Category Archives: organic

Tyrone Hayes on the misfortune of frogs, crooked science and why we should shun GMOs

by EarnestTheriot Posted on January 15, 2015

green4us

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

This New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant […]

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Warhammer: Thanquol – Games Workshop

As the armies of Chaos spill down from the north in a tide of blood and fire, the skaven are at last ready to unleash their invasion of the surface realms. Vast armies of chittering ratmen scurry forth from the darkness, bursting out into the wan light of day, their beady eyes hungry for blood. […]

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Warhammer: Khaine – Games Workshop

War spreads in a tide of blood and fire as the End Times descend upon the Warhammer World. Ancient kingdoms vanish as their people are put to the sword under the relentless advance of the Dark Gods’ hosts, those that remain desperately fighting for their very survival. Only on the island realm of Ulthuan have […]

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Warhammer: Thanquol (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, […]

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White Dwarf Issue 50: 10 January 2015 – White Dwarf

It’s all about Thanquol, the sneakiest ever Skaven there ever was, this week, as he gets a new awe-inspiring model and an End Times book named after him. To celebrate the Skaven’s dramatic involvement in the End Times, we’ve got rules, painting guides, tips for assembling large plastic kits – and we’ve also sweated blood […]

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread

PLEASE NOTE: This is a summary and analysis of the book and NOT the original book. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis Inside this Instaread: Summary of entire book, Introduction to the important people in the book, Key Takeaways and Analysis of the Key Takeaways. […]

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The Naturally Clean Home – Karyn Siegel-Maier

You don’t need to pay a fortune for expensive “green” commercial cleaning products. It’s easy and inexpensive to mix up effective, nontoxic alternatives using basic kitchen staples — baking soda, vinegar, lemon juice, herbs, and borax — plus a handful of easy-to-find essential oils. Karyn Siegel-Maier offers 150 all-natural recipes for cleaning everything in your home […]

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The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green

The definitive guide to growing marijuana just got better! Greg Green’s original Cannabis Grow Bible set a new standard for handbooks on cannabis horticulture and established Green as the leading authority in the field. Green’s comprehensive and professionally presented work on how to cultivate superior cannabis struck a chord with beginner, amateur and professional growers […]

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Tyrone Hayes on the misfortune of frogs, crooked science and why we should shun GMOs

Posted in Casio, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, Monterey, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged art, biology, climate, conflict, japanese, king, ms-, research, water contamination | Comments Off

Why is Bill Gates drinking poop-water? (video)

by Myrna Posted on January 14, 2015

‘Waste’ is actually a resource! More here: Why is Bill Gates drinking poop-water? (video) ; ; ;

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Why is Bill Gates drinking poop-water? (video)

Posted in eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged ants, drought, introduction, kitchen design, lai, media, monterey, puppy, twitter | Comments Off

Totally nuts! Growing almonds in California uses over 250% more water than all of L.A.

by LeoraValle Posted on January 14, 2015

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

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Warhammer: Thanquol – Games Workshop

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Warhammer: Khaine – Games Workshop

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Warhammer: Thanquol (eBook Edition) – Games Workshop

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

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White Dwarf Issue 50: 10 January 2015 – White Dwarf

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo – A 15-minute Summary & Analysis – Instaread

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The Naturally Clean Home – Karyn Siegel-Maier

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The Cannabis Grow Bible – Greg Green

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Totally nuts! Growing almonds in California uses over 250% more water than all of L.A.

Posted in aquaponics, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, growing marijuana, horticulture, LAI, LG, Monterey, ONA, organic, Pines, solar, solar power, Uncategorized | Tagged g & f, king, living, media, mother nature network, news, q&a, style, web | Comments Off

What Does "Cage-Free" Even Mean?

by BethanyKORQ Posted on January 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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What kind of farm do you imagine when you think of organic or cage-free eggs? Images of hens frolicking in lush meadows?

