Kathy Navis tells viewers she has seen more people looking for eggs produced in Northeast Wisconsin, especially in Door County where chicken farmers have hundreds of chickens, instead of hundreds of thousands. She says, “we’ve seen about a 25 to 50 percent increase in egg sales.”

The Organic Consumers Association provides the following things we can to do to get moving in the right direction:

1. Congress should exempt small-scale, direct-to-consumer, local, pasture-based, and organic farmers and food processors from inappropriate food safety regulations. Support Tester-Hagan amendments to Senate Bill 510.

Take Action

2. Consumers should swear off factory-farmed animal products and eat vegetarian when pasture-raised organic isn’t available. We also need to press the USDA to require pasture for organic chickens, as it has for cows.

Take Action

3. Regulators should phase-out the worst factory farming practices. To address salmonella, we can start by banning battery cages. The USDA organic standards ban battery cages. Michigan and California are the first states to pass phase-out laws. Banning battery cages can cut the risk of salmonella contamination in half.

Learn More

4. Localities should lift restrictions on residents raising chickens in their backyards.

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The findings are considered plausible to many experts because the pesticides are designed to attack the nervous systems of insects. It is not surprising, then, that they should also impinge on the nervous systems of humans who are exposed to them.

Forty organophosphate pesticides are registered in the United States, with at least 73 million pounds used each year in agricultural and residential settings.

ADHD is thought to affect 3% to 7% of American children, with boys affected more heavily than girls. Many experts believe its incidence has increase sharply in recent decades, but critics attribute the increased incidence to over-diagnosis. Some attribute the increase to the greater use of pesticides.

The newest study, reported Thursday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, examines the effects of both prenatal and childhood exposure to the pesticides, which are widely used in the United States to control insects on food crops. Epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi of UC Berkeley and her colleagues have been studying more than 300 Mexican American children living in the heavily agricultural Salinas Valley. Because they live in a farming community, the children are more likely than others to be exposed to the pesticides, but the problems resulting from environmental exposure are often first seen in those with the highest exposure.

Eskenazi and her team tested for levels of pesticide metabolites in urine in the mothers twice during their pregnancies and several times in the children after birth. They then tested the children at ages 3 1/2 years and 5 years for attention disorders and ADHD, using the mothers’ reports, performance on standardized computer tests and behavior ratings from examiners. After correcting the data to account for lead exposure and other confounders, they found that each tenfold increase in pesticide levels in the mothers’ urine was associated with a fivefold increase in attention problems as measured by the assays. The effect was more pronounced in boys than in girls.

The study comes only three months after a Harvard study, looking at much lower levels of malathion in urine, found that a tenfold increase in pesticide levels was associated with a 55% increase in ADHD. The researchers believe that most of the children in the study were exposed to the malathion through food.

“It’s known that food is a significant source of pesticide exposure among the general population,” Eskenazi said in a statement. “I would recommend thoroughly washing fruits and vegetables before eating them, especially if you are pregnant.”

– Thomas H. Maugh II / Los Angeles Times

LINKS:

More evidence links pesticides to hyperactivity

“Nevertheless, this issue of people being arrested for selling raw milk is no laughing matter: It’s yet another example of the tyrannical actions of health authorities who want to sterilize your food through pasteurization, fumigation or irradiation,” says Adams at www.NaturalNews.com.” There’s no such thing as a safe “living” food in the eyes of the FDA, you see. Only dead food is “safe” food according to regulators.”

You can see the full collection of CounterThink cartoons on www.CounterThink.com where the full archive goes way back to 2006 (when they were just black and white!).

Last month PepsiCo set off a firestorm among angry bloggers when the company attempted to buy its way onto the popular ScienceBlogs (run by Seed Media Group) with its own offering called Food Frontiers. Apparently, the actual scientists didn’t appreciate having their space invaded by PR flaks.

One blogger put it succinctly, “I don’t care how many PhD scientists they hire, PepsiCo is a corporation, not a research institute, for crissakes!” Within two days, ScienceBlogs apologized and pulled PepsiCo’s plug, but not before some disgusted bloggers quit altogether. (Food Frontiers continues to live on PepsiCo’s corporate Web site.)

While this story illustrates a victory in the battle against one corporation’s attempt to control scientific discourse, in the bigger picture, PepsiCo appears to be winning the war.

PepsiCo Picks off Public Health Experts One by One

Ask anyone who’s been in the public health field for at least 10 years if they’ve heard of Derek Yach, and the response is likely to be: “Of course, he’s a public health hero.” If you ask for a response to Yach’s decision to go work for PepsiCo, the reaction will be head-shaking. “Shocked,” “deeply disappointed,” “a blow to public health,” were all phrases I heard when the news came, in 2007, that one of the world’s most respected public health experts went over to the dark side.

Derek Yach’s story even plays a prominent part in a graduate-level food policy class at NYU that dedicates an entire class session to industry co-optation, because of its current impact on the nation’s debate over the obesity epidemic.

It was a personnel coup for the nation’s largest food company and purveyor of such notoriously unhealthy products as Mountain Dew and Cheetos. PepsiCo’s new “director of global health policy” came with a pedigree the company must have been salivating over.

