Germany is taking steps to outlaw the cultivation of genetically modified crops in Europe’s biggest economy.
The Agriculture Ministry plans to officially request that producers of GMOs exclude Germany when applying to sell seeds in European Union, Christian Fronczak, a spokesman for the ministry, said Tuesday. Scotland took similar measures earlier this month.
“The German government is clear in that it seeks a nationwide cultivation ban,” Fronczak said by phone from Berlin. “There’s resistance from all sides, from the public to the farmers.”
Germany is taking advantage of new measures allowing countries to opt out of growing gene-modified crops. Switzerland’s Syngenta AG and U.S. rival Monsanto Co. have been among the strongest proponents of the seeds, which are mostly banned in the EU because of what some say are uncertain environmental and health effects. Monsanto maintains the products are safe.
The Agriculture Ministry has asked for the backing of state ministries in a letter sent in the past few days, Fronczak said. Germany gave state governments a deadline until Sept. 11 to reply. If it doesn’t hear any objections from the states, it will ask that companies exclude Germany from their applications to sell GMO seeds, Fronczak said.
There is one genetically modified crop, a variety of corn designed to be pest-resistant, already grown in the EU and eight pending applications for GMO seeds, according to an April statement from the European Commission.
There’s just no avoiding it. There is soooo much going around about this September and financial collapse, weird coincidences, and Yahweh’s Appointed Times, otherwise known as the Biblical Feast Days, that one would need to be in serious denial to not be at least peripherally aware of the concerns.
With no apologies, I am a follower of Yeshua, and His very name means Yah is salvation. So I do focus on the Appointed Times more than on the deceptions of Satan in mimicking Yah and imputing numerological significance to dates on the wrong calendar. I have espoused preparation and care for your neighbors and surroundings for ever. BUT, I am very, very, very leery of date setting and have a few words of caution for people that I need to share. So bear with me please, as I do think it is very important to keep some things in mind as we approach September.
First and foremost, while it definitely looks as though it is the Shemitah, the release, the Shabbat of the land, it doesn’t always happen on a definitive day. It can happen over time, and therefore not be as clear of an occurrence in our decidedly human minds. In other words, there can be a snowballing effect in action, and it will likely be traceable to a significant Scriptural appointed time, but it may not be evident to us while we are in the beginning stages.
Also, most people have no idea that there is a schism among those who do observe the Moedim, or Appointed Times. The Jews typically follow a projected calendar based upon astronomical calculations of the new moon. However, even the Encyclopedia Judaica shows that prior to the Hillel II calendar adoption, Hebrews used the sliver of the moon to begin the count of the months, which never exceed 30 days. The Karraite Jews still do this, and publish their sighting of the new moon in the current nation of Israel on their website. This causes a slight variance in observance of the High Sabbaths and Moedim amongst those who keep the Appointed Times.
The reason this is important information is because people will likely scoff when something happens a day or two before or after a projected event. Most people don’t even know there is any dissension among those who observe these Appointments, and when they come across the dissension, they can become very confused. We certainly have had a difficult time coming to a conclusion in our own home, so I thought it was worthwhile to let those who are interested know that there are issues with the agreed observance of the actual days.
On the Jewish calendar, they project Yom Teruah, or Rosh Hoshana/Feast of Trumpets to be September 13th. For those who are looking for the crescent moon, the projected date for being able to see the sliver of the moon is September 15th. Yes, the last day for Jade Helm 15. So the point is, we are close, but not exactly in agreement on the Appointed Times.
Hopefully, after letting everyone know that aside from Shavuot (Pentecost) and the regular weekly Sabbath, that there are some variances among the observant people, even, or more importantly, among many in the Hebraic Roots and Messianic groups, you will see that the Creator doesn’t work on our time frames. In Scripture, there are at least two times where Yahweh stopped or turned back the sun. So, as Yeshua said, “No man knows the day or the hour”, so “watch and pray”.
