Pesticide Potpourri
- Many people like to eat with clean hands. However, in a restaurant getting from the bathroom to your table can be a feat of extraordinary dexterity as you try to turn off the water, leave the bathroom and dispose of the paper towel without contaminating your freshly washed hands. A Fort Myers restaurant has made this good hygiene practice easy for its diners. Sitting next to the salt, pepper and packets of sweeteners, customers at the Oasis Restaurant will also find a dispenser of antibacterial sanitizing gel. “Maybe I’m just a cleanliness nut, but I think it’s a good idea," said Gerry Ryder, a former nurse who lives in Fort Myers and dines at Oasis. “Especially with everything going on today.” Oasis owner Bonnie Grunberg has said she had wanted to put hand sanitizer on the tables years ago. So three weeks ago, at the height the swine flu pandemic scare, she seized the opportunity. “I've never been thanked so much,” Grunberg said, especially from women customers - although men use the gel too, she said. (The News-Press.com, 5/27/09).
- Australia’s Gene Technology Regulator has received a license application from BSES Ltd for the limited and controlled release of up to 12,500 GM sugarcane lines. The sugarcane plants were genetically modified for altered plant growth and sucrose accumulation, enhanced drought tolerance and nitrogen use efficiency, and improved cellulosic ethanol production from sugarcane biomass. The trial, which will take place on six BSES stations in Queensland from June 2009-2015, aims to evaluate agronomic properties of the GM sugarcane lines grown under field conditions. The GM sugarcane lines contain one or more genes or gene fragments from 22 genes derived from a range of plant and bacterial species. The GM plant materials will not be used for human food or animal feed. The comprehensive Risk Assessment and Risk Management Plan for the application concludes that the release poses negligible risk to people and the environment. BSES Ltd is bound to adopt certain measures to restrict the dissemination of GM plant materials, such as surrounding the trial site with a pollen trap and postharvest monitoring of fields. (Crop Biotech Update, 5/22/09).
- On May 12, five potato farmers rang the bell of the New York Stock Exchange, kicking off a marketing campaign that is trying to position the nation’s best-selling brand of potato chips as local food. Five different advertisement spots will highlight farmers who grow some of the two billion pounds of starchy chipping potatoes the Frito-Lay company uses each year. One is Steve Singleton, who tends 800 acres in Hastings, FL. “We grow potatoes in Florida, and Lays makes potato chips in Florida,” he says in the ad. “It’s a pretty good fit.” Mr. Singleton’s ad and the other four will be shown only in the farmer’s home state. A national spot featuring all five potato farmers was soon to follow. Frito-Lay is one of several big companies that, along with some large-scale farming concerns, are embracing a broad interpretation of what eating locally means. “Local for us has two appeals,” said Aurora Gonzalez, director of public relations for Frito-Lay North America, which is owned by PepsiCo. “We are interested in quality and quickness because we want consumers to get the freshest product possible, but we have a fairly significant sustainability program, and local is part of that. We want to do business more efficiently, but do it in a more environmentally conscious way.” ConAgra recently began a marketing campaign to highlight its Hunt’s canned tomatoes, most of which are grown within 120 miles of its Oakdale, CA processing plant. Of course, the tomatoes would be local only to people in the area. But if the company can show consumers its tomatoes are grown near the plant that processes them, shoppers who want to know where their food comes from might be more apt to buy them. (New York Times, 5/13/09).
- Grimmway Enterprises Inc. is suing Fernando and Yvonne Iturriria for $230,059.34 in damages, plus attorneys fees. The carrot giant alleges the Iturririas allowed an "unknown number" of sheep to graze on two acres of carrots at the outset of harvest season, after which the sheep defecated on the crops, the lawsuit says. Both sides declined to comment. Sheep are high-risk carriers of E. coli bacteria, so the original two acres of carrots and the adjoining 74 acres were destroyed to prevent food poisoning, according to the lawsuit. (Bakersfield Californian, 5/27/09).
- The Vernon (BC, Canada) council instructed city staff in May to proceed with a bylaw that would ban cosmetic pesticides on public land in 2010 and on private property in 2012. “This is the way the world wants to go,” said Councillor Patrick Nicol. Possible impacts from chemical use fueled Councillor Buffy Baumbrough’s support for a bylaw. “We heard concerns about the health and environmental potential and the susceptibility of children to pesticides,” she said. “We may not understand the impacts until years later.” Chemicals would still be used to control noxious weeds or for agricultural activities. Opposition to a bylaw came from Councillors Mary-Jo O’Keefe and Shawn Lee. “This whole thing sounds good but we’re saying we don’t have confidence in Health Canada (regulations) and we don’t believe local citizens can follow directions,”said Lee. (Vernon Morning Star, 5/27/09).
