It’s a problem that has baffled agriculture and science – the mysterious deaths of honey bees all over the world in the last five years. But a new film thinks it has the answer.

Vanishing of the Bees claims a new generation of pesticides weakens the bees and makes them more susceptible to other diseases.

The film tells the story of how colony collapse disorder first appeared in America in the winter of 2004 – when many beekeepers across the country found their bees had vanished and left behind empty hives – and of how scientists have since failed to find a single cause for it.

It goes on to suggest neonicotinoid pesticides, some of them made by Bayer, one of the world’s biggest chemical companies, may be behind the disappearances.

They include the widely used imidacloprid (marketed under the trade name Gaucho), which has been banned in France following pressure from beekeepers. It is still in use in Britain and the US and has already been the subject of protests from beekeepers in New Zealand.

Neonicotinoids are applied to seeds rather than sprayed on to growing plants, and affect the pests that consume them. In theory, this means non-pest insects should not be affected.

But Vanishing of the Bees suggests long-term, low-level exposure may be having a weakening effect on honey bees, which have also been hit in recent years by diseases ranging from the devastating varroa mite to the nosema fungus and other viruses.

The pesticides, it suggests, may be the final straw for a weakened population. In particular, the film targets Bayer, which has rejected the allegations.

“Everybody knows this is about the varroa mite, the nosema pest and a number of fungal and viral diseases,” said Dr Julian Little, a spokesman for Bayer CropScience.

“The healthiest bees in the world are in Australia, where they have lots of neonicotinoids but they don’t have varroa.”

Related posts:

1. Pesticides blamed for killing bees
2. Gardening 101: How do I become a no impact gardener?
3. Proven: Eating Red Meat Raises Death Risk from Cancer and Other Diseases

Children living with parents who use pesticides around the home are significantly more likely to develop brain cancer than children who are not exposed to such chemicals, according to a study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Researchers matched each of 400 fathers and 250 mothers who reported having been exposed to pesticide products — including insecticide, herbicide and fungicide — with a non-exposed person of the same sex, age and status. All participants lived in residential areas of Florida, New Jersey, New York or Pennsylvania. None of them lived in New York City. All were parents of children who had participated in the Atlantic Coast childhood brain cancer study.

The scientists further evaluated each participant’s level of exposure over the two years prior to the birth of their child by means of a phone interview featuring more detailed questions about home or work use of pesticides. Most “exposed” participants were exposed to pesticides through home use — such as garden or lawn care — rather than professionally.

The researchers found that children whose parents had been exposed to pesticides were significantly more likely to develop brain cancers, including astrocytomas and primitive neuroectodermal tumors. The risk of astrocytoma was especially increased by the use of herbicides.

Among “exposed” fathers, those who wore protective clothing or who washed immediately after pesticide use were significantly less likely to have children who developed brain cancer.

Prior studies have linked prenatal pesticide exposure to brain cancer, and the chemicals have also been linked to cancer in a number of animal studies. Researchers do not know exactly how the chemicals lead to cancer, but many pesticides are known to exhibit mutagenic, hormone mimicking or immune-hampering effects. The developing bodies of fetuses and children are especially susceptible to these effects.

Brain cancer is the second most common childhood cancer, after leukemia. Full article here…

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In recent years bee populations around the world have plummeted, with British bee keepers losing a fifth of hives over last winter.

But the cause of the sudden decline has not been identified.

Now a new study by the insect research charity Buglife and the Soil Association has claimed the decline was caused in part by a group of pesticides called neonicotinoids.

The “systemic” chemical, that kills unwanted insects by getting into the cell of the plant, is widely used on farms in Britain for crops like oilseed rape and the production of pot plants.

It is already restricted for use in much of Europe including France and Germany after beekeepers claimed the chemical was killing honey bees.

However it is found in the UK in products including Chinook, used on oilseed rape and Bayer UK 720, that is used in the production of pot plants and therefore ends up in gardens and homes around the country.

The new study brought together a number of peer-reviewed pieces of research. It concluded that neonicotinoid pesticide damages the health and life cycle of bees over the long term by affecting the nervous system.

“[Neonicotinoids] may be a significant factor contributing to current bee declines and could also contribute to declines in other non-target invertebrate species,” the report read.

