2010-02-28

genetically modified alfalfa looms over grassfed animal products

2.24: news.pol/gmo/USDA must not approve GE alfalfa:

from Center for Food Safety
date Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 11:05 AM
subject Tell Congress to Hold USDA Accountable!

Call your Senators and Representative today and say
USDA must not approve GE alfalfa!

Monsanto wants to sell its genetically engineered (GE) alfalfa
and wants the USDA to approve its permit application,
but consumers, farmers, dairies, and food companies
dont want GE alfalfa plants and seeds released into the environment.

USDA's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) admits
that if GE alfalfa is approved:
* GE Contamination of non-GE and organic alfalfa crops will occur
* GE contamination will economically impact small and family farmers
* Foreign export markets will be at risk due to rejection of GE contaminated products
* Farmers will be forced to use more toxic herbicides to remove old stands of alfalfa

Yet, unbelievably, USDA has decided that these impacts are insignificant!
And, USDA intends to approve Monsanto's Roundup Ready GE alfalfa anyway.

Call your Congressional Representatives today
and ask them to hold USDA accountable
by contacting Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack
and urging him to deny approval of Monsanto's GE alfalfa!

Tell them that you DO NOT support the deregulation of GE alfalfa,
for the following reasons:
* GE contamination of non-GE and organic crops would be inevitable
* You won't buy products that are GE-contaminated
* Alfalfa is a major food source for livestock
and GE alfalfa would destroy the integrity of organic dairy products
* You support the rights of farmers to grow the crops of their choice,
and GE contamination makes that impossible
* Ask your Representative and Senators to contact Secretary Vilsack
and urge him to deny USDA approval of Monsanto's GE alfalfa

Then email us at info@truefoodnow.org
and tell us who you called
and let us know what kind of response you got!

Background
In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS)
sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA)
for its illegal approval of Monsanto's
genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa.
USDA failed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS)
before deregulating the crop, as required by law.
An EIS is a rigorous analysis of the potential significant
environmental, health, and economic impacts of a federal decision,
mandated under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
The federal courts sided with CFS
and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed
the impacts of the GE plant on the environment, farmers, and the public
in an EIS.

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009.
A 75-day comment period is now open until 3 March, 2010.
CFS has begun analyzing the EIS
and it is clear that the USDA,
in its recommendation to approve GE alfalfa,
has not taken into consideration the concerns of
non-GE alfalfa farmers, dairies, exporters, retailers or consumers ...
In fact, their [current] EIS states that consumers
don't care if their organic food is GE contaminated
and neither do organic farmers,
as long as farmers employ the organic practices required
under the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA).
Obviously, this is not true
and we need to push our Congressional representatives
to call upon USDA to deny the approval of GE alfalfa.
. review the EIS and other documents .

USDA must not approve GE alfalfa Tell-a-friend!

2.24: web.health/alfalfa/toxins that could get worse under gmo?:
. one of the hazards when gmo's involve gene shifting
is that the toxins and allergens already in the plant
can become more potent or effectively administered .
. natural toxins from alfalfa include medicarpin and Canavanine .
. medicarpin is useful for reducing plant population densities;
it's found in soils of the mature plant .
. Canavanine, an arginine analog,
is practically found only in the seed currently .


2.25: pol/gmo/gm-alfalfa invading organics:
. instead of beating the dead horse of anti-gmo,
we should push organics toward adopting
greenhouse technology,
both as a way of controling insects physically,
and for protecting crop genetics by
filtering out pollen vectors .

2.26: co.pol/gmo/linkedin.com/gm-alfalfa invading organics:
"(
If you want to avoid GMO's in Canada and USA
you need to buy organic since we don't label them here.
There are lobby groups trying to get the government to
label food products as GMO
but the companies against it have stronger lobby boards
that argue it will cause unnecessary fear among citizens.
)
my reply:
. If you want to avoid GMO's you need to buy organic ?
that won't work in the usa soon:
they are now approving GE alfalfa
(see Center for Food Safety)
. this is sure [to] end organic meats
unless organic turns to air-filtered greenhousing
[2.28: or gmo can be considered organic].

2.28: pol/gmo/organic meat is not grassfed:
. organic meat is not worth fighting gmo's about
because really healthy meat should be
completely grass fed,
whereas organics can be grain-feed .
. grassfed will not be an economic reality until
the entire world downsizes population -- faght chance --
so, instead of worrying about gmo silage,
the health-conscious among us
should instead be resigned to a meatless future;
(see legumes offering complete protein
-- black beans and kidney beans);
however, as with solar energy,
the production of eggs is within the grasp of homeowners,
and we should structure locals law so as to
encourage the production of homegrown grassfed eggs .
. most homes are far away from the industrial farmers
where most of the gmo silage usage will be contracted,
therefore, they are the best place to raise healthy eggs .

