Leafy Greens Munched in D.C. July 29
The Leafy Green Agreements Hearing was held July 29, I was told to look into CODEX ALIMENTARIUS
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, http://www.bartelby.net/73/1056.html WHAT FUTURE OF FOOD ARE YOU CHOOSIING
These Baby Leafy Greens were What is the education that 1. EMBRACING THE DIRT! "Bio-diversity is everything!"
Launch in external player or download. 2. HYGIENICALLY GROWN VEGGIES These are becoming popular in Japan. Japanese 'plant factory' churn out immaculate vegetables "They look more like the brightly WHAT IS THE ANSWER
"BEET KEEPERS, Return!" GROWING YOUR OWN PRODUCE MAY
HERE IS a 12 MINUTE EDUCATION 1. SEE KEEP The BEET...for those over 21 please!!! 2. Take a look at this Humorous five minutes 3. JOIN THE MISSION ORGANIC 2010! REAL SCIENCE, REAL BENEFITS LEAFY GREENS: UPDATE, ABOUT THE HEARING REP DENNIS KUCINICH is chairman of Subcommittee Hearing Titled: Hearing: “Ready to Eat or Not?: Location: Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2154 On Wednesday, July 29, 2009, at 2:00 p.m. in room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Domestic Policy Subcommittee will hold a hearing entitled, “Ready to Eat or Not?: Examining the Impact of Leafy Green Marketing Agreements.” The hearing will examine the safety of ready to eat produce, the successes and challenges posed by the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (CALGMA), as well as its proposed nationalization. The hearing will focus on bagged or value added leafy greens marketed as “ready to eat,” the role of private industry and government in regulating these products, and the economic, environmental, and food safety impacts of that regulation. The safety of “ready to eat” leafy greens has come under scrutiny after outbreaks of E. coli were traced back to contaminated bagged products, including the 2006 outbreak which resulted in more than 200 hospitalizations, five deaths and nearly $400 million in losses of produce. 4:04 PM From MR MICHAEL TAYLOR's TESTIMONY http://groc.edgeboss.net/download/groc/domesticpolicy/testimony.of.mr.michael.r.taylor.pdf Most produce is grown in an outdoor environment, MICHAEL TAYLOR UPDATES US ON CODEX In addition, FDA is leading an effort through the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the international food safety standards body, with support of the Food and Agriculture OrganzationlWorld Health Organization, to develop commodity-specific annexes to the Codex hygienic code for fresh fruit and vegetable production, starting with an annex for fresh leafy http://groc.edgeboss.net/download/groc/domesticpolicy/testimony.of.mr.michael.r.taylor.pdf IT's ABOUT TRADE: SUMMARY FROM the TESTIMONY We recommend that the USDA does not establish a national LGMA due to the negative environmental consequences that will occur. Until deer are taken off the animals of significant risk list, the scope is narrowed to processed greens, the vague areas tighten up, and most importantly the supermetrics reigned in, the LGMA should not become a national program. Besides the degradation of soil, water and wildlife habitat wherever leafy greens are grown, millions of public dollars are at stake. Farmers in markets that require the LGMA and supermetrics will be encouraged to take out previously installed conservation practices and will be hesitant to put in new ones that protect our natural resources. Such misguided food safety requirements are counterproductive. http://www.wildfarmalliance.org/Press%20Room/press_room_National_LGMA.htm ON PASSAGE OF #HR 2749 We stand with our Republican allies on this bill We stand with REP FRANK LUCAS (R) Oklahoma, We stand with lawyer BILL MARLER He urges the passage of #HR 2749 He says: "There is a great deal of resistance from smaller food producers, who feel that the bill will unfairly burden them. Here is my promise: if the effects of the bill turn out to be onerous for small food producers – those that sell food to neighbors or at farmer’s markets - I will personally take up the effort to amend the bill. In the mean time, I urge everyone who cares about safe food to call his or her Congressperson and urge passage of HR 2749. It really is long past time to “put me out of business.” http://www.marlerblog.com/articles/lawyer-oped/ MR MARLER shops at his local Farmers' Market Washington, here we come!!! HERE IS a GREAT BOOK, (KEEP the BEET gets a note on P. 244.) WANT TO READ KEEP the BEET's OTHER STORY ON LEAFY GREENS
kids in the field at KEEPING CHILDREN and DEER out Crops, ponds destroyed in quest for food safety Is it true that an organic farmer in CA He has since ripped out such plants in the name of food safety, because his big customers demand sterile buffers around his crops. No vegetation. No water. No wildlife of any kind. "I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop," he said. "On one field where a deer walked through, didn't eat anything, just walked through and you could see the tracks, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of the tracks and annihilate the crop." REQUEST TO ESTABLISH a FEDERAL LEAFY GREENS MARKETING On a parallel, and completely-related track, a petition was delivered to USDA on June 8th that requests the establishment of a Federal Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement. If approved, this would extend the standards used by the largest greens growers in the country to any farmer that agreed to sign-on, and make the California agreement the de facto standard for any farmer supplying greens to markets across the country. http://nlgma.org/fresh-produce-industry-associations-peti.php 9:28 PM I have been looking at There is a move to nationalize This Hearing was held July 29 I am dissapointed that Dennis Glad this hearing on Leafy Greens took place. http://domesticpolicy.oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=2557 ACTION ALERT FROM THE H.R. 2749 The Food Safety Enhancement Act UPDATE -- July 29, 2009, 3:30 PM: The House of Representatives is voting today (July 29, 2009) Please contact your Representative immediately You can watch the vote on H.R. 2749 Also today, Representative Dennis Kucinich i This hearing examines one of the most pressing concerns RELATED LINK: National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition July 29, 09 FROM REP DENNIS KUCINICH OPENING STATEMENT Here are some of the details. “Ready-to-Eat