Tuesday 7 June 2011
Hear Us, Julia!
Talk is cheap and hindsight easy when it comes from Meat & Livestock Australia on June 6 2011:
“I would like to apologise to the Australian livestock industry and the broader community for the hurt and anger caused by the recent footage of horrendous acts of cruelty to our cattle in Indonesia.
“No section of our community was more distressed than those of us whose life’s work is the caring and raising of livestock.
“I can assure you that if this disgusting cruelty had been witnessed by any Australian industry representatives before now, action would have immediately been triggered to bring it to a halt.
“This issue has made it clear that we must only allow our cattle to reach those facilities where we can be absolutely confident they will be handled in line with internationally accepted welfare practices...."
The only animal welfare solution that is guaranteed to be 100% effective is a total ban on live export.
Find out how to stop this live trade here at Ban Live Export.
A Bloody Business video on demand*
* Warning this ABC Four Corners video contains graphic images
Who loves fossil fuel companies? Not many it seems
Two million odd Sandgropers may be riding on the mining industry's back; but there are miners and then there are miners it seems – and those that drill for petroleum and gas or dig for coal are really not the flavour of the month with 91% of WA people who answered the question below.
Click on survey table to enlarge
Monday 6 June 2011
Is Monsanto telling untruths?
On 3 March 2011 the bio-tech multinational Monsanto Corporation stated on its own corporate blog Beyond The Rows in the post Monsanto's Commitment: Farmers and Patents:
It has never been, nor will it be Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer's fields as a result of inadvertent means.
In a written statement to ABC Rural, plant breeder Monsanto says It has never been, nor will it be, its policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of patented traits are present in a farmer's paddock or grain as a result of inadvertent means.
It has never been, nor will it be Monsanto policy to exercise its patent rights where trace amounts of our patented seed or traits are present in farmer’s fields as a result of inadvertent means.
Monsanto confirms this policy in a letter from its legal representatives Wilmer Hale on 28 April 2011:
However, I can find no formal Monsanto policy document online which sets out this exemption for accidental contamination of non-GMO farmland or crops.
Nor can I find any current publicly available company documents which define the terms trace amounts and inadvertent means.
As accidental contamination by GMO seeds in Australia has been recorded at seventy per cent of the area of one West Australian organic farm, one has to wonder why trace amounts is so vague a phrase and what implications this may have as contamination instances spread.
It also remains a concern that while Monsanto continues to insist on patent enforcement it also insists that it is not liable for loss suffered from accidental contamination according to this legal opinion of 19 February 2011:
The language: "In no event shall Monsanto or any seller be liable for any incidental, consequential, special or punitive damages" limits and restricts the ability to sue for any damages. There is no "hold harmless" clause contained in the agreement to benefit the growers.
Monsanto's agreement shifts all liability to the growers, including contamination issues or any potential future liability.
* This post is part of North Coast Voices' effort to keep Monsanto's blog monitor (affectionately known as Mr. Monsanto) in long-term employment.
Oh no Brad, tell me it ain't so!
If the idea of genetically modified crops made you feel slightly queasy, then a technicolour yawn might be induced at even the passing thought that it's not only fictional serial killers who may've been having something extra with their fava beans.
Of course the only possible place to hide the stuff originally derived from R&D using human cells would possibly be in the "high fructose corn syrup" or "natural" flavouring. Then again the blog first reporting this was an American Christian pro-life site and thus its balance is suspect.
Conclusion: No-one is actually eating foetal product, but quite a few food and beverage multinationals are somewhat embarrassed because it seems that they probably do benefit from research and development originally based on human embryonic stem cells – and maybe cadavers.
Sunday 5 June 2011
Gillard and Ludwig fiddle while last of the goodwill burns
It is hardly surprising that Labor backbenchers are pushing the Prime Minister.
This issue has the ability to mushroom even further than troubling concerns over the treatment of asylum seekers given that it doesn’t trigger that deep well of xenophobia within the Australian psyche.
The general response would be the same if the Four Corners exposé had been concerned with local abbattoirs.
The Gillard Government cannot afford to go slowly or employ half measures when addressing live animal export to Indonesia – only a total ban will see Australian cattle protected from deliberate and unthinking cruelty in that country.
Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig needs to do the maths. There are more voters living in urban areas of this country who don’t make a living either directly or indirectly from the cattle industry than those who do in rural and regional Australia.
Snapshot of RSPCA Australia banner 4 June 2011
GRACE: mapping Earth's water supplies 2002 to 2010
The GRACE Tellus program has been running for nine years now and is a collaboration of the US and German space agencies (NASA and DLR) whose key partners are the University of Texas Center for Space Research, Geoforschungszentrum Potsdam and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Its twin satellites, launched 17 March 2002, are making detailed measurements of Earth's gravity field over land and ice and over the oceans to investigate Earth's water reservoirs .
WHAT IS 'EQUIVALENT WATER THICKNESS'?
The observed monthly changes in gravity are caused by monthly changes in mass. The mass changes can be thought of as concentrated in a very thin layer of water at the surface, whose thickness changes. In reality, much of the monthly change in gravity is indeed caused by changes in water storage in hydrologic reservoirs, by moving ocean, atmospheric and cryospheric masses, and by exchanges among these reservoirs. Their vertical extent is measured in centimeters, much smaller than the radius of the Earth or the horizontal scales of the changes, which are measured in kilometers. Some changes in gravity are caused by mass redistribution in the 'solid' Earth, such as that following a large earthquake, or that due to glacial isostatic adjustment; in those cases the concept of 'equivalent water thickness' does not apply, even though it is possible to compute the quantity...
As GRACE travels over areas of snow and ice sheets such as Greenland and Antarctica, changes in mass will be recorded. This information, along with measurements from the ground and other satellites will enable scientists to determine if these areas are growing or shrinking. Knowledge of this mass variation is key to understanding the effects of climate change and sea level rise.
WATER
LAND