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Follow Up on the
News
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Sewer
Decision Time
A public vote on a proposition to create a Boiceville sewer
district is scheduled for Tuesday, May 8 when property owners
in the proposed district
will vote to formally establish the district to be served
by the plant.
"We strongly urge all property owners to attend the Town
Board meeting Tuesday night to get accurate information on
this important project," said Leifeld.
The project is intended to protect water quality in the Esopus
Creek, which feeds the Ashokan Reservoir; to improve economic
development potential in the hamlet; and to eliminate homeowner
management of individual on-site septic systems.
The project is part of the Catskill Watershed Corporation's
Community Wastewater Management Program, which is primarily
funded by New York City. Lamont Engineers of Cobleskill are
designing wastewater management projects for six hamlets in
the program, including Boiceville, in the City's Catskill-Delaware
Watershed.
The governing town boards of these hamlets were asked to voluntarily
participate in the CWMP program and may opt out of the program
up to the point of commencement of construction of a wastewater
management system. In nearby Phoenicia voters opted out of
the program when project opponents rallied enough support
for their cause and won by a small margin.
Leifeld does not think there is significant opposition to
the project in Boiceville though, but that was not always
the case.
“I feel more confident now about it than I felt a month
ago,” he said. “Now I think people see it as the
lesser of two evils.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of people that don’t
want it, but to be honest with you, I don’t know,”
said Boiceville businesswoman and former town board member
Cindy Johanson. “I know a lot of the businesses do (want
the plant) but many of the people I’ve talked to either
recently got new septic systems or they’re just really
upset that they’d be forced into doing something like
this.”
Johanson, who has been a steady presence at meetings between
the town and Lamont Engineering, was personally dispassionate
about the project.
“My thoughts are that the town doesn’t need this
but I could take it or leave it,” she shrugged. “For
me, it’s not a crunch situation. I know there are some
businesses in town that don’t have a lot of space. For
them, and for the school perhaps some alternate needs to be
explored but there are people that want to be included that
haven’t been...Brunel Drive, that whole section was
just totally cut out...and the top of DeSilva Road...If we’re
doing this for the betterment of the town, then let’s
include the places that need it; people that are closely involved.”
Johanson said that, as odd as it may sound, she recently received
an offering of assistance from CWC for a new septic system,
if she needed one. She said she shouldn’t have received
the letter since hers is a commercial site.
Following a study which concluded that a wastewater treatment
plant would be the most efficient and effective means of treating
sewage in Boiceville, the Olive Town Board agreed to proceed
to the design phase, in which a WWTP was designed to handle
an estimated 62,240 gallons of wastewater per day from 92
customers within a specified District. The District was the
subject of a public hearing in March, but the Town Board felt
citizens should have another opportunity to hear and ask questions
about the project before the May 8 vote to establish the District.
The cost of construction of the collection system will be
paid from a block grant out of the CWMP program fund. Operation
and maintenance fees for residences will be capped at $100
per year. Businesses will be charged according to usage, with
a $250 minimum fee per year.
Should voters decide on May 8 not to establish a Boiceville
Sewer District, CWMP Program funds would then pass to another
eligible community listed in the 1997 NYC Watershed Memorandum
of Agreement (MOA).
For more information on voting procedures and locations, contact
the Supervisor's office, 657-8118.
All
The Town’s A Stage...
Burkhardt has been president of the Shandaken Theatrical Society
in Phoenicia for several years, and is therefore no stranger
to the theater. This is, however, her first time directing
a show in Olive, which mainly features Olivite cast members.
“I was approached by the president of the board of directors
at the library to do ‘something theatrical’,”
Burkhardt said in a characteristically animated telephone
interview, “I made the proposal to do Our Town.”
Burkhardt went on to say that all of her time – and
the cast members’ time – is being volunteered,
and that 100 percent of the box office proceeds will be going
back to the library. The library is sponsoring and producing
the play, and is hoping for a return greater than the $500
that they were able to put into the production’s budget.
“This production has been very unique,” Burkhardt
said. “I’m used to having a stage, lights, etc.
They have none of that at the library. There have been a lot
of obstacles to directing this; but it’s made me think
out of the box.”
Burkhardt described the Our Town as “a great play”,
which follows life in the small town of Grover’s Corners,
New Hampshire, during the turn of the last century. The main
focus of the story is the lives of the Gibbs and Webb families.
