" I heard it through the AgLine"

July 12, 2010

 

 

·        Healthy hives are best defense for bees

·        Pheromones and the origin of species

·        Europe’s new approach to biotech food

·        Monsanto to pay $2.5M for misbranding

·        Carrots won’t improve vision, but …

 

 

Healthy hives are best defense for bees

 

(rrstar.com) ROCKFORD — Phillip Raines was never worried when honeybees began dying off a few years ago and abandoning their hives across the country.

 

Colony collapse disorder was a new phenomenon that seemed to be killing off honeybee populations for no particular reason, but Raines said he knew his bees would be safe.

 

“We saw through what the issues were right away,” said Raines, who ranks as Illinois’ third-largest beekeeper while operating Raines Honey Farm in Davis. Keeping the populations healthy is vital to fruit and vegetable production. Experts say a third of everything we eat depends on honeybee pollination.

 

Fungus, viruses to blame

Raines has thought all along that bad or negligent beekeeping practices are behind the cause of CCD, and today his belief appears to be supported by research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. No CCD case has ever been discovered in Illinois, according to state agriculture officials, and local beekeepers are taking precautions to keep it that way.

 

The USDA has released a report stating that CCD may be caused by a fungus and a group of viruses — something Raines believes comes from migratory bees being exposed to numerous chemicals and pesticides.

 

“It is too many chemicals in our society, and it is expressing the viruses,” Raines said. “The challenge with the viruses is, there is nothing to fix it. And the fungus that is affecting them, there is no cure for it if that is” what’s causing CCD.

 

“This is why, when I put hives out, I drive two miles around and talk to the farmers and find out what they are spraying and when they are spraying.”

 

Byron-area beekeeper Jeff Ludwig likens CCD’s devastation of a colony to a sickness among children: “It’s like all the kids in school getting the flu at the same time.”

 

Ludwig said pesticide awareness is growing among beekeepers and is playing a big role in keeping colonies healthy.

 

“You are seeing a lot more organic things happening,” he said. “I have been trying real hard in the last five years to forgo using any chemicals. A lot of my customers are appreciating that, too.”

 

Organic movement

Illinois has about 1,400 registered beekeepers with about 20,000 colonies. Across the country, bees are used for various reasons.

 

“They provide surplus honey for folks who wish to sell honey to the public, they pollinate fruits and vegetables,” said Steve Chard, apiary inspection supervisor with the Illinois Department of Agriculture. “About a third of the food we consume comes from plants pollinated by honeybees.”

 

Raines doesn’t blame produce suppliers for wanting to provide the best-looking products possible.

 

“When the average consumer goes shopping and they look at apples on the stand, if there is a blemish on the apple, they usually don’t buy it,” he said. “But if it is a perfect apple, then they buy it. But what they don’t recognize is how many chemicals were used to make that apple pretty.”

 

He would, however, like to see more done to limit the use of chemicals. “There are too many chemicals in our society, period. It has got to be reduced. But there has got to be better practices by beekeepers also. We are a part of the problem.”

 

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Pheromones and the origin of species

 

(NewScientists.com) – FOR all that we have learned of the origin of species, there are remarkably few cases where we know the specific genetic change that caused speciation. Now the discovery of a mutation that could lead to two new species of moth provides another one.

 

Female European corn borer moths (Ostrinia nubilalis) waft a chemical into the air to lure potential mates. After the insects invaded North America in the early 20th century, farmers discovered that pheromone-laced traps could tempt males away from females and from maize crops that the moths infest. This approach worked in the Midwest, but similar traps for moths in New York state did not. In the 1970s, researchers figured out why: New York's moths produce a pheromone that is chemically distinct from that of the Midwestern moths. Males are attracted to one or the other, but not both.

 

This difference keeps the two populations from mating in the wild - an important step towards creating new species. Now a team led by Jean-Marc Lassance and Christer Löfstedt at Lund University in Sweden has identified the gene that is responsible for creating this barrier.

 

Lassance and Löfstedt found that the two moth pheromones are composed of fatty acid molecules that are mirror images of one another. The New York moths' pheromone is made up of 98 per cent of one version, the E isomer, while the Midwestern moths make a perfume that contains just as much of the Z isomer. When the two populations mated in the lab, their female offspring produced a more equal mix of the two pheromones (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature0958).

 

The team attributes these differences to a mutation in the gene that codes for the enzyme fatty-acyl reductase, which is important in the production of pheromones. Expressed only in females, it comes in two versions, FAR-E and FAR-Z, with the New York moths having FAR-E and the Midwestern moths FAR-Z. Lassance says that this genetic difference is what keeps the two populations from interbreeding.

