Category Archives: environment

Poultry market to shut over bird flu fears | Shanghai Daily

This will do more to cut flu cycle than any other step! After five years, it will revolutionize their poultry market and the fight against annual and novel flus!

Shanghai will suspend live poultry trading from January 31, the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, until April 30 to prevent a recurrence of the bird flu.

The suspension will be an annual feature for the next five years, dependent on the evaluation and warning of the bird flu and the seasonal onset, according to a joint statement issued by the Shanghai Agricultural Commission and the Shanghai Commerce Commission.

All the designated wholesale and retail markets will be banned from trading in poultry and violators face hefty fines between 10,000 yuan (US$1,641) and 30,000 yuan under a new rule that took effect in June.

via Poultry market to shut over bird flu fears | Shanghai Daily.

GM Crop Could Migrate Dangerously – Inter Press Service

Food security activists who secured a moratorium on introducing genetically modified brinjal (aubergine) into India fear that their efforts are being undermined by the release of GM brinjal in neighbouring Bangladesh.

via GM Crop Could Migrate Dangerously – Inter Press Service.

When you lie, lie big! Text of H.R. 3533: Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us

the term ESA means the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.).

3.FINDINGS

Congress finds that—

(1)the ESA was passed in 1973 as a means of protecting and recovering species and has not been substantially revised in over 25 years;

(2)the ESA has not achieved its stated goal of recovering threatened species or endangered species;

(3)of the species listed in accordance with the ESA, less than 1 percent of the total number of species in the United States have been recovered and removed from the list, largely due to data errors or other factors;

(4)there is—

(A)no comprehensive independent study of the costs or benefits of the ESA;

(B)no full accounting of how much the Federal Government and State and local governments spend to implement, enforce, and comply with the ESA; and

(C)no meaningful effort to account for the costs the ESA imposes on the private sector;

(5)the ESA effectively penalizes landowners for owning endangered species habitat by forcing them to bear the cost of conservation;

(6)the regulatory listing process under the ESA has become a tool for environmentalists to undermine, slow down, or halt construction of infrastructure projects, hampering economic growth and employment; and

(7)litigation stemming from the ESA and some resulting settlements between the litigants and the Federal Government have made the ESA even more unworkable, to the detriment of species.

via Text of H.R. 3533: Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us.

The global struggle for peasants seeds: A struggle for our future | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy

After all, according to ETC Group, 80-90% of seeds are sourced outside of commercial markets, that is to say through peasant seed systems, and farm-saved seeds. In the new publication, Our Seeds Our Future La Via Campesina chronicles ten experiences of peasant seed selection, saving, improvement, and re-use. These experiences in recovering and reproducing knowledge to improve peasant agricultural food production are mirrored by multitudes more in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

via The global struggle for peasants seeds: A struggle for our future | Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.

When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too – Wired Science

The ability to treat cancer, and to transplant organs, because doing those successfully relies on suppressing the immune system and willingly making ourselves vulnerable to infection. Any treatment that relies on a permanent port into the bloodstream — for instance, kidney dialysis. Any major open-cavity surgery, on the heart, the lungs, the abdomen. Any surgery on a part of the body that already harbors a population of bacteria: the guts, the bladder, the genitals. Implantable devices: new hips, new knees, new heart valves. Cosmetic plastic surgery. Liposuction. Tattoos.

We’d lose the ability to treat people after traumatic accidents, as major as crashing your car and as minor as your kid falling out of a tree. We’d lose the safety of modern childbirth: Before the antibiotic era, 5 women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of every nine skin infections killed. Three out of every 10 people who got pneumonia died from it.

via When We Lose Antibiotics, Here’s Everything Else We’ll Lose Too – Wired Science.

The Right Habitat, Food Source Keys to Supporting Populations of Beneficial Insect / Press Releases / News and Media / Southern SARE – SARE

Entomologists with North Carolina State University have unlocked a few secrets in the life cycle of a tiny beneficial wasp that parasitizes stinkbug eggs. The findings increase the potential for biological control of stinkbugs, reducing the need for insecticides.

Sriyanka Lahiri, a NCSU graduate student, received a Southern Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SSARE) Graduate Student Grant to study the overwintering and nutrition requirements of Telenomus podisi– a minute parasitic wasp that kills stinkbug embryos in egg masses and replaces them with its own young. NCSU associate professor David Orr was also a project participant.

via The Right Habitat, Food Source Keys to Supporting Populations of Beneficial Insect / Press Releases / News and Media / Southern SARE – SARE.

Company profile – PHC plant health care

Plant Health Care is the worldwide market leader in the field of mycorrhiza technology and soil biology. We supply useful soil fungi and soil bacteria as well as other products that make plants resistant and allow them to function better. This makes it possible to save drastically on pesticides as well as on fertiliser. The user achieves at least the same production at lower cost and the plant is healthier. Plant Health Care products thus offer a significant contribution to making the green sectors more sustainable. We were selected to the top 20 of the world’s most sustainable companies for a very good reason.

via Company profile – PHC.

Garden-Fresh Foods Shuts Down over Recalls

The Garden-Fresh Foods plant in Milwaukee has halted production and reassigned about 100 employees because of product recalls, the company said Saturday.

Garden-Fresh has recalled tons of products in eight separate recalls since the end of August. The first was announced Aug. 30, after routine sampling of retail products by Michigan food safety officials detected Listeria bacteria.

The recalls include various fresh-cut vegetables and ready-to-eat slaws, dips and spreads, as well as 50 tons of ready-to-eat chicken and ham products that were the subject of a late-October recall. Among the brand names they have been sold under are Garden-Fresh, Grandpa\’s, Weis, Finest Traditions, Archer Farms, Market Pantry, D\’Amico & Sons.

via Garden-Fresh Foods Shuts Down over Recalls.

SPIN and ? Causing problems to improve food safety? FDA Extends Comment Period for Food Safety Rules

Fears of small farmers and natural food enthusiasts are being stoked, I expect, by big food interests to make food safety improvements no so much.  Too bad;  lots of folks will be sick and too many die because of supposed threat to small farmers ability to make a living.

The Food and Drug Administration has extended the comment for food safety rules for farmers by an additional week after people said they had technical problems submitting their views online.

New Hampshire Rep. Annie Kuster led a New England delegation in asking for the extension. The original deadline was Friday; the new deadline is Friday, Nov. 22.

Earlier this year, farmers attended FDA sessions on the rules, which would require them to take new precautions against contamination, including ensuring workers\’ hands are washed, irrigation water is clean and that animals stay out of fields. New England farmers say many aspects of the rules were derived from large-scale farming practices that don\’t apply to the region\’s smaller farms.

via FDA Extends Comment Period for Food Safety Rules.