The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service determined Thursday evening that plans put forth by Foster Farms to immediately change its slaughtering and processing practices were sufficient to avoid shuttering the facilities.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 213 of the 278 reports of salmonella contraction during the outbreak came from California. The Food Safety and Inspection Service’s investigation began July 1, but some cases were reported as early as March. While the 42 percent hospitalization rate is double that of typical salmonella outbreaks, according to the CDC, there have been no reported deaths associated with the outbreak.

Dr. Tomas Aragon, the director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Emergency Readiness at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, said he was concerned by the relatively high rate of hospitalization for afflicted individuals.

Aragon speculated that this particular strain — or strains — is more pathogenic than typical ones, given that salmonella is usually self-limiting and that individuals with the infection usually recover without antibiotics. The salmonella linked to Foster Farms facilities has been uncommonly resistant to antibiotic treatment, according to the CDC.

No recall has been issued for the chicken products, and the investigation is ongoing. Aaron Lavallee, an administrator with the Food Safety and Inspection Service, explained that discerning which products were tainted with salmonella is the missing piece of the puzzle. Officials have yet to pinpoint whether those products are chicken breasts, thighs or something else altogether.

In letters sent to Foster Farms’ president, Ron Foster, on Oct. 7, food safety inspectors said multiple noncompliance records had been filed against the company before and during the outbreak, from January through September, regarding fecal material on animal carcasses.

Foster Farms has made various attempts to reassure the public on its website. Foster personally apologized to those afflicted with the foodborne illness, and the company reminded consumers that all raw meat must be properly handled and cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees to ensure safe consumption.

Cal Dining said that it does not use any Foster Farms products and that students with meal plans have no need to worry about the outbreak. Stores that do not vend Foster Farms chicken include Andronico’s Community Markets and Trader Joe’s, among others.

Costco will continue to sell Foster Farms poultry, according to Craig Wilson, the corporation’s vice president of food safety and quality assurance. Safeway representatives could not be reached for comment.

Contact Kimberly Veklerov at kveklerov@dailycal.org.

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Kevin Foote/Senior Staff

For more than a decade, genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have been a point of contention among scientists and citizens alike. While many criticize the technology as potentially harmful to health and the environment, others, such as UC Berkeley scientist George Chuck, see genetic engineering as the answer to many of the world’s most pressing problems.

For the past year, Chuck has trekked out to his personal collection of dirt rows at the edge of UC Berkeley’s Gill Tract to tend to the hobby he reserves for late nights and weekends.

Although Chuck spends his working hours as a UC Berkeley researcher in the campus department of plant and microbial biology, he sees his true calling as a tender of the fields, nourishing the plants that lay root in his plot and cursing the wild turkeys that ravage his crops.

“Working on these African grain crops is satisfying,” he said. “It’s a lot more satisfying than working on biofuels, at the end of the day.”

In this unassuming plot of land, Chuck is attempting a grand feat: to address world hunger through the delicate art of bioengineering. Specifically, Chuck’s hobby involves injecting an African wheat plant with a gene known to suppress “axillary branches” in sunflowers. By doing this, he hopes to reduce the number of sprouts protruding from the plant, allowing it to produce higher-quality seeds. He hopes these seeds will someday be used to bake a nutritious bread that is popular in certain parts of Africa where poverty is rampant.

His dreams are sowed in this small segment of the Gill Tract, a UC-owned piece of land in Albany, where some of the campus’s most important agricultural research is conducted.

“I do not want to create a transgenic crop plant — I’m using genetic engineering as a tool to test my hypothesis,” Chuck said.

Though his studies are rooted in educational and philanthropic intentions, his research may hit the nerves of avid GMO opponents, including one prominent UC Berkeley scientist, Miguel Altieri. What Chuck calls a process that ancestral farmers — the “first engineers” — have been doing “for thousands of years” Altieri condemns as an infringement of “biological barriers imposed by nature.”