That kind of farming exists, but such conditions aren’t mandated by organic code—not explicitly anyway. According to the USDA regulations, animals raised organically have “year-round access … to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, clean water for drinking, and direct sunlight, suitable to the species, its stage of life, the climate, and the environment.” Those rules are open to a wide variety of interpretations.,

Ten times over the course of a year and a half, under cover of night,a group of radical animal-rights activists snuck into the facilities of a large operation called Petaluma Farms, a major west-coast major supplier to Whole Foods and Organic Valley, according to The New York Times. The Petaluma egg complex produces both certified-organic and non-organic “cage free” eggs, the main difference between the two standards being that organic eggs must come from hens fed only organic feed.

The group, Direct Action Everywhere, seems to find all animal farming abhorrent—a point driven home in the video’s first third, wherein several group members denounce the killing of animals. Later, footage taken from within the Petaluma facilities shows lots of birds wallowing tightly together, often amidst what looks like significant buildup of their own waste. The narrators use words like “stench, ” “filth,” and “misery” to describe the scene; and show several birds in obvious bad health—birds with blisters, missing feathers, one clearly caked with shit—along with birds that appear to be in decent shape. The crew dramatically rescues one pathetically injured bird, handing her over the fence, one activist to another, and whisking her to a vet in Berkeley, who declares her in dismal shape.

In a media statement, Petaluma owners Judy and Steve Mahrt wrote that “The video in no way reflects our practices or the overall health of our flocks.” As for outside access, the statement adds the company maintains “sun porches for outdoor access while protecting from predators and disease.” All the filming in the video akes place at night, when most domesticated chickens go inside, anyway. So the video doesn’t tell us anything about the birds’ outdoor access.

Pressed for details, the company referred me to the below video. At about the 2:38 mark, there’s a depiction of one such sun porch—it’s a raised, triangular space jutting off the side of the building, made of chicken wire. By the company’s own admission, then, the birds never touch the ground outside—their “outdoor access” seems to conform to the letter of organic code, if not the spirit of organic farming conjured in the heads of consumers.

This is not Petaluma’s first PR problem. Michael Pollan famously used it as an example of industrial-organic farming in Omnivore’s Dilemma, observing that its meat-poultry buildings “don’t resemble a farm so much as a barracks,” and that the birds were conditioned to never make use of their access to outdoors. As for the company’s egg operation, Judy’s Family Farm, Pollan never got a look: “The company was too concerned about biosecurity to let a visitor get past the office.”

Last year, Petaluma settled a lawsuit brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund over the depiction of the lives of its hens on its packaging. As part of the agreement, in which Petaluma did not admit to wrongdoing, the company agreed to modify its egg cartons “by removing the illustration of hens on a green field and removing the language that Plaintiff alleged could lead consumers to mistakenly believe the eggs come from hens with significant outdoor access.” Previously, the inside of the cartons claimed that “these hens are raised in wide-open spaces in Sonoma Valley, where they are free to roam, scratch, and play.”

A “sun porch” at a Petaluma Farms facility—the “access to outdoors” required by organic code. Screenshot from the video, above, provided by Petaluma Farms

So what’s to be taken away from the Direct Action Everywhere video? I see it as an important but problematic look behind the veil of what Pollan has deemed “supermarket pastoral”—the gauze of marketing that cloaks the often-harsh realities of large-scale organic farming.

Yet compared to the vast Iowa facilities that triggered a half-billion-egg salmonella recall in 2010 (the Food and Drug Administration’s stomach-turning post-outbreak inspection report can be found here), the Petaluma houses captured on tape by Direct Action Everywhere actually look pretty good. When you confine thousands of birds into a building and manage several buildings, problems like the ones caught on take by DAE are going to arise. I’d feel better about Petaluma if it represented standard practice for industrial egg production, and not the rarefied status implied by organic certification.

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What Does "Cage-Free" Even Mean?

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Organic Valley, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged Direct, family, g & f, illustration, images, king, legal, petaluma-farms | Comments Off

Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

by DemetriHmi Posted on January 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President Barack Obama will unveil a new plan to cut methane from America’s booming oil and gas industry ahead of the State of the Union address, in an attempt to cement his climate legacy during his remaining two years in the White House.

The new methane rules—expected ahead of the State of the Union speech next week—are the last big chance for Obama to fight climate change, campaigners said.

“It is the largest opportunity to deal with climate pollution that this administration has not already seized,” said David Doniger, director of the climate and clean air program at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Methane is the second biggest driver of climate change, after carbon dioxide. On a 20-year timescale, it is 87 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas.

