[Biofuel] 4 Foods That Could Disappear If New Food Safety Rules Pass
http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/11/will-new-food-safety-law-small-farms-organic-FSMA 4 Foods That Could Disappear If New Food Safety Rules Pass -By Tom Philpott | Wed Nov. 6, 2013 When President Obama signed into law an overhaul of the nation's food safety regime in early 2011, it was clear that the system needed a kick in the pants. Recent salmonella outbreaks involving a dizzying array of peanut products and a half billion eggs had revealed a dysfunctional, porous regulatory environment for the nation's increasingly concentrated food system. The law, known as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), was a pretty modest piece of work when it came to reining in massive operations that can sicken thousands nationwide with a single day's output. No surprise, since Big Food's main lobbying group, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, notes on its web site that GMA worked closely with legislators to craft the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act and will work closely with the FDA to develop rules and guidance to implement the provisions of this new law. (Food and Water Watch summarizes FSMA here; Elanor Starmer lists some of its limitations here.) Even for many supporters of food safety reform, one persistent question has long been whether the new rules would steamroll small and midsize farms. Obviously, what would be a light burden for a multinational giant like, say, Kraft Foods, could be a crushing one for a farm that sells its produce at a farmers market. To allay fears of one-size-fits-all regulations-which swirled in sometimes-wildly paranoid forms during the FSMA debate-Congress exempted most operations with sales of less than $500,000 from most of its requirements. But the proof of is in the rule-making-the process by which federal agencies, in this case the Food and Drug Administration, translate Congressional legislation into enforceable law. Congress intended its exemption to save small farms from overly burdensome regulation, but the question remained: How would the FDA put it into action? Finally, more than two years after Obama signed FSMA, the FDA's rule-making process appears to be nearing an end. And I'm disappointed to report that, according to decidedly nonparanoid, noncrazy observers, the proposed rules as currently written represent a significant and possibly devastating burden to small and midsize players. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a highly respected lobbying and watchdog outfit, has come out with a list of Top 10 Problems with the Food and Drug Administration's Proposed Food Safety Regulations for Farmers and Local Food Businesses. If you'll excuse the gimmick, here are four foods that could go missing if the FDA sticks to the current version of its food-safety rules. 1. The local, organic carrots in your kid's school lunch program. Many farm-to-school programs are facilitated by what the US Department of Agriculture calls food hubs-operations that gather produce from small farmers and sell it, usually to buyers like schools, restaurants, and retailers. The USDA actively promotes them as strong and sound infrastructure support to producers across the country which will also help build a stronger regional food system. The USDA lists more then 100 active food hubs nationwide. The new rules imperil food hubs in two ways. The first is through the farms that supply them. The new law's less-than-$500,000 exemption applies only to farms that sell more than half of their produce directly to consumers. But a growing number of small farms earn a significant amount of their income selling to third-party local enterprises like food hubs and food co-ops-and if revenue from those sources exceeds half of total revenue, these farms would lose their exemption and become subject to costly requirements. NSAC points to the FDA's own economic analysis (see page 27) showing that more than 30,000 small and very small farms would be subject to regulation. The cost of compliance for these farms, USDA shows, will be 4 percent to 6 percent of total gross sales-enough to knock out half or more of a small operation's profits, and turn an operation that's scraping by into one that fails. Then there's the problem that the FDA's proposed rules have not settled upon a definition of very small business. If such a definition isn't spelled out, NSAC warns, operations like food hubs could be regulated well beyond their risk and with compliance costs too high for them to stay in business. 2. The kohlrabi in your farm-share box. You might be annoyed by the amount of kohlrabi (a grievously underrated vegetable) in your CSA, but probably don't want it to disappear altogether. But because the current proposal doesn't narrowly define manufacturing facilities, CSAs and other direct farmer-to-consumer farms that do light processing activities or include produce from another farm in their boxes will be
[Biofuel] Scientists Warn of Extreme Risk: Greatest Short-term Threat to Humanity is From Fukushima Fuel Pools
