Yearly Archives: 2010

Moody Forest, home of the Red Cockaded Woodpecker

In addition to her popular trilogy of books, Janisse Ray has also edited a small volume about the Moody Forest Natural Area, which was on sale at her talk in Moultrie the other day. I can’t find a reference to that book online, although Moody Forest itself features in Wild Card Quilt.

However, Gretchen and I did visit Moody Forest in 2008, and took some pictures, like this one on the right that appears to be the home of some rare red-cockaded woodpeckers:

That’s just one picture, but follow this link for the others.

Least ethical company in the world?

Guess which company came in worst of all in Swiss firm Covalence’s survey of least ethical companies? Hint: it’s Forbes’ Company of the Year.
Monsanto, the Missouri-based agriculture giant, ranked dead last in the Covalence ethical index. The company, which leads the world in the production of genetically-engineered seed, has been subject to myriad criticisms. Among them: the company is accused of frequently and unfairly suing small farmers for patent infringement.
Worse than Philip Morris, Chevron, or Halliburton. Quite an accomplishment!

Janisse Ray in Moultrie, 26 Jan 2010

Janisse Ray spoke and read from her books in Moultrie last night. The place was packed with a wide variety of people:

Packed, many ages

Here’s her opening poem: Continue reading →

Janisse Ray in Moultrie next week

Janisse Ray plans to speak in Moultrie and sign books.
The Georgia Center for the Book, with the support of the Georgia Humanities Council, is working with the Moultrie-Colquitt County Library System and the Moultrie Chapter of the Georgia Conservancy to present a free public lecture and book-signing by Ray on Tuesday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m., in the library auditorium.

Ray was born in Baxley, Ga., and is an environmentalist activist, poet, a memoirist and the award-winning author of “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood.” This book, a memoir about growing up on a junkyard in the ruined longleaf pine ecosystem of the Southeast, was published by Milkweed Editions in 1999.

Why should you care?
Ray has won a Southeastern Booksellers Award 1999, an American Book Award 2000, the Southern Environmental Law Center 2000 Award for Outstanding Writing, and a Southern Book Critics Circle Award 2000. “Ecology of a Cracker Childhood” was a New York Times Notable Book and was chosen as the Book All Georgians Should Read.

As an organizer and activist, she works to create sustainable communities, local food systems, a stable global climate, intact ecosystems, clean rivers, life-enhancing economies, and participatory democracy. She is a founding board member of Altamaha Riverkeeper and is on the board of the Environmental Leadership Center of Warren Wilson College and Satilla Riverkeeper.

Are you tired of development trumps all? Do you like trees and home-grown vegetables? Come hear Janisse Ray!

Floating Bottom

In the dead of winter, it’s amusing to look back a few months to fall flowers:

Red and yellow

These yellow and white flowers are growing on floating bottom in the middle of a pond. Looks like a lush prairie:

PB010502

But if you step on it, you will sink through into water. Here’s what you find at the edge of the floating bottom:

Bladderwort?

I think that’s bladderwort, which is a carnivorous plant that eats small insects.

And for another color:

Red2

Pictures by Gretchen Quarterman, 1 Nov 2009, Lowndes County, Georgia. More pictures in the flickr set.

DoJ vs. Monsanto

Well, it’s a start, as reported by Jack Kaskey for BusinessWeek, Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Soybeans Probed by Justice (Update4),
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) — Monsanto Co., the world’s largest seed producer, said the U.S. Justice Department formally requested information on its herbicide-tolerant soybean seed business as part of an investigation.

The Justice Department issued a civil investigative demand seeking confirmation that competitors and farmers will have access to first-generation Roundup Ready soybean seeds following patent expiration in 2014, St. Louis-based Monsanto said today in a statement. The company has provided access to “millions of pages of documents” as it cooperates with inquiries into its business and the industry.

After Monsanto’s stock price fell, analysts tried to put a good spin on this:
The department’s focus on Roundup Ready soybeans “likely indicates no DOJ interest in the remainder of Monsanto” operations, Vincent Andrews, a New York-based analyst at Morgan Stanley, said today in a report. He rates the shares “overweight.“
He wishes.