Now that is out of the way, I would like to invite you to read the following article by Michael Snyder. He has done a good job of succinctly encapsulating a lot of the events that are lined up for September of this year. I also want to encourage you to prepare as well as you can and to not be afraid, but be aware…and Be Well!
What is going to happen on September 23rd, 2015? For months, there has been an incredible amount of buzz on the Internet about the month of September, and in particular there has been a tremendous amount of speculation about the date of September 23rd. For a long time I didn’t pay much attention to all of this chatter, because I like to stick to things that I can prove. In law school, I was trained to be very analytical and to greatly value hard evidence. If you follow my articles regularly, you have probably noticed those traits reflected in my writing. Well, today I am going to discuss some things that I cannot prove. I am going to share with you some things that other people are reporting, and I humbly submit them for your consideration. Personally, I do not know what is going to happen on September 23rd, but I have come to the conclusion that there are just way too many “coincidences” to ignore. Ultimately, you need to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.
There are a couple of things about September 23 that we can say that we know for sure. First of all, Yom Kippur falls on that day. It is the most solemn of all of the holy days in the Bible, and it is commonly connected with the judgment of God.
Secondly, we know that Pope Francis will be arriving at the White House to meet with Barack Obama on September 23.
But both of those events are not that unusual. Yom Kippur happens every year, and U.S. presidents have met with popes quite often in the past.
So why is everyone getting so excited?
Well, when you couple the amazing confluence of events that we are going to witness in September 2015 with the unprecedented warnings and cryptic messages about the three day period of September 22nd to September 24th that seem to be popping up all over the place, it is enough to cause any rational person to stop and reflect on what might happen.
If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, I encourage you to watch the three YouTube videos that I have posted below.
I want to make it clear that I do not agree with everything in these videos.
Again, I do not agree with everything in these videos.
But all three of them do contain some incredible “coincidences” that I cannot explain away.
Lastly, I want to share with you an extraordinary message by Jim Staley entitled “September 23rd, 2015 – The Convergence” in which he discusses all of the things that are going to happen on and around this date…
Did watching those three videos change your perspective on this?
I have to admit that they shook me up. And when you combine all of this information with dreams and visions that people have been having about September, it starts to become difficult to ignore this phenomenon.
Just yesterday, I was alerted to the following message that Dr. Patricia Green just recently released…
This is a message from the LORD given to Patricia Green on July 29, 2015.
“September 23rd is the day Obama makes a pact with the devil. It was not by chance that the Pope and Obama are meeting on the Day of Atonement. (September 23, 2015) They will make a pact that will seal the fate of the United States of America. My vengeance will be poured out from this point forward. (September 23rd) There is no turning back.
Tell My people to draw close to Me in these last days. Tell them to purify their hearts by the washing of the water of My Word. Tell them to ask My Spirit to expose any wickedness within themselves, so they can repent and be clean.
I am returning for My Bride without spot or wrinkle. I am coming for a pure Bride. Only those who are purified by My Spirit and My Word are My Bride. There will be no pretending when I return. Many will say, “LORD, LORD, did I not prophesy in Your Name, heal the sick, cast out demons, and bring people into Your kingdom?” And I will say to those who had impure hearts, “Get from Me, I never knew you.”
This is the time for self-reflection. If you judge yourself in this season and repent of your hidden sin, your sin will not be exposed to your shame.
Now is the time to purify your own hearts. Now is the time before My vengeance is poured out.”
Once again, I do not personally know what will happen on September 23rd.
If I did, I would tell you.
I am just reporting what others are saying. Use discernment and decide for yourself if there is anything to all of this.
But without a doubt, the month of September does appear to be extremely significant. In a recent article, I detailed some of the things that will be happening next month…
September 14th – Rosh Hashanah
September 15th – The Jade Helm military exercises are scheduled to end.
September 15th – The 70th session of the UN General Assembly begins on this date. It has been widely reported that France plans to introduce a resolution which will give formal UN Security Council recognition to a Palestinian state shortly after the new session begins. Up until now, the U.S. has always been the one blocking such a resolution, but Barack Obama has already indicated that things may be different this time around. If alarm bells are going off in your head as you read this, then you probably already understand how significant this event could potentially be.
