statism watch

Flashback: Fury as EU approves antibiotic resistant GM potato | Canada’s flax crop mysteriously contaminated by GM seeds | Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seed | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis

Ian MacDougall, Associated Press
March 10, 2010

Arctic vault now contains the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, operators say

Two years after receiving its first deposits, a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island has amassed half a million seed samples, making it the world’s most diverse repository of crop seeds, the vault’s operators announced Thursday.

Cary Fowler, who heads the trust that oversees the seed collection, which is 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from the North Pole, said the facility now houses at least one-third of the world’s crop seeds.

“In my lifetime, I don’t think we’ll go over 1.5 million. I’d be rather surprised if we go over a million,” Fowler told The Associated Press. “At that point, we’d have all the diversity in the world … and the most secure samples.”

Located in Norway’s remote Svalbard archipelago, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a safeguard against wars or natural disasters wiping out food crops around the globe. It was opened in 2008 as a master backup to the world’s other 1,400 seed banks, in case their deposits are lost.

War wiped out seed banks in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another bank in the Philippines was flooded in the wake of a typhoon in 2006. The Svalbard bank is designed to withstand global warming, earthquakes and even nuclear strikes.

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Perfectly safe? Monsanto corn DNA has escaped into the environment – Monsanto regularly uses this as a club to force farmers adjacent to Monsanto fields to buy their product when genetic material sweeps across in the wind to contaminate their crops. See this documentary, The World According to Monsanto, for more on that. So now the EU has approved a potato that has the antibiotic resistant marker gene nptll and BASF promises this addition won’t go viral. Is BASF trying to wipe out antibiotics? They say, emphatically, no in this press release, and that the use of antibiotic resistant marker genes is required to distinguish between modified samples and control samples in the labroatory. Their press release detailing the benefits to paper production may be found here. What do you think? (It’s interesting to note that BASF already has a toe in the livestock feed business, and that these potato peelings may also be fed to animals) Save Our Seeds provides more background here.

Flashback: Will This Little GMO Piggy Go to Market? | Monsanto’s GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals | Canada’s flax crop mysteriously contaminated by GM seeds | Britain will starve without GM crops, says major report | It is too late to shut the door on GM foods | Organic food no more nutritious, study finds | Researchers working on swine flu ‘vaccine corn’ | High-fructose sweeteners linked to obesity, diabetes | Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | UK Environment minister calls for international food treaty, GM foods at Fabian Society address | GM Crops Climb to Nearly One-Tenth of Global Crop Production | Genetically engineered meal close to your table | The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops | Europe’s secret plan to boost GM crop production | Hunger in Africa blamed on western rejection of GM food | GM crops could lead to ‘disaster’: Prince Charles | Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seed | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis | Agribusiness positions GM crops as panacea to predicted global food shortage | Monsanto Plans to Save World with its Biotech Crops | High-level UN task force to tackle global food crisis | Scientist who claimed GM crops could solve Third World hunger admits he got it wrong | Codex Alimentarius — An Emerging Threat | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

Martin Hickman and Genevieve Roberts, The Telegraph
March 4, 2010

Critics claim plant could spread antibiotic-resistant diseases to humans

The introduction of a genetically modified potato in Europe risks the development of human diseases that fail to respond to antibiotics, it was claimed last night.

German chemical giant BASF this week won approval from the European Commission for commercial growing of a starchy potato with a gene that could resist antibiotics – useful in the fight against illnesses such as tuberculosis.

Farms in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic may plant the potato for industrial use, with part of the tuber fed to cattle, according to BASF, which fought a 13-year battle to win approval for Amflora. But other EU member states, including Italy and Austria and anti-GM campaigners angrily attacked the move, claiming it could result in a health disaster.

During the regulatory tussle over the potato, the EU’s pharmaceutical regulator had expressed concern about its potential to interfere with the efficacy of antibiotics on infections that develop multiple resistance to other antibiotics, a growing problem in human and veterinary medicine. Amflora contains a gene that produces an enzyme which generally confers resistance to several antibiotics, including kanamycin, neomycin, butirosin, and gentamicin.