A character called the Stage Manager, played by Ted French
of Shandaken, walks the audience through time, explaining
who the other characters are, and elucidating upon certain
events.
The play consists of three acts, the last of which being the
source of much of its lasting appeal to American audiences.
In this act, which takes place in a graveyard, deceased members
of the Grover’s Corners community observe the funeral
of one of the main characters, and comment upon life in terms
both lofty and mundane. It is during this act that the audience
of the Olive production will be treated to seeing the pallid
wraiths of the entire Olive town board (excepting, of course,
Mrs. Burkhardt), along with Supervisor Leifeld. But before
Olive Republicans become too overjoyed at the simulated demise
of their rivals, they may find it ominous to note that the
role of John Stoddard the undertaker is played by none other
than John Parete, chairman of the Olive Democratic Party.
Although the temptation to use the play as a method of projecting
politically-motivated fantasies upon the stage may prove overwhelming
for some, Burkhardt insists that the great value of Wilder’s
masterpiece is to help us overcome our petty squabbles, and
look at life from the perspective of something that won’t
last forever, and must be treated as precious.
“We need to enjoy life while we’re living it,
that’s what the play shows me,” Burkhardt said.
“These minutes and seconds only come once; we have to
enjoy them while we can.”
To reinforce her point, Burkhardt read a quote of Wilder’s,
from the preface to the play:
“The past cannot be relived. Living people, humans occupied
with petty occupations and small thoughts, know little of
true joy or happiness. Truth is to be found only in the future.”
The Olive production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town will
be performed May 11, 12, 18, and 19 at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday,
May 13 at 2:00 p.m. (for persons wishing to treat their mothers
to a fanciful dose of mortality.) The location is the Community
Room of the Olive Free Library on Route 28A. Tickets are $7
for adults, $5 for seniors and children ages 5-12, and free
for children under 5.
Reservations are recommended, as seating is limited. Please
call (845) 657-2482.
Acquaintances of the deceased are welcome to bring flowers.
Republicans are asked to retain their applause until the end
of the performance.
The
EPA Weighs In...
The basis behind the FADs are simple: to meet federal Safe
Drinking Water Act requirements for the drinking water of
8 million city dwellers based on the maintained purity of
such water’s source in the Catskills watershed. as protected
by land use regulations and careful stewardship practices.
The basis behind the politics of FAD renewals is equally simple,
in the long run… to utilize the city’s fear of
a costly filtration order to get it to pony up the funds for
local economic enhancement programs, as well as the cost of
such source protection means as home septic and municipal
sewer systems, along with a myriad other programs.
After a particularly stressful review and behind-the-scenes
negotiating process that included the involvement of powerful
Congressmen and the state governor’s office, drawn into
the fray because of new threats of development led by Dean
Gitter’s long-promised Belleayre Resort, the EPA finally
recently issued a draft FAD for New York City’s massive
and complicated water system on April 12, with surprises for
many.
Chief among them was the fact that the EPA, after thorough
review of a revised long-term watershed protection plan that
the New York City Department of Environmental Protection submitted
to the feds last year, decided to extend its usual FAD approval
time from five to ten years.
But also included in the carefully-worded determination was
language that, despite clarifications to the opposite effect
released by New York City since the FAD’s release, seems
to indicate that the DEP will have to pay whatever it takes
to ensure the building of municipal sewer systems in a series
of targeted hamlets, Phoenicia and Boiceville included. As
well as renewed commitments towards large infusions of cash
into the region via city land acquisitions ($300 million),
pumped-up educational programs, and a re-invigorated program
aimed at renovating the region’s private septic systems..
At the same time, the draft FAD released by the EPA last week
also includes a construction schedule for the city’s
building of an ultraviolet light (UV) disinfection plant for
Catskills water by August of 2012, as a supplement to its
existing chlorine disinfection
In reaction to the draft FAD’s release, reactions have
lined up along two basic camps, based on political party and
regional location.
In the former case, State Senators John Bonacic and James
Seward and Assemblymembers Clifford Crouch and Peter Lopez
blasted the EPA’s waiver period extension from five
to ten years, sharply characterizing the move as a means to
give license to the DEP “to be a bully to the people
of the Catskills.” As key issues, apart from the timing,
they brought up the City’s reluctance to extend recreational
use of its Upstate lands – meaning hunting, primarily
– as well as create better flood controls through the
creation of “voids” within its upstate reservoirs.