September 21st – The UN International Day Of Peace. Could this be the day when the UN Security Council resolution establishing a Palestinian state is actually adopted?
September 23rd – Yom Kippur
September 23rd – Pope Francis arrives at the White House to meet with Barack Obama. Some have suggested that the timing of this event is highly unusual…
Francis is the 266th pope who will be meeting with President Obama on the 266th day of the year, leading one Internet preacher to wonder if “something is being birthed” on that day, since 266 days is the typical human gestation period from conception to birth.
September 24th – The Pope addresses a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
September 25th to September 27th – The United Nations is going to launch a brand new sustainable development agenda called “The 2030 Agenda“. The following is an excerpt from an article that I just wrote about this insidious new plan…
If you didn’t like “Agenda 21″, then you really are not going to like “The 2030 Agenda”. Next month, the United Nations is going to launch “The 2030 Agenda” at a major conference that will be held from September 25th to September 27th in New York City. The Pope is actually traveling to New York to deliver an address which will kick off this conference. Unlike Agenda 21, which primarily focused on the environment, the 2030 Agenda is truly a template for governing the entire planet. In addition to addressing climate change, it also sets ambitious goals for areas such as economics, health, energy, education, agriculture, gender equality and a whole host of other issues. As you will see below, this global initiative is being billed as a “new universal Agenda” for humanity. If you are anything like me, alarm bells are going off in your head right about now.
September 28th – This is the date when the Feast of Tabernacles begins. It is also the date for the last of the four blood moons that fall on Biblical festival dates during 2014 and 2015. This blood moon falls on the very first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, it will be a “supermoon”, and it will be clearly visible from the city of Jerusalem. There are many that dismiss the blood moon phenomenon, but we have seen similar patterns before. For example, a similar pattern of eclipses happened just before and just after the destruction of the Jewish temple by the Romans in 70 AD.
I want to make it clear that I am not claiming that anything specific will happen on any particular date.
But I am not claiming that nothing will happen on any of these days either.
I do believe that September will be an extremely significant month, and without a doubt I do believe that we are currently living in the last days of normal life in America.
So what do you think is about to happen?
Please feel free to add to the discussion by posting a comment below…
The following article is a pretty good illustration of why it is necessary to flatly legalize cannabis and let the State control what they are allowed to actually control…Commerce. You know. That’s where a third party is involved in an exchange of goods. An example would be if I were to sell my tomatoes to a health food store and then you were to buy them from that store. If Nevada’s law, which arguably is poorly written, didn’t have limits on home growers, people could simply help each other. Bureaucracies are horrible at getting help to people when they need it. The medical marijuana with heavy state run controls is more than frustrating for people who are in pain. I’ll be posting several articles about these problems to illustrate why Missourians need to support the 2016-013 Constitutional Amendment.
The article below reminds of the laws regarding cannabis in California in the early 1990’s. At that time, it was legal to have up to one ounce…But you couldn’t buy it, couldn’t grow it and couldn’t sell it. Apparently it was supposed to spontaneously generate in your pocket or purse.
For more than a year, Sheila Gerstenzang has carried the card in her wallet: “Medical Marijuana Patient.”
But she’s yet to purchase a single bit of marijuana.
After a year of frustration and more than $200 out of her pocket, she gave up and let her card expire in May.
Months of delays in opening the first legal Las Vegas-area dispensary have cost investors money and frustrated advocates. But the effect on patients has been the most cruel.
There are more than 9,300 active marijuana cardholders in Nevada, including almost 6,700 in Clark County. There also are an untold number like Gerstenzang who have given up, at least for now.
Nevada’s first dispensary opened July 31 in Sparks. But in Clark County, where nearly three-quarters of the state’s population lives, patients are still waiting.
