http://www.naturalnews.com/Report_HPV_Vaccine_0.html
(NaturalNews) For the last several years, HPV vaccines have been
marketed to the public and mandated in compulsory injections for young
girls in several states based on the idea that they prevent cervical
cancer. Now, NaturalNews has obtained documents from the FDA and other
sources (see below) which reveal that the FDA has been well aware for
several years that Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) has no direct link to
cervical cancer.

NaturalNews has also learned that HPV vaccines have been proven to be
flatly worthless in clearing the HPV virus from women who have already
been exposed to HPV (which includes most sexually active women), calling
into question the scientific justification of mandatory “vaccinate
everyone” policies.

Furthermore, this story reveals evidence that the vaccine currently
being administered for HPV — Gardasil — may increase the risk of
precancerous cervical lesions by an alarming 44.6 percent in some women.
The vaccine, it turns out, may be far more dangerous to the health of
women than doing nothing at all.

If true, this information reveals details of an enormous public health
fraud being perpetrated on the American people, involving FDA officials,
Big Pharma promoters, and even the governors of states like Texas. The
health and safety of tens of millions of young girls is at stake here,
and what this NaturalNews investigative report reveals is that HPV
vaccinations may not only be medically useless; they may also be harmful
to the health of the young girls receiving them.

This report reveals startling facts about the HPV vaccine that most
people will find shocking:

• How it may actually increase the risk of precancerous lesions by 44.6
percent.

• The FDA has, for four years, known that HPV was not the cause of
cervical cancer.

• Why mandatory HPV vaccination policies may cause great harm to young
girls.

• Why HPV infections are self-limiting and pose no real danger in
healthy women

• Little-known FDA documents that reveal astounding facts about Gardasil

• How Big Pharma promoted its Gardasil vaccine using disease mongering
and fear mongering

The Trail of Evidence
This story begins at a company called HiFi DNA Tech, LLC
(http://www.hifidna.com) a company involved in the manufacture of
portable HPV testing devices based on DNA sequencing analysis. HiFi DNA
Tech has been pushing to get the FDA to classify its HPV detection
technology as a “Class II” virology testing device. To understand why
this is a big deal, you have to understand the differences between
“Class II” and “Class III” virology testing devices.

Based on FDA rules, a Class III virology testing device is one that is
considered by the FDA to have “premarket approval,” meaning that it
cannot yet be sold to the public. In order for such a device to be
marketed to the public, it must be downgraded to Class II status, which
is considered a “special controls” status. Class II devices are,
“…those devices for which the general controls by themselves are
insufficient to provide reasonable assurance of safety and
effectiveness, but for which there is sufficient information to
establish special controls to provide such assurance, including
performance standards, postmarket surveillance, patient registries,
development and dissemination of guidelines, recommendations, and any
other appropriate actions the agency deems necessary.”

In other words, a Class II device may or may not actually be safe, but
the FDA considers is safe enough to release to the public.

HiFi DNA Tech has been trying to get its HPV detection device downgraded
to a Class II device based on the following arguments:

• For more than 20 years, the FDA had regulated the HPV test as a “test
for cervical cancer.”

• But since at least 2003, the FDA has changed its position on the
relationship between Human Papilloma Virus and cervical cancer, stating
that the HPV strain is “not associated with cervical cancer.”

• Accordingly, HiFi DNA Tech is arguing that the HPV test it has
developed is no longer a test for cervical cancer, but is merely a test
for the presence of Human Papilloma Viruses — a shift that makes the
test far more reliable in its primary purpose. In other words, the test
is merely detecting the presence of a virus, not making a diagnosis of a
disease (which would be a much higher standard to meet).

On October 12, 2007, HiFi DNA Tech sued the Food and Drug Administration
in an attempt to force it to downgrade its HPV detection technology to
Class II (see http://www.news-medical.net/?id=31180 ). Earlier in the
year — on March 7, 2007, HiFi DNA Tech filed the HPV PCR test
reclassification petition with the FDA. It is the information in this
petition document that led us to the FDA’s knowledge that HPV is not
linked to cervical cancer.

