A friend just told Me about another weed killer. If the weeds are growing up in the middle of the concrete, or bricks or whatever, take boiling water and dump it over the weeds. she said it killed all hers.

I have no idea what's going on. but one thing i do know is,if my cats don't want to eat it, then it goes.

What in the world? And I thought most people didn't shop there anymore?


Welcome to the 54th annual Fortune 500 – a living, breathing almanac of big business. In a year marked by economic turmoil, here's a rundown of how the nation's largest corporations fared. Read more...
 
 
1. Wal-Mart Stores
2. Exxon Mobil
3. Chevron
4. General Motors
5. ConocoPhillips
6. General Electric
7. Ford Motor
8. Citigroup
9. Bank of America Corp.
10. AT&T  11. Berkshire Hathaway
12. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
13. American International Group
14. Hewlett-Packard
15. International Business Machines
16. Valero Energy
17. Verizon Communications
18. McKesson
19. Cardinal Health
20. Goldman Sachs Group 

Wellcome to Itchmo, Amanda.

Non-Genetically Modified Soy Protein

There has been considerable debate around the world about genetically engineered foods over issues such as the consumers' 'right to know,' labeling, safety and ethical or religious concerns. Experts estimate that more than 60% of foods eaten by North Americans contain genetically engineered ingredients. Because soy is an excellent protein and therefore used as ingredients in so many foods, it has received the most focus and attention.
         Genetically engineered soybeans refers to the process where a specific protein from a bacterium commonly found in soil is transplanted into soy making the plant more resistant to a specific herbicide called Roundup.
         It has always been our policy to provide customers with healthy, delicious food that you can feel good about eating. For more than one year we have worked closely with our soy protein suppliers to source farmers growing non-GMO soybeans.  We want you to know that the soy protein used to produce all our products comes from certified non-GMO soybeans.
         This is accomplished using a program called Identity Preservation  (IP) system. This program certifies that each phase, from planting, growth, harvest, storage, shipping and processing is monitored and documented to safeguard against the accidental addition of GM soybeans to these non-GMO soybeans. Through this system, which is the best available, we can certify that our soy protein is from non-GMO soybeans.

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear
Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination.



Gary Rinehart clearly remembers the summer day in 2002 when the stranger walked in and issued his threat. Rinehart was behind the counter of the Square Deal, his “old-time country store,” as he calls it, on the fading town square of Eagleville, Missouri, a tiny farm community 100 miles north of Kansas City.

The Square Deal is a fixture in Eagleville, a place where farmers and townspeople can go for lightbulbs, greeting cards, hunting gear, ice cream, aspirin, and dozens of other small items without having to drive to a big-box store in Bethany, the county seat, 15 miles down Interstate 35.

Everyone knows Rinehart, who was born and raised in the area and runs one of Eagleville’s few surviving businesses. The stranger came up to the counter and asked for him by name.

“Well, that’s me,” said Rinehart.

As Rinehart would recall, the man began verbally attacking him, saying he had proof that Rinehart had planted Monsanto’s genetically modified (G.M.) soybeans in violation of the company’s patent. Better come clean and settle with Monsanto, Rinehart says the man told him—or face the consequences.

Rinehart was incredulous, listening to the words as puzzled customers and employees looked on. Like many others in rural America, Rinehart knew of Monsanto’s fierce reputation for enforcing its patents and suing anyone who allegedly violated them. But Rinehart wasn’t a farmer. He wasn’t a seed dealer. He hadn’t planted any seeds or sold any seeds. He owned a small—a really small—country store in a town of 350 people. He was angry that somebody could just barge into the store and embarrass him in front of everyone. “It made me and my business look bad,” he says. Rinehart says he told the intruder, “You got the wrong guy.”

When the stranger persisted, Rinehart showed him the door. On the way out the man kept making threats. Rinehart says he can’t remember the exact words, but they were to the effect of: “Monsanto is big. You can’t win. We will get you. You will pay.”