“(Farmers) would never use this agrobacterium that Chuck is using — they never crossed bacteria with plants or genes of frogs with plants or anything like that,” said Altieri, a professor in the department of environmental science, policy and management. “We are creating novel organisms, and we have no idea what the ecological impacts are.”

Chuck, however, who funds the entire project himself, says this notion is precisely the type of criticism he hopes to address through his research, which also compares the health effects of “wild” or “ancestral” crops with those of their “cultivated” descendents.

“They think we’re screwing with nature, and that’s a somewhat valid concern,” Chuck said. “But the other thing they’re concerned about is, what is it doing to you? There’s this idea that somehow wild crop plants are more natural or better for you, and that’s completely untrue.”

Sarah Hake, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Plant Gene Expression Center and a UC Berkeley professor of plant development, notes that these misconceptions are the source of much of the stigma surrounding GMOs, and she sees this as a premature bias against the technology.

“I think if they understood what are the risks, what are the benefits … it would not be as scary,” said Hake, who works with Chuck in her lab. “These things can be tested and answered, so my response is to isolate one concern at a time. Look at a particular example rather than condemning the whole technology.”

Altieri also pointed to the likely futility of any bioengineering research that attempts to mitigate world hunger, given the underlying social, political and historical factors that contribute to the issue. He calls biotechnology a “blind solution” to a complex problem.

“Call it a simple experiment in biology, and don’t claim that they can help mitigate famine in Africa,” Altieri said.

Even with criticism from Altieri and those who share his views, Chuck remains steadfast in his mission, even giving tours of his crops to graduate students in Hake’s class.

“People don’t like GMOs. I can understand that, and I can appreciate that,” he said, adding that fear for the unknown should not stand in the way of educational potential. “That’s the mission of the university: to educate. We’re actually doing that with this land.”

Virgie Hoban is the lead research and ideas reporter. Contact her at vhoban@dailycal.org.

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Kira Walker/Staff

The city of Berkeley needs new student trailblazers. The two competing proposals for a new student district both have passionate advocates. At this week’s meeting, the City Council voted to do a staff analysis of the United Student District Amendment, an alternative district map submitted a few months ago. That was good news for the co-ops which do not want to be kicked out of the current student district. It was good news for the dorm residents who want a majority of the dorms in the student district. It was good news for the many nonstudent residents of District 7 who have expressed strong support for keeping the co-ops in the district. Now we need student trailblazers to put together a town hall meeting aimed at bringing all residents together for a fair and inclusive plan.

The Berkeley Student Cooperative board, CalDems board, East Bay Young Dems, ASUC president and two Daily Cal editorials have all expressed strong support for including the majority of co-ops, dorms and Northside residents in the new student district. This objective could be the guiding point for us to take a fresh look at structuring a student district and help us create a new map that incorporates the best of both proposals. With this new perspective, we may even be able to make adjustments to other districts’ borders that have been requested by the coalition of neighborhood associations.

As the current District 7 City Council member, I have helped many students smash stereotypes, stand up to prejudice and discrimination, and take student ideas and translate them into city policies and community action. On multiple occasions, we have successfully challenged racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia and ageism. But all of those forces still exist, and we must continue exposing them and find proactive ways to overcome them

A majority of my commission appointments have been students.  When I first appointed students to the most powerful commissions, such as Zoning, Planning and Police Review, I was yelled at, laughed at and cursed at. But many of these students have gone on to do great things. For example, when Andy Katz  served on the Berkeley Zoning Adjustments Board while completing his undergraduate degree and served as Board President from appointment by members who were two to three times his age. Katz has since gone on to be elected to the East Bay Municipal Utility Board and is now the Sierra Club-endorsed candidate for the California State Assembly for the 15th District. Likewise, student Jesse Arreguin did such great work on the Housing Advisory Commission and the Rent Stabilization Board  that community members asked him to run and elected him to be the first Latino and youngest City Council member. Student Police Review commissioner Claire Zellman wrote groundbreaking legislation on LGBT sensitivity training and went on to become a nationally recognized rabbi.

