EU Position On Genetically Modified Foods: Monsanto-killer or ‘Trojan Horse’? New law lets EU states ban GM crops

The European Union has approved a law that will enable the bloc’s 28 member states to restrict the cultivation of genetically modified crops, even if the EU has declared them as safe. The law comes despite furious lobbying from multinationals.

Previously, countries that opposed the cultivation of crops approved by Brussels potentially faced legal challenges. Now, any country may unilaterally ban a particular genetically modified variety of seed – or even “groups of GMOs defined by crop or trait” – and additionally demand that their neighbors do not contaminate their fields.

The EU legislation will come into force in spring next year, pending a formal agreement from the individual states. Among the states likely to find use for the statute are France, Germany, Austria and Poland, which have consistently opposed gene-splicing technologies.

Some believe that the new law will allow the deadlock over GM crops to be broken after nearly two decades of controversy. Due to opposition from the EU heavyweights, only one GM crop has been approved since 1998. About 0.1 percent of land on the continent is used to grow genetically-modified crops, specifically Monsanto’s MON810 maize.

Officials have speculated that the new nation-oriented rules will allow more leeway for proponents of GM crops, such as Britain and the Iberian states, to go ahead.

 Read more: Monsanto-killer or ‘Trojan Horse’? New law lets EU states ban GM crops — RT News

Sweat Shops:You should care where your T-Shirt was made: The true cost of a T-shirt - by M. MacKinnon and M. Strauss

A Sweatshop making your T-Shirt

At about 8:30 a.m. one morning in April, a generator rumbled to life at Rana Plaza – rattling the building, as it always did when it started.

Work had just begun at the welter of garment factories when the power went out. So a manager on the seventh floor, home to the New Wave Style factory, was quick to stand up as the lights went back on and announce that the building was safe. Everyone should continue doing their jobs.

But this time, Rana Plaza didn’t stop shaking.

“He died on the spot as he was announcing that we should keep working,” Raehana Akhter recalls. Then she fell, too. “It was like stepping into an elevator [shaft]. I felt this feeling in my stomach, and then everything fell.”
When she landed, Ms. Akhter, a 22-year-old mother who worked as a quality control officer for about $2 a day, was in complete darkness, with her left leg trapped under shattered cement.

“The ceiling was just here,” she says, putting her hand about 30 centimetres above her face. “I felt like this would be my little grave.”

The building did become a grave – for 1,129 people. Its collapse was the world’s worst industrial accident in almost three decades. Fatal accidents in the garment-trade belt around Dhaka have become all too regular.

Sweatshop

The Rana Plaza deaths added to a toll of 117 who died in a November, 2012, fire at Tazreen Fashions. And that disaster was echoed by another fire this week, which claimed 10 lives at the Aswad Composite Mills factory.

The collapse of Rana Plaza spotlighted the potentially tragic costs of the cheap T-shirt – now a staple of fast fashion – and sparked debate about just how much responsibility retailers should have for the supply chain that moves product onto their shelves.

Yet as the ties between countries have become stronger, accountability has become a loose thread. The Globe’s investigation shows how companies such as Loblaw place their orders through middlemen, who in turn source work to a network of far-flung factories. The retailer whose shelves are stocked with cheap T-shirts in many cases does not know where in the world it or its materials is going to be produced when an order is placed. Inspecting buildings and working conditions has been beyond the retailer’s scope.

Note EU-Digest: Maybe it is high time that the EU Parliament approves legislation which only allows in products made overseas into the EU that have a 'Trade Mark' which  says: "This product has been produced in a workplace which meets EU approved standards for safety". Just talking about the issue with the Governments in question that allow these sweatshops or corporate entities which import these products has had very little effect. 

In the meantime consumers should check the label of the products they are buying and think twice about buying the product if it is not clearly specified that it was produced in a safe workplace.