The Republican legislators meanwhile noted how the State Senate
had passed an act seeking to rescind the City’s authority
to regulate its watershed, without mentioining that act’s
failure to muster any support in the state Assembly, and said
they would be urging upstate towns to pass resolutions condemning
the EPA’s FAD proposal.
Democrat Assembly members Aileen Gunther and Kevin Cahill
simultaneously released a statement that urged cooperation
between Upstate communities and the city during the FAD’s
upcoming review and comment period, which lasts through May.
On a more localized basis, Delaware County economic/industrial
development director Glenn Nealis voiced dissatisfaction regarding
the new FAD from his constituent area, which represents the
largest geographic portion of the watershed. But he also said
the fact of the FAD revealed growing problems within the region’s
ability to function as a viable political entity, as it did
when first fighting New York City regulatory changes a decade
ago.
“Delaware County and the rest of the West of Hudson
communities have gotten exactly what we deserve,” Nealis
said of the growing FAD brouhaha. “We spent the whole
time bickering among ourselves over who should be making comments
and proposals and nobody got anything done. The Coalition
of Watershed Towns dropped the ball and have been asleep at
the switch.”
Officials and residents in Ulster County, meanwhile, said
they saw the extension to ten years as an admission by all
that no new major regulatory changes would be expected for
that period of time. And they welcomed the new benefits inherent
in the EPA’s waiver document.
So what will the benefits of the proposed new FAD be for local
residents?
“The program will continue to support the rehabilitation
or replacement of approximately 300 septic systems per year,”
the FAD says of a popular component of the city’s watershed
operations that have helped thousands fix septic systems already
over the last decade. “A new initiative will evaluate
the need for and feasibility of a septic cluster system program…
and funding needs will be assessed to evaluate whether additional
monies are required to address the identified needs.”
As for the community systems program, which ran into its first
big obstacle this past winter when Phoenicia property owners
voted against a proposed system with $17 million in promised
city funding, it seems New York has been practically ordered
to pay whatever it takes to make local communities offers
they can’t refuse.
“NYCDEP will execute contract changes… that include
funding levels sufficient to complete projects,” the
FAD says in regards to Phoenicia, indirectly addressing property
owner worries that there wouldn’t be enough on hand
to avoid possible =cost overruns to be picked up by local
communities. Similarly, Operations and Maintenance costs would
also have to be covered.
According to DEP spokesman Ian MIchaels, though, “The
new Filtration Avoidance Determination requires that the City
maintain available funding for a possible infrastructure project
in Phoenicia. It does not require that any such project take
place. Participation in the New Infrastructure Program remains
voluntary, and the EPA is fully aware of Phoenicia’s
decision to not participate at this time.”
Talk about splitting hairs…
“While the DEP believes that a new wastewater plant
in Phoenicia would be beneficial both for the town and for
water quality, failure to construct a plant would not jeopardize
filtration avoidance,” Michaels continued. “ Should
there come a time when Phoenicia residents have another opportunity
to join the New Infrastructure Program it would be under the
same terms as previously offered.”
In Boiceville, where a new project is to get voted on by the
community May 8, “NYCDEP will provide sufficient funding
to complete” such projects.
Apart from the wastewater projects and funding language, other
key new areas in the FAD addressed the city’s need to
address the turbidity, or general muddiness, of waters coming
into and out of the Ashokan reservoir, a problem brought to
a head in the past year via a successful lawsuit from Trout
Unlimited and other organizations. With flooding also a concern,
the city will implement a new long term plan for Stream Management
throughout the Catskills, including research and riparian
buffer protection programs to help stabilize streambanks.
Continuing dredging of the Schoharie Reservoir, who had much-discussed
dam repairs started in the last year, and future analysis
of new ways of lowering turbidity levels (and possibly flood
problems) at the Ashokan Reservoir are also expected by next
winter.
Finally, a new waterfowl management program involving “avian
population monitoring, avian harassment activities and avian
deterrence” will be implemented over the coming years
at various sites throughout the reservoir system, including
the Ashokan.
