Judge's ruling could bring Valley's high-speed rail project to screeching halt [Fresno Bee]
A
Sacramento County Superior Court judge's decision late Friday has the potential
to halt construction of California's high-speed rail project before it starts.
After considering a lawsuit filed almost two years ago by Kings County and two
of its residents, Judge Michael Kenny determined that a funding plan adopted by
the California High-Speed Rail Authority in 2011 violated several provisions of
Proposition 1A, a $9.9 billion bond measure approved by voters in 2008….But
Kenny's ruling also asks for more arguments from both sides before he
determines whether to issue a court order to overturn the rail agency's plan or
to negate the state Legislature's approval last summer of about $2.6 billion
from Prop. 1A for construction to begin.
What's
ailing America's cattle? [Wall Street Journal]
A
growing number of cattle arriving for slaughter at U.S. meatpacking plants have
recently shown unusual signs of distress. Some walked stiffly, while others had
trouble moving or simply lay down, their tongues hanging from their mouths. A
few even sat down in strange positions, looking more like dogs than cows.…With
few other changes to animals' diets that could trigger such symptoms, Dr.
Grandin and other scientists involved with the livestock industry began to
suspect a tie to weight-gain supplements called beta-agonists that have only
recently become widely used. On Friday, drug maker Merck & Co. said it
would temporarily suspend sales of Zilmax, one such feed additive, responding
to widening animal-welfare concerns within the U.S. beef industry over the use
of pharmaceuticals in meat production.
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Shipping
continued after computer inspection system failed at meat plants [New York
Times]
A
troubled new computer system used by inspectors at the nation’s 6,500
meatpacking and processing plants shut down for two days this month, putting at
risk millions of pounds of beef, poultry, pork and lamb that had left the
plants before workers could collect samples to check for E. coli bacteria and
other contaminants.…Agriculture Department officials, who acknowledge that the
system failed nationwide on Aug. 8, played down the threat to public safety and
insisted that the breakdown of the $20 million computer system had not
compromised the nation’s meat supply. Neither the Agriculture Department nor
the meat inspectors could point to any examples of contaminated beef or poultry
getting into the hands of consumers. The shutdown of the system is only the
latest in a series of computer troubles affecting some 3,000 federal meat
inspectors who are using the new technology….The new inspection system was
supposed to be a significant improvement over older methods that the
Agriculture Department had used for decades.
Editorial: Delta tunnel
project still stuck with unacceptable baggage [Sacramento Bee]
…If
state and federal officials hope to salvage BDCP, they need to come up with
solutions that reduce the project's impact, as opposed to transferring that
impact elsewhere. And while it may be too late to build any kind of trust with
stakeholders in the Delta and Northern California, there are steps they could
take to reduce the mistrust. One big step would be to specify, in greater
detail, exactly how this project would be operated in different
situations….Only that kind of specificity – along with decisions on how much
water is needed for Delta flows to help fish – will put upstream water users at
ease, or at least alarm them less.
Editorial: Farm-fed economy
[Stockton Record]
Anyone
who doubts the importance of agriculture to this county should take a look at
the recently released report on last year's farm production. It's
stunning….Impressive as the raw numbers are, they hardly tell the whole story.
Agriculture up and down the Valley is the ballast for county economies that too
often lack diversity. San Joaquin County is luckier than most in that sense,
owing to our proximity to the Bay Area and Sacramento, but farming remains this
county's No. 1 industry. It plugged along with relatively strong production
numbers - although slipping back in 2009 and 2010 - even as the Great Recession
was costing many residents their homes and jobs. Ag production also is
important for what it means to those not involved in farming. It means
money….To be sure, some agriculture work can be low-paying, dirty and
dangerous, but those jobs help support an industry that brings a huge amount of
stability to the rest of the economy.
Commentary: Not all industrial
food is evil [New York Times]
I’VE
long wondered how producing a decent ingredient, one that you can buy in any
supermarket, really happens. Take canned tomatoes, of which I probably use 100
pounds a year. It costs $2 to $3 a pound to buy hard, tasteless, “fresh” plum
tomatoes, but only half that for almost two pounds of canned tomatoes that
taste much better. How is that possible? The answer lies in a process that is
almost unimaginable in scope without seeing it firsthand. So, fearing the worst
— because we all “know” that organic farming is “good” and industrial farming
is “bad” — I headed to the Sacramento Valley in California to see a big tomato
operation. I began by touring Bruce Rominger’s farm in Winters. With his
brother Rick and as many as 40 employees, Rominger farms around 6,000 acres of
tomatoes, wheat, sunflowers, safflower, onions, alfalfa, sheep, rice and more.
Unlike many Midwestern farm operations, which grow corn and soy exclusively,
here are diversity, crop rotation, cover crops and, for the most part, real
food — not crops destined for junk food, animal feed or biofuel. That’s a good
start.
Ag
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