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CapitalPress.com
January 29, 2016
California’s Water Project boosts allocations
Capital Press
SACRAMENTO — With
the state’s reservoirs filling
rapidly amid recent storms,
the State Water Project now
predicts it will deliver at least
15 percent of requested sup-
plies to its 29 contractors.
The state Department of
Water Resources announced
it expects to deliver 631,115
acre-feet of the nearly 4.2
million acre-feet requested by
local agencies, up from the 10
percent of normal deliveries
initially allocated in Decem-
ber.
DWR director Mark Cow-
in said in a statement that the
allocation is still low despite
all the rain and snow because
the drought isn’t over.
“Our modest increase un-
derscores the fact that we still
have a critical water shortage
that we don’t know when will
end,” he said. “One look at
our low reservoirs tells us that
we need a lot more wet weath-
er before summer.”
State and federal officials
have said California would
need 150 percent of normal
levels of rain and snow this
winter to significantly ease
drought conditions. Cali-
fornia’s snow water content
statewide was 115 percent of
normal as of Jan. 26, the data
center reported.
Nonetheless, the state
water allocation could be
increased further if storms
continue to build rainfall and
snowpack totals, officials
said. Last winter’s allocation
started at 10 percent and was
eventually raised to 20 per-
cent.
Last year’s allocation was
the state’s second lowest since
1991, when agricultural cus-
tomers got a zero allocation
and municipal customers re-
ceived 30 percent of requests.
In 2014, SWP deliveries were
5 percent for all customers.
Contractors haven’t received
their full allocations since
2006.
After a break this week,
more rain and snow is expect-
ed in California this weekend,
according to the National
Weather Service. Above-aver-
age precipitation is anticipated
for Northern California over
the next two weeks, with El
Nino still expected to produce
above-average rainfall for the
entire state over the next three
months, the federal Climate
Prediction Center reports.
The State Water Project
serves about 25 million Cali-
fornians and just under 1 mil-
lion acres of irrigated farm-
land, according to the DWR.
Die-offs fluster beekeepers
on eve of almond blossom
Cancellation of
grass-fed standard
worries farm group
USDA’s marketing division
drops labeling program
By TIM HEARDEN
Capital Press
PALO CEDRO, Calif. —
As almond blossom in Cali-
fornia is about to begin, bee-
keepers have endured another
tough winter in terms of honey
bee die-offs, producers and re-
searchers say.
A variety of factors are be-
ing blamed, including signs
that the varroa mite believed to
cause many of the deaths is de-
veloping a resistance to treat-
ments against it, University of
California-Davis bee expert
Elina Nino said.
While there’s been no orga-
nized survey to discover how
widespread the losses have
been this year, some beekeep-
ers have reported significant
losses, and some deaths oc-
curred even before the winter
began, she said.
“They’ve been having is-
sues keeping bees alive for
most of the year,” said Nino,
an extension apiculturist at
the UC’s Harry H. Laidlaw
Jr. Honey Bee Research Fa-
cility. “Especially they’ve had
a lot of issues with the varroa
mite, maybe more than before.
They’ve had to treat more of-
ten. … It doesn’t sound great.”
Bee breeder Glenda Woo-
ten, co-owner of Wooten’s
Golden Queens in Palo Cedro,
said the operation lost a small
percentage of bees this winter
but she knows of other bee-
keepers who suffered deeper
losses. She, too, blamed much
of the carnage on varroa mites,
a virus-transmitting parasite of
honey bees.
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
In this file photo, steaks
and other beef products are
displayed for sale at a grocery
store in McLean, Va. The
USDA Agricultural Market-
ing Service is dropping its
“grass-fed” label program, but
the Food Safety Inspection
Service is now handling it.
“It is a different system
and will bear careful watch-
ing,” said Ferd Hoefner, the
coalition’s policy director.
Hoefner said he wor-
ries the revocation of AMS
grass-fed labeling standards
was actually motivated by
pressure from large meat
companies that want to use
the claim without following
the protocols.
“They’d prefer not to live
up to the standard,” he said.
The reason that AMS cre-
ated its grass-fed standards
was due to the lack of a com-
mon definition in the live-
stock industry, Hoefner said.
The division will resur-
rect its previous system of
verifying producer “grass-
fed” claims that don’t adhere
to a common understanding
of the term, he said.
“They’re going back to
a multiplicity of meanings,
rather than a single mean-
ing,” Hoefner said. “It helps
the consumer not one iota.”
Although the FSIS will
check documentation to en-
sure grass-fed labels are not
misleading, Hoefner is con-
cerned that its process won’t
be as thorough.
Auditors from AMS
conducted yearly on-site
reviews, while the FSIS
approves a label based on
documentation only once
instead of routinely, he said.
Courtesy of Kathy Keatley Garvey/UC-Davis
Retired University of California-Davis bee breeder and geneticist Kim Fondrk prepares bees to be
deployed in an almond orchard in Dixon, Calif. As the almond blossom is about to begin, beekeepers
have had another rough winter in terms of die-offs.
“It’s getting that our treat-
ments don’t work on the var-
roa mite as much as they used
to,” Wooten said. “Then when
they go back and the hives are
dead, they say, ‘What hap-
pened? I treated.’
“But it took a lot of food
this summer to keep them go-
ing” as the drought limited for-
age for bees, she said. “We had
to supplement feed with sugar
syrup a lot this summer.”
The shortage of forage af-
ter last year’s almond blossom
prompted some bee suppliers
across the country to decide
to pass on this year’s bloom,
Wooten said.
“A lot of guys aren’t going
to come back to California,”
she said. “Once they came
out here, their hives didn’t do
well the rest of the summer for
them.”