Matt Shardlow, chief executive of Buglife, called for a ban on the pesticides.

“Other countries have already introduced bans to prevent neonicotinoids from harming bees,” he said. “This is the most comprehensive review of the scientific evidence yet and it has revealed the disturbing amount damage these poisons can cause.”

The study also looked at the approval process for pesticides in the UK. It concluded that there are not enough tests to look at the long term effects on insects that are not pests.

Peter Melchett, Director of the Soil Association, said pesticides were causing a continued decline in pollinating insects, risking a multimillion pound farming industry.

“The UK is notorious for taking the most relaxed approach to pesticide safety in the EU; Buglife’s report shows that this puts at risk pollination services vital for UK agriculture”, he said.

However Dr Julian Little of pesticide manufacturer Bayer CropScience, said pesticides are not approved unless it is found they have no effects on insects like bees.

“When it comes to bee health, pesticides are not the problem, disease is,” he said.

Buglife will be presenting the report to Michael Jacobs, the Prime Minister’s Special Advisor on Environmental Issues, at a bee summit at Number 10 Downing Street.

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2. Pesticides Cause Childhood Brain Cancers
3. Individuals Who Apply Pesticides Are Found To Have Double The Risk Of Blood Disorder

Science Daily

Monday, August 10, 2009

The active ingredient in many insect repellents, deet, has been found to be toxic to the central nervous system. Researchers say that more investigations are urgently needed to confirm or dismiss any potential neurotoxicity to humans, especially when deet-based repellents are used in combination with other neurotoxic insecticides.

Vincent Corbel from the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement in Montpellier, and Bruno Lapied from the University of Angers, France, led a team of researchers who investigated the mode of action and toxicity of deet (N,N-Diethyl-3-methylbenzamide). Corbel said, “We’ve found that deet is not simply a behavior-modifying chemical but also inhibits the activity of a key central nervous system enzyme, acetycholinesterase, in both insects and mammals”.

Discovered in 1953, deet is still the most common ingredient in insect repellent preparations. It is effective against a broad spectrum of medically important pests, including mosquitoes. Despite its widespread use, controversies remain concerning both the identification of its target sites at the molecular level and its mechanism of action in insects. In a series of experiments, Corbel and his colleagues found that deet inhibits the acetylcholinesterase enzyme – the same mode of action used by organophosphate and carbamate insecticides.

These insecticides are often used in combination with deet, and the researchers also found that deet interacts with carbamate insecticides to increase their toxicity. Corbel concludes, “These findings question the safety of deet, particularly in combination with other chemicals, and they highlight the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to the development of safer insect repellents for use in public health”.

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For starters, not all un-organic food has as high a pesticide contamination as others. What does that mean? It means that you don’t have to buy everything organic. Phew! Thank goodness, because our wallets would be hurting–and empty–if we did that.

Here’s are lists of the “dirtiest” and “cleanest” fruits and veggies out there, according to the Environmental Working Group:

Highest pesticide levels:
1. Peach
2. Apple
3. Sweet bell pepper
4. Celery
5. Nectarine
6. Strawberries
7. Cherries
8. Kale
9. Lettuce
10. Grapes–imported
11. Carrot
12. Pear
13. Collard Greens
14. Spinach
15. Potato

Lowest pesticide levels:
47. Onion
46. Avocado
45. Sweet corn–frozen
44. Pineapple
43. Mango
42. Asparagus
41. Sweet peas–frozen
40. Kiwi
39. Cabbage
38. Eggplant
37. Papaya
36. Watermelon
35. Broccoli
34. Tomato
33. Sweet potato

In addition to produce, buying organic meat, milk and coffee is recommended.

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Eat right and exercise, conventional wisdom has it, if you want to avoid joining the diabetes epidemic.

But a new study adds some muscle to a growing body of research suggesting those steps, although beneficial, might not be enough for people exposed to chemicals in the environment.

The scientists linked diabetes and people’s body burdens of DDE, a chemical produced as the body breaks down the pesticide DDT, banned in the United States more than 35 years ago.

“Even though we haven’t used DDT in decades, its metabolites are still detected in almost everyone in the country,” said lead researcher Mary Turyk, an epidemiologist at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s School of Public Health.

