Liars, Cheats, and Thieves Hurting Us Again

Business runs on trust. TRUST. Period. However over the past several years the trust that the customer needs to have in the products she/he buy has been sorely tried.

It did not start with the tainted dog and cat food from China, but that brought it to the attention of the American public. Since then we have had tainted baby food from China; tainted milk and chocolate bars from China. These were cheats that the Chinese do to their own people, and from what I read, the people who do them seem to have a hard time understanding that what they did was wrong. Luckily many more millions of Chinese think this is wrong, and are trying to fight back. This, however, is by no means a Chinese problem.

Here in the US and Canada, most of the tainted problems stemmed more from system contamination rather than malicious cheating. Escherica (E.) coli 0157:H7 in spinach, then in lettuce from all over. Then there were the E. coli infected tomatoes, but wait it wasn't the tomatoes it was the peppers, but wait it was none of those things. (I have read so much on this I think there never was an E. coli 0157:H7 problem, but I simply do not know.) The regulators made a hash of their testing and product recalls, wasting millions of tons of produce in the process, in a world filled with hunger. So we loose confidence it everything, which creates a major problem.

Now we have a major manufacturer of organic fertilizer using a prohibited substance to improve their "certified organic" fertilizer. California Liquid Fertilizer illegally cheated certified organic farms and their customers by tainting their fertilizers with ammonium sulfate, one of the worst of the synthetic fertilizers rightfully prohibited from from organic gardens. You can read here the story from the Sacramento Bee, Organic farms unknowingly used a synthetic fertilizer. This is a story that dovetails with our financial crisis: where were the regulators? This tainting of the fertilizer by California Liquid Fertilizer went on for seven (7) years! OMG! But it gets worse: The article says:

According to documents obtained by The Bee through a Public Records Act request, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials were notified of the problem in June 2004 but didn't complete their investigation and order the company to remove its product from the organic market until January 2007.

This is an organic grower's nightmare. Being told that something is organic, because we have to trust our suppliers to tell us the truth because we do not have a chemistry lab with a spectrometer to test the products with the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute), WSDA (Washington State Department of Agriculture), which we stick to, or Oregon Tilth, or CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers),or other organic certification.

This is not the first time (or the second or third) that organic farmers who are doing their darnedest to keep their food organic are screwed by big business. In the late 1990's, Monsanto decided to these GMO wheat that was Roundup Ready (Roundup is something you do not want to use around food, it is super poisonous), and it crossed with organic wheat. These were field tests, out in the wind and weather. What did Monsanto expect? This was a major disaster that was also a cross between a fiasco and a tragedy. You can start reading about it in this report by the Canadian Organic Consumers Association Organic Consumers Association. An Update On The GMO Controversy from November 2001. However, it was Monsanto's response to the problem that is so egregious: I read that they sued the organic farmers over using their GMO, patented seed. The organic farms were decertified and had to go back to being transitional organic farms for several years. Here is a link to the sins of Monsanto Millions Against Monsanto. Read it and be amazed, or one of those other "A" words.

We work very hard to keep our food pure. So do the farmers who used California Liquid Fertilizer. One of the agricultural companies lied to, cheated on, and thieved from was Earthbound Organics. They are probably still the biggest supplier of organic produce, and millions of people depend on their organic vegetables. In the winter, when we have no vegetables, we buy them in the store like non-farmers, and we buy from Earthbound among others. Everyone throughout the organic food/value chain was betrayed.

The purposeful tainting of a product crosses all boundaries of decency: it is illegal, immoral, and unethical. It endangers people's lives. This cavalier attitude by those companies that perpetrate these cheats is so disrespectful of all of us. As a customer I do think about these problems as I stand in the grocery store or over the sink preparing dinner. As a farmer I fear this type of thing happening to our farm. As a business woman, I want to rip these liars, cheats, and thieves limb from limb. The ancient punishment of drawing and quartering seems about right for those who do this. No bailout bonuses for those guys. Do you think I'm angry? Oh yes.

CULTIVATE THE SOIL: RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING AND SMALL-SCALE FARMERS AND RANCHERS IN WASHINGTON STATE

Mary Embleton of Cascade Harvest and Puget Sound Fresh sent this information out today. This is a new publication.

