It’s a big news day for corn. The university agricultural programs and commercial seed companies are nearing the conclusion of mapping the complete genome of a stalk of corn. The AP is reporting today that a group of scientist, primarily from Washington University (St. Louis, MO), are about to publish they have achieved the “holy grail”.

The benefit for farmers will come from new lines of corn that withstand environmental stress and produce more yield, Fields said. The United States produced about 13.1 billion bushels of corn last year worth $3 billion, which is roughly 44 percent of the global supply.

We’re so freaked out as a culture about cloning, yet nobody seems to have a problem that public money is funding the genetic makeup of Mother Nature. Imagine if you replaced the use of the words farmers and corn or corn stalk with doctors and babies. Ethically, what makes this different from altering the genes of a child, in utero, to make sure the parents produced the most perfect, disease resistant child possible? Once we perfect all the agriculture, what’s next, pets? Then us?

AP - Researchers Map Corn Plant’s Genome

Now Chinese companies are openly defying laws on the use of banned pesticides, and according to this UPI report there is large demand for said pesticides on the black market.

SHIJIAZHUANG, China, Feb. 16 (UPI) — Farmers operating in remote portions of China reportedly are still using a pesticide banned by their government as dangerous to humans.

While the sale or use of the pesticide methamidophos was outlawed by the Chinese government last year, some farmers still use the cheap toxin to protect their crops, the Asahi Shimbun reported Saturday.

News of the pesticide’s continued use stemmed from the discovery of trace amounts of it in food products in China’s Chiba and Hyogo prefectures. Those items were manufactured by Tianyang Food and have since been linked to illnesses in 10 people.

An investigation determined some farmers continue to use the potentially dangerous product because of its effectiveness in killing pests.

The Shimbun spoke to a broker who allegedly participates in the illegal production of the chemical who said there is strong demand for the banned substance.

“We are secretly manufacturing it at our plant,” the unidentified broker said. “We still get a lot of orders. If we are raided before we can deliver the product, we have customers pay the equivalent of the fine.”

This story was originally reported on in TIME Magazine, February 7th.

Since December, frozen gyoza(meat dumplings) produced by Chinese manufacturer Tianyang Food Processing Ltd. have caused at least 10 people to become ill due to contamination by a potentially lethal insecticide. Full TIME Story…

Generally, I’m not a fan of ethanol as a fuel, and totally opposed to food-product based ethanol. The so called “Green” movement’s concern about reducing the use of fossil fuel, may help reduce some greenhouse gases, that are supposedly making the earth warmer, but biofuel is so ineffecient to produce will it really resolve the problem? It is problematic to pipeline ethanol because of evaporation problems. It takes fuel to grow the bio material; planting and harvesting, so there is a huge production efficiancy cost or waste to producing ethanol.

Anyway, I’ll get into that some other time….

What about the corn-based ethanol every farmer in America is racing to plant. The “Green” movement seems to have forgotten about the laws of unintended consquences. When you start subsidizing farms to grow corn and soybeans for fuel, that means they are growing less other grains, such as wheat, barely, and vegetables, etc. The laws of supply and demand say, if there is short supply of something the price goes up. So what’s happening in your grocery store? The price of vegetables have….gone up! Imagine that? What else is happening? We’re subsizing the farmers to grow corn for fuel, so where is the corn going now…for fuel. Ever look at the contents of just about any boxed or canned product? What’s the ingredient that is in practically all of them? Corn Syrup! So, again, the laws of supply and demand dictate, if the corn is getting a good price for fuel, it’s going to be in short supply for corn syrup, and thus all the other food prices rise. Great, we’ve made our gasoline cheaper and maybe cleaner going into our cars, but we’ve jacked the price of food up in the process. Which will either make it a wash, or a worse alternative compared to gasoline.

I’m just the simple man. I’m not a chemist, nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night, but some of this stuff seems so obvious to me. Especially, living in a rural Illinois farm community where you now see all the farmers erecting new buildings, plowing with new tractors, and driving new cars. It’s clear to me something has happened in the last year!

In Illinois, the farmers all get reduced rates on their property taxes, because they are the poor old family [corporate] farmers. I couldn’t even begin to explain to you what that does to the schools in the small town who’s only revenue is property tax money, and the largest owners of property hardly have to foot any of the bill. I believe, it’s only a matter of time before the average citizen realizes their wallet is shrinking in the name green and clean, and demand enough is enough.

