Farming Revolution Could Feed the World - NewsGrabs 20 April 2008

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NewsGrabs

Health Supreme's NewsGrabs - a selection of contrary and underprivileged news in health and a wide range of (mostly) related sectors. Find what trends you may have missed - watch out for the weekly News Grabs.

Here is this week's selection for you:

UN calls for farming revolution
The Unesco study recommends better safeguards to protect resources and more sustainable farming practices, such as producing food locally. More natural and ecological farming techniques should be used, it says.

Unesco says wheat prices have risen 130% percent since March 2007 while soy prices have jumped 87%. "The status quo is no longer an option," Guilhem Calvo, a Unesco expert, told a news conference in Paris. "We must develop agriculture less dependent on fossil fuels, that favours the use of locally available resources."

Finally a step in the right direction! Check out Permaculture's low input high yield model of sustainably growing the foods we eat. Grow food local and grow it in a sustainable way, where soil fertility increases with the years.

See also the following article...

Change in farming can feed the world
The report - the first significant attempt to involve governments, NGOs and industries from rich and poor countries - took 400 scientists four years to complete. The present system of food production and the way food is traded around the world, the authors concluded, has led to a highly unequal distribution of benefits and serious adverse ecological effects and was now contributing to climate change.

The authors say science and technology should be targeted towards raising yields but also protecting soils, water and forests. "Investment in agricultural science has decreased yet we urgently need sustainable ways to produce food. Incentives for science to address the issues that matter to the poor are weak," said Watson.

The scientists said they saw little role for GM, as it is currently practised, in feeding the poor on a large scale . "Assessment of the technology lags behind its development, information is anecdotal and contradictory, and uncertainty about possible benefits and damage is unavoidable," said the report.

Are anti-oxidants REALLY harmful to you??
In this review, which is a rehash of their paper published last year in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA), they first excluded over 400 trials, that had no deaths. They then decided which trials they liked (low risk bias) and did not like (high risk bias), a factor that has received criticism in mainstream medical journals.

Not surprisingly, the selection process in today's review excluded many of the most positive studies. For example, quoting the review itself, 'In secondary prevention trials (meaning people with disease) with high-bias risk, mortality was significantly reduced by supplements.' In those they called 'low-bias risk' there was no significant change in mortality.

Vitamin E increases life span of Alzheimer’s patients
“Vitamin E has previously been shown to delay the progression of moderately severe Alzheimers disease. Now, we’ve been able to show that vitamin E appears to increase the survival time of Alzheimer’s patients as well,” Pavlik said. This is particularly important because recent studies in heart disease patients have questioned whether vitamin E is beneficial for survival.

Pine bark extract's osteoarthritis potential expanded
Supplements of French maritime pine bark extracts may reduce the pain associated with arthritis of the knee. The randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 156 patients with osteoarthritis and using the pine bark extract, Pycnogenol, indicated an improvement in all osteoarthritis symptoms by 56 per cent, according to data published in the journal Phytotherapy Research.

UK Food Safety Authority issues health claims guidance
The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) has issued a detailed 81-page document advising companies on how to negotiate the various European Commission processes involved in health claims submission, approval and application.

The document explains all aspects of the regulation, defines the various claim options and details what is expected in scientific dossiers and how to go about submitting them to the relevant authority.

Endless red tape is being put in front of anyone providing healthy natural products. Don't say they can prevent or cure anything, is the first commandment. And then for what you CAN say, there is a multitude of hoops to jump through before you may do so.

New Zealand: Get diet drinks out of our schools!
"Following agreement with Government, beverage manufacturers are taking sugar sweetened fizzy drinks out of secondary schools, but unfortunately the manufacturers are replacing them with the more dangerous aspartame-containing drinks," said Soil & Health Association spokesperson Steffan Browning. "The isolated phenylalanine in aspartame has been shown to deplete serotonin levels and lower the seizure threshold. This can trigger mood swings, suicidal tendencies and behavioural problems – exactly the sort of problems we want to lessen in our young people, not increase."

Sweetener poses serious health risks
An article issued by the Food and Drug Administration revealed that when the temperature of aspartame exceeds 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the wood alcohol in aspartame converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid. Formaldehyde is grouped in the same class of drugs as cyanide and arsenic, two deadly poisons. All day long, the troops drank their diet sodas which had converted themselves into poisons.

"Consumers for World Trade" - Fake Grassroots Corporate Front Group Bites the Dust
Consumers for World Trade (CWT), which describes itself as being a "network of consumers," is enthusiastic about everything from the right of the U.S. President to negotiate free trade agreements, slashing import duties and quotas on items such as footwear and apparel and opposing mandatory country-of-origin labeling. You'd be right in thinking this doesn't sound like a normal consumer group, but exactly who they are is not immediately obvious. A little digging though, reveals that CWT is just another front group trying to wrap a self-serving corporate message in a public interest name.

GM Crops a Disastrous Failure World Wide
BT cotton has revealed itself toxic in India, GM corn in the US promotes pest expansion and superweeds, GM rice illegally entered the food chain, GM canola is an economic hazard and consumers in the US are refusing to drink milk from cattle treated with Monsanto's genetically modified growth hormone. Not a pretty picture for the GM agro-industry camp.

Corrupt to the Core - Memoirs of a Health Canada Scientist - Bill 517: GE Labeling
"The experiences of the few honest whistleblowers and valiant fighters for truth within Health Canada - like Dr. Chopra, who saved Canadians from Monsanto's Bovine Growth Hormone - shows how rotten-to-the-core this agency has become - serving as the handmaiden of, and implementer for, an extremely corrupt industry."

Pharma Companies Mislead With Ads For Psychiatric Medications
"Roughly half of the adverts featured citations to primary research papers to support their claims. Yet when the team checked, they found that over a third (35 per cent) of the claims were not supported by their cited sources.

"'The sources are provided by the companies themselves, so it's pretty easy to cherry pick one study that backs up their claim,' Spielmans told Chemistry World. 'Despite that, many of the cited sources did not support the advertising claims.'"

Glaxo And Novartis Face Alabama Fraud Lawsuit
The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that Glaxo and Novartis won’t get separate trials in a lawsuit claiming they inflated prices paid by the state Medicaid program. The state’s lawsuit says the drugmakers overstated the average wholesale price used to calculate state Medicaid reimbursement rates to pharmacies. Alabama has sued 70 companies over similar allegations...

Pharmaceutical Companies Oppose Patent Reform
A version of the bill passed the House last September but the White House opposes the damages portion of the House version and a similar measure in is stalled in the Senate amid vocal opposition from Lilly and Monsanto, as well as smaller tech companies that fear lower damages would leave them vulnerable to infringers.

Pharma, whose drugs often have just one or two patents, says it needs the threat of high damages to protect their intellectual property.

On the other side, Boldrin & Levine, in their book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" argue that pharmaceutical patents (Chapter 9) are neither essential for providing just compensation to pharma for their research expenditures, nor