Since the early 1990s, researchers have monitored a group of Great Lakes charter boat captains, recreational fishermen and others to learn about the health effects of eating fish tainted with persistent organic pollutants – chemicals that remain in the environment for decades and grow more concentrated as they move up food chains.

For the new study, blood samples from the Great Lakes group showed “consistent, dose-related associations of DDE” with diabetes, the researchers wrote in the July issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.

Among 471 adults, including 36 with diabetes, there was no link to the disease based on the amount of fish consumed or exposure to other pollutants. But the higher the concentration of DDE in the blood, the more likely they were to develop diabetes.

The study is among the strongest voices in a chorus of research supporting the link between environmental chemicals and diabetes, according to David O. Carpenter, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University of New York, Albany. He was not involved in the study.

“Most people have not thought of diabetes as a disease related to environmental exposure,” he said, “and these studies show that it is. The science has been growing very, very rapidly, and to my mind, it’s one of the most exciting developments in the study of diabetes.”

Diabetics cannot produce or use enough insulin, a hormone that lets glucose – the body’s fuel – enter cells. More than 23 million Americans, or eight percent of the population, are diabetic, and that group swelled by 13.5 percent from 2005 to 2007, according to the American Diabetes Assn.

For the most common type of diabetes, Type 2, obesity and lack of exercise play a key role. The bulk of studies searching for a cause have focused on lifestyle factors, while research on environmental influences hasn’t been prominent in journals devoted to the disease, said Henry Kahn, an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Diabetes Translation.

“But maybe it should be. It would be foolish to overlook pollution as a factor,” he said, adding that he and colleagues have lately taken a greater interest in the role of pollutants. “We recognize it’s possibly a very important thing,” he said. “We agree it’s on the list of things worth studying.”

Oliver Jones, a biochemist at the University of Cambridge, wrote in the journal Lancet last year that “if there is indeed a link” between contaminants and diabetes, “the health implications could be tremendous. There has been almost no consideration for the possible influence of environmental factors such as pollution.”

Among the reasons to believe that the environment might be involved in diabetes, according to Carpenter, is that its prevalence varies across geographic areas, and people who move to places where it’s more common become more likely to get sick. Kahn, however, said that effect could be due to people migrating to more developed areas, where a richer diet and more sedentary lifestyle are the norm.

Further evidence came from a sweeping study of more than 2,000 adults, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that found people with the highest levels of six pollutants were 38 times more likely to have diabetes than those with the lowest exposure. The chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins and DDE, were chosen because they were present in at least 80 percent of participants.

“That’s just mind-boggling,” Carpenter said.

Also, Vietnam veterans exposed to the dioxin-laced defoliant Agent Orange were significantly more likely than average to become diabetic, prompting the government to offer compensation to diabetic veterans.

The way the new Great Lakes study was conducted makes its findings especially convincing, according to the authors and other experts.

Other research has found similar links between diabetes and pollutants, but they were cross-sectional studies, which means “you measure the level of a chemical and ask people if they have diabetes,” Turyk said.

Those studies could easily be skewed, Turyk said, because they don’t indicate whether diabetes developed before a person was exposed to pollutants. But in the new paper, she and colleagues measured participants’ exposure to DDE from blood samples taken in the mid-1990s, then followed up with them for nearly a decade to see who among them became diabetic, thereby ensuring that diabetics were exposed before they were diagnosed.

The paper further bulwarked the claim by discrediting the hypothesis that the link between the two is a statistical fluke. Critics have suggested that pollutants like DDE only appear to be potential causes of the disease because diabetics more slowly break down the chemicals, and therefore carry more of them.

But Turyk, sharing principal research duties with Henry Anderson of the Wisconsin Division of Public Health and Victoria Persky at the University of Illinois-Chicago, quashed that theory by showing no difference in DDE metabolism rates between diabetics and non-diabetics.

“This paper clearly shows that’s not the case,” said Carpenter. “It’s a very important contribution because of that fact.”

The researchers controlled for obesity, age and other risk factors, and still found a link to DDE exposure. The study didn’t distinguish between Type 2 and Type 1, or early-onset diabetes, but most diabetics in the study suffered from Type 2, which is more common in adults.

The authors said the relatively small number of participants and short duration limit the reliability of the findings. In addition, the link to DDE was relatively weak compared with past research.

