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August 30, 2007
·
Splat!
Thousands revel in world’s largest tomato fight
·
California grower recalls 34 tons of spinach
· K-State to share historic insects, plants on the web
·
Monsanto stays the course despite French GMO attacks
· Missouri soldiers recruited to help Afghanistan farmers
Splat! Thousands revel in world’s largest tomato fight
(Yahoo News) Bunol – Over 40,000 people, many
of them foreign tourists, participated in the hard-fought annual
tomato-throwing battle in this small town in eastern 
This year's edition of the world famous
'Tomatina' Wednesday set an attendance record of 40,000 participants, not to
mention requiring about 117,000 kg of tomatoes, said the Spanish news agency
EFE.
The massive attendance surprised the
organizers, though they had predicted an increase in participation for this
edition of the event because more parking places had been set up in and near
the town and 7.7 tonnes more of tomatoes had been ordered this year.
The Tomatina is being celebrated for more
than 60 years on the last Wednesday of August.
Although there is some disagreement over the
origin of this 61-year-old party, according to the most accepted version, a
group of friends began the tradition by starting a tomato fight in the town's
main square as a parade of papier mache 'giants' passed by.
The peculiar battle draws 'adversaries' to
Bunol from countries all over the world, but especially from Japan, South
Korea, Belgium, Australia, the US, Canada, Italy, France and Germany.
The tomato fight begins at 11 a.m. with a
unanimous 'war cry' shouted by all participants, who don't stop energetically
hurling the tomatoes at one another until their 'ammunition' runs out.
In just an hour of furious activity, every
last participant - and even those who dare peek out of their windows to get a
look at the spectacle - is covered in red, juicy mush from the ripe tomatoes,
which are carried into town for the fest in five large dump trucks.
The cooperative charged with supplying the
tomatoes to Bunol for the Tomatina is also responsible for ensuring that only
soft, overripe tomatoes are provided to the participants, although there are
always some unripe green ones that get mixed in and strike some unfortunate
people with unexpected force.
Wednesday's Tomatina, though, concluded
without any serious incidents and only about a dozen of the warriors had to be
treated for minor injuries, most of them consisting of slight injuries to their
eyes. 
California
(MercuryNews.com) – More than 68,000 pounds
of bagged fresh spinach are being recalled by a Monterey County grower after
routine testing found salmonella in a sample taken from a Watsonville packing
plant.
There have been no reports of illness from
the spinach, but state and federal health officials said they are working with
Metz Fresh of King City to determine the source and scope of contamination.
The recall announced Wednesday comes almost
exactly one year after a nationwide outbreak of illness was traced to a batch
of bagged
Since then, produce growers and distributors
say they have taken steps to improve sanitation and testing procedures.
The current recall involves a batch of
spinach that was packed on Aug. 22 and distributed late last week to retail and
food-service customers, such as restaurants or institutional kitchens,
in the United States and Canada.
The salmonella was found during testing at a
packing plant that was operating under contract with Metz Fresh, said Greg
Larsen, a company spokesman.
In a statement, Metz Fresh said the
salmonella was detected in a single sample of spinach at the processing plant.
The company said it decided to recall spinach from three processing lines at
the plant as a precaution, since all three lines were handling produce from the
same field.
Company officials began contacting their
customers, asking them not to serve or sell the spinach to consumers, after
receiving a preliminary test result on Friday, Larsen said. As of Friday night,
he added, "we had corralled and held 90 percent of the expanded lot in
question."
The company decided to formally recall the
product on Tuesday, after lab analysis confirmed the preliminary finding of
salmonella.
Officials are still trying to determine
whether any of the spinach was sold or served to consumers.
Salmonella can cause fever, abdominal cramps
and diarrhea. It can be life-threatening to children, the elderly and adults
with compromised immune systems.
The recall involves only fresh spinach packed
under the Metz Fresh label, in packaging marked with tracking code 12208114,
12208214 or 12208314. The spinach was packed in 10- and 16-ounce bags, as well
as 4- and 10-pound cartons.
K-State to share historic insects, plants on the web
They work in different buildings, but the reason for their chilly treatment is
the same. Part of their job is to deter pests that like dead plants and
insects.
Zolnerowich and
With K-State librarians David Allen and Michael Haddock, however, the curators
are now moving far beyond preservation. They're among the seven multi-subject
teams chosen for a 2007 K-State Targeted Excellence Award. They'll receive
$800,000 over four years because their work shows promise of elevating K-State
into the top 10 of land-grant institutions.