The last time the EPA issued a FAD was in November, 2002,
when deeper involvement with the city’s upstate monitoring
partners, the Catskill Watershed Corporation and Watershed
Agricultural Council – both set up via the negotiation
process between New York and the CWT in the 1990s –
was enhanced, along with added funds for watershed community
wastewater treatment plants.
As part of its consideration for the new FAD, the EPA noted
that among the recent and/or current issues it paid “significant
attention” to were the various opinions within the Upstate
community towards city land acquisition, recreational use
of city-owned lands, ongoing partnership programs with other
agencies within the watershed, and the Belleayre Resort project.
Regarding land acquisitions, acknowledgement was made for
the belief among some that “continuation of the program
could impede future growth,” tempered in the final run
by a belief that such opposition could be softened by working
with land trusts and other localized organizations to better
identify possible lands for acquisition and always ensuring
the “willing seller” basis for the program.
As for the Gitter project — which was raised within
the FAD review process last summer when the developer invited
EPA Regional Administrator Alan J. Steinberg to the Catskills
to see what he was proposing, and then accelerated when Steinberg
started hosting closed-door negotiations between Belleayre
Resort proponents and opponents throughout the fall: “Widely
divergent recommendations were provided about this project.”
To actually see the New York City filtration avoidance determination
in its entirety, visit: www.epa.gov/Region2/water/nycshed/public.htm
Written comments on the proposed FAD renewal should be sent
to New York City Watershed Team EPA Region 2, 290 Broadway,
28th Floor, New York, NY 10007, or by email to sweeney.philip@epa.gov.
Comments will be accepted through May 31.
Pet
Food And Secrecy
In
retrospect, the mysterious wave of deaths from acute renal
failure and similar illnesses had begun to rise last year
but failed to attract widespread attention until early March.
Kidney failure has, in fact, been a leading cause of pet death
for over a decade but the toll was rising dramatically in
2007. The first company to issue a recall notice, after it
was observed that "routine" taste tests in February
were killing one in six of their test animals, was the Canadian
distributor, Menu Foods, who initially recalled over 60 million
cans of "wet food."
At the time the recall was announced, an employee of the NY
State Health Department confided that a rodent poison named
‘aminopterin’ had been detected in pet food samples
by a state lab but, like so much else in this episode, the
idea that folic acid-inhibiting rat poison (detected in only
two samples, according to an early story on the recall), suggestive
of other symptoms which should have been present but were
not, could have contaminated 873 hundred tons of wheat gluten
destined for pet food just didn’t add up even in a layman’s
mind. Cornell University quickly entered the investigation
but, like the FDA, failed to confirm the aminopterin traces.
Toward the end of the month, the new villain was announced
to be the industrial chemical melamine, which was present
in the urine of affected animals but, in none of the readily
available studies, displayed anywhere near the toxicity levels
that would account for the lethal results reported. Again,
the idea that a chemical contaminant could infect so many
tons of wheat protein also seemed unlikely, prompting suspicions
that something else was going on.
Locally, the extent of the secrecy became evident last month
when attempts to gauge the impact on pets of the Catskill-Hudson
Valley region of the Food and Drug Administration’s
national recall of some brands of dog and cat food were met
with one of two typical responses from local veterinarians.
If no deaths had been reported, area vets and animal hospitals
would announce that they had performed some "blood work"
for concerned pet owners but no fatalities had been recorded.
Responses from other vets when asked about pet fatalities,
however, were more along the lines of an ambiguous "We’re
only dealing with the (pet) food (company) representatives
and we can’t give out that information."
Since Menu Foods, as lawsuits began being filed in late March,
announced that they would be responsible for veterinarian
bills proven to associated with the recall, it would seem
apparent that some sort of secrecy provision was attached
these arrangements. Secrecy and misdirection, in fact, seemed
to attend almost every aspect of the recall to the extent
that, for weeks in March and early April, the FDA website’s
recall page, which withheld vital information about the brand
names involved at a critical time, played down the threat
by listing pet fatalities in the teens- a number that was
reflected in major media coverage until the Associated Press
released their first story on the crisis, by Andrew Bridges,
on April 9th, advancing an estimate of 39,000 injured animals.
Meanwhile, as websites maintained by veterinarian associations
and pet-owner groups were posting deaths in the thousands
by the end of March, National Public Radio ran a recall story
in early April citing the FDA figure of 17. On the same day,
3,168 dead pets had been recorded in a survey by a pet-owner
site.