Like nearly all human health research, it doesn’t directly show that chemicals in the environment cause diabetes.

“With epidemiology, you gather a body of evidence against something,” she said. “You can never really prove something causes something else.”

Scientists still don’t understand the mechanism by which DDE and other chemicals might contribute to diabetes, according to Carpenter, though he said pollution seems to disrupt the way genes produce proteins and “basically change the biochemistry of the cell.”

“It may be that they’re toxic to the pancreas,” which produces insulin Kahn added. “We don’t know.”

For now, common-sense precautions are everyone’s best bet, Carpenter said.

“Obese people are usually obese because they eat too many animal fats, and animal fats are where these contaminants are commonly found,” he said.

Turyk added that “people should definitely follow sport fish advisories,” which warn about contaminants in waterways.

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FoodFreedom

Thursday, June 18, 2009

A new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The bill needs to be stopped.

HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.

HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

To read a detailed account of the bill, go to: http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm

(Read the section on tracing. That is NAIS, isn’t it? – highly disguised yet triggered by the word “trace.” )
Alarming Provisions:

Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:

* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. [isn't this every home in the US, every garden?] Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. [What is the definition?] And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times. [Yes. There are laws against this corporate-size-destroys-the-little-guy policy, aren't there? Are home bread or cheese or lacto-fermented vegetable makers who make for their own families included in this?]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This astounding control opens the door to CODEX. WTO "good farming practices" will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides. Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry's products. They will be slaves on the land, doing the work they are ordered to do - against their own best wisdom - and paying out to industry against their will.

There will be no way to be frugal, to grow one's own grain to feed the animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work with nature at all. Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be finished. So, it's obvious where control will take us. And weren't these the "rumors on the internet" that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]

* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.” [This - "that has been used to transport or hold such food" - would mean all cars that have ever brought groceries home so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION can be shut down under this. This is using food as a cover for martial law.] Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area. [This is also a means of total control over the population under the cover of food, and at any time.]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. [If these bills cover all who "hold food" then this allows for taking of records of anyone at any time on no basis at all.] Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers.

[NAIS for animals and all other foods?]

* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food. Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food” [Is this not every home in the US?] would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.” The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods. With all these ambiguities, [with all these ambiguities, it is dangerous, period, separate from the money] it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. [It is massive and absurd and burdensome beyond the capacity of people to comply - is this not fascism? - so it is a set up for being used to impose penalties endlessly and/or to eliminate anyone at will.]

* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals. [Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of "crimes"? Or is it entirely ambiguous and left to the whim and sole power of "the Administrator"? Who is that person set to be? Is it Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and executive, as Food Democracy has said? That is, do these bills set up an agency by which the entire US food supply will be turned over to the control of a multinational corporation under WTO regulations (and not to US farmers and not to US laws under the Constitution), with boundless freedom to do what it wants, and one infamous for harm to farmers and lack of safety of food?]

If it was not clear before how frightening these bills were, this small section of provisions, should make their actual fascism clear now. It goes way beyond “food safety” to absolute control over farms, animals, food, and us, including our movements and access to food at all.

Action to Take:

Contact your Representative now! Ask to speak with the staffer who handles food issues. Tell them you are opposed to the bill. Some points to make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:

1. The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real food safety problems lie.

2. Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food safety.

3. The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions.

HR 2749 needs to be defeated!! Please take action NOW.

Or, contact your Representative by using the finder tool at www.Congress.org or send a message through the petition system (the petition will be on our website this evening) at http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

To check the status of HR 2749, go to www.Thomas.gov and type “HR 2749″ in the bill search field.

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ScienceDaily

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

A study involving 678 individuals who apply pesticides, culled from a U.S. Agricultural Health Study of over 50,000 farmers, recently found that exposure to certain pesticides doubles one’s risk of developing an abnormal blood condition called MGUS (monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance) compared with individuals in the general population. The disorder, characterized by an abnormal level of a plasma protein, requires lifelong monitoring as it is a pre-cancerous condition that can lead to multiple myeloma, a painful cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow.

“Previously, inconclusive evidence has linked agricultural work to an increased multiple myeloma risk. Our study is the first to show an association between pesticide exposure and an excess prevalence of MGUS,” said lead author Ola Landgren, MD, PhD, of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which is part of the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “This finding is particularly important given that we recently found in a large prospective cancer screening study that virtually all multiple myeloma patients experienced a MGUS state prior to developing myeloma.”