http://www.globalresearch.ca/scientists-warn-of-extreme-risk-greatest-short-term-threat-to-humanity-is-from-fukushima-fuel-pools/5357344 Scientists Warn of Extreme Risk: Greatest Short-term Threat to Humanity is From Fukushima Fuel Pools By Washington's Blog Global Research, November 08, 2013 We've long said that the greatest short-term threat to humanity is from the fuel pools at Fukushima. The Japanese nuclear agency recently green-lighted the removal of the spent fuel rods from Fukushima reactor 4?s spent fuel pool. The operation is scheduled to begin this month. The head of the U.S. Department of Energy correctly notes: The success of the cleanup also has global significance. So we all have a direct interest in seeing that the next steps are taken well, efficiently and safely. If one of the pools collapsed or caught fire, it could have severe adverse impacts not only on Japan but the rest of the world, including the United States. Indeed, a Senator called it a national security concern for the U.S.: The radiation caused by the failure of the spent fuel pools in the event of another earthquake could reach the West Coast within days. That absolutely makes the safe containment and protection of this spent fuel a security issue for the United States. Award-winning scientist David Suzuki says that Fukushima is terrifying, Tepco and the Japanese government are lying through their teeth, and Fukushima is the most terrifying situation I can imagine. Suzuki notes that reactor 4 is so badly damaged that - if there's another earthquake of 7 or above - the building could come down. And the probability of another earthquake of 7 or above in the next 3 years is over 95%. Suzuki says that he's seen a paper that says that if - in fact - the 4th reactor comes down, it's bye bye Japan, and everyone on the West Coast of North America should evacuate. Now if that's not terrifying, I don't know what is. The Telegraph reports: The operator of Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant will begin a dry run of the procedure at the No. 4 reactor, which experts have warned carries grave risks. *** Did you ever play pick up sticks? asked a foreign nuclear expert who has been monitoring Tepco's efforts to regain control of the plant. You had 50 sticks, you heaved them into the air and than had to take one off the pile at a time. If the pile collapsed when you were picking up a stick, you lost, he said. There are 1,534 pick-up sticks in a jumble in top of an unsteady reactor 4. What do you think can happen? I do not know anyone who is confident that this can be done since it has never been tried. ABC reports: One slip-up in the latest step to decommission Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant could trigger a monumental chain reaction, experts warn. *** Experts around the world have warned that the fuel pool is in a precarious state - vulnerable to collapsing in another big earthquake. Yale University professor Charles Perrow wrote about the number 4 fuel pool this year in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. This has me very scared, he told the ABC. Tokyo would have to be evacuated because [the] caesium and other poisons that are there will spread very rapidly. Perrow also argues: Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years. Former Japanese ambassador Akio Matsumura warns that - if the operation isn't done right - this could one day be considered the start of the ultimate catastrophe of the world and planet: (He also argues that removing the fuel rods will take decades rather than months.) Nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen and physician Helen Caldicott have both said that people should evacuate the Northern Hemisphere if one of the Fukushima fuel pools collapses. Gundersen said: Move south of the equator if that ever happened, I think that's probably the lesson there. Harvey Wasserman wrote two months ago: We are now within two months of what may be humankind's most dangerous moment since the Cuban Missile Crisis. *** Should the attempt fail, the rods could be exposed to air and catch fire, releasing horrific quantities of radiation into the atmosphere. The pool could come crashing to the ground, dumping the rods together into a pile that could fission and possibly explode. The resulting radioactive cloud would threaten the health and safety of all us. *** A new fuel fire at Unit 4 would pour out a continuous stream of lethal
[Biofuel] Global Fail: Govts Pour $500 Billion Into Fossil Fuel Subsidies
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/11/07-8 Published on Thursday, November 7, 2013 by Common Dreams Global Fail: Govts Pour $500 Billion Into Fossil Fuel Subsidies Governments are 'subsidizing the very activities that are pushing the world towards dangerous climate change,' states new report - Andrea Germanos, staff writer While greenhouse gas emissions reach record levels, governments across the world are pouring hundreds of billions into fossil fuel subsidies, fostering perverse incentives to continue the race towards climate doom, a new report details. The report, Time to Change the Game http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/8668.pdf, from the UK-based think tank Overseas Development Institute (ODI) explains how the subsidies-amounting to over $500 billion globally in 2011-are thwarting a switch to a low-carbon economy. The rules of the game are currently biased in favor of fossil fuels, stated report author Shelagh Whitley. The status quo encourages energy companies to continue burning high-carbon fossil fuels and offers no incentive to change. We're throwing money at policies that are only going to make the problem worse in the long run by locking us into dangerous climate change, stated Whitley. Though the subsidies pad the pockets of the industry, the report's Executive Summary states that if governments' aim is to avoid dangerous climate change, [they] are shooting themselves in both feet. They are subsidizing the very activities that are pushing the world towards dangerous climate change, and creating barriers to investment in low-carbon development and subsidy incentives that encourage investment in carbon-intensive energy. In addition to the U.S., the countries with the greatest fossil fuel subsidies include Russia, Australia, Germany and the UK. The inconsistencies between climate goals and energy policies