1. YingQi Fan 2. powerful as dung 3. The prices of fossil fuels are soaring up and up, which leads to reinforce the competitiveness of development of new energy. This reminds me of the nuclear energy, which has been scrutinized in the public spotlight over the years, since people are always skeptical about nuclear risks although it is a nearly green electricity source. Everything has its own advantages and drawbacks. Energy generated by Dung sounds very good, almost green and at the same time cleaning up greenhouse gas. But no one is sure how effectively it works. Will it cost much, or will it still have some problems we haven’t noticed now but realized later just like DDT and Freon? Anyway, it is still happy to see so many good ideas are being came up with continuously. ------------------------------ Powerful As Dung By Kendyl Salcito Newsweek International Sept. 3, 2007 issue - Israel just bought into one of the crappiest ideas around, and it's paying off. A few years ago, amid a nationwide effort to clean up manure, which emits methane (a greenhouse gas), the Minister of Environment told 55 farmers in Hefer Valley to bury the dung from their 12,000 dairy cows. So the Hefer farmers teamed up with a water-purification company to create a power plant fueled by dung. Their recipe: mix the dung with water, then stir and heat, releasing methane that turns turbines. The plant, about 50 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, went live on July 31. It processes 272 metric tons of manure a day and produces 1.6 megawatts of electricity, which is mainly funneled into Israel's power grid. Full capacity, expected by the year-end, will be 2.4 megawatts. That's less than half a percent of Israel's electricity capacity, but suppliers of the technology insist that methane from manure could eventually be a cheaper energy source than fossil fuels. --------- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427856/site/newsweek/
1. Min Sook Kim (Choi) 2. Nobel laureate urges China and U.S. to act on gas emissions: 3. Dr. Yunus gave a lecture titled “From Poverty to Prosperity” at Ewha a couple of weeks ago. I remember he was saying “I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or as a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it.” We all just can’t turn away from the global warming and pollution issues any more. The mid September weather of Seoul was used to be crystal clear with blue sky.
For reference, the Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
------------------------- From Korea Herald
Nobel laureate urges China and U.S. to act on gas emissions Muhammad Yunus, a 2006 Nobel laureate, said yesterday that powerful and bigger countries must commit themselves to the Kyoto Protocol. He is in Seoul to participate in the second international symposium hosted by the Bidding Committee of Expo 2012. Speaking on "Human Endeavors for a Better Future," he said global warming is no more an abstract idea, it is a problem that people everywhere must cope with on a daily basis. "It is a question of life or death for 150 million Bangladeshi," he said. "The fact that we have more floods than before, and each of them is worse than before means something." The economist and the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank, Yunus said that over 30,000 people got swept away by the most devastating cases of floods in 1991 and 2006. Considering that it is impoverished people that are prone to effects of climate change, he said he has "a lot of business to do." The symposium is seeking solutions for global warming and sustainable development. He said that a solution must be made as soon as possible, and urged bigger and more powerful countries to commit themselves to the Kyoto Protocol to join the global attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2012. "The two biggest polluters, the U.S. and China, are competing with each other in terms of greenhouse gas emission. When they stop polluting, other countries will follow suit," he said in his speech. The Nobel laureate also urged the United Nations to create a new binding element, where all member countries must take part before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. "Their notion of 'considering' reduction (of greenhouse gas emission) is not good enough. 'We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions' is what we need," he said. "Solutions can also be found in people's lifestyles," he said. Climate change and global warming can be prevented by individual efforts, he added. By turning to renewable resources such as bio-energy and solar energy, he said human beings can continue sustainable development. Another important step, according to Yunus, is to develop social businesses that create profit and have a positive effect on the planet and its people. Yunus and his bank, Grameen Bank, were awarded the 2006 Novel Peace Prize for their efforts to spur economic and social development, said the Norwegian Nobel Committee in its prize announcement last year. His first $27 credit loans to 42 poor Bangladeshi villagers have now grown into more than 7,000 micro financing institutions, serving 16 million poor people in both the developing and industrialized countries. As of July 2007, Grameen Bank had issued $6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers. In 1999, Korea saw its first microcredit institution, Joyful Union, established in association with Grameen Bank, and a capital contribution of $50,000 by Citibank Korea Inc. Yunus earlier this week received an honorary philosophy doctoral degree from Ewha Womans University which acknowledged his contribution and effort for the well-being of poor people and their self-sufficiency. The forum is the second, following the first symposium held in May this year. Delegates of the Paris-based BIE will select the winner during its general assembly meeting from Nov. 26 to 27 in Paris. By Jeong Hyeon-ji -----
1. Peaches Park 2. Gum! 3. When you walk around Seoul, there are some pretty nasty places. Our family used to live in boston when I was little, and I remember me and my little sister would run down the sidewalk and count all of the chewing gum stuck to the ground. There are probably a million pieces of gum on the streets of Seoul, and technology has advanced to lower the cost of removing these buggers. Chewing gum and cigarette butts are probably the most common forms of pollution on our streets. (maybe bottle caps?) Anyways, this idea, though ingenious, wouldn't necessarily work as planned if the consumers didn't buy and actually chew this particular brand. All in all, I think this is good news. _______________________________________
'Virtually non-stick' gum created By Rebecca Morelle and Liz Seward BBC News, York
Spraygun removes chewing gum from pavement (BBC) Discarded gum is a major headache for street cleaners Gum splattered streets could soon be no more thanks to a virtually non-stick chewing gum that has been invented by UK scientists.
