Organics in the News

Today, federal district Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California denied a request by a coalition of organic seed growers, and conservation and food safety groups seeking a temporary ban on genetically engineered (GE) sugar beets and sugar beet seeds. While Judge White denied the preliminary injunction, he indicated that permanent relief is likely forthcoming: “The parties should not assume that the Court’s decision to deny a preliminary injunction is indicative of its views on a permanent injunction pending the full environmental review that APHIS [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] is required to do.” The court further explained: “While the environmental review is pending, the Court is inclined to order the Intervenor-Defendants to take all efforts … to use conventional [non-GE] seed.”

The coalition’s motion for preliminary injunction, brought by Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice attorneys, called for a moratorium on all planting, production and use of the genetically modified seeds and beets until the court could consider a permanent remedy to the government’s unlawful deregulation of the crop. The coalition will argue for a permanent injunction at a hearing in July.

Since the first commercial cultivation of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in 1996, Monsanto and the rest of the big six Biotech seed companies, (Pioneer/DuPont, Syngenta, Dow, BASF and Bayer) have become masters at the art of story telling. Farmers looking for the next big technology fix have loved their stories: the promise of better yields, less chemical need for weed control, higher profits and of course, a solution to the elusive goal of feeding the world.

Governments, seeing biotechnology as a huge economic engine, embraced the technology. University research was shifted almost exclusively to biotech crops. GM was the wave of the future, bankers encouraged planting GM crops to guarantee a “profitable harvest”. Crop insurance premiums were lower for farmers planting GM. Everyone bought the story.

In a recent opinion piece in the Wisconsin State Journal, former Secretary of Agriculture, John Block, touted the virtues of GM crops and credited them with producing higher yields, lower pesticide use and solving the ever growing problem of world hunger. Current Agriculture Secretary, Tom Vilsack, plugged GM at last week’s USDA Outlook Conference. Problem is, the promises are just good stories. The believers are missing the truth.

While researchers and scientists investigate the cause of our diabetes, obesity, asthma and ADHD epidemics, they should ask why the FDA approved a livestock drug banned in 160 nations and responsible for hyperactivity, muscle breakdown and 10 percent mortality in pigs, according to angry farmers who phoned the manufacturer.

The beta agonist ractopamine, a repartitioning agent that increases protein synthesis, was recruited for livestock use when researchers found the drug, used in asthma, made mice more muscular says Beef magazine.

Until three months ago, Thomas M. Dukes was a vigorous, healthy executive at a California plastics company. Then, over the course of a few days in December as he was planning his Christmas shopping, E. coli bacteria ravaged his body and tore his life apart.

Mr. Dukes is a reminder that as long as we’re examining our health care system, we need to scrutinize more than insurance companies. We also need to curb the way modern agribusiness madly overuses antibiotics, leaving them ineffective for sick humans.

Antibacterial drugs were revolutionary when they were introduced in the United States in 1936, virtually eliminating diseases like tuberculosis here and making surgery and childbirth far safer. But now we’re seeing increasing numbers of superbugs that survive antibiotics. One of the best-known — MRSA, a kind of staph infection — kills about 18,000 Americans annually. That’s more than die of AIDS.

R&G Miller & Sons, Inc. is a rather unusual family dairy farm that combines over 150 years of history and family involvement with some of the newest cutting-edge farming practices of today.

The farm dates to 1852 when Jacob Miller came from Germany and began farming in northeastern Dane county along County Highway V just east of East Bristol and west of U.S. Highway 151.

His son Jacob took over in the early 1900s and in the early 1950s sold it to his sons Reinhold and Gerald.

Over the years the family added adjoining lands to the original 80 acres. In 1968 they combined the dairy herd — which was milked in two separate barns —and built a Double 6 milking parlor.

In 1979, the family formed R & G Miller and Sons, Inc. which today includes 1,700 acres of owned and rented land. There are 320 cows being milked twice a day in a 30-cow Rotoflo carrousel milking parlor that was installed in 1990.

Ten Miller family members are active in the farm operation today: Ron and his wife Stephanie and their children Cindy and Miguel; Tom and his daughter Amanda; Gary, Steve and Jim.