You can read the rest of this article, originally published at AlterNet…
How Junk Food Giant PepsiCo Is Buying Up High-Ranking Experts to Look Like a Leader in Health and Nutrition

Aspartame producer Ajinomoto chose to rebrand it under the name AminoSweet, to “remind the industry that aspartame tastes just like sugar, and that it’s made from amino acids — the building blocks of protein that are abundant in our diet.”

Did you know there have been more reports to the FDA for aspartame reactions than for all other food additives combined?

In fact, there are over 10,000 official complaints, but by the FDA’s own admission, less than 1 percent of those who experience a reaction to a product ever report it. So in all likelihood, the toxic effects of aspartame may have affected roughly a million people already.

While a variety of symptoms have been reported, almost two-thirds of them fall into the neurological and behavioral category consisting mostly of headaches, mood alterations, and hallucinations. The remaining third is mostly gastrointestinal symptoms.

You can read the rest of this article for more details, originally published at AlterNet…
America’s Deadliest Sweetener Betrays Millions, Then Hoodwinks You with Name Change

For the past 18 months dairy farmers in America have faced their worst crisis since the Great Depression. Since December 2008, the price they are paid for their milk has dropped more than 50%. At the same time, giant dairy processors have raked in record profits while dairy farmers are losing their farms.

This problem has been caused by excessive concentration, which offers farmers little choice where they can sell their milk. As a result of this economic crisis several farmers have taken their own lives in the face of crushing debt with no clear hope of resolution. Farmers need your voice today.

Please ckick to stand with them!

Antibiotic Overkill…

Did you know that up to 70 percent of antibiotics sold in the U.S. are fed to poultry or livestock to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions?

The FDA is accepting comments on a rule that could make it easier to feed antibiotics to healthy food animals – a rule that will weaken the already-lenient controls on the use of antibiotics in food animal production. The new rule affects the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD), a program allowing veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics mixed into animal feed in new ways. Currently, the VFD ensures that for those new antibiotic uses, a diagnosis is made before animals are given antibiotics in their feed.

Many industrial farms routinely feed antibiotics to poultry or livestock to compensate for overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, while promoting growth. Proposed changes to the VFD could weaken oversight that prevents unnecessary drug use – increasing the rate of antibiotic resistance in humans.

Up to 70 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are fed to healthy food animals. Weakening the VFD could breed dangerous new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that can spread to humans thus making these important drugs we depend on useless.

Send your comment now! Tell the FDA to protect human and animal health by rejecting this rule and saving antibiotics.

Tell the FDA: 70% of antibiotics is enough!

Just say no... to Monsanto!

The USDA has given initial signs that it is preparing to grant Monsanto approval to distribute its seed, even knowing that it is almost certain the crop’s modified genes will contaminate non-GMO – including organic – alfalfa.

Fortunately, the possibility of the USDA giving Monsanto the green light has caught the attention of two leading members of Congress – Senator Patrick Leahy and Congressman Peter DeFazio. They have written a “Dear Colleague” letter, addressed to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, asking him to maintain the ban on GMO alfalfa in order to protect farmers, the environment, and the organic industry.

If your members of Congress have not done so already, they have until the end of this week – less than 24 hours – to sign the letter and join their colleagues in asking Secretary Vilsack to maintain the ban on Monsanto’s GMO alfalfa.

During the Bush administration, Monsanto illegally won USDA approval for its GMO alfalfa by convincing regulators to bypass a mandatory environmental review. In response to a lawsuit by consumer groups, the courts then stepped in and banned GMO alfalfa until the USDA followed the law.

During the USDA’s public comment period on Monsanto’s alfalfa application in March, CREDO Action members submitted over 77,000 comments asking the USDA to protect the organic sector by keeping the GMO seed off the market. Now, they need to generate the same kind of overwhelming response to members of Congress so they will tell Secretary Vilsack to protect organics and farmers instead of Monsanto’s profits.

Sign the CREDO petition to your senators and representative today, urging them to sign on to the Leahy – DeFazio letter asking Secretary Vilsack to reject Monsanto’s application to market and sell GMO alfalfa.

Quinoa

The Incas, who held the crop to be sacred, referred to quinoa as chisaya mama or the mother of all grains. During the European conquest of South America quinoa was scorned by the Spanish colonists as “food for Indians,” and even actively suppressed, due to its status within indigenous non-Christian ceremonies. In fact, the conquistadors forbade quinoa cultivation for a time and the Incas were forced to grow corn instead.

Quinoa in its natural state has a coating of bitter-tasting saponins, making it unpalatable. This may also explain why it was rejected by the Europeans who were quick to adopt other indigenous food crops like the potato and maize. Most quinoa sold commercially in North America has been processed to remove this coating. In contemporary times, quinoa has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%). Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source among plant foods.

