Germany bans Monsanto’s GMO corn

Here’s an excerpt from the Spiegel Online story:

Greenpeace activists take a sample from a Monsanto test site near Borken in North Rhine-Westphalia: The GM crop MON 810 has been banned in Germany. DPA photo.

“…Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by theAmerican biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

Raw milk farmer Michael Schmidt on the campaign trail in his local riding: “You can’t win if you don’t play.”

As you may remember, we reported earlier that raw milk farmer and food rights activist Michael Schmidt has decided to seek the Progressive Conservative party nomination in his local riding of Bruce Grey Owen Sound. Since then, Michael has been traveling around meeting people, hearing their stories and sharing his political perspectives. Here are some excerpts from material recently posted on his political blog and website:

The decline of farming and rural life can be seen along roadsides throughout Ontario, and not just in Bruce Grey Owen Sound riding, although that's where this picture is from. Photo by Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt on “Why I am seeking your support”: “One of the reasons I have decided to run in the upcoming provincial election is because people are telling me so many stories of their struggles – and defeats – in dealing with the endless streams of bureaucratic regulations.

Factory farming and sewage sludge use on farmland blamed for death of lakes

Who says investigative journalism is dead? This report by David Michael, from Augie’s Journal of Natural Food and Healing shows that concerned individuals are still out there, digging the dirt on matters of public concern. Here’s an excerpt from David’s report:

“Human illnesses and animal deaths have occurred recently from neurotoxins secreted by a heavy slime of blue and green algae floating on Ohio’s largest lake—Grand Lake St. Mary’s (Grand Lake) in Auglaize County. This is a lake that has been deteriorat ing for decades, but especially so in the past 10 years as factory farms have sprung up all over the area, and more are being built.

Front line dispatches from the milk war

Here’s an excerpt from the latest updates from David E. Gumpert’s “The Complete Patient” blog:

“The struggle for access to nutritionally-dense food has evolved into a multi-front war, and the action is becoming hot and heavy, with little respect for vacation timetables…or individual rights. Counteroffenses are being fought, where skilled attorneys are willing to take up the struggle. Here are three key developments over the last week:

Food recalls — the end of real food?

Here’s an excerpt from Raine Saunders of the AgricultureSociety.com blog, on what the recent egg recalls may be a prelude to:

“For a long time I believed that with every food recall story in the media, we’d see more and more people start taking notice of what’s going on in the food system – that food produced in factory environments is harming our health because everything is completely backward and geared toward the reign of big food and corporate agriculture – and that sustainable agriculture would start to become the order of the day.

Food recalls are not doing the job they should – they are not waking people up fast enough. The more we continue to support big agriculture’s products by ignoring these problems, the more control will be given to entities (the government) and corporations (Big Pharma and Big Agriculture – companies like Tyson, Smithfield, Swift, and Cargill who control over 80 percent of the food sold in our country) to dictate the future of food growth, production, sales, and health (or lack thereof).

Nutraloaf — cruel and unusual dinner?

Yet another assault on the essential needs of human beings — excerpted from a post on the Boing Boing blog:

Perhaps only the "space food" eaten by astronauts could be less appealing. Photo via Boing Boing

“Act up in prison and you’ll lose precious privileges … like food you actually want to eat.

Shareholders demand Kellogg label and remove GMO ingredients from products

Concerned citizens are once again taking matters into their own hands and using direct action to effect corporate change. This story is excerpted from organic consumers.org:

Battle Creek, MI — “Why should Kellogg shareholders take a bullet forMonsanto?” asks Michael Passoff, of the As You Sow Foundation. The foundation is part of a shareholder group that has filed a resolutionchallenging the company over its use of genetically engineered foods.

The resolution, which will be voted on Friday, asks the company to remove genetically engineered ingredients from their products until long term testing has proven them safe. It also proposes an interim step of labeling products that contain these ingredients.

Playing chicken with the egg scare

Here’s an excerpt from Globe and Mail food reporter Jessica Leeder’s take on “Massive egg recall opens window on inhumane farming”:

What's it about, the chicken or the egg? Photo via Globe and Mail.com

“If anyone stands to benefit from the most sweeping egg recall in America’s history, it is the chickens.

Animal-welfare advocates waging an ongoing war to free caged birds have seized on the U.S. recall of half a billion eggs over fears of salmonella contamination as evidence that common industrial egg-producing systems are not only inhumane, they pose a real threat to food safety.

Another media rant on how “Raw milk draws fans, despite being illegal to sell”

It’s pretty much the same old story we’ve heard a hundred times before. But it’s not going away. Time and again the media throw it up into the public’s face. No wonder raw milk is on a roll in America. Free publicity like you can’t believe.

You've gotta wonder what the government's repeated attempts to suppress raw milk does to people's attitudes towards their government. Photo by William J. Lizdas, captioned "Raw milk flows directly from the bulk tank to glass jars at the dairy farm of Kay and Wayne Craig."

Well sure they quote the government naysayers. But people are not stupid. I’ll bet fewer and fewer of them are still “drinking the kool aid”. Nope, they’ve switched — to raw milk!

This time our eternal story of raw milk’s popular appeal despite dire government warnings is by Rick Barrett of the Journal Sentinel. We found it at JSOnline, where it’s titled “Raw milk draws fans, despite being illegal to sell“:

“Some people drive a long way for a gallon of raw milk at Wayne Craig’s farm in New Holstein.

It’s one of a dozen or so dairy farms in the state openly providing unpasteurized milk to the public – a practice that regulators say is illegal and unsafe because the milk can carry pathogens capable of making someone very ill or even killing them.

Salmonella eggs and food sterilization

Excerpts from a recent Natural News story titled “FDA exploits salmonella eggs recall to pursue food sterilization agenda“:

“(NaturalNews) It’s always amusing to see how quickly consumers can be worked up into a false fear frenzy by health authorities. We saw it last year with the overhyped H1N1 swine flu scare which was fanned into a flaming fear fest by WHO advisors on the take from vaccine manufacturers. Now we’re getting a new round of fear-mongering from many of the same sources who are warning us about salmonella contaminated eggs.

According to mainstream news sources, a massive 380-million-egg recall has been announced, and these eggs are all so incredibly dangerous that you have to immediately remove them from your refrigerator and take them back to the storewhere you bought them so that they can be properly destroyed. This is all backed up by phrases like, “It’s not worth the risk,” and claims that if people eat the eggs, they are taking “too much of a chance.”