Friends of Rural New York

This Fall, Millions of MTV Viewers Will Be Served “A Side of Truth”

Imagine if fast food restaurants offered diners a side of truth with every meal—truth about where their meat, eggs, and dairy products really come from. That’s exactly what happens in Compassion Over Killing’s newest 30-second commercial—“A Side of Truth”—hitting the MTV airwaves this November, reaching more than 21 million cable subscribers nationwide.
Check the ads out at:
http://www.cok.net/camp/mtv/

The Sustainable Agriculture Coalition released the SAC farm bill platform, No Time for Delay: A Sustainable Agriculture Agenda for the 2007 Farm Bill, along with a report card on implementation of ten key innovations from the 2002 Farm Bill and related materials.  All the documents are at http://www.msawg.org/key-farmbill.html.  We encourage everyone to provide a link or feature the platform on your own websites if possible.

The Catholic Rural Life Conference will be holding a session of the 2007 Farm Bill in New York State. More details when they become available.

September 2006
An Analysis of the Benefits of Farm-Scale Anaerobic Digesters in the United States
Anaerobic digestion is a method of manure processing during which methane-producing bacteria break down animal waste. In recent years, this technology has been touted as an environmentally friendly solution for waste management at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs). This factsheet describes anaerobic digestion, and discusses its potential as an energy source.
See:
http://www.sierraclub.org/factoryfarms/factsheets/
Our comment:
The unmentioned drawbacks are that the taxpayers are being forced to subsidize the digesters and that it gives the producers an incentive to enlarge their operations by adding more livestock.

Comment:
We would even question whether Cornell’s so-called “world-class"scientists can be objective given their dependence on agri-business funding. Cornell’s misguided scientists are promoting the CAFO model of farming. Senator Nozzolio is known to be an advocate of industrial farming.  Putting the laboratory at Cornell just may be the best way to attempt to dilute any protections for our food safety. For example, the e coli problem is a by product of industrial agriculture. Can we believe that Cornell scientists will not attempt to unduly influence state employees?
Boos and hisses to Nozzolio for this lame brained idea. 

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Food Laboratory employees say move to Geneva would hinder their work

First published: Sunday, October 22, 2006
In response to Sen. Michael Nozzolio’s Oct. 5 letter, we employees of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets Food Laboratory offer our perspective on why the move of the Food Laboratory to Geneva would be counterproductive to fulfilling our mission.

Senator Nozzolio states that the Geneva site was chosen to further solidify the Food Technology Park’s national standing and reputation. While we applaud that goal, we, as a food safety regulatory agency, do not share the same mission. Our focus is to ensure the safety and quality of food, not to develop an improved product or process. Direct collaborations with manufacturers whose products fall under our agency’s regulatory realm may create conflicts of interest.

He also states that relocation would enable the Food Laboratory to fully optimize the resources and assets of Cornell University. We do not see how moving to Geneva will improve our relationship with Cornell, as we already have several associations and collaborative research projects with Cornell staff in Ithaca.

Our proximity to the state Health Department, State Police Laboratory and the state Department of Environmental Conservation is very important to the services we provide. For example, our laboratory worked with the Health Department on the recent E. coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak. If our laboratory were in Geneva, we would have not been able to provide such rapid support.

The senator states that Cornell collaborates regularly with inspectors from our agency’s Division of Food Safety and Inspection. This is true, but the inspectors are not part of the Food Laboratory. They are based in our department’s main office in Colonie. Laboratory staff meet routinely with staff from other divisions in the agency in Colonie. Moving the lab would result in increased travel costs and have a detrimental effect on the lab’s productivity as an entire day would have to be devoted to a meeting, rather than an hour.

Finally the senator states that this relocation will use every possible scientific resource at Cornell and its world-class scientists. We respect the scientists at Cornell, but we have world-class scientists and state-of-the art equipment here in Albany. We find that some of our best sources of expertise in our field are in regulatory food laboratories in other states.

We invite Senator Nozzolio to visit our laboratory, so he can better understand the work we do and our role in ensuring the safety, security and quality of food for the citizens of New York.

DEBRA OGLESBY
Albany Times Union

Schodack Landing

http://www.news10now.com

Sierra Club says Walsh is in too close with food industry
Updated: 10/23/2006 2:41:37 PM
By: Staff
An environmental group is accusing Syracuse Republican Congressman James Walsh of doing the bidding of the food industry in return for thousands of dollars in contributions in recent years. The Sierra Club says Walsh has helped to stymie efforts to make the nation’s food supply safer.

Martha Holly Loew, Iroquois Group of the Sierra Club, said “He collects more money than anybody else in the assembly at this point. And $500,000 can get you a long way to beating legislation which would help protect our safety. He has taken money ahead of our health and we believe it is time for him to go.

“Agriculture is the largest industry in New York State. We have a lot of food production, food processing and I have supported the agriculture industry primarily by supporting farmers by doing watershed protection, by helping them to stay in business, stay on the farm. Most of our farms are small family farms,” Walsh said.

Walsh says he has worked to tighten standards for food quality nationwide and has never attempted to weaken the quality of that food supply.

