The California Department of Food and Agriculture, on behalf of the Invasive Species Council of California (ISCC), seeks to appoint seven (7) members to the California Invasive Species Advisory Committee (CISAC).

The role of CISAC is to advise the ISCC on a broad array of issues related to preventing the introduction and spread of invasive species and providing for their control and/or eradication, as well as minimizing the economic, ecological, and human health impacts that invasive species cause.

The ISCC  chair is the secretary of the California Department of Food and agriculture and the vice-chair is the secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency. Other members are the secretaries of the following California agencies:

• Environmental Protection Agency
• Business, Transportation, and Housing Agency
• Health and Human Services Agency
• Emergency Management Agency

The ISCC represents the highest level of leadership and authority in state
government regarding invasive species.  Its goal is to promote a consistent
approach to invasive species at the state level.  The purpose of the ISCC is to
help coordinate a comprehensive effort to exclude invasive species from entering California and to eliminate, reduce, or mitigate the impacts of invasive species already established in the state.
CISAC  maintains an intensive and regular dialogue regarding the aforementioned issues and provides advice in cooperation with other takeholders and existing organizations addressing invasive species.

Prospective nominees of the CISAC should be knowledgeable in and represent
one or more of the following communities of interest:

– Biologists

– Global Commerce

– Ranchers

– Economists

– Foresters

– Tribal Government Representatives

– Farmers

– Plant Pathology

– Academics / Researchers

– Entomology

– Public Health Specialists

– Risk Analysts

– Weed Science

– Nematology

– Veterinary Medicine

– Public Member

– Federal, state, county and city Government Representatives

– Non-Governmental Environmental Representatives

No member may serve on the CISAC for more than two (2) consecutive terms. All terms will be limited to three (3) years in length.

Members of the CISAC and its subcommittees will serve without pay.  However, while away from their homes or regular places of business to attend to CISAC  business, members, to the extent funding is available, may be allowed travel expenses, including per diem.  Interested parties and newly appointed CISAC members are encouraged to attend the next meeting of the CISAC,  which will be held on Thursday, January 19, 2012.

Submitting Nominations:

Nominations should be typed and should include the following:
1. A brief summary of no more than two (2) pages explaining the nominee’s suitability to serve on the CISAC.
2. A resume or curriculum vitae.
3. At least two (2) letters of reference.

Nominations should be postmarked no later than Tuesday, January 10, 2012, to
the following address:
Dr. Robert Leavitt
Invasive Species Council of  California
1220 N Street, Suite 221
Sacramento,
California 95814.

For additional information, visit the Invasive Species Council of California’s website at: www.iscc.ca.gov.

The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) has just released The Changing Organization of U.S. Farming, a report that shows  farmers and ranchers are on their way to accomplishing the greatest challenge of this century – sustainably meeting the food demand of the future.

In a world where the population just passed the seven-billion mark, and projections show a need to double food production by 2050 while using fewer natural resources, the ERS report documents a production increase of nearly 50 percent since 1982, while US farmland decreased by 70 million acres.  The report also shows a reduction in pesticide use and reflects significant technological innovation.

These achievements come from the bedrock of agriculture, the more than 98 percent of American farms that are family-owned. That’s very important as we move further into our future. America’s family farmers take pride in feeding families around the world.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/12/05/143141300/insects-find-crack-in-biotech-corns-armor

Hidden in the soil of Illinois and Iowa, a new generation of insect larvae appears to be munching happily on the roots of genetically engineered corn, according to scientists.   It’s bad news for corn farmers, who paid extra money for this line of corn, counting on the power of its inserted genes to kill those pests.   It’s also bad news for the biotech company Monsanto, which inserted the larvae-killing gene in the first place.

In fact, the gene’s apparent failure, as reported in the journal PLoS One, may be the most serious threat to a genetically modified crop in the U.S. since farmers first started growing them 15 years ago.  The economic impact could be “huge,” says the University of Arizona’s Bruce Tabashnik, one of the country’s top experts on the adaptation of insects to genetically engineered crops.  Billions of dollars are at stake.

The story of how this happened is long and complicated, but the details are important, so let’s start at the beginning.

Almost the entire agricultural biotech industry has been built on just two  genetic traits, and our story involves one of them.

The gene (actually a family of genes) in this story — the first pillar of the industry — was copied from an insect-killing bacterium called Bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt.  In the 1980s, scientists managed to insert a Bt gene into plants, and voila, the plant cells started manufacturing the same worm-killing toxin as the bacteria. (The other big gene for the agricultural biotech industry allows a plant  to survive doses of the popular   herbicide glyphosate, widely known by  Monsanto’s trade name, Roundup.)

So-called Bt corn went on sale in the late 1990s.  It has been astonishingly effective against the European corn borer, a common pest.

But from the beginning, scientists worried that biotech companies were overusing Bt and increasing the chances that it would eventually stop working. Why?  The key word is resistance.

The more widely you spray any insecticide, the more likely you are to uncover and promote the growth of a new strain of insects that’s resistant to your insect killer.  It has happened with one insecticide after another over the decades. Eventually, scientists said, the same thing would happen to a crop that carries its own insecticide.  Covering fields with Bt crops would lead to a strain of insects that the crops didn’t kill.