Gerstenzang, who is in her 60s, has progressive scoliosis and spinal stenosis that cause nearly constant pain. She was first diagnosed at age 9.
About five years ago, with her pain getting worse and specialists unable to help, she did some research and read that marijuana could help her conditions. But she didn’t want to grow her own or use a drug that hadn’t been tested.
Last year, after reading about the coming legal dispensaries, she applied for and got her patient card.
And then she waited.
“It makes me very angry,” Gerstenzang said recently, sitting in the living room of her home in the Summerlin area of Las Vegas. “It makes me feel like we’re all being taken advantage of, we’re being bled for money.”
‘Nothing I can do’
Nearly everyone involved — including county and state officials — has said for months they want dispensaries open in Las Vegas. Yet it hasn’t happened.
Depending on who you ask, you can blame bureaucratic foot-dragging, business decisions, politics, a poorly written state law — or some combination thereof.
It’s been legal for cardholders to grow their own marijuana in Nevada since 2001. In both 1998 and 2000, voters easily approved legalizing it for medical use.
Two years ago, the Legislature voted to allow commercial growing and dispensaries. State Sen. Tick Segerblom, who sponsored that 2013 law, has been frustrated and surprised at how long it’s taken to get Clark County dispensaries open.
In their overly narrow interpretations of its gray areas, Segerblom said, some people seem to have lost sight of the law’s purpose.
“At the end of the day, you have sick people with medical cards who can’t buy this 15 years after the voters of the state approved it,” said Segerblom, D-Las Vegas.
The latest controversy is over one shop’s business plan. Euphoria Wellness, the only dispensary in the county that’s gotten its final state registration, planned to open in March selling marijuana it bought from home growers. That’s allowed under state law.
But the county balked at Euphoria’s plan to buy pounds of marijuana from each grower, citing a separate clause in the law that says a patient can only possess 2½ ounces of “usable marijuana” at a time.
By definition, that means it would be illegal for anyone to sell more than 2½ ounces to a dispensary, the county argues.
Segerblom said that was never the intent of the law, since such a small amount would make the marijuana prohibitively expensive to buy and test. Part of the dispute centers on the definition of the word “usable.”
So the delay has dragged on. Euphoria still isn’t open, and its temporary county business license expired July 30. The dispensary recently threatened to take the county to court, but said it hopes to avoid that.
County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak said businesses bear blame for the delays, too. He pointed to growers who have long had clearance, but have not started operations.
“There’s a certain amount that the government can control, but we can’t control the economics of it,” Sisolak said.
He said he’s gotten calls from frustrated patients, some of whom tell him they’ve spent $800 or more — for nothing.
“I sympathize … but there’s nothing I can do,” Sisolak said.
‘It’s getting worse’
Some days are better than others. But when asked to describe her pain, Gerstenzang put it this way: “It’s every day; it’s 24 hours a day.”
She can’t sleep comfortably in any position and can’t turn over in bed. She can’t even do the most mundane of tasks, something no one misses until you can’t do it: “I would like to be able to clean my toilet,” she said.
The pain is mostly on her right side, but sometimes spreads to her upper back, too. She can only walk for about a block before it kicks in.
“It’s awful. It’s getting worse,” said her husband of 12 years, Herb. “We can’t have a normal relationship.”
The Gerstenzangs love to travel, but it can be torture. On a trip to Europe, Sheila coped by walking while leaning on a doggie stroller.
A Spanish teacher in New York, she retired on disability in 2002 after becoming unable to even bend over a desk to help a student. Not long after that, the couple moved to Nevada.
Five years ago, when the pain was getting worse, she went to see pain management specialists and an orthopedist. She had an epidural. Nothing helped.
Someone recommended an opiate pump, but she worried about infection.
After reading up on marijuana, she decided she wanted to try a strain low in THC, the main mind-altering substance in marijuana.
“Well, I’m a child of the ’70s, and I did not want to get high any more,” Gerstenzang said.
