Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Though the public increasingly demands no-risk food, there is no such thing. Bruce Ames, chairman of the biochemistry department at the University of California, Berkeley, points out that up to 10% of a plant's weight is made up of natural pesticides. Says he: "Since plants do not have jaws or teeth to protect themselves, they employ chemical warfare." And many naturally produced chemicals, though occurring in tiny amounts, prove to be potent carcinogens in laboratory tests. Mushrooms and broccoli might be banned if they were judged by the same standards that apply to food additives. Declares Christina Stark...
...pesticides. At a time when nutritionists are urging the public to down more fresh produce, consumer groups are claiming that pesticide use could result in tens of thousands of cancer cases over the next 50 years. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, use of pesticides -- fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and plant-growth regulators -- has more than doubled in the past 20 years, to about 820 million lbs. annually. Farmers say the chemicals are necessary to save crops and keep food prices low; even with extensive spraying, pests destroy around a third of U.S. crops each year...
...seed because it changed hands -- from farmer to grain-elevator operator to feed broker to poultry producer -- so many times. Closer monitoring is necessary at every step along the food-supply chain. Federal agencies also need more flexible enforcement powers. The USDA, for example, cannot levy fines on processing plants. It can close a plant down, but that is a drastic action that is not readily employed...
...varieties of amino acids that constitute the building blocks of proteins. But the entire genome of even the simplest organism dwarfs that snippet. The genetic blueprint of the lowly E. coli bacterium, for one, is more than 4.5 million base pairs long. For a microscopic yeast plant, the length is 15 million units. And in a human being, the genetic message is some 3 billion letters long...
...basic facts were eerily familiar. A North African nation stood accused of obtaining equipment from a European firm in order to build a poison-gas plant. Only this time the culprit is not U.S. antagonist Libya but good friend Egypt...