CULTIVATE THE SOIL:
RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING AND SMALL-SCALE FARMERS AND RANCHERS IN WASHINGTON STATE
Megan McPhaden
Washington State Housing Finance Commission
Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program
Fall 2008

You don't need The Ponderosa to farm. Your backyard, the top of your garage, containers on your lanai, a bowl of greens on your kitchen counter all produce food. This downloadable PDF file provides you with good information, live links to resources that give you a wide range of information.

Mary wrote:
Produced by the Washington State Housing Finance Commission's
Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program,
this resource is now online [Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program]: www.wshfc.org/FarmRanch/resources.pdf.

If you would like to receive a copy of "Cultivate the Soil" in the mail, please contact Viet Tran at 206.287.4482 or viet.tran@wshfc.org

For questions concerning the Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program, please contact
Tia Peycheff at 206.287.4416, tia.peycheff@wshfc.org or
Dan Schilling at 206.287.4415, dan.schilling@wshfc.org

Please distribute this to anyone you think may be interested!

Capital Press letter to the editor

I couple of weeks before the election, during the endorsement frenzy, Capital Press endorsed John McCain. For many reasons I did not support his candidacy. For many more reasons I supported Barack Obama. Yea!

I believe that the past seven years have been extremely hard on family farms. The twelve years previously under Republican administration was even harder on us. The eight years of Clinton were not as hard, but far from good. The assent of the industrial farm, which like much of American industry has been shown the doorway to China, is really the legacy of Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He devised the industrialized farming scheme that dominates today's agriculture. I have come to believe that this is one of the most harmful policies we have in the USA. There are many reasons for this, but it not good on many levels, including homeland security, that the USA has become a net importer of food, much of it being imported from China.

My husband had read the Capital Press endorsement to me in the morning, and later that day I read an article from the McClatchy newspapers website that discussed how John McCain ridiculed small, family farmers. I wrote a letter to the editor, which now appears on their website. As far as I know, it was not printed in the paper.

Why I Fill Out Those Farm Surveys

I completed the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey as soon as I received it last week. I completed two other surveys, including the big national agricultural survey sent out every few years.

Why would I do this? It exposes my farm to scrutiny ("you shouldn't let them know you exist"), it takes time ("I'm busy farming, I don't have time for this c***"), and it makes me think about what we are doing ("I don't even want to think about this"). I do this because I want the people who allocate money, designate zoning, and set public policy to recognize our farm and our customers. If they don't know we are here, we will most certainly be run over by progress.

I cannot count the number of times that I have been told that there are no farms in Kitsap County. In the summer of 2000 (what a way to start a new century and a new millennium), we (my husband Cliff and I) had to really take over from my father. I called everyone who claimed they had something to do with farming about what my options were and where we could get some help. I swung between being disappointed to being outraged by the responses.

One state group promised to send me information on hiring farm workers: that never came. The job of the county extension agent was in flux at that point (things have gotten better), after a bizarre conversation ("6 acres is not a farm." "I said 60 – six zero – acres." "There aren't any farms that size in Kitsap." "We have owned and farmed this property since 1892. Mr. Peterson in Silverdale has more land and farms.") that fellow never got back to me (I think he was losing his job at that moment, to cut him some – what – slack?).

The people who did help were the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) who knew we existed, and sent me to some websites (come on State Legislators give these hard working people some money), and answered some questions. They knew we were here. They my father was declining in health and farming, and they cared that we kept on farming. My parents and before them my grandparents had filled out the state farm census every time it was out. I had one buried in my father's unopened mail (several feet of it), and they sent us another copy and then interviewed us on the phone. It really was not much, but it gave us a little boost.

Since our first bad experience with the WSU Extension for Kitsap County, we now have Arno Bergstrom as our Extension Agent. His classes on farming are popular and helpful. This year they produced a beautiful and interactive Kitsap County Farm Map.

A few years later we discovered the Kitsap Conservation District. What wonderful people. They have been here in Kitsap County since 1949. They don't have much money, but they are doing a great deal to help landowners take care of their property, preserve the integrity of steams, and help animal owners control the mud problems that are inevitable every winter. These may seem like trivial issues, but maintaining a clean and healthy planet, county, or farm is like washing you dishes or sweeping your floor: either you can live in a nice home or in a pit; it's your choice.

The Kitsap Conservation District and members of the Kitsap 20/20 Agriculture Task Force sponsored the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey. If you are a farmer, and I don't care if your grow vegetables on top of your garage in town and sell or give them to your neighbors, or if you have 20,000 acres of forest land, or something in between, fill it out. Federal, State, and County budgets depend on it.

