Trails of the Triffid

"If you're going to play around with [genetically modified] crops, once the genie's out of the bottle, once it's in the environment, you can't control it,"

"Mysteriously, Triffid has reappeared in commercial crops".


Flax is mainly self-pollinated but around five percent of pollination occurs through insects. There are no prolific wild relatives in Canada that cross with flax.
Yet it spreading through the prairies and ending up overweight in the inspector's samples, and in organic fields? Like transgenic corn in Mexico, flax has been prohibited and yet contamination is widespread and significant in both countries, both crops. Is this a covert policy to slip in genes in the genome and win compliance with inevitability of its spread?


Alan McHughen (read about him in Brewster's Kneen's book Farmageddon, which if you cannot find in your library is available here www.ramshorn.ca. McHughen is the designer of the GMO flax and apparently promoted his book with a big mail out of packages of Triffid flax.

And then there is this:

GRAIN COMPANIES EXPLOIT FLAX SITUATION TO
TIGHTEN VISE ON FARMER SEED SAVING
SASKATOON, SK—Grain company Viterra wants to force all farmers wishing to grow flax in 2010 to purchase certified seed. A Viterra spokesman delivered that message in a presentation on January 11 at the Crop Production Show in Saskatoon.
Viterra and others are pushing the requirement for certified seed as a purported solution to the problem of the Triffid contamination in flax shipments to Europe. Triffid is a genetically modified variety not approved in Europe. But the NFU believes that the proposed certified seed cure is the wrong one, and that there will be long-lasting and negative side effects.
“The best solution is to test the seed supply, both farm-saved seed and certified seed,” said NFU President and flax producer Terry Boehm. He continued: “It is false to simply assume that certified seed is safer than farm-saved. For one thing, it is almost certain that the certified seed system is the source of the Triffid contamination farmers are now facing. Furthermore, it has now been determined that two varieties of flax are contaminated with Triffid at the breeder seed level".

More from the NFU

here's to the right to choose raw milk

Dairy farmer Michael Schmidt walks out of a Newmarket courthouse not guilty of bovine milky mischief.

"The judgment is the culmination of a three-year legal battle that has made Mr. Schmidt a star in a growing international food-rights movement fuelled by mistrust of the industrial food system.
Today's ruling means that raw, or unpasteurized, milk produced by Mr. Schmidt's cows – heritage Canadiennes bred near the town of Durham, Ont. – can legally be distributed to the small network of consumers who have bought “cow shares” in exchange for access to the animals' unprocessed milk". Globe story

And Michael Schmidt’s blog.

Transgenic Organics?

Watch as the rationalizations for violating the simple ethics of the precautionary principle erodes into the organic industry. Surely we are brighter than this.

http://www.metrofarm.com/mf_Food_Chain_Radio.php

regulating the nanoelephant in the room

The biggest unreported story mushrooming in the background of our current cultural realties is the nanotechnology future.

Whether you've transported them up into Pacific Coast glaciers on your moisture wicking nanosilver skipants, or are unwittingly participating in nanoencapsulation studies on a populous scale...the consequences will be fodder for future thesis and peer review. We are the field trials.

“Nobody Told Me I was a Nano-Consumer:” How Nanotechnologies Might Challenge the Notion of Consumer Rights

"Regarding nanotechnologies and the consumer, a central paradox is the absence of a regulatory framework while more than 1,000 nano-enabled products are already available on the consumer markets. This represents a serious challenge for the consumer interest".

read it here

symbionts and gene transfer

Symbionts helps in the transfer of genes between organisms.


"Although common among bacteria, lateral gene transfer—the movement of genes between distantly related organisms—is thought to occur only rarely between bacteria and multicellular eukaryotes. However, the presence of endosymbionts, such as Wolbachia pipientis, within some eukaryotic germlines may facilitate bacterial gene transfers to eukaryotic host genomes".