PREPARATION:
You can treat quinoa much like rice, bringing two cups of water to a boil with one cup of grain, covering at a low simmer and cooking for 14–18 minutes or until the germ separates from the seed. The cooked germ looks like a tiny curl and should have a slight bite to it (like al dente pasta). As an alternative, one can use a rice cooker to prepare quinoa, treating it just like white rice (for both cooking cycle and water amounts).

Red Quinoa (cooked)

Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Quinoa flour can be combined with sorghum flour, tapioca, and potato starch to create a nutritious gluten-free baking mix in the following ratio: three parts quinoa flour, three parts sorghum flour, two parts potato starch, and one part tapioca starch. Quinoa flour can also be used as a filling for chocolate.

Greens N Grains is now stocking red quinoa in boxes and in bulk in addition to the regular quinoa.

“Big agriculture dominates this state,” says Joe Plasterer, the consumer representative on the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. “It’s like the auto industry in Michigan … and now look at Michigan. It has a shell of an economy.”

Jessica VanEgeren reports the following in today’s Capital Times…

Farmer defies warrant, keeps raw milk business open

A Sauk County dairy farmer who was handed a warrant Wednesday for operating a farm without a dairy license and selling raw milk products said he is ignoring the authorities and is open for business.

“This is how I make a living,” Vernon Hershberger, a Loganville dairy farmer, said Thursday morning. “We are going to go right ahead and do business.”

Hershberger said roughly 100 families, including some Madison customers, purchase raw milk, yogurt, cheese, butter and ice cream from a store on his farm that is open for business Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

It is only open to “members” who pay annual fees to purchase his dairy goods. The store is not open to the public.

By 10 a.m. Thursday, a handful of families already had arrived at his property to purchase his products.

“We got a lot of support,” said Hershberger, the father of nine whose only source of income is the money he earns from selling his dairy products.

The raid by officials from the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection comes on the heels of a veto by Gov. Jim Doyle last month of a bill that would have allowed the sale of raw milk for a limited trial period and only to customers who traveled to farms to purchase the product. The bill would not have allowed for raw milk to be sold in retail stores.

Even if the governor had signed the bill, Hershberger would be in violation of state law because he does not have a dairy license.

He did have a Grade-B dairy license that he did not renew in February.

Lee Sensenbrenner, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, said Thursday that it is standard procedure for the department to send out a questionnaire when a license is not renewed.

Sensenbrenner said DATCP officials obtained a special inspection warrant from a Sauk County judge to search the farmer’s property when Hershberger failed to return the questionnaire.

“They went there because they couldn’t get information and the questions answered through regular methods,” Sensenbrenner said.

With the warrant in hand, two or three Sauk County police vehicles were stationed on Hershberger’s property while authorities searched his property for several hours.

Before leaving, they sealed the coolers that contained the farm’s dairy products, said Hershberger. The power to the coolers was left on.

Sensenbrenner said the state takes issue with the fact Hershberger does not have a dairy license or a license to run its store.

“You need a license to run a retail store and a license to operate a dairy farm,” Sensenbrenner said. “If you want to be a dairy farmer, you need a license.”

Hershberger said he does not need a retail license because the store is not open to the public.

“We farmers are not perfect people,” Hershberger said. “But we have rights. A private individual has rights.”

Sensenbrenner said it will be up to the Sauk County District Attorney to decide if charges are filed against Hershberger.

Along with drought and blight worries, stressing about future fossil fuel prices and availability keeps many farmers counting sheep at night.

Conventional farmers in the United States use a lot of fossil fuels, and not just in tractors. Through petrochemicals comprising synthetic fertilizers, weed killers and insecticides, fossil fuels can help boost crop yields. These practices allow the agricultural industry to grow food at low monetary prices (though not low environmental and health costs).

Contemplating future uncertainties such as climate legislation and oil and gas prices, agronomists at Iowa State University have spent 6 years sizing up some alternatives. In a study published yesterday in Agronomy Journal, they tested planting and fertilizing methods to see how our farmlands could produce food without relying so heavily on fossil fuels.

The results were bountiful.

Compared with the typical two-year rotations of corn and soybeans, the more diverse crop systems (more crops, more rotations, more manure) yielded as much or more corn and soybeans. Further, they required much less petrochemicals.

For a four-year rotation of corn-soybean-small grain/alfalfa-alfalfa, herbicide use decreased by 85 percent between 2003 and 2008. The amount of nitrogen-based fertilizers fell by 78 percent. Bacteria found on the roots of alfalfa plants aids nitrogen fixation in the soil.

Herbicide and fertilizer use within a three-year rotation of corn-soybean/small grain/red clover dropped by 80 and 66 percent, respectively.

Now let’s talk manure. Depending on location, this natural fertilizer can be expensive. But diversifying the farm with some livestock means free manure. Under these circumstances, the excrement might return almost $250 per acre.

Professor Matthew Liebman in a statement:

It’s hard to predict the exact details of what the future will bring us. But results of this study show that we do have options for maintaining high farm productivity and profitability while substantially reducing our dependence on fossil energy.

While these systems lowered fossil fuel costs, they are much more labor-intensive. According to the researchers, most of the extra work was not necessary during the seasonal activities for corn and soybean production.

Image: David N. Sundberg