Gardening

Genetic Modification

• Since growing GM plants is now illegal in Switzerland, it is feared that pharma and agrochemical companies will remove their research out of the country, said Bernard Schips, director of the Swiss Institute for Business Cycles. From the nation that brought you DDT.

• Denmark decides to tax farmers for growing GM crops at 13-euros per hectare. This is planned to compensate claimed contamination to conventional or organic crops growing nearby and no doubt provide employment to bureaucrats and NGOs. Perhaps the Danes would consider levying a similar tax on their military to compensate for their pollution of the High Arctic.

• Australia has dropped a decade-long project to genetically modify peas to resist pea weevil pests. The protein involved when expressed in the plant, showed allergic lung damage in mice, reports New Scientist.

• We are reminded by Dose commuter newspaper that Prince Philip once said grey squirrels caused more harm to the environment than GM crops.

Kyoto Kafuffles

• "Dead end talks over an international treaty that most countries in the world reject and others are clearly set to violate." Carlo Stagnoro, director, Ecologia di mercato at the Instituteo Bruno Leoni, Italy.

• The U.N.s Montreal conference manages to save face by extending the time in which countries may meet their deadlines but the U.S. isnt budging.

• The newly formed Coalition for Rainforest Nations demands carbon credits for protecting existing natural forests just as surprise, surprise the UNs Kyoto comics commence in Montreal.

Environment

• The government-funded Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation has launched a $1.5-million advertising campaign to tell Torontonians what the provinces greenbelt is and how it benefits them, writes Mike Adler in The Mirror.

• Deer can be a problem but down in Arkansas Wayne Goldsberry took stern measures against a buck that burst through his daughters bedroom window. He killed it with his bare hands.

• Prince Charles was reportedly green with envy after his visit late last year to San Francisco. It was his "kinda place," reported The Daily Telegraph as HRH admired its environmental acumen. Alas, the grass is, as we all know, greener the other side of the fence or ocean.

• The Great Lakes arent going to be drained to water a thirsty southwest U.S. A new agreement amongst stakeholder states and provinces resulted in protecting what is 95% of North Americas freshwater and 20% of the worlds from such exploitation.

• Thanks to salting of roads in the northeastern U.S. every winter, some streams in urban and suburban areas have become one-fourth as salty as the sea, reports the current issue of Natural History. If it continues this way, say ecologists, much of the surface water will become toxic to freshwater life and unfit for human consumption in a century or two.

• British environmentalist Richard Sandbrook, founder of British arm of Friends of the Earth dies at age 59. It would appear than being an environmentalist is not as healthy as being a gardener. They are renown for living longer.

• Shirley MacLaine believes in crop circles (and UFOs) and features them on her website. She might wish to check our archives. Well check Irma La Duce.

Law & the Gardener

• If marijuana became a legal crop, can we expect similar taxes to tobacco? And will some attempt to avoid paying those taxes as did several small Quebec cigarette factories that were recently raided in a police operation that involved 300 officers across the nation?

• Eco-terrorists are a threat to agriculture, warns FBI special agent John Lewis. "This movement is responsible for more violence and economic damage than any other in the U.S.," he told the Farm Animal Council of Saskatchewan Inc. (FACS).

Business

• Their "Think Pink" promotion at Coles Florist & Garden Centre, Grimsby, Ontario (www.colesflorist.ca) won them a 2005 Garden Centre Award of Excellence. Movie buffs will recall that "Think Pink" was the cleverly spoofed fashion campaign in the 1957 classic Funny Face with Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn.

• As snow came to much of the nation, customers eager to purchase Troy-Bilt, Yard Machine and Yardworks snow blowers from Canadian Tire found they were out of luck. Representatives from the manufacture, MTD, were rushing to faulty fuel lines, fouling things thoroughly up but presumably increasing snow shovel sales.

• South o the border, the lawn and garden market is worth US$37-billion annually, according to a recent article in FP Business magazine.

Health

• There is a link between drinking colas and hypertension that has nothing to do with caffeine, says a study of 155,594 women participating in the U.S. Nurses Health Study and published in the authoritative Journal of he American Medical Association.

• All those fruit and vegetables may be good for some aspects of your health, but forget about the fibre - it won't prevent colorectal cancer, second greatest cancer killer of Canadians, Harvard School of Public Health researchers say.

• In search of healing gardens, writer Susan Hines looks into horticultural therapy for Landscape Architect and finds a mixed bag, despite the acknowledged advantages they offer. As far as design goes, landscape architects appear to have much to learn themselves.

• Funding from tobacco companies will be banned at Germanys largest research centre, under a new ethical code adopted by the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), reports Nature. In the closing decades of the 20^th century, German health researchers accepted millions of dollars from the tobacco industry. Historical note: Hitler hated tobacco.

• Salmonella poisoning incidents in the U.S. caused by contaminated fruits and vegetables numbered 554 between 1990 and 2003, more than those caused by poultry, notes New Scientist under the heading of Rotten Tomatoes

• The threat from bean sprouts appears to be over, Ontarios Chief Medical Officer of Health announced to a relieved province. Toronto Public Health, an oxymoron if ever there was one, lifts a distribution ban on the tasty tidbit.