Scenes like this are playing out in many parts of rural America these days as Monsanto goes after farmers, farmers’ co-ops, seed dealers—anyone it suspects may have infringed its patents of genetically modified seeds. As interviews and reams of court documents reveal, Monsanto relies on a shadowy army of private investigators and agents in the American heartland to strike fear into farm country. They fan out into fields and farm towns, where they secretly videotape and photograph farmers, store owners, and co-ops; infiltrate community meetings; and gather information from informants about farming activities. Farmers say that some Monsanto agents pretend to be surveyors. Others confront farmers on their land and try to pressure them to sign papers giving Monsanto access to their private records. Farmers call them the “seed police” and use words such as “Gestapo” and “Mafia” to describe their tactics.

When asked about these practices, Monsanto declined to comment specifically, other than to say that the company is simply protecting its patents. “Monsanto spends more than $2 million a day in research to identify, test, develop and bring to market innovative new seeds and technologies that benefit farmers,” Monsanto spokesman Darren Wallis wrote in an e-mailed letter to Vanity Fair. “One tool in protecting this investment is patenting our discoveries and, if necessary, legally defending those patents against those who might choose to infringe upon them.” Wallis said that, while the vast majority of farmers and seed dealers follow the licensing agreements, “a tiny fraction” do not, and that Monsanto is obligated to those who do abide by its rules to enforce its patent rights on those who “reap the benefits of the technology without paying for its use.” He said only a small number of cases ever go to trial.

Some compare Monsanto’s hard-line approach to Microsoft’s zealous efforts to protect its software from pirates. At least with Microsoft the buyer of a program can use it over and over again. But farmers who buy Monsanto’s seeds can’t even do that.

The Control of Nature
For centuries—millennia—farmers have saved seeds from season to season: they planted in the spring, harvested in the fall, then reclaimed and cleaned the seeds over the winter for re-planting the next spring. Monsanto has turned this ancient practice on its head.

Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented. “It’s not like describing a widget,” says Joseph Mendelson III, the legal director of the Center for Food Safety, which has tracked Monsanto’s activities in rural America for years.

Indeed not. But in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.” In this case, the organism wasn’t even a seed. Rather, it was a Pseudomonas bacterium developed by a General Electric scientist to clean up oil spills. But the precedent was set, and Monsanto took advantage of it. Since the 1980s, Monsanto has become the world leader in genetic modification of seeds and has won 674 biotechnology patents, more than any other company, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Farmers who buy Monsanto’s patented Roundup Ready seeds are required to sign an agreement promising not to save the seed produced after each harvest for re-planting, or to sell the seed to other farmers. This means that farmers must buy new seed every year. Those increased sales, coupled with ballooning sales of its Roundup weed killer, have been a bonanza for Monsanto.

This radical departure from age-old practice has created turmoil in farm country. Some farmers don’t fully understand that they aren’t supposed to save Monsanto’s seeds for next year’s planting. Others do, but ignore the stipulation rather than throw away a perfectly usable product. Still others say that they don’t use Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds, but seeds have been blown into their fields by wind or deposited by birds. It’s certainly easy for G.M. seeds to get mixed in with traditional varieties when seeds are cleaned by commercial dealers for re-planting. The seeds look identical; only a laboratory analysis can show the difference. Even if a farmer doesn’t buy G.M. seeds and doesn’t want them on his land, it’s a safe bet he’ll get a visit from Monsanto’s seed police if crops grown from G.M. seeds are discovered in his fields.

Most Americans know Monsanto because of what it sells to put on our lawns— the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup. What they may not know is that the company now profoundly influences—and one day may virtually control—what we put on our tables. For most of its history Monsanto was a chemical giant, producing some of the most toxic substances ever created, residues from which have left us with some of the most polluted sites on earth. Yet in a little more than a decade, the company has sought to shed its polluted past and morph into something much different and more far-reaching—an “agricultural company” dedicated to making the world “a better place for future generations.” Still, more than one Web log claims to see similarities between Monsanto and the fictional company “U-North” in the movie Michael Clayton, an agribusiness giant accused in a multibillion-dollar lawsuit of selling an herbicide that causes cancer.

