Natural Communities Magazine A magazine devoted to the local natural wellness culture.

In case you were still curious to learn what really goes on behind the closed doors of beef slaughterhouses, the release of a secret video by the Humane Society (www.HSUS.org) silenced the skeptics and naysayers by revealing the horrifying atrocities committed against diseased cows by slaughterhouse employees (click here to see the Humane Society investigation). As the secret videos show, cows at the Westland slaughterhouse in California were forklifted, electrocuted with cattle prods, kicked and otherwise abused by workers in order to get them into the processing lines so they could be used as meat for the human food supply.

These actions, of course, were taken in violation of federal law. USDA regulations state that non-ambulatory cows (those that can’t walk) should never be used in the human food supply due to the risk of disease (mad cow disease in particular). But given that non-ambulatory cows cause a financial loss for slaughterhouses, there is a strong financial incentive to drag, shove, shock or otherwise kick those cows into the processing line so that their flesh can be transformed into a few more bucks of profit for these beef processing companies (and all the companies downstream that use beef, too, like fast food chains, canned soup manufacturers, providers to school lunch programs and so on).

In reaction to the secret video, the USDA has issued a massive recall of 143 million pounds of frozen beef. That’s the largest ever in the history of the United States. Five felony counts of animal cruelty were charged to the pen manager who worked at the plant, and three misdemeanor charges were filed against another employee. The company has not yet been charged with anything. Note that this would have never happened unless the Humane Society video had brought all this to light.

About 37 million pounds of the recalled beef had already been set to school lunch programs at the time of the USDA recall. But here’s the real kicker: Most of that beef has already been eaten by schoolchildren!

By the way, I’ve also posted a really nice podcast on this subject that was recorded live from a bamboo rainforest in the high Andes of Southern Ecuador. The background sounds are simply amazing, and the discussion is deep. Click here to view all podcasts now.

There’s also an important video clip we’ve just posted on beef and processed meats from the movie All Jacked Up. Click here to see the video.

Click here to read more…

www.naturalnews.com

Great River Organic’s stone mill a beacon to the past

Glenn Robeck doesn’t mind working nose to the grindstone.

While most flour mills today are high-tech commercial giants with lightning-fast steel rollers that churn out flour for the masses, Robeck earns his living at rustic Great River Organic Milling. Here, centuries-old, slow-turning granite millstones grind organic grains into flours for a niche market of artisan bread bakers and health-conscious consumers.

“At the end of the day, it’s more than just a paycheck,” said Robeck, the mill’s long-time production manager. “You have to earn your livelihood, but it’s nice to feel you’re also doing something that leaves the world a little better place.”

The small mill, tucked in a quiet valley 6 miles east of the Mississippi River, is one of just a handful of granite stone millers left in America. It’s a beacon to the past, before Wisconsin was America’s Dairyland and when wheat was the state’s big crop.

Great River Organic Milling has a growing following among those looking for healthful alternatives to processed foods - in this case, flour milled with the whole grain left intact, which commands roughly three times the price of refined flour.

When the process for refining flour was invented in the 1870s, it was considered a major breakthrough, giving the baking staple a longer shelf life, and grains more diversified uses. But refining also snatched valuable nutrients. Whole-grain flour, by contrast, is everything nature intended.

“This is 100 percent whole grain,” Great River Organic Milling owner Rick Halverson shouted above the steady hum of machinery that moves raw grain through the mill in a loop. “All the natural, nutritional components of the grain go in the bag.”

The downside is a shorter shelf life, as the germ of the grain is left intact. The germ contributes much of the grain’s protein, folic acid and other B vitamins, carotenes and other antioxidants, plus omega-3 fatty acids.

But the omega-3 fatty acids also cause rancidity.

So Great River only makes its flours to order, unlike industrial millers that ship product cross-country to vast networks of supermarkets and commercial bakeries.

Sweet smell of success

A pleasant, nutty aroma wafts through the mill that was cobbled together in a red pole farm shed in the 1970s. Robeck said he finds satisfaction in watching demand for organics grow, including organic grains and flours. “Every acre farmed organically is 1 less acre farmed with chemicals,” he said.

The refined flour industry took a hit several years ago when the low-carb Atkins diet sent bread sales plummeting. But the diet caused barely a ripple at this mill, as its customers consistently follow natural, whole-food diets, which include whole grains, Halverson said.

“Now, with the slow food and locally grown foods movements, we’re getting more and more calls from people asking, ‘Where do you get your grain?’ ” Halverson said. The company knows all its suppliers, he added. Each bag of raw grain is labeled with the farmer’s initials.

Quality is crucial to customers such as bread baker Cameron Ramsey, owner of Madison Sourdough. He has been buying flour from the mill for 15 years.

