Food and Faith seed Archives

Posts Tagged: seed

November 19, 2010

Seeds – How to criminalize them

Posted 2:58pm

UPDATE: BREAKING: Senate votes cloture on S 510 – must now be voted on in 60 days. Linn Cohen-Cole, in her post Seeds – How to criminalize them, asks us to wake up to the implications of this bill. Lots of email has been flying around the cyber heavens about this Food Safety Bill. The Bill language starts below and the rest can be linked to in Linn’s article. Read with your critical mind engaged and give your thoughts in the comments section below. Wisdom says stop a bill that is broad as everything yet more vague even than it is broad. Wisdom says stop a bill that comes with massive penalties but allows no judicial review. Wisdom says stop a bill with everything unspecified and actually waits til next year for an unspecified “Administrator” to decide what’s what. Where we come from, that’s called a blank check. Who writes laws like that? ”Here, do what you want about whatever you want and here’s some deadly punishments to make it stick.” Wisdom says know who wrote that bill and be forewarned. Wisdom says wake up. Here’s the bill. Let’s use our imaginations and extrapolate from the little bit it reveals and from the reality we know. SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES. (a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respectto food production facilities

October 8, 2010

monsanto

Posted 7:27pm

After asking a class of college kids whether they had heard of Monsanto and none of them had, I asked the same question on the PHP Facebook page and many do know about Monsanto. But, there seems to be a generation gap on this. Many had heard about Monsanto years or decades ago. Like these three FB comments — “DDT and Agent Orange in the 60’s. Monsanto is a poison dealer.” “From early childhood. Monsanto had a chemical plant in our town. My father was a Chemical Engineer for Union Carbide and made, among other things, MIC the stuff that was being made in Bhopal.” And (sarcasm alert) — “back in the 70’s for dirty dealing and toxic pollution ….great company !!!!” But not all were elders… “Years. But in 90’s heard more about ADM – and late 90’s early 00’s when “supermarket to the world” was sponsoring NPR, it was shocking. Well, not shocking… (It doesn’t suprise me about RoundUp; not as many kids are getting their hands dirty in the fields) (for the record, I’m a Gen Xer)” And one commented that it would be “worth doing research into the issue.” Indeed. Some articles on Monsanto have just come my way today, and below those are several earlier posts on Monsanto – in case you missed those. To be clear here, the Presbyterian Church USA has nothing against the company. But we do have clear policy supporting family farmers and sustainable farming approaches, and your reading of the following may raise questions about whether Monsanto is always considering these. It’s a hodge-podge, but hopefully something for everyone. “…Monsanto finally admitted recently that superbugs, or pests that have evolved to be able to eat the Bt crops, are a real and growing concern.” ~from the Grist article below.