September 30th 2004 
Hail Mary  Here in Ireland we have just had a government cabinet reshuffle. TD Mary Couglan is the surprising new appointment as Minister of Agriculture. The former incumbent, Joe Walsh, had flagged his retirement from the post some months ago. Farmers have been caught on the hop; "I'm not sure whether she's a singer (we have an excellent jazz singer of the same name) or a politician"; "You're joking"; "Hope she'll be better than Joe Walsh", are some of the instant reactions from farmers at the National Ploughing Championship in Carlow, yesterday. Despite the general puzzlement, some were enthusiastic: "She'll have more of a kick in her, new face, more zip.": "She might give us a few more bob". The farm leader, Ruaidhri Deasy, diplomatically welcomed her appointment describing her as "young and vibrant". 
It may be that the biggest advantage the new minister has over Min.Joe is that she is better to look at. (a triumph of style over substance?). Some say that the Minister's prime requirements these days is to able "to do the sums", pointing to the fact that the Department of Agriculture and its boss are becoming increasingly irrelevant as the big decisions and administration are now coming from Brussels.
A Junior Minister (a kind of deputy to Ms Coughlan) has still to be nominated. The Junior Min. usually gets the (lowly?) organic brief. 

Green Dreams  The new Minister will be busy cramming over the next few weeks and she will undoubtedly be targeted by all sorts of powerful lobbyists. It would be unrealistic to suppose that organics will impinge on her consciousness to any extent. It might therefore be useful for the Green Party to repeat their urgings, from earlier this week, to Min. Coughlan and her Junior (when appointed); "The reform of EU agriculture provides a real opportunity for Irish farming to diversify and the government needs to provide real support, advice and incentives for those who want to go organic." They also pointed out that the organic market in Ireland is now worth over €38 million (not €38 billion! as elsewhere reported).

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. The previous Junior Minister, Noel Treacy, launched a booklet, Your guide to organic food and farming, last week at the farmers' market in Galway. Nice design, good pictures and, for the average punter, sets out the main tenets and advantages of organics. The publication suggests season-by-season products and recipes and will be as effective - or non-effective! - as any supermarket promotion leaflet. It is produced by the Organic Market Development Group set up by the Dept. of Agriculture. If you are interested, and can wait for the 1.5 Mbyte to download (and have PDF), go to www.agriculture.ie/organics/guide/Organic_Guide.pdf  I won't say anything about the typographical errors - sure we all maka them.
The Farmers Journal last week (I don't read it - thanks to correspondent, J., for alerting me) carried an item on Mellows College in Galway (remember the campaign we were all involved in last year to retain the organic facilities at said establishment?). It seems that Galway County Council are now casting greedy eyes on the land at Mellows for industrial development.
If the West is still awake, we might hear more about this soon. 

Organic matters to some  The IOFGA bi-monthly magazine, Organic Matters, gets better by the day (or two-month). It may be a bit light on content for the money, but what's there is always interesting and design has improved tremendously. I loved the quote in the July/August issue, by my favourite cheese makers, the Iresons from the other side of Hungry Hill, in Kerry; "Supermarkets have no right to sell organic food. They are the enemy of food". See www.organicmattersmag.com 
The UK-published monthly, Country Smallholding, on the other hand, whilst not an exclusively organic (although its by-line is, Organic living at its best) publication, has many articles of interest to Irish organic farmers and has a generous 100 pages (OM has 32).  www.countrysmallholding.com
For some of the most refreshing, stimulating  reading on the web, see the organic pioneers Rodales' site at www.newfarm.org. Read all about the "no-till" planter roller and large-scale composting. 

The Vatican and GM  See www.gmwatch.org on the vagaries of recent Vatican decisions on GMOs. Start reading their Newsletters from 20th September, Vatican Conference (on GMOs) condemned as tool of US by leading US Catholic, through Monsanto's Man in the Vatican, 24th Sept. to Vatican Conference a disgrace, 29th Sept.

Comfrey  Y'all know about my enthusiasm for comfrey. I have been sending free plants to anyone that asked over the last few years. Can't afford it anymore though. Nobody ever seemed to abide by my request to send a "stamped, addressed envelope" - the postage on the average packet is now about €2.50. A good web page on the wonder-plant that I've just found is;  http://www.futurefoods.com/comfrey.html  I have loads, by the way. Contact me if you want any.