The antibiotics could become “extremely important” to treat otherwise multi-resistant infections and tuberculosis, the European Medicines Authority (EMA) warned. Drug resistance is part of the explanation for the resurgence of TB, which infects eight million people worldwide every year.

“In the absence of an effective therapy, infectious Multiple Drug Resistant TB patients will continue to spread the disease, producing new infections with MDR-TB strains,” an EMA spokesman said. “Until we introduce a new drug with demonstrated activity against MDR strains, this aspect of the TB epidemic could explode at an exponential level.”

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Flashback: Monsanto’s GMO Corn Linked To Organ Failure, Study Reveals | Canada’s flax crop mysteriously contaminated by GM seeds | Britain will starve without GM crops, says major report | It is too late to shut the door on GM foods | Organic food no more nutritious, study finds | Researchers working on swine flu ‘vaccine corn’ | High-fructose sweeteners linked to obesity, diabetes | Doomsday seed vault’s stores are growing | Genetically Modified Seeds: Monsanto is Putting Normal Seeds Out of Reach | UK Environment minister calls for international food treaty, GM foods at Fabian Society address | GM Crops Climb to Nearly One-Tenth of Global Crop Production | Genetically engineered meal close to your table | The GM genocide: Thousands of Indian farmers are committing suicide after using genetically modified crops | Europe’s secret plan to boost GM crop production | Hunger in Africa blamed on western rejection of GM food | GM crops could lead to ‘disaster’: Prince Charles | Small Farmers Pushed to Plant GM Seed | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis | Agribusiness positions GM crops as panacea to predicted global food shortage | Monsanto Plans to Save World with its Biotech Crops | High-level UN task force to tackle global food crisis | Scientist who claimed GM crops could solve Third World hunger admits he got it wrong | Codex Alimentarius — An Emerging Threat | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

Joan Delany, The Epoch Times
March 2, 2010

Genetically modified pork a step closer to Canadians’ dinner tables

Genetically engineered pigs developed at the University of Guelph have passed the first of several regulatory hurdles on the way to being approved for human consumption.

Environment Canada has determined that the university’s transgenic Yorkshire pigs—so-called Enviropigs—are in compliance with the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and can be produced outside of the research context in controlled facilities where they are segregated from other animals.

Developed in 1999, the Enviropig is the first transgenic animal created to solve an environmental problem—phosphorus pollution of surface and groundwater in areas of intensive pig production.

Depending on its age and diet, manure from the Enviropig contains 30 to 70 percent less phosphorus than that of regular pigs. Enviropigs are able to digest a form of phosphorus in feed grains that regular pigs cannot, producing manure that is less environmentally damaging.

Steven Liss, associate vice-president of research services at the University of Guelph, says researchers have been working to develop an animal that has “less of an impact environmentally and can be produced in a more sustainable fashion.”

“I think there’s a great deal among our community and population that would applaud efforts to reduce the environmental impact of animal production, and I think this would go a long way to increase the sustainability and lessen the footprint that pig production sometimes yields.”

Submissions have been made to Health Canada and other federal agencies including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have the pigs approved for human consumption and commercialization. Liss declined to speculate how long it could take the various agencies to reach a decision.

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Does anyone else think their tax dollar might have better things to do than enforce a socialized price-fixing board for eggs?

Flashback: Ont. appealing raw milk producer’s acquittal | Stop selling unlicensed natural health remedies: pharmacy regulators | Passage of Bill C-6 Imminent, Gives Health Canada Warrantless Search and Seizure Powers | US House approves sweeping new food powers for FDA | Listeriosis report urges cleanliness and – increased federalization of food safety | New Ontario regulations forcing local butchers out of market | SWAT Teams raiding Amish, Food Co-ops in Rural US | Ottawa to revive bill restricting natural health products | Naturopaths Fear Proposed Bill C-51 | Canada’s C-51 Law May Outlaw 60% Of Natural Health Products | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

Sarah Elton, Globe and Mail
February 23, 2010

To farmers’ markets across the country they flock, foodies in search of free-range eggs fresh from the farm.