are becoming increasingly stark, writes ODI director Kevin Watkins. Germany is providing lavish support for the construction of new coal plants. Britain offers generous tax concessions for oil and gas exploration, including bumper deals for companies involved in fracking. The United States spends heavily to subsidize gasoline and other fossil fuels. In all of these cases, bold climate-change targets are being undermined by business-as-usual subsidies. In some countries, including Pakistan, Venezuela and Bangladesh, fossil fuel subsidies are significantly greater than domestic health expenditures. And while some renewable energy subsidies exist, they're no match for those of fossil fuels. From the report: At a global scale, today's fossil fuel subsidies dwarf support for renewables. The IEA has estimated that for every $1 of support for renewables in 2011, $6 was spent on fossil fuel subsidies. Among the reasons the report lists for why subsidies exist are special interests. In the US, individuals and political-action committees affiliated with oil and gas companies have donated $239 million to candidates and parties since the 1990 election. Further: The benefits of these subsidies are often concentrated among specific actors, while the costs are spread across the general population. Eliminating the fossil fuel subsidies would not only be a better investments and climate approach, it would also have economic and social benefits, according to the report. To realize those benefits, the G20, responsible for 78% of global carbon emissions from fuel combustion in 2010, should end all fossil fuel subsidies by 2020. The report urges nations at the upcoming UN climate talks in Warsaw to take up the issue and to agree on a timeline for the phase-out. Eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would be the mother of all win-win scenarios, ODI director Kevin Watkins told the BBC. You'd have a win for taxpayers, a win for governments north and south and you'd have a win for the planet as well. * * * In tandem with the report, the ODI released a series of infographics including the ones below: http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/fossil-fuels_527ab7cbc9212_w587.jpg http://thumbnails.visually.netdna-cdn.com/emissions_527ab749884df_w587.jpg ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture
http://www.independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/the-founding-fables-of-industrialised-agriculture/ The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture October 30, 2013 by Colin Tudge Governments these days are not content with agriculture that merely provides good food. In line with the dogma of neoliberalism they want it to contribute as much wealth as any other industry towards the grand goal of economic growth. High tech offers to reconcile the two ambitions - producing allegedly fabulous yields, which seems to be what's needed, and becoming highly profitable. The high-tech flavour of the decade is genetic engineering, supplying custom-built crops and livestock as GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). So it was that the UK Secretary of State for the Environment and Rural Affairs, Owen Paterson, told The Independent recently that the world absolutely needs genetically-engineered Golden Rice, as created by one of the world's two biotech giants, Syngenta. Indeed, those who oppose Golden Rice are wicked: a comment so outrageous that Paterson's own civil servants have distanced themselves from it. Specifically, Golden Rice has been fitted with genes that produce carotene, which is the precursor of vitamin A. Worldwide, approximately 5 million pre-school aged children and 10 million pregnant women suffer significant Vitamin A deficiency sufficiently severe to cause night blindness, according to the WHO. By such statistics a vitamin A-rich rice seems eminently justified. Yet the case for Golden Rice is pure hype. For Golden Rice is not particularly rich in carotene and in any case, rice is not, and never will be, the best way to deliver it. Carotene is one of the commonest organic molecules in nature. It is the yellow pigment that accompanies chlorophyll in all dark green leaves (the many different kinds known as spinach are a great source) and is clearly on show in yellow roots such as carrots and some varieties of cassava, and in fruits like papaya and mangoes that in the tropics can grow like weeds. So the best way by far to supply carotene (and thus vitamin A) is by horticulture - which traditionally was at the core of all agriculture. Vitamin A deficiency is now a huge and horrible issue primarily because horticulture has been squeezed out by monocultural big-scale agriculture - the kind that produces nothing but rice or wheat or maize as far as the eye can see; and by insouciant urbanization that leaves no room for gardens. Well-planned cities could always be self-sufficient in fruit and veg. Golden Rice is not the answer to the world's vitamin A problem. As a scion of monocultural agriculture, it is part of the cause. Syngenta's promotion of it is yet one more exercise in top-down control and commercial PR. Paterson's blatant promotion of it is at best naïve. For Golden Rice serves primarily as a flagship for GMOs and GMOs are very big business - duly supported at huge public expense by successive governments. It is now the lynch-pin of agricultural research almost everywhere. The UK's Agriculture and Food Research Council of the 1990s even had the words 'Agriculture' and 'Food' air-brushed out to become the Biotechnology and Biological Research Council (BBSRC). We have been told that GMOs increase yields with lower inputs and have been proven beyond reasonable doubt to be safe. Indeed, journalist Mark Lynas has been