Thursday
October 25th 2004
Sweden's secret weapon I'll
bet you haven't heard about this one, in between the essential
listening to the dramatic postponing of EU commissioners' appointments,
the continuing horrors of Israel and Iraq, US neo-con, pro-Bush radio
(relayed to an astonished public on Irish radio) and the football-playing
Jack Russel in Croker (non-Irish, search Google for the entertainment of
the year).
Sweden sent a team of highly trained specialists to Erfurt in Germany last
week and unleashed a devastating secret weapon. The white-clad group had
been training for months in great secrecy (as you would, with a new
weapon) and managed to astonish their 1,100 protagonists when they
unholstered it for the first time.
The much-shrouded weapon? Organic
food!
The Swedish chefs won the 21st Culinary Olympics, around - believe it
or not, just as long as the other Olympics. The plot was fiendishly
clever; "The plan was top secret up to the last minute, to keep
competing countries from learning of the winning edge - organic
products", their spokeswoman said. You can see - if you want - the
winning, grinning chefs at http://www.svenskakocklandslaget.nu.
Do you think they should be nominated for a Nobel prize?
Organic
chickens contaminated with illegal antibiotic I won't do like
everybody else and recycle the press release from the British Food
Standards Agency. See it yourself at http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2004/oct/organichick
No other media has added anything further to the story yet.
The Soil Association says it wasn't they that certified the Northern
Ireland-processed chukkies.
The processor, Moy Park, Co.Down, which also handles millions of conventionally reared
chickens per month, is "cooperating with investigations"
into how the banned-in-food antibiotic, Nitrofurin, got into 23 tons of organic chicken
distributed throughout the UK and the Republic. Confidential line open for
any news on same - 027 70717.
Wednesday
October 20th 2004
You can't
call this research "Bats" Organic farming is good for
wildlife; this has almost always been a canon of organic
faith. Since the origins of the organic movement in Britain in the 1930s,
Lady Eve Balfour, Alfred Howard and Newman Turner and others have
maintained that increased biodiversity has been one of the principal
outcomes of using organic farming methods. However, despite some efforts
and requests for funding research to investigate the area, there was
little or no investment and no hard science produced to show that more
"animalitoes" crawled, ran or flew in organic environments.
Rachel Carson, in her devastating book, Silent Spring, 40 years
ago, showed how destructive to wildlife DDT was, and organic farmers, by
not using it or other similar pesticides, could always claim that,
therefore, organic farming was less harmful to the environment and
consequently better for us all.
Sure, that and anecdotal observation told us all that there were more
worms, more birds, more slugs (the buggers!) and such on organic farms but
that wouldn't wear with the suits at Depts.of Agriculture and other
"scientific" bodies, and only provided mocking ammunition
("wishy-washy", "tree-hugging stuff" from the "dirt-and-sandals
brigade") for the white-coats at the likes of Monsanto
Inc.
But now there would appear to be significant evidence for increased
biodiversity on organic farms. An extensive study just published in the journal, Biological Conservation, Vol. 122,
p. 113 , two non-partisan groups, English Nature and the Royal
Society for the Protection of Birds reviewed research in Europe, New
Zealand, Canada and the US on biodiversity in different farming systems.
In almost two thirds of the comparisons, organic farming was shown to
benefit wildlife, a quarter gave mixed results or showed no benefit and
about 8% concluded that organic methods were detrimental to wildlfe!*
This is one statement in the report that should wake up the dinosaurs;
"During the next 50 years, global agricultural expansion threatens to
impact worldwide biodiversity on an unprecedented scale that may rival
climate change in its significance".
All in all, it's good news. Peter Melchett, the Soil Association's Policy
Director said: "The scientific case for the wildlife benefits of
organic farming is now settled and beyond doubt". And it might be even better - some of the
studies were of newly-converted organic farms where the benefits would not
have kicked in. On the other hand, some farms may have been well disposed
towards wildlife conservation before they converted and had higher than
average counts of the various species.
An interesting finding from one study is that two populations of bats -
the greater and lesser horseshoe - are found in the UK only on
organic farms.
There's hard science for you - organic farmers have more bats (I resist
it!) than anyone else. But I can't see that becoming as popular a
marketing claim for organic farming as e.g. the Danish higher sperm counts
in organic farmers.
This review of a wide range of research and its findings is welcome news
for organics. One can at least quote a headline or two from it - remember
the Soil Association getting nobbled over unsubstantiated claims for
organic produce? But more research needs to be done to refine the
information. See www.organicts.com
for much more from this report.
*Can
anyone suggest why this might be so, or that there should be "no
benefit"? Overweeding in horticultural crops? Large-scale, organic mono-cropping? Compaction?
On another slant (which surely didn't apply here, I hope) - our bogey
man, Prof. Trewavas, claims that to feed the same world population using
organic farming methods you would need a lot more land and thus destroy
existing wildlife reserves.
