in agriculture also are essential to recruiting tomorrow's farmers and innovators." 

EU bans chemical in baby bottles

Baby bottle chemical is removed Baby bottle chemical concernHeart fears over common chemical The European Commission has announced a ban on the use of bisphenol A (BPA) in plastic baby bottles from next year.

The commission cited fears that the compound could affect development and immune response in young children.

There has been concern over the use of BPA for some time, with six US manufacturers removing it in 2009 from bottles they sold in the US, although not other markets.

But a UK expert said he thought the move was "an over-reaction".

BPA is widely used in making hard, clear plastic and is commonly found in food and drink containers.

A European Commission spokesman said the proposal had been approved after being presented to a committee of national government experts on Thursday - months earlier than scheduled - and approved.

The European parliament had called for the ban in June.

Areas of uncertainty

John Dalli, Commissioner in charge of Health and Consumer Policy, said the ban was good news for European parents.

Continue reading the main story“Start QuoteI would be happy for a baby of mine to be fed from a polycarbonate bottle containing bisphenol A”

End QuoteProfessor Richard Sharpe,University of Edinburgh "There were areas of uncertainty, deriving from new studies, which showed that BPA might have an effect on development, immune response and tumour promotion," Mr Dalli said in a statement.

EU states will outlaw the manufacture of polycarbonate feeding bottles containing the compound from March 2011, and ban their import and sale from June 2011, the Commission said.

But Professor Richard Sharpe, of the Medical Research Council's Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the University of Edinburgh, said the commission's decision must have been made on political, rather than scientific, grounds.

"I do not know of any convincing evidence that bisphenol A exposure, in the amounts used in polycarbonate bottles, can cause any harm to babies as not only are the amounts so minuscule but they are rapidly broken down in the gut and liver.

"Babies have the necessary enzymes and are able to metabolise bisphenol A just as effectively as adults."

He added: "Personally I think this is an overreaction, but if satisfactory replacements chemicals are available then this can be done to placate those calling for action, but scientifically it's a retrograde step.

"I would be happy for a baby of mine to be fed from a polycarbonate bottle containing bisphenol A."

And Professor Warren Foster of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Canada's McMaster University, said the EU had acted with "extreme caution".

Mimicking

The National Childbirth Trust is a British charity which has campaigned for the ban.

Its chief executive Belinda Phipps told the BBC: "When you put liquids into a bottle - particularly hot liquids or liquids containing fatty liquids - it leaches out of the plastic. And particularly as the bottle gets older and it gets more scratched, more and more leaches out and into the liquid."

Ms Phipps said that when a baby drinks from a bottle which contains BPA, the baby absorbs the leached chemical into its fat.

"It's a chemical that mimics oestrogens, but not in a good way," she said. "It interferes with oestrogens getting into the receptors, and it can have some very unpleasant effects - and animal studies have shown significant effects."

Canada was the first country to declare bisphenol A toxic in October, after it was concluded that the chemical might have harmful effects on humans, as well as the environment and "its biological diversity".

The Canadian decision was strongly opposed by the chemical industry.

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.