If it passes European health and safety tests, it could be in our shops by next year, the chemical company developing the gum says.
Revolymer claims its product is easier to remove from pavements, shoes and carpets than gums currently on sale.
Its research was presented at the BA Festival of Science, in York.
Chewing gum clean-up costs can be extremely high.
London's Westminster Council recently released figures showing that it had spent more than £100,000 a year to remove chewing gum from its streets; in Oxford the total was £45,000.
Both ways
For years, scientists have been working on ways to solve the problem.
You always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove Professor Terence Cosgrove, Revolymer Now Revolymer, a Bristol University spin-out company, claims that it has created a new material which can be added to gum that makes it much easier to remove from surfaces.
The material is formed from long chains of molecules, called polymers, which have both water-loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic), and therefore oil-loving, properties.
The polymer's affinity for oil means that it can be easily mixed into the rest of the ingredients needed to create chewing gum; but it is its attraction to water that gives it its non-stick abilities.
Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, Professor Terence Cosgrove, said: "The hydrophilic coating means that you always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove - and, in some cases, doesn't stick at all."
Degrades in water
The researchers have been testing the gum - a working name is Rev7 - on a number of surfaces.
Recent tests on four different types of paving stones showed that the gum vanished from the surfaces within 24 hours - possibly removed by rain from the UK's very wet summer or street cleaning - while other gums remained stuck for several days.
Gum being dissolved (Uni of Bristol) The new gum is said to degrade much faster For some types of shoe, the gum could be pulled straight off immediately; other shoe types needed water to wash it off; while leather soles needed water and a detergent to detach the gum. Commercial gums remained stuck fast.
Preliminary results suggested the gum with added polymer eventually dissolves in water.
Professor Cosgrove said: "If a piece of chewing gum has been washed off and has gone down a sewer somewhere, obviously you want it to degrade."
The team also tested the gum on one of the most tricky surfaces - hair. Using the company CEO's daughter - who said she was due a haircut - as a volunteer, they attached commercial gum to one side of her hair and Rev7 to the other.
The commercial gum eventually had to be cut out, but Rev7 could be mostly removed using water, shampoo and a comb.
Gum link-up
Professor Cosgrove admitted that getting it out was still a difficult task.
The scientist said 20 people had tasted the gum and said it was comparable to commercial gum in terms of taste and texture.
The company now needs to get its polymer accepted as a food product by passing EU health and safety tests. It can then go on sale.
Professor Cosgrove says he is hopeful that the gum will pass them, and says the product could be on the market as early as next year, either as a Revolymer product or through a partnership with one of the major chewing gum manufacturers.
Scientists at the University College Cork, Ireland, recently announced they were creating a biodegradable gum; while a Queen's University team is taking a different tack by developing a super-solvent that would remove even the stickiest of gums. _______________ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6993719.stm
1. SuJung, Kim 2. Soil degradation issues 'swept aside', say experts 3. Soil scientist called for more strict guidelines to stop soil degradation. They insisted that threre is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change-global warming.
