OCA's Blog
This week, the FDA acknowledged it is investigating whether a nearby massive concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO), or factory farm, could be the source of E. coli contamination of romaine lettuce earlier this year. The tainted lettuce resulted in hundreds of illnesses in 36 states and resulted in five deaths.
According to Food & Water Watch’s Factory Farm Map, an analysis of USDA data on factory farms, the density of cattle feedlots in the region where the tainted lettuce was grown is extreme. In Yuma county in 2012, cattle feedlots had an estimated average of over 67,000 head of cattle per facility. In the region implicated in the outbreak, samples of nearby irrigation canal water tested positive for the same strain of E. coli that caused the outbreak. The canal is close to a CAFO that can hold in excess of 100,000 head of cattle at any one time.
You may have seen a story this week detailing how Facebook shut down a series of accounts. As noted by Politico, Facebook claimed these accounts “sought to inflame social and political tensions in the United States, and said their activity was similar — and in some cases connected — to that of Russian accounts during the 2016 election.”
Similar? What does “similar” mean?
The death-pit for civil liberties is usually found in a combination of fringe/unpopular people or ideas and a national security emergency.
Warning of a possible domino effect as multiple climate feedback loops are triggered within a dynamic cascade of rising temperatures and warming oceans, scientists behind a frightening new study say that for the sake of humanity's future they hope scenarios explored in their new models do not come to pass.
"I do hope we are wrong, but as scientists we have a responsibility to explore whether this is real," Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where the research was done, told the Guardian. "We need to know now. It's so urgent. This is one of the most existential questions in science."
As its expert in reproductive toxicology, Monsanto called Dr. Warren Foster to the stand on August 2 to attack the animal studies cited by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). IARC relied on those studies for its determination that glyphosate is a carcinogen.
Foster, a professor at McMaster University in Ontario, has Ph.Ds in “medical sciences” and veterinary sciences. He admitted under cross that he never studied glyphosate nor its carcinogenicity before Monsanto paid him to testify.
Monsanto’s six week trial which began June 22 with jury selection in San Francisco Superior Court has been a parade of mostly dark days for the chemical titan.
Tuesday, July 31, was a relatively bright oasis for Monsanto and by far its best showing so far in the dramatic Johnson vs. Monsanto trial. Monsanto’s attorneys called Dr. Lorelei Mucci, a cancer epidemiologist and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH).
Despite its impressive name, the HSPH has earned an unsavory reputation for taking rich contributions from polluters in exchange for producing scientific “research” that fortifies corporate profit-taking. Big Tobacco, the chemical industry, Detroit automakers, corporate food processors, and industrial meat and grain barons have all turned to HSPH for corporate-friendly science anointed with the imprimatur of the Harvard name.
"Instead of putting American families first, the Trump administration is once again doing the bidding of corporations and their lobbyists."
President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Transportation Department on Wednesday formally unveiled their long-anticipated plan to gut Obama-era fuel efficiency standards, a regulatory rollback environmentalists quickly denounced as "a disastrous wreck for consumers and the planet."
Fifty years ago, in their popular hit “Chicago,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young asked Americans to take notice of a federal courtroom in the Windy City, where a black political activist sat bound, gagged and shackled to a chair in a legal drama where America’s justice system, values and character seemed to all be on trial.
Today, the most outspoken member of that band, Neil Young, visited another American courtroom. This one in San Francisco, where the essential values and future of our country once again are on trial. Young and his fellow activist Daryl Hannah attended the trial of Dewayne Lee Johnson, a young black man who is dying of a debilitating and agonizing form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that he says he contracted from contact with the ubiquitous weed killer Roundup.
Following the close of our case, Monsanto’s lawyers, on July 30, made an obligatory motion to nonsuit the case—a Hail Mary motion asking the judge to dismiss our claims on grounds that Plaintiff’s counsel, during the past six weeks, had not produced sufficient evidence to bring the case before the jury.
Judge Suzanne Ramos Bolanos denied the motion on all issues except our request for punitive damages which she reserved, presumably until the jury returns a verdict. We took that decision as a signal that Judge Bolanos is hostile to Dewayne Johnson collecting punitive damages which usually comprise the largest portion of big reward cases. Reserving a ruling on the appropriateness of “Punis” is a common strategy for judges who frown upon them. After all, the jury might decide on its own to not award punitive damages. In that case, deferring the decision until after the jury returns its verdict avoids an issue for appeal. Furthermore, if the trial court’s nullification of a jury’s punitive damages reward is reversed on appeal, the appellate court can simply reinstate the jury verdict rather than ordering the trial court to hold another full trial on that issue.
On Friday morning, July 27, day 13 of the Monsanto trial, we called our final live witness in Dewayne Johnson’s case against Monsanto—Dr. Charles Benbrook. Benbrook is an agricultural and toxicology scientist. A Harvard graduate and former executive director of the National Academy of Sciences, Benbrook has been studying the link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma since 2000.
Wednesday, July 25—Day 11 of the Monsanto trial—seemed a dark day for the Plaintiff.
With the jury off duty, Judge Bolanos heard a parade of evidentiary motions and made a series of surprising and disappointing rulings in Monsanto’s favor for each one.
First, Plaintiff’s counsel lead by Brent Wisner, sought to exclude evidence that our side’s exposure expert, Dr. William Sawyer, occasionally used Roundup himself. Wisner and his colleague, Tim Litzenburg, pointed out that in the tobacco context, the courts have consistently held that an expert witness’s cigarette use is irrelevant. The court indicated its inclination to ignore this precedent.
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