September 23rd 2004
Bracken is a killer   Bracken, the tall fern (pteridium aquilinium) widespread throughout the countryside of the British Isles and that, in its withering state in the autumn and winter, gives our hills their characteristic rusty complexion, has a long history of usefullness to the rural dweller. It was the poor man's thatch: it provided bedding and feed for cattle; it was made into soap (even beer!); and among its many other uses was a rich source of potash. In the post-First World War period, the British Board of Agriculture even considered the commercial exploitation of bracken as a fertilizer. It was demonstrated at the time that 50 tons of fresh ferns, cut in June, could yield 1 ton of potash*. In Japan the young shoots are considered a delicacy and treated much like asparagus. The inhabitants of the Canary Islands dried the roots and ground them into a powder which they then mixed with barley meal to make goflo, a supplement in the diet of the poorer peasant. There are many other examples of the plant being used throughout the world. It even has its place in literature; in Elizabethan England, it was believed the tiny spores of the fern conferred invisibility on the possessor, a myth that Shakespeare used in Henry IV: 'We have the receipt of Fern seed - we walk invisible.'
It is those self-same microscopic spores, however, that have brought bracken into ill-repute in 
recent times, reversing its standing as a usefull and beneficial crop to animals and humans to that of a pest or even a killer. In the last decade it has been shown that the spores contain a toxin, ptaquiloside (PTQ) that is carcinogenic. In the two countries, Brazil and Japan where it is eaten as a vegetable, there are abnormal levels of gastric and oesophageal cancer. There have been warnings about the dangers to humans, particularly in walking through the plants in August when the spores emanate in clouds from the plants. Workers were advised to wear special clothing and even respirators when working among, or near, ferns. There is a measurable economic loss from bracken also; farmers in Britain, it is estimated, lose at least £8 million worth of cattle every year to poisoning from the plants. The problems were regarded as serious enough to warrant the setting up in 1996 of the Bracken Advisory Committee, based at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. 
A new twist to the tale, giving a further thumbs-down to bracken, came from a Danish researcher who delivered a paper at a British Ecological Society meeting in Lancaster this September. Lars Rasmussen, a scientist at  the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University of Denmark, said he had found levels of PTQ, up to 20,000 times acceptable levels, in well water where bracken was nearby. 
This had not been suspected before, and if true, should deeply concern all who live near bracken and drink water from a source local to the plant. 
The Danish researcher claims that the highly soluble compound, 'like sugar', washes from the plant and roots into ground water thus contaminating nearby wells.This could account, he says  for cancer clusters throughout the world where bracken is close to drinking water. Venezuelan scientists recently confirmed a link between bracken-covered countryside and stomach cancer. It could solve, he suggests, the long-standing mystery of Gwynned County, in north Wales, where, in the 1980s and '90s, doctors found an abnormally high incidence of gastric cancer. Rasmussen believes that some of the water supply in Gwynedd could have been heavily contaminated with PTQs. The rural area near Snowdon, like many such uplands throughout Britain and Ireland, has seen the sheep population expand enormously in recent decades. Bracken has kept in step with this intensification, spreading at the rate of 3% per year, mostly at the expense of heather. Rasmussen's research shows that the time of the highest levels of contamination is in summer, particularly after heavy rainfall. PTQ is 'just as mobile as pollutants like nitrates', he maintains. 
Short of widespread research and testing, and attempts to get rid of bracken, there is isn't an awful lot that can be done. In the meantime however it would be highly advisable to avoid bracken like the plague, particularly in late summer, and if your water source is suspect, switch to another. Another problem is that milk can be contaminated from cows eating bracken but whereas that could be a danger to the individual farm family consuming their own milk or making milk-based products, the risk would be minimised when mixed with milk from a range of farms. 
Alas for the demise of an ancient folk crop and remedy - bracken roots, bruised and boiled were used to 'kill the broad and long worms in the body' and sciatica (Mrs Grieve). 
So, stick to the real asparagus, forego making soap with bracken - if you were ever so rural craft-oriented - and definitely, don't contemplate making beer with it! 
Rasmussen has also something to say about the new GM crops. GM maize, for example, he tells us, has been generated to produce higher levels of plant toxins to combat pests and weeds. 'Some of these toxic natural products have a similar structure to PTQ and I think they will behave in a similar way', he concludes. He hopes to carry out more research in this area.