The tighter supply of bees
and California’s ever-ex-
panding bearing acreage of
almonds — it was 870,000 in
2014, according to the USDA
— has pushed growers’ polli-
nation costs to roughly $200
a hive, Wooten said. That’s up
from about $150 per hive three
seasons ago.
To trim transportation
costs, some beekeepers in
Florida are shipping bees one-
way to California and leaving
it up to almond growers to
dispose of them when they’re
finished. Growers have had no
trouble finding beekeepers in
California to purchase them,
Wooten said.
“I know several beekeepers
who want to buy those hives,”
Wooten said. “They’re a very
good product … I’ll bet if you
tried to buy some now you’d
find out they’re already sold.”
Federal judge rejects glyphosate labeling lawsuit
Monsanto was accused
of misleading claims
about herbicide
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
A federal judge has thrown
out a lawsuit that accused
Monsanto of labeling its
“Roundup” glyphosate herbi-
cide to mislead people about
health impacts.
Last year, several Los An-
geles residents filed a lawsuit
alleging that the biotech and
pesticide company false-
ly claimed the weed-killing
chemical “targets an enzyme
found in plants but not in peo-
ple or pets.”
The lawsuit sought class
action status that would allow
other Roundup buyers to join
the litigation, as well as finan-
cial compensation for damages
and an injunction prohibiting
Monsanto from advertising
that Roundup doesn’t affect
people or animals.
According to the plaintiffs,
glyphosate disrupts an enzyme
known as EPSP synthase,
which affects not only plants
but also microbes, including
those found in the digestive
systems of people and animals.
Their complaint contended
that glyphosate kills gut bacte-
ria just as it does weeds, which
harms “digestion, metabolism,
and vital immune system func-
tions” when people eat crops
sprayed with the chemical.
Monsanto responded that
the allegation was an “absurd
misinterpretation” of its claim
because the enzyme is not
produced by human or animal
cells and the labels make no
mention of “gut bacteria.”
The company also said the
plaintiff’s accusations about
glyphosate’s use in commer-
cial food production are irrel-
evant to consumers applying
the chemical to weeds in their
lawn or garden.
U.S. District Judge Dean
Pregerson has agreed with
Monsanto’s request to dismiss
the lawsuit, ruling that its la-
beling claims were approved
by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency and thus
the complaint is pre-empted by
federal regulation.
The Federal Insecticide
Fungicide and Rodenticide
Act, or FIFRA, aims in part
to create uniformity in label-
ing and packaging for pesti-
cides, so lawsuits that seek
to alter such claims based on
state false advertising laws are
barred, Pregerson said.
T. Matthew Phillips, the at-
torney representing the plain-
tiffs, said he plans to appeal.
“The judge never deter-
mined whether the label state-
ment is true or false,” he said.
“Apparently the truth doesn’t
matter to the courts nor Mon-
santo.”
LEGAL
PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder,
on 2/9/2016. The sale will be
held at 10:00 am by
NORTHWET WATERCRAFT
580 19TH ST SE #B, SALEM, OR
2003 YAMAHA VX CRUISER SKI
VIN = YAMA2556E303
Amount due on lien $2,143.57
Reputed owner(s)
Universal Auto Sales
Brandon Boatwright
Legal-5-2-1/#4
LEGAL
5-7/#4x
The USDA’s marketing
division has dropped its
standards for grass-fed meat,
which the agency says won’t
impact ranchers or consum-
ers but has a sustainable
farming group worried.
The agency’s Agricultur-
al Marketing Service recent-
ly withdrew its voluntary
standards for livestock pro-
ducers who want to market
their livestock’s meat as
grass-fed, which the AMS
had verified through an an-
nual audit program since
2007.
After a routine review,
AMS decided the verifi-
cation program doesn’t fit
within its “statutory man-
date” because the division
doesn’t actually regulate
food labels, which fall under
the purview of the USDA’s
Food Safety and Inspection
Service.
While AMS does not
have the authority to define
its own labeling standards
for “grass-fed” meat, the di-
vision can still verify ranch-
ers are following their own
grass-fed production stan-
dards or those developed by
other programs, the agency
said.
Labeling claims must
ultimately be approved by
FSIS, which reviews docu-
mentation from producers
to establish they don’t feed
their livestock grain and pro-
vide continuous access to
pasture during the growing
season, said Sam Jones-El-
lard, public affairs specialist
for AMS.
“It is a house-cleaning
exercise more than anything
else,” he said in an email.
The agency’s explanation
isn’t particularly reassuring
for the National Sustainable
Agriculture Coalition, which
supports grass-fed meat pro-
duction and is concerned
about the rationale for the
change.
As of Jan. 25, Lake Oro-
ville — the State Water Proj-
ect’s main reservoir — was
at 39 percent of capacity and
60 percent of average for this
time of year, according to the
DWR’s California Data Ex-
change Center.
However, with 10,212 cu-
bic feet per second flowing
into the lake, the surface is
rising. It was at 714.19 feet
above sea level on Jan. 25,
up from its low point of 649.5
feet above sea level on Dec. 9,
according to the DWR.
5-1/#18
PURSUANT TO ORS
CHAPTER 98
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold, for
cash to the highest bidder, on 2/1/
2016. The sale will be held at
10:00am by
B.C. TOWING
1834 BEACH AVE NE SALEM, OR
2015 JEEP RENEGADE UT
VIN = ZACCJBATIFPB48417
Amount due on lien $4,545.00
Reputed owner(s)
LILLY A WEBER
legal-4-2-4/#4
By TIM HEARDEN