Since I read the article about Marxism: the metabolic rift last week, I found and posted this article about 'soil degradation'. What made me surprise was there is a link between soil degardation and global warming. I dindn't realize this kind of linkage between different forms of contamination. --------------------- Soil scientists have called for more targeted research and strict guidelines to stop what they say is the massive degradation of land and soil around the world, which is contributing to climate change and threatening food security.
The proposal is the outcome of five days of discussions at the International Forum of Soils, Society and Global Change in Selfoss, Iceland, which concluded last week.
"The soils of the world are degrading," Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health, told SciDev.Net.
There is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change, he says.
The forum heard that at least a quarter of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from changes in land use — such as deforestation — in the last century.
And without the cover of vegetation, land becomes more reflective, heating up the air above it, and potentially contributing to global warming. It also loses fertility and the capacity to support vegetation and agricultural crops.
By addressing soils and protecting the land cover and vegetation, you can get a "much bigger bang for the buck" in terms of mitigating climate change, Adeel says, but recognition of this link "is not there at the international level".
The forum is currently drafting a set of guiding principles on land care, and will collate methods and lessons learnt on land care to be made available globally.
It has also proposed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change develops a special report on the link between land degradation and climate change.
Forum participants also called for a better understanding of and capacity for carbon sequestration in soil, recognising the potential to put back 1”“2 billion tons [sic] of carbon by restoring degraded ecosystems.
Boshra Salem, from the Department of Environmental Sciences at Egypt's University of Alexandria told SciDev.Net that degradation of soil and land in already marginally productive land is a significant issue for many developing countries, particularly in northern Africa, the Sahara region and parts of Asia, including China.
Salem said that many of these regions have fragile ecosystems. "Any human interventions, for example grazing livestock, can lead to serious degradation."
"There needs to be more collaboration, especially between countries who share the same land degradation problems," Salem added. ----- http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/22831
Court Halts Introduction Of GMO Rice In The Philippines
Today, i ate my favorite Japanese cooky and i was so shocked by a phrase on the cooky box: this corn cooky might be made from GMO cron!! I've never expected to see that kind of warning, so i ate them almost all before i saw it. There is no one who can assure that we will be safe from GMO food. Those GMO food companies are just making risky foods and crops for profit. Even though we are living with rationalized standards(we believe that), no one knows about just one simple result from cron cookies.
------------------------------
PHILIPPINES - A Philippine court has temporarily halted an application to bring genetically modified (GM) rice to the country, pending a study of possible health and environmental effects.
A temporary restraining order was issued yesterday (18 September) after Greenpeace, together with other nongovernmental organisations, challenged the Philippine government's right to approve Bayer Crop Science's LL62, a herbicide-tolerant type of hybrid rice.
The order prohibits the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) from approving Bayer's application to introduce LL62 for food, animal feed and the manufacture of other products.
A statement from the court said the order would "preserve the status quo until the merits of the case can be heard". No date has yet been set for the a new hearing.
Bayer submitted its application to BPI in August 2006. If eventually approved, it will be the first GM rice in the Philippines.
Environmental group Greenpeace filed its injunction on 23 August this year, citing several concerns over LL62, particularly the absence of public consultations, as required by the Philippine law. The injunction also pushes for a review of the approval process for GM plants in the country.
"It will be a big mistake to allow GM rice to enter our food supply. It has never been proven safe for human consumption and poses grave risks to the environment and to our health," said Daniel Ocampo, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Genetic Engineering Campaigner.
Agnes Lintao, policy officer for Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (Searice), another of the petitioners, said approval of LL62 would open the floodgates to further GM rice contamination in the Philippines and that the government should abandon all applications for GM organisms.
Bayer say the LL62 rice variety is safe for human consumption, and produces a protein conferring herbicide tolerance that is commercially available in Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the United States.
"Bayer Crop Science believes that this rice poses no harm on human health, food or feed. It has also been confirmed in many trials that it did not exhibit weedy characteristics, or negatively affect other organisms," said the company's communications manager, Reynaldo Cutanda. --------------------------------- http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/23245
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
6 comments:
1. YingQi Fan
2. powerful as dung
3. The prices of fossil fuels are soaring up and up, which leads to reinforce the competitiveness of development of new energy. This reminds me of the nuclear energy, which has been scrutinized in the public spotlight over the years, since people are always skeptical about nuclear risks although it is a nearly green electricity source. Everything has its own advantages and drawbacks. Energy generated by Dung sounds very good, almost green and at the same time cleaning up greenhouse gas. But no one is sure how effectively it works. Will it cost much, or will it still have some problems we haven’t noticed now but realized later just like DDT and Freon? Anyway, it is still happy to see so many good ideas are being came up with continuously.