I ask you this, if you are hesitating to fill out the survey: where would you prefer your taxes to be spent, on farms, ranches, and local food, or more those things that destroy local farms, forests, and land?

Cascade Harvest & Puget Sound Fresh Need Help

It's time to step up and give.

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The meltdown in financial markets and the increasingly weak economy have hit us hard here at Cascade Harvest Coalition. As of today, we will lose 75% of our operating budget (approximately $230,000) for 2009. This is largely local government grants that won’t be funded because of operating shortfalls.
We need your help!
For ten years, Cascade Harvest Coalition has been fiercely dedicated to building a sustainable food system in our region. Each year, we have reached millions of consumers with messages on the critical importance of local farms and food to our economy, our communities and our environment. We have given them the tools they need to directly connect with local farmers – through the Puget Sound Fresh Farm Guide, CSA directory, searchable database, and by directly supporting Farmers Markets and restaurants, local retail grocers and others who source locally.
We have made it our mission to more directly connect farmers with local food buyers, helping support sustainable farming operations and increasing their bottom line.
We have provided thousands of hours of one-on-one assistance to current and beginning farmers as they try to access land, start new farm businesses, and develop new markets. We have helped maintain over 500 acres in active agricultural production and provided many hundreds of farmers with the resources, tools and information they need to be successful.
And our efforts to support new processing infrastructure in the Puget Sound region are starting to bear fruit. Working with our collaborative partners, we’ve identified existing processing capacity and are helping farmers get new products to market as well as examining the potential for other processing facilities. We are adding considerably to the fundamental base of information about production, processing and infrastructure in our region that will serve us for years to come.
Importantly, we have also provided significant financial support to other organizations promoting sustainable food and farming systems by helping fund workshops, conferences and other community events as well as acting as fiscal sponsor for organizations just starting to build capacity.
And, we provide a crucial conduit for information – through this and our other email lists – to make sure that those interested in issues affecting local food and farms are informed. This list – started nearly 10 years ago – has grown from reaching a handful of individuals and organizations – to reaching an estimated 2,000 directly and through information sharing. Almost daily – organizations ask to post information to this list because they know you care about the issues. And yet, the majority of people on this list are not members of Cascade Harvest Coalition.
We urge you to become a member or make a contribution, individually and through your business or organization to support our efforts at this critical time. Your support is crucial in helping us maintain the momentum we’ve built and the successes we’ve achieved.
Thank you for your support!
Mary Embleton, Director

Tainted Milk: Why Sustainable Agricultural Practices are Needed

Sustainable agricultural practices feed the soil with the nutrients it needs to grow healthy crops to feed you. Dying, chemically fed soil produces grains, vegetables, and other plants that are low in protein. Processing practices can also lower the nutrient value. Foods are tested for protein levels under certain situations. Food grown in poor soil simply lacking nutrients, and food processing managers who want to pass the tests without providing the nutrients have found a cheap cheat in Melamine, a chemical that shows higher levels of protein than really exists.

Melamine, a plastic that is poisonous to humans and animals (tainted dog and cat food in 2007), was found in the milk given to babies in Chinese hospitals in Beijing. The result, so far, is 6,200 sickened and 3 dead.

An article published on Huntington Post reports the following.

More than 6,200 babies have been sickened by tainted milk formula and dozens of infants are suffering from acute kidney failure, China's health minister said Wednesday as the death toll rose to three children.

The article went on to discuss the situation,closing the article with this:

Suppliers to the dairy companies are believed to have added the banned chemical, normally used in plastics, to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein. Inspectors will now start testing for melamine in all dairy products, Li said.

The chemical additive was at the center of a major pet food scandal in the United States in 2007. An estimated 1,500 dogs and cats died after ingesting a pet food ingredient manufactured in China that was laced with melamine.

This sad story is going to be repeated again and again all over the world as our food chain is centralized, processing leeches out the nutrients, and the soil our food is grown in is weakened and killed by herbicides and pesticides.

By buying organically grown and naturally grown food, you are telling farmers that you value this type of food. The message that "conventional" farmers are being bombarded with is if they farm without these additives (poisons) they will fail. The simple act of buying organic food shows conventional farmers that this is a lie, and they can make a living farming the healthy way.

My prayers and best wishes for full recoveries go out to the sick children and their parents. I send my condolences to the parents and families of the children who died.

