Navy Wins Exemption From Bush to Continue Sonar Exercises in Calif.
President Cites National Security in Order
By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 17, 2008; A02
The White House has exempted the Navy from two major environmental laws in an effort to free the service from a federal court's decision limiting the Navy's use of sonar in training exercises.
Environmentalists who had sued successfully to limit the Navy's use of loud, mid-frequency sonar -- which can be harmful to whales and other marine mammals -- said yesterday that the exemptions were unprecedented and could lead to a larger legal battle over the extent to which the military has to obey environmental laws.
In a court filing Tuesday, government lawyers said President Bush had determined that allowing the use of mid-frequency sonar in ongoing exercises off Southern California was "essential to national security" and of "paramount interest to the United States."
Based on that, the documents said, Bush issued the order exempting the Navy from provisions of the Coastal Zone Management Act, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality granted the Navy a waiver from the National Environmental Protection Act.
The government filings said the federal ruling limiting sonar use "profoundly interferes with the Navy's global management of U.S. strategic forces, its ability to conduct warfare operations, and ultimately places the lives of American sailors and Marines at risk."
The exemptions were immediately challenged by the environmental group that had sued the Navy and by the California Coastal Commission, a state agency that ruled last year that the Navy's plans to protect marine mammals were too limited and deeply flawed.
"There is absolutely no justification for this," commission member Sara Wan said in a statement. "Both the court and the Coastal Commission have said that the Navy can carry out its mission as well as protect the whales."
Joel Reynolds, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the organization would "vigorously" contest the White House orders in court.
U.S. District Judge Marie Florence-Marie Cooper ruled this month in Los Angeles that the Navy's plan to limit harm to whales -- especially deep-diving beaked whales that have at times stranded and died after sonar exercises -- were "grossly inadequate to protect marine mammals from debilitating levels of sonar exposure." A federal appeals court had previously ruled that the Navy plan was inadequate and sent the case back to Cooper to set new guidelines for the exercise.
In her ruling, Cooper banned sonar use within 12 nautical miles of the coast and required numerous procedures to shut it off when marine mammals are spotted. After the ruling, the Navy indicated that the guidelines would render the exercise useless, but the judge disagreed.
The Navy had received a federal exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act for the exercises, which are scheduled to continue through January 2009, but the NRDC and other groups filed suit under other environmental laws. The Navy will still have to convince federal judges that the exemptions are legal. The NRDC said yesterday that waivers are not allowed under the National Environmental Protection Act.
The NRDC also said the situation does not constitute an emergency, because the Navy is allowed to continue sonar training under Cooper's ruling.
"The president's action is an attack on the rule of law," said Reynolds, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the NRDC, which obtained the injunction against the Navy. "By exempting the Navy from basic safeguards under both federal and state law, the president is flouting the will of Congress, the decision of the California Coastal Commission and a ruling by the federal court."
Navy officials have argued that they must step up sonar training because a new generation of "quiet" submarines has made it increasingly difficult to detect underwater intruders. The Navy says that more than 40 nations now have relatively inexpensive diesel-powered submarines, which can be located only with sonar that emits the loud blasts of sound. The Navy trains sailors in sonar use on an underwater range off Southern California and wants to set up another range off the Carolinas.
Adm. Gary Roughead, the chief of naval operations, said in a statement yesterday that the White House waivers were essential and warranted, given that the Navy has 29 procedures to mitigate sonar's impact on whales.
"We cannot in good conscience send American men and women into potential trouble spots without adequate training to defend themselves," Roughead said. "The southern California operating area provides unique training opportunities that are vital to preparing our forces, and the planned exercises cannot be postponed without impacting national security."
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sharply criticized the exemptions. "Once again the Bush Administration has taken a slap at our environmental heritage, overriding a court that was very mindful to protect marine wildlife, including endangered whales, while assuring that the Navy's activities can continue," she said in a statement. "Unfortunately, this Bush Administration action will send this case right back into court, where more taxpayer dollars will be wasted defending a misguided decision."
The NRDC said the waters off Southern California are especially rich in marine mammal life and are on migration paths of five species of endangered whales.
Stradee?
USDA Recommends That Food From Clones Stay Off the Market
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 16, 2008; A03
The U.S. Department of Agriculture yesterday asked U.S. farmers to keep their cloned animals off the market indefinitely even as Food and Drug Administration officials announced that food from cloned livestock is safe to eat.
Bruce I. Knight, the USDA's undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, requested an ongoing "voluntary moratorium" to buy time for "an acceptance process" that Knight said consumers in the United States and abroad will need, "given the emotional nature of this issue."
Yet even as the two agencies sought a unified message -- that food from clones is safe for people but perhaps dangerous to U.S. markets and trade relations -- evidence surfaced suggesting that Americans and others are probably already eating meat from the offspring of clones.
Executives from the nation's major cattle cloning companies conceded yesterday that they have not been able to keep track of how many offspring of clones have entered the food supply, despite a years-old request by the FDA to keep them off the market pending completion of the agency's safety report.