------------------------------
Powerful As Dung
By Kendyl Salcito
Newsweek International
Sept. 3, 2007 issue - Israel just bought into one of the crappiest ideas around, and it's paying off. A few years ago, amid a nationwide effort to clean up manure, which emits methane (a greenhouse gas), the Minister of Environment told 55 farmers in Hefer Valley to bury the dung from their 12,000 dairy cows. So the Hefer farmers teamed up with a water-purification company to create a power plant fueled by dung. Their recipe: mix the dung with water, then stir and heat, releasing methane that turns turbines. The plant, about 50 kilometers north of Tel Aviv, went live on July 31. It processes 272 metric tons of manure a day and produces 1.6 megawatts of electricity, which is mainly funneled into Israel's power grid. Full capacity, expected by the year-end, will be 2.4 megawatts. That's less than half a percent of Israel's electricity capacity, but suppliers of the technology insist that methane from manure could eventually be a cheaper energy source than fossil fuels.
---------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20427856/site/newsweek/
1. Min Sook Kim (Choi)
2. Nobel laureate urges China and U.S. to act on gas emissions:
3. Dr. Yunus gave a lecture titled “From Poverty to Prosperity” at Ewha a couple of weeks ago. I remember he was saying “I became involved in the poverty issue not as a policymaker or as a researcher. I became involved because poverty was all around me, and I could not turn away from it.” We all just can’t turn away from the global warming and pollution issues any more. The mid September weather of Seoul was used to be crystal clear with blue sky.
For reference, the Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
-------------------------
From Korea Herald
Nobel laureate urges China and U.S. to act on gas emissions
Muhammad Yunus, a 2006 Nobel laureate, said yesterday that powerful and bigger countries must commit themselves to the Kyoto Protocol. He is in Seoul to participate in the second international symposium hosted by the Bidding Committee of Expo 2012.
Speaking on "Human Endeavors for a Better Future," he said global warming is no more an abstract idea, it is a problem that people everywhere must cope with on a daily basis. "It is a question of life or death for 150 million Bangladeshi," he said. "The fact that we have more floods than before, and each of them is worse than before means something."
The economist and the founder of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Grameen Bank, Yunus said that over 30,000 people got swept away by the most devastating cases of floods in 1991 and 2006. Considering that it is impoverished people that are prone to effects of climate change, he said he has "a lot of business to do."
The symposium is seeking solutions for global warming and sustainable development.
He said that a solution must be made as soon as possible, and urged bigger and more powerful countries to commit themselves to the Kyoto Protocol to join the global attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2012. "The two biggest polluters, the U.S. and China, are competing with each other in terms of greenhouse gas emission. When they stop polluting, other countries will follow suit," he said in his speech.
The Nobel laureate also urged the United Nations to create a new binding element, where all member countries must take part before the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. "Their notion of 'considering' reduction (of greenhouse gas emission) is not good enough. 'We will reduce greenhouse gas emissions' is what we need," he said.
"Solutions can also be found in people's lifestyles," he said. Climate change and global warming can be prevented by individual efforts, he added. By turning to renewable resources such as bio-energy and solar energy, he said human beings can continue sustainable development. Another important step, according to Yunus, is to develop social businesses that create profit and have a positive effect on the planet and its people.
Yunus and his bank, Grameen Bank, were awarded the 2006 Novel Peace Prize for their efforts to spur economic and social development, said the Norwegian Nobel Committee in its prize announcement last year. His first $27 credit loans to 42 poor Bangladeshi villagers have now grown into more than 7,000 micro financing institutions, serving 16 million poor people in both the developing and industrialized countries. As of July 2007, Grameen Bank had issued $6.38 billion to 7.4 million borrowers.
In 1999, Korea saw its first microcredit institution, Joyful Union, established in association with Grameen Bank, and a capital contribution of $50,000 by Citibank Korea Inc.
Yunus earlier this week received an honorary philosophy doctoral degree from Ewha Womans University which acknowledged his contribution and effort for the well-being of poor people and their self-sufficiency.