She called some “delivery” services that advertise online — which are illegal — but none could tell her about the THC content of their marijuana because it hadn’t been tested.
While driving, the Gerstenzangs stopped in Colorado, but a dispensary there couldn’t tell her the THC content of its product, either.
A friend once gave Sheila a little bit of “stuff in honey,” as she put it — a marijuana-infused product. She said she took only a tiny bite, which made her feel “very weird” and did nothing for pain.
The Gerstenzangs are glad marijuana sold in Nevada will be tested. Herb, a pharmacist who worked in drug approval for the Food and Drug Administration, said he wouldn’t want his wife taking an untested drug.
So for now, they wait. With no dispensary open, Sheila sees no point paying more money to her doctor, the state and the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issues the driver’s license-like patient cards.
State officials said they don’t track why people decide not to renew the cards, and they couldn’t say last week how many had made that decision this year.
Once a local dispensary opens, Gerstenzang said, she’ll see if it has a low-THC product, then consider applying for a card again.
“Of course, we have no idea whether it will help me,” she said. “But I’d like to be able to find out.”
On it’s face, the following story about genetically engineered rice seems much more innocuous than the vast majority of genetic engineering schemes. But one still has to question the wisdom of splicing different species of genes together. Maybe methane is necessary in order for rice to be digestible? Perhaps we don’t know all that we think we know about the biological processes of life? I mean, if I actually knew half as much as I thought I knew when I was sixteen, it would be amazing. It seems as though in our efforts to run full steam ahead into a Brave New World, we probably getting ahead of ourselves. Anyway, here is the article about a different type of GMO rice:
Rice agriculture has become one of the most powerful anthropogenic sources of methane, due to continuously growing world population. “We would get more starch, more food, and less methane”, explains Dr Jansson, now director of plant sciences at the US Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
“Until now, nobody actually achieved success in altering rice plants” the Dutch scientist said.
Already in 2002, scientists reported that the more grain carried by rice plants, the less methane they emitted. Chuanxin Sun of the Swedish university and senior author of the study added a single gene from barley to rice, then planted it in a field next to a conventional rice field in China. By reducing the size of the rice plants’ roots, the scientists hoped that they could curb the amount of methane produced in the fields. As a result, the world’s rice paddies emit between 25 million and 100 million metric tons of methane every year. Since the low-methane strain of rice isn’t bred to be herbicide or pesticide resistant, this most likely won’t be an issue with this particular strain – though the way that its root-system interacts with microbes in the soil is something to watch. With less carbon in the roots, there is less raw material for the microbes to work on, the researchers explain. Without more trials, Bodelier wrote, it’s hard to know how the genetic modification impacts the rice cultivar’s long-term chances for survival. Far fewer methane-producing bacteria hugged the roots of the new rice. Crops like Roundup-resistant soy or corn have led to a marked increase in the use of herbicides in the United States, though some studies have also shown that genetically modified crops have led to a decrease in the use of some pesticides.
The methane is a natural byproduct of the decomposition of organic matter in the rice paddies. The reduction in methane emissions was particularly effective during the summers, when they were down to 0.3 percent of total emissions from the plant’s decomposition, compared to 10 percent emissions in the conventional crop.
Unlike golden rice where a totally alien gene was introduced into the group, here the change is not major but still could have unintended consequences, Paul Bodelier, a microbial ecologist at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology in Wageningen told CSM. Therefore, a need for developing a new rice variety that reduces methane emissions was recognized. Genetically engineered rice isn’t commercially cultivated anywhere in the world, in part because of ethical and biological concerns about the spread of engineered rice pollen, experts said.
Thayer City Park by the Rodeo Arena, Thayer, Missouri
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Draft Horses, Wool Spinning Demonstrations, Herbal Medicines, Heritage Breed Hogs, Dairy & Meat Goats, Sheep, Organic Gardening, Bee Keeping, Scottish Highland Cattle, Petting Zoo, Sheep, Chickens, Turkeys, Aquaponics, Learn how to make a rocket stove
Explore How To Be Self-Reliant, Self-Sufficient and Be Prepared!
