This is the quandary that farmers faced—until the infamous ozone-destroying agricultural pesticide methyl bromide was banned. The phasing-out took decades, its use drastically curtailed under the 1987 Montreal Protocol in the late 1990s to the present, with increasingly stringent regulations. It is still employed in restricted quantities for fumigating quarantined crops and for “critical and emergency uses,” which include using it to kill imported organisms that might otherwise be introduced into the United States. In developed countries, farmers are allowed to apply up to 14,600 tons of the chemical in 2006, according to United Nations documents.

So what’s a farmer to do? Not go organic, apparently: earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considered an application by Tokyo-based Arysta LifeSciences to begin listing methyl iodide, a fumigant that could be used to sterilize the fields and storage rooms where strawberries, tomatoes, and melons are grown and stored. Listing is one of the first steps in getting a pesticide approved for use. Appalled environmentalists, who had spent years campaigning against methyl bromide, immediately mobilized to fight what some have dubbed “son of methyl bromide.”

Some say the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree. “It’s not an ozone-depleter, but that’s about the only nice thing you can say about it,” says Susan Kegley, senior staff scientist with Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). “It’s more acutely toxic and a stronger carcinogen, sometimes [causing cancer] with only a single application&.” Because of this, it’s not registered for use anywhere in the world—except Japan. “The European Union uses the precautionary principle, so it probably won’t be registered there,” Kegley says. “It has been approved in Japan for fumigating imported timber, the first allowed use in the world.”

The EPA and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation differ about the health impacts of methyl iodide. Citing concerns for pregnant women and fetuses, DPR disagreed with the EPA’s assessment that health effects on workers and the nearby community could be mitigated through precautionary procedures and in the case of workers, protective clothing. It also disputed the “safe” level of the pesticide, which the EPA estimates to be about five times higher than the DPR safe level. The DPR also says that it is “very concerned” about possible neurological disruption and the consequent effects on fetuses.

Most growers now lament the good old days, when one application of methyl bromide could boost productivity for several years. When used as a soil fumigant, methyl bromide left no residue, and it virtually sterilized the soil of all life, including insects, nematodes, molds, and fungi. It gave strawberries and other crops several years of pest-free growing time. Lettuce farmers often leased the land after strawberry crops had been grown in the fumigated soil because the sterilization killed off lettuce pests too. Vineyard growers often used methyl bromide as a fumigant before plants went in, so the chemical has been widely used in Northern California. Even anti-pesticide activists concede that no presently available chemical or combination of chemicals is as effective or long lasting as methyl bromide. “There’s nothing else like it,” say both growers and activists.

But interestingly, grower organizations have stopped short of adopting an official position advocating methyl iodide, which is the one chemical that seems to be as effective as methyl bromide in killing virtually everything in the soil. As Mary DeGroat, public relations director for the California Strawberry Commission, recently told the L.A. Times, “We are hoping to find something as efficient and cost-effective as methyl bromide, but we’re not proponents” of any particular chemical. “If an alternative comes up that works and is safe, then that’s great news. Whatever the [EPA and state] deem legal and appropriate, we work within those realms in compliance. If they approve methyl iodide, obviously there would be some training involved. That would be critical.”

Environmentalists point out that there is nothing that works like these chemicals because those who use chemical pest controls often refuse to consider other techniques. As methyl bromide was phased out, experimentation has flourished in alternative methods such as solar heat sterilization, intercropping, crop rotation, and other less toxic controls. “You seem to need the threat of something going away to get innovation like that,” says Kegley.

The EPA says that it is now reviewing methyl iodide as part of a larger fumigant assessment study of half a dozen pesticides. The results of the study are expected by the end of this year, when the EPA has said that it will reconsider the registration of the chemical. It denied listing this spring.

Kegley views the denial to list methyl iodide as a victory, citing citizen action and PANNA’s vigorous protests as important in the EPA’s decision. “The EPA was really pushing this through, and we slowed it down,” she says. A PANNA spokesperson says that a public awareness campaign from a coalition of environmental, health, and social justice organizations helped to generate more than 12,500 comments. Stay tuned for the next installment in the continuing saga, some time early next year, shortly after the EPA completes its long-awaited fumigant review.

How Would a Patriot Act?, which chronicles the expansion of presidential powers under the Bush Administration, broke ground in other ways: in just over three months, it went from an idea to a manuscript to a bestseller. Not as well known is its manner of production: the first printing was on 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper and the second on 100 percent recycled paper with half post-consumer waste. The decision to use 100 percent post-consumer waste recycled paper was made at the start, to demonstrate that progressive literature could be printed in a manner consistent with a commitment to the environment—and be successful to boot. So far, 40,000 books have been printed without a tree felled. Now that’s patriotic!

The initiative includes only the unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County—those zoned for ranchland, agriculture, and hillsides. “We’re building on the existing general plan, strengthening it, and making it more permanent,” Drekmeier explains. Currently, the county board of supervisors can undo land use restrictions; once the initiative passes, any weakening or repealing would have to be done by voters.

One of the initiative’s innovations is to discourage subdividing ranchlands. The existing general plan has a complicated slope formula where subdividing land becomes more difficult the steeper the topography gets. PLAN’s initiative is more restrictive: if an area is zoned for ranching and the parcel is at least 160 acres, the landowner is allowed to put only one home on it—no matter what the slope. If the initiative passes, the number of homes allowed on hillsides would be halved, says Drekmeier. It also preserves the 40-acre-minimum parcel requirement for a designation of large-scale agriculture. Over 400,000 acres of rural land and wildlife habitat, including water and view sheds, will be protected; the initiative bans building within 150 feet of a stream, on ridgelines, or on slopes of 30 percent or more, to help retain wildlife habitat and allow the public to see the hills without looking at dozens of houses.