US officials acknowledge that Obama will have to cut methane if he is to make good on his promise to cut US greenhouse gas emissions 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, and by 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025.

“It is the largest thing left, and it’s the most cost-effective thing they can do that they haven’t done already, and all the signs are there that they intend to step forward on that,” Doniger said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll out a combination of regulations and voluntary guidelines for the oil and gas industry, people familiar with the plan said.

The rules represent Obama’s first big climate push on the oil and gas sector, after moving to cut emissions from power plants and, during his first term, cars and trucks.

But the clock is ticking. Any new EPA regulations would have to be finalized by the end of 2016—and Republicans in Congress and industry lobby groups are already mobilizing to oppose the standards.

Methane accounts for about 9 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. The biggest share of this by far comes from the oil and gas industry, which has exploded over the last decade.

The US is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, and is on track to become the world’s largest oil producer in 2015.

Most of those greenhouse gas emissions are from leaky equipment—faulty casing on newly fracked wells, but also millions of miles of pipelines and aging infrastructure.

The EPA had originally promised to announce a new methane plan by the end of last year.

The agency administrator, Gina McCarthy, indicated that the agency would combine regulations with voluntary guidelines for industry.

Unlike the power plant rules, which left industry a fair amount of latitude in cutting emissions, the methane standards are believed to be tightly focused on plugging leaks.

The new rules could directly target leaking valves and other equipment that allow methane to escape from wells, pipelines and other infrastructure.

The new rules could also be backed up with voluntary guidelines for other types of air pollutants that would also lower methane emissions.

“If you take steps to reduce volatile organic compounds, those steps would automatically have the secondary benefit of reducing methane emissions,” said Sandra Snyder, an environmental attorney at the Bracewell Giuliani law firm.

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Obama Wants to Crack Down on Fracking Emissions

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When "Top Chef" Star Tom Colicchio Went to Washington

by Shelley9010 Posted on January 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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On a fall day in a congressional office bedecked with University of Oregon (Go Ducks!) paraphernalia, Tom Colicchio and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) were getting on like old college buddies.

Up on Alaska’s Mohawk River, the congressman insisted, you can still spear salmon with a pitchfork. “I was in Juneau half an hour and caught 30 fish,” countered Colicchio, the smooth-domed celebrity chef, who’d chosen a navy blazer for the occasion. “I said, ‘Nah, this isn’t fun anymore, this is boring.'” But Colicchio, the head judge on Bravo’s Top Chef and founder of the New York City restaurants Gramercy Tavern, Craft, and Colicchio & Sons (his boys are 3, 5, and 21)—wasn’t here simply for the pleasantries.

More than 700 chefs had already signed a petition supporting a DeFazio-sponsored bill, currently stalled in the House with 67 cosponsors, that would require food manufacturers to disclose their GMO ingredients. A subset of the signatories were on the Hill to lobby legislators and staffers. “As chefs, we know that choosing the right ingredients is an absolutely critical part of cooking,” the petition reads. “But when it comes to whether our ingredients contain genetically modified organisms, we’re completely in the dark.” The chefs were joined by reps from activist groups—including Food Policy Action, the Center for Food Safety, a national campaign called Just Label It, and the Environmental Working Group—to address the issues of transparency, food safety, and the massive amounts of money ($36 million in the last election) the food industry has spent fighting GMO-labeling initiatives.

Invited to observe the meeting with DeFazio, I took advantage of the chance to give Colicchio a light grilling. Here are a few tidbits Colicchio gave me on some of his favorite topics:

On states rights: “We typically label things not because they’re dangerous. If they’re dangerous, we take them out of the food supply. But we believe everything in our processed foods should be labeled.â¨ Like some labels say “modified food starch.” Why modified? It’s been altered. I’m not asking for a skull and crossbones—simply a line in the ingredient list that says ‘GMO corn.’ That’s it!