This is an older article. I hope it's not true now.

"The Deadly Chemicals in Organic Food


IF you buy organic food because you think it's free of the cancer-causing pesticides used on other farms, think again. "Organic" farmers routinely spray their crops with naturally occurring pesticides - and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has classified pyrethrum, a top organic pesticide, as a "likely human carcinogen."

Feeling paranoid yet? Well, in fact, the EPA made that call in secret, almost two years ago! The revelation about pyrethrum, with other recent findings, calls into question the superiority of organic farming.

For decades, activists have claimed that organic food is healthier and kinder to the environment than "chemically farmed" food. Organic farmers, for example, didn't use synthetic pesticides.

What most people don't realize - and activists try to hide - is that organic farmers are allowed to use a wide array of natural chemicals as pest killers. Moreover, these natural poisons pose the same theoretical (but remote) dangers as the synthetic pesticides so hated by organic devotees.

Last year, we learned that rotenone, a natural insecticide squeezed from roots of tropical plants, causes symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats. Now we learn of the EPA's pyrethrum decision.

The EPA's Cancer Assessment Review Committee based its 1999 decision on the same high-dose rat tests long used by eco-activists to condemn synthetic pesticides. Because no one knows just how pyrethrum causes tumors, the committee also recommended assuming that even the tiniest dose can be deadly. (The same logic is used to brand hundreds of other chemicals as carcinogens.)

Charles Benbrook, a long-time organic activist, notes that pyrethrum is applied to crops at low rates and that pyrethrum degrades relatively rapidly, minimizing consumer exposure. He's right, but all this is true of today's non-persistent synthetic pesticides as well.

Pyrethrum and modern synthetic pesticides break down so rapidly that consumers are rarely exposed to any at all. Two-thirds of all fruits and vegetables tested as they leave the farm in the U.S. have no detectable pesticide residues - despite our being able to detect chemicals at parts per trillion levels. (That's equivalent to 1 second in 31,000 years!)

Pyrethrum is extracted from a type of chrysanthemum grown mainly in Africa. It is literally a nerve poison that these plants evolved to fight off munching insects. The dried, ground-up flowers were used in the early 19th century to control body lice.

In fact, many of the widely used synthetic pesticides are based on natural plant-defense chemicals. Synthetic versions of pyrethrum (known as pyrethroids) make it possible to protect a crop with one or two sprays instead of spraying natural pyrethrum five to seven times at higher volumes.

Organic activists hold to the twisted logic that if a toxic chemical can be squeezed from a plant or mined from the earth, it's OK - but a safer chemical synthesized in a lab is unacceptable.

It is possible to farm without pesticides, as demonstrated by a farm family recently highlighted in Organic Gardening magazine. They use a Shop-Vac and a portable generator in a wheelbarrow to daily suck insects off crops. Talk about labor-intensive! And even that won't fight fungal or bacterial diseases, or insects that eat crops from the inside out. Organic coffee growers in Guatemala spray coffee trees with fermented urine as a primitive fungicide.

Bruce Ames, noted cancer expert and recent winner of the National Medal of Science, notes that more than half of the natural food chemicals he tests come up carcinogenic - the same proportion as synthetic chemicals. These natural chemicals are collectively present in large amounts in the very fruits and vegetables that are our biggest defense against cancer.

Medical and health authorities are unanimous in their recommendation of five to seven servings of fruits and vegetables per day to ward off cancer
- no matter how they are grown. Lesson: high-dose rat tests vastly exaggerate risks.

With global food demand set to more than double in the next 50 years and one-third of the planet's wildlife habitat already converted to farmland, humanity must responsibly use pesticides to produce more per acre.

There simply are no compelling reasons to demand chemical-free farming.

