Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

This announcement will certainly give the nation’s number one retailer of organic food a run for its money.

Target and Wal-Mart are helping to boost sales of organic foods by offering them to discount shoppers. Wal-Mart plans to carry more than 400 organic items. Whole Foods Market Inc., the biggest U.S. natural-food grocer, has increased revenue an average of 21% the last five years.

Source: LA Times

A group of scientists is putting pressure on the government’s food watchdog to state that organic milk is healthier than the conventional pint, because of its high content of vitamins and essential fatty acids.

The scientists, backed by organic producers, will write to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) this week, asking them to recognise that organic milk is not only free of antibiotics , but is also much richer in essential fatty acids such as omega 3, said to help brain development in children.

I’m a farmer because it’s a working farm. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the only place I want to be.

When we get our organic status we’re going to farm properly and we’re going to have a herd of cows and proper sheep and proper chickens, and we’re going to have small amounts of Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs. I’ve joined the breeders’ club already and I’m quite excited about it.

I would like to go for some kind of organic food production and I plan to do it - maybe something Indian.

1. Punahou School (private), Honolulu, HI
2. The Willow School (private), Gladstone, NJ
3. Desert Edge High School (public), Goodyear, AZ
4. East Clayton Elementary (public), Clayton, NC
5. Conserve School (private), Land O’Lakes, WI
6. Ross School (private), East Hampton, New York
7. Michael E. Capuano Early Childhood Center (public), Somerville, MA
8. Clackamas High School (public), Clackamas, OR
8. Washburn Elementary School (public), Washburn, WI
10. One World Montessori (private), San Jose, CA
10. Sonoji Sakai Intermediate School (public), Bainbridge Island, Washington

On 31st July 2006 Whole Foods Market, the largest natural and organic foods retailer in the US, announced its Q3 2006 results for the 12 weeks ending 2nd July 2006. Whole Foods Market reported an increase in sales from US$1.13bn in Q3 2005 to US$1.34bn for Q3 2006, an increase of 18%. Operating income increased from US$64.6m in Q3 2005 to US$84.3m for Q3 2006, an increase of 30%.

Grocery shoppers across America have been witnessing a subtle but revolutionary change on store shelves. Organic products are popping up in the cereal aisle, amid rows of canned goods, and beside bottles of salad dressing. Though organic food has been around for decades, it used to be found mainly in specialty stores such as Whole Foods or confined to a tiny corner in the produce section.

Some food producers are even rolling out organic versions of existing products. You can now fill your cart with Ragu organic pasta sauce, Snyder’s organic pretzels, Orville Redenbacher’s organic butter popcorn, and later this summer, organic Kraft macaroni and cheese. “With Wal-Mart in the game and Safeway and just about everyone else, organic is at a tipping point,” says Samuel Fromartz, author of the new book Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew. “It’s really gone mainstream.”

Organic food is supposed to be free of most chemical pest killers, fertilizers, antibiotics, hormones and genetic engineering. Organic farmers and ranchers must enrich the soil and be kind to animals; chickens should strut outside and cows should regularly graze.

But a Dallas Morning News analysis has found that the United States Department of Agriculture does not know how often organic rules are broken and has not consistently taken action when potential violations were pointed out.

Given that organic food often costs more, shoppers may want to prioritize their grocery lists, shelling out more only for higher-residue foods. Here’s the magazine’s “buy organic” list: apples, bell peppers, celery, cherries, imported grapes, nectarines, peaches, pears, potatoes, raspberries, spinach and strawberries.

Also recommended: meat, dairy and eggs, to avoid hormones and antibiotics given to non-organically raised animals, and the risk of mad cow disease from conventional feed that can contain protein from sick cows. Baby food is on the list too. As it is often concentrated, so are any pesticide residues, and young children are more vulnerable to small amounts of toxins.

The series will include Beef, Chicken and Eggs, Pork, Dairy, and Crops. A series I would like to see is seafood. Not sure if that’s possible, due to the fact that there are no current standard in place for USDA certified organic seafood.

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political “limelight” once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

In these time where everything is dependent on electronic thingamajig, there are better way to get rid of these product than simply throwing it in the trash. Many companies offer some form of recycling electronic products, such as:

• Intel - Offering recycling programs in five states.
• Circuit City Stores - Will give you a gift card for your items.
• Dell - Offer free recycling of your old computer with a purchase of a new one.
• Best Buy - They will collect and recycle electronics destroyed by the effects of Hurricane Katrina that have been brought to a staging area in Orleans Parish, Louisiana.
• Sprint Nextel - Offer prepaid shipping labels so you can sent them any of your old cellphones to recycle.

You can find more events from the official Earth Day web site.

Have a Happy Earth Day everyone.

Sir David King said it was likely the deadly H5N1 virus will spread among the UK’s wild bird population. That will mean more poultry flocks have to be kept inside to reduce the risk of infection from mixing with them.

He said: “It means organic farming and free-range farming would come to an end. It will change farming practices.”

And a source at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told the Mirror: “Even if bird flu does not hit poultry, it will still mean many, if not all, fowl are no longer able to roam free as they would be at risk from contamination by infected wild birds.

“Sadly, that could be the end of free-range farm practices.”

Have you ever wonder what the word “Organic” really means, if so, your in luck. At a meeting in Orlando, FL on April 1995, the National Organic Standards Board came out with the definition of “Organic” as the following:

Organic agriculture is an ecological production management system that promotes and enhances biodiversity, biological cycles and soil biological activity. It is based on minimal use of off-farm inputs and on management practices that restore, maintain and enhance ecological harmony.

‘Organic’ is a labeling term that denotes products produced under the authority of the Organic Foods Production Act. The principal guidelines for organic production are to use materials and practices that enhance the ecological balance of natural systems and that integrate the parts of the farming system into an ecological whole.

Organic agriculture practices cannot ensure that products are completely free of residues; however, methods are used to minimize pollution from air, soil and water.

Organic food handlers, processors and retailers adhere to standards that maintain the integrity of organic agricultural products. The primary goal of organic agriculture is to optimize the health and productivity of interdependent communities of soil life, plants, animals and people.

Reuters is reporting that Wal-Mart will be expanding the amount of organic food item they will be offering to their customers. DeDe Priest, Wal-Mart’s senior vice president of dry grocery says:

What you’re going to see is over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to have doubled our SKU (stock keeping unit) count.

This move will propel Wal-Mart beyond just being the top U.S. grocery seller and also number one seller of organic milk. The new offering that will be added in the coming week includes pickles to macaroni and cheese, on top of their current offering such as organic baby food, juice, produce, pasta sauce, etc.

With Wal-Mart pushing their suppliers to increase the amount of organic products that produce, we as consumers will reap the benefits of lower cost organic food, given Wal-Mart have no plans of making any extra money from organic items. Priest says, “Our focus is never really to grow our margin, it’s to grow our absolute sales.”

Organic food is better for children’s diets as it dramatically lowers exposure to dangerous pesticides linked to neurological problems, according to a new report funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The study, carried out by Emory University researcher Chensheng “Alex” Lu PhD, confirmed that organic diets lower children’s dietary exposure to organophosphorus pesticides used in US agricultural production that previous research has linked to causes of adverse neurological effects in animals and humans.

In fact, it demonstrated that replacing children’s non-organic diets with organic food items substantially decreased the pesticide concentration to non-detectable levels.