As pet-owners scrambled to keep up with the new names being
added to the recall list of over a hundred brands, some of
them checking Internet listings twice a day because of media
sluggishness on the issue, it was websites like Pet Connection,
Itchmo, Howl911 and others which provided the most valuable
insights and updates on what was really happening. Their message
boards flowed with accounts from bereaved pet-owners- some
of whom had just lost the most precious and dependable presence
in their life- carefully detailing exactly what they had been
feeding their pets, which symptoms developed and what actions
they took. It was only by monitoring these heart-rending accounts
that shoppers could anticipate the next brands to be recalled.
In many cases, this saved animal lives.
The webpages of the PET FOOD companies themselves were generally
defensive and, well, corporate- to a point that even the Financial
Times ran a story advising them adopt a more sensitive and
tempered approach. But denial held sway even as reports flooded
in and brands like Alpo, produced by the Swiss corporation
Nestlé, remained on the "safe" list, inflating
sales until the company finally slipped out its recall announcement
at a 4 AM weekend "press conference."
While the full scope of this story cannot even be approached
in the space available in these pages, some urgent points
still ignored in major media need to at least be touched upon.
The heart of the story isn’t about PET FOOD companies
or supermarkets but rather about corporate culture and the
national news media which has, as part of that culture, been
largely missing in action on these developments- just as it
was on related issues leading up to this point. It is also
about public agencies serving as little more than appendages
of the industries they’re supposedly designed to regulate.
It is also the sorry story of the corporate corruption of
science by CEOs with their heads up their bottom lines.
The missing words in this crisis are ‘genetically modified.’
They are words Cornell, a GM-foods advocate closely associated
with the leading biotech firm Monsanto, kept out of the discourse
when it leaped in to assume its prominent role in the testing.
Wheat gluten has never been demonstrated to be lethally toxic-
nor has melamine. The same can not be said for genetically
engineered wheat and that is the elephant in the room that
stands behind the stalling and cover-up in this case. Aminopterin,
an anti-metabolite which, aside from its brief and aborted
career as a rodent toxin and cancer "drug", is more
commonly used as a DNA-marker in genetic engineering through
the bio-resistance it provokes. Melamine may have been illegally
added to boost the protein readings of the product but that’s
a question that avoids the central facts.
In the twists and turns of this saga, a Las Vegas firm called
ChemNutra was named by Menu Foods as the primary supplier
of the "contaminated" wheat gluten. ChemNutra, which
according to their own website seems to qualify for the benefits
allotted to a minority or woman-owned company though it handles
tens of millions of dollars in nutraceutival chemicals a year,
pointed the finger at XuZhou Anying Biologic Technology Development
Co Ltd, a Chinese trading firm that, in turn, denied involvement
with the suspect gluten. ChemNutra’s owners, New York
attorney Stephen S. Miller and his wife Sally Qing Miller,
have mixed credentials. Sally has a degree in Food Chemical
Engineering from Hanzhou Institute of Commerce in Hanzhou,
China, a nation currently spending $500 million annually on
biotechnical research. Stephen, who is testifying before Senator
Richard Durbin’s Subcommittee on Agriculture as this
is written, worked with the E.F. Hutton Group in the 1980s
when it was led by Scott Pierce (brother-in-law of then-Vice
President George Bush- an association which may help explain
why the FDA delayed naming ChemNutra when it identified XuZhou)
who entered guilty pleas to 2000 criminal counts of fraud
as the brokerage firm disintegrated in the organized crime
"Pizza Connection" drug money laundering scandal.
(The firm’s remains survive under the Smith Barney-Citigroup
banner).
During this decade, investment in emerging biotechnology soared
as incentives developed under the administration’s urging
and, by 1992, GM foods had been approved for human consumption
by the FDA’s decision that its content was "substantially
similar" to foods which are not genetically manipulated
and, so, could enter the marketplace without specific safety
testing.
.
Due in large part to intensive lobbying and an aggressive
Public Relations campaign to overcome consumer reluctance
by Monsanto and other industry giants, engineered foods- even
vegetables with human genes inserted did not have to be labeled
in the American marketplace.
Bioscientists have recently produced an animal which is 85%
sheep and 15% human. Lambchops, anyone?
The GM food industry seeks to overcome consumer hesitation
to eat produce with cross-species genes by claiming widespread
benefits to farmers and a promise to conquer world hunger.
