Uncategorized (page 49)

As 750 scientists and animal-genetics researchers prepare to gather in Minneapolis on July 23-27, city police are canceling vacations days, beefing-up crowd control training and supporting a new city law to make wearing a gas mask a misdemeanor for everyone except police, fire and medical emergency officials. Law enforcement agents point to threatening e-mails from anti-choice activists (protesting genetically engineered food) who threaten to disrupt the meeting in much the same way they disrupted the World Trade Organization in Seattle last year.

Farm Aid President Willie Nelson applauds the USDA's new organic certification standards, but complains that organic farmers will have to pay for organic certification, something Farm Aid and other organic supporters think the government should pay for. Our friends at the Citizens Against Government Waste blast Farm Aid's idea, noting, "It is preposterous for the organic industry, which lobbied for the creation of an organic certification program, to now propose that it should be compensated for the costs of that program."

In response to what they claim is "the most serious health crisis since tobacco," public health nannies in California are calling for Governor Gray Davis to use the iron fist of government to change what the state's citizens choose to eat.

Greenpeace is attempting to replicate the hysteria it created in Europe by frightening the American public into joining a "True Food Network" to work against genetically engineered food. Expect a flurry of activity from Greenpeace in the near future, centered on efforts to scare chefs, restaurants, and local supermarkets into dropping GE products and joining the Network, especially in California.

The anti-choice American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) continues to claim that farm and agricultural organizations are somehow misleading farmers by supporting genetically modified crops. ACGA CEO Gary Goldberg says, "The ACGA is neutral on the issue of GMOs. We only represent the interest of corn producers…" The idea that ACGA is "neutral" and not influenced by radical anti-choice environmentalists is anything but truthful, as can be seen in our exclusive "Inside the American Corn Growers" expose.

Prince Philip has sided with Princess Anne in the pro-science camp against Prince Charles, who believes genetically engineered foods are unsafe. No word out of the royal camp yet on whether the queen sides with her husband and daughter or with her anti-choice son, Charles.

The New York Times reviews last week's National Nutrition Summit, cataloging many of the claims and suggestions for governmental changes made by anti-choice nannies. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala says government agencies are "not national nannies." Columnist Joanne Jacobs disagrees and voices her concern over "Uncle Sam watching what I eat."

Despite nanny groups' claims that pollen from genetically modified corn kills monarch butterflies, new field tests from the University of Illinois find that "under actual field conditions, no mortality directly or indirectly attributable to ingestion of endotoxin-containing corn pollen could be detected" to black swallowtail butterflies, which are just as likely to encounter the corn pollen as monarchs. It seems that GE-corn is just as safe for butterflies as it is for humans.

Chefs Collaborate 2000 leader Rick Bayless is about to get the star treatment in a nationwide ad campaign to promote organic food and "sustainable" agriculture sponsored by yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm. Bayless is the first of several activist "celebrity role models" who will push organic activism nationwide. (PR Newswire, "Yogurt Maker and Celebrity 'Doer' Join Advertising and Activism in a Marriage Made for Environmental Change.")

Canadian physician Dr. Gifford Jones writes "the fairest way to tax fat is by using the bathroom scale." Feeling that food taxes are too complicated and unjust, Jones believes heavy-set people are "irresponsible" and cost the health care system more, "but they pay the same tax as everyone else." Why tax people based on body-weight? "Few things motivate people more than money." Just ask CSPI. (The Edmonton Sun, "Tax the Obese?")