telling us from some remarkably high platforms that the debate on GMOs is dead; that there is now a consensus among scientists worldwide that they are necessary and safe. In reality, GMOs do not consistently or even usually yield well http://www.independentsciencenews.org/commentaries/roundup-ready-2-soybeans/ under field conditions; they do not necessarily lead to reduction in chemical inputs, and have often led to increases http://www.enveurope.com/content/24/1/24; and contra Mark Lynas, there is no worldwide consensus of scientists vouching for their safety. Indeed, the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) has drawn up a petition that specifically denies any such consensus and points out that a list of several hundred studies does not show GM food safety. Hundreds of scientists are expected to sign. Overall, after 30 years of concerted endeavour, ultimately at our expense and with the neglect of matters far more pressing, no GMO food crop has ever solved a problem that really needs solving that could not have been solved by conventional means in the same time and at less cost. The real point behind GMOs is to achieve corporate/ big government control of all agriculture, the biggest by far of all human endeavours. And this agriculture will be geared not to general wellbeing but to the maximization of wealth. The last hundred years, in which agriculture has been industrialised, have laid the foundations. GMOs, for the agro-industrialists, can
[Biofuel] The Founding Fables of Industrialised Agriculture
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[Biofuel] The Village Against the World
http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_village_against_the_world_20131108 The Village Against the World Posted on Nov 8, 2013 By Nomi Prins The Village Against the World A book by Dan Hancox The most expensive government on the planet-ours-was shut down over budget concerns, health insurance and passive-aggressiveness. The inane partisan squabbling most acutely affected those with the most to lose-the people at the bottom of the economic pile. Meanwhile, grossly unequal division of wealth and power is a growing blight on the face of humanity. Dangerous mechanisms of financial ruin are nurtured by governments while they spew rhetoric about helping citizens. A future in which reckless economic exploitation will diminish seems highly unlikely. But what if another world were possible? One in which the spoils of predatory capitalism, subsidized by central banks and federal policy, aren't rapaciously consumed by a tiny minority at the expense of the vast majority of global citizens? In his captivating new book, The Village Against the World, Dan Hancox shows, in lyrical and penetrating prose, that not only is it possible, but an observable fact. And so begins his tale of the alternative. Nestled in farmland about 60 miles from Seville, Spain, in the region of Andalucía, exists Marinaleda, a village of 2,700 people. The cry OTRO MUNDO ES POSSIBLE-another world is possible-adorns a metal arch over its main avenue. For 30 years, the citizens of this tiny pueblo have fought and won a struggle to create a utopia in which everyone has a job and a home. Communism seems too dismissive and combative a term for Marinaleda's ability to exist in defiance of a system that has shattered surrounding towns, and entire countries around the world. The year 2016, Hancox writes, will mark the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia But how do you go from a fevered dream, an aspirational blueprint, to concrete reality? The answer unfolds as Hancox takes us on a trip that inspires one's visual senses as he depicts the white-washed beauty of the village, one's taste buds as he describes simple meals capped with thick bread doused in fresh local olive oil, and invites us to envision a collective life freed-as much as possible-from global crises, acquisition and power plays. In Marinaleda, the Che Guevara stadium houses sporting events, oversized placards of doves decorate streets named for left-wing idols like Salvador Allende and Pablo Neruda, and profits from the local vegetable canning factory or olive oil co-op are used to enhance the village. Marinaleda's main housing development consists of 350 casitas-modest homes self-built by their inhabitants, with materials furnished by the village. Mortgages are 15 euro per month. The village has, and needs, no police force. For eight years, Hancox was fascinated with Marinaleda's miracle struggle, transforming from abject poverty in the late '70s (60 percent unemployment, and people going without food for days at a time) to the functioning utopia that it became. Beyond Marinaleda, the economic suffering of Spain at the hands of a speculative overdrive unleashed by big U.S. banks and adopted by European ones, remains acute. It is made worse by austerity measures that punish citizens, while providing banks and bondholders with EU subsidies. Youth unemployment sits at a sickening record high of 56.1 percent, second only to Greece's 62.9 percent. Spain's adult male unemployment at 25.3 percent tops all other EU countries. The Spanish housing market remains in tatters, after catastrophic levels of overbuilding and leverage, complementing America's housing bubble before it burst in 2007-2008. Just as in the U.S., Spanish banks foreclosed on slews of properties for which the population had been forced to overpay during the bubble, increasing homelessness. The current economic crisis has left Spain with 4 million empty homes, and ghost towns on the outskirts of Madrid. In contrast, Marinaleda brims with excitement and festivity during its famous annual ferias and carnivals, though most of the time, it is incredibly peaceful. No one there has experienced a foreclosure. Even before the crisis descended on Spain, the wealth gap in Andalusia was a chasm, Hancox informs us. It has been so forever. It is a region where mass rural pauperism exists alongside vast aristocratic estates-the latifundios. It's an oft-repeated bit of southern rural mythology that you can walk all the way from Seville, the Andalusian capital, to the northern coast of Spain without ever leaving the land of the notorious Duchess of Alba, a woman thought to have more titles than anyone else in the world. While 22.5 percent of her fellow Spaniards survive on only ¤500 a month, the duquesa is estimated to be worth ¤3.2 billion-and still receives ¤3 million a year in EU farm subsidies. It's important to note, as Hancox does
