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Showing posts from July, 2005

Scientists Warn Fewer Kinds of Fish Are Swimming the Oceans

By CORNELIA DEAN NY Times Researchers who studied decades of catch records from Japanese fishing fleets say fishing has greatly reduced the diversity of fish in the world's open oceans, leaving ocean ecosystems less resilient against environmental changes like global warming.

Future of Food in Peril

If corporate owning of genetic material from plants doesn't bother you, how about your own genes? Last night Deb Koons Garcia showed her film "The Future of Food" at the Rutland Free Library as part of a tour of New England. The film was an biting expose Monsanto's attempts to gain control of the seed market worldwide by buying up seeds, companies, seed genes and they are succeeding. The freightening point the Deb makes in this film is that Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" seeds allow the spraying of the popular Roundup without hurting the plants. This allows Monsanto to control the sale of the pesticide and also the seed giving them more control over the agricultural markets. Since Monsanto ownes the patent to the "Roundup Ready" seeds, any farmer found to have plants with its properties on the farms can and have been sued by Monsanto. These genetically engineered seeds have migrated, as plants are supposed to do, and the courts have ruled that unwi