or Not?: Examining the Impact of July 29, 2009 While it is largely silent on key questions applying to upstream processing and distribution of Ready to Eat produce, CALGMA has a lot to say about farming practices and land stewardship. Small and organic farmers in particular have expressed concern about the costs and scientific justification for some of CALGMA’s requirements. Some of CALGMA’s metrics are seen to be in direct conflict with environmental protection and widely accepted agricultural practices. In some cases, streams have been contaminated, wildlife refuge destroyed, and biodiversity threatened by farmers’ efforts to remain in compliance with CALGMA metrics. Today we hope to address why CALGMA’s regulatory framework has focused solely on farming practices, to the exclusion of the rest of the supply chain. It seems the farmers have taken the brunt of the burden of minimizing contamination, when it may make more scientific sense to focus attention on the processing, packaging and distribution of Ready to Eat produce. Consumers have a right to expect that the food they eat is safe. It is in the public health interest that Americans consume greater amounts of raw vegetables. But whether or not nationalizing CALGMA, as the USDA has proposed, is the best way to achieve those goals is the question this hearing addresses. I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses today on this important issue. __ DALE COKE http://groc.edgeboss.net/download/groc/domesticpolicy/testimony.of.mr.dale.coke.pdf Pre-cut, packaged leafy greens, marketed as “Ready to eat,” have become Yet as the popularity of bagged lettuce and spinach has increased, so have rare but serious food borne illnesses associated with it. Outbreaks of E. coli 0157 and other pathogens have occurred in relation to pre-cut, packaged leafy greens at least once a year practically every year since 2003. Regulation to prevent these outbreaks rests in the hands of the industry. The California Leafy Greens Handler Marketing Agreement (CALGMA) was 2.) Farmer Liability. The majority of food disease outbreaks related to leafy WILD SITE Food Safety Teach-In Session Notes and Descriptions Dan Imhoff, Director of Watershed Media http://www.wildfarmalliance.org/Press%20Room/press_room_event_expand.htm Food Safety Requires a Healthy Environment WFA Food Safety Paper "Food Safety Requires a Healthy Environment: Policy Recommendations for E. coli O157" Major recommendations include: a) the unfounded targeting of wildlife is stopped; b) buffers between crops and grazing lands are vegetated instead of left bare, and no buffer is required between crops and habitat; c) a ceiling is placed on all government authorized food safety programs to curtail the use of environmentally destructive super metrics; and d) food safety auditors are certified through programs teaching agricultural natural resource protections that reduce the incidence of harmful pathogens on the landscape. http://www.wildfarmalliance.org/Press%20Room/press_room_research.htm#health FROM HEALTHY FOOD SAFETY: OTHER LINKS AND RELATED BLOGS Turning a New Leafy Green http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/turning-a-new-leafy-green-195 By: Matt Palmquist | March 04, 2008 | 12:23 PM (PST) | Beyond a program to monitor E. coli in water, Redmond argues, the key to combating it in leafy greens lies in the animal kingdom — and, more specifically, in cow manure fertilizer. "The more we look at it, the more we reluctantly have to admit that the reservoirs of E. coli are in cattle — pigs, geese and deer are just diversions," she says. ARE THEIR NATURAL SOLUTIONS Abstract "They're used to working inside the factory walls," said Ken Kimes, owner of New Natives farms in Aptos (Santa Cruz County) and a board member of the Community Alliance With Family Farmers, a California group. "If they're not prepared for the farm landscape, it can come as quite a shock to them. Some of this stuff that they want, you just can't actually do." Auditors have told Kimes that no children younger than 5 can be allowed on his farm for fear of diapers. He has been asked to issue identification badges to all visitors. Not only do the rules conflict with organic and environmental standards; many are simply unscientific. Surprisingly little is known about how E. coli is transmitted from cow to table. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/12/MN0218DVJ8.DTL=rss.news#ixzz0LuNSeXTn IT's ABOUT TRADE: OOOPS!!! http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/16/hr-2749-totalitarian-control-of-the-food-supply/ "* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This astounding control opens the door to CODEX. WTO "good farming practices" will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry's products. They will be slaves on the land, doing the work they are ordered to do - against their own best wisdom - and paying out to industry against their will. There will be no way to be frugal, to grow one's own grain to feed the animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work with nature at all. Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be finished. So, it's obvious where control will take us. And weren't these the "rumors on the internet" that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]" OPPS-2 http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/cafta/Agriculture.html "Underpinning the WTO, FTAA, and CAFTA is the ideology that all food -- from basic grains and meat to fruits and vegetables -- should be produced for international export. This is a drastic shift from the centuries-old practice where each country produced the majority of food its citizens needed on local, small farms -- and only traded in certain products that could not be grown locally. Indeed, the first great wave of globalization -- the colonization of Africa, Asia, and Latin America -- was based on transnational companies forcing local farmers to give up local food production, and shift production to plantations using enslaved Indigenous and African labor to grow luxury crops of coffee, sugar, bananas, and cocoa for export to the colonizing countries." POEM FOR THE DAY I plan to read this one A POEM for ROLLO This big fella, he was a Burger King kind of guy, I just came from this HIlton health show. September 3, 1985 8:34 PM
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