The forum is the second, following the first symposium held in May this year. Delegates of the Paris-based BIE will select the winner during its general assembly meeting from Nov. 26 to 27 in Paris.
By Jeong Hyeon-ji
-----
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/archives/result_contents.asp?id=20070914
1. Peaches Park
2. Gum!
3. When you walk around Seoul, there are some pretty nasty places. Our family used to live in boston when I was little, and I remember me and my little sister would run down the sidewalk and count all of the chewing gum stuck to the ground. There are probably a million pieces of gum on the streets of Seoul, and technology has advanced to lower the cost of removing these buggers. Chewing gum and cigarette butts are probably the most common forms of pollution on our streets. (maybe bottle caps?) Anyways, this idea, though ingenious, wouldn't necessarily work as planned if the consumers didn't buy and actually chew this particular brand. All in all, I think this is good news.
_______________________________________
'Virtually non-stick' gum created
By Rebecca Morelle and Liz Seward
BBC News, York
Spraygun removes chewing gum from pavement (BBC)
Discarded gum is a major headache for street cleaners
Gum splattered streets could soon be no more thanks to a virtually non-stick chewing gum that has been invented by UK scientists.
If it passes European health and safety tests, it could be in our shops by next year, the chemical company developing the gum says.
Revolymer claims its product is easier to remove from pavements, shoes and carpets than gums currently on sale.
Its research was presented at the BA Festival of Science, in York.
Chewing gum clean-up costs can be extremely high.
London's Westminster Council recently released figures showing that it had spent more than £100,000 a year to remove chewing gum from its streets; in Oxford the total was £45,000.
Both ways
For years, scientists have been working on ways to solve the problem.
You always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove
Professor Terence Cosgrove, Revolymer
Now Revolymer, a Bristol University spin-out company, claims that it has created a new material which can be added to gum that makes it much easier to remove from surfaces.
The material is formed from long chains of molecules, called polymers, which have both water-loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic), and therefore oil-loving, properties.
The polymer's affinity for oil means that it can be easily mixed into the rest of the ingredients needed to create chewing gum; but it is its attraction to water that gives it its non-stick abilities.
Chief Scientific Officer of Revolymer, Professor Terence Cosgrove, said: "The hydrophilic coating means that you always get a film of water around the gum and that is one of the reasons it is easy to remove - and, in some cases, doesn't stick at all."
Degrades in water
The researchers have been testing the gum - a working name is Rev7 - on a number of surfaces.
Recent tests on four different types of paving stones showed that the gum vanished from the surfaces within 24 hours - possibly removed by rain from the UK's very wet summer or street cleaning - while other gums remained stuck for several days.
Gum being dissolved (Uni of Bristol)
The new gum is said to degrade much faster
For some types of shoe, the gum could be pulled straight off immediately; other shoe types needed water to wash it off; while leather soles needed water and a detergent to detach the gum. Commercial gums remained stuck fast.
Preliminary results suggested the gum with added polymer eventually dissolves in water.
Professor Cosgrove said: "If a piece of chewing gum has been washed off and has gone down a sewer somewhere, obviously you want it to degrade."
The team also tested the gum on one of the most tricky surfaces - hair. Using the company CEO's daughter - who said she was due a haircut - as a volunteer, they attached commercial gum to one side of her hair and Rev7 to the other.
The commercial gum eventually had to be cut out, but Rev7 could be mostly removed using water, shampoo and a comb.
Gum link-up
Professor Cosgrove admitted that getting it out was still a difficult task.
The scientist said 20 people had tasted the gum and said it was comparable to commercial gum in terms of taste and texture.
The company now needs to get its polymer accepted as a food product by passing EU health and safety tests. It can then go on sale.
Professor Cosgrove says he is hopeful that the gum will pass them, and says the product could be on the market as early as next year, either as a Revolymer product or through a partnership with one of the major chewing gum manufacturers.
Scientists at the University College Cork, Ireland, recently announced they were creating a biodegradable gum; while a Queen's University team is taking a different tack by developing a super-solvent that would remove even the stickiest of gums.
_______________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6993719.stm
1. SuJung, Kim
2. Soil degradation issues 'swept aside', say experts
3. Soil scientist called for more strict guidelines to stop soil degradation. They insisted that threre is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change-global warming.
