Bush admin. opens last North American
rainforest to logging

Compiled by Eamon Martin

Dec. 29 (AGR)— Capping more than 10 years of intense controversy over the fate of some of the nation’s last remaining old-growth forest and igniting howls of protest from conservationists, the Bush administration on Dec. 23 removed prohibitions on logging and development from 9 million acres of the United States’ largest national forest, the Tongass of southeastern Alaska.

The Bush administration rule, led by US Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, a former timber lobbyist, announced the day before Christmas Eve, exempts the Tongass National Forest from the Roadless Area Conservation Rule. This landmark conservation policy was designed to protect 58.5 million acres of pristine national forest land from logging and roadbuilding. The new rule exempting the Tongass is the result of a deal to end a court challenge to the roadless rule brought by the State of Alaska.

The roadless rule was put in place after a two-year process that included 600 scientific studies and two rounds of public comments that generated almost two million responses, most of them in favor of the rule.

The Tongass contains nearly 30 percent of the world’s unlogged coastal temperate rainforest. At risk are the habitats of the North American grizzly bear, bald eagle, coho salmon, humpback whale, and Sitka black-tail deer, among others.

Widespread opposition to undoing the Tongass protections was expressed this summer when the public sent more than a quarter of a million comments in opposition to the proposal. These comments followed more than two million comments supporting the roadless rule in response to prior notices.

But Rey recently dismissed the public outcry as “not a referendum” and the he would not “count votes” from the public.

“The Bush administration has turned its back on the public, good science, and the law in its effort to clear-cut the Tongass,” said Tom Waldo, an attorney for environmental watchdog group Earthjustice. “This is obviously a Christmas present from the Bush administration to the timber industry which wants the right to clear-cut in America’s greatest temperate rainforest.”

Bush administration officials claimed the decision would result in the logging of only about 3 percent of the forest.

But environmental groups countered that because the parcels to be cut are spread across much of the landscape, roads built to provide loggers with access will end up disturbing much more of the temperate coastal rainforest —four times as much, according to US Forest Service estimates.

Dennis Neill, public affairs officer for the national forest said plenty of intact forest will be left. About 6.7 million acres of the 16.8 million-acre forest is permanently off-limits to all development. The current forest plan envisions allowing logging only about 676,000 acres, of which 330,000 acres are affected by yesterday’s decision.

“This place is not going to be a 16 million-acre stump field. It’s not happening,” he said. “Yeah, we’re going to cut some trees. That’s part of our job. It’s part of our mission. Congress passes the budget every year and tells us to do that.”

Environmentalists also attacked the decision for it’s timing.

“We were anticipating this would come down right before Christmas” when the news would get less attention, said Nicole Whittington-Evans, assistant regional director of The Wilderness Society. “This is just a clear pattern with the Bush administration where they ignore public comment, both inside and outside Alaska, which favored protection of the Tongass roadless areas, and just basically line the pockets of corporate interests.”

Administration officials also plan to remove the roadless-rule protections at the nation’s second-largest national forest, the Chugach, near Anchorage.

Environmental groups supported the roadless rule as a way to curb the development and logging that had already affected half of national forest land. But Western states and the timber industry said the rule was unjustified in its sweeping scope — touching about 30 percent of national forest acreage in the country.

Industry groups and states have made a concerted effort to attack the rule through lawsuits around the country. In July, a federal district court judge in Wyoming suspended the rule nationwide. Environmental groups are appealing the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in Denver.

Before that, a federal court in Idaho originally threw out the roadless rule, but that decision was overturned last December by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco.

“Rather than wait for a resolution, the administration has indicated that it will move administratively to give individual governors the right to ignore the rule. That would seem to pre-empt the judicial process. It would also give a handful of state officials power over federal lands, which belong to all Americans,” the New York Times responded in an editorial.

The Tongass National Forest has been particularly contentious because it is the only temperate rainforest on the continent.

“This is the rarest forest type on earth and it needs to be protected,” said Jeremy Paster, a forest campaign organizer for Greenpeace.

Amy Mall of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said it would open to development “the most valuable habitat from one of our most important forests and one of the most ancient forests worldwide. The trees they want to log are the biggest and oldest.”

Of the more than 250,000 comments the agency received, she said, fewer than 2,000 favored the rule.

