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July 21, 2010
· California tackles organic produce fraud
· Vegetable breeding patents challenged
· Scientist charged with giving data to China
· Glyphosate falls victim of its own success
· Climategate fallout only just beginning
California
(TheCalifornian.com)
– It's been barely a year since Luis Miranda began selling
organic produce at farmers markets near his home in
Scanning the stands recently at a market in downtown
"You see banners that say 'certified' or 'pesticide-free,' and it's either not true or it doesn't mean what customers think it means," Miranda said. "I see farmers do it all the time, and it hurts real organic farmers like me."
Higher prices for organic produce give farmers an incentive to look for ways around the costly and time-consuming organic certification process. The results can be shoppers who don't get what they pay for and true organic producers who are undersold by conventional farmers with lower production costs.
To cut down on such fraud,
"Enforcement is critical, because right now no one's watching the store," said Al Montna, president of the state Board of Food and Agriculture. "Organic produce is difficult to raise, it's expensive, and the guy that's short-circuiting the process is taking away value on the market."
In fact, the 40-year-old Miranda was the only vendor at the market that day whose squash, bell peppers and tomatoes bore the seal of an accredited organic certifier. To keep that seal, he pays about $250 in annual fees to the certifier and the State Organic Program, which oversees at least 2,800 farms and ranches in the largest organic farming community in the country.
"They're supposed to use the fees to make improvements, but every market where I go, the state has never shown up," said Miranda, who lives about 40 miles south of the state capital in Lodi and sells at six farmers markets each week. "I feel like I'm just donating some money to the state, and I don't know what they do with it."
The State Organic Program proposed new rules in June aimed at creating more consistent oversight. They would, for the first time, outline specific procedures for investigating complaints and collecting samples to check for use of unauthorized pesticides and fertilizers. They also would allow the state to establish a spot inspection program to ensure California-made products carrying the organic label are authentic.
In addition, later this month, state agriculture officials will begin training county officials to weed out organic impostors.
Rick Jensen, chief of inspection and compliance for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, said officials would focus on areas where they know there are problems.
That will include farmers' markets, where many organic sellers are allowed to skip certification because their gross sales bring in less than $5,000 per year. The small farms are expected to obey the same rules as larger, certified ones, but officials acknowledge they've had difficulty enforcing that.
Related
The State Organic Program will hold a public hearing on the proposed rules in August and hopes to see them take effect in October, Jensen said.
Audit finds lapses
California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the state's largest organic certification agencies, has been urging the state to crack down on violations for years, executive director Peggy Miars said.
"Only with reliable enforcement can we assure customers of the high integrity of the organic foods they buy and eat," she said.
In March, an internal audit of the National Organic Program
highlighted the difficulty of regulating an industry that has grown between 14
percent and 21 percent annually over the past decade. The audit found numerous
lapses in enforcement on the national level and in
Jensen, the state inspection chief, said the state had already
begun working to meet the audit's recommendations before it was published. He
received a letter from the USDA in May confirming that
Not everyone thinks more state involvement will improve
Dan Best, the coordinator of Certified Farmers' Markets of Sacramento, said he believes his 10 locations are relatively free of deceptive practices by non-organic farmers. If anything, he said, the state's onerous and expensive certification process has shut out farmers whose products truly are organic.
"I've got several growers who everyone knows to be organic, but they don't use the label because they can't meet all the regulation requirements," Best said. "We want to be sure people aren't misrepresenting their produce, we want to be safe, but the current regulations are a huge cost to growers."
Tomato, broccoli breeding patents challenged
(Bloomberg) – Unilever NV, the world’s second- biggest consumer goods maker, and Syngenta AG are challenging the validity of European patents on breeding processes for tomatoes and broccoli at a hearing that attracted about 150 demonstrators.
The hearing, which started this morning at the European
Patent Office, will establish the validity of patents on breeding vegetables. A
unit of Basel, Switzerland-based Syngenta and Unilever, based in
Farmers and representatives from Greenpeace were among those
protesting against the patents outside the
Failure to do so would lead to “rising prices for farmers and consumers” because fewer companies would control food production, Christoph Then, a patent consultant for Greenpeace, said in the statement.
“The cases today will decide to what extent the patents can be maintained,” Rainer Osterwalder, a spokesman for the patent office said by telephone. “The patents will remain valid until there’s a final decision, which we expect by the end of this year.”
Plant Bioscience Patent
In 2003, Syngenta filed its challenge against the patent U.K.-based Plant Bioscience Ltd. got a year earlier on a breeding process for broccoli plants. Unilever in 2004 opposed a patent granted to the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture for a method for breeding tomatoes, according to the patent office.
