AFDO Issues Guidance on Cottage Foods

By Dan Flynn (Food Safety News) May 30, 2012

With so many state lawmakers willing to throw out the rulebook when it comes to cottage foods, the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) has decided it's time to draw the line.

The 116-year-old AFDO has published a 20-page "guidance document" with "consensus opinion of best practices and limitations on this somewhat controversial matter."

AFDO says it developed the guidance document for state and local food safety regulators to help them with management of food safety issues associated with cottage food operations.  AFDO Food Committee, consisting of food protection officials from around the country, drafted the document.

AFDO defines cottage food as products made in a home kitchen for direct sale to consumers. The FDA Food Code, adopted by most state and local jurisdictions, prohibits the sale of food prepared in a home kitchen from being sold in any food establishment, retail food store, or to any wholesale food manufacturer.

Read more: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/05/afdo-issues-guidance-document-on-cottage-foods/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=120530

Rub-A-Dub-Dub

By Kathy Keatley Garvey (Bug Squad - Happenings in the Insect World) May 29, 2012

Ever seen honey bees engaging in washboarding? 

It's a behavior so named because they look as if they're scrubbing clothes on a washboard or scrubbing their home.

It occurs near the entrance of the hive and only with worker bees. They go back and forth, back and forth, a kind of rocking movement. No one knows why they do it. It's one of those unexplained behaviors they've probably been doing for millions of years.

Bee breeder-geneticist Susan Cobey of the University of California, Davis and Washington State University, has witnessed washboarding scores of times. Last week the unusual behavior occurred on two of her hives at the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis. She hypothesizes that these bees are in the "unemployment line." It's a time when foraging isn't so good, so these bees are "sweeping the porch" for something to do, she speculates.

Read more: http://ucanr.org/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=7586

Visit the Kathy Keatley Garvey website at: http://kathygarvey.com/

Check out the marvelous inspirational article about Kathy Keatley Garvey in the June 2012 issue of the American Bee Journal. It features more beautiful bee photography by Kathy Keatley Garvey and a walk in her garden.

Bees

By Tammy Horn (NY Times) May 29, 2012

Long known as the angels of agriculture, honey bees have received global attention due to losses attributed to a combination of factors: Colony Collapse Disorder, mites, deforestation and industrial agriculture. Honey bees provide pollination for crops, orchards and flowers; honey and wax for cosmetics, food and medicinal-religious objects; and inspiration to artists, architects and scientists.

While there are thousands of insects in the Hymenoptera order (for example, wasps, flies and ants), honey bees are the only living members of the tribe Apini, within the family Apidae. The one genus of honey bee Apis can be divided into three branches based on how honey bees nest: the giant open-nesting honey bees Apis dorsataand Apis laboriosa; the dwarf, single-combed honey bees Apis floraeand Apis andreniformis; and the cavity-nesting honey bees Apis cerana, Apis koschevnikovi, Apis nuluensis, Apis nigrocincta, and Apis mellifera. These nine species thrive in environmental extremes like deserts, rain forests and tundra, but most people only know Apis mellifera, the agricultural darling.

Read more: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/bees/index.html

Photo: Ann Johanssen (NY Times)

Groundwater Depletion in Semiarid Regions of Texas & California Threaten US Food Security

(The following brought to us by CATCH THE BUZZ (Kim Flottum)

The nation's food supply may be vulnerable to rapid groundwater depletion from irrigated agriculture, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

The study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, paints the highest resolution picture yet of how groundwater depletion varies across space and time in California's Central Valley and the High Plains of the central U.S. Researchers hope this information will enable more sustainable use of water in these areas, although they think irrigated agriculture may be unsustainable in some parts.

"We're already seeing changes in both areas," said Bridget Scanlon, senior research scientist at The University of Texas at Austin's Bureau of Economic Geology and lead author of the study. "We're seeing decreases in rural populations in the High Plains. Increasing urbanization is replacing farms in the Central Valley. And during droughts some farmers are forced to fallow their land. These trends will only accelerate as water scarcity issues become more severe."

Read more: http://home.ezezine.com/1636/1636-2012.05.29.08.50.archive.html

Related articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31water.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120528154857.htm

In British Columbia it's the "Day of the Honey Bee"

(A bit of news from Beekeeping Around the World. In British Columbia it's the "Day of the Honey Bee".)

The Day of the Honey Bee is becoming a national day of celebration of the value of honey bees to pollination and food production. Many beekeepers, clubs, farmers markets and retail honey outlets are hosting special events, putting up displays and presenting information and activities that help to educate the public about bee-haviour and bee-friendly gardening and agricultural practices.

Read more: http://www.bcbeekeepers.com/?page_id=275

Related articles: 
http://www.bcbeekeepers.com/?page_id=275
http://www.marghanita.com/help-celebrate-day-of-the-honey-bee/
http://www.paherald.sk.ca/Arts/Cultural-activities/2012-05-29/article-2990250/Buzz-being-created-by-Day-of-the-Honeybee/1