 

Questions remain as to how it works. Male moths must develop complementary genetic changes to detect one pheromone or the other, and those genes haven't been identified, says Richard Harrison, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who was not involved in the study.

 

But the research adds weight to the theory that pheromones can drive the evolution of new species, Harrison says, and moths probably aren't alone. Fruit flies, at least, also do it, and fish and maybe even some mammals use similar odour cues.

 

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Europe’s new approach to biotech food

 

(The New York Times) BRUSSELS — After decades of pushing nations to surrender more power to Brussels, the European Union is about to throw in the towel on one highly contentious issue: genetically modified foods.

 

On Tuesday, the European Commission will formally propose giving back to national and local governments the freedom to decide whether to grow crops that many Europeans still call Frankenfoods.

 

The new policy is aimed at overcoming a stalemate that has severely curtailed the market for biotech seeds in Europe for years. Only two crops, produced by Monsanto and B.A.S.F., are sold for cultivation here.

 

The new flexibility is supposed to open up markets in countries like the Netherlands, where governments are broadly favorable toward growing and trading biotech products, while countries like Austria, where the products are unpopular, can maintain a ban.

 

But far from celebrating, the growing global industry, as well as some farmers themselves, is extremely wary of the new approach.

 

“So many different authorities suddenly doing so many different things risks sending a message to successful growers in Africa and Asia that authorities are unsure how to deal with biotech,” said Nathalie Moll, the secretary general of EuropaBio, an industry group.

 

She said it also remained to be seen whether the proposals would conform with World Trade Organization rules.

 

The United States and the Union are still trying to resolve a dispute over genetically modified organisms, or G.M.O.’s, and related issues after the W.T.O. ruled, in 2006, against Europe’s de facto ban. Washington could still retaliate in that case.

 

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative declined to comment on the new approach but said it would be on the agenda at a meeting with E.U. officials this month.

 

Despite “some progress” in recent months, the United States “still has a number of concerns,” said Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. trade representative. They include “a substantial backlog of pending biotech applications, and bans adopted by individual E.U. member states on biotech products approved at the E.U. level.”

 

The reality remains that the European Union still produces few genetically modified crops.

 

The United States, Brazil, Argentina, India and Canada are the top five producers in terms of land under cultivation. The European Union, with 27 member nations, is the 14th largest, just after Burkina Faso.

 

A key factor behind the proposed change in Europe is a growing frustration in Brussels with the current system, under which meetings between government officials and ministers routinely end in deadlock. That forces unelected officials at the European Commission to make the final decision on authorizing biotech products — and to take the heat.

 

The commission has found itself repeatedly pressured on one side by the United States and the W.T.O. to follow the recommendations of its own scientific authorities and enforce the use of approved products and on the other by countries like Austria and environmental groups that believe the E.U. authorities are too eager to promote newfangled technologies.

 

Under the new proposals, the commission would continue to make the approvals itself but leave it to members and local and regional authorities to decide what they want to grow at home.

 

But whether the new rules will win the necessary approval from E.U. governments and the European Parliament still is unclear.

 

In an unlikely alliance, the Austrian and Dutch governments first made the proposal back in 2008.

 

The Dutch were eager to ease tensions over biotech crops with the United States and other trading partners, and to ensure continuing imports of animal feeds that contain biotech products.

 

Animal farming is a big part of the economy in the Netherlands, which, in turn, is a major exporter of meat and dairy products. Dutch researchers also are involved in developing biotech products.

 

The Austrians supported the changes as a way to keep its national ban on growing any such crops without facing regular challenges from the E.U. authorities.

 

Other countries, though, have expressed concern about setting a precedent that could undermine European integration. The crisis this year over how to supervise the finances of the 16 nations that use the euro already has highlighted the limits to European cooperation.

 

“If the agricultural policy is common, why wouldn’t the policy of cultivation of G.M.O.’s be?” asked Elena Espinosa, the Spanish environment minister. Spain grew 80 percent of the biotech corn, designed to resist a pest called the corn borer, produced in Europe last year.

 

In addition, Belgium, which has just taken over the rotating E.U. presidency, is concerned that a ban by a single country could put the entire bloc in danger of facing retaliatory trade sanctions.

 

Even farmers that favor biotech crops are concerned that the commission is offloading a problem on them — and that the issue could become even more politicized than it is now.

 

“The Welsh and the Scots are vehemently opposed to genetically modified crops,” said Philip Lodge, who would like to farm biotech sugar beets in Yorkshire, in northern England. “With these conflicts of interest so close to home, I just don’t see how I’ll be able to grow G.M. in practice.”