The Santa Clara effort would be the third in a series of Bay Area open space measures that have passed in the last two decades. It would connect lands protected by Alameda County’s Measure D with open space created by the 1986 San Mateo Initiative, resulting in a million-acre greenbelt.

Despite support from what Drekmeier calls “serious farmers—those who truly want to see farmland stay farmland”—the Santa Clara Farm Bureau, as well as a handful of realtors and developers called the Alliance for Housing and the Environment, have come out against the initiative. Jenny Derry, executive director of the Santa Clara County Farm Bureau, says restricting development on ranchlands will lower property values: “This is potentially the worst thing to happen to farmers and ranchers in our county in the last decade.” She believes that the initiative would make it hard for farmers to maintain their way of life—splitting off parcels for their children or mortgaging land to pay for farm machinery, for instance. She also opposes what she calls “land use by initiative instead of public process” and believes the existing “General Plan is changeable, and this is its strength.”

Greenbelt Alliance representative Michele Beasley disagrees, saying the initiative protects ranchland by deterring land speculation. She worries about leapfrog development if Congressman Richard Pombo’s (R-Stockton) plan to build a freeway over Mount Hamilton from the Central Valley to San Jose is successful. “The time is now to put in protections&to create an open space legacy for our grandchildren,” she says.

Drekmeier says PLAN tried to enlist as many players as possible in the four-year process. “We shopped it around and got a lot of feedback. We heard from farmers that they did not want us to include areas zoned medium- or large-scale ag—so the areas most suitable for development are not covered by the initiative.” The one home per 160-acres of ranchland is not as restrictive as Alameda County’s, which allows one home per 320 acres.

Stanford professor Robert Girard, architect of this and many similar open-space measures, adds that the initiative was the result of elaborate polling of Santa Clara County residents, endless meetings, and discussions with planners. This initiative, he says, is “an effort to strike a balance between built-up areas and [the] peace of rural areas”—to protect a “large reserve of open land from going the way of Southern California.”

Over 70 percent of the Santa Clara residents PLAN polled said they would most likely vote for it. Other counties—including Merced and Butte—are considering similar measures, says Drekmeier. “Once an area’s developed, you can’t turn it back. That’s why we’re being pro-active here.”

In 1984, the chemical leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India killed and sickened thousands of people. Fearing a similar disaster in the US, Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986. Among other requirements, the law forces industrial facilities that handle toxic chemicals to publicly report their chemical waste and emissions. This provision is known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), and stands as one of the most powerful right-to-know laws in the country.

The TRI forces individual facilities to report the release, disposal, incineration, treatment, or recycling of 650 chemical compounds, among them some of the most hazardous to human health and the environment, such as benzenes and phthalates. While the TRI does not impose limits, the reporting requirements have effectively induced manufacturers to voluntarily reduce their pollution.

Last year, the EPA under the Bush administration proposed big changes to the TRI. Annual reporting would be replaced with biennial reporting, and facilities needn’t report their waste and emissions in “off” years. And compared to requirements today, companies could produce ten times the amount of pollution (from 500 to 5,000 pounds per year) before reporting would be required. This May, the House of Representatives voted for the Toxic Right-To-Know amendment in an attempt to prevent the EPA from dismantling the TRI. Most Republicans voted against the amendment, which was sponsored by Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ) and Hilda Solis (D-CA), but enough crossed party lines for it to pass. Whether it will pass in the Senate or be vetoed by Bush is uncertain.

The Environmental Working Group has identified 101 California facilities that could stop reporting their use or release of toxic chemicals under the Bush plan. Among those plants exempted from detailed reporting would be 17 facilities in Alameda County, 20 in Contra Costa County, and 10 in Santa Clara County.

In response to this imminent rollback of the public’s right to know, California State Senator Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo/San Francisco) has sponsored Senate Bill 1478, which would establish a California database of toxic releases similar to the current law. If Bush succeeds in weakening the federal standards for reporting, SB 1478 will ensure that the state’s chemical reporting standards remain strong. Speier’s bill has passed out of the Senate and is now in the Assembly.

Babies and Bug Spray

The Healthy Schools Act of 2000 compelled public schools to notify parents of upcoming pesticide applications on campus and to post notices in areas where pesticides were applied. It also offered school staffers training in least-toxic Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Six years later, the advocacy group Environment California has trained its sights on another realm where children spend a substantial amount of time: daycare facilities. The group sponsored AB 2865, the Healthy Day Cares Bill, which closely mirrors the provisions of the Healthy Schools Act. It requires private licensed daycare facilities to notify parents about pesticide applications, post signs after application, and give daycare providers IPM information and training.

A recent US Environmental Protection Agency study revealed that levels of pesticides found in dust were significantly higher in daycare settings than in residential homes. Children’s exposure to pesticides has been linked to persistent asthma and increased risk of childhood leukemia.

The Healthy Day Cares Bill has passed out of the Assembly and is now headed for the Senate.

Stationary Stinkers

In 2002, California was the first state to pass a law that set greenhouse gas limits: AB 1493 mandated the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from noncommercial vehicles such as cars and light-duty trucks starting with 2009 models. This year, Speaker of the California State Assembly Fabian Nunez reintroduced AB 32, which sets binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources such as power plants, oil refineries, and landfills. The bill also directs the California Air Resources Board to institute an emissions reporting and tracking system to monitor compliance with the limits.

Under AB 32, global warming pollution would be reduced by 145 million tons by 2020, cutting forecasted emissions for that year by 25 percent. Predictably, the California Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill, fearing that it will discourage economic growth, increase the cost of business in the state, and jeopardize the availability of an adequate energy supply. Because developing nations such as India and China will continue to expand their fossil-fuel dependent economies, they argue, a California-only cap on emissions will do very little to reduce global greenhouse gases.