Got all that? This is a somewhat complex story to follow, so here it is
again in summary:

• A company that manufacturers a DNA testing device that can detect the
presence of HPV (Human Papilloma Virus) is petitioning the FDA (and
suing the FDA) to get it to reclassify its medical device as a “Class
II” device based on the revelation that the FDA has already adopted the
position that HPV infections do not directly cause cervical cancer.

• This would mean that the FDA has been aware for years that HPV does
not cause cervical cancer, which means that the FDA’s approval of the
Gardasil vaccine — as well as the national push for Gardasil
vaccinations — is based on a grand medical hoax that, not surprisingly,
appears to be designed to exploit the fear of cancer to sell vaccines.
The victims in all this, of course, are the young girls who are
apparently being subjected to a medically useless (and potentially
dangerous) vaccine.

• None of this information was apparently known during the more recent
debates over the safety and efficacy of Gardasil, the HPV vaccine now in
use. This means that the public debate over mandatory HPV vaccinations
lacked key elements that now seem essential to reaching rational,
evidence-based conclusions over the safety and efficacy of such vaccines.

Next, we reveal the FDA’s statement that HPV is “not associated with
cervical cancer.”

The Text of the Petition
The Reclassification Petition, dated March 7, 2007, is still posted on
the FDA’s website:
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/07p0210/07p-0210-ccp0001-01-vol1.pdf

In case the FDA removes this document (as it has been known to do),
we’ve posted a backup copy of the document on our own servers:
http://www.NaturalNews.com/downloads/FDA-HPV.pdf

This document reveals the following text:

The FDA news release of March 31, 2003 acknowledges that “most
infections (by HPV) are short-lived and not associated with cervical
cancer”, in recognition of the advances in medical science and
technology since 1988. In other words, since 2003 the scientific staff
of the FDA no longer considers HPV infection to be a high-risk disease
when writing educational materials for the general public whereas the
regulatory arm of the agency is still bound by the old classification
scheme that had placed HPV test as a test to stratify risk for cervical
cancer in regulating the industry.

NaturalNews sought to verify the existence of the FDA news release
referenced by this petition reclassification document and found that,
indeed, the FDA news release exists. In fact, it’s still posted on the
FDA website at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2003/NEW00890.html

In it, the FDA says, “The HPV DNA test is not intended to substitute for
regular Pap screening. Nor is it intended to screen women under 30 who
have normal Pap tests. Although the rate of HPV infection in this group
is high, most infections are short-lived and not associated with
cervical cancer.” (Emphasis added.)

In other words, the FDA knew in 2003 that HPV infections are not
associated with cervical cancer.

Furthermore, the FDA states, in the same press release, “Most women who
become infected with HPV are able to eradicate the virus and suffer no
apparent long-term consequences to their health.”

In other words, HPV infections do not cause cervical cancer! Remember,
the entire push for mandatory HPV vaccinations of young girls across the
country has been the urgent call to “save” these young girls from
cervical cancer. The vaccine push has been about “savings lives.” But as
these documents clearly reveal, HPV is no threat to the lives of young
girls. In fact, as you will see below, HPV infections are naturally
self-limiting!

HPV Infections Resolve Themselves, Without Vaccines
As the reclassification petition reveals, HPV infections are naturally
self-limiting — meaning that they are controlled naturally, without
requiring intervention with drugs or vaccines. It is not the HPV virus
itself that causes cervical cancer but rather a persistent state of
ill-health on the part of the patient that makes her vulnerable to
persistent infections.

As the petition states:

“Based on new scientific information published in the past 15 years, it
is now generally agreed that identifying and typing HPV infection does
not bear a direct relationship to stratification of the risk for
cervical cancer . Most acute infections caused by HPV are self-limiting
[1, 4-7]. …Repeated sequential transient HPV infections, even when
caused by “high-risk” HPVs, are characteristically not associated with
high risk of developing squamous intraepithelial lesions, a precursor of
cervical cancer.

