“First they came for the raw milk” — The Crown’s appeal of farmer Michael Schmidt’s landmark 2010 acquittal — April 13, 2011, Newmarket. Be there!

It'll be back to court at 50 Eagle Street Newmarket for farmer Michael Schmidt and his legions of supporters April 13th to hear the Crown appeal of his 2010 acquittal on 19 raw milk charges.

Ever since Justice Paul Kowarsky acquitted Durham area farmer Michael Schmidt on 19 raw milk related charges in January of 2010, a truce of sorts has prevailed on the raw milk front in Ontario. And the massive publicity that accompanied that acquittal has made Michael Schmidt into even more of a public figure and a hero of the food rights movement across North America than he was before.

Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the Fuller brush and the geodesic dome, had plans for tracking food products

From Justice Critic Gordon S. Watson:

Back in the late 60s, I had the privilege of seeing Buckminster Fuller speak at Simon Fraser University and UBC. One of the best thinkers of modern times, his main theme was that mankind is endlessly creative, therefore technology would ‘save’ us. I don’t believe that any more, but I am confident the solution to the controversy over dairying to obtain raw milk, safely, is available right now

Here’s the link to something I predicted about a decade ago …  a system for tracking an item of food, from producer to plate.  With a couple of tweaks, this software can be applied to every single jar of REAL MILK coming out of the milk room, from an artisanal dairy :  https://thisfish.info/about/what/

Trace-ability?  I’ll give you trace-ability ….  any given jar can be tracked back to the very cow “who” produced it, at which milking,  on what day of the week!  …  let’s see you do that, BC Dairy Producers … with your 1000s of cows on the 546 dairy farms in British Columbia, mingling all their truckloads of milk into the pipelines of two processors, then that “homo milk” sitting on 1000s of retail shelves for 30 days!!

Bees “entombing” pesticide-laden pollen in sealed cells, scientists say

From Fiona Harvey at The Guardian, a UK newspaper:

Entombed' pollen is identified as having sunken, wax-covered cells amid 'normal', uncapped cells. Photograph: Journal of Invertebrate Pathology, via The Guardian UK

“Honeybees are taking emergency measures to protect their hives from pesticides, in an extraordinary example of the natural world adapting swiftly to our depredations, according to a prominent bee expert.

Scientists have found numerous examples of a new phenomenon –bees “entombing” or sealing up hive cells full of pollen to put them out of use, and protect the rest of the hive from their contents. The pollen stored in the sealed-up cells has been found to contain dramatically higher levels of pesticides and other potentially harmful chemicals than the pollen stored in neighbouring cells, which is used to feed growing young bees.