Green groups sue USDA to stop bio-pharm planting

A coalition of environmental groups and consumer advocates sued the US Agriculture Department in federal court Nov. 12 to try and halt the experimental planting of biotech crops engineered to make medicine.

Environmentalists, consumer advocates and food industry groups have urged the USDA to impose stricter regulations on pharmaceutical crops, fearing the unapproved plants could accidentally slip into the food supply.

Biotech companies like Dow Chemical Co. and Monsanto Co. are experimenting with corn, soybeans, tobacco, rice and sugar crops as a cheaper way to mass produce medicines to treat a range of human ailments.

The coalition, which includes Friends of the Earth and Center for Food Safety, accused the USDA of allowing the experimental crops to be planted in open fields without assessing the risk to other crops, wildlife and humans.

The lawsuit was filed in a federal district court in Hawaii, one of the top producing states of pharmaceutical crops. (Reuters)

State Law would pin the ‘T-word’ on animal-rights and eco protesters

New York is one of several states currently considering legislation that could define certain animal rights and environmental groups as terrorist organizations. The sponsor of the bill, Assembly Member Richard Smith, says it was written to curtail the activities of extremists who “bomb research labs and torch ski camps.” Opponents of the bill point out that much of the wording of bill A4884 (and a companion bill in the state senate) was lifted directly from language created by the American Legislative Exchange Council, an influential conservative D.C. lobby.

ALEC’s model legislation, drawn up by its “Homeland Security Working Group,” is called the Animal and Ecological Terrorist Act, and it ostensibly focuses solely on groups like Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front, which have attacked homes and development projects that threatened the habitat of several species. But more mainstream groups, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), are also targeted by ALEC as a “threat.” For activists, the danger lies in how A4884 defines “terrorist” organizations: “Any association, organization, entity, coalition, or combination of two or more persons with the primary or incidental purpose of supporting any politically motivated activity through intimidation, coercion, fear, or other means.”

Activist groups fear that lawful dissent, such as demonstrations, letter-writing campaigns, and leafleting, might fall into any one of those categories, particularly the catchall phrase “other means.” The bill also seeks to prohibit people from gathering photographic or videotaped evidence of illegal or harmful activities, effectively shutting down the camcorders and other tools used by 21st-century protesters. Additionally, the bill calls for the creation of a state-run website where people convicted of “eco-terrorism or animal-rights terrorism” would be identified with photographs and stigmatized, much as states do with child molesters. (Village Voice)

UK cuts rainforest funding to meet Iraq costs

Britain is to slash its aid program aimed at saving the Amazon rainforests and preserving the culture of its people to meet the soaring cost of rebuilding Iraq.

Environmentalists fear the government’s decision to review its £16m contribution to the international community’s efforts to protect Amazonia could lead to further ecological and cultural devastation.

Britain is one of the leading backers of the G7 Pilot Program for the Conservation of the Brazilian Rainforests, which helps indigenous peoples to manage the forest in a sustainable way and counter the effects of illegal logging.

The Department for International Development admitted it was scaling back cash for its aid projects to the Amazon in a written parliamentary reply to the Labor MP Barry Gardiner Nov. 11.

The number of trees felled in the Amazon region has risen by 40 per cent in the past year, with almost 10,000 square miles of virgin forest -- an area 1.2 times the size of Wales -- cut down. But the Government has admitted “the future” of schemes that were due to continue for another three years, “will have to be reviewed”.

The move was made after the government’s decision to pour £540m into the rebuilding of Iraq, which critics say is being spent at the expense of aid projects to some of the world’s poorest nations. (Independent)

Treated wood poses cancer risk to kids

A new Environmental Protection Agency study concludes that children who repeatedly come in contact with commonly found playground equipment and decks made of arsenic-treated wood face increased risk of developing cancer

The study suggests the risk to children is considerably greater than EPA officials indicated last year in announcing the products were being taken off the market. Although manufacturers have agreed to stop producing arsenic-treated wood products beginning in 2004, such wood remains in many public playgrounds and back yards.

The preliminary findings released yesterday show that 90 percent of children repeatedly exposed to arsenic-treated wood face a greater than one-in-1 million risk of cancer — the EPA’s historic threshold of concern about the effects of toxic chemicals.

