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THE PROBLEMS
Personal Health
WASHINGTON - Florida tomato pickers converged on McDonald's Corp.'s flagship Chicago restaurant over the weekend to protest poor working conditions and wages they say have stagnated for 30 years.
The farm hands, members of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, want a penny-per-pound pay raise from their employers, growers based in and around Immokalee, Florida. And they want Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's to finance the wage hike by paying more for their tomatoes. The company said it is studying the issue.
This Spring, instead of artificial dyes, decorate with nature's own colors using simple ingredients from your kitchen.
Here's how:
1 Boil eggs, cool and refrigerate until ready to dye.
2 Add 4 cups chopped fresh or frozen fruit or veggies (or 1-3 TB spice) to 4 cups water and 2 TB vinegar.
3 Bring to a boil, then simmer 15-30 minutes. Strain and cool to just warm.
4 Soak eggs 5-10 minutes in your dye (the longer, the darker), then dry on a paper towel.
5 Store dyed eggs in the fridge if you plan to eat them.
LONDON - Many of the world's top food companies are not doing enough to help cut the salt, fat and sugar which are contributing to a global, diet-related health crisis, according to a report on Tuesday.
It called the response of the top 25 firms "pathetic" and said many only changed their ways when faced with bad publicity.
The report, by London's City University, looked at how the companies had responded to targets set in 2004 by the World Health Organization (WHO) to tackle obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
Poland's upper house of parliament may ban trade and plantings of genetically modified (GMO) seeds on Thursday and put Warsaw on a collision course with Brussels for endorsing a law that breaks EU rules.
The chairman of the Senate's agriculture committee said he expected senators from the ruling conservative Law and Justice party and several fringe groups to support the draft law, which has already been approved by the lower house of parliament.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- He works in a world of long knives and huge saws, blood and bone, arctic chill and sweltering heat. For Martin Cortez, this is life on the line as a meatpacker.
It's no place for the squeamish. Some workers can't stomach the gore - chopping up the meat and bones of hundreds of cattle, day after day. Cortez has been at it more than 30 years. It also can be very dangerous. Some workers have been slashed, burned or scarred. He has not.
What a week it has been for the giant oil companies! Billions in record quarterly profits rushing into their coffers. An even bigger round of quarterly profits coming up. Gargantuan executive pay bonanzas. And a pile of "forces beyond our control" excuses to publicize in response to the empty outrage of Washington politicians and the real squeeze on consumers and small businesses.
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Rachel's Democracy & Health News #852
"Environment, health, jobs and justice--Who gets to decide?"
Thursday, April 27, 2006................Printer-friendly version
www.rachel.org -- To make a secure donation, click here.
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Featured stories in this issue...
LANSING - The Michigan Senate signed off on legislation Thursday that aims to block local regulation of genetically modified crops.
The bill, which heads to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, would pre-empt local governments in Michigan from adopting ordinances that regulate or ban the planting of seeds, including genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.
But it includes an exception allowing for local regulation if the bipartisan state Commission of Agriculture agrees the seeds will hurt the environment or public health.
Why do creators of the genetically-engineered (GE) papaya fruit have to push so hard to introduce it? If the GE papaya is really a simple solution to a major agricultural disease that farmers want, it would be readily adopted by governments, farmers and markets. However, it is not. The concern over this genetically modified orgnanism (GMO) food is so great, that it creates resistance, loss of markets, contamination and more loss of markets. In Thailand, the government has a ban on field trials and hasn't commercially released the papaya after almost a decade of testing.
