Opinion: California farm
labor law still a hot issue [Sacramento Bee]
…The
farm labor issue, therefore, is still simmering, even if economic circumstances
have changed….Two years ago, after vetoing one version, Brown signed an
overhaul of the farm labor law aimed at making it easier for the Agricultural
Labor Relations Board to crack down on employer misconduct and speeding up
mandatory mediation when an election doesn't produce a contract.…Meanwhile, however,
a sharp dispute has arisen over the UFW's use of mediation to obtain contracts
on unionization elections that occurred many years, or even decades,
earlier….The issue arose obliquely on Monday when the Senate Rules Committee,
chaired by Steinberg, approved Brown's nomination of Herbert Mason, a retired
Fresno professor of farm labor relations, to the farm labor board.
Huge
amounts spent on immigration, study finds [New York Times]
The
Obama administration spent nearly $18 billion on immigration enforcement last
year, significantly more than its spending on all the other major federal law
enforcement agencies combined, according to a report published Monday by the
Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. Based
on the vast resources devoted to monitoring foreigners coming into the country
and to detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, immigration control has
become “the federal government’s highest criminal law enforcement priority,”
the report concluded.…The 182-page report was an opening salvo in a contentious
debate over immigration that President Obama has pledged to lead this year. Its
purpose was to marshal publicly available official figures to show that the
country has built “a formidable enforcement machinery” since 1986, the last
time Congress considered an overhaul of the immigration laws that included
measures granting legal status to large numbers of illegal immigrants.
State
expects little impact from new FDA food safety rules [Marysville
Appeal-Democrat]
The
California Farm Bureau Federation in Sacramento is reviewing the 547-page
document of proposed food safety rules from the federal Food and Drug
Administration, the executive director for the Yuba-Sutter Farm Bureau says.
New preventive control provisions would apply, with some exceptions, to
facilities that are required to register with the FDA under food facility
registration regulations, Megan Foster said Monday. "Activities within the
definition of 'farm' would not be subject to the rule," Foster noted.
Scientists
claim censorship by federal agency [Associated Press]
Seven
federal fisheries scientists filed a complaint Monday claiming their supervisor
censored their research into the water needs of threatened Klamath Basin salmon
because it was viewed by others as biased, violating an Obama administration
policy prohibiting political manipulation of science by the federal
government….The complaint alleges Klamath Basin Area Office Manager Jason
Phillips took steps to transfer the seven scientists and assign their work to
the U.S. Geological Survey, because he felt that other agencies and interested
parties in the Klamath Basin viewed their research as inherently biased in
favor of the bureau, "producing scientific work only to prove other
agencies wrong."…The complaint says Phillips noted the NOAA Fisheries
Service, which oversees protection of salmon, raised concerns over a life-cycle
model the scientists produced on the coho salmon, a threatened species. NOAA
Fisheries has set minimum flows, controlled by the bureau, down the Klamath
River to protect the coho. The life-cycle model suggested that flows in the
Klamath River were less important than flows in tributaries, which are not
controlled by the bureau. The complaint says the model was never published.
Local
ag interests speak up against tapping Salinas Valley aquifer [Monterey County
Herald]
Ocean
Mist Farms vice president Dale Huss warned California American Water on Monday
that drilling for water in the Salinas Valley basin's prized 180-foot aquifer
would prompt agricultural interests to draw a "line in the sand," and
prompt a lengthy and costly legal battle. "Putting the Salinas Valley
aquifer in jeopardy is not going to be tolerated," Huss said during a
meeting of the Peninsula regional water authority's technical advisory
committee. Huss, a new committee member, was reacting to a draft state water
board report suggesting Cal Am might have the legal right to draw feeder water
from the Salinas Valley groundwater basin for its proposed desal plant under
certain conditions.
Moth
quarantine lifted for most of Sonoma County [Santa Rosa Press Democrat]
The
state on Monday dramatically scaled back the size of a quarantine area created
to stop the spread of the European grapevine moth in Sonoma County, marking the
latest victory in the wine industry's battle against the pest. A state and
federal quarantine area will remain for a three-mile-wide swath of land in
Sonoma County along the border of Napa County, where the moth was first
discovered more than three years ago. The quarantine previously took in 46,500
acres of land in Sonoma County, said Tony Linegar, the county's agricultural
commissioner. He put early estimates of the revised area at about 5,600 acres.
Ag
Today is distributed to county Farm Bureaus, CFBF directors and CFBF staff, for
information purposes, by the CFBF Communications/News Division, 916-561-5550; news@cfbf.com.
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