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The Go Green Self Reliance Festival is dedicated to promoting and supporting the local economy, sustainable living, agriculture, alternative renewable energy, preparedness, and positive community activities, held in Thayer, Missouri in the Ozarks on the Missouri Arkansas border. The festival averages 16 speakers, 150 vendors and 3,000 or more in attendance.
Mike Slack, the organizer is a homesteader, a writer and veteran of US Army Intelligence. His articles on preparedness topics have appeared in several issues of The Survivalist magazine.
Since chemtrails have helped so much with the geoengineering, Bill Gates gave $300k to a group of retired Silicon Valley people to study the feasibility of lightening clouds to fix global warming. And they are ready to give it a go in the real world now.
Sometimes things are so foolish it just boggles the mind. This is one of those times for me. You can read the article excerpt below and click on the title to go and read the full thing.
Aqua Metrology Systems’ Armand Neukermans, 73, background left, and engineer Jack Foster, 79, right, check the operations of a cloud condensation nuclei droplet spraying system prototype during a test to measure droplet particles at Aqua Metrology Systems in Sunnyvale, Calif., on Wednesday, June 24, 2015. (LiPo Ching/Bay Area News Group) ( LiPo Ching )
SUNNYVALE — A team of elder Silicon Valley scientists is building an audacious device that might solve one of humanity’s most profound dilemmas — a “cloud whitener” designed to cool a warming planet.
The men — retired physicists, engineers, chemists and computer experts from some of Silicon Valley’s top tech companies — have been meeting four days a week for seven years in the Sunnyvale lab of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project to design a tool that creates perfectly suspended droplets of water resembling fog.
Their goal is to launch the nation’s first open-air field trial of controversial “geoengineering” at a still-unidentified site in Moss Landing. There, they would test the ability of an energy-efficient machine to hurl tiny seawater droplets into a graceful trajectory — the first step of a research project to boost the brightness of clouds to reflect rays of sunlight back into space.
It’s been almost a month since a case of avian influenza was detected in poultry in the central United States. So it might seem that the epidemic—which over several months caused the destruction of 49.5 million chickens and turkeys—can safely be considered over.
But in fact, it may have only taken a break. And if it returns, as some experts predict it will, what one government official calls “the largest animal-health emergency in this country’s history” may turn out to be just an opening act. At risk, the next time, will be not just the egg and turkey farms of the Midwest, but the billions of birds being raised in the poultry-producing centers on the east and west coasts—effectively, most of the poultry economy of the United States.
And attempts to prevent it, by developing a vaccine, may paradoxically turn out to be almost as devastating—because international trading partners say they will bar imports of any birds vaccinated against the disease.
The dire uncertainty that surrounds bird flu emerged last week at a hearing held by the Senate Committee on Agriculture to examine how the epidemic unfolded and why it spread. (Here’s my earlier post from when the epidemic was still going on.) Just the numbers are jaw-dropping: To stop the movement of the disease, Dr. John Clifford, deputy administrator of the federal Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, testified that 42 million chickens and 7.5 million turkeys were killed. Those numbers equal 10 percent of the egg-laying hens in the entire United States, and 3 percent of the turkeys.
The cost of those lost birds, according to economist Thomas Elam of the Indiana-based consulting group FarmEcon, was $1.57 billion—but the further costs to businesses that support farms, to egg and poultry wholesalers, and to food service firms, pushed the loss to $3.3 billion. In addition, Clifford said, the US Department of Agriculture committed $500 million to emergency efforts to block the disease, and paid out $190 million to farmers whose birds were destroyed.