You might like to refer also to an item I did on on bracken in 2002; see Hill walking could give you cancer 

* I cleared an acre or so of bracken when I first came to this smallholding in West Cork. The neighbours said that my 6' tall forest of bracken 'was a good sign of the soil'. They also said I would never get rid of it. 'Spraying is the only thing for it' , one insisted. Spraying wasn't an option for me, nor cutting either, as I wanted (for health reasons mostly) to completely eliminate the plant, if possible. I also wanted to grow root vegetables. So I set about ploughing it up. My first pass with a small tractor, my 45 hp Ford, and a two-furrow plough, didn't get down deep enough to reach the roots or rhizomes. When the soil had settled a bit, I cross-ploughed with one plough board removed. This ripped through the deep mat of intertwining black roots and mostly brought them to the surface. I then dug them up with a fork (called locally ' a four-prong pike') making small heaps. I estimated there was about thirty tons of the stuff. I was lucky with the early spring weather; the heaps dried out and I was able to burn them, afterwards scattering the ashes. I was aware of the potash value of the above-ground plant but I wan't sure if the roots had the same properties. The potatoe crop that followed was phenomenal - the potash must have been there - and eight years on, although the same field has been fallow for the last two years, there is no reappearance of the fern. 

September 21st 2004 I had neglected the Archives pages for a while. It's a painful procedure because of some glitch in my FrontPage software. After a tedious few hours today, they are now up to date.
I will have a news update tomorrow. The main item will be about new research that bracken produces cancer-causing toxins that are contaminating water supplies.
Several new markets on Where to Buy... page. I hear that a lot of you are printing out this page. Good. I am going to do some research, improve the page and make it "printer friendly"soon. 
Eamon Ryan of the Irish Green Party has now dropped out of the Irish presidential election and it now looks like a one-horse race. It's a pity - it was great to hear him and green issues being given such prominence in the Irish media; Marian Finucane's popular radio show gave him almost 40 minutes last week. It's a big change to give runners rather than candidates already on the ballot such coverage. It was different in 1997. You might be interested in my "green" attempt to become a presidential candidate in the last presidential election. See, From the garden to the Park - almost

September 11th 2004  The dreadful events in Russia in the last week have brought us to a new level of barbarity. Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of the Beslan horror* and on this day too, to those of the casualities of  9/11. And, in a wider context, we should all remember the dead, maimed and wounded in all wars and conflicts throughout the world. 
Atrocity begets atrocity it is said, and the cycle of hatred and revenge seems to be unbreakable. It is sometimes such a sad, mad  world we live in.
The unspeakable brutalities committed in North Ossetia, and in the Russian and Indonesian bombings, have understandably shifted the focus of the world's media away from other news. 

* What can our political leaders be thinking of? Their  miserly €100,000 donation to the victims of the Beslan school is being castigated as an insult to the survivors. Why even bother? But, thank goodness, we have a big heart in this country and there is a different and much more humane and generous response coming from NGOs - as usual. Hopefully the government will be shamed into giving funds appropriate to the decent will of the people.

