MOOS ALERT: Food Safety Bill passes in the House, to be signed into law by President in 2011
President to Sign Food Safety Bill in Early 2011 by Helena Bottemiller | Dec 23, 2010
The new food safety law will give FDA expanded authority over approximately 80 percent of the food supply--not including USDA-regulated meat and poultry products--by giving the agency mandatory recall powers and expanded access to records. It also requires growers and food facilities to implement food safety plans and stipulates that foreign facilities importing food to the U.S. must meet the same standards.
Tues Nov 30: The controversial S510 Food Safety Bill has passed in the US Senate a few minutes before 11am EST, 73-25 with the Tester Hagan amendment intact.
Read about it in the NY TIMES and FOOD SAFETY NEWS
But WHOOPS, S510 stalls in the Senate!
And here's the Nitty Gritty details on S510
organic matter: UK nutrition study flawed say sustainable food advocates
See responses from sustainable food advocates:
Tom Philpott from Grist
Paula Crossfield from Civil Eats
Rodale Institute
The Organic Center
Marion Nestle
Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm
sowing seeds: news of inspiration
News from Working Lands Alliance:
Dairy farmers in Connecticut won significant support from state leaders. The state budget includes $10m for emergency support and another $6m to $8m in price supports. Milk prices paid to farmers have fallen while operation costs have risen dramatically, leaving most dairy farms at risk of closing. Nearly 45% of all cropland in the State of Connecticut is directly tied to dairy farming. The loss of dairy farms would transform our state's landscape with thousands of acres of abandoned farmland vulnerable to development. The state's commitment of $$ to dairy represents a critical investment in the stewards of our farmlands!
more weeds
It isn't just about Compost
by Brian Halweil
Nourishing The Planet, August 24 09
“The concerns with fertilizer really have to do with compost,” said journalist James McWilliams. “Compost is extremely heavy. And this is, in some ways, going to be tremendously unwieldy and unachievable, especially in poor countries.”
Says Brian Halweil, Senior Researcher at The Worldwatch Institute, "At a time when the number of hungry people on the planet has just topped one billion, this guest’s anti-compost statement was good evidence that journalists, agricultural scientists, politicians, and even farmers often dismiss agricultural approaches based on misinformation."
read Worldwatch's Nourishing the Planet article here
sowing seeds: news of inspiration
DTN Progressive Farmer by Marcia Zarley Taylor, june 11 2009
USDA is offering big benefits to beginning farmers: Who else can qualify for 1.5 percent, 20-year fixed interest rates on a big chunk of any farm mortgage? No, that's not a typo. The Farm Service Agency's Down Payment Program for beginning or limited resource farmers may be the best deal in decades for someone interested in buying land at the moment.
"That's the best rate I've ever seen for a USDA loan program, and I've worked in farm credit for 27 years," says Greg Beachy with Farm Credit Services of Mid-America in Louisville, serving Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee and Kentucky. Borrowers who've stumbled onto the offer are already backlogged, but he expects a surge of applicants as word spread. "USDA really is looking for ways to get young people into farming," he tells me.
weeds: trouble patches
Life-threatening disease is the price we pay for cheap meat
Modern factory farms have created a 'perfect storm' environment for powerful viruses
The Independent by Johann Hari
In most swine farms today, 6,000 pigs are crammed snout-to-snout in tiny cages where they can barely move, and are fed for life on an artificial pulp, while living on top of cess-pools of their own stale faeces. Instead of having just 20 pigs to experiment and evolve in, the virus now has a pool of thousands, constantly infecting and reinfecting each other. The virus can combine and recombine again and again. The ammonium from the waste they live above burns the pigs' respiratory tracts, making it easier yet for viruses to enter them. Better still, the pigs' immune systems are in free-fall. They are stressed, depressed, and permanently in panic, making them far easier to infect. There is no fresh air or sunlight to bolster their natural powers of resistance. They live in air thick with viral loads, and they are exposed every time they breathe in.