Demand for local food at an all time high

What a modern headline: “Demand for local food at an all time high.” A person born in 1908 probably would not be able to understand it, yet today the issue of locally grown versus imported food may be essential to our continued well-being. The locally grown food issue is, ironically, worldwide.

For all the industrialized nations the food chain has become a complex system based on global corporations that separate producers and consumers are through a chain of processors, value-added manufacturers, shippers and haulers, and retailers. This food chain is so convoluted it is almost impossible to understand. For example, If you shop at Costco and many other grocery stores, you are familiar with the Earthbound Farm Organic Foods, which is a subsidiary brand of Natural Selection Foods, which is a subsidiary of Tanimura and Antle.

The Certified Organic Associations of BC (Canada) has a chart of the global corporations that own some of the organic (but not local) brands you can find on your grocery store shelves. Who Owns What in the Organic food industry, by Phil Howard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University's Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies is surprising. If after reading the chart, you feel like you are in a modern version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who's on First,” you are not alone.

The global organic food industry is threatened by the movement to buy from local farmers, who actually provide less than 2% of all food consumed in the United States, and probably the industrialized world, as well, although I have no statistics on this. The globalization of food, which took away the issue of seasonality, so you could have tomatoes, cherries, broccoli, and more year-round, proved to be a highly disruptive situation to both food distribution and agriculture. Food distributors who did not provide out of season food found themselves out of business. Farmers planted one or two crops to meet the huge demand that nationwide and worldwide distribution created.

The local food movement may be as disruptive in reverse. If you enter the phrase “demand for locally grown food” into Yahoo Search, you will get 9,870,000 articles returned.

LOCAL FOOD DISTRIBUTION

Local Kitsap Peninsula food is actually difficult to find. All of the local CSA (community supported agriculture) farms were sold out weeks in advance. Local farmers markets report an increase in customers of double or more over last year. Even our miserable weather and resulting slow season does not deter CSA members and farmers market customers.

However, not everyone can join a CSA or go to a farmers market. To help people who want to enjoy locally grown food, Bainbridge Islander Carlee Ashen started Farm Courier to bring local produce to Bainbridge Island doorsteps. She is at the forefront of local food distribution. Farm Courier enjoys an unique place in the local food distribution system, but Ashen’s success is going to inspire others to copy her business model and join her in providing fresh, locally grown food on the Kitsap Peninsula.Farm Courier and Carlee Ashen were recently featured in this Bainbridge Island Review article Cyber market links Bainbridge growers to residents hungry for local food.

Crossposted with http://www.buylocalfoodinkitsap.org/

"Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting."

What is water worth? One major American investor, T. Boone Pickens betting $100 million that water is the new oil. You can read Business Week's Cover Story for June 12, 2008,
There Will Be Water. (It is not on permalink, so it may disappear after a few weeks.)

Currently, water is desperately needed in the sub-Saharan areas, India, and China. I have been saying for some time that water is the new oil, and that some wars today are being fought over water, such as the war centered in sub-Saharan Darfur.

Pickens is staying at home, and this interesting article talks about trying to sell water in the USA. We are not there yet, but as people loose their water rights, and water is wasted by being used as a waste/sewage disposal system, or dumped back into salt water, water could become as precious as Pickens thinks it will.

There's a saying in Texas: "Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting." Pickens decided to fight. In 1999 he created a company called Mesa Water and began to accumulate water rights so he could strike a deal with another city altogether. The hell with Amarillo. Pickens was confident he could sell his water: The population of Texas was expected to jump 40% by 2020, mostly in urban areas one dry season away from drought.

Ironically, it may be the flooding that boosts Pickens' investment, since the flooding is polluting the water with the damaged oil tanks, refineries, waste treatment plants, and so on. Flood and drought may radically change the cost of water and food.

Sad news for peregrine lovers

The Seattle Times reported today that none of the peregrine (falcon) babies survived this year. The peregrines have been nesting atop the WA MU tower since 1994. They have successfully raised many babies. Just the headline
Falcon babies atop Seattle's WAMU tower all dead brought me great sorrow. Ángel González, Seattle Times business reporter, has been following the peregrines. I have stood in that building and watched the peregrine baby cam in past years.

The death of these baby birds is not the only tragedy because the bird population has been declining for a very long time at an alarming rate. I did a quick search on Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, and I was sadly bemused by the hatred of her and this book that still bubbles up 46 years later. The idea that we have as many birds as we had in 1962, when Silent Spring first appeared is wrong. It is not just DDT, the chemical that Carson pinpointed in bird deaths then, but a lot of factors, including not enough water put out for birds. In my philosophy, the Earth should be a garden of wonder, but it has turned into a garden of terror for many, including the birds.

