TO THE EDITOR
MORE FRANKEN-
FOODS COMING
I am a food service professional. I am
a certified executive and master pastry
chef. I am currently employed as a
food and beverage director locally. I
have studied nutrition, and though I do
not hold a certificate in nutrition, need-
less to say, it is not only an interest, but
an avocation. I have spent nearly 30
years in the food service business. I am
passionate about both good nutrition
and good food.
I have spent most of my adult life
honing the skills I need to present fresh,
seasonal, farm-to-table foods in both a
nutritional and appealing way to en-
hance people’s enjoyment and lives.
Last week the FDA decided that yet
another “Franken-food” could be
“safely” consumed. To say that I am dis-
appointed would be a severe understate-
ment. Once again, as in so many times in
the past, the FDA has caved in to politi-
cal pressures and dollars from special
interests. That this is not the first time
does not lessen the impact of the deci-
sion they have made. In the interest of
political capital and whatever other
perks they’ve been offered, they have
offered the health and well-being of not
only the people of this country, but in-
deed the world, to those whose only real
interest is themselves and their own en-
richment. Consumers have become no
more than an afterthought with a wallet.
The animals tested were first genera-
tion animals and their offspring. It does
not take much intellect to realize that
these animals are entirely too expensive
to end up on someone’s dinner table.
No, it will be their offspring for many
generations, harboring not only an ex-
tremely monochromatic genealogy, but
unknown mutations, diseases and possi-
ble viruses that at this point we cannot
even imagine.
Further, the FDA has decided that
there is no need for the public to be in-
formed when they are eating genetically
modified (which are now on our gro-
cers’ shelves, and unless we eat our own
open-pollinated, organic foods, most
probably in our pantries) and cloned
foods. How is it that the legislators in
New York in their infinite wisdom have
created a law that bans trans-fats in
restaurants because “people have a right
to know what they are eating,” and yet
the FDA is ready to foist questionable
foods on the world at large without so
much as letting them know that what
they are eating is from genetically mod-
ified and cloned plants and animals?
What happened to the “right to know
what we are eating”? I for one would
like to make my own studied choice.
How can I be expected to trust the FDA
when they have so often proven that
they cannot be trusted?
Outrage is almost an understatement
when I look at the serious miscarriage of
the mission to keep our food stream safe.
From now on, I’ll just figure “FDA”
stands for “For Dollars Alone.” The FDA
should take a hard and serious look at
what they are planning to do to the safety
of the world’s food — and so should we.
Iain L. Stuart
Springfield
4 JANUARY 11, 2007
STAGE HANDS MAGIC
I want to thank EW for their wonderful ar-
ticle (1/4) about the IATSE (stagehands
union) members who work backstage at the
Hult. I had the pleasure of working firsthand
with that crew when I stage managed
Willamette Rep’s production of Woody
Guthrie’s American Songbook and OFAM’s
Crazy for You.
I’ve traveled to about half the states in our
great country on tour with shows in the 1970s
and 1980s — playing some of the biggest and
most famous venues, and I have never met a
crew as professional and dedicated as the
crew we have here at the Hult. In just a rela-
tively few hours, they build and learn the
rhythm and timing of an entire show. Lights,
sound, sets, costumes, props and makeup —
everything you see, they touch and apply
their magic.
The touring shows from New York City
come in with a skeleton crew. They rely on
the local union members to execute the set
changes, hang and focus the lights, mix the
sound, iron, stitch, sew and dress the actors.
The next time you’re impressed with a
show at the Hult and you see those folks, usu-
ally dressed in black, emerging from the alley
between the theater and the parking lot, you
might stop and say “good show.” They had as
much to do with giving you an exciting the-
ater experience as the soprano who sang the
lead.
Carol Horne
Eugene
climate change and peak oil because the solu-
tions are inherently decentralized and would
require relaxation of centralized power con-
trol systems.
Mark Robinowitz
Eugene
ROGUE AGENCY
BROWN EUGENE
Eugene’s newest slogan — that it is the
“number one green city” in the country — is a
wild exaggeration that makes ecological poli-
cies more difficult to achieve. Perhaps the
city government is the greenest in Lane
County although Eugene emits more pollu-
tion than the other cities combined. Eugene is
number one for formaldehyde (from ply-
wood glue), particulate pollution and pollen
— our air is only clean when it is raining.
Amazon Creek is polluted with lawn chemi-
cals and industrial waste, and the city may
allow its headwaters to be smothered with
more subdivisions.
