Agriculture

"If the mad cow found in California has you wondering about food safety, well, there are plenty of problems that pose serious risks to the food supply. But mad cow disease shouldn't be high on the worry list."

"Where have all the bees gone? The question has vexed farmers, beekeepers, regulators and scientists since the fall of 2006, when U.S. bee populations began their mysterious decline."

"A new biotech corn developed by Dow AgroSciences could answer the prayers of U.S. farmers plagued by a fierce epidemic of super-weeds. Or it could trigger a flood of dangerous chemicals that may make weeds even more resistant and damage other important U.S. crops. Or, it could do both."

"The first new case of mad cow disease in the U.S. since 2006 has been discovered in a dairy cow in California, but health authorities said Tuesday the animal never was a threat to the nation's food supply."

The release Friday of the Senate Agriculture Committee chairman's draft of a 2012 Farm Bill shifted the political fight over this major legislation into high gear. Finishing the bill by September, when the current law expires, will be a challenge, especially in an election year. The Farm Bill has many provisions that affect the environment, public health, and environmental health.

"A 1974 memo from Dow Chemical describes several chemicals in a widely used farm fumigant as 'garbage.' Today, one of those useless chemicals threatens drinking water for more than 1 million people across the San Joaquin Valley. Now linked to cancer, the toxin was waste from a plastic-making process. Chemical companies often mix such leftovers to create other products to avoid the cost of disposal, says one long-time chemical engineer."

"In 2006, when beekeepers began to report that their hives were suffering from a mysterious affliction, a wide variety of theories were offered to explain what was going on. ... Over the last few weeks, several new studies have come out linking neonicotinoids to bee decline. As it happens, the studies are appearing just as 'Silent Spring,' Rachel Carson’s seminal study of the effect of pesticides on wildlife, is about to turn fifty: the work was first published as a three-part series in The New Yorker, in June, 1962. It’s hard to avoid the sense that we have all been here before, and that lessons were incompletely learned the first time around."

"To the untrained eye, a weed is just a weed, and few of us can tell a thistle from a teasel. But for Paul Heiple and his team of Weed Warriors, knowing the difference is essential to their work routing out invasive plants that threaten the native species at Edgewood Park, a 500-acre natural preserve that overlooks California’s Silicon Valley."

"A coalition of more than 2,000 U.S. farmers and food companies said Wednesday it is taking legal action to force government regulators to analyze potential problems with proposed biotech crops and the weed-killing chemicals to be sprayed over them."