What is important about these deaths is that the death of birds and the overall decline of the world's bird population continues. Whether it is grinding along or accelerating makes no difference. I quickly looked for an article to share with you about this problem, and I found very few entries. The best continues to be a six year old article from National Geographic, published November 5, 2002, Quarter of U.S. Birds in Decline, Says Audubon by John Pickrell. There is a wealth of information on the National Audubon Society website. It is worth going there.

A quarter of all bird species in the United States have declined in population since the 1970s, according to a report issued by the National Audubon Society.

Of more than 800 native U.S. bird species, 201 are included on the group's Watchlist 2000, and 214 are on Watchlist 2007.

I do not have time to search further, today, for more information, but my sorrow for the peregrines is increased by my sorrow at the seeming lack of easily accessible information that is recent, concerning this.

The Watchlist 2007 is found here. Just because a bird is not on the Watchlist does not mean that it is thriving for no species of bird is really thriving. In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses what happens when anything, good or bad, crosses a threshold and becomes epidemic. Has the greater population of birds yet crossed the tipping point into extinction?

What you can do. If you have a yard, put out water for the birds, especially if you are in a dry area or an area bordering salt water. Birds need lots of fresh water to survive. If you are in a desert or drought area, add all types of bird food.

Why this is important to farming. Birds are a natural pest control system. While many complain that birds eat grain and human food, it is bird food, too. My father always told me that the most important tithe that anyone could give was 10% back to the wild animals and birds. We have become so greedy that we will destroy everything and ourselves through our unkind farming practices.

Climate Change, Global Warming, and Mary Rosenblum's Water Rites

Less than 3% of the world’s water is potable, and a large percentage of that is in the polar ice caps and glaciers that are melting into the oceans to become unusable salt water. Desalination plants have proven to be inadequate and costly, so maintaining the fresh water we have is increasingly important.

In the past few years, it has become clear that water is the “new oil” in terms of ownership, availability, price, and a reason for war. In Darfur,the war there is a geo-political disaster that is being fought for water, oil, tribal dominance and religion. In Darfur, drilling a well is a political act than can get you murdered. Other parts of the world, such as China, India, most of Northern Africa, and a few areas of the US, do not have enough fresh, potable water to meet the needs of every person who lives there.

In her novel, Water Rites, Mary Rosenblum explores what a world dominated by water shortages will be like in the Pacific Northwest. We just added Water Rites to our Bookshelf because it brings home the problems of global warming in an excellent novel. You can buy it there from Powell’s Books.

This is a book that you can and should read with your family, including children. Water Rites should be on every reading group’s booklist.

I’ve know Mary Rosenblum for about 20 years. Her knowledge of life and our world is wide and deep. Whenever we get together, she educates me in the most delight conversations on global warming, sustainable farming, child rearing, and sheep herding. She understands in the way that only a person with ties to family, the land, and the Earth can that global climate change is accelerating. Mary started thinking and writing about global warming in 1992. In Water Rites, Mary explores what life will like when too little fresh water is the norm.

In 1994, Mary published her first novel, The Drylands, and received the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. That book is again available with three short stories set in the same world and sharing some the same characters as Water Rites.

Mary set her stories south of Portland, Oregon, near the area where she lives and farms, and about 200 miles south of our farm. Her characters are men and women like us, who are caught in a global disaster, enduring the hardships while helping other people to survive, too.

The first three stories, Water Bringer, Celilo, and The Bee Man, depict the lives of people living on the land that is dying from the drought. These people, seen as hicks by the ignorant, are shaped in amazing ways by their circumstances. I really cannot say much more, because the unfolding of these stories is so moving that I do not want to harm them with spoilers.

The fourth story is the award winning novel, The Drylands. We follow Major Carter Voltaire, of the US Army Corp of Engineers, trying to allocate water and build a pipeline to drought stricken agricultural areas. The story is vivid and the characters richly drawn. The characters we meet in the first three stories inhabit Voltaire’s world. It is his responsibility to get fresh water to the drought-stricken farm lands, while Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and other coastal cities drown in sea water.