Each of their claims is countered by groups like the Soil
Association (whose 68 page fact book, "Seeds of Doubt,"
can be downloaded free from their website), Greenpeace International,
Science In Society, GMWatch, Network of Concerned Farmers
and many other citizen and environmental groups. Those opposing
the "GM revolution" commonly point out the industry’s
failure to fulfill their glowing promises, characterize the
introduction of GM crops as premature at best and projecting
irreversible ecological damage and unprecedented monumental
human disaster at worst. Farmers today are faced with concerns
about cross pollination, market rejection and liability just
for starters. New laws in Iraq dictate that farmers there
cannot use their own seeds.The prime beneficiaries in all
of this are seen as the biotech companies themselves, who
can patent the lifeforms they create and profit at every stage
of the food chain.
As co-president of Monsanto’s agricultural sector, Robert
Fraley, proclaimed in 1996, "What you are seeing is not
just a consolidation of seed companies; it’s really
a consolidation of the entire food chain."
The renowned biochemist, Dr. Mae-Wan Ho, noted in a talk at
the Franco-British Council Symposium in Paris, France on February
8, 2007: "...manipulation of scientific evidence appears
to be the mainstay of the regulatory process. Both the FSA
(Food Safety Authority) and the ACNFP (Advisory Committee
on Novel Foods and Processes) have been operating on the anti-precautionary
principle. Not only do they require the public and genuinely
independent scientists to prove there is a hazard, they have
persistently ignored all evidence of hazards submitted to
them and, instead, continue to misinform the public by citing
highly flawed studies that claim to find no effect against
the latest findings."
The same situation is present in the telecommunications field
where the industry has a tight grip on both the research being
conducted and the regulatory agencies. Despite massive evidence
of physical effects from nonthermal radio frequency electromagnetic
waves and numerous studies linking them to the current rise
in maladies from cancer to chronic fatigue and autism, the
billions available to the wireless industry have kept a lid
on the threats to public health. Studies on the effects of
electromagnetic frequencies on bees are finally gaining a
bit of attention as Colony Collapse Disorder wipes out hives
in electropolluted regions around the world. (Pollen from
GM plants is also a suspect in this crisis threatening the
food supply although the EMF factor is a more compelling answer
to the mystery). Like the PET FOOD recall, many are taking
the CCD phenomena as a wake-up call.
Since food industries create the standards for their own testing
under our present system, it should not be surprising that
Monsanto’s studies are favorable to their designs. But
when Greenpeace Germany commissioned an independent study
of Monsanto’s data on their transgenic corn MON863,
approved for animal and human consumption on the basis of
methods found wanting by independent scrutiny, the results
were published in the peer-review journal Archives of Environmental
Contamination and Toxicology and a follow-up study was reported
upon by David Gutierrez of the Campaign for Labeling of GM
Foods on April 10, 2007:
"A variety of genetically modified corn that was approved
for human consumption in 2006 caused signs of liver and kidney
toxicity as well as hormonal changes in rats in a study performed
by researchers from the independent Committee for Independent
Research and Genetic Engineering at the University of Caen
in France."
The Caen group found damage to the kidneys and livers of test
animals as well as hormonal changes and blood abnormalities,
possibly perforation of blood cells. GM food advocate Alex
Avery of the Hudson Institute responded quickly by pointing
out that the "studies have consistently found the variations
occurred randomly," implying that they should then be
of little concern. But while the intricacies of molecular
biology may be complex, the foundation of the viability of
GM food is rather simple and it was demonstrated by Dr. Arpad
Pusztai of the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, Scotland
in the first independent, non-industry studies of GM food
in 1998 and the very problem isolated involves "randomness."
When Pusztai spoke publicly of his findings, he was dismissed
by Aberdeen, which was later revealed to have received a $230,000
grant from Monsanto, and his work fiercely attacked. But when
Pusztai sent the research protocols to 24 independent scientists
in different countries, they verified his conclusions. "The
data showed that rats fed the GE potatoes for 10 days suffered
serious damage to the immune systems and various organs, including
the kidney, stomach, spleen, and brain," wrote Dr. Richard
Wolfson in Biotech News in May 1999.
"GM foods have been introduced on the back of just one
published paper. Just one, in fifteen years of GM," Dr.