“As several million Americans use pesticides, it’s important that the risks of developing MGUS from the use of pesticides is known,” added senior study author and NCI investigator Michael Alavanja, DrPH.

The blood of study participants, who were individuals licensed to apply restricted-use pesticides, was assessed for MGUS prevalence. The median age of participants was 60 years (range 30-94 years), and all lived in either Iowa or North Carolina. Participants also completed questionnaires providing comprehensive occupational exposure information for a wide range of pesticides, including information such as the average number of days of pesticide use per year, years of use, use of protective gear while applying pesticides, and pesticide application methods. Information on smoking and alcohol use, cancer histories of the participants’ first-degree relatives, and other basic demographic and health data were also obtained. Individuals with prior histories of lymphoproliferative malignancies (such as multiple myeloma or lymphoma) were excluded. Cancer incidence and mortality were monitored annually, and, after five years, follow-up interviews were conducted to update the information about participants’ occupational exposures, medical histories, and lifestyle factors.

For comparison, data were obtained from a large MGUS-screening study conducted by the Mayo Clinic, and the results from the pesticide-exposed group were compared with the assessments of 9,469 men from the general population of Olmsted County, Minnesota. The two groups were similar in terms of age, race, and educational attainment. Because of the low prevalence of women among workers who apply pesticides, women were excluded from the study.

In the pesticide-exposed group, no MGUS cases were observed among those who were less than 50 years of age, but the prevalence of MGUS in those older than 50 was 6.8 percent, which is 1.9 times higher than the general population study group of men in Minnesota.

The researchers also evaluated the potential association between MGUS prevalence and 50 specific pesticides for which usage data were known. Of the chemicals studied, a significantly increased risk of MGUS was observed among users of dieldrin (an insecticide), carbon-tetrachloride/carbon disulfide (a fumigant mixture), and chlorothalonil (a fungicide). The MGUS risk for these agents increased 5.6-fold, 3.9-fold, and 2.4-fold, respectively. Several other insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides were associated with MGUS, but not significantly.

“There is great concern regarding the increase in frequency in mature B-cell malignancies in the Western world and what may be the cause of this. A number of reports in the past have linked exposure to pesticides with increased risk of these types of cancers, but the present study is the first to link agricultural work to a pre-malignant condition,” said John G. Gribben, MD, DSc, Professor of Experimental Cancer Medicine at Barts and the London School of Medicine, who is not affiliated with the study. “It is vital to assess the risk of workplace exposure and disease, and the results lend further support to providing safe workplace practices to limit exposure to potential carcinogens.”

“Our findings are intriguing,” stated Dr. Landgren. If replicated in a larger sample from our study and other large studies, further work should focus on gaining a better understanding of the molecular basis of MGUS and multiple myeloma. Ultimately, this will result in the identification of novel molecular targets involved in the progression from MGUS to multiple myeloma and in the development of targeted therapies.”

The study will appear in the June 18 issue of Blood.

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Infant formulas purchased from stores in Canada show widespread tainting with traces of melamine, a toxic constituent of plastics and other materials. In China, the fraudulent use of melamine as a protein replacement in infant formulas resulted in the poisoning of more than 1,200 babies last year, six of whom died. Canada’s widespread contamination, however, appears unintentional and to stem from a very different source.

Chemists with Health Canada in Ottawa report they have yet to identify the source of the pollutant they’ve just turned up in 71 of 94 samples of infant formula. In a report of their findings, however, just published online ahead of print in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Sheryl Tittlemier and her colleagues do finger one key suspect: the insecticide cyromazine. It’s legal for use on food crops and animal forage — and melamine is one of its breakdown products.

“In all instances in which melamine was detected, concentrations observed were below the standard of 0.5 micrograms per gram set by Health Canada for infant formula,” the researchers note. Indeed, levels ranged from 4 to 346 nanograms per gram (or parts per billion) of assayed formula. Based on the concentration present in even the most contaminated product, Tittlemier’s group calculates that a baby’s likely intake of the kidney-toxic chemical would only come to about 1 percent of the allowable intake.