In the foreword, Mary writes that in 1994 the scary global warming predictions were forty years out, but now, fourteen years later, they are becoming a fact of our lives. As Mary concludes in her foreword, “Think of that next time you vote, or purchase a car. Pay Attention, okay? It won’t be a nice world to live in.” (Water Rites, p. 11)

You can visit Mary’s website at www.maryrosenblum.com. There you will find a list of her other novels and short stories. There is also a picture of Mary with the wonderful dogs that she breeds and trains.

Inert Is Not Inert Anymore

Inert
adj.

1. Unable to move or act.
2. Sluggish in action or motion; lethargic. See synonyms at inactive.
3. Chemistry. Not readily reactive with other elements; forming few or no chemical compounds.
4. Having no pharmacologic or therapeutic action.

[Latin iners, inert- : in-, not; see in–1 + ars, skill.]

Seems like a straightforward definition, but if you care about being poisoned, maybe you should care about this:

Ingredients can be listed as "inert" if they do not have an action pertinent to stated action of the product. This means that an herbicide that kills plants can have in its "inert" ingredients pesticides that kill pests, or you, or your kids and pets. Or inversely, a pesticide to kill a specific pest (like we're not all linked!) could wipe out all the food crops, or flowers, or your yard.

OK, maybe that sounds harsh or paranoid, but if you rid your yard of one noxious weed, you could set off a chain reaction if you use some products. When I first heard about the Inert ingredients, I thought it was one of those "urban myths." I searched for information on it and found many articles. Here is a link to an article Aerial Spraying for the Brown Apple Moth to Resume" that discusses this issue. The article is in Beyond Pesticides Daily New Blog (October 24, 2007). Here is a quote from the article about one inert list:

However, the inert chemicals in CheckMate LBAM-F have now come under scrutiny by local residents. These inerts ingredients causing concern are: butylated hydroxytoluene, tricaprylyl methyl ammonium chloride, polyvinyl alcohol, and sodium phosphate. These inerts are listed by the US EPA as List 3 - Inerts of unknown toxicity, and List 4B - Other ingredients for which EPA has sufficient information to reasonably conclude that the current use pattern in pesticide products will not adversely affect public health or the environment, respectively.

Suzanne Dowling, a concerned resident, said, “There are health hazards associated with each and every one of the four inert ingredients of the product to be dumped on us.”

There are additional links in this article.

For the regulators of certified organic products the inert list is of prime concern. One of the men who works for WSDA Organic Program told me that they spend a huge amount of their time testing the inert ingredients of products being put forth as "organic".

If you read my last post about Pesticides in children, you can extrapolate the implications of non-inert Inert ingredients.

Spring is coming, and state and local pest controllers will be out aerial spraying gypsy or codling moths honestly not knowing about the "inert" list. They truly believe it to be a real inert ingredient such a silica.

Question of the day:
How do we move to knowing what is really in things?

As more and more people suffer from neurological problems, allergies, diseases, and syndromes, it is time to look at the environment in which we live. The following article appeared at the end of January 2008. As with all newspaper articles, it was a one-edition wonder. I am quoting some of it here with appropriate links, and links to the original study, at the bottom of this, to educate us all.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 30, 2008
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

Harmful pesticides found in everyday food products
Mercer Island children tested in yearlong study

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.

The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue [15 January 2008] of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.

With good scientific caution, Chensheng Lu, went on to discuss the limitations of current research, noting, however, that:

"In animal and a few human studies, we know chlorpyrifos inhibits an enzyme that transmits a signal in the brain so the body can function properly. Unfortunately, that's all we know."

The article continues, discussing Chlorpyrifos:

Dangerous science

Chlorpyrifos, made by Dow Chemical Co., is one of the most widely used organophosphate insecticides in the United States and, many believe, the world.

For years, millions of pounds of the chemical insecticide were used in schools, homes, day care centers and public housing, and studies show that children were often exposed to enormously high doses. Just as the EPA was ready to ban the product, which analysts said would have damaged Dow's overseas sales, the company "voluntarily" removed it from the home market. Yet, with few exceptions, the agricultural uses continued.

The EPA's Web site is a study in contradictions when it comes to chlorpyrifos.

To be fair to the EPA, the website actually reflects attitudes towards these chemicals over time. It is, however confusing, because you need to read the dates of the various documents. If you search on the word chlorpyrifos, nearly a half million articles or references will be identified. This chemical has been in use since, at least 1988, and likely earlier.

To read more about this, go to the article at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

P-I senior correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattlepi.com.

The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives www.ehponline.org The study was published in the 15 January 2008 issue. You can download a PDF copy of the study from EHP at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/10912/abstract.html