Supporters of the bill counter that California is the tenth largest carbon dioxide pollution in the world, and someone must take the lead. And advocates point out that there is an economic upside: regulating greenhouse gas emissions shields the state from fluctuations in the price of oil, speeds up innovation, and lowers the pollutants that also cause smog, soot, and toxic air pollution. AB 32 passed out of the Assembly and is now in the Senate.

Methane Diplomacy

On June 15, California signed an agreement with Sweden to advance the use of renewable fuels, with a particular emphasis on “biogas” for motor vehicles. Biogas—also called digester gas, swamp gas, or landfill gas—refers to the combination of methane and other gases produced by the fermentation of organic matter such as manure, wastewater sludge, or biodegradable feedstock.

Sweden’s energy goals are ambitious: the country aims to end its dependency on fossil fuels by 2020. California hopes to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. State legislators saw mutual opportunity: California can benefit from Sweden’s biogas expertise while Sweden can benefit from the sale of products and research to California markets. Thousands of cars and buses in Sweden are currently powered by biogas, while California has millions of tons of biomass that could be converted if we only had the know-how.

Mixed Messages on Smog

A fourth of the pesticides used in California every year are fumigants, used to kill pests and pathogens in cotton, carrot, almond, and strawberry crops. The fumigants are injected into the soil, and lead to the formation of ground-level smog and health problems in agricultural communities. (See page 5 for a related story.)

Two years ago, a lawsuit was brought against the state by the Community and Children’s Advocates Against Pesticide Poisoning, El Comité Para el Bienestar de Earlimart, and three other citizens’ groups from the San Joaquin Valley and Ventura County. In April of this year, US District Judge Lawrence Karlton ruled that California was violating the Clean Air Act and that it must significantly reduce volatile organic compound emissions from fumigants and other pesticides in the San Joaquin Valley and elsewhere by 2008.

The state Department of Pesticide Regulation is appealing the judge’s decision, claiming that the Clean Air Act was not violated. Yet, the same week in June that the state filed its appeal, the department unveiled a new initiative to curb volatile organic compounds from fumigants and institute regulations by 2008.

The state admits that the new initiative was launched in part to address the court case, and a spokesperson from the Department of Pesticide Regulation claims that the initiative will meet or exceed the standards laid out in the judge’s order.

Monsanto vs. Counties

A Monsanto-sponsored bill, introduced in early 2005 by Shafter Democratic Senator Dean Florez, has been resurrected in the state’s agriculture committee. As amended in June by Florez and numerous coauthors, the bill prohibits counties from banning or otherwise regulating nursery starts or seeds. It says that “provisions of law relating to nursery stock and seed are of statewide concern” and it reserves to the state the power to label, sell, store, or register such stock. It does not mention genetic modification, but SB 1056 was geared to challenge bans on GMOs passed in Mendocino, Marin, and Trinity counties, the cities of Arcata and Point Arena, and the ten-year moratorium just enacted in Santa Cruz County. In the latest round of amendments to the bill, these bans would stand, as provisions will not apply to ordinances enacted before July 1, 2006. Observers predict that the bill will be debated as hotly as a Sacramento summer once it reaches the Assembly.

Hetchy and Scratchy

Ever since the Tuolumne River was dammed 83 years ago, the Hetch Hetchy Valley of Yosemite National Park has been under water. The reservoir created by the dam has stored water for 2.4 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area. Draining the glacial valley and restoring its dramatic grandeur has endured as an environmentalist’s dream, albeit an unlikely one.

A feasibility study commissioned by the Schwarzenegger administration reviewed options for reclaiming the Hetch Hetchy Valley and storing San Francisco’s water in other locations. The reservoir is one of nine in the same system, so the alternatives are likely to involve expanding others or storing water underground. The study is preliminary, but it keeps the option of a drained Hetch Hetchy on the table.

The group intended the stories to be presented in public kiosks scattered around town. But the vision eventually morphed into a web site. Today—a decade later—Shaping San Francisco is a seductive hydra: with about 1,300 pages divided into 52 chapters, the sprawling site is, in the words of its creator, “a perfect example of a mental illness.”

As intended, the site is an ideal tool for understanding the bones of the modern metropolis. All the city’s neighborhoods are represented; pick a race, sexual orientation, religion, gender, or profession and learn how such communities influenced the land- and folkscape.

In addition to continually working on the site, Carlsson leads pedal-powered tours that make visible how class struggle and natural history are an integral part of San Francisco. His passions are evident online as well: snippets of botanical tours from 1945 share cyberspace alongside interviews with ’30s union organizers. One can study photos of pre-Sunset District sand dunes or of the Symbionese Liberation Army safe house in Bernal Heights. And you can place yourself in the virtual topography by clicking on any one of 49 hills.

Carlsson says the motivating question behind the dozen-years-and-counting endeavor is one of how to approach history. “Partly [Shaping San Francisco was] going to stage a revolt against American-style history,” he explains. “Objectivity from a historical point of view is just laughable to me.” Aside from oral interviews, he says most of the source information on the site is written by someone else—”usually some white guy, usually in a newspaper”—thus begging the issue of veracity. Carlsson and the hundreds of other volunteer contributors to the project have added their own sensibilities about class and ecology in attempts to set the record, if not straight, then more accurately Lombard-like.

More than ten years after Carlsson began compiling facts on his 500-megabite hard drive, the project about the past has itself become a slice of the city’s history. He’s currently working on converting the files to a Wikipedia format so that anyone with a keyboard can add to and update the hundreds of pages, though he admits such freedom could usher in a panoply of subjective dramas: “What if the Maoists want to put in their take on San Francisco’s history?”