The US EPA has released the list of animal feeding operations that have agreed to voluntarily take part in a monitoring study to evaluate their air emissions. Family farmers, environmental advocates and besieged citizens decried the EPA’s deal with CAFO (confined animal feeding operations) operators as a sell-out to corporate operations. By agreeing to allow monitoring of their emissions, helping to pay for the study and paying a small penalty up front, the CAFO participants avoid a possible lawsuit over their toxic emissions. Industry advocates claim that the deal assures that producers will cooperate with the EPA and assure that they are fairly regulated. However, the EPA already had the authority to study toxic emissions and that the agreements are a “sweetheart deal” for CAFO polluters.

More than 2600 agreements from operators nationwide have been filed. One hundred fifty-five New York State farms, 139 of them dairy, have signed the agreement with the EPA and have paid a civil fine. The largest fines were paid by Lawnel’s Farm Inc of Piffard; Kreher’s Egg Farm LLC of Clarence, Noblehurst Farms, Inc of Linwood and Willet Dairy LLC of Locke. Wegmans Food Markets and Cornell University also signed the agreement and paid a fine. There are over 600 DEC permitted CAFOs in New York State.

Livestock factories generate an estimated 575 billion pounds of manure each year. Manure lagoons emit toxic airborne chemicals that can result in human health problems. Air pollutants like hydrogen sulfide and ammonia can cause both immediate and long-term respiratory problems. Residents near large livestock factories may experience headaches, runny noses, sore throats, excessive coughing, diarrhea, and burning eyes more often than people living elsewhere.

According to the EPA, the industry led monitoring is expected to begin this winter and will occur for approximately 24 months.  Within 18 months after the conclusion of the air emissions study, the EPA will publish emission-estimating methods for CAFOs.

Concerns about toxic emissions from livestock factories led the American Public Health Association to issue a resolution last year urging federal, state, and local government health officials to impose a precautionary moratorium on permitting for new CAFOs.

For a complete list of farms, email

Hey everyone- here is some hot news from the Buffalo area. Here we have a couple of academics that are getting money to study the rainfall effect on fecal pathogens at the beaches. I’ll bet you didn’t know that fecal matter was raining on the beaches. This gives a whole new meaning to the accusation that PhD means “piled higher and deeper.”
Hint: Fecal matter is coming from the livestock factories in Erie County. The liquid manure runs off the field or leaks from the manure pits and thereby gets into Lake Erie. Have these guys not read that even the EPA, as corrupt as they are, admits that 70% of the crap in our waterways is from the farms.

ERIE COUNTY
Grant will fund study of rain, beach pathogens

10/5/2006

Buffalo State College professor Stephen Vermette and Tom Niziol,
meteorologist-in-charge of the National Weather Service in Buffalo,
have received a $16,900 National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
grant to examine the relationship between rainfall and exposure to
fecal pathogens at local beaches.
In 2004, Erie County had 59 beach closures due to high counts of
those pathogens, of which 58 percent were related to rainfall events.

The study will look at 2004 and 2005 rainfalls, reconstructing data
from archived radar, to determine the thresholds at which rain
affects the quality of water at the beaches.

http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20061005/7068801.asp

FDA says Vreba-Hoff CAFO conditions “so inadequate"that drug residues could enter the food supply

HUDSON, MI - The US Food and Drug Administration sent a warning letter to Vreba-Hoff dairy CAFO (Dillon Hwy, Lenawee County) in August after investigations found multiple food safety and animal/drug violations. 

The FDA warned Vreba-Hoff that “you hold animals under conditions that are so inadequate that medicated animals bearing potentially harmful drug residues are likely to enter the food supply.”

Vreba-Hoff was cited for offering “an animal for sale for slaughter as food” that was “adulterated” with penicillin. Violations were discovered in tests by the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service.

According to the FDA, previous USDA tests of Vreba-Hoff cows sent for slaughter as human food found oxytetracycline in cow tissues. “In regard to this oxytetracycline residue, our investigator noted that you administered an approved animal drug via a route, intrauterine, which was not indicated in the labeling, without benefit of a valid veterinarian-client-patient relationship and that you failed to maintain adequate treatment records.”

The FDA noted that the letter “is not intended to be an all-inclusive list of violations. As a producer of dairy cows that are offered for use as food, you are responsible for ensuring that your overall operation and the food you distribute are in compliance with the law.”

“Food safety is a serious issue these days,” said Janet Kauffman of Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan. “We’re very concerned about the animals at these huge facilitites. We’re concerned about the sickness, the drugs. FDA recently shut down spinach producers because of food safety risks.  Let’s hope if they find more contaminated meat from Vreba-Hoff, they do more than send a warning.”

In the last 6 years, Vreba-Hoff has also been cited more than 50 times by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for violations of water quality laws after animal waste flowed to streams.
CONTACT: Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan
John Klein, President 517-383-2261
or Janet Kauffman 517-448-4973

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See FDA warning letter to Vreba-Hoff: http://www.fda.gov/foi/warning_letters/g5992d.htm