“We’re not debating the science of GMOs, but I would say there’s an ever-increasing environmental issue because of the overuse of herbicides. If you look at the health of the soil, if you care about the environment, how much carbon is in the ground, you wanna know what’s in your food.â¨ This is a recent development, where people in the food industry are starting to care about the policies behind these issues. Typically consumers who care about food, they’re not thinking about policy. Like when they go to a farmers market, they’re probably paying more—there are policies that are keeping those foods more expensive than processed ones. I don’t quite understand how people who care about states’ rights all of the sudden don’t believe states have a right to label. Those same people will say the states have a right to raise animals a certain way. Where did all the states’ rights people go? I want them! They’re somewhere in this building!”

On customer confusion: “I always use this example: It’s summer, and you go into the supermarket and see all the beautiful strawberries. One is labeled local. One is labeled organic and ‘made in Chile’—it’s GMO free, but people don’t know that. People will go, ‘Oh, that one’s local, so I’ll buy that.’ That lack of transparency puts the organic farmer at a competitive disadvantage.”

On getting his kids thinking about (and actually eating) good food: “I find that the trick to get them to eat is to bring them shopping. I started gardening this year, and they are so interested in watching stuff grow. And I want to teach them patience, because they’re so focused on immediate response of hitting a button and something happens. My older son really loves food and really cares about it. He isn’t into policy yet, but we had a food policy booth set up at Lollapalooza, and he manned it this year because I couldn’t get there. I had to entice him with lots of free music.”

On his own childhood dinners: “We had a family that had to be at the table at a certain time every single night. I don’t think I was a picky eater. I don’t remember. The only thing I do remember is my older brother would constantly steal the food off my plate.”

On his earliest cooking mishap:â¨ “I would bake a lot with my grandmother. I grew up in a four-family home in New Jersey. There were two homes on the plot and my grandparents lived in the other building. So I made this blueberry pie and I had to walk it a couple hundred yards to the side house. We’re on the second floor, and my grandmother insisted that I put it in a brown paper bag and hold it straight. I kept saying, “Oh, it’ll be okay.” I run home, upstairs. I take it out, big moment, and the blueberries all flew out of the pie!”

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When "Top Chef" Star Tom Colicchio Went to Washington

Posted in alo, Anchor, Casio, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged brother, chile, congress, food, gmo, Ona, policy, safety, top stories, university, venta | Comments Off

The USDA might tell Americans to eat less beef for the sake of the environment

by WoodrowPantano Posted on January 6, 2015

The USDA might tell Americans to eat less beef for the sake of the environment

By John Lighton 6 Jan 2015comments Share

The Department of Agriculture is responsible for issuing guidelines on what America eats: It tells us what foods make up a healthy diet, and, during the last dozen years, what foods are organic.

Now, the USDA is also considering offering recommendations on how Americans can eat to minimize their effect on the environment. That would mean more fruits and vegetables and less meat — especially meat from cows.

From the Associated Press:

[A USDA] advisory panel has been discussing the idea of sustainability in public meetings, indicating that its recommendations, expected early this year, may address the environment. A draft recommendation circulated last month said a sustainable diet helps ensure food access for both the current population and future generations.

A dietary pattern higher in plant-based foods and lower in animal-based foods is “more health promoting and is associated with lesser environmental impact than is the current average U.S. diet,” the draft said.

That appears to take at least partial aim at the beef industry. A study by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last year said raising beef for the American dinner table is more harmful to the environment than other meat industries such as pork and chicken.

The study said that compared with other popular animal proteins, beef produces more heat-trapping gases per calorie, puts out more water-polluting nitrogen, takes more water for irrigation and uses more land.

The committee is finding that it’s old aim, health, and its possible new aim, sustainability, go hand-in-hand: Food that’s better for you is also easier on the environment.

Of course, the meat lobby has a bone to pick (ahem) with the USDA over this, and its allies in Congress aren’t happy either. Last month’s CRomnibus bill to fund the government warned the USDA to only focus on nutrition and to not worry about “extraneous factors.”

The beef industry has long held sway over the guidelines the USDA puts out, with unfortunate results for the environment — University of Michigan researchers found last year that if all Americans followed the USDA dietary guidelines, we’d see a 12 percent increase in dietary-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Source:
New diet guidelines might reflect environment cost

, The Associated Press.

Government Dietary Guidelines May Back Off Meat To Be More Environmentally Friendly

, ThinkProgress.

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