"Our collections are large, active research museums that are distinctive,"
Zolnerowich said. "We have a legacy of organisms that characterized life
in the
Because the collections preserve actual parts of history, they can provide
insights into the past,
The K-State Herbarium was established in 1877, soon after the university opened
its doors. It now holds an estimated 200,000 dried, pressed specimens. Known as
the Entomology Collection when it began in 1879, today's
Working separately and together, the curators already have secured support to
help them replace aged equipment and update crumbling paper-label data. The
support includes funding from the National Science Foundation, and the changes
will not only help modernize the museums, but also pave the way to make
continued growth less cumbersome.
The collections have always focused on providing the samples that K-State's
faculty need for research studies, teaching, and the university's statewide
Extension outreach efforts.
As part of that, both museums recently started work with K-State's Konza
Prairie Biological Station in long-term research on the station's biodiversity.
To date, that's added more than 35,000 specimens, just to the entomology collection.
And, other Konza samples are waiting to be sorted.
The museums also are involved with other
Moving the majority of the K-State collections into modern cabinets is
providing a perfect opportunity for the museums to sort and physically reflect
new findings on specimen classifications.
Even so, Zolnerowich and
Bug by bug and plant by plant, they've started to create computer databases
from more than 120 years' worth of detailed written records on everything from
species name to collection date, place and distribution. They're also working
to add high-quality digital photos.
Data from these specimens will be the base of a pilot project for the
university's Digital Libraries Program. Although still in the preparation
stages, the project already has a name: the K-State Biodiversity Information
System. In time and with the help of librarians Allen and Haddock, BiodIS will
make the combined natural history collections available to anyone on the
Internet via interest-specific portals.
The site also will include open collections "harvested" from K-State
Research and Extension files, other universities, and state and federal
agencies. It will integrate related scientific literature and Extension
publications. And, it will connect to other major archives and databases --
including the National Plant Diagnostic Network, which K-State faculty (and
software) helped start.
In the end, a youngster with a science fair project will be able to find
age-appropriate facts without first knowing the Latin names for an organism's phylum,
class, order, family, genus and species.
At the same time, a researcher wanting to compare Kansas' prairie with Africa's
Serengeti will be able to access high-quality images and data on everything
from taxonomy to mapped geographic spread -- without first having to request
K-State to ship actual specimens on loan.
Plus, K-State can work as a full partner in large-scale, multi-discipline
research initiatives.
"The library and K-State's Ag Experiment Station are helping fund this
project. We're getting other support from (K-State) Extension and from software
developers at the
Monsanto stays the course despite French GMO attacks
In recent years, biotech firms given the green light
to carry out GMO tests in
This pushed Bayer CropScience to
end field tests in
Still, Missouri-based Monsanto,
creator of the only GMO technology currently in commercial use in
"Monsanto wishes to continue
its research in biotechnology and its field trials in
"As the sharp rise in prices
of raw food in
Monsanto has issued two separate
complaints against protesters this month following attacks on GMO test sites
that it says caused losses totalling 100,000 euros (US$135,900).
In 2004, 45 percent of all
Monsanto's field trials on GMO seeds suffered damage from activists. In 2005,
55 percent suffered such damage and in 2006, 65 percent did.
SMALL ACTIVITY
Heated debate has surrounded the
use of GMO products across Europe and in
While GMO technologies are more
widely used in the
Monsanto said it derives around
50 percent of its revenues in
While the number of hectares sown
with maize incorporating Monsanto's MON-810 technology has swelled to more than
20,000 hectares this season from 5,000 in 2006, GMO-derived business accounts
for less than one percent of its turnover in
Monsanto has given about eight
seed companies the right to use its MON-810 technology in
This season around 40 percent of
the area sown with GMO maize was directly using Monsanto seeds. The other 60
percent was made up of maize produced by French firms or cooperatives which
have negotiated the right to use Monsanto's technology.
Missouri
soldiers to help Afghanistan
(Missourinet.com) – About fifty members of the Missouri
National Guard head for
The members of the Missouri Army and Air National Guard with farming
backgrounds will work in Nangarhar province with local farmers. Captain Doug
Dunlap, who grew up on a farm near
But farming there is basic. An acre to an acre-and-a-half is the usual size.
Four or five acres is a big farm. He says the goal is to move the farmers in
Nangarhar province from 13th or 14th century agriculture to the 19th century.
He says the farmers there are challenged by access to new technical advice,
quality seed, fertilizer, and access to markets. He says they don't need
200-horsepower tractors--but they have asked for the designs of a horse-drawn
steel plow.
Dunlap says 85 percent of the economy in
Dunlap thinks the Missourians will be there for about a year and the program
will continue with others after their tour is ended.
End Transmission