Carlsson is not fond of the typical reaction to the project: awe. He laments that it’s “kind of discouraging,” explaining that he’d rather it inspire others to use technology to strengthen community involvement and connection to a place. He lauds a similar site he was recently turned on to: organiccity.com, a storytelling project created by two students in CSU East Bay’s Multimedia Graduate Program, which focuses on downtown Oakland and the area around Lake Merritt. The nascent site is very user-friendly, with viewers easily able to participate through clicking on a map to locate stories and by adding their own tales. “It’s a perfect example of what Shaping San Francisco should evolve into,” Carlsson says.

The legal filings exemplify how effectively and quietly nanoparticles have inserted themselves into our lives. While we weren’t looking, sub-microscopic machines went from the stuff of science fiction to more than 200 products that you can buy today from the likes of Levi Strauss to L.L. Bean. These new products have been either enhanced or made possible by tiny particles less than a hundredth of a millimeter, so small that they can only be seen with the most powerful microscopes in the world. On the nanoscale (ten or fewer atoms), familiar materials turn strange—for instance, gold liquifies and opaque substances become transparent. They also react differently on a chemical and catalytic level than their macro counterparts.

“The growth in nanotechnology and the products that contain them has been astonishing,” says Tracy D. Hester, an attorney who heads the Houston environ-mental law group in the firm of Bracewell & Giuliani, a national law firm. He said the Friends of the Earth petitions could be the beginning of the first litigation over how nanomaterials should be regulated.

From Dockers Go Khakis to Daewoo vacuum cleaners, from sunscreen to golf clubs, nanotechnology is beginning to pervade our lives. Once the province of worried academics and starry-eyed inventors, the tiny molecules have hit the bright lights, appearing daily in your supermarket and mail order catalogs.

Indeed, it’s now possible to be in contact with this technology from the moment you arise in the morning and use your Wilkinson Sword razor to the moment your head hits the Sharper Image Contour-Foam neck-support pillow. From machine memory to environmental remediation, the chemicals are transforming old favorites and making the previously unthinkable a household necessity.

At the same time, many observers are concerned both at how little is known about the risks of these particles and how inadequate and inappropriate are many of the current laws dealing with issues ranging from human and animal health to disposal of nano-wastes. At least half a dozen agencies, including the EPA, the FDA, and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, can or should play a role in overseeing the creation, use, and disposal of nanochemicals, but so far, it’s unclear what oversight the agencies might adopt.

Inadequate regulation is part of why so many consumers don’t even realize they are using nanotechnology: There is no requirement in the United States to label products that use nanoparticles. (To see which nano-products you might be using, click on the Nanotechnology Consumer Products Inventory at http://www.nanotechproject.org. The results will surprise you.)

Even researchers working on the cutting-edge of the field admit that it’s hard to know which products contain nanotechnology. “I couldn’t even say for sure which sunscreens use nano,” says Kristen Kulinowski, director for external affairs at Rice University’s Center for Biology and Environmental Nanotechnology and the director of the International Conference on Nanotechnology. “I can guess, by looking at the ingredients and at whether it is all white and goopy or mostly clear.” (You might want to steer clear of clear.)

Like any frontier, the field of nanotechnology is a place where the law is often inadequate to deal with day-to-day problems. “Unless it’s pharmacological or a radionucleotide, there are very few specific regulations that apply,” says Patricia McClellan-Green, assistant professor of environmental and molecular toxicology at North Carolina State University. She agrees that nanotechnology has been largely unregulated or underregulated. Sometimes it’s clear that nanotechnology has been used, but some chemicals have a currently regulated “macro” or traditional formulation and a new nanoformulation. The law treats the two chemicals as the same.

“So far, nanotechnology is regulated mostly under the Toxic Substances Control Act, but those laws don’t distinguish between nanotechnology and other chemicals,” says Kulinowski. “That means that, say, titanium dioxide [a chemical commonly used in sunscreens] might be covered under the Act, but a nano-formulation of titanium dioxide could conceivably have very different toxicological properties. That’s usually the very reason we’re interested in nanotechnology. “If it weren’t different in some way, we probably wouldn’t be interested in the nano form.”

She hastens to add that the general view of nano titanium dioxide is that it’s safe. But with some chemicals, the nano-formulation is so different that it should be regulated as if it’s a different chemical, and current laws don’t allow for two radically different formulations—with extremely different risks—of the same chemical.

For example, work done by Eva Oberdorster, formerly of Southern Methodist University, showed that water fleas were killed by synthetic carbon nanoparticles called “buckyballs,” and a species of fish suffered brain damage after exposure to them.

Follow-up research seems to indicate that simply formulating the outer structure of the particle a little differently can cause such drastic effects, says Kulinowski. Experts say the study underscores the need for more research and information-sharing about these technologies.

Such knowledge is hard to come by. Many firms jealously guard the specifics of their nanotechnology fabrications, so as not to clue in competitors about important differences in technique. “In particular, sometimes it’s difficult to get information about the coatings and the structure, which can be extremely limited,” says McClellan-Green.

Perhaps the scariest thing about nanotechnology is how little is known about the possible effects on wildlife and people. “We’re just starting to understand the most basic things about the risks,” says McLellan-Green, whose work includes studying the marine effects of nanoparticles. “For example, we’re just getting information on how the particles move in the environment, and how they’re taken up in different forms of life.” Until we understand the risks, she says, “We should exercise caution in how we treat these chemicals.”

“In nanotech, the first major environmental legal issue will be when a nanoparticle is truly new and should be regulated differently [from its non-nano counterpart] under the Toxic Substance Control Act. Current law is not clear at all in this area,” says Hester. “While the Toxic Substances Control Act provides a general framework, given the high stakes EPA has already proposed a voluntary pilot program to register and test certain nanomaterials. EPA also plans to provide additional guidance soon on when a chemical is considered ‘new’ under the Act.”