The End of Food Democracy in Europe   
This week saw depressing developments on the food and agriculture front - the capitulation of the EU to US trade pressure and that of the global biotech industry. Seventeen GM seeds have been approved for use in Europe and have been added to the Common Catalogue of Seeds. Monsanto has also been been allowed to import and process a GM variety of oilseed rape, GT 73, resistant to its Roundup herbicide. A controversial measure to allow contamination of conventional seed by GMOs has been put on the long finger. Apparently, during discussions of the lattter, David Byrne, the EU food safety boss, revealed his true, pro-GM colours by supporting a contamination level almost ten times the lowest level proposed! And he is supposed to be responsible for consumer protection. 
It is probably not too hyperbolic to say that this is the beginning of the end of organic and, indeed, conventional non-GMO farming, in Europe. Fischler, and Leamy, and Davy Byrne and their behind-the-scenes influences, have won the day - Pandora's Box has been opened and the monster within has been unleashed.  
It is a sad day for those of us who have tried to do their bit in the last five years or more to stem the greed-driven progress of GM food and promote organic and other healthy food production systems and consumption. The decision removes the right of national governments wanting to protect traditional farming techniques in their own countries and protect the democratic rights of its citizens. There is little doubt that the majority of European consumers don't want GM food - a recent Which report in the UK showed that 61% are concerned about GMOs in food. And the trend is increasingly against GM; in the same report the percentage in favour of GMOs has droppped by 25% in two years. 
The organic lobby has not been acquiescent; "EU member states, which are supposed to develop national legislation to protect conventional and organic farming from GMO contamination, will be left no room for manoeuvre," said Marco Schlüter of IFOAM (the international organic umbrella org.) Europe.
See Friends of the Earth site -  http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/uk_farmers_to_grow_gm_maiz_08092004.html 
We have indeed surrendered; remember this quote from a few years' back which revealed the cunning hand of the industry? "The hope of the industry (ABCs – AgBioTech Corps) is that over time the market is so flooded (with GM organisms) that there’s nothing you can do about it. You just sort of surrender!" Don Westfall, Vice President, Promar International, Washington, consultants to Kellogs, Unilever, Aventis etc. 
Their game was always to insinuate GMOs by stealth, and intelligent, liberal, activist Europe was always the big nut to crack. Now they have finally got their way. The rest of the world will be a relative walkover. The biotech industry will be able to assuage the doubts of developing countries over exports and demonstrate to them that the second largest consumer block in the world is now toeing the GM line. 
It's ironic that as Europe falls to the GM industry more and more counties in the US are following the example of Mendocino County, California in declaring themselves GMO-free areas. The movement is growing apace; Trinity County, also in California, is now GMO-free and twelve other counties in the state are debating the topic. It is expected, in time, that the whole state will declare itself as anti-GM. The east coast is also awake; several New England counties are also on the verge of declaring themselves against biotechnology in food crops. 
The movement is very well established in the UK with many districts and councils already declared and there are nascent groups in many other countries. 
Perhaps the time is ripe for consumer groups and all other interested parties in Ireland and elsewhere to build on this movement, insinuating themselves into local politics and initiating GMO-free zones (remember how Adi Roche in Ireland and others successfully followed this path back in the 1980s leading to "nuclear-free zones". Cork city and county to this day boasts of this status).
Remember that "co-existence" - Fischler's devious invention - of GM, organic and conventional crops  is an absolute nonsense. Read about what happened to "contained", co-existing GM papaya in Hawaii (chaos and controversy - organic papaya there is now fetching 600% more than the GM type) and Thailand on www.gmwatch.org).  
A documentary film, Future of Food, which, in the making, influenced the Mendocino County decision is being hailed as the most "eloquent and compelling introduction to the complicated subject of GM". The director, Deborah Koons Garcia, spent three  years developing the project; "My goal was to make a film that gave the average person a clear understanding of how genetic engineering works, from the cellular level to the global level. I'm hoping this film can be a combination of Silent Spring and The Battle of Algiers. Once you see it you'll feel compelled to act, even if that means just changing the kind of food you eat." 
Fighting words indeed Ms Garcia; the film is undoubtedly headed to become an essential tool of general education on GMOs throughout the world and will be extremely useful in countering the seductive, glossy propaganda of the biotech industry which they even unashamedly use in junior schools. I will be making enquiries about the availability of the film over the next week.  
Eco-writer William Engdahl sums up the problem succintly; "If the spread of GM crops continues at the current pace, within perhaps seven to eight years, the essential food supply of mankind will pass to the corporate control of perhaps three to four giant multinationals. Such power over life and death has never before in history been so concentrated in so few hands (my emphasis).Most shocking is that such a profound policy change is being advanced with almost complete absence of truly independent scientific study, or analysis of long-term possible negative effects of genetically modified foods, sometimes called GMO’s, on either humans or animals. Since April 18, 2004 the EU, under heavy pressure from Washington, has permitted gene-manipulated foods to be sold inside the EU for the first time since a ban was imposed in 1998. The new rule appears to be a control of GM products, as it imposes labelling, somewhat like that warning on cigarettes, that a product contains a certain percent GM substance. The EU Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, an open fan of GM food, hails it as "farmers' right to choose."
From "Gene-manipulated Seeds: Are We losing Our Food Security Too? By F. William Engdahl www.currentconcerns.ch/archive/2004/04/20040401.php  via www.gmwatch.org 
Only the most drastic action can now claw back food democracy in Europe. The good should get going!