A FOOD SYSTEM THAT KILLS
SWINE FLU IS MEAT INDUSTRY'S LATEST PLAGUE
Grain April 2009
Mexico is in the midst of a hellish repeat of Asia's bird flu experience, though on a more deadly scale. Once again, the official response from public authorities has come too late and bungled in cover-ups. And once again, the global meat industry is at the centre of the story, ramping up denials as the weight of evidence about its role grows. Just five years after the start of the H5N1 bird flu crisis, and after as many years of a global strategy against influenza pandemics coordinated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the world is now reeling from a swine flu disaster. The global strategy has failed and needs to be replaced with a public health system that the public can trust.
Landmark U.S. Geological Survey Study
Demonstrates How Methylmercury, Known to Contaminate Seafood, Originates in the Ocean
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new landmark study published today documents for the first time the process in which increased mercury emissions from human sources across the globe, and in particular from Asia, make their way into the North Pacific Ocean and as a result contaminate tuna and other seafood. Because much of the mercury that enters the North Pacific comes from the atmosphere, scientists have predicted an additional 50 percent increase in mercury in the Pacific by 2050 if mercury emission rates continue as projected.
sowing seeds: news of inspiration
By Chuck Bartels
The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK — Heifer International is opening a $7.5 million museum at its Little Rock headquarters to help illustrate the work it does around the world to help impoverished people feed themselves.
Progress Reported as Sustainable Agriculture Standards Committee Takes Next Steps Toward Development of American National Standard
CSRWire
Madison, WI - June 5, 2009 - Significant progress was made during the second face-to-face meeting of the multi-stakeholder Standards Committee working to develop an American National Standard for Sustainable Agriculture (SCS-001).
Forty-eight Committee members, along with fifteen observers, convened for the two-day summit last week in St. Charles, Illinois to review Task Force recommendations, lay the groundwork for resolution of key issues - including issues never before discussed and debated in an open national forum - and establish the initial subcommittees to carry the Task Force work forward
MDA awards $100,000 in sustainable agriculture grants
Hutchinson Leader
Submitted by Matt McMillan on June 7, 2009 - 7:20am.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) has awarded $100,000 in sustainable agriculture grants for seven on-farm research and demonstration projects. Available through the MDA's Sustainable Agriculture Grant Demonstration Program, the grants support three-year projects that increase farm net profits, benefit the environment and improve the farm family quality of life.
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sowing seeds: news of inspiration
OMB Watch
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will resume a portion of its survey of the use of farm chemicals that was cut during the Bush administration. The surveys historically have provided crucial publicly available data on the amount and types of pesticides used on a variety of crops and livestock operations nationwide. [photo from LaLeva.org]
sowing seeds: news of inspiration
(Photo by Chisako Fukushima and Greg Bowman)
Living plants out-last, out-perform roof shingles
Many Rodale Institute staff members cooperated in recent days to construct the farm’s first green roof, providing an early crop this spring. The innovative installation pushes the edge of the chosen living-roof technology due to its relative steep roof angle.
Using a type of low-growing and maintenance-free sedum, the living system is carefully designed to outlast a typical roof, while slowing runoff from severe rainfall. It also provides a cooling effect to the building—and the surrounding air—in summer. So says William Heasom, P.E., president of Down to Earth Design Foundation (www.toearth.org), a non-profit organization focusing on engineering for regeneration.
Obama moves to shore-up US biofuels industry
05 May 2009 17:49 ICIS news by Joe Kamalick
WASHINGTON (ICIS news)--President Barack Obama’s administration took steps on Tuesday to provide emergency funding to the floundering US ethanol industry and to stimulate broader distribution of biofuels and production of flexible-fuel automobiles.
The president established a biofuels interagency working group to focus on reviving and expanding US biofuels production and use. The working group includes the Department of Energy (DOE), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Among other things, the Agriculture Department will make available an unspecified amount of federal funds to refinance existing investments in renewable fuels refineries “to preserve jobs in ethanol and biodiesel plants”.