But they must move quickly because demand far outstrips supply. The eggs – laid by hens that roam free, eat bugs and live an existence that is antithetical to the life of the caged battery fowl that produce for supermarkets – sell out quickly. That is, unless you know who to ask and where to find them. Or, in some cases, the secret password.

Dawn Woodward, owner of Evelyn’s Crackers, an artisan baked-goods company in Toronto, will show up at the market at seven in the morning for farm-fresh eggs or drive an hour out of town to find them. When she’s leaving the city, she phones ahead to place an order with one of the hundreds of small farms in the country that sell pastured eggs.

“The flavour is better,” she says. “They are fresher and richer. They’re sweeter, a fuller flavour.” She prefers eggs laid by hens allowed to scratch and wander – when she can get them.

This longing for farm eggs has pushed the price of a dozen to about $5, roughly the same price you pay for organic eggs at the supermarket. In California, where alternative eggs have reached cult status and where the farmers who raise them are stars – starmers – a carton can cost $8 (U.S.). The eggs offer smaller producers a good revenue source. But this growing market for a different kind of egg is creating tension between the small farms that raise them and the egg marketing board that has helped to develop the mainstream egg industry in Canada and its large chicken farms.

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Flashback: Ont. appealing raw milk producer’s acquittal | Court approves raw milk co-op | Raw milk farmer vows to fight on | Milk trial defence: Raw milk is safe and food choice a right | Milk trial prosecution: Cow share contracts ‘a preferred customer list’ | Farmer turns to Constitution as defence at raw-milk trial | Raw milk crusader returns to court to fight charges | Raw milk producer fined $55,000 | Raw milk fans rally at court for dairy farmer | You can’t stop the raw milk, activist says | Farmer Surveilled, Raided for Natural Milk Operation has Trial Delayed

National Post
February 16, 2010

Responding to the province’s appeal last week of his January acquittal on 19 charges relating to his distribution of raw dairy products, Ontario farmer Michael Schmidt said he will continue to fight for the right of Canadians to drink the kind of milk they want — taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada if necessary.

In a press conference at Queen’s Park yesterday, which Mr. Schmidt “directed personally at Dalton McGuinty and those MPPs who seem to be under the tight control of our marketing boards in Ontario,” the Durham, Ont., dairy farmer said Canadians should enjoy the fundamental right to eat and drink what they want. “It’s my body. I want to put in my body what I think is good for you,” he said, between sips of raw milk. “The government made a big mistake having chosen me as their prime target to attack the raw milk movement.”

Appearing at Mr. Schmidt’s side was Karen Selick of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who will assist his defence by preparing a constitutional challenge to the law that bans raw milk in Ontario. It will refer to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms’ section seven, which guarantees personal liberty.

Raw milk is legal to drink, but laws in every province make it illegal to distribute and sell to the general public. The ruling acquitting Mr. Schmidt last month only made it legal for farmers to distribute their milk provided customers purchase “shares” in cows, the arrangement Mr. Schmidt has with his raw dairy supporters.

Mr. Schmidt also announced yesterday that he intends to found an association and college at his organic farm to help establish production, testing and inspection regimes for raw dairy production. He said he has approached the province and Dairy Farmers of Ontario with an offer to negotiate the development of a niche market for raw milk.

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You lose, Ontario A-G. Deal.

Flashback: Court approves raw milk co-op | Raw milk farmer vows to fight on | Milk trial defence: Raw milk is safe and food choice a right | Milk trial prosecution: Cow share contracts ‘a preferred customer list’ | Farmer turns to Constitution as defence at raw-milk trial | Raw milk crusader returns to court to fight charges | Raw milk producer fined $55,000 | Raw milk fans rally at court for dairy farmer | You can’t stop the raw milk, activist says | Farmer Surveilled, Raided for Natural Milk Operation has Trial Delayed

The Canadian Press
February 13, 2010

Raw milk crusader Michael Schmidt says the Ontario government is wasting its time by appealing last month’s court ruling that found him not guilty of violating the Health Protection and Promotion Act.

