sad news, good news, gmos & asshats

Some good news first!

Funding for research of test tube pigs has finally been cut off here in Ontario:

After more than10 years, active research into the genetically modified (GM or genetically engineered) pig called “Enviropig” is being abandoned. In late March, the hog industry group Ontario Pork decided to stop funding GM pig research at the University of Guelph and the university is now closing down its active research and ending its breeding program of GM pigs.

You can read the rest of the article over at Common Ground's website.

Some more GMO news, this time not so good:

Biotechnology's promise to feed the world did not anticipate "Trojan corn," "super weeds" and the disappearance of monarch butterflies.

But in the Midwest and South - blanketed by more than 170 million acres of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton - an experiment begun in 1996 with approval of the first commercial genetically modified organisms is producing questionable results.

Those results include vast increases in herbicide use that have created impervious weeds now infesting millions of acres of cropland, while decimating other plants, such as milkweeds that sustain the monarch butterflies. Food manufacturers are worried that a new corn made for ethanol could damage an array of packaged food on supermarket shelves.

You can read the full article here.

Some fucking asshole decided to kill and desecrate an animal that is sacred to the Lakota people:

According to a Fox News report, the extremely rare and sacred white buffalo born last year has been found dead and skinned along with its mother.

Lightning Medicine Cloud, born May 12, 2011 on a stormy night at the Lakota Ranch in Greenville Texas, was a natural white buffalo—an extremely rare occurrence, happening an estimated once per ten million births. In June, a naming ceremony attracted over 2,000 visitors to the ranch, and a report on the proceedings cited beliefs held by some Lakota that the calf was the third white buffalo ever, and the first male in 150 years. Such a white buffalo is tied to the story of White Buffalo Calf Woman, and is the most sacred animal, perhaps the most sacred thing on the planet, to the Lakota people.

In March, the discovery that a ranch in Hunt, Texas offered the chance to kill a white buffalo for $13,500 sparked outrage in Indian country. A day after the news broke, the owner of the ranch told Indian Country Today Media Network that he would cease offering the white buffalo hunt. The buffalo being killed at that ranch and others, like those being born on a ranch in Bend, Oregon, are not natural white buffalo—as an expert told ICTMN in March, knowledge of genetics has allowed modern breeders to engineer white bison.

The rest of the story, along with updates can be read here.

And sadly MCA/Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys passed away last week:

Adam Yauch, a founding member of pioneering hip-hop group the Beastie Boys, died Friday at age 47.

He died in New York after three years of treatment for cancer, his representatives said. He had been diagnosed with a cancerous salivary gland in 2009.

The rest of the article can be read here.

Sláinte!

Laurel