Several other Oregon towns are ahead of
Eugene. Hood River banned more big box
stores, a law upheld by the Oregon Supreme
Court in 2002. In contrast, Eugene is wel-
coming more big boxes such as Whole Foods
(on Highway 99) and Lowe’s (in west
Eugene wetlands).
Portland has a task force to look at peak
oil impacts, something Eugene has not
adopted.
Even Washington, D.C., a city not known
for environmental policies, now mandates
that all new commercial buildings must use
“green” features.
This slogan is similar to the embarrassing
claim to be the “World’s Greatest City of the
Arts and Outdoors.”
Legal prohibitions are much more effec-
tive than public relations at preventing pollu-
tion.
Calling Eugene the country’s most green
city is similar to Al Gore’s film An
Inconvenient Truth, which had great rhetoric
yet neglected to discuss Gore’s promotion of
NAFTA, the WTO, energy deregulation and
a huge expansion of the interstate highway
system.
The inconvenient truth is that the shadow
government (corporations and the military
industrial complex) did not want to deal with
The Oregon Bureau of Land Management
(BLM) is attempting to destroy tens of thou-
sands of acres of Oregon’s last ancient forests
west of the Cascade mountains as well as the
nation’s largest ancient forest roadless area
on BLM lands, the Zane Grey. The Zane
Grey roadless area adjoins the Rogue River
Wilderness in southwest Oregon.
In southern Oregon alone, the BLM has
currently prepared more than 30 timber sales,
with more under way, that would decimate or
degrade tens of thousands of acres of ancient
and native forest in the Rogue, Umpqua,
Applegate and Illinois River watersheds.
This corrupt and rogue agency has been
convicted by federal courts of breaking the
law nearly a half dozen times in the last 36
months over its mismanagement of forest
lands in western Oregon. Yet no one is pun-
ished except those who try to uphold the law.
To add insult to injury, the Oregon BLM
is attempting to throw out the Northwest
Forest Plan as it pertains to their
2.6 million acres in western Oregon to please
their Oregon timber baron masters. This
sham is being called the Western Oregon
Planning Revision (WOPR; learn more at
www.oregonheritageforests.org).
The only thing that may be able to stop the
BLM is citizen pressure placed on Secretary
of Interior Dirk Kempthorne via Sen. Ron
Wyden and Congressman Peter DeFazio. Tell
them that this must be stopped to protect
threatened salmon, wildlife, future wilder-
ness and recreation and to help curb global
warming.
Shannon Wilson
Eugene
FORD’S FALLACIES
As most daily papers persist in giving us
lies about the supposed presidential qualities
of Gerry Ford, they ignore his main role as a
manipulated pawn of the Republican power
structure. His pardon of Richard Nixon was
no act of courage but a blatant response to
pressure of the GOP to remove some of the
onus from the first in a series of terrible pres-
idents it nominated.
Ford’s unfortunate “insights” are reflected
in his having placed in high positions two ar-
chitects of today’s criminal invasion of Iraq:
Dick Cheney as his chief of staff and Donald
Rumsfeld as his secretary of defense (war).
His pardon of Nixon becomes more of a
travesty as it encourages gullible Americans
to tolerate illegal actions of George Bush,
puppet on the strings held by the same two
reprobates who once guided policy for Ford.
It is essential — if our children are to have
an understanding of justice that punishes law-
breakers in high places — that Bush and
Cheney be impeached. Then they and
Rumsfeld should be extradited to be judged
by the World Criminal Court in The Hague.
George Beres
Eugene
SAVAGE ADVICE
Savage Love is not exactly my idea of
“words of pure wisdom.” Perhaps that’s a
play on words. Surely this rag can find some-
thing of more value to the masses than Mr.
Savage’s advice to others’ sexual woes and
worries. It’s offensive. I’d like to see it go
bye-bye.
Tracy McGeehan
Eugene
WHY I DISLIKE ARSON
OK, let’s play ping-pong, Randy (letters,
12/28). First, thank you for giving your point
of view on my comments regarding the “eco-
arsonists,” but I wish you took the time to
read me better; one of my first sentences
mentioned my disapproving with violence,
“especially in the form of arson.” Maybe I
should have explained more why I don’t like
arson: It doesn’t accomplish anything, it is
gratuitous and pollutes, so, in the case of the
eco-arsonists, it wasn’t smart, I give you that.
Now, there is a BIG difference between
the eco and pro-lifers. Every time I read or
heard about arson perpetrated by pro-lifers,
they hope they are going to torch someone,
especially the doctor and his assistants, if
possible … PRO-life, yeah right! Don’t you
remember the guy who tried to murder a doc-