Maybe I need a time-out for being a neglectful cat owner. But first in my defense let me say–or maybe just rationalize–that I always make sure my kids get flu-shots and regular immunizations; my house is completely child-proofed (probably to the extreme); I check for lead paint; I read labels before feeding my kids; when I heard about the mercury warnings in some vaccinations, I made sure my kids’ vaccine contained no mercury. In other words, I heed almost all safety and health advice when it comes to my kids. Yes, I am the annoying, neurotic mother that drives pediatricians, teachers, friends and family members crazy.

Somehow, during all of my parenting insecurities and neuroses, I neglected my dear sweet pets–2 cats, Dinah and Othello. Once I became a parent, vet visits got put on the back-burner. Those tantalizing car rides with two high-screaching animals lost out to the daily activities of motherhood. Paying the pediatrician came first, and I just never found the extra money or time to get my cats to the vet for all their immunizations. It was something I always planned to do…with next month’s paycheck. Besides, my cats were indoor; they were never let outside. Oh, I almost forgot, we feed them the expensive cat food in the green bag. Shouldn’t that help compensate for the lapsed vet visits?

Well, take my advice it doesn’t. My three year old darling daughter, likes to pick up our cats. Dinah, who is ten years old and can be a bit cranky at times, is not real fond of the way DD picks her up. Have you ever seen a 3 three year old pick up a giant, overweight cat?

The other day, DD picked Dinah up, and in an effort to get away, Dinah, nipped at her. There were no tears and no blood drawn. After searching her arm for about 5 minutes I finally found the tiny mark where the cat’s tooth went. It was so tiny, I couldn’t tell if she broke the skin–I think the top layer of skin may have been broken, but it didn’t seem like it penetrated beyond that. To be safe, I washed out the bite with soap and water really well. Then, I thought I should put some Neosporin on it as an added precaution. The package warned that a doctor should be contacted for any animal bites. This seemed reasonable. So I put the Neosporin on and then called the doctor’s office. This fateful call changed everything.

The nurse asked if the cat had a recent rabies vaccination. I told her no, but also explained she was a housecat. I also told her that both my cats had not been around any animals or outside since their last rabies vaccination, so it would be impossible to contract it. Well, apparently I was wrong on that.

The nurse informed me that bats fly in houses all the time and can bite animals or small children without them ever knowing it. My reply was that we had never had a bat in our house. If we did, wouldn’t we know because he would be flying around. (As far as I know, bats don’t just fly in houses and then leave at their leisure. Wouldn’t they be stuck in the house?) The nurse wasn’t convinced, she would need to talk to the doctor and find out if my daughter needed to come in for a series of raby shots. I felt completely sick when she told me this. What had my negligence exposed my child to? The nurse also said that she would also need to report this to Animal Control.

I hung up the phone worried sick and guilt-ridden and went to pick my son up at school. When I got home, my husband took a message from the nurse after she had talked to the doctor. She said not to worry about rabies if the cat hasn’t been in contact with any other animals, but that I should watch for any possible infection. She added that Animal Control would probably contact me to ask some questions. After breathing a sigh of relief, I told my husband I would make a vet appointment tommorow afternoon for the cats, and I vowed never to lapse in vaccinations again.

Well, I never got a chance to make that appointment. Early the next afternoon, I had just gotten home and was fixing my daughter lunch when a woman from Animal Control showed up on my doorstep. She said she would have to follow me to a vet’s office right now to make sure my cat was quarantined for 10 days. After questioning the rationale of this, she told my husband and I the other choice was for her to take the cat with her to be euthanized. She finally agreed that I could make an appointment to take her there, but I would need to make the appointment now with her witnessing it. Then the vet would have to fax over a form to Animal Control as proof that Dinah was in quarentine. Besides feeling like the world’s worst mother, I felt like a criminal who was about to be escorted to jail–except my cat would serve out my sentence.

To add to this, my husband, who often works at home, was getting ready to go into a conference call and I needed to finish preparing for a presentation for a children’s story hour at our local library that I would be doing the next day. Oh btw, the story hour presentation was on bats.

Needless to say both cats are getting all their shots. Tomorrow, the kids and I our going to visit our sweet Dinah in kitty jail. I promise not to smuggle in any nail files to break her out.

Did I mention that the quarentine is $19 a day for 10 days?