Back-to-the-land
advocate dies John Seymour, 91, the English-born writer and anti-GM
activist died in Wales earlier this month. lived on a small-holding in
Co.Wexford, Ireland, for 24 years until recently. Known since the
1970s for his self-sufficiency books - which sold in vast numbers -
he spearheaded the Irish protest movement against GM crops in 1999,
landing himself in court as one of the famous "Arthurstown
Seven".
"Never be afraid of being called a crank," he once famously said.
"Look up crank in the dictionary. It's defined as a useful object
that starts revolutions."
There was a good article in the Irish Times on 25th September. They are a
subscription site but you can see the article on www.gmwatch.org
Newsletter, 13th October, Anti-GM hero's memorial service.
October
12th 2004
Fischler
out, Fischer in The incoming EU agricultural commissioner,
Mariann Fischer Boel from Denmark has been involved in some controversy.
She has been accused of "conflict of interest", as her husband
farms three farms in Denmark and claims hundreds of thousands of Danish
kroner in EU subsidies. She denies that this will influence her in any
way; "I am married to a farmer ....I have
absolutely nothing to hide."
The former Danish Agriculture Minister, went on to say; "We must be
innovative ... we need to invest in the future," emphasising that the
EU must focus on protecting the rural environment, food safety and
preventing depopulation of the countryside - "There has to be a place
for family farms".
That her accountant's statement of financial affairs, being prepared for
the Commission, were processed through the Danish prime minister's office
has also been questioned. See Danish MEP's site, www.bonde.com
Mrs Fischer Boel has flagged that there will be little change in the
current CAP regulations before the mid-term review in 2008.
She has also indicated that there will be no question of allowing national
governments to run subsidies.*
The new commissioner, if all goes well takes up her post on November 1st.
I will be submitting a list of questions to her on organics and
co-existence
*.But Herr Fischler last week introduced a measure,
called "de minimus aid", allowing national governments to
give limited subsidies to farmers and fishermen in special circumstances.
See http://europa.eu.int/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/04/1188&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
The answer (to how far GM pollen travels) my friend,
is a-blowing in the wind
Remember, in the not-so-long-ago, the GM industry-recommended safety zone
of one metre between GM and conventional crops? Remember when this was
extended to 6 metres? Recall Herr Fischler and Davy Byrne recently on
"co-existence" of GM with organic crops? And, I'm sure, I don't have to
remind you of Canadian, Percy Schmeiser's celebrated case with Monsanto about
alleged accidental contamination of the former's rape seed crop.
Research on contamination distances has been thin on the ground and
although it was shown that the original safe distances could be wildly
out, the general consensus, amongst legislators, seemed to be that
contamination from GM crops could be contained within reasonable
boundaries.
Well, we now have some hard research on how far some GM pollen
can really travel: no, not up to 21 metres (in the sort of increments the GM industry would prefer us to believe) but up to 21
kilometres! (That's over 13 miles in my non-metric-converted book).
The research that yielded this result was carried out by scientists at the
US Environmental Protection Agency. They were astonished to find that
pollen from a genetically modified plant, creeping bentgrass, had blown on
the wind and pollinated wild grasses up to 21 kilometres away. Not only
did they prove a new long distance record for stray GM pollen, but they
showed that it contaminated an area of over 300 square kilometres.
Creeping bentgrass is a significant commercial crop, being a favourite of
golf course managers; apparently it gives a smoother surface to putting greens.
The modified version, tested by the EPA, would allow them to spray
invading weeds with Monsanto's Roundup and similar herbicides without
damaging the bentgrass.
The researchers were taken aback at the extent of the contamination of the GM
pollen, and they now think that it is possible that some pollen may travel
hundreds of kms, with one source contaminating thousands of square kms.
Furthermor they have no idea how to control it when it cross-breeds with
wild grasses.
This has huge implications for the term "coexistence", the
eupehemism of Fischler, Byrne and their advisers that basically implies GM
plants can co-exist with conventional and organic crops without
contaminating them. They left the determination of the akward
"safe" co-existence distances to individual EU member states.
You don't need to be a rocket scientist to work out that if one accepted
the above area of potential contamination, 300 square kms (and the EPA
people are suggesting it could be much bigger) around a GM crop, and
that if coexistence without contamination was to be honoured, no GM
crops could be allowed, as each GM crop source would have hundreds
of conventional farmers within that area and some organic too.
If Fischler and Byrne, or their successors - they are both moving on -
want to be honest about the co-existence principle, it should be incumbent
upon them to take deep note of these EPA findings and advise member states
of how to interpret the principle.
Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences: (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0405154101)
Also reported in New Scientist in September, see www.newscientist.com
(thanks to correspondent Mdn. for drawing my attention to the article).
.