Tuesday 7th September 2004 
Book  Don't forget to get a copy of  Not on the label; What really goes into the food on your plate by Felicity Lawrence, published by Penguin, £7.99. Irish readers can get a copy in the discount book and stationery shop, Reeds in Nassau Street, Dublin and in Patrick's Street, Cork (just up the road from Eason). There are savings of up to 40% on current books (don't know how a relatively small two-shop business does it - I have some experience of the book trade having been a bookseller and publisher myself for 15 years, battling against the like of Eason, who were both your wholesaler and a competing retailer - but sin scéal eile).
Thanks to my correspondents (and especially J.G. from Tipperary) for prompt information on the book about BSE and Alzheimer's Disease. See below. 

Dying for a hamburger  Did you hear of the new film about McDonald's doing a "Michael Moore" in the States? It's, again, a low-budget satirical/activist documentary that's competing with the megabucks offerings from Hollywood. The director and lead actor/guinea pig, Morgan Spurlock, raised a minuscule $65,000 to make the film in which he subjects himself to "living " off McDonald's "meals" for a month. He eat three meals a day, working his way through the whole range, accepting Super Size (the very, very large American portions) whenever they were offered. The poor man was a wreck within a few weeks, and his medical advisers were pleading with him to come off the diet. He persisted, however, and after the month, he had gained a whoping thirty pounds, his cholesterol levels were alarming and he had symptoms of both liver and heart disease. 
The film earned a best director award at the 2004 Sundance festival. It's such a thorn to McD's that they took out expensive press ads in advance of the film's release to counter the effects of the documentary.
45 million people eat at McDonald's every day!
Google it for more - www.google.com

And if that isn't enough to put you off your burger, try this; Dying For A Hamburger: Modern Meat Processing And The Epidemic Of Alzheimer's Disease*. One of the authors, Dr Waldman, is a coroner for Toronto City and is also employed by the University of Toronto. They make the extraordinary claim that there is a link between eating beef, at least from large-scale meat processors, and the modern high rate (one in 10 people over 65) of Alzheimer's Disease. They say that the prevalence of Alzheimer is a modern phenomenon in the West, related to our industrialisation of meat production, and extra-controversially, a prion disease related to BSE and the human variant, Creutzfield/Jakob disease. 
If what they say is conclusively proved - and it's not apparently in the book - it would have a staggering effect on the beef-producing nations, including ourselves. But the jury, it would seem, is still out and the beef industry's bacon is saved - for a time.
There has been strong criticism by experts of the authors' claim that Alzheimer is a prion disease. But methinks a stone has been lifted and there are a few more worms to come out from under it.
One of the several disturbing facts in their book is that Alzheimer's Disease is very low in countries that eat little or no beef e.g. India, and high in countries like ourselves with large consumption. For more information on the dreadful meat-packing industry in the US, read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (Penguin 2001). See Publications page and search Archived Weekly News  
For more information on Alzheimer in Ireland, see - www.alzheimer.ie   

* By Dr. Murray Waldman and  Marjorie Lamb. Published, 2004  by Random House www.randomhouse.com. 

Distance no object  An t-Ionad Glas, The Organic College, Dromcollogher, Co. Limerick is now offering Distance Learning courses on organic and sustainability subjects. If you're reading this you obviously have access to the Internet and that's all you need to become a student of this innovative and friendly college. Contact Jim McNamara or Tom Atkins at 063 83604 or look up their website - www.organiccollege.com  
The College will also be hosting a Heritage Day next Saturday from 2 - 6pm, that, if my previous experience is anything to go by, will be stimulating and good fun. I'm sorry to see that they're not doing their usual barbecue this year. Their organic lamb chops and burgers were sensational.

Ed. All this talk of burgers is making me salivate - I'd murder a big, juicy organic burger, right now. I wonder if Super Valu in Castletownbere, have Ballinree mince? Dear though it be, I'd take the plunge and put my luscious, home-smoked mackeral to one side for a day or two. The fishing's been good, by the way - the main reason I've been off-line these last few weeks. I have a freezer to fill now. The weather's been fantastic too since last weekend and the annual mackeral run is still going strong (they like the water temperature to be above 15 degrees).