Bird Life, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Food Shortages, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development —

by Sarah Gorman December 10, 2009

Bronwyn’s urban backyard is teeming with diversity. It is providing local families with nutritious food through her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), but she doesn’t think she is doing anything exceptional. Students from Mulloon Creek Natural Farm’s Permaculture Design Certificate course recently visited Bronwyn Richards’ home in Braidwood, NSW, Australia. They learnt how an urban gardener manages to provide a constant supply of organic vegetables not only for her own family, but five others.

Bronwyn’s bountiful garden doesn’t stop at the boundary of her house block. In true spirit of community and fair share, friendly neighbours have gladly let her use area that they don’t use, allowing Bronwyn to garden over an acre. So the hothouse can be found in the next door neighbour’s backyard this year and the turkeys forage under a neighbour’s old orchard.

As a passionate, down to earth, organic gardener, she has combined different methods, such as biodynamics and permaculture principles. The options she chooses suit her needs. For example, commercial day old ducklings and chicks are bought and raised free range for meat by hens that are “good mothers”. And the good mothers continue providing nutritious eggs.

Ducks, chickens and turkeys happily roam around the garden and the sheep (and sometimes, pigs) are kept amused down the back. Extra potatoes have been sown to give the next round of pigs something interesting to do while rooting around. In between the poultry and four legged creatures are the garden beds, regularly rotated with a diverse array of vegetables. Bronwyn’s philosophy is that if the animals and vegetables are happy and healthy, then when consumed by us, that essence is passed on.

Jerusalem Artichokes

The CSA model allows a close and flexible relationship with customers. Each week she emails them with a list of seasonal produce and the customers put in their orders. First in, first served. When there is an abundance of one vegetable, it is included in all the customer’s boxes. Sometimes customers are given something new for tasting. They can also ask Bronwyn to grow certain vegetables. As a grower, she finds it’s fantastic to have a consistent customer base. As Bronwyn is the gardener, she is at the natural limit of households she can provide for.

Bronwyn would encourage all of us to get in the garden and “just give it a go”.

Herbs

Source: -

http://permaculture.org.au/2009/12/10/an-urban-gardener-feeds-a-community/

In 2007, Carol Goland drove home from a meeting of the Dairy Labeling Advisory Committee in Reynoldsburg feeling optimistic. There had been heated debate over a seemingly simple issue: the fairest and most informative way to label dairy products made from cows that have not been injected with a controversial growth hormone intended to increase milk production.

The farmers using the hormone — commonly known as rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), but also rBST (recombinant bovine somatotrophin) — were worried about losing business to competitors labeling their products as “rBGH-free.” Goland, executive director of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association, could empathize. Still, she’d argued — successfully, it would turn out — that Ohio consumers have the right to know how their food is produced.

But the matter did not stay settled. In February 2008, Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) head Robert Boggs issued a ruling that tilted the labeling issue in favor of farmers using rBGH.

Since 1994, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recommended that labels touting “rBGH-free” also state that the FDA has determined that “no significant difference has been shown between milk derived from rBST-supplemented and non-rBST supplemented cows.” But the FDA remained silent on details like size and placement of the disclaimer.

this article is VERY long… read more:
http://www.clevescene.com/cleveland/got-artificial-hormoned-milk/Content?oid=1638383

(9/9/2009)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety & Inspection Service and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a public meeting to provide information and receive public comments on agenda items and draft U.S. positions that will be discussed at the 3rd Session of the Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance to be held in Jeju, Republic of Korea, Oct. 12-16.

The public meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 24, 2009, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Rm. 107-A, USDA, Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building, 1200 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250. Attendees will be required to present photo identification at the door.

Documents and agenda items related to the 3rd Session of the Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance will be accessible at www.codexalimentarius.net/current.asp.

Codex was created in 1963 by two United Nations organizations, the Food & Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization. Codex develops food standards, guidelines and codes of practice in order to protect the health of consumers, to ensure fair food trade practices, and to promote the coordination of food standards undertaken by international governmental and non-governmental organizations.

The Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance was established by the 29th session of the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 2006 to help develop science-based guidelines to be used to assess the risks to human health that are associated with the presence of antimicrobial resistant microorganisms and antimicrobial resistant genes in food and feed, including aquaculture, and their transmission through food and feed. The Codex Ad Hoc Intergovernmental Task Force on antimicrobial resistance is hosted by the Republic of Korea.

Interested parties may submit written comments at the public meeting, or by e-mail to David G. White at David.White@fda.hhs.gov.

For further information about the public meeting, contact Doreen Chen-Moulec, U.S. Codex Office, FSIS by e-mail at Doreen.Chen-Moulec@fsis.usda.gov or uscodex@fsis.usda.gov or by phone at (202) 205-7760 or fax at (202) 720-3157.

feedstuffs.com

The Lyme Induced Autism Foundation (LIA) has joined with other leading health organizations to call on medical practitioners to prescribe diets free from all genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and urged individuals, especially those with autism, Lyme disease, and associated conditions, to avoid eating genetically modified (GM) foods. The LIA Foundation recognizes the unique health dangers posed by GMOs, especially for populations suffering from autism, Lyme disease, and other chronic disorders, and they have concluded, “There is an urgent need for independent research to evaluate the role that GM foods play in contributing to the prevalence or severity of autism, Lyme disease, and related conditions.”