[Biofuel] Our Response Plan For Oil Spills Isn’t Working - In These Times
http://inthesetimes.com/article/15841/sickness_after_the_mayflower_oil_spill/ Web Only// Features » November 12, 2013 Our Response Plan For Oil Spills Isn’t Working [Links and photo in on-line article] We know how to sponge oil off pelicans. But when it comes to human health, we’re alarmingly clueless. BY Brad Jacobson More than 2.6 million miles of oil and gas pipelines currently snake through the U.S., overseen by only 135 inspectors from the Transportation Department’s regulatory agency—a safety system the top pipeline safety official recently described as “kind of dying.” That’s particularly alarming considering plans for new pipelines such as the Keystone XL, which, if approved, will increase the mileage of oil-bearing pipes in the U.S. by 1,700 miles and carry millions of gallons of particularly toxic tar sands oil right through the heartland of America. A spate of U.S. pipeline ruptures in recent years underscores how ill-prepared we are to address the health needs of residents following oil spills, and how poorly we document the health impacts so as to develop better responses to future spills. When ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline ruptured last March and flooded a Mayflower, Ark., neighborhood with an estimated 210,000 gallons of heavy crude oil, our National Contingency Plan (NCP) for responding to hazardous substances, including oil spills, was set into motion. In a nutshell, this is how the plan operates: The company that spilled the oil works with federal, state and local agencies to stanch the flow, and then eventually begins the daunting task of cleaning up the mess. All parties work in concert to monitor air and water quality, which is supposed to limit residents’ exposure to toxic and carcinogenic chemicals found in the oil. The Environmental Protection Agency is the official on-scene coordinator for inland areas, the Coast Guard for coastal or major navigable waterways. You may notice what’s missing from this plan: what happens when people actually get sick. The plan doesn’t prioritize responding to the acute, chronic and long-term medical health of exposed local populations—including prompt screening for baseline signs of disease, which public health experts say is crucial for both proper medical treatment and effective research on human health effects. That’s left largely up to state and local agencies, which invariably don't have the expertise or the resources to adequately carry out the task. So in spill after spill, emergency responses vary, citizens often suffer the health consequences with little or no recourse, and there continues to be a dearth of data on the health impacts. Public health experts with experience in oil spill response who spoke with In These Times stressed the need for the NCP to utilize the type of specialized medical teams that are sent to areas during such disasters as catastrophic storms or infectious disease outbreaks. “That's where the gap is,” said Aubrey Miller, a senior medical advisor and captain in the U.S. Public Health Service who helps coordinate intergovernmental relations on health and medical matters, and who is an expert on the inner workings of the NCP. Asked by In These Times to comment on the medical and scientific gaps in its plan, the EPA replied in a statement: “An On-Scene Coordinator leading and/or supporting an oil spill response can access assets such as those available through HHS [Health and Human Services] and its agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control, U.S. Public Health Service, and Disaster Medical Assistance Team.” In other words, the EPA could bring in medical teams with specialized knowledge of the health risks associated with oil spills. But according to Miller, “in reality” that's not in the plan’s budget. On the rare occasion that medical emergency teams are brought in, he says, they do not comprehensively and systematically attend to the medical health needs of exposed populations or provide timely screening of disease markers for research purposes. Shockingly little research exists in the U.S. on the long-term health effects from oil spills. This may come as no surprise considering that traditionally much of the funding for studies related to oil spills is provided by oil companies, who can influence everything from a study's parameters to its timeliness. “So if you have exposures with an oil spill,” said Miller, “and you're really worried about the long-term health effects—in kids or women or old people or people with lung conditions—there currently is no federal funding for long-term health research that addresses those issues.” That’s a problem for researchers like Edward Trapido, associate dean for research and professor of epidemiology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, who is overseeing two separate National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) studies related to the Deepwater Horizon