But don’t hold your breath; most observers don’t expect definitive action any time soon. “Some firms have taken voluntary action by setting guidelines on research,” says Douglas Kysar, a professor of law at Cornell and a member scholar of the Center for Progressive Reform. “But there are billions of dollars being spent on nanotechnology research, and 99 percent of it is dedicated to things other than risk assessment and mitigation.”

“There’s probably not going to be nano-specific regulation anytime in the near future, unless there is a consumer product scare,” says Kulinowski.

Nanotechnology might offer some of the quickest, cleanest ways on the horizon to treat contaminated water. Consider, for example, a new nanomolecule that speeds up the breakdown of TCE in groundwater by “many orders of magnitude,” according to its co-creator Michael S. Wong, assistant professor of chemistry and biomolecular engineering at Rice University.

“It breaks down into ethane and chloride salt, which are both fairly harmless,” he says. “Nature itself actually can get rid of a lot of chemicals, but very slowly. Our catalyst kick-starts the reaction and accelerates it.”

Initial trials were so surprisingly successful, he says, that work is underway to do controlled trials at actual sites. Wong and his colleagues plan to construct a larger tank with the catalysts inside, run contaminated water into it, and see how well the nanocatalyst works in breaking down TCE from real spill sites.

Wong’s is not the only research that could someday be used to clean up the mess left by previous generations of chemicals. Nanotech can also bind arsenic to iron, so magnets can draw out the iron-bound arsenic. And since arsenic in drinking water is a problem around the world, including many places in California, such technology could offer hope for communities worldwide where finding uncontaminated drinking water occupies much of residents’ time and energy.

All of which goes to show that to abandon all nanotechnology because of concerns about its safety might do more harm than good. As research by Cornell law professor Kysar and others has shown, people often overestimate the risks of new technology and underestimate its benefit. “We tend to think that anything that has a high risk has a low benefit, and that’s just not true,” Kysar says.

The useful little microorganism called Saccharomyces cerevisia is invisible to the naked eye, but it can become airborne, travel great distances, and get onto skin and clothing. And the spores are very hardy. Case in point: as an avid sourdough lover, I still make my own bread from a sourdough culture passed on to me by my father-in-law in 1965. When a niece from Holland visited me in the ’90s, she wanted to learn to bake sourdough bread. She asked if she could take a portion of the wild yeast culture with her. I took some sourdough starter, spread it on a plate, and set it outside in the sun to dry. I then pulverized it and sealed it in a Ziplock bag. A few weeks later, after rehydrating and feeding flour to the dried yeast culture, my niece baked sourdough bread in Amsterdam.

Over centuries, people have learned how to culture specific strains of yeast. One of the most consistent problems for brewers and winemakers is keeping the yeast strain they’re using pure and uncontaminated by other strains and wild (airborne) yeast. Most brewers, winemakers, and bakers use yeast cultured by laboratories under carefully controlled conditions. Today, many different strains are available for different fermentation processes. Bakers, brewers, and winemakers want the perfect strain for their own needs, especially if it speeds up the fermentation process and eliminates “off” flavors. To feed those desires, scientists are creating genetically modified yeasts, which might be just about the worst idea that I can imagine. Consider that yeast travels through the air like pollen, which means that GM yeast could find its way into brews and bread just like non-GM yeast does.

Yeast is literally everywhere. It belongs to the Phylum Ascomycota, the largest division of fungi. The same group includes delectable morels and truffles, as well as the fungus responsible for the dreaded Dutch Elm disease. These organisms differ from plants in that they lack chlorophyll, and so they cannot photosynthesize. To reproduce, they must feed on other organisms. Without them, decomposition could not take place. Dead and spent matter would accumulate.

In bread baking, yeast feeds on the flour, producing carbon dioxide bubbles that push up the dough. In brewing, the spores feed on the barley sugars and release alcohol and carbon dioxide. Similarly yeast feeds on grape sugars to make wine. In each case the reaction—fermentation, the conversion of sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide—is the same:

C6H12O6( (Glucose) + Saccharomyces cerevisia =
2C2H5OH (Ethanol) + 2CO2 (Carbon dioxide)

People have been satisfied with how this process has worked for at least 12,000 years. Though anyone can brew ales, ferment wines, and make bread, it takes careful study, patience, and experience to make the finest of these products—in fact, it is an art.

Over 20 years ago, the first research on the genetic engineering of brewing yeasts began, and genetically engineered strains have been developed. One of these GE yeasts allows the brewing of “lite” beer, which has a lower alcohol content. Even though these GE yeasts are available, it seems breweries are not using them—or if they are, they aren’t telling anyone. According to Cornell University Cooperative Extension, US processors are not currently using GE yeast in beer and bread.

As owners of an organic brewery, we must show our certifiers proof that we are not using genetically engineered yeast, along with an affidavit from our yeast supplier that the yeast is free from GMOs.

But it’s a different story for winemakers. The wine industry is booming. Wine grapes are now grown in every one of the lower 48 states, and wineries are springing up everywhere. It comes as no surprise that scientists have genetically engineered wine yeast. In fact, Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain ML01 is now commercially available and approved for use by the FDA in the United States. Springer Oenologie (a division of Lesaffre Yeast Corporation) has released the first GM wine yeast to the North American market.

Why genetically engineer wine yeast? In wine-making there are two fermentations: the alcoholic and malolactic, in two separate reactions. Natural wine yeast only accomplishes the alcoholic fermentation. The genetic engineers have created a Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain that will conduct malolactic fermentation as well, which eliminates the need for additions of another distinct microorganism, lactic acid bacteria. No one knows what the long-term risks to wild yeast and other yeasts are, or the health implications of this GE yeast.

Genetics Professor Emeritus Joe Cummings, from the University of Western Ontario, writes in Sustainable Agriculture, “The United States Food and Drug Administration in 2003 designated the genetically engineered yeast Saccharomyces cerevisae strain ML01 to be a substance generally recognized as safe&The GM wine yeast did not appear to have been tested for toxicity in animal feeding experiments nor was the must [the grape residue] and finished wine. The FDA review seemed to be based on faith rather than on science.”

The biotechnology industry claims that genetic engineering of products and processes is well regulated, and our government oversees thorough testing to prove safety. However, the British medical journal, The Lancet, points out that international faith in the FDA is fast eroding because approvals are frequently influenced by political pressure. Certainly the approval of GE wine yeast leaves fundamental—and extremely unsettling—questions to be answered.

Because the US has no labeling requirements for GE products, we don’t know which companies are using GE yeast. I’ve spoken to winemakers in Mendocino County who were outraged to learn that GE wine yeast had been approved and is now out in the world. We learned during the Measure H campaign that at least 30 field trials with GE wine grapes had been conducted in California, according to officials at UC Davis. We know that trials are being conducted with GE yeast. It would behoove the wine industry to find out where these trials are being conducted. In the meantime, the best way to stop this nonsense is to boycott wines and all other products whose producers cannot prove they don’t use GMOs.

In the meantime, my bread is rising in the kitchen. I wonder if any GE yeast has drifted into the dough.

Conventional wisdom blames the docs for decades of prescribing antibiotics too often and too quickly. But it turns out that excessive reliance on the prescription pad may not be not the only culprit behind the rise in antibiotic resistance. Some scientists believe that resistant bacteria arise when livestock are treated with antibiotics and that this resistance can be transferred to bacteria that cause human illness.

How can this happen? Consider the following chain of events: an E. coli bacteria is living in the gut of a cow. This cow is regularly given antibiotics, and so to survive, the E. coli contains a gene to help it resist the antibiotic. When this cow is slaughtered, the E. coli, perhaps through sloppy handling, makes its way from the gut to ground meat that is sold in a supermarket. Mrs. Smith buys this meat and makes a hamburger. Smith gets a phone call midway through meal prep and doesn’t wash her hands thoroughly, and the E. coli manages to stay on her skin. Eventually it meets a staph bacteria and transfers its antibiotic resistance. Smith now has antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria. Staph are capable of causing toxic shock syndrome and various types of skin infection, and treatment usually includes antibiotics.

The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that every year 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics are used for non-therapeutic purposes in pigs, poultry, and cattle. When humans ingest the flesh of these animals, they may also be exposing themselves to the genes of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Only 3 million pounds of antibiotics are used in human medicine each year. Put another way, over 70 percent of antibiotics produced each year are used for animal husbandry.

Antibiotic use in livestock falls into three categories: therapy, prevention, and growth promotion. If an animal exhibits symptoms of an infection, it is given antibiotics as therapy, but it also may be dosed preventatively to ward off infection from exposure to sick animals or unhealthy housing conditions. Low, sub-therapeutic levels of antibiotics are also administered to promote growth. Why antibiotics promote growth is unclear, but some speculate that it suppresses disease, so the animal does not expend as much energy on maintaining its immune system. Low doses may also increase the efficiency of digestion and metabolism through manipulation of the microbial life found in the animal’s gut.

Resistance develops through a process of selection. Ideally, a dose kills off all target bacteria. But if the dose is not sufficiently high, some of the bacterial population remains. These survivors are more resistant to antibiotics—and it’s possible that resistance developed to one class of antibiotics may increase resistance to others. Six classes of antibiotics used in livestock are also used to treat people. Since most livestock receive sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics as growth promoters and preventives over extended periods of time, antibiotic-resistant bacteria can easily develop in livestock—bacteria resistant to the same drugs used to control infection and disease in people.

Livestock excrete bacteria as well as antibiotics in their waste, which is stored in large lagoons. From these lagoons, antibiotics and resistant bacteria can make their way into the environment. Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been isolated from groundwater and soil near animal waste lagoons. Often waste is used as fertilizer on crops, spreading resistance farther. Bacteria in the soil can pick up resistance from any resistant bacteria in the waste, and the presence of antibiotics in the soil continues the process of killing off less resistant bacteria while favoring the more resistant strains. In short, use of antibiotics in livestock has led to the formation of reservoirs of resistance both in the livestock themselves and in the surrounding environment.

Resistance can pass not only from mother to daughter cells but also between cells. Genes for antibiotic resistance usually reside on plasmids, small circular pieces of DNA separate from the genome, or on transposons, small DNA elements that can cut themselves out of the genome and paste themselves back in at a different location. Some transposons are also able to copy themselves to insert elsewhere in the genome. Resistance genes can be swapped between different bacteria, meaning resistance genes may eventually find their way from the reservoir in livestock to human bacteria. These may be beneficial bacteria that are part of the normal ecosystem in the gut, but they can become their own reservoir of resistance genes in people.

Eventually, a resistance gene may link up with pathogenic bacteria. Initial treatment of the sick individual is likely to be less effective because the doctor is unaware of the resistance. Higher, perhaps more toxic, dosages of antibiotics must be prescribed, with fewer antibiotics to choose from. Bacteria with resistance genes may also be more virulent.

The solution is simple—stop using antibiotics. Resistant bacteria have more genes and must spend more time and energy copying and repairing DNA before dividing. In the absence of antibiotics, the resistance gene is no longer needed, and the extra energy used to maintain the DNA that codes for resistance outweighs the benefit. Bacteria with such genes reproduce more slowly, so the number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria will eventually decline.

Simple in theory does not mean simple in practice: consider Denmark. By 1999, through a combination of voluntary and regulatory measures, Denmark’s broiler chicken and swine industries had stopped using antibiotics as growth promoters. To compensate, many Danish livestock producers improved sanitation and offered roomier housing. They also used alternative feed additives such as amino acids to mimic the growth-promoting effect of antibiotics. Despite these measures, more feed and time were required to raise animals to slaughter weight. Farmers also increased their use of therapeutic antibiotics. The number of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment surrounding the farms has decreased significantly although there has been no clear impact on human health. Granted, Denmark did not have many problems with antibiotic resistance in human illnesses to begin with. Controversy continues over whether the growth promoter ban is beneficial.

How frequently does this chain of events occur? Is it worth it to discontinue use of antibiotics in livestock?

Compelling evidence suggests that antibiotic resistance in people originated from livestock. The impacts of antibiotic-resistant Salmonella and Campylobacter are well documented. Salmonella and Campylobacter are food-borne pathogens with extremely low rates of person-to-person transmission, so resistance found in human infections can be attributed to the reservoir of resistance genes originating from livestock. For Salmonella, there are many cases dating back to 1984 linking resistant bacteria in human infections to farms, and there has been an increasing frequency of such reports. In addition, studies have linked antibiotic resistance to greater virulence. Infection with antibiotic-resistant Campylobacter is associated with increased length of illness and greater risk of death. A Danish study reports that antibiotic-resistant Salmonella is associated with a tripling of the risk of death. While this is worrying, Salmonella and Campylobacter are for the most part foodborne, and illness can be prevented through thorough cooking and adherence to sanitary measures.

In most cases, the effects of resistant bacteria are not so obvious. Much of the evidence for other bacteria is circumstantial. Studies have found that an increase in levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in livestock and people follows introduction of that antibiotic into livestock. For example, a class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones was approved for human use in the US in 1986 and for animal use in 1995. There were no reports of fluoroquinolone-resistance in foodborne Campylobacter until 1995. As another example, only countries that use avoparcin in livestock have cases of a urinary tract infection in humans that is difficult to treat with vancomycin, an antibiotic very similar to avoparcin. Vancomycin resistance is especially disturbing because it is a drug of last resort. After the EU banned the use of avoparcin, levels of vancomycin-resistant bacteria in meat products, livestock, and people decreased.

In a 1976 study conducted by Dr. Stuart Levy, author of The Antibiotic Paradox, chickens on a farm were divided into two groups, one of which received an antibiotic in their feed. After two weeks, 90 percent of the antibiotic-receiving chickens excreted resistant bacteria. Moreover, after twelve weeks, multidrug resistance developed. Resistance transferred to the farmers. After six months, more than 30 percent of people on the farm excreted bacteria, 80 percent of which were resistant, compared to 6.8 percent resistance for people who lived in the surrounding area. Researchers speculated that farmers developed resistance through handling the feed and because the genes were in the environment. People who ate eggs from the chickens did not develop resistant bacteria.

Other studies compare DNA sequences of resistance genes from different bacteria. Results from these experiments show that often the bacteria infecting people are the same as those in livestock. For example, in 1982 a streptotricin antibiotic was introduced as a growth promoter for pigs. Streptotricin has never been used in people. Within one year of its introduction, resistant bacteria were detected in pigs. Within two years, bacteria with the same gene were also found in pig farmers, their families, urban residents, and E. coli from urinary tract infections. A few years later, the resistance gene was found in pathogenic bacteria. Strikingly, it not only found its way into bacteria that can infect both animals and humans but also to Shigella, bacteria that resides only in people. While not all people who are infected by Shigella exhibit symptoms, Shigella infection can lead to stomach cramping, diarrhea, and fever. A more recent study used two variants of a vancomycin resistance gene. These two variants differ only by one DNA base. In poultry, the resistance gene has a G where in pigs there is a T. In humans, there is an even mix of G and T variants except in Muslim countries (which don’t raise or consume pigs) where people contain only the G variant.

Based on such evidence, the EU, which follows the precautionary principle, has banned the use of antibiotic growth promoters that can select for resistance to human antibiotics. US policy is based on proof of principle, and there is not enough evidence to justify eliminating the positive effects of antibiotic growth promoters. If antibiotics were discontinued, the cost of meat would increase by $5 to $40 per person per year, and an additional 2 million acres of cropland would be needed because animals would grow more slowly and produce more waste in the bargain. Dr. Ian Phillips, from the University of London, writes, “The banning of any antibiotic usage in animals based on the ‘precautionary principle’ in the absence of a full quantitative risk assessment is likely to be wasted at best and even harmful, both to animal and to human health.”

And skeptics remain. These scientists believe that only in the cases of Salmonella and Campylobacter is there sufficient evidence to show negative impact on human health, and even then they believe it is minimal. They point out that in almost every case, interpretation of data is complicated by use of antibiotics in humans as well as animals. Antibiotic resistance could have arisen first in people and then spread to animals. It is safe to say that these theories represent a minority in the scientific community.

Says Dr. Lee Riley, professor of epidemiology and infectious disease at UC Berkeley, “To be blunt, the likelihood of anything changing in the industry is very low. This has been going for more than fifty to sixty years, and there’s really lots of good evidence that a lot of the antibiotic resistance in humans is traceable to animal feed. The industry has not reacted to the overwhelming evidence for many good reasons, both legal and economic.”

Riley believes the solution is to look at European practices and appreciate their results. “Decreasing the use of antibiotics doesn’t contribute to any bad effect on the food industry. And ultimately we have to consider the negative impact of what we’re doing. Europe and Asia might stop imports of American food products. We need to weigh the risks and benefits. But they’ll only do it if they see that it’s to their benefit to sell antibiotic-free products. They need to get pressure from American consumers.”

Government interference never works, Riley says: “The most powerful weapon is the consumer.”