So university researchers and federal regulators came up with a strategy to preserve Bt’s effectiveness.  First of all, they said Bt crops (mainly corn and cotton) should be extremely effective.  Ideally, they would kill 99.99 percent of all the target insects that fed on them.

And for those rare insects that survived, regulators came up with a second line of defense, to prevent resistant insects from mating and producing lots of resistant offspring.  Farmers who grew Bt corn (or cotton) were required to grow non-Bt crops on some of their farm, as a “refuge” for normal insects.  That way, the rare, surviving, resistant insects would probably find non-resistant mates, instead of each other, and their offspring still would (likely) be killed by the Bt corn.

To the surprise of some environmentalists, the strategy has worked.  There’s no evidence that the European corn borer has evolved resistance to the Bt toxin.  The same goes for some insects that feed on cotton, such as the pink bollworm — at least in the United States.

Yet the danger is real, as shown by something that happened in India.  Tabashnik says  farmers there ignored rules that required them to plant refuges of non-Bt cotton. As feared, a resistant strain of pink bollworm emerged in 2009 to prey on cotton fields.

Here in the U.S., though, the Bt train rolled on.  After its success against the European corn borer and various cotton pests, scientists created corn plants that included another version of the Bt gene, one that produces a toxin that is lethal to larvae of some beetles, such as the corn rootworm.  This insect is an important scourge of corn fields; at the time, farmers reportedly spent $1 billion a year on insecticides to fight it.

This new Bt gene, however, did not produce a “high dose” that killed 99.99 percent of all rootworms.  Instead, it was what you’d call a “moderate dose,” says Tabashnik.  He says it’s the worst situation: “The fastest way to get resistance.”

So a scientific advisory panel urged the Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen the second line of defense against resistance, and demand large refuges on non-Bt corn.  They proposed that farmers be allowed to plant Bt corn with this new gene on no more than half of their corn acres.

Monsanto argued that such a large refuge wasn’t necessary, and the EPA agreed.  In 2003, the agency decided to allow farmers to plant this new product on 80 percent of their corn acres.

The scientists who called for caution now are saying “I told you so,” because there are signs that a new strain of resistant rootworms is emerging.  In eastern Iowa, northwestern Illinois, and parts of Minnesota and Nebraska, rows of Bt corn have toppled over, their roots eaten by rootworms. Entomologist Aaron Gassmann at Iowa State University, who authored the PLoS One paper, collected insects from some of these fields and found many with a greater-than-expected ability to tolerate Bt.

Monsanto says other factors may be causing this.  Because corn is so profitable right now, many farmers are growing corn year after year, causing a boom in insects that feed on corn.

But a committee of experts at the EPA is now recommending that biotech companies put into action, for the first time, a “remedial action plan” aimed at stopping the spread of such resistant insects.   The agency’s experts want farmers in areas where such damage has been observed to stop planting this kind of Bt corn altogether.  Instead, those farmers will have to use other methods, such as spraying chemical insecticides, to control the rootworm. Some may simply plant soybeans or other crops instead.

The EPA’s experts also are suggesting that the agency reconsider its approval of a new kind of rootworm-killing corn, which Monsanto calls SmartStax.  This new version of Bt corn includes two different Bt genes that are supposed to kill the rootworm in different ways.

This should help prevent resistance from emerging, and the EPA is allowing farmers to plant it on up to 95 percent of their corn acres.  But if one of those genes is already compromised, Tabashnik says, such a high percentage of Bt corn could rapidly produce insects that are resistant to the second one, too.

http://www.healthycal.org/archives/6783/print/

A year after environmentalists lost a regulatory battle to keep controversial pesticide methyl iodide off the California market, they appear to be winning the ground war against the chemical.

Only six California growers have used methyl iodide—marketed as Midas—to zap soil borne pests and weeds before planting crops like chile peppers, strawberries and walnut trees.

Methyl iodide manufacturer Arysta LifeScience Corp. paid for at least two of the fumigations. The company shared in the cost of a third, according to the grower.

By way of comparison, more than 8,500 soil fumigations took place in California in 2009, the last year for which data is available from the state’s Department of Pesticide Regulation.

“Methyl iodide is a speck on the horizon,” said Les Wright, Fresno County Agricultural Commissioner.

Growers and agriculture industry groups clamored for methyl iodide registration last year before the California Department of Pesticide Regulation gave the chemical its final approval.

They pointed to the coming ban on methyl bromide, one of the most effective and widely used fumigants in the state, and argued that without methyl iodide, California’s billion-dollar agriculture industry would hemorrhage jobs and profits. Methyl bromide is currently being phased out under the Montreal Protocol; it’s expected to be eliminated altogether by 2015.

But now, some growers say methyl iodide is too politically risky to use.

“The people who oppose this particular chemical are really loud and effective,” said Liz Elwood Ponce, co-owner of Lassen Canyon Nursery in Redding. “If no one said anything, I think the chemical would be used more widely. But the objection has pretty much paralyzed the growers into no action.”