When I first brought numerous interns into City Hall, there were jokes about being overrun by teenyboppers. It was argued that council items were too important for high school and college interns to write them. But time and time again, students have proven they can do the research, do the community organizing, do the coalition building and translate their visionary ideas into practical policy. This summer, our office had 17 interns who wrote dozens of policies addressing important issues, including housing, environment, labor, health, disability, public safety, economic development and sexual assault awareness. In fact, at the last City Council meeting, 15 different student written City Council items were considered, and almost all were adopted.

Numerous student commissioners and student interns have proven that they can make significant contributions to the city of Berkeley and truly make the world a better place. We have made a lot of progress at getting student voices heard and getting student ideas implemented. It would be tragic to let personal or political agendas get in the way of an inclusive student district now.

Thanks to the summer research of Stefen Elgstrand and other students, it has been proven that it is mathematically possible to keep the co-ops in the student district and to include a majority of dorms. Many nonstudent longtime residents of District 7 have also expressed strong support for keeping the co-ops in the district. The Northside co-ops  must not be kicked out and made to wait 10 years to get back into a student district. The hollow promise that a second student district might be created somehow and sometime in the future is no substitute for creating a fair district map now.

I invite supporters of both plans and anyone interested to come together for a town hall meeting aimed at bringing the student community and current District 7 residents together for a fair and inclusive plan. I believe we can craft a compromise that treats all major student housing groups fairly.  If interested, students can attend our town hall meeting Friday, Sept. 20, at noon and work together to create a consensus proposal.

Andy Katz, Jesse Arreguin, Claire Zellman and Queen Nefertiti Shabazz are just a few examples of students who were trailblazers. We need students this year to apply to be interns and commissioners. We need students to help create a consensus plan that makes a student district a reality. Perhaps this opportunity is your chance to be a trailblazer!

Kriss Worthington is a Berkeley City Council member.

The post Where are the leaders? appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Read this week’s agenda below:

Sara Grossman is the executive news editor. Contact her at sgrossman@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @saragrossman.

The post ASUC Senate agenda: Week 2 appeared first on The Daily Californian.

That said, the council should wait a week before voting on the measure.

On Wednesday, the ASUC Senate should vote on whether to endorse an amended student district map as the best way to represent student voices. Because of legislative procedure, there was no earlier meeting possible for them to consider this, and the opinion of the ASUC should be known before City Council members convene to vote on a matter of such vital interest to Berkeley students.

The district plan proposed by the Berkeley Student District Campaign, an effort spearheaded by the Office of the ASUC External Affairs Vice President, is a flawed effort that does not represent the interests of all students. The plan as it currently stands does not include the voices of students living in Northside student housing co-ops or those living in the Unit 4 residence halls (Foothill, Stern and Bowles).

Tackling this problem, members of the Berkeley student community have proposed an amendment to the student district plan -— the United Student District Amendment. While the USDA is also not a perfect plan, it at least addresses the exclusion of Northside students in the original plan put forth by the BSDC.

ASUC External Affairs Vice President Safeena Mecklai asserted in a recent op-ed in The Daily Californian that the original plan best integrates student populations with the larger Berkeley community because it doesn’t split up the Downtown and North Shattuck neighborhoods. Although Mecklai’s commitment to making sure students and other community members live in harmony is laudable, her argument that the USDA disrupts these neighborhoods and communal interests is unconvincing.

Even though the USDA map does split up those neighborhoods, there’s no indication that those areas contain concrete interest groups the same way the Northside concentration of co-ops and residence halls represent hundreds of students in the space of a couple city blocks. Simply put, it is not worth advocating for a “united student district” if it doesn’t actually unite the voices of enough students.

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