 

Other farmers warned that the Union risked stirring up new confrontations with activists, who in the past have destroyed crops planted in trial fields.

 

“The prospect terrorizes me,” said Jerome Hue, who farms in Carcans, France. “If every locality can ban G.M.O.’s, I don’t see how we will be allowed to grow the crops anywhere in France anymore.”

 

Mr. Hue grew corn produced by Monsanto before the French government imposed a national ban in 2008. France has said it would consider lifting that ban once the European authorities have assessed new evidence about the effects of G.M. crops on the environment.

 

Mr. Hue said anti-biotech activists could erect beehives at the edges of some farmers’ fields to put pressure on the authorities to impose new bans if the honey picked up traces of the modified genes.

 

But commission officials and some other member states like the Netherlands say the new policy points the way to managing an increasingly unwieldy group of 27 countries.

 

Last week, in the latest example of the persistent differences, countries failed for a third time to break a deadlock over whether to allow imports of six varieties of bioengineered corn for food and feed made by Monsanto, Dow AgroSciences, Pioneer and Syngenta.

 

That leaves the decision up to the E.U. health commissioner, John Dalli, who is expected to approve the products in coming months. He caused a furor among environmentalists in March when he approved cultivation of a biotech potato by B.A.S.F. — the first such approval in more than a decade in Europe.

 

In the European Parliament, among those reviewing the proposed new rules will be José Bové, a French sheep farmer who captured worldwide attention a decade ago for ransacking a McDonald’s restaurant to protest the influence of multinational corporations. Since then he has served time in a French prison for damaging biotech crops.

 

He is now a deputy chairman of the agriculture committee at the European Parliament, where he was elected as a member of the Green party.

 

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Monsanto to pay $2.5 million for misbranding

 

(Dow Jones) WASHINGTON – U.S. biotech giant Monsanto Co. (MON: 47.71, 0, 0%) agreed late last week to pay a $2.5 million fine for misbranding its cotton-seed products, the largest civil penalty ever enforced under a federal act that controls the sale and use of pesticides.

 

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Monsanto distributed cotton-seed products that contained a genetically engineered pesticide that was banned from 10 counties in Texas for fear that pests would become resistant to it. Monsanto was required to label the products with an explanation of the ban. In 2007, the company disclosed to the EPA that it didn't include the required language explaining that the pesticide was banned in the 10 Texas counties. A subsequent EPA investigation concluded that the company sold or distributed the misbranded products between 2002 and 2007.

 

"This agreement shows that when a company violates the law by distributing misbranded pesticides, EPA will take action," said Cynthia Giles, assistant administrator for EPA's office of enforcement and compliance assurance. "The regulated community should understand that we take these violations seriously, and the public will accept nothing less than compliance."

 

The company responded to the settlement by saying it has implemented a new internal review process to prevent such errors from occurring in the future.

 

"We take full responsibility for this oversight, and we are committed to compliance with the terms of our EPA registrations," said John Chambers of Monsanto in a statement.

 

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Carrots won’t improve vision, but …

 

(The Baltimore Sun) – Eating carrots won't improve your vision. That's a myth. But it will protect your vision, according to VSP Vision Care, a non-profit provider of vision services in a new video.

 

Carrots have vitamins and nutrients, such as vitamin A, C and E that can reduce the impacts of cataracts and age-related macular degeneration.

 

Some 30 percent of eye care providers are asked at least once a week about carrots improving vision, according to VSP.

 

But doctors say that carrots and other healthy foods are important. Lutein, zeaxanthin and minerals including zinc, copper and selenium can help protect the retina, which is the light- sensitive part of the back of the eye. Special fatty acids in fish protect the retina and can help the eyes maintain a layor of protective moisture. 

 

“One of the keys to keeping your vision healthy is an overall healthy diet. Developing good eating habits and a balanced diet to maintain proper levels of the important vitamins A, C, E as well as lutein and zinc such as are found in fruits and vegetables will help to lower the risk of some of these serious vision related problems in the future,” said Roger Phelps, an eye doctor in the VSP system, said in a statement.

 

The eye docs recommend eating these foods at least three times a week for good eye health:

 

+Carrots, kale, spinach, dairy products, egg yolks for vitamin A

+Citrus fruits, especially kiwi, and juices, green peppers, broccoli, potatoes for vitamin C

+Eggs, whole grains, vegetable oils, sunflower seeds for vitamin E

+Spinach, corn, kale, broccoli, Brussels sprouts for lutein and zeaxanthin

+Coldwater fish, such as salmon, mackerel, and rainbow trout, and sunflower oil and corn oil for omega-3 fatty acids

+Meat, poultry, fish, whole grains, dairy products for zinc

 

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