Sources: Earthjustice, New York Times, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Washington Post

Mad cow disease exposes meat industry negligence

By Liz Allen

Dec. 31 (AGR) — The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Dec. 23 that the disease known as Bovine Spongiform Encephalophy (BSE) or mad cow disease was found in a dairy cow slaughtered in Mabton, Washington on Dec. 9.

USDA officials are currently claiming that the cow may have come from Canada. BSE is contagious, fatal, and affects the central nervous system. The disease can incubate for four or five years before symptoms appear.

BSE is generally thought to be transmitted through the consumption of prion proteins, agents that are modified forms of components of normal cell surfaces. They are found in food containing meat from infected animals. Cattle catch the disease because of the common meat industry practice of putting animal parts into livestock feed for extra protein.

There is a 1997 law in the US prohibiting cattle farmers from feeding their animals feed that contains brain or spinal cord tissue. According to the USDA the disease is contagious through the consumption of brain, spine or lower intestine matter from infected animals. Enforcement of the 1997 law is weak, causing a higher risk for infection.

Humans who consume beef contaminated with BSE can catch a similar disease, a variant of Creutzfeldt - Jakob Disease (vCJD). The disease is fatal. Although some neurologic symptoms may appear, brain abnormalities cannot be detected through an MRI or x-ray until vCJD is already in its late stages. The USDA is maintaining that US meat is still safe to consumers, and their recall of over 10,803 pounds of beef is acting in “an abundance of precaution.”

The USDA claims to have tested 20,000 cattle for Mad Cow Disease in 2002 and 2003, however, according to United Press International (UPI) news service, the USDA has not produced documents pertaining to those tests, despite requests over a series of months since July, 2003. UPI reported that USDA official Michael Marquis responded to the initial request that same month, promising that if any such documents exist, they would be forwarded.

However, UPI also reports that no phone calls, made periodically since July through December, were returned. UPI called the USDA’s failure to produce documents a violation on a 30-day limit by the Freedom of Information Act.

How long BSE has been in the US is a point of controversy. The USDA reports that the only previous case was a young woman in the US and she is believed to have contracted the disease while previously living in the UK, where the largest outbreak of BSE and vCJD occurred.

However, critics say that BSE has been in the US for many years, and is a result of mistreatment of animals in the industry, inadequate testing and lax industry oversight.

Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice-president of the United States Humane Society, pointed to the slaughtering of “downer” animals as a threat to the US meat industry’s safety standards. “Downer” animals are animals too sick to stand or walk and are usually spent dairy cattle.

The infected cow was identified as a downer cow, but was originally identified as having partial paralysis due to complications from pregnancy, and although she was tested for BSE she was sent to the slaughterhouse anyway.

He called these animals the prime carriers of BSE and referred to a 2001 study in Germany that found the cows up to 240 times more likely to be a carrier of BSE. Pacelle called for laws banning the slaughtering of downer animals. He said such legislation was passed last year by US House and Senate, but was killed in conference after heavy lobbying by the dairy industry.

Also, in question is the testing technique for the disease, which takes a longer time to process than the tests that are conducted in Europe. Plus, the industry only tests a small percentage of the 35 million cattle that are commercially slaughtered each year.

Retired USDA veterinarian Michael Schwochert reported to UPI that in the last six months he had seen a cow who appeared to have the BSE, who was sent out on a special truck before USDA officials saw and the people working in the office at the meat processing plant were told not to say anything about the incident.

“Organic” beef is increasingly seen as a safer option, because the cattle receive more individualized attention, and do not eat feed containing antibiotics, hormones or high-protein animal waste and blood.

Also, organically raised cattle are rarely slaughtered when too sick to walk. But organic cattle are not necessarily free from mad cow disease because not all causes of the disease are known and calves from a non-organic cow could have been exposed to the disease.

The US beef industry accumulated $2.6 billion in overseas beef sales with 80 percent being sold to Japan, South Korea and Mexico. Already 11 countries have banned beef imported from the US.

On Dec. 29 the US entered into negotiations with Japan to attempt to lift the ban on beef, although Japan refused. At least four major grocery chains on the west coast in the US have voluntarily removed US beef from their shelves. As of Dec. 26, McDonald’s is reported to have suffered a 5 percent slide in sales and the US dollar is sliding to another low against the euro.

The USDA continues to insist that their beef supply is safe. US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman insisted that she would be serving US beef at her holiday dinner. Previously the USDA and the FDA placed limits importing products such as food, food ingredients, dietary supplements and cosmetics from countries that had documented cases of BSE.