“(Great River) is very unique, and when they go, who’s left?” Ramsey said. “They’re a vanishing breed, man.”

Great River began processing organic grain from nearby farms in the mid-1970s, long before organic was cool. The stone mill tradition harkens back to an era in Wisconsin from roughly 1850 to 1880, when the state grew one-sixth of the nation’s wheat.

Back then, flour mills were small-town fixtures, noted Margaret Bogue, a retired University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor.

“Wheat was a crop that moved west with the population from the East,” she said. Milwaukee was the largest flour milling city west of the Appalachian Mountains until it was displaced by St. Louis in 1871.

Wheat growing in Wisconsin tapered off markedly in the 1880s, Bogue said. The constant replanting of wheat fields had depleted the soil of nitrogen, and blight set in, forcing a wholesale shift.

By the turn of the 20th century, most Wisconsin farmers raised dairy cows. Cheese factories began replacing flour mills, Bogue said.

Along with flours, Great River Organic Milling makes three hot cereals: Multi-Grain with seven grains; a Breakfast Cereal blend of wheat and rice; and Highland Medley, a three-grain blend similar to Irish oatmeal. Great River also makes four types of pancake mix.

The original mill here, Little Bear Trading Co., went bankrupt in 1992. Office manager Nadine Bayer, Robeck and another mill employee bought the building and equipment from the bank to revive the mill under a new name, Great River Organic Milling.

They sold to Halverson four years ago because they recognized the company needed to grow, Bayer said.

Halverson, who had extensive sales experience with food ingredients, bought the mill on one condition: that Bayer and Robeck stay on to help run it. Since then, sales have grown from $274,000 to just over $600,000, Halverson said.

Great River Organic Milling’s main business is bulk flour for artisan bakers, including bakers in Chicago, Madison and the Twin Cities. The mill also handles high-protein, gluten-free grain called brown teff, which is grown in Ethiopia.

Retail is the fastest-growing segment. Great River began with about 40 regional food co-op customers. Now the mill has 400 to 500 retail customers, including Outpost Natural Food Stores and Sendik’s in the Milwaukee area, and some Sentry stores. Sales also extend to Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky.

But the mill’s most famous customer traveled a much greater distance.

Will Steger took the mill’s wheat and rice breakfast cereal to the North Pole in 1986 during his famous dogsled expedition.

By KAREN HERZOG
 kherzog@journalsentinel.com

www.jsonline.com/

Thanks to a backlash of consumer letters from concerned consumers, the USDA has extended its public comment period on its proposed standard for meats labeled as “naturally raised”. A 2007 Consumer Reports survey found that 83% of consumers assume a “naturally raised label means “it came from an animal raised in a natural environment.” Yet the USDA’s proposed standard is so weak, it would apply to a cloned animal raised in the confines of a factory farm, and fed a steady diet of genetically engineered grains. The public comment period on this labeling standard will close on March 3, so take action now:

 http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9692.cfm

The EPA has opened a public comment period on whether a toxic pesticide used on food and cotton in the U.S. but banned in much of the world, should be taken off the market. The pesticide, endosulfan is one of the dealist pesticides still in use. It harms the hormone system, and low levels of exposure in the womb have been linked to autism, male reproductive harm and other birth defects.

Endosulfan, like DDT, is an organochlorine and persists in the environment long after it has killed the target pests, leaving a deadly legacy for people and wildlife. According to one farmer who observed birds and frogs dying following the consumption of insects sprayed with endosulfan: �Fields smell awful two or three days after spraying because virtually every living thing has been killed and starts to rot�.

The Organic Consumers Association is joining with Pesticide Action Network and other allies in gathering tens of thousands of petition signatures to ban this toxic pesticide off the market now. Learn more and take action:

www.organicconsumers.org

This exclusive clip from the documentary film All Jacked Up features Mike Adams (the Health Ranger) talking with Bobby Rice about how We the People can defend ourselves against the marketing lies, junk science and massive chemical onslaught dumped onto consumers by Big Pharma and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This video clip features a cartoon segment and an urgent call for action to protect ourselves and our children from the deadly chemicals fed to us by food corporations and drug companies.

See film clip.

It’s part of the outstanding All Jacked Up documentary available now on DVD from Faerie Films at: http://alljackedupmovie.com/nt/

www.naturalnews.com

Orange mobile phone company agreed to remove its cell phone mast — dubbed the “Tower of Doom” — from the top of a five-story London apartment building after seven of its residents got cancer.

The cancer rate among those living on the top floor, where residents from five of the eight flats were affected, is 20 percent — 10 times the national average.

The mast, along with a second mast owned by Vodafone, was put up in 1994. Since then, residents have battled cancer, headaches and other health problems they say are caused by radiation from the masts. Three residents have died from cancer, while another four are still fighting the disease.