While Syngenta backs patent protection for new breeding methods that respect the law, the company doesn’t support patents on methods that already exist.
“We originally filed an opposition to the ‘broccoli patent’ because we did not believe the requirements of patentability were met,” Syngenta said in an e-mailed statement. “Our opposition was in relation to this very specific patent application.”
Unilever spokesman Flip Doetsch said in an e-mail he had no comment at this stage.
A European patent is the easiest way for companies at the moment to get patent protection across several countries at once. The European Patent Office isn’t part of the European Union.
The European Commission, the executive agency for the 27- nation region, earlier this month presented plans to create patents to cover the whole EU. Similar plans for EU-wide patents have failed in the past over language issues.
Scientist charged with giving data to
China
(boston.com) WORCESTER — A scientist from Westborough passed on trade secrets worth more than $100 million to China about a commercial insecticide developed by Dow Chemical Co., said a federal prosecutor, who described Kexue Huang as one of only a handful of people ever charged by the United States with economic espionage to benefit a foreign government.
Huang, 45, who worked for Dow in
The charges, which do not involve classified or national
defense information, stem from a federal indictment in
A spokeswoman for the
But Huang’s lawyer, James P. Duggan of
“If he was really intending to steal trade secrets which allegedly have these commercial values of hundreds of millions of dollars, he would hardly be publishing what he knew in a scholarly journal which is open to and available to the public,’’ Duggan said after the hearing. “That is not the way a proper crime is committed.’’
Dow AgroSciences, a Dow business unit based in
“We are cooperating fully with the authorities,’’ the statement said. “Because of the nature of the investigation, we are unable to comment further.’’
Huang lives in Westborough and works as a scientific
researcher for Qteros Inc., a
“He has no reason to believe that his job is in jeopardy,’’
said Duggan. He later said his client has a doctorate in pharmacology from a
university in
Sue Hager, spokeswoman for Qteros, said Huang has worked at the biofuels company for about a year.
“As far as we understand, the allegations have nothing to do with his employment here at Qteros,’’ she said.
Huang, a tall, thin bespectacled man who wore a tan jail
jumpsuit, black sneakers, and leg shackles, is one of only six or seven
individuals ever charged with economic espionage to benefit a foreign
government or instrumentality,
The Justice Department in
Joseph F. Savage Jr., a
Since the law went into effect, Savage said, roughly 50
cases have been prosecuted, and the vast majority of them concerned corporate
espionage among competitors in the
Most of the cases involve “one company stealing stuff from another company,’’ he said. “There’s millions of employees, and most of them don’t have any connection to foreign governments.’’
Each count of economic espionage carries a maximum sentence
of 15 years, though Huang would probably serve far less if convicted,
Given the potential penalties,
“Mr. Huang is a substantial risk of flight,’’
Duggan implored the judge to release his client and let
Huang report to Indiana himself. His chances of remaining free while awaiting
trial would probably be far greater if Hillman lets him report to
Duggan said Huang has no criminal record and is a well-educated man with a wife, who works as a data manager for Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and two children. His wife sat in the gallery of the otherwise empty courtroom.
“I do think it’s unusual, judge, that you could allege a larceny scheme’’ based on publication in a journal, Duggan added.
Duggan said later that prosecutors contend Huang’s alleged
theft of trade secrets could enable manufacturers in
Hillman put off a decision on Huang’s bail until he gets more information from prosecutors.
Huang and his wife are willing to surrender their passports and those of their children and to use the $275,000 to $300,000 of equity in their home to secure his bail, Duggan said.
“It’s hard to picture the whole family moving, without
passports, to
Glyphosate falls victim of its own success
(weeklytimesnow.com) – THE world's pre-eminent herbicide, glyphosate, has become a victim of its own success, according to a leading researcher.
Harry Strek, leader of Bayer CropScience's integrated weed management and weed
resistance biology team in
Dr Strek spoke at a pesticide
chemistry conference in
Speaking after the conference, he told The Weekly Times that chemical companies needed to invest in research to find broad spectrum herbicides with new modes of action to attack and kill weeds.
"Glyphosate was the herbicide of the century," he said.
"Our industry has not introduced a new significant mode of action (in weed control) in 20 years.
"We need new herbicides and they need to be cheap."
Glyphosate resistance in some weeds has become a problem in many countries.
Resistance has been exacerbated by the uptake of Roundup Ready crops around the world as growers come to rely on a single herbicide for weed control.
Some scientists are predicting half of the world's agricultural weed species will become resistant to glyphosate by 2018.