A woman found to be positive for the same strain (genotype) of HPV on
repeated testing is highly likely suffering from a persistent HPV
infection and is considered to be at high risk of developing
precancerous intraepithelial lesions in the cervix . It is the
persistent infection, not the virus, that determines the cancer risk.”

The FDA agrees with this assessment of the relationship between HPV and
cervical cancer, as evidenced by its 2003 news release quoted above.

Next, we reveal evidence that HPV vaccines actually cause precancerous
lesions in women.

Do HPV Vaccines Increase the Risk of Precancerous Lesions?
The reclassification petition cited above also reveals that Gardasil
vaccines may increase the risk of developing precancerous lesions by
44.6 percent in some groups of women. This is found in a quote
referencing a document mentioned in the petition, which states:

“PCR-based HPV detection device with provision for accurate HPV
genotyping is more urgently needed now because vaccination with Gardasil
of the women who are already sero-positive and PCR-positive for
vaccine-relevant genotypes of HPV has been found to increase the risk of
developing high-grade precancerous lesions by 44.6%, according to an FDA
VRBPAC Background Document : Gardasil HPV Quadrivalent Vaccine. May 18,
2006 VRBPAC Meeting.
www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/06/briefing/2006-4222B3.pdf”

NaturalNews tracked down the correct URL of the document referenced
above and found it in the FDA docket archives. We have placed a safe
backup copy at: http://www.NaturalNews.com/downloads/FDA-Gardasil.pdf

Sure enough, this document reveals startling information about the
extreme dangers apparently posed by Gardasil vaccinations. On page 13,
this document states:

“Concerns Regarding Primary Endpoint Analyses among Subgroups

There were two important concerns that were identified during the course
of the efficacy review of this BLA. One was the potential for Gardasil
to enhance disease among a subgroup of subjects who had evidence of
persistent infection with vaccine-relevant HPV types at baseline. The
other concern was the observations of CIN 2/3 or worse cases due to HPV
types not contained in the vaccine. These cases of disease due to other
HPV types have the potential to counter the efficacy results of Gardasil
for the HPV types contained in the vaccine.

1. Evaluation of the potential of Gardasil™ to enhance cervical disease
in subjects who had evidence of persistent infection with
vaccine-relevant HPV types prior to vaccination. The results of
exploratory subgroup analyses for study 013 suggested a concern that
subjects who were seropositive and PCR-positive for the vaccine-relevant
HPV types had a greater number of CIN 2/3 or worse cases as demonstrated
in the following table:

Observed Efficacy
- 44.6%

It appeared that subjects in this subgroup of study 013 who received
Gardasil™ might have had enhanced risk factors for development of CIN
2/3 or worse compared to placebo recipients.”

Revealing the Dangers of Gardasil
This revelation should be quite shocking to anyone who has been
following the debate over Gardasil and mandatory vaccinations of teenage
girls. First, it reveals that Gardasil appears to increase disease by
44.6 percent in certain people — namely, those who were already
carriers of the same HPV strains used in the vaccine.

In other words, it appears that if the vaccine is given to a young woman
who already carries HPV in a “harmless” state, it may “activate” the
infection and directly cause precancerous lesions to appear. The
vaccine, in other words, may accelerate the development of precancerous
lesions in women.

This is information that has simply not been made available in the
debate over Gardasil vaccination policies. The pro-vaccination rhetoric
has always been about “saving lives” and it carried the implied
statement that Gardasil is perfectly safe for all women, posing
absolutely no increased risk of cancer. What these documents reveal,
however, is that Gardasil may, in fact, pose a serious increase in the
risk of cervical cancer in some recipients of the vaccine.

Next: Will health authorities “interrogate” young virgins over their
sexual activity (or lack thereof)? What are the bioethical ramifications
of this vaccine being mandated to all teenage girls?