The World Health Organization and other agencies say there is no risk of radiation from cell phone masts, so the companies had no legal obligation to remove the masts.

In August 2007, after a long legal battle, Orange agreed to move the mast from the building — to another area near homes, a public library and a primary school.

Vodafone has no plans to remove their mast from the building, and is working on securing a new long-term lease.

Sources: This Is London August 6, 2007

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Unless you live in some unbelievably remote location, the odds are high that you’re being bombarded with information-carrying radio waves that can wreak havoc on your body.

These radio waves have increased dramatically and exponentially over the last few years — especially from cell phones, but also from WiFi, WiMax, BlueTooth, and other wireless devices. For most people, the damage from this 24-7 exposure will take years or even decades to surface since there is a lag time of five to 20 years for the health effects to become clinically apparent.

For those unfortunate people in London who were living directly below a major cell phone mast, the damage became apparent sometime between the mast’s construction in 1994 and the beginning of the resident’s campaign to have the mast removed in 2002.

You may not realize that you are likely living closer to a cell phone tower than you think. Cell “sites” can look like antennas or huge towers, but they can also be quite camouflaged. They exist on many schools, churches, firehouses, cemeteries and even in national parks. If you’re wondering why a school or park would want a cell site on their grounds, it’s because the cell phone companies pay to have them there, with fees that can range upwards of $2,000 a month.

While there are already more than 175,000 cell towers in the United States, this number is expected to increase by 48 percent to 260,000 by 2010, according to CTIA (the International Association for the Wireless Telecommunications Industry).

If you want to know just how close you are to a cell phone tower or antenna, simply type your location into AntennaSearch.com. It will tell you all of the towers (existing and future) and antennas that are within eight miles of your address!

Why are Increasing Cell Phone Towers so Concerning?

What most people, including experts, fail to understand is that the danger from land-based portable phones, cell phones and WiFi routers is not from the magnetic radiation or the microwave carrier wave from which typical SAR ratings are given on phones. Unless you have massive exposures like you might expect in a microwave oven, these thermal effects are insignificant.

Nearly all the biological damage comes from the modulated signals that are carried ON the carrier microwave. These modulated information-carrying radio waves resonate in biological frequencies of a few to a few hundred cycles per second, and can stimulate your vibrational cellular receptors causing a whole cascade of pathological consequences that can culminate in fatigue, anxiety and ultimately cancers.

Again, this is a very serious concern because, unless you live in an isolated rural setting, you are probably being exposed to these radio-waves day-in and day-out — whether or not you even own or use a cell phone.

Numerous studies have linked exposure to information-carrying radio waves to health problems, but you may not realize that your symptoms are related to these radio frequencies because they could easily be attributed to other causes as well.

Aside from cancer and brain tumors, cells phones and other radio frequencies can cause:

• Alzheimer’s, senility and dementia
• Parkinson’s
• Autism
• Headaches
• Sleep disruptions and fatigue
• Altered memory function, poor concentration and spatial awareness

Can You Hear Me Now? The Truth the Cell Phone Industry Doesn’t Want You to Hear

One of the world’s undisputed experts in cell phone safety is Dr. George Carlo, and I had the privilege of spending two full days with him in October 2007.

I was so compelled with the information I heard that my next book, slated for release in 2009, will detail the reasons why I believe using cell phones is far more dangerous than smoking cigarettes ever was.

In the 1990s, Dr. Carlo was given a $28-million grant from the cell phone industry to put an end to the talk that cell phones were hazardous to your health. Unfortunately, what he found was not what he’d been paid to find. Instead, he discovered that they DO, in fact, cause damage.

The cell phone industry offered him a position for $1 million a year to silence him, but he refused, and started a non-profit institute called The Safe Wireless Initiative to inform the world of this danger instead. I highly recommend you check out his site as he has compiled excellent resources on interventions you can use to maximize your health and minimize your risks.

I also tried to spread the word about the dangers of cell phones via a Today Show interview I did last year. Well, they only aired four seconds of my 20-minute interview, completely censoring the supporting evidence that cell phones can cause damage.

Tips to Limit Your Damage from Information-Carrying Radio Waves

There quite simply is no safe biological threshold for exposure to information-carrying radio waves, and there is, quite honestly, little you can do to avoid them 100 percent.

But you can reduce your, and your family’s, exposure by taking the following commonsense precautions:

• Limit the amount of time you spend on a cell phone or cordless phone.

• Use a wired headset to limit your exposure to the cell phone — ideally, an air tube headset that conducts sound but prevents any radiation from traveling up the wire to your brain. Also make sure the wire is SHIELDED, which prevents the wire from acting as an antenna that could attract more information-carrying radio waves directly to your brain. Wireless BlueTooth headsets should be avoided.