Research by the
Dr Strek said the
"Overuse of one herbicide will select for plants which have mutations," he said.
"We estimate 15 to 30 continuous herbicide applications will eventually lead to resistance.
"So it is important to mix the herbicide modes of action.
"Farmers should use another (mode of) chemistry every other year or every third year (for weed control)."
Dr Strek suggested farmers use other pre-emergent or post-emergent herbicides in rotation with glyphosate, even though the other chemicals might not be as effective.
"And if possible, rotate the types of crops," he said.
"Basically, avoid the over-reliance on one mode of action because weeds can develop resistance to any herbicide if it is overused."
Climategate fallout only just beginning
(SFGate.com) – Five investigations into the "Climategate" scandal have now cleared a group of scientists accused of twisting data in an effort to prove the world is getting warmer.
But many environmentalists and climate researchers fear the damage has already been done.
The scandal spawned big headlines and heated blog posts when
it erupted last fall after hackers released a stash of unflattering e-mails
from a climate research lab in
British and American investigations have now largely exonerated the scientists, saying they did not warp their studies to reach a pre-determined end. But the public may not buy it. Some polls show the public's belief in the reality of climate change has ebbed, although other surveys disagree.
"Despite multiple denials from people in the field, this has really hurt," said Daniel Kammen, a UC Berkeley professor who contributes to reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The accuracy of the IPCC's reports, long considered the most authoritative on global warming, came under fire during Climategate.
"Even though the science of climate change hasn't changed, the public perception of it has," Kammen said. "You have less than 50 percent of people strongly believing in something that 99.99 percent of climate scientists agree on."
Exonerations downplayed
The exonerations haven't generated anything like the intense media coverage that the initial scandal did. Newspapers have typically covered them with small stories far removed from the front page - or ignored them altogether.
"The accusations were on A1, the exonerations are usually on A15," said Aaron Huertas, press secretary for the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Climategate's lingering effects could play a role in the
debate over global warming legislation, both in Congress and in
"In general, I think the scandal has made the opponents of energy-rationing legislation stronger and more confident," said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute think tank.
Ebell, who for years has been one of the fiercest critics of global warming science, doubts that Climategate by itself changed any votes in the Senate. But the scandal may have solidified skepticism about climate science among the public, he said. That would make any global warming bill harder for Senate Democrats to pass.
"The American public opposes policies that are going to raise their energy prices," Ebell said. "And I just don't see how they can get around that."
Climategate featured accusations that scientists were fudging data, colluding to silence critics and stonewalling public requests for information. The investigations to date have discounted the most serious charges.
Scientists cleared, chided
Earlier this month, for example, a British panel found that
the researchers at the center of the scandal, working at the Climatic Research
Unit of the
The panel found nothing wrong with the "trick" referenced in the controversial e-mail, saying it was a valid technique for handling the data, which was used to produce a widely seen graph tracking temperature changes over the last millennium. But the panel criticized the scientists for not making clear, either in the graph or in its caption, that they were using that technique. Without the explanation, the panel said, the graph was "misleading."
The panel's findings, however, haven't drawn as much
attention as the original charges. Tom Hollihan, who
teaches media and politics at the
"The story that sticks is the first story out there
that shapes the conversation," said Hollihan,
who teaches in the university's
Ebell and other critics call the investigations a farce, saying they represent an attempt by the academic community to defend their own.
Affect on public opinion
"These establishment reports to whitewash this scandal - they have no credibility," Ebell said. "It's pretty obvious that they're not independent inquiries, that they were designed to come up with an exoneration. You need (an investigation with) people who don't have connections, who haven't written papers with the people who are accused or served on faculty with them."
How much the scandal affected public opinion isn't clear.
A
A survey released in June by Stanford University Professor Jon Krosnick found that 74 percent of Americans believe the climate probably grew warmer in the past century. While that figure is down from 84 percent in 2007, Krosnick attributed the decline to short-term changes in the weather, not Climategate. Indeed, only 9 percent of the people surveyed had heard about the hacked e-mail messages.
"At the end of the day, I feel people still see what's happening - they're seeing the heat waves, they're seeing the fires, they know the ice is thinning," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. "The last decade, we know, is the warmest on record, and no e-mails are going to change that."
Still, environmentalists fear that Climategate will make passing federal global warming legislation, already a difficult task, that much tougher.
"If members of Congress believe that - because of the coverage of so-called Climategate - the public is less concerned about the impacts of global warming, some of the senators who are on the fence may feel less compelled to vote for legislation that curbs global warming pollution," said Dan Lashof, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center. "That's the real danger in this."
End Transmission