Interrogating Young Virgins
The FDA directly admits the vaccine is utterly useless in these women,
stating in the same document, “Finally, there is compelling evidence
that the vaccine lacks therapeutic efficacy among women who have had
prior exposure to HPV and have not cleared previous infection (PCR
positive and seropositive).”

What this essentially means is that the “safe” administering of the
Gardasil vaccine requires that it be administered only to virgins
(because virtually all women who are sexually active carry HPV strains).
That, of course, would require the direct questioning of the sexual
habits of all young girls before administering the vaccine.

Is this what the Governor of Texas really had in mind when he mandated
such vaccinations for all young girls in Texas? … a male doctor with a
vaccination needle in his hand and a thirteen-year-old girl sitting in a
private clinic room behind closed doors, with the male doctor asking
her, “Have you ever had sex?”

Clearly, this kind of patient questioning crosses all kinds of ethical
barriers when such vaccinations are made mandatory (as they have been
made in Texas). It puts the State in the positioning of ascertaining the
sexual habits of very young teenage girls and then potentially causing
them harm. It’s not hard to suppose that most sexually active teenage
girls would claim to still be virgins (especially if their parents were
present), creating a situation where vaccines would be routinely
administered to precisely the HPV carrier subgroups for which it has
been demonstrated to greatly increase the risk of precancerous lesions.

In other words, under a mandatory Gardasil vaccination scenario like
what exists in Texas today, a sexually-active young teenage girl has to
make a tough choice:

1) She can lie to her doctor, claim to be a virgin, receive the vaccine
and thereby potentially increase her risk of cervical cancer.

2) She can tell her doctor she’s sexually active, thereby surrendering
her privacy and possibly subjecting herself to various consequences from
her sexual status being learned by her parents or guardians. (One would
hope, of course, that such sexual habits were not secrets, but alas, we
live in the real world where many teenage girls do indeed have sex at a
very early age…)

Furthermore, the young girl is unlikely to be given accurate information
about the health risks associated with the vaccine, since virtually all
health authorities are heavily involved in promoting pro-vaccination
propaganda, routinely ignoring scientific evidence that might give
reasonable people pause.

Naturally, the better scenario here is that the young girl is not
sexually active to begin with, but in a society where 8th and 9th
graders are already routinely engaged in sexual activities — almost
always unbeknownst to their parents — it seems naive to expect that
such girls would suddenly honor pledges of celibacy in order to protect
themselves from possible future dangers posed by a present-day vaccine
(especially when doctors blindly claim the vaccine is harmless).

There are also serious questions about the safety of the vaccine for
non-sexually-active young women. Yet even if the vaccine poses no
increased risk of cervical cancer for non-sexually-active young girls,
there’s still the more serious question of: Does the vaccine work? Does
it really prevent cervical cancer in the first place? And that question
has already been clearly answered by the FDA’s own admission that HPV
infections are not the cause of cervical cancer in the first place.

Next: Do HPV vaccinations help anyone? We reveal a four-quadrant
comparison that shows the vaccine to be more harmful than helpful.
The Four Quadrants of Garsadil Vaccinations
When considering the safety and effectiveness of Gardasil vaccinations
on young teens, there are essentially four quadrants to consider, as
shown in the table below:

Quadrant I: Non-Sexually Active
No Gardasil Vaccine Quadrant II: Non-Sexually Active
Receives Gardasil Vaccine
Quadrant III: Sexually Active
No Gardasil Vaccine Quadrant IV: Sexually Active
Receives Gardasil Vaccine
Based on what we’ve learned from the FDA’s own documents, here are the
likely outcomes of each of the four quadrants:

Quadrant I: Non-Sexually Active, No Gardasil Vaccine
Outcome: No risk of cervical cancer.

Quadrant II: Non-Sexually Active, Receives Gardasil Vaccine
Outcome: No medical benefit from vaccine.

Quadrant III: Sexually Active, No Gardasil Vaccine
Outcome: HPV presence is self-limiting and does not lead to cervical cancer.

Quadrant IV: Sexually Active, Receives Gardasil Vaccine
Outcome: 44.6% Increased risk of precancerous lesions. No reduction in
cancer risk.

In other words, Gardasil adds no benefits to any quadrant! There is no
subgroup that actually benefits from a Gardasil vaccination. But there
is at least one quadrant in which Gardasil achieves an increased risk of
disease. Put another way, Gardasil helps no one, but it harms some.

This is hardly a position from which to mandate the vaccine for
everyone, especially since the vaccine has been widely prescribed as
“completely safe” for everyone. It is widely claimed by medical
authorities that the vaccine has no downside: No health risks, no
increased risk of disease and no potential to cause harm in women.
Clearly, these assumptions have no basis in scientific fact.

Keep in mind, too, that Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil, has
publicly suggested that young boys should receive Gardasil vaccinations!
Why? Because they might engage in oral sex with girls who carry the
virus. Therefore, the story goes, young boys should be vaccinated
against this virus that they claim causes cervical cancer! (Never mind
the fact that boys don’t have a cervix…) There is no end, it seems, to
the pseudoscientific nonsense that will be spouted in an effort to sell
more Garsasil vaccines to people who don’t need them.

Next: New clinical study shows Gardasil to be medically useless
Research Shows Gardasil to be Useless
To further investigate this conclusion, NaturalNews took a closer look
at research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
(August, 2007), entitled, “Effect of Human Papillomavirus 16/18 L1
Viruslike Particle Vaccine Among Young Women With Preexisting Infection”

This research sought to determine the usefulness of the HPV vaccine
among women who already carry HPV (which includes virtually all women
who are sexually active, regardless of their age).

This document can currently be found at a University of Louisville
document archive reprinted from JAMA. Click here to read the PDF yourself.

Just in case that copy disappears, we’ve also hosted the PDF here:
http://www.NaturalNews.com/downloads/HPV-Vaccine-Effects.pdf

This document reveals startling information about the ineffectiveness of
the Gardasil vaccine. It reveals that the HPV vaccine often caused an
increase in the presence of HPV strains while utterly failing to clear
the viruses in most women.

These shocking results caused the study authors to publish this sobering
conclusion, printed in JAMA:

“No significant evidence of a vaccine therapeutic effect was observed in
analyses restricted to women who received all doses of vaccine or those
with evidence of single HPV infections at entry (Table2). We observed no
evidence of vaccine effects when we stratified the analysis on selected
study entry characteristics reflective of [various parameters] (TABLE3).
Similarly, no evidence of vaccine effects was observed in analyses
stratified by other study entry parameters thought to potentially
influence clearance rates and efficacy of the vaccine, including time
since sexual initiation, oral contraceptive use, cigarette smoking, and
concomitant infection with C trachomatis or N gonorrhoeae (Table 3).”

In other words, the authors found no evidence that the vaccine worked at
all. This observation led the authors to offer this damning conclusion
that appears to render Gardasil nothing more than a grand medical hoax:

“… rates of viral clearance over a 12-month period are not influenced
by vaccination.”

The study goes on to state words that should cause every doctor,
Governor and health authority across the United States (and around the
world) to rethink Gardasil vaccination policies:

“…given that viral clearance rates did not differ by treatment group
and that persistent viral infection is the best established predictor of
risk of progression, it is unlikely that vaccination could have a
significant beneficial impact on rate of lesion progression.1,17

Results from our community-based study provide strong evidence that
there is little, if any, therapeutic benefit from the vaccine in the
population we studied. Furthermore, we see no reason to believe that
there is therapeutic benefit of the vaccine elsewhere because the
biological effect of vaccination among already infected women is not
expected to vary by population.

In other words, the vaccines didn’t work on the population studied, and
there is no reason to believe that those same vaccines would magically
work on other populations, since the biology of women and HPV is so
similar across various populations.

Next: Is Gardasil a grand medical hoax?

The Conclusion: HPV Vaccinations a Medical Hoax
It is difficult to take an honest look at this scientific evidence and
the statements made by the FDA and not come to the conclusion that
mandatory Gardasil vaccination policies being pushed across U.S. states
right now are based on something other than science.

There are many theories exploring the motivation for such vaccination
policies. Possible theories include:

Financial benefit: Big Pharma is pushing mandatory Gardasil vaccination
policies so that it can profit from selling more vaccines to the states.
This idea is at least partially supported by the fact that the first
state Governor to mandate such vaccines (Texas Gov. Rick Perry) had
undisclosed ties to Big Pharma. (A top official in Perry’s
administration worked directly for Merck, the manufacturer of Gardasil.)

Conspiracy to poison the people: This theory, which may stretch the
bounds of belief in some readers, proposes that such mandatory vaccines
are put in place in order to create future disease by poisoning the
people with dangerous chemicals and DNA fragments that are knowingly
added to vaccines. The poisoning of the people, it is said, will pay off
in future profits for Big Pharma when those people develop other serious
diseases requiring “treatment” with medications. Many people who support
this theory currently believe, for example, that AIDS was engineered by
human scientists and then administered to the gay population in New York
in the late 1980’s through vaccines.

Control the sheeple: This theory supposes that the main purpose of
mandatory vaccines is to train the American public to get used to
submitting to compulsory medicines. Once a certain segment of the
population is targeted and effectively injected with mandatory
medicines, these policies can be extended to other groups and,
eventually, can encompass the entire population.

The first theory — Financial Benefit — is the simplest and easiest
theory to believe. It requires nothing more than simple greed on the
part of Big Pharma, along with the usual level of corruption at the FDA.
NaturalNews believes this is the most likely explanation for events
surrounding Gardasil vaccination policies, but we do not rule out other
possible explanations, either.

Profits at Any Cost
What’s clear in all this is that mandatory HPV vaccination programs are
not based on anything resembling good science. They seem to be based on
a carefully planted meme — an idea that, coincidentally, spreads from
one person’s mind to the next much like a virus, gaining momentum as the
mainstream media (MSM), health authorities, FDA and drug company reps
repeat the meme on a regular basis. And what is that meme? That HPV
causes cervical cancer, and, therefore, HPV vaccinations could halt
cervical cancer and save lives.

This meme appears to have no real scientific basis. It is more of an
urban legend than anything resembling scientific fact. Furthermore, it
appears to have been conjured by those in a position to financially
benefit from the adoption of that meme (the drug companies who
manufacture, sell, and profit from the sale of HPV vaccines). In this
case, that drug company is Merck, a powerful corporation with a dubious
history rife with charges of price fixing, large-scale tax avoidance (it
set up offshore accounts to avoid billions in U.S. taxes), widespread
biopiracy, conspiring with the FDA to discredit its critics, burying
negative evidence about its drugs (see the history of Vioxx at
www.NaturalNews.com/vioxx.html ) and numerous other actions that many
consider to be criminal in nature.

There is no question that Merck has the lack of ethics, the willingness
and the means to commit medical fraud on an unprecedented scale. Based
on the information revealed in this report, the mandatory vaccination of
young girls with Gardasil appears to be the boldest medical hoax yet
perpetrated by the company. You can read the true history about Merck
and its crimes at: http://www.NaturalNews.com/Merck.html

NaturalNews believes Merck is currently engaged in a massive medical
fraud, and that it has influenced, corrupted or otherwise recruited FDA
officials and state health authorities in a grand scheme to sell
vaccines that are at best medically worthless, and at worst medically
dangerous. Halting cervical cancer seems to have nothing to do with the
marketing and prescribing of Gardasil. The entire campaign push for
mandatory HPV vaccinations seems to be based entirely in the realm of
sales and marketing.

The “marketing” of HPV vaccines involves classic disease mongering –
spreading fear about a disease as a way of corralling patients into
begging for the “solution” that just happens to be readily available
from the same pharmaceutical company that promoted the disease in the
first place. The hype over cervical cancer and Gardasil seems to be
nothing more than a classic case of fear-based marketing designed to
create such consumer fear over cervical cancer that a massive public
outcry would result in legislation mandating the vaccines.