Methyl iodide use has been so rare that Arysta put out a press release last October to announce its first application on the Central Coast, which took place only after the Santa Barbara County Ag commissioner dismissed a challenge to the fumigation permit by environmental law firm Earthjustice.

The controversy over methyl iodide had simmered for years, but it erupted in 2010 when Department of Pesticide Regulation managers overruled both their own staff scientists and an agency appointed peer review panel to approve the chemical for use in California agriculture.

UCLA professor John Froines, who chaired the peer review committee, appeared at a state assembly hearing in Sacramento last April and said “science was subverted” in the state’s decision to approve methyl iodide.

“I would not want my family, my friends or anyone else to live or work or go to school near fields where this methyl iodide will be used,” Froines said after detailing the chemical’s properties that are known to cause cancer and damage nervous systems. “You had the best science you could have had and the fact that it was ignored is devastating.”

Earthjustice and California Rural Legal Assistance have sued the state Department of Pesticide Regulation on behalf of environmentalists and farm workers, arguing that regulators put politics before safety in approving methyl iodide, and demanding the decision be reversed. A Fresno County methyl iodide application last summer drew protests, and last month, Santa Cruz County Supervisors passed a resolution urging Gov. Brown to reconsider methyl iodide registration. Last March, the governor told a Ventura County newspaper that his administration would take a fresh look at the decision, but he’s taken no action since then.

So far no health and safety issues related to the five California applications have been reported.

But the political heat is too much for growers, especially those with recognizable labels, Elwood Ponce said.

“Big growers that market in all these stores can’t take a chance on a boycott”, said Elwood Ponce.

“Methyl iodide is indeed a political hot potato”, said Paul Towers of the Pesticide Action Network of North America, whose group is a plaintiff in the methyl iodide lawsuit.  “But what made it a political hot potato is grounded in scientific reality.”

Dennis Lane, a sales manager for Trical, Inc. a Hollister-based company that markets and applies fumigants, said he thinks slow sales are normal for a new product.

“They haven’t seen it on their farm,” Lane said of California growers.

So far, at least one farmer, Tzexa Lee of Fresno County’s Cherta Farms, said his experience with an Arysta-funded fumigation was mixed. He lost 20 percent of the chile peppers he planted, and doesn’t know why. The company took soil samples, but representatives haven’t given Lee any answers yet. Still, he said the chemical was great at weed killing.

“No workers were needed for weeding,” Lee said.

The other Fresno County application was also a bust. But grower David Sarabian said the loss of the chiles he planted after the fumigation was due to scorching hot summer temperatures, not the chemical.

In Florida, the company reported 14 incidents of minor plant damage to Ethe PA in 2008 and 2009. Such post-fumigation problems are reportedly rare.

In California, the high cost of methyl iodide may be keeping some growers away. Lane also noted that state-mandated half-mile buffer zones between fields that are fumigated with methyl iodide and homes, schools, day care centers and other such sensitive sites also limit its use because of the proximity of agricultural land to neighborhoods, especially in coastal areas.

“It almost makes it unusable,” Lane said.

Arysta officials declined to discuss methyl iodide use in California. The company’s website says Midas has been successfully applied on more than 17,000 acres in the southeastern U.S.

However, in several of those states, including Florida, one of the nation’s biggest agricultural producers, officials say methyl iodide use has been light.

In an email, Dennis Howard, chief of Florida’s Bureau of Pesticides, wrote that based on his discussions with Arysta and growers, “…my understanding is that very few if any applications are occurring in Florida.”

 
At North Carolina State University, plant pathologist and extension specialist Frank Louws said, “The Montreal Protocol has seen methyl iodide as a true replacement (for methyl bromide) but our growers have not gravitated that way.”

In California, the fate of methyl iodide is in the hands of Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch, who will hear the Earthjustice case in January.

“I think many people are waiting to see what is the outcome of this lawsuit,” said Rick Tomlinson, public policy director of the California Strawberry Commission. “Farmers live in these communities. They’re not going to rush in and adopt something when there’s a concern.”

http://www.fresnobee.com/2011/12/06/2640248/organic-dairy-near-kerman-could.html

Organic Pastures dairy near Kerman – under state quarantine for three weeks – could resume producing its raw milk products soon, if it passes a final round of testing by the state.

The dairy’s products were recalled by the California Department of Food and Agriculture on Nov. 15 after five children in the state became ill with E.coli.

State health investigators found that the children, who live in Kings, Contra Costa, Sacramento and San Diego counties, all drank raw milk from Organic Pastures Dairy.

The dairy has been unable to sell any of its raw milk products, except for its aged raw milk cheese, during the investigation.

Recently, the state allowed the dairy to resume production for the purpose of testing small batches of products. Complete results of those tests are expected by Monday, said Steve Lyle, spokesman for the state agriculture department.

Lyle said the quarantine will remain until all the lab tests are complete and results come back negative for any pathogens.

Dairy owner Mark McAfee said he is eager to resume making his raw milk, butter and cream. And he said he is confident about the testing.

“They have not been able to find any pathogens, and they won’t,” McAfee said.

McAfee, the state’s largest raw milk producer, said the recall has cost the dairy about $50,000 in lost sales.