The LIA Foundation calls for: 
• A moratorium on all genetically modified foods 
• Research to evaluate the role of GM foods on autism, Lyme disease, and related conditions 
• Physician and patient advocacy groups to advise patients on the role of GM foods in disease processes
• Health practitioners to distribute non-GMO educational materials (www.nonGMOGuide.com)

http://www.examiner.com/x-5148-LA-Environmental-Health-Examiner~y2009m8d31-Food-Prescription-The-Lyme-Induced-Autism-Foundation-prescribes-100-NonGMO-diet

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Brazil’s Sugarcane Technology Center and Germany’s BASF said on Tuesday they will jointly develop a genetically modified sugarcane with yields up to 25 percent higher than those currently available.

The cane, expected to hit the market within 10 years, will be able to handle drought better than current strains, said Luiz Louzano, biotechnology manager at BASF’s local unit.

“Our aim is to develop a cane which can survive in more hostile environments, areas with water limitations. Those characteristics could raise the average cane yield (in Brazil) to 100 tons per hectare, from 80 currently,” Louzano said.

This is BASF’s first step into the development of cane varieties.

The world’s largest chemical maker, which invested 1 billion euros in the past 10 years to set up a gene development program, signed a deal earlier this year with Monsanto to create the world’s first drought-resistant biotech corn.

It now expects to introduce some of these genes in conventional cane varieties developed by CTC, which was created in 2004 from Brazil’s Copersucar and has been a world leader in cane research.

“Our role is to research and validate new genes and look for partnerships with the best seed makers,” Louzano said.

The variety is expected to benefit mainly new cane frontiers such as the west of Sao Paulo, Triangulo Mineiro, in Minas Gerais state, and Brazil’s center-west states.

Cane planting has been expanding rapidly in these regions, which are usually drier and have poorer land than traditional cane-producing areas like Ribeirao Preto and Piracicaba, in the state of Sao Paulo, where yields are the world’s highest.

“It’s also a permanent goal for us to develop varieties that use less water due to its scarcity. It’s an effort in place in other parts of the world too,” Louzano said.

In Brazil, BASF signed an agreement with state-run agricultural research company Embrapa in 2007 to develop a herbicide-tolerant soy variety. The product was submitted for approval by Brazilian authorities in December 2008 and is expected to be cleared by 2011/12.

So far, no GMO cane variety has been approved in Brazil or in any other country.

The German company expects to submit the new variety for governmental approval within the next seven years.

It is with very deep sadness that I report that Craig Alan Winters passed away this morning, as a result of complications from his fight against cancer. Craig was incredibly courageous and upbeat throughout his fight against the disease, but in the end, his body was simply too ravaged to carry on.

I received a call this morning from Craig’s best friend, Steve, who got the call about the news from Craig’s dad. I called Swedish Medical Center this morning and they told me that he died at 6:30 a.m. of respiratory failure. Craig was born in 1951.

In the late 1990s, Craig hired me to serve as the communications director for a new group he launched, called The Campaign to Label Genetically Engineered Foods. Craig worked for years to educate people about the problems surrounding “Frankenfoods,” and coordinated with Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s office to introduce legislation that would require genetically engineered foods to be labeled so people would know what they were purchasing. The legislation never made it through several Congresses during the Clinton and Bush years, but Craig resiliently continued to push for its passage and hoped to win the battle, finally, under the Obama administration.

http://www.examiner.com/x-5148-LA-Environmental-Health-Examiner~y2009m7d4-Craig-Winters-leaves-a-nonGMO-health-legacy

Craig Winters’ website is gone!

http://www.thecampaign.org/

Codex Alimentarius – A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Codex Alimentarius – Translation: “Food Code” Originally envisioned and designed by what became the most ruthless and inhumane of 20th century Western European regimes, Codex Alimentarius (Codex) was later organized and officiated mainly by members of an emerging pharmaceutical industry spawned by that very same source.

Codex aims are already being closely followed by even the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who has already sent “cease and desist” letters to vitamin manufacturers for their promotion of mental and physiological benefits of vitamin supplements on their web sites. Nearly 2/3rds of existing available vitamin substances have already been banned by the European Union through the European Food Supplements Directive which was passed into law in 2002 and upheld as law by the European court of Justice in 2005.

Note: These supplements are scheduled to be removed from online sites and store shelves in 2009.

GMA Aims to Beef Up Private-Sector Food Safety Efforts

Supermarket News – New York City, NY, USA

GMA’s supply chain initiatives were announced days after President Obama proposed to increase the FDA’s 2010 budget by 19%. Half of the increase would go to food safety efforts, according to published reports.

“There is a rare and historic opportunity to enact significant food safety reforms through the combined efforts of Congress, the administration and the industry over the next few months,” Bailey said.

GOVERNOR SEBELIUS MUST VETO KANSAS LEGISLATION

By Jeffrey Smith
April 23, 2009

NewsWithViews.com

According to studies acknowledged by the FDA, milk from treated cows has higher levels of pus, antibiotics, growth hormone, and Insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1). It is the IGF-1 that has the medical community up in arms. The American Nurses Association called for the elimination of rbGH in dairy production. The past president of the American Medical Association urged hospitals to serve only rbGH-free milk (over 160 hospitals have pledged to do so). And schools nationwide are banning the drugged milk as well.

Cancer link to milk hormone

IGF-1 is a risk factor for cancer. A Lancet study showed that pre-menopausal women below age 50 with high levels of IGF-1 are seven times more likely to develop breast cancer. A study in Science found that men with high IGF-1 levels are four times more likely to get prostate cancer. IGF-1 is implicated in lung and colon cancer.