Brad Moline, a third-generation turkey farmer from Manson, Iowa, used the impact of the epidemic on his family’s farm as an example of what turkey growers face from avian flu. The Molines were forced to destroy their entire flock, 56,000 turkeys housed in 12 barns, wiping out at least two-thirds of their income for the year. Once a flock is destroyed, the birds have to be composted and the barns disinfected, and farmers cannot restock with baby birds (“poults,” if they are turkeys) until they get the all-clear. That’s if they can find birds to grow at all: Unlike poultry producers, turkey farms grow just one crop per year, and the hatcheries that supply the poults aim to hatch them only when they are needed—which was much earlier in the year than now. “If we are lucky, we will be able to salvage this year with one flock, which we hope to repopulate sometime around August 1,” he told the committee.
As I reported earlier, animal-health authorities suspected—and virus analysis is now confirming—that while the flu was originally brought to the US by wild birds migrating down from Canada, most of the spread within the US was due to people and vehicles inadvertently carrying the virus from farm to farm. Rob Knecht, president of the Michigan Allied Poultry Industries, said that preventing that from happening again if the virus returns will be complicated and costly. Some examples he ticked off: requiring farms to book the episodic crews they use for short but labor-intensive tasks such as moving large flocks from barn to barn, and not sharing them with other farms. Creating worker “locker rooms” at local hotels, with clothing and boots provided, and driving them back and forth in disinfected vans. Constructing new shower facilities on farms, for every worker to use, or procuring mobile shower units that are delivered to farms by truck. Building disinfecting troughs and tire sprayers at every farm entrance and assigning workers to monitor the gates so that every vehicle goes through disinfection. “The financial investment on these changes,” he said, “can be very high.”
Producers are looking seriously at making those investments, though, because federal authorities are predicting the flu will come back. “There is the very real possibility of another major outbreak later this year,” Elam said. Clifford expanded on that: “USDA is treating the threat of more infections in the fall with the utmost seriousness,” he said. “It’s very likely that wild birds will carry the virus with them when they begin migrating south in the fall.”
The major chicken-producing states—Georgia, and the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia peninsula—should be particularly watchful, he added: “Although states in the Atlantic flyway have not been affected by this outbreak, it’s important that our state and industry partners begin preparations should the disease occur there.” That’s true for the Pacific Flyway as well; the first 2014 cases occurred there.
Possibly the most dismaying thing is that—unlike human flu—there’s no vaccine available, and while a USDA research unit is crashing research on a formula, using it could end up losing producers just as much money as letting the flu rampage. Currently, because of the outbreak, 18 countries have blocked imports of any American poultry or eggs, and another 38 countries have blocked imports from the states that were affected. But because of suspicions of the vaccine—which can suppress birds’ symptoms while still allowing them to pass the virus along—many countries won’t accept vaccinated birds for import.
“USDA believes that if a vaccine were used, some additional trading partners would ban all U.S. exports of poultry and eggs and not necessarily just those from the states currently affected by HPAI,” Clifford testified. “The loss of these markets could cost U.S. producers at least $3 billion in trade revenue.”
With a vaccine off the table, producers may have no option but to guard their farms’ borders, watch for new outbreaks, and wait. They may not have to wait long. Last week, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced it had found a similar strain of virus in a chickadee, its second find in a wild bird so far—and the fall migration season hasn’t even begun.
Monsanto. One of the most evil corporations on the face of the planet. When they get slammed by a pseudo governmental agency, they just have to find their own paid for scientists to refute the others. The marvel I see here is that Monsanto didn’t have enough money to pay off the WHO. It’s likely that the cat is too far out of the bag for the WHO to keep pretending it isn’t there.
(Reuters) – Monsanto Co, whose Roundup product is one of the world’s most widely used herbicides, said on Tuesday it has arranged for an outside scientific review of a World Health Organization finding that the weed killer’s key ingredient probably causes cancer.
The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said in March that it had concluded that the ingredient, called glyphosate, was probably carcinogenic after reviewing a range of scientific literature. [ID:nL2N0WM2I4]
Monsanto reacted to the finding by demanding a retraction, labeling the findings by a team of international cancer scientists as “junk science.” [ID:nL2N0WP0UM]
On Tuesday, Monsanto said it had hired Intertek Scientific & Regulatory Consultancy to convene a panel of internationally recognized scientific experts to review IARC’s work. The experts include medical doctors, cancer experts, and individuals with doctoral degrees who are specialists in public health, the Creve Coeur, Missouri-based company said.