Read Widespread Lateral Gene Transfer from Intracellular Bacteria to Multicellular Eukaryotes

transgenic dna persists in the food web.: Guelph research

This is some more evidence for what others (and here) have been saying for quite some time: gmo dna sequences transfer to other organisms.
In the case of this study, Monsanto's cp4 epsps genes moved on through the soil ecosystem to arthropods, nematodes, and earthworms. I wonder if they are round-up ready (the soil life) and if monsanto owns them now.


Detection of transgenic cp4 epsps genes in the soil food web .
Miranda M. Hart1, Jeff R. Powell1, Robert H. Gulden2, David J.
Levy-Booth3, Kari E. Dunfield4, K. Peter Pauls2, Clarence J. Swanton2,
John N. Klironomos1 and Jack T. Trevors.
University of Guelph

Abstract - The persistence and movement of transgenic DNA in
agricultural and natural systems is largely unknown. This movement poses
a threat of horizontal gene transfer and possible proliferation of
genetically modified DNA into the general environment. To assess the
persistence of transgenic DNA in a field of Roundup Ready
corn, we quantified the presence of the transgene for glyphosate
tolerance within a soil food web. Using quantitative real-time PCR, we
identified the cp4 epsps transgene in bulk soil microarthropods,
nematodes, macroarthropods and earthworms sampled within the corn
cropping system. We found evidence of the transgene at all dates and in
all animal groups. Transgenic DNA concentration in animal was
significantly higher than that of background soil, suggesting the
animals were feeding directly on transgenic plant material. It remains
to be tested whether this DNA was still within the plant residues,
present as free, extracellular DNA or had already undergone genetic
transformation into competent bacterial cells. These results are the
first to demonstrate the persistence of transgenic crop DNA residues
within a food web.

Here

let them eat cottonseed cakes

Biotech scientists have worked for decades to produce a gossypol-free cotton plant by silencing the gene that produces a toxin, gossypol, throughout the plant and with little success as insects and diseases do not like gossypol either and are ravaged by them..

The breakthrough came as genetic engineers have managed to inhibit gossypol production in the seeds.

why?

So the poor people can eat the fruits of industrial farming.

This as a land grab has been thieving through vast tracts of farmlands in Africa and Asia. Industrial crops for fuel and gadgets, clothes, food.

It is a blessing to have a bit of land to plant our food and not worry about the need to to eat stuff like cottonseed meal.

Genetic engineering turns 'Fabric of Our Lives' into edible cottonseed that may feed millions

they say its a wheat glut

LONDON: A sharp decline in wheat prices driven by a supply glut is set to lead to more of the grain being turned into motor fuel in the European Union.

according to a Reuter's story

whilst the descendants of the mother of wheat, face famine in Ethiopia due to drought and crop failures.

swine flu lager and nanothermite: good TV on CBC last night

Thanks Rick Mercer...finally a chance to laugh at Swine Flu vaccines.



Not funny but also noteworthy last night on CBC was The Fifth Estate`s The Unofficial Story, a documentary about the growing number of people unsatisfied with illogical explanations for the events of 911. Its the first mention of nano-thermite I`ve seen in the main media (as well as free-fall buildings, molten metal, iron-rich microspheres, lateral ejections, and pulverized concrete) You can watch it on their website here.

The comments are of interest as well, including this one from Rob Tamaki:

`As one of first Professional Engineers to have signed on to the AE911Truth petition (approx. no. 38 out of 970 presently), I stand firmly behind the science demonstrating that the collapses of WTC 1, 2, and 7 can only be explained by Controlled Demolition.

I only caught the last few minutes of the program this evening, and I am pleased that the issue of the finding of nanothermite was introduced. However, it really needed more time to be able to develop the details behind this research more carefully. It needs to be stressed that this was no ordinary material. It is of a highly processed composition that is capable of being developed only within the most advanced research or military laboratories in the world.