• Limit your exposure to WiFi routers. Find out where they are located in your work environment and stay away from them.

• If you have any land-based (non-cellular) portable phones, do NOT use anything other than the 900 MHz phones as the Gigahertz phones stay on continuously, blasting you with information-carrying radio waves 24/7.

• Use the speakerphone instead of putting the phone to your ear; this is probably one of the single most important steps you can take other than not using your cell phone.

• Limit calls inside buildings.

• Use the phone in open spaces as often as possible.

• Limit use by children and preadolescents, or don’t let them use cell phones at all. Children’s developing nervous systems and thinner skulls are simply too vulnerable to cell phone damage.

Whether you love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is less than ten days away. Millions of flowers and chocolates will soon be bought and given to loved ones. Unfortunately, these gifts come at a cost much higher than the one on the price tag. Conventional roses and chocolate sold in the United States are produced using toxic pesticides, with little regard for the workers or the environment.The United States imports about 70 percent of its flowers from foreign countries, mostly from Ecuador and Columbia. Roses analyzed in the past few years were found to contain a myriad of harmful pesticides that ranged from organophosphates such as Dimethoate, carbamate- Aldicarb, to organochlorines like Captan, Bravo, Tedion, Iprodione and Procymidone.

Organophosphates are considered to be the most likely pesticide to cause an acute poisoning. They are a highly toxic class of pesticides that affect the central nervous, cardiovascular and respiratory systems. Symptoms of exposure include: numbness, tingling sensations, headache, dizziness, tremors, nausea, abdominal cramps, sweating, incoordination, blurred vision, difficulty breathing, slow heartbeat, unconsciousness, incontinence, convulsions and fatality. Some organophosphates have been linked to birth defects and cancer. Organochlorines are known estrogenic pesticides and have been linked to cancer. They also have been found to cause immunotoxicity and neurotoxicity.

Such heavy use of pesticides means that workers are coming in contact with them daily. Furthermore, the roses are grown in greenhouses that contain the pesticides and prevent proper ventilation, making it even more dangerous. Workers are also not given proper protection when working with the pesticides so they become particularly vulnerable. According to the International Labor Organization, women in the rose industry had more miscarriages than average and that more than 60 percent of all workers suffered headaches, nausea, blurred vision or fatigue. Nearly 70% of the 50,000 rose workers are women.

Chocolate faces a similar set of problems. Chocolate is conventionally grown in the sun. Since the canopy of shade that controls pests and weeds naturally is often destroyed to make way for sun grown crops like cocoa and coffee, the use of toxic pesticides is prevalent. EPA allows certain levels of pesticides to be present in non-organic chocolate imported to the U.S. These pesticides include: Methyl Bromide, Pyrethrins, Hydrogen Cyanide, Naled, and Glyphosate.

The chocolate industry has been accused of using forced child labor to harvest the cocoa in West Africa. Companies like Nestle, Archer Daniels Midland, and Cargill have been charged with using cocoa producers that trafficked children from Mali into the Ivory Coast and forced them to work inhumane hours with no pay, little food and sleep, and frequent beatings. On top of all these horrors, the children, who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of toxic pesticides due to their age and stages of physical development, are being involuntarily exposed to toxic pesticides, some of which are banned in the United States.

This Valentine’s Day, show your love for not only your friends and family, but also the earth and the global community. Buy organic and fair trade flowers and chocolate, both of which are more readily available than ever. Here are some resources of suppliers of organic flowers and chocolates:

Flowers

• Organic Bouquet
• California Organic Flowers
• Local Harvest
• Network for Good
• Diamond Organics

Chocolate

• Dagoba Chocolate
• Sweet Earth Chocolates
• Theo Chocolates
• Lillie Belle Farms
• Dean’s Beans Java Drops

If you don’t have access to organic flowers or chocolate, try other creative ways of expressing your love. A homemade card or picture collage, a poem, or a special homemade dinner are all ways to show someone you care while doing minimal harm to the environment and society. Happy Valentine’s Day!

http://www.beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/?p=278

The U.S. National Research Council has advised that researchers should study children and pregnant women in order to determine if cell phones or other wireless devices could be causing health damage.

The U.S. FDA had asked the National Research Council, which advises the federal government on scientific matters, to recommend some future lines of study. Most studies of cell phones to date have looked only at short-term effects on healthy adults.

The Council noted that, “Although it is unknown whether children are more susceptible to RF exposure, they may be at increased risk because of their developing organ and tissue systems.”

The Council also identified a number of other overarching issues that merit further study, such as differences between long- and short-term exposure, and possible biological mechanisms, other than simple heating, by which wireless radiation could affect cells.

 Sources: