05/12/05 Paid to write; Supporting the judge

A Northwest based outdoor magazine is one of two cited by news reports as publishing articles by a freelance writer paid by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to write positive stories three years ago on Natural Resources Conservation Service programs. The current editor of Primedia's Oregon and Washington Game and Fish magazine said he was unaware that Dave Smith was being compensated by U.S.D.A., and agreed that his articles should have made mention how Smith was being paid. Smith, who is now a biologist working for N.R.C.S. in Montana, says he clearly told publishers of the two magazines he was being paid by the government, and knew the magazines could not pay him as a result. From their point of view, Judge John Coughenour did the right thing by now allowing the jurisdiction of the court on the issue of Environmental Protection Agency Section Seven consultations over pesticides to expand in scope. Representatives from E.P.A., Washington State Potato Commission, Washington State Farm Bureau, and Crop Life America argued before Coughenour that E.P.A. had complied with a 2002 order. A coalition of environmental groups led by the Washington Toxics Coalition some months back filed a motion seeking to modify that order to be determined on a may affect, not will affect, status. E.P.A. and its friends of the court argued that the may affect determination was not valid in this particular matter because Section Seven consultation processes had not been completed for the pesticides in question. Now with today's "Food Forethought", here's Susan Allen. ALLEN: I am all for recycling but this might be taking it a little too far& Do you want to talk sustainability? Well, who needs good old cow manure when human waste is available? In California (of course it had to be) farmers are now using treated sewage waste from big cities as fertilizer, and while some farmers are tickled with the benefits of rich tithly soil, others are turning their noses up at using sewage, fearing consumer fall out. Of course for LA and other cities it's a win- win, they can dump their lump of up to 450,000 tons of treated sewage a year on the other side of the mountains out of site and mind. Farmers then use the sludge to improve soil for cattle and fiber but supposedly not any produce directly consumed by consumers. Yeah, right! The opposition is heating up and there is now a bill being sponsored to stop what one Senator calls a wealthy industrial area dumping on rural poor farm country. Hey, where all Hollywood eco-activists on this one I'm Susan Allen and this is Food Forethought.