Alex Avery is director of research at the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Food Issues in Churchville, Va.
 

Does anyone have any ideas on this? Anything?

They just said it will go up again. Let's see what it is tomorrow.

I can't believe any of this. this is illegal, i hope and pray. Why are they special and not dragged off to jail, or to be hung sorry, but i could do that to people, and I take the word lightly, who do these horrible things.
no wonder the world is falling apart.

You're right about that. and it should be against the law.
I read about a couple starving a dog. they kept taking pictures until the dog, tied up, starved to death. I cried and cried. It was horrible.
what is wrong with people? Can they even be called humane beings? NO

I have heard of cat flu, but not dog flu. Wow.

Nabiya, I'm so shocked and sorry to hear that Natasha has gone to the bridge. You and Her had many happy years together, and it's wonderful she was with you when she died.
What a strong little fighter She was. We are all sending [hugs] and healing for you.
You will see her again, right now she's playing with all of our sweet pets, chasing butterflies, and being free.

Reports Offer Grim Picture of Economy


Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 17, 2008

The economy is slowing across the nation, the home-building sector is tanking more than even the pessimists could have imagined a few months ago and prices keep rising at an uncomfortably high rate.

This Story
Reports Offer Grim Picture of Economy
J.P. Morgan Hit Hard by Credit Crisis
Those are the unpleasant conclusions of several government reports released yesterday that, together, offer a picture of a U.S. economy being squeezed from all directions.

"Today's news confirms a lot of what we've been hearing and how people have been feeling about the economy," said Mark Vitner, a senior economist at Wachovia. "There is a clear case that the economy is lousy, but not a clear case that the economy is in recession."

The bad news was in line with economists' expectations and did not restrain a rally on Wall Street.

Economic conditions have weakened almost across the board in the past six weeks, according to the "beige book," a compilation of anecdotal reports about business conditions from around the United States prepared by the Federal Reserve.

Business has slowed in nine of the 12 regions in which the Fed divides the nation, and consumer spending was "softening across most of the country," the beige book said. The residential real estate and construction industry was "generally anemic," it said. Bright spots included the tourism sector, which has been buoyed by the weaker dollar, which is attracting visitors from abroad; agriculture, which is benefiting from high prices; and health-care businesses.

Industrial production, a key measure of the economy that is considered in deciding whether a recession has occurred, rose 0.3 percent last month, the Fed said in a separate report. However, the gain resulted from higher energy prices, which made the utilities' output appear higher. For the first three months of the year, manufacturing output was down 0.5 percent, consistent with a recession.

Also yesterday morning, the Commerce Department said that builders started 11.9 percent fewer units of housing last month than in February, a remarkable decline. The number housing starts, a particularly useful indicator of building activity, was down 63 percent last month from its January 2006 peak, according to an analysis by consulting firm Global Insight.

Paradoxically, the sharper the decline in home construction, the better it could be for the economy in the long run. There is currently too much supply of houses nationwide, and the less construction there is, the sooner supply and demand will come back into balance. Indeed, demand for homes has dropped so much that even the current depressed level of construction may be too much.

"It's bad news as long as housing starts are falling less than demand," said Christian Menegatti, an analyst at RGE Monitor, an economics research firm.

Even as the economy is softening, the prices consumers pay are rising. Consumer prices were up 0.3 percent last month, the Labor Department said yesterday, driven by sharp increases in the prices of natural gas and heating oil. When volatile food and energy prices are excluded, prices rose 0.2 percent.

So far, businesses have resisted passing along the higher costs of their raw materials to consumers -- which is keeping "core inflation," or the increase in the prices of goods other than food and energy, within a zone that the Federal Reserve can live with.

"It's hard for them to pass along higher costs when the consumer is on the ropes," Menegatti said.

The beige book described the manufacturers' and service businesses' varying responses to inflation. "Most manufacturers have or are planning to increase prices in response to rising input costs," it said. "While the response of service firms has been more mixed, in part due to differences in competitive pressures."