Monsanto President Brett Begemann said his company is confident in the safety of its herbicide products, and the review is being done primarily to reassure consumers and others.
“It has created a lot of confusion,” Begemann said of the IARC cancer link finding. “This panel is going to review the data thoroughly, and they are going to make their findings available to everyone for review.”
Monsanto said the process and the findings will be independent and will be transparent. But the company said it would be involved in providing information and data for the review.
Farmers have been using glyphosate in increasing quantities since Monsanto in the mid-1990s introduced crops genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed with Roundup.
Genetically modified corn, soybeans and other crops branded as “Roundup Ready” are popular because of the ease with which farmers have been able to kill weeds. But weeds have developed resistance to glyphosate, prompting farmers to use more herbicide.
Agricultural use of glyphosate in 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, was more than 283 million pounds (128 million kg), up from 110 million pounds (50 million kg), in 2002, according to U.S. Geological Survey estimates.
The United States and other international regulatory bodies have said glyphosate is safe when used as directed. But the WHO cancer research unit’s report found that several studies have raised concerns about glyphosate and its health impacts.
(Reporting By Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)
When the first rattlings about the Greek financial melt down began, well over a year ago now, there were some articles about how the new thinking in the nation went to food production and many young people were heading back to familial farming lands to be able to weather the coming storm. Now that the crush has begun, another article about this has come across my desktop.
The concept is simple. CIVILization, with the operative word being civil, requires that people have enough food to live. If we can’t, or won’t, help others, we will lose the ability to treat each other in a civilized and humane fashion.
KARITAINA, Greece (AP) — Ilias Mathes has protection against bank closures, capital controls and the slashing of his pension: 10 goats, some hens and a vegetable patch.
If Greece’s financial crisis deepens, as many believe it must, he can feed his children and grandchildren with the bounty of the land in this proud village high in the mountains of the Arcadia Peloponnese.
“I have my lettuce, my onions, I have my hens, my birds, I will manage,” he said, even though he can no longer access his full pension payment because of government controls imposed six days ago. “We will manage for a period of time, I don’t know, two months, maybe three months, because I also want to give to our relatives. If they are suffering, I cannot leave them like this, isn’t that so?”
(Reuters) – U.S. environmental regulators on Thursday proposed a rule that would create temporary pesticide-free zones to protect commercial honeybees, which are critical to food production and have been dying off at alarming rates.
The restrictions would cover times when specific plants are in bloom and when commercial honeybees are being moved through certain areas, EPA officials said.
Honeybees are needed to pollinate plants that produce a quarter of the food consumed by Americans, and beekeepers travel around the country with managed hives to help the process.
The rule, due to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, includes a class of insecticides knowns as neonicotinoids, which some have blamed for the demise of honeybee colonies.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that honeybees had disappeared at a staggering rate over the last year. Losses of managed honeybee colonies hit 42.1 percent from April 2014 through April 2015, up from 34.2 percent for 2013-2014, and the second-highest annual loss to date, according to the USDA.
Beekeepers, environmental groups and some scientists say neonicotinoids, or neonics – used on crops such as corn as well as on plants used in lawns and gardens – are harming the beess.
But Bayer, Syngenta and other agrichemical companies that sell neonic products say mite infestations and other factors are the cause.
The White House has formed a task force to study the issue, and the EPA has been studying the effects of neonics on bees.
Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director for the
Center for Biological Diversity, applauded the proposed rule, but said neonics, which are commonly used as seed treatments on crops like corn, need to be banned. In seed treatments, the pesticide is applied to the seed before it is planted.
“EPA needs to take the next step and ban these poisoned seeds,” Burd said in a statement.
(Reporting By Carey Gillam; Editing by Peter Galloway and Jonathan Oatis)
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