 Read more: Spinning tragedy: The true cost of a T-shirt - The Globe and Mail

Europe's new climate policies creating a wood pellet business boom in the US and Canada

US wood pellets reducing EU greenhouse gas emissions

The wood pellet industry is enjoying a speedy, zero-to-80 growth surge across the United States and Canada.

Hundreds of millions of dollars are being invested in factories – some of them converted from old lumber mills – in coastal plain forests from Virginia to Louisiana and Maine.

They are serving a market created, almost overnight, by new environmental policies that are driving European electric utilities to burn imported wood in their boilers instead of coal.

This came about as the European Union adopted aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. They created incentives for electric utilities to cut back on their use of coal and will require renewable sources to provide 20 percent of all energy by 2020. Wind and solar power are also a part of this equation. 

European power companies are looking to close the gap with biomass – primarily with imported wood pellets. Biomass use in Great Britain, 3 million tons last year, is expected to grow tenfold over the next five years.

Britain’s biggest carbon emitter is the Drax Group, a Yorkshire utility that operates the largest power plant in western Europe. Drax is converting half its plant from coal to wood pellets. Coal is one-third the price of pellets, but Drax CEO Dorothy Thompson said her company is responding to renewable-energy credits and a British carbon tax, introduced this year at $7 a ton, that will grow by 2020 to more than $60 a ton.

In Europe, the United Kingdom is the No. 1, importer bringing in 855,000 metric tons (mt) from Canada last year and another 475,000 mt from the U.S. While Canadian pellets dominate the U.K. market, the U.S. is the biggest supplier to the Netherlands and Belgium. Denmark and Sweden receive the most pellets from Russia.

While the EU power market has gotten much attention, the heating market comprises 40 percent of the EU pellet market, with no subsidy required, because Pellets are 30 percent cheaper than heating oil. Currently, 90 percent of Canadian exports are being shipped from western ports and going through the Panama Canal, but an effort is underway to organize the smaller pellet producers in eastern Canada to pool resources and product to develop export facilities in the east.

The bottom-line is that the consumer marketfor pellets  in the EU has grown into a very stable market, It is no longer seasonal and some people even prefer to buy pellets in the summer months.

The annual increase each year in the EU has hovered around 700,000 tons of pellets for the past few years, but is projected to exceed 1 million tons in 2013, based on the sales of boilers and stoves. Italy is showing the most rapid growth currently, having added over 1 million pellet stoves in recent years. Consumption is expected to exceed production in both Austria and Germany this year, which will add to import demand.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/17/4244134/european-climate-policy-drives.html#storylink=cpy

In the foreseeable future the US and Canada seem to be well poised to meet these European demands.

Maryland-based Enviva LP the US’s biggest pellet maker, opened its Ahoskie mill in 2011 and a second one in Northampton County this year. Together, they produce 865,000 tons of pellets annually to be shipped out of the port at Chesapeake, Va.

In 2015, Enviva expects to start exporting an additional million tons from a planned $40 million terminal at the Wilmington port. The company is scouting sites for two new pellet mills in southeastern North Carolina, one of them in Sampson County.

At the same time, California-based International Woodfuels has said it will produce 285,000 tons a year from a planned pellet mill in Wilson County and a new export terminal at the Morehead City port.

Eastport in Washington County, Maine, near the Canadian border, which is planning a $120m wood-pellet factory, is one of the areas which seems especially well positioned to benefit from this European "craving" for wood pellets.

Chris Gardner, the director of the Eastport Port Authority says, "Eastport is the closest port on the US East-Coast to the European heartland. We can get European consumers their wood pellets before anyone else in the US".

The pellet industry is a "green industry" and not harmful to the environment as it is founded on a climate-friendly, carbon-neutral rationale.

All forests use photosynthesis to soak up carbon dioxide. This stored-up carbon is released into the air when wood pellets are burned, but wood is called a renewable fuel because that carbon eventually is recaptured by new trees that grow in place of the old ones.

The wood pellet industry can certainly become a win-win proposition for everyone.

EU-Digest

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/08/17/4244134/european-climate-policy-drives.html#storylink=cpy