Pusztai said in an interview. "It was written by a Monsanto
scientist and published in 1996...I could take it apart in
10 seconds...the main problem is that the researchers appear
to have done their utmost to find no problem."
The principle which entirely undermines the multi-billion
dollar GM industry and potentially explains why some animals
are stricken by the GM gluten (and not the incidentally present
melamine) and why rice and corn gluten are also suspect is
"substantial equivalence." Dr. Pusztai explains:
"We had two transgenic lines of potato produced from
the same gene insertion and the same growing conditions; we
grew them together along with the parent plant. With our two
lines of potato, which should have been substantially equivalent
to each other, we found that one of the lines contained 20%
less protein than the other. So the two lines were not substantially
equivalent to each other. But we also found that these two
lines were not substantially equivalent to their parent. This
could not be predicted. It demonstrates that the unpredictability
is inherent in the GM process on a case by case basis- and
also at the level of every single GM plant created."
Although no one seems to have mentioned it, it would also
appear to raise some questions about the intellectual property
rights of the patent but that, of course, like a considerable
weight of other evidence cannot be considered here.
As it stands, the $38 billion a year PET FOOD industry is
dwarfed by the human market and many people are not aware
that over 70% of processed foods they buy off grocery store
shelves contains GM ingredients. They’d be doubly shocked
to learn the percentage of foods, including frozen vegetables,
are produced in China. In an already shaky economy, it’s
small wonder that the FDA and the other players involved in
the recall were determined to avoid the GM factor.
The PET FOOD crisis is an inevitable result of priorities
misplaced in the corporate mind. They are priorities which
will continue to terrorize shoppers until they are modified
by the insertion of human principle. In the world of corporate
think, it is conceivable to conjure self-justifying thoughts
like- "How utterly contemptible of future generations
to threaten this quarter’s profits when they only exist
in theory...."
***
This story is dedicated to Jizo, who died of renal failure
in the early stages of the recall. We miss you, boy.
XXX
A Jar Of Olives
On
Aging
The fact that my birthday is this week and that my social
security checks are laughingly called my “old pay
ment” paycheck, I began to contemplate aging.
Marty Giuliano told us that his father Dino was turning
eighty. “No Way!” was our reaction. We laughed
about contacting Willard Scott, the morning show correspondent
who mentions all the men and women celebrating birthdays
in the three digits, to get the Smucker’s Jar ready
for him in twenty years from now. What flavor jelly would
you like, Dino?
Then there is Mescal Hornbeck who at 96 is my contemporary
in a senior art class. She is spry, spunky, political
savvy and creative. How about Orange Marmalade, Mescal?
Don DuBois at 93, who works everyday in his shop, just
created a prayer bench for his church. Don, do you prefer
grape or strawberry?
Aging cannot be a mathematical statistic. Chronological
age does not always correspond with attitude and performance.
Try this little mathematical formula to see your chronological
age:
1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that
you would like to
go out to eat. (Pick more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2.
3. Add 5.
4. Multiply it by 50.
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add
175; if you haven’t, add 1756.
6. Now subtract the four- digit year that you were born.
You should have a three-digit number. The first digit
of this number was your original number. (How many times
you want to go out to restaurants in a week.) The next
two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!) THIS IS THE
ONLY YEAR (2007) IT WILL EVER WORK.
Remember that your answer is only a number, not a lifestyle.
My aunt Helen at ninety was joking about planting her
Easter tulip plants outside. “I may not be around
to see them next year,” she remarked. “But
someone will enjoy them.” I’m sure she will
not only enjoy them but will plant more.
I think I prefer to think of aging as ripening or refining
rather than just getting older.
Mae West once said, “When I dream I am ageless!”
Our old dog Kahlua, who died last week, could no longer
get up to walk outside, but you should have seen him run
as he lay sleeping and snoring. All four paws were running
sideways chasing some bird or rabbit in a dream. He didn’t
know he was old. In his dreams he could out-run the wind!
Aunt Helen is right. Aging is the life cycle, and there
will be someone around to enjoy those tulips you planted.
We each leave a mark on this earth. We are remembered
and, hopefully, leave this world a little bit better because
we were part of it.
Am I old? No, I am still chasing the wind with my chocolate
lab at my heels until I leave it with my picture on a
Smucker’s Jar. Raspberry please!
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