Please share this article with others.

Permission is granted to reprint this article in its entirety, for any
non-commercial purpose, as long as full credit is given to the author
(Mike Adams) and a clearly visible clickable link is placed back to this
URL at NaturalNews.com. You may also freely quote from this article with
proper citation.
Sources Cited
HiFi DNA Tech files lawsuit against FDA
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=31180

Reclassification Petition - Human Papillomavirus (HPV) DNA Nested
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Detection Device (K063649 )
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dockets/07p0210/07p-0210-ccp0001-01-vol1.pdf

FDA Approves Expanded Use of HPV Test
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2003/NEW00890.html

VRBPAC Background Document, Gardasil™ HPV Quadrivalent Vaccine, May 18,
2006 VRBPAC Meeting
http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/ac/06/briefing/2006-4222B3.pdf

Effect of Human Papillomavirus 16/18 L1 Viruslike Particle Vaccine Among
Young Women With Preexisting Infection
Journal of the American Medical Association, August, 2007

Sounds like the post-Peak Oil diet… […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Retail Retail Retail

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Organic Organic

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose (35 percent)
Seattle/Tacoma (32 percent)
Portland (27 percent)
Washington, D.C. (26 percent)
Denver (26 percent)
San Diego (24 percent)
Austin (23 percent)
Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto (22 percent)
Boston (21 percent)
Phoenix (21 percent)

My take: Other surveys have shown that frequent buyers of organic food represent about 8 percent of all consumers. The figures measured here - once monthly - are a pretty low threshold and would drop sharply if they measured consumers buying at least several organic items in each trip to the store. Overall, organic sales represent about 3 percent of all supermarket purchases.
What drives purchases?Availability. "Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s
have established themselves in the organics market, and as such are
more popular among organics users. However, a high percentage […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Food and Drink Food and Drink

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Media Media

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Photo: basil flats
He pegs the choice to phytochemicals, healthful and potentially
flavorful substances that are found at significantly higher levels in
organically produced crops.
What do phytochemicals have to do with flavor? Phytochemicals are
chemicals created by plants, and especially those that have effects on
other creatures. Plants make many of them to defend themselves against
microbes and insects: to make themselves unpalatable, counterattack the
invaders and limit the damage they […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Only a small minority of operators and certifiers took advantage of
the absence of a definitively worded regulation to minimize grazing;
they also loosely interpreted, if not disregarded, the several
citations to pasture requirements in the USDA regulations. This failure
to come to the same understanding and application as everyone else
seems to stem from a profit […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

No Tags

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

His farm is nestled in the Wiscoy Valley, beside a tiny stream called Money Creek, literally ground zero for the storm. When it rained, and kept on raining (a total of 26 inches), the creek overflowed, swamped fields, flooded a packing shed and cooler and washed out roads. A levee in the nearby town of Rushford gave way and the town was devastated.
Reached on his cell in a field, Jack told me he lost $200,000 worth of crops – and not just in his fields. (The image at left shows a flooded corn field).
The day the rain began to fall, […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

By Samuel Fromartz
September 8, 2007
After
years of complaints and aggressive public advocacy, the U.S. Department
of Agriculture last week did what it should have done long ago: It
forced the largest private- label organic milk company in the nation -
Boulder-based Aurora Organic Dairy - to amend its farming practices so
they comply with regulations.

The department also threatened to revoke the company’s organic
certification, which allows it to sell organic milk, if it failed to
comply during a one-year probationary period.

This enforcement action was among the most significant the USDA
has taken to protect the organic marketplace. Earlier this year, it
shut down a big organic dairy in California, which also flouted the
regulations.

It’s a win for organic consumers, ensuring that the
private-label organic milk they are buying for $5 to $6 a gallon […]

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Photo of CEO Danny Wegman, linked from Rochester Democrat and Chronicle slide show

Retail Retail

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back

Original post by Samuel Fromartz and software by Elliott Back