2010-02-01

pim

1.1: proj.addn/log/rev and blog:
. look at site, fix page giving details of schiz case,
wonder about how to start blogging backward
the material written before blog started .

pos.addn/resolution:
. start acting more bloggable .

proj.addn/log/rev 2009 gear subj:
1.6:
. my prev'policy on logging project folders
-- like that for trike --
had been to copy proj folders from month to month
since I wanted the chance to quickly refer to
prior work of the same topic;
and also, use the prev'month's folder structure
as a template for filing the curr'month's notes .
. now I should go back and remove dup'y stuff .
1.7:
. I also found there was a lot that was
not marked as blogged,
and much that had been passed over
but that could be blogged with a little editing .
mis:
. there were even a few items
that had been overlooked somehow .
tech:
. from the month where blogging began, 0905,
and working backwards to 0910,
found gear folders and files .
. one very relevant topic -- sewing mach' repair --
needed it's own blog file,
and since it's now the wrong year,
I included the year into the file's title .

1.11: proj.addn/log/review 2009:
. 0904 mobi notes are blogged?
find where I left off with rev subj,
log 0905 was rev'd .
2030,
log 0904 was rev'd .
2043,
log 0903 .

1.14: pos.addn/blog/priority should be dev.mac:
. since actually getting the project on the ground
was embodied by the study of the impl'lang,
the impl'lang (dev.mac/obj'c)
should be the first to get blogged .
todo:
. the only file left in [addx 0905].folder
is adda .

1.24: proj.addn/blog/addx 0905 and earlier 2009:
. the only file left in [addx 0905].folder
is adda .
. review blog for places to put older files .
. review adda .
. found and fixed more problems with text eaten by
blog turning angle brackets into xml tags .


1.1: mis.addn/todo:
. the usual 99 todo/todo.txt is just for banking?
no, there was at first a 99 todo.txt
which was then combined into the [99 todo].folder;
so I should be combining those .


1.3: proj.addn/rdy xpw db:
. rev log's text parts on mac
for what to bring to xpw .

1.4: pos.addn/fs:
. getting around (mis.addn/xp/filename error)
the main goal of moving log files
is to share the mac files with xpw .
. to keep things sync'd,
the changes made by either platform
should happen to a copy that is on the removable .
. but to get some quick searches,
I should copy the files to hard drive .
. 2008 ... 2009 are going to be modified a lot,
so they are only on the shared vol .
. I may never get around to hand-sorting the rest of log,
it may be better to just copy the files of previous era's
and morph them as new files
without worrying about keeping track of
original vs current creation dates .
. that will involve some concerns about
how to keep track of what's been reviewed,
but there is much time before that happens:
just do the usual review with the current era for now .


1.9: mis.addn/forgot recording cleanup routine:
. how did I convert olympus pc files
to something audacity will import? .

1.9: mis.addn/fs/memory needs hard pos review:
. where is everything on mac?
been at pc too long, and my mem is shot!
I put the log and all it's picts
in the aspect encrypt?
what was I thinking picasa would do?
[... a false assumption about picasa limits]
it's not reaching in the crypt,
so I had moved them back,
but then I was finding it was
annoying not having the log together .
. I could picasa-import picts as they were produced .

1.10: mis.addn/fs/forgotten pos helps revise pos:
. org downloads on xpw,
mov [to be installed]s to where
admn acct can reach them:
. the shared.folder has some surprises for my failing mem!
. I had been putting all dowloads and docs
into the docs.folder of cf.card;
but shared.folder also has docs;
I try to corralling them into a subfolder,
but the [ada 2009 downloads].folder
is having permissions problems .
. it is letting me copy instead of mov,
so I can still do my next idea
of making sure that everything is in both places:
. the cf.card is there in case of
anything stupid needs to reinstall xp-fujitsu os .
. the shared.folder is searchable more quickly than card .


1.10: proc.addn/log/type-in of notes routine:
. the log has previously distinguished logging from
type-in of notes to log,
but writing notes is now so routine,
all logging should be considered type-in's
without having to say that explicitely .


1.15: mis.addn/log:

find missing ergo.kybd entry:
. not anywhere? write a summarizing entry now .
[@] proj.addn/usb.ergo`kybd/delete.key fixed

data loss:
. almost lost an article spacing out a paste to subj.file
after a complicated double entry:
writing about having to do an article reporting
not finding an expected article .
. my mem' had one paste lined up
and recalled already doing one
when 2 were needed .

book notes unreadable:
9.5.17/addn/dev.mac/obj'c:
. typedef can define a function
so that its id can be used in defining
ptrs to id .

cut&paste confusion:
. somehow I lost an article moving it from log to subj.file .
. did I just paste it into the wrong file? search .
. I just have a really bad mem:
I had placed it into the correct subj',
but then forgot which subj' I'd decided on .
. most obama`mail is co.pol,
but this plea to help for haiti
would be placed in gov (charity and consumer interests) .


1.24: mis.addn/lost data/paste buffer forgotten:
. I'm pretty sure that I had some content for
health/cancer/mold still #1 when on a low-fat diet,
but unless that was a false memory
(as in the title was the content meant to be expanded)
I fear that I fell prey to forgetting to unload my paste buffer .
. there should be this system where
if the cut doesn't get pasted
then it shows back up in the place it was cut from
just like the windows system does for files .