Joe Rick, a nephew of Reinhold and Gerald, joined the operation four years ago. And, Gerald Miller — the G in R & G Miller & Sons — although now in his 80s, is still active in the farm operation.

In 1997 the farm was certified organic and began shipping milk to Organic Valley Cooperative. The family gives credit for the decision to go organic to John Miller, who left the family farm in 1998.

Resulting contamination of non-GE and organic alfalfa hay and seed would devastate livelihoods and organic industry

The National Organic Coalition (NOC) today announced that more than 200,000 people submitted comments to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) critiquing the substance and conclusions of its Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) on Genetically Engineered (GE) Alfalfa. Groups, including NOC, Center for Food Safety (CFS), Organic Consumers Association, Food & Water Watch, CREDO Action and Food Democracy Now, mobilized their communities to help generate the unprecedented number of comments.

In addition, more than 300 public interest organizations, farmers, dairies, retailers and organic food producers from the U.S. and Canada delivered a strongly worded letter to USDA, calling upon it to deny approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered, Roundup Ready alfalfa (GE alfalfa). The letter cites the inevitable contamination of organic and non-GE alfalfa hay and seeds and threats to the viability of organic dairies, livestock, and meat and dairy producers as reasons for urging the denial. NOC, Organic Valley, Whole Foods, National Cooperative Grocers Association, CFS and others agree that it would be irresponsible government policy to approve GE alfalfa in the absence of legal requirements holding companies accountable for GE contamination, as is currently the case.

Atrazine, a weed killer widely used in the Midwestern United States and other agricultural areas of the world, can chemically "castrate" male frogs and turn some into females, according to a new study.

New research suggests the herbicide may be a cause of amphibian declines around the globe, said biologists at the University of California-Berkeley, who conducted the study. The findings are being published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found that long-term exposure to low levels of atrazine -- 2.5 parts per billion of water -- emasculated three-quarters of laboratory frogs and turned one in 10 into females. Scientists believe the pesticide interferes with endocrine hormones, such as estrogen and testosterone.

"The effects of atrazine in the long term have been shown to demasculinize or chemically castrate [frogs], combined with complete feminization of some animals," said lead researcher Tyrone B. Hayes, a biologist and herpetologist at the University of Berkeley.

When Ron Leys and other members of the Crawford County Board approved a livestock farm siting law four years ago, they thought they were giving themselves more control over where the big farms go.

Then came a proposal from a pig farm to expand on hilly ground just a few hundred yards from the boundaries of the Lower Wisconsin State Riverway.

And Leys, chairman of the county board, discovered that the siting law afforded little protection at all. Instead, it appeared, the rules, which had been written by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, largely block challenges by local communities to the factory farms.

"These guys have put the handcuffs on us so tightly that we can't move," he said.

Organic farmers fear this year's spring breezes will be carrying pollen from genetically altered sugar beets, which they say could render their crops worthless, and they hope to persuade a federal judge this week to halt the plantings nationwide.

Experts and industry groups say such an injunction could jeopardize U.S. sugar supplies, about half of which comes from the biotech beets planted on more than 1 million acres in 10 states stretching from Michigan to Oregon.

"It will be a big problem," if the injunction is granted, said Carol Mallory-Smith, professor of weed science at Oregon State University. "The industry really had converted to this."

The beets, engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's popular herbicide Roundup, comprise 95 percent of the crop after two seasons of planting. All the seed comes from Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Organic farmers, food safety advocates and conservation groups already have won a lawsuit forcing federal authorities to reconsider their 2005 approval of the Roundup Ready beets for unrestricted use, saying the government failed to take a hard look at cross-pollination risks.

A trifecta of organic seeds, organic vegetables and organic compost ignited a food revolution in an unlikely place: Hardwick.

With a population of just over 3,000, Hardwick was a community once dominated by hard-living granite industry workers and rumored to have more bars per capita than any other community in the United States.

It is now a largely blue-collar town trying to balance the perks and pressures of a new industry of high-priced, high-quality food growers and producers.

Hardwick finds itself the new media darling, with everything from The New York Times to TV chef Emeril Lagasse's program "Emeril Green" going gaga over artisan cheese produced at nearby Jasper Hill Farm, the meals made from local products served at Claire's Restaurant and Bar, and the other value-added organic food grown, produced, cooked and sold from the area.