The peak tainting found, 346 ppb, is in the same ballpark that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported finding in a single domestic infant formula — one of 74 samples it tested last year. In November, Stephen Sundlof, director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, noted that at such concentrations U.S. infant formulas are “safe” for continued use as a sole source of nutrition for babies.

The real question is how melamine has been making its way into North American infant formulas. At a press briefing last fall, Sundlof posited that it might be from melamine-based plasticware or food packaging. He noted that some foodware and plastic-laminate counter materials are made from melamine, which studies have shown can leach into foods.

But clearly, no one believes manufacturers are storing their wholesale supplies of baby formula in melamine vats. It also would appear, Tittlemier’s group says, that the melamine it found did not come from packaging. These chemists tested the material lining the can from which the most tainted formula had come — and found no melamine. Most reassuring: Melamine concentrations in North American products are far lower than those linked with the deliberate adulteration of dairy products in China.

Which brings Tittlemier’s group back to cyromazine, an insecticide used on Canadian and U.S. produce. The pesticide’s manufacturer has published data showing that when goats had been dosed with a radioactively labeled form of the insecticide, five to nine percent of the residues turned up as radiolabeled melamine in the milk. “It appears plausible,” Tittlemier and her colleagues now conclude, “that milk from cattle exposed to cyromazine may contain melamine,” explaining how the chemical could end up in milk-based infant formula.

Of course, melamine also turned up in most of the 19 samples of soy-based formula that Health Canada tested — products with no milk. I’m guessing the pesticide is also used on soybean fields, although a quick scan of FDA’s pesticide-tolerance data sheet doesn’t identify allowable levels for soy as it does for onions, potatoes, corn, radishes and lima beans.

Bottom line: Even our salads and casseroles may have a little something in common with the laminate counter tops on which so many are prepared: melamine.

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Agriculture, so often cited as a factor in global decline – for claiming natural grasslands that store carbon, soil erosion and pesticide runoff – could become a big part of the solution to global warming, according to a hopeful report by Worldwatch Institute released today.

Innovations in food production and land use that are ready to be put to work could reduce greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to roughly 25 percent of global fossil fuel emissions and be managed to reduce carbon already in the atmosphere as well, according to WWI and Ecoagriculture Partners.

Carbon capture technology remains unproven and will take a decade at least to put into operation. By contrast, agricultural and land use management practices that are ready today could be employed to sequester carbon through photosynthesis by growing and sustaining more plants.

To understand how and why the agricultural approach to climate change must be a part of the solution, the public first needs to recognize that the world must “go negative” with carbon emissions – producing fewer than it churns out to reach the necessary reductions by 2050, said Sara Scherr, co-author with Sajal Sthapit of the report, Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use.

Policymakers must go beyond improving energy efficiency and scaling up renewables and add ways to pull down emissions from forestry and agriculture operations.

More than 30 percent of all human-caused greenhouse gases are linked to agriculture and land use, notes the report, which rivals the combined emissions of the transportation and industry sectors.

The report outlines five ways to reduce and sequester carbon using farming strategies:

* Enriching soil carbon. Soil, the third largest carbon pool on Earth’s surface, can be managed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing tillage, cutting use of nitrogen fertilizers, and preventing erosion. Soils can store a vast amount of additional carbon by building up organic matter and by burying carbon in the form of biochar (biomass burned in a low-oxygen environment).

* Farming with perennials. Two-thirds of all arable land is used to grow annual grains, but there is large potential to substitute these with perennial trees, shrubs, palms, and grasses that produce food, livestock feed, and fuel. These perennials maintain and develop their roots and branches over many years, storing carbon in the vegetation and soil.

* Climate-friendly livestock production. Livestock accounts for nearly half of all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and land use. Innovations such as rotational grazing, manure management, methane capture for biogas production, and improved feeds and feed additives can reduce livestock-related emissions.

* Protecting natural habitat. Deforestation, land clearing, and forest and grassland fires are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Incentives are needed to encourage farmers, ranchers, and foresters to maintain natural forest and grassland habitats through product certification, payments for climate services, securing tenure rights, and community fire control.

* Restoring degraded watersheds and range lands. Restoring vegetation on vast areas of degraded land can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while making land productive again, protecting critical watersheds, and alleviating rural poverty.

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