Inflation pressures notwithstanding, the Federal Reserve has been aggressively cutting interest rates in the past seven months, dropping the federal funds rate by three percentage points, to 2.25 percent.

Leaders of the Fed do not want to cut that rate much further, as they want to save room for further cuts if the economy gets worse. The central bank is likely to cut the rate another quarter of a percentage point during its April 29 to 30 meeting, as suggested by trading in futures markets, with a smaller chance that it will cut by half of a percentage point.

 Retail gas hits record $3.50 a gallon as oil marches higher By ADAM SCHRECK,
 


NEW YORK - Retail gas prices hit another new milestone Monday, jumping to an average $3.50 a gallon at filling stations across the country. Crude oil prices, meanwhile, set new records of their own, spiking above $117 a barrel after an attack on a Japanese oil tanker in the Middle East.

 
Diesel prices at the pump also struck a record high of $4.20 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service, putting pressure on truckers and other shippers who rely on the fuel to transport goods to market.

Gas and diesel are expected to keep climbing as they trace the path of crude, which has surged to new records for six trading sessions in a row. And the worst may be still to come: The summer driving season, when demand is at its greatest, has yet to begin.

"It's uncharted territory. People look at the prices and think they're being taken advantage of," said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service, Wall, N.J. "I don't think we're done, but I have to believe we're in the eighth or ninth inning" of price increases.

Gas prices at the pump jumped more than a nickel over the weekend nationwide, and are up 23 percent from a year earlier. Drivers are paying the lowest prices in New Jersey and the most in California, where a gallon of regular is now averaging $3.86 for a gallon.

Crude prices are rising along with a host of commodities, from corn and wheat to gold and platinum. Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose to a record $117.60 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange but fell back to $116.09, down 60 cents from Friday's close.

Crude prices came under increased pressure Monday after the 150,000-ton tanker Takayama was struck off the coast of Yemen as it headed for Saudi Arabia, its Japanese operator, Nippon Yusen K.K., said in a statement posted on its Web site. None of the ship's 23 crew members was injured, but several hundreds of gallons of fuel leaked before a 1-inch hole in the tanker's stern was repaired, the company said.

Kyodo News agency reported that the Japanese tanker was fired on by a rocket launcher from a small boat.

"There's clearly some geopolitical tension in the market," said Mark Pervan, senior commodity strategist at the ANZ Bank in Melbourne, Australia. "This will die down, but the market is pretty jittery at the moment.

Adding to the worries were claims Monday from the main militant group in Nigeria's restive south that it had launched two more attacks on oil pipelines in the region. There was no immediate confirmation.

On Friday, oil prices rose to touch $117 for the first time after an attack on a Royal Dutch Shell PLC pipeline by the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.

Shell confirmed a pipeline leak that it said appeared to have been caused by explosives. It said it had isolated the line for repairs and that a small quantity of production had been shut.

Attacks since early 2006 on Nigerian oil infrastructure by the militant group have cut nearly one-quarter of the country's normal petroleum output, boosting oil prices. Nigeria is a major supplier of oil to the U.S.

Comments over the weekend by an OPEC official that the group was not likely to increase production also supported prices Monday.

Abdalla Salem el-Badri, secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, said Sunday that oil prices would likely go higher and that the group was ready to raise production if the price pressure was due to a shortage of supply — something he doubted.

"Oil prices, there is a common understanding that has nothing to do with supply and demand," el-Badri said on the sidelines of an energy conference in Rome.

Also over the weekend, Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted Saturday as saying crude oil prices at $115 a barrel are too low, and that oil must "discover its real value." The Iranian president made the remarks during a visit to an oil and gas exhibition in Tehran late Friday.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures fell 0.182 cents to $3.2741 a gallon while gasoline futures fell .0254 cents to $2.9639 a gallon. Natural gas futures fell a penny to $10.577 per 1,000 cubic feet.