Brent Blanchard tried to argue that because there was no seismic signature, the buildings could not be brought down by controlled demolition. But this is exactly the relevance of nanothermite. Nanothermite does not produce the kind of seismic shock wave that C4 or RDX might. It would not produce a seismic signature. Blanchard's supposed clincher is really completely irrelevant.``

BC Meat Regulations: Our farmers need us to speak

This is from Robin Wheeler of Roberts Creek and the local Farm Food Freedom folks, taking the initiative to rally support for local sustainable meat processing in BC. and extrication from the current system that is threatening many small farmers in the Province. Take some time to write a letter: the voice of the people is undeniable.

November 12, 2009
Hi, folks -
Some of us are figuring that RIGHT NOW, OVER THE COMING WEEK is a very, very good time to write a letter requesting that our BC government exempt small farmers from the imposed meat regulations. We think a focused push, hopefully with hundreds of letters, might show how we have not gone away, that there are in fact even more of us, and that we want change.
Please ask that farmers be permitted to sell healthy animals from their farm gates, without trauma, fossil fuels, time and extra cost, and without the increased threat of contamination that a visit to a government inspected facility can bring.

Please write to our Premier (who has the power to lift the meat regulations as other provinces have)
Hon. Gordon Campbell premier@gov.bc.ca
or Room 156, Parliament Buildings, Victoria BC V8V 1X4

or Ida Chong, who is holding the meat regulation potato right now -
Hon. Ida Chong
Minister of Healthy Living and Sport
P.O. Box 9062 Stn. Prov. Govt.
Victoria, BC V8W 9E2
250-387-3504
HLS.Minister@gov.bc.ca
or our Agriculture man,
Hon. Steve Thomson
Minister of Agriculture and Lands
P.O. Box 9043 Stn. Prov. Govt.
Victoria, BC V8W 9E2
250-387-1023
steve.thomson.mla@leg.bc.ca

please see www.farmfoodfreedomfighters.ca for free downloads of bumper stickers, buttons and more.

oh when do we go back home

I found some photos of the farm hiding out. They make me miss home. Clicking makes em big.

Red is sussing out the next fun escape which he did the first day I let the calves out of the barn into the world - walking right through the electric fence (which was buggered) Notice Alex content with grass and milk. ,
The rope around the greenhouse is to keep it from flying off on the remnants of Ike and their Ilk; On a good storm (we had three) I was there holding the purloins and praying with the tomatoes and basil. I have yet to hear if my friends have taken down the plastic yet, but trust they have it in hand.






Thats buckwheat up in the new beds I worked up (plowed sod to double buckwheat followed with Rye. Its beside the river where the turtles came up. I'm wondering what kind of things turtles like to eat, and if it was them who helped the pheasants eat the spinach in another low area.

Hunger should not be

"Hunger would not have to be – this is not a new finding. The World Food Report confirms this statement in spite of the alarming findings it has to make. Not later than after the arousing hunger revolts two years ago, the shameful hunger problem should have disappeared from the globe. Instead the number of hungry people has not shrunk but has drastically increased. At the same time, the report shows a way out of the crisis: Reinforcement of the food supply on a local basis, observing all at once the regional conditions, the ecological handling of the resources and among others the unrestricted access to seeds.
An essential aspect relating to the question of such an unrestricted access is the question of the reusability of the applied seed sorts: People must be able, independently from the industrial producers of seeds like Monsanto or Syngenta, to cultivate its own food. Sovereignty of food is a fundamental right, it must be a fundamental freedom of mankind".

Read more A Crisis-Proof Agriculture for the Fight against Hunger and Poverty
by Reinhard Koradi, Switzerland

My friend, who farms nearby (pictured here in disguise- sorta) has never played Farmville. I'm thankful for little things like that tonight.

wheat goddess

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear
to them except in the form of bread."
Mahatma Ghandi

Or the goddess and a field of wheat.

Van Gogh had some hunger and more than a glimpse of that goddess. here