Doug Mosel, who acted as spokesperson for GMO-Free Mendocino, believes that there are unique factors in the Mendocino campaign that contributed to the win. Probably most important was timing. Not only did Mendocino take the opposition by surprise with its initiative, the county also had the advantage of being first off the block with a GMO-free campaign. The opposition, mostly made up of large chemical and fertilizer corporations, was unsure what to expect or how to react. Mendocino County’s agriculture is on a smaller scale than Sonoma’s, and it has the highest percentage of acres in organic produce. One of its largest commercial retailers, Fetzer Vineyards, supported the initiative because the company was already moving toward organic. And as a county, Mendocino has a distinctive cultural narrative of fostering anti-establishment renegades. Right-wing or left, the majority of the population is wary of corporate influence.

“To their credit, the opposition learned from their mistakes in our county,” says Mosel. “In the three ballot initiatives [Butte, San Luis Obispo, and Sonoma] that were really honest competition, the opposition won.” Mosel believes that Mendocino greatly benefited from the way the opposition framed its campaign. CropLife America, which represents the chemical industry, poured in over half a million dollars to a campaign that seemed constantly on the defensive. The GMO-free group focused on offensive framing strategies, which Mosel cites as key to gaining the support of voters. The group hardly reacted to the opposition’s shrill mailers, instead keeping up its educational mission. Mosel spoke about the surprisingly effective homespun radio ads put together by local supporters. “We focused on, `It’s good for the economy, it’s good for our health, it’s good for our environment,’ and only in the last two weeks of the campaign did we change our focus to the oppositional arguments.”

After the ballot initiative passed, the opposition took some hints from the Mendocino campaign. To portray a farmer-friendly image, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau and other commercial growers formed the Family Farmers Alliance to oppose Measure M. “The Farm Bureau campaigns now look almost exactly like ours but reversed,” says Mosel. Dave Henson, who directed the GE-Free Sonoma campaign, agrees with Mosel, saying, “They learned to get the Monsanto corporation logo out of the front line and not directly send any money to the Sonoma campaign.” Though it is still unclear whether the chemical industry donated money to the Family Farmers Alliance, Henson remains skeptical of their campaign tactics. “If you look at their spending reports, which are public documents, they borrowed $150,000 and have yet to say where they got it. This is a classic campaign trick, and after the campaign is over, the biotech corporations could give them $150,000. It’s not illegal, it’s a way to avoid having the public see who is behind a campaign.”

Henson and Mosel believe that the chemical industry’s influence is peaking, together with peak oil. Genetic engineering technology in conjunction with massive industrial-scale monoculture requires a level of chemical and petroleum inputs and distribution systems that assumes endless, escalating volumes of cheap oil. “Biotech and corporate agriculture are not sustainable,” says Mosel. “Peak oil is going to pull the plug on them in a relatively short time. Do we need biotech? No, not in agriculture.” But many who challenge the necessity of GE in agriculture tend to agree that genetic manipulation is essential for medical research. More people support GE medical technology than agricultural GE, and the opposition capitalized on this when formulating its campaign against Measure M.

Henson says, “The Farm Bureau’s TV ads, radio ads, and mailers focused heavily on the claim that if M passed, people would not be able buy many cancer and HIV drugs, insulin, or vaccines. It was just a flat-out lie.” Henson believes the tactic was shameful but very effective. “Many people said that the fear of losing access to medical drugs was why they had voted ‘no’ in the end.” The moratorium proposed by Measure M prohibited only living, reproducing GE organisms, and currently there are no such drugs or vaccines. Henson agrees that Measure M might have prohibited the use of living, reproducing genetically engineered vaccines that might be developed in the future, but he argues that they are in fact dangerous pathogens, which should face the 10-year moratorium proposed by the initiative. Henson has done his own straw poll: after speaking with a number of researchers, he believes that the medical research community is upset with the way Monsanto in particular rushed GE crops onto millions of acres of farmland and thus into processed foods without the rigorous testing that would prove them safe. Agricultural GE research still does not require containment, meaning that genetically engineered pollen and seed from research facilities can easily and invisibly be carried by wind, animal, or insect and commingle with native plants in the vicinity and beyond.

Lab containment is one of four regulations that Henson and other GE-Free supporters are now trying to enact in California at the state level. The other three include the labeling of all seeds and food products containing GE ingredients, public notification of experimental fields or commercial GE crops, and accountability of the biotechnology companies for damages that may result from the release of GE crops and animals. But the GE issue is moving beyond the county level because states nationwide now are passing what is essentially a preemptive resolution for state control of seed production and sales. “Fourteen states have now preempted cities and counties from doing what we have in Mendocino,” says Mosel. “That bill is now pending in California.” If the bill is passed, the win in Mendocino will stand, but new initiatives could not be enacted after July 1, 2006.

Because the bill does not mention GE and focuses only on the control of seed, it can be confusing to voters. California State Senator Dean Florez, who sponsors the legislation, claims it will help to unify the state, but opponents argue that cutting off the will of counties by state decree is undemocratic and that, in the end, it will create more rifts than bridges. Despite the potential obstacle of this state legislation, Henson remains optimistic, saying, “It was a great victory for us in California not to have this law just pass through unnoticed. Because we have been running GE-Free initiatives, win or lose, most state legislators understand that this is a big issue.” Both Mosel and Henson have noticed how their communities have changed as a result of the debate over GE. “People felt the excitement and the energy of realizing that if they got serious about something they could be effective,” says Mosel. Both agree that bringing the issue to the forefront of debate at the local level is a victory in itself.

Monsanto has already sued more than 100 farmers in the US for breaching patents. Many of the farmers sued by Monsanto have had their fields contaminated from neighboring GE crops, but because of the way in which patent law has been applied, they are still considered liable. According to a report released by the Center for Food Safety, “Monsanto has an annual budget of ten million dollars and a staff of 75 devoted solely to investigating and prosecuting farmers.” Henson believes that fruitful debates regarding issues of GE can only occur when we can overcome the existing rift between the often more conservative farming community and the environmental community. Says Henson, “The old narrative is that environmentalists are trying to take farmers’ rights away, but in this particular case, the exact opposite is true.”