The problem appears to be greater in the warmer climates of southern states, where children tend to spend more time playing outdoors. There, 10 percent of all children face a cancer risk that is 100 times higher than children in the general population, according to a review of the EPA data by the Environmental Working Group. (Washington Post)

Interior Dept. attempts to derail Species Protection Act

A senior official of the US Interior Department, in a wide-ranging critique of the Endangered Species Act, said Nov. 13 that the needs of an expanding population, agriculture interests and burgeoning development in the West should be given equal consideration with endangered plants and animals.

Attending an endangered species conference in Santa Barbara, Assistant Secretary of Interior Craig Manson criticized the critical-habitat provision of the law, which limits development in areas favored by threatened species, saying such designations aren’t necessary for the perpetuation of many plants and animals.

Manson oversees the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the agency responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act.

In an interview before his speech in Santa Barbara, CA, Manson said the 30-year-old environmental law is “broken” and should no longer be used to give endangered plants and animals priority over human needs.

“The problem is the act was not written with a great deal of flexibility,” he said, adding that the interests of developers and private property owners in some cases should prevail over endangered species.

But former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt, who also was a speaker Thursday, was sharply critical of the Bush administration’s stewardship of endangered and threatened species.

“There is nothing wrong with the Endangered Species Act. It works,” said Babbitt, who served during the Clinton administration. “The problem is this administration is not enforcing it and it doesn’t want it to work. They want it to fail.” (LA Times)

Berlusconi’s attempt to bury bad news about a nuclear waste dump provokes outrage in ‘Italy’s California’

On Nov. 13, Italy learnt that a huge lorry bomb had detonated at its Carabinieri base in southern Iraq. Hours later, as details of the atrocity were still coming in, Silvio Berlusconi’s cabinet signed an emergency decree, stating that the 80,000 square meters of nuclear waste produced by Italy’s nuclear power stations, at present scattered in sites around the country, are to be buried in salt deposits beneath the town of Scanzano Jonico in the province of Basilicata, in the deep south. The controversial decision ended up buried deep inside the news bulletins because of the morning’s horrific events.

A hundred years ago this coastal strip was all marshland. Malaria was endemic. Emigration was incessant - it became one of the emptiest corners of the country. In the 1930s, Mussolini drained the swamps, which put a stop to the malaria.

Today the region has been transformed. In the past two decades, diligent farmers have rendered the sandy soil fertile, and the countryside is full of peach and apricot and plum orchards, groves of tangerines, strawberry farms, vineyards, olive groves. Proudly they call it Italy’s California.

The town has reacted as if electrocuted. The first demonstration was held outside the town hall on Nov. 14: small children walked in procession carrying a little coffin symbolizing the town. Students blocked highway 106, the coastal road, for hours, and have come back to do it again every day since. Citizens pack emergency meetings at the town hall day after day. Local leaders talk of organizing a march on Rome.

Normal life has ceased. In its place there is the restless agitation of a community in sudden and total crisis. “I’ve only seen people in this state once before,” said Michelangelo Tarasco, a local television journalist, “that was after an earthquake.”

A fruit farmer, Antonio Ambrose, said: “We have everything we need here. The farming is very good, we have water, sun, sea - we don’t need the rest of the country, we can survive on our own. We can be autonomous. This is the way they always treat the south - take everything good and send us their rubbish.” (Independent Digital)

Loopholes allow timber sales in national forests

The US Congress is still deadlocked on President Bush’s forest management plan to step up salvage logging and thinning on millions of acres of federal land. Nevertheless, small timber harvests of the same type are going forward in Oregon. They’ve been made possible through a little known procedure called “administrative rule changes.”

Five changes in the Forest Service Handbook took effect last summer called “categorical exclusions.” They exempt certain timber sales from typical environmental reviews and citizens cannot appeal them to the Forest Service.

Stopping the sales requires a federal court order. A few logging projects under the new rules have already started in the Mt. Hood, Willamette and Siskiyou National Forests.

The “categorical exclusions” alarm conservation groups.

Jay Ward of the Oregon Natural Resources Council says the rules are being bent to benefit timber companies. “They were originally designed for totally non-controversial items like painting an outhouse or moving a campsite on federal lands and they’ve taken that loophole and blown it out of proportion so that now they can plan 1000-acre logging sales, declare that they have no environmental impact and do them without any kind of appeal procedure.” Ward says nothing would stop federal timber managers from lining up these thousand-acre sales side by side to limit environmental review over a wider area. (Oregon Considered)