The Ministry of the Attorney General has confirmed it is appealing the decision to the Ontario Court of Justice.

Schmidt said the government is “clutching at straws” after a justice of the peace ruled on Jan. 21 that his innovative “cow-share” program for raw milk consumers doesn’t violate the law.

Schmidt’s program allows consumers to become “part-owners” of his dairy cows, which the court said complied with the province’s laws as it dismissed 19 charges against the farmer.

The Ministry of Health raided Schmidt’s Durham farm in 2006, resulting in a yearlong trial that ended last month with the acquittal.

Schmidt said the fight is not about milk, but is about respect for the individual’s right to make choices without government interference.

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The state can’t even keep its grubby hands off of your supplements and vitamins! And when they can’t get their fascist food ’safety’ bill passed after 2+ years of trying – Bill C-6 died with Parliament when it was prorogued – they just go ahead and implement the agenda administratively by sweeping the products off of pharmacy shelves! The drug companies are removing their competition by lobbying for laws and NAPRA policy to make them illegal – unless of course, you ask them for a ‘license’. How much ‘public-private’ tyranny will the Canadian public countenance?

Flashback: Passage of Bill C-6 Imminent, Gives Health Canada Warrantless Search and Seizure Powers | US House approves sweeping new food powers for FDA | Listeriosis report urges cleanliness and – increased federalization of food safety | New Ontario regulations forcing local butchers out of market | SWAT Teams raiding Amish, Food Co-ops in Rural US | Ottawa to revive bill restricting natural health products | Naturopaths Fear Proposed Bill C-51 | Canada’s C-51 Law May Outlaw 60% Of Natural Health Products | Codex Alimentarius Commission adopts more than 50 new food standards

Tom Blackwell, National Post
February 7, 2010

Makers of natural-health products say they are bracing for widespread layoffs and millions of dollars in losses after Canada’s pharmacy regulators issued a surprise directive recently urging druggists to stop selling unlicensed natural remedies.

The order affects thousands of herbal treatments, multi-vitamins and other products, most of them waiting for approval from Health Canada under a backlogged, five-year-old program to regulate natural-health goods.

The National Association of Pharmacy Regulatory Authorities (NAPRA) says pharmacists cannot be assured the products are safe until they are granted a government licence, and should not sell them in those circumstances. “Pharmacists are obliged to hold the health and safety of the public or patient as their first and foremost consideration,” said the association’s recently issued position statement.

Representatives of the natural health industry, however, have reacted angrily to the directive issued last month, predicting it will have little impact on patient safety, while triggering an economic “crisis” for their members.

“We are talking about job loss, we are talking about a lot of income loss, we are talking about product stuck in warehouses that cannot be sold,” Jean-Yves Dionne, a spokesman for the Canadian Health Food Association, said in an interview.

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Flashback: Food summit offers thin pledges to hungry | Food prices set to rise? | Will recession spark global food crisis? | American thinktanks sowed seeds of food crisis | Agribusiness positions GM crops as panacea to predicted global food shortage | Billions needed annually to raise food production: UN chief | Monsanto Plans to Save World with its Biotech Crops | High-level UN task force to tackle global food crisis | Head of IMF says if food prices remain high, consequences are dire

John Vidal, The Guardian
January 22, 2010

New analysis of 2009 US Department of Agriculture figures suggests biofuel revolution is impacting on world food supplies

One-quarter of all the maize and other grain crops grown in the US now ends up as biofuel in cars rather than being used to feed people, according to new analysis which suggests that the biofuel revolution launched by former President George Bush in 2007 is impacting on world food supplies.

The 2009 figures from the US Department of Agriculture shows ethanol production rising to record levels driven by farm subsidies and laws which require vehicles to use increasing amounts of biofuels.

“The grain grown to produce fuel in the US [in 2009] was enough to feed 330 million people for one year at average world consumption levels,” said Lester Brown, the director of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington thinktank ithat conducted the analysis.