Meanwhile, it’s not just DoJ: Continue reading →

Non-GMO Uprising Predicted by supermarket trade publication

Jeffrey M. SMith writes in the Food Freedom blog that Supermarket News Forecasts Non-GMO Uprising:
For a couple of years, the Institute for Responsible Technology has predicted that the US would soon experience a tipping point of consumer rejection against genetically modified foods; a change we’re all helping to bring about. Now a December article in Supermarket News supports both our prediction and the role the Institute is playing.
“The coming year promises to bring about a greater, more pervasive awarenes” of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in our food supply, wrote Group Editor Robert Vosburgh, in a trade publication that conventional food executives and retailers use as a primary source of news and trends in the industry. Vosburgh describes how previous food “culprits” like fat and carbs “can even define the decade in which they were topical,” and suggests that GMOs may finally burst through into the public awareness and join their ranks.

Vosburgh credits two recent launches with “the potential to spark a new round of concern among shoppers who are today much more attuned to the ways their food is produced.” One is our Institute’s new non-GMO website, which, he says, “provides consumers with a directory of non-GMO brands . . . developed ‘for the 53% of Americans who say they would avoid GMOs if labeled.’”

More than half of Americans? And that’s before most Americans learn that GM corn causes liver and kidney damage in rats and RoundUp causes human birth defects. Perhaps Monsanto is the new RJ Reynolds….

But that doesn’t mean big food won’t fight back. The Supermarket News article ends by taking the Forbes line that all Monsanto needs is better PR: Continue reading →

Monsanto Corn Causes Liver and Kidney Damage in Rats

The researchers used Monsanto’s own data, which was for a period of ingestion of only 90 days, and reached these conclusions:
We therefore conclude that our data strongly suggests that these GM maize varieties induce a state of hepatorenal [liver and kidney] toxicity. This can be due to the new pesticides (herbicide or insecticide) present specifically in each type of GM maize, although unintended metabolic effects due to the mutagenic properties of the GM transformation process cannot be excluded [42]. All three GM maize varieties contain a distinctly different pesticide residue associated with their particular GM event (glyphosate and AMPA in NK 603, modified Cry1Ab in MON 810, modified Cry3Bb1 in MON 863).
Why should GM foods have this sort of effect?
These substances have never before been an integral part of the human or animal diet and therefore their health consequences for those who consume them, especially over long time periods are currently unknown.
Humans generally have centuries of experience with most other foods, and have rejected or developed appropriate preparation methods for those that are toxic.

Plus until recently humans weren’t in the habit of eating pesticides that had been deliberately engineered to be toxic to other species. Especially without testing first to see if they might be toxic to humans….

One of the four authors of this research paper in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Biological Sciences, Gilles-Eric Seralini, had already established that Glyphosate Formulations Induce Apoptosis and Necrosis in Human Umbilical, Embryonic, and Placental Cells. In other words, RoundUp causes human birth defects. So if Monsanto’s pesticide doesn’t get you or your children directly, it can still get you in your food. And maybe not just in food containing corn, given that chickens fed feed including Monsanto corn show abnormal gene expression. Maybe somebody will study people who eat chickens fed Monsanto corn and see what effects that has.

But remember, while the evidence mounts that Monsanto is poisoning the world’s food supply, Forbes just named Monsanto company of the year! All this other stuff is just economic externalities, and profit is all that matters!

Abnormal Chicken Feed

Jeremy Hsu writes that “Organic Feed Shown to Affect Genes in Chickens”:
Two generations of chickens were fed either organically cultivated feed or normal feed.
Um, organic feed is normal feed. It’s that other stuff that’s abnormal. And so are chickens raised on it:
Scientists then sampled RNA, the partner molecule for DNA during gene expression, from the small intestines of five organically fed chickens and five conventionally fed chickens. The results showed significant differences in gene expression among 49 genes.

The top ingredient in chicken feed is corn. The abnormal variety of which mostly comes from seed patented by Forbes’ Company of the Year: Monsanto.

Hm, what about humans raised chickens raised on abnormal feed? What do those 49 chicken genes do, anyway?

…the Dutch researchers note that seven of the 49 genes were involved in helping the chickens synthesize cholesterol, when just 30 genes are involved in the overall cholesterol biosynthesis.
Well, that can’t be important, can it?