At least one Kansas cattle producer also disclosed yesterday that he has openly sold semen from prize-winning clones to many U.S. meat producers in the past few years, and that he is certain he is not alone.
"This is a fairy tale that this technology is not being used and is not already in the food chain," said Donald Coover, a Galesburg cattleman and veterinarian who has a specialty cattle semen business. "Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about, or they're not being honest."
Yesterday's awkwardly meshed announcements by FDA and USDA officials, made at a joint news conference in Washington, reflected continuing divisions among U.S. regulatory agencies on how to deal with the issue of food from clones.
Stephen F. Sundlof, director of FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, spoke from his perspective as the person who oversaw that agency's six-year review of the safety of milk and meat from clones and their offspring. He released the results of that 968-page "final risk analysis," saying "meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe as food we eat every day."
That conclusion amounted to handing the cloned-food hot potato to the USDA's Knight, whose agency has the responsibility of getting those products accepted on the market.
Recent surveys indicate that the agency has a challenge. Last year, 22 percent of Americans who responded to a major survey said they had a favorable impression of food from clones.
That was up from 16 percent a year earlier. Nonetheless, about 50 percent have an unfavorable impression, said Danielle "Dani" Schor of the International Food Information Council Foundation, an industry-funded interest group that has conducted the survey of 1,000 Americans annually since 2004.
At issue are clones of beef cattle, dairy cows, pigs and goats, as well as their offspring, which farmers in the United States and a few other countries are starting to raise in an effort to produce more consistently high-quality milk and meat.
In recent weeks, as it became clear that the FDA was ready to release its positive safety report, officials there began encountering resistance from other agencies that would have to deal with the consequences of food from clones entering the U.S. food supply.
Some of them, including the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, have been struggling for years to persuade countries in Europe and other parts of the world to accept gene-altered crops from the United States. The last thing those agencies needed, insiders said, was a new U.S. product that nobody wants.
The USDA's request that farmers keep their clones out of the food chain, probably for a few more years, "is simply allowing the time for an orderly transition to occur," Knight said, adding that the department is already having conversations with U.S. trading partners and trying to smooth the way to acceptance.
Some U.S. consumer groups have expressed concern for the cloned animals, which often have health problems, and have suggested that the American public may be as tough a sell as the wary consumers in the European Union and Japan.
"Despite the fact that cloned animals suffer high mortality rates and those who survive are often plagued with birth defects and diseases, the FDA did not give adequate consideration to the welfare of these animals or their surrogate mothers in its deliberations," said Wayne Pacelle, chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States.
Some U.S. groups have demanded that food from clones be labeled to give consumers the "right to choose."
But James Greenwood, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include the nation's biggest farm-animal cloning companies, rejected that idea, as has the FDA. He said cloning is simply a way to make offspring. Other methods of farm animal procreation, such as in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, are not listed on food labels.
He and other industry representatives specifically rejected proposals to label food from conventionally conceived offspring of clones.
While the now-expired FDA moratorium sought to keep both clones and their offspring off the market, the new USDA moratorium requests only that clones themselves be withheld, so the offspring might make it to store shelves within a few years.
But imagine the labels that would appear if certain rules were in place, Greenwood said:
" 'This steak's father was a clone.' 'This steak's grandfather was a clone.' 'This steak's great-grandmother was a clone.'
"At what point does it become absurd?"
Stradee, please remind me of the link.
All clicked and have to go take care of Patti - we just had dinner - which I cooked........
It was good - Game Hens with Asian sauce.
Asian sauce? do tell.
~~~
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,850,537.5 square feet!
65.432 acres
ehBeth wrote:Asian sauce? do tell.
~~~
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,850,537.5 square feet!
65.432 acres
Now, that's cute! All clicked!
:wink:
I'm here ya all! Home from work just a few minutes ago.
Kitten tending, tele messages, chatting with daughter, emails, fixin' dinner....clicking, saying "howdy" and comfy feetsies.
Dan, Patties home from hospital? Hurray!
With her own chef, plus!
ehBeth, you're a gem! Thanks for all the stats!
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
sue, cloning
is absurd, and nobody, especially the animals, benefit.
Gotta give California credit though. The judges do recuse themselves. Corporations arn't exempt from the law {even if george says they are...}
We knew the Navy would find a way to stall the Federal ruling. They won't win. Sonar blasting is unnecesssary. Enviornmental laws arn't.
Stradee wrote:oops,
Hi Ya Teeny!
Hi Stradee! 10 clicks and I'm done! :wink:
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,850,748.3 square feet!
~~~
so great to have a bunch of WildClickers to see and read!
~~~
65.441 acres
isn't that the truth ehBeth
good god! amigo's gone bonkers...
What's this gone **** Kemosabe?? He's always been bonkers.
But, all we Wildclickers still appreciate him - RIGHT????
Late clicks - our friend from MS arrived today and we are having fun.
One more tree smiling.
Tonto speak without forked tongue
Teeny, your efforts each day are so appreciated! Thanks to you and all the WildClickers!!
clickin'
http://rainforest.care2.com/i?p=583091674
Late again - but clicked.
Could'nt get into the thread, today! All clicked, early, 7:34 AM, EST!