Last year 107m tonnes of grain, mostly corn, was grown by US farmers to be blended with petrol. This was nearly twice as much as in 2007, when Bush challenged farmers to increase production by 500% by 2017 to save cut oil imports and reduce carbon emissions.

More than 80 new ethanol plants have been built since then, with more expected by 2015, by which time the US will need to produce a further 5bn gallons of ethanol if it is to meet its renewable fuel standard.

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Very nice. Now perhaps we can be rid of the ridiculous law as well. This journal would hazard a guess more people died from choking on chicken bones than the evil raw milk back in the day.

Flashback: Raw milk farmer vows to fight on | Milk trial defence: Raw milk is safe and food choice a right | Milk trial prosecution: Cow share contracts ‘a preferred customer list’ | Farmer turns to Constitution as defence at raw-milk trial | Raw milk crusader returns to court to fight charges | Raw milk producer fined $55,000 | Raw milk fans rally at court for dairy farmer | You can’t stop the raw milk, activist says | Farmer Surveilled, Raided for Natural Milk Operation has Trial Delayed

Megan Ogilvie, Toronto Star
January 21, 2010

The cows will still give their milk and their owners will still savour frothy mouthfuls straight from the farm. But now, the infamous cow-share program of Durham, ON, is legal in the eyes of the law.

In a surprise move, a Newmarket court ruled Thursday that dairy farmer Michael Schmidt is allowed to continue his raw milk co-operative and that his venture does not break laws against selling unpasteurized milk.

Government officials had little to say about the decision Thursday afternoon. But dairy experts say the ruling will spur more cow-share programs to form and encourage the underground co-ops already operating in Ontario to surface. And, they say, it will likely force the government to change its laws to allow the sale and distribution of raw milk in the province.

Food activists, chefs, proponents of the local and slow food movements and those who scorn excessive government regulations see the ruling as a victory for their causes. But few were more thrilled than Schmidt’s dedicated contingent of some 200 cow-share members.

“This is beyond our wildest hopes,” said Judith McGill, who has been a cow-share member at Schmidt’s Glencolton Farms for four years. “We are now out and we will build.”

Toronto chef and restaurateur Jamie Kennedy was one of the more than 100 people waiting outside the courthouse who greeted news of the ruling with cheers, hugs and happy hand shakes.

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Flashback: Milk trial defence: Raw milk is safe and food choice a right | Milk trial prosecution: Cow share contracts ‘a preferred customer list’ | Farmer turns to Constitution as defence at raw-milk trial | Raw milk crusader returns to court to fight charges | Raw milk producer fined $55,000 | Raw milk fans rally at court for dairy farmer | You can’t stop the raw milk, activist says | Farmer Surveilled, Raided for Natural Milk Operation has Trial Delayed

Megan Ogilvie, Toronto Star
January 21, 2010

DURHAM, Ont.–As dusk falls on his farm, Michael Schmidt pulls on a cap and walks down to the barn.

It’s milking time, and the farmer, dressed in khaki work shirt and black, frontier-style vest, moves easily through his herd of Canadienne cows. The dark brown animals, tied to stalls and knee-deep in hay, have long, curved horns and old-fashioned ladies’ names like Lourdes, Viola and Zaide. They stand patiently for Schmidt to unhook their collars.

When Schmidt calls out – a melodious “oh-aye, oh-aye, oh-aye” – eight cows leave their line and file along a concrete corridor to the milking parlour. They turn their backsides toward the milking equipment and wait, ears twitching, for Schmidt. Within minutes, their teats are hooked up to pumps and frothy white milk spurts into glass canisters.

Every morning and evening, without fail, Schmidt milks his cows. And, after more than three years fighting the law, it’s clear that nothing, not the government and not the courts, will stop him.

He will find out Thursday whether he is permitted to continue his raw milk cooperative venture.

It has been one year since Schmidt defended himself against 20 charges for dispensing milk straight from the cow. In Canada, it is illegal to sell or distribute unpasteurized milk, which health officials consider a health hazard.

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