Since I read the article about Marxism: the metabolic rift last week, I found and posted this article about 'soil degradation'. What made me surprise was there is a link between soil degardation and global warming. I dindn't realize this kind of linkage between different forms of contamination.
---------------------
Soil scientists have called for more targeted research and strict guidelines to stop what they say is the massive degradation of land and soil around the world, which is contributing to climate change and threatening food security.
The proposal is the outcome of five days of discussions at the International Forum of Soils, Society and Global Change in Selfoss, Iceland, which concluded last week.
"The soils of the world are degrading," Zafar Adeel, director of the UN University's International Network on Water, Environment and Health, told SciDev.Net.
There is a strong link between soil and land degradation, and climate change, he says.
The forum heard that at least a quarter of the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has come from changes in land use — such as deforestation — in the last century.
And without the cover of vegetation, land becomes more reflective, heating up the air above it, and potentially contributing to global warming. It also loses fertility and the capacity to support vegetation and agricultural crops.
By addressing soils and protecting the land cover and vegetation, you can get a "much bigger bang for the buck" in terms of mitigating climate change, Adeel says, but recognition of this link "is not there at the international level".
The forum is currently drafting a set of guiding principles on land care, and will collate methods and lessons learnt on land care to be made available globally.
It has also proposed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change develops a special report on the link between land degradation and climate change.
Forum participants also called for a better understanding of and capacity for carbon sequestration in soil, recognising the potential to put back 1”“2 billion tons [sic] of carbon by restoring degraded ecosystems.
Boshra Salem, from the Department of Environmental Sciences at Egypt's University of Alexandria told SciDev.Net that degradation of soil and land in already marginally productive land is a significant issue for many developing countries, particularly in northern Africa, the Sahara region and parts of Asia, including China.
Salem said that many of these regions have fragile ecosystems. "Any human interventions, for example grazing livestock, can lead to serious degradation."
"There needs to be more collaboration, especially between countries who share the same land degradation problems," Salem added.
-----
http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/22831
sekyoung.^^
Court Halts Introduction Of GMO Rice In The Philippines
Today, i ate my favorite Japanese cooky and i was so shocked by a phrase on the cooky box: this corn cooky might be made from GMO cron!!
I've never expected to see that kind of warning, so i ate them almost all before i saw it. There is no one who can assure that we will be safe from GMO food. Those GMO food companies are just making risky foods and crops for profit.
Even though we are living with rationalized standards(we believe that), no one knows about just one simple result from cron cookies.
------------------------------
PHILIPPINES - A Philippine court has temporarily halted an application to bring genetically modified (GM) rice to the country, pending a study of possible health and environmental effects.
A temporary restraining order was issued yesterday (18 September) after Greenpeace, together with other nongovernmental organisations, challenged the Philippine government's right to approve Bayer Crop Science's LL62, a herbicide-tolerant type of hybrid rice.
The order prohibits the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) from approving Bayer's application to introduce LL62 for food, animal feed and the manufacture of other products.
A statement from the court said the order would "preserve the status quo until the merits of the case can be heard". No date has yet been set for the a new hearing.
Bayer submitted its application to BPI in August 2006. If eventually approved, it will be the first GM rice in the Philippines.
Environmental group Greenpeace filed its injunction on 23 August this year, citing several concerns over LL62, particularly the absence of public consultations, as required by the Philippine law. The injunction also pushes for a review of the approval process for GM plants in the country.
"It will be a big mistake to allow GM rice to enter our food supply. It has never been proven safe for human consumption and poses grave risks to the environment and to our health," said Daniel Ocampo, Greenpeace Southeast Asia Genetic Engineering Campaigner.
Agnes Lintao, policy officer for Southeast Asia Regional Initiatives for Community Empowerment (Searice), another of the petitioners, said approval of LL62 would open the floodgates to further GM rice contamination in the Philippines and that the government should abandon all applications for GM organisms.
Bayer say the LL62 rice variety is safe for human consumption, and produces a protein conferring herbicide tolerance that is commercially available in Canada, the European Union, Japan, Mexico, Russia and the United States.
"Bayer Crop Science believes that this rice poses no harm on human health, food or feed. It has also been confirmed in many trials that it did not exhibit weedy characteristics, or negatively affect other organisms," said the company's communications manager, Reynaldo Cutanda.
---------------------------------
http://www.enn.com/agriculture/article/23245
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