From Hurriyet :
ISTANBUL - Ben & Jerry's 'Flavor Fathers' are in Istanbul seeking inspiration for new ice cream concotions. Speaking of their love for Baklava and spices, they travel the world in search of the perfect combination, as well as the most ethical way of producing it
The ice cream gurus screaming for justice It is just as important to make products with "great value in terms of justice" as it is to turn a profit, said representatives of Ben and Jerry's ice cream company on Monday, in Istanbul on a search for new varieties of the dessert.
Peter Lind and Arnold Carbone are the flavor directors of Ben and Jerry's, the famous north American ice cream company, and have been working together for over 20 years. They travel the world and ask local customers for inspiration, inventing over a hundred tastes each year, only to have a final handful translated into mass production.
Flavor gurus
The "flavor gurus" are on the first part of their world tour organized around the "do the world a flavor" competition in which participants from 25 countries are tasked with creating a new flavor for the popular company.
With famously irreverent names such as "peace of cake" and "yes Pecan!", a reference to Obama, aspiring flavor creators were also asked to name their concoctions. "A little known secret of success is too make sure your product name begins with 'Ch,'", Lind joked, referring to the flavors 'Cherry Garcia' and 'Chunky Monkey' two popular varieties created by consumers via competitions such as this one. Participants were presented with a long table of ingredients, vanilla and chocolate ice cream and told to create a taste, as well as an accompanying name and packaging design.
Recipes can be posted on line as well as on Facebook, and anyone can submit an idea. Users of the social networking site can vote on the most creative combination (without actually trying them).
The winner in each country will be flown to the Dominican Republic for a week to experience a cocoa cooperative on which some of Ben and Jerry's chocolate is made.
Fair trade is an essential part of Ben and Jerry's philosophy, whose mission statement has centered itself in equal parts on product quality, economic competitiveness and social awareness, since its inception in a renovated gas-station in small town Vermont in 1977.
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Thursday, March 12, 2009
The ice cream gurus screaming for justice
Pioneering midwife touts 'orgasmic birth'
Despite living on a commune in rural Tennessee, Ina May Gaskin has had the kind of career success most people only dream about.
A midwife who never formally studied nursing, Gaskin has helped to bring home birth and lay midwifery back from the brink of extinction in the U.S. An obstetrical maneuver she learned from the indigenous Mayans of Guatemala has made it into scientific journals and medical textbooks, and her insistence on the rights of a birthing mother empowered a generation of women to demand changes from doctors and hospitals.
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Gaskin largely blames the nation's rising maternal death rate on the increase in Caesarean section births and the drugs sometimes used to induce labor.
The National Center for Health Statistics reported last month that the maternal death rate for 2005 has risen to about 15 women per 100,000 live births, more than double the 1998 rate of 7.
At least part of that increase is due to better reporting, but researchers say Caesareans also may be a factor.
Promoting natural birth
Gaskin passionately believes natural childbirth is the answer. The number of women giving birth with a midwife has doubled over the last decade and accounts for about 8 percent of births today — the vast majority in hospitals. Still, she says it's a challenge to promote natural birth to a generation that favors comfort and convenience.
Promoting home births is an even tougher sell. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has continuously warned against home births as too risky.
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See also: Orgasmic Birth: The Natural Reality Behind The Hype
Ethiopia: Authority urges paradigm shift in agriculture law on genetically modified organisms proposed
From Binyam Tamene for All Africa.com :
Addis Ababa — Amid the price of chemical fertilizer showing little sign of decreasing, Federal Environmental Protection Authority urged on Tuesday for a paradigm shift to ecological agriculture.
Dr. Teweldeberhan Gebregziabhere, Director General of FEPA said during a national conference on Ecological Agriculture for Sustainable Food Security in Ethiopia said that the country must diversify its source of fertilizers.
While expressing his support to using chemical fertilizers to attain food security in the country, the Director said the country has as much as much as possible stick to ecological agriculture, adding the country's high capacity to produce compost could support the shift.
FEPA also proposed a new draft law for the use and application of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country.
The proposed law entitled the Bio-safety Draft Law, which will focuses on GMOs, will be instrumental especially at this time when use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture remains controversial, the Director said.
Dr. Tewolde said the law was currently under consideration by the Prime Mister's Office, before heading to the parliament which is expected to approve it.
"If genetically modified remained unregulated in the country, they could suffer the general set up of our society as well as the environment," Dr.Tewolde said.
The Director was speaking at a national conference on Ecological Agriculture for Sustainable Food Security in Ethiopia.
According to the Director, the draft law prepared to regulate and monitor GMO products produced inside the country, as well as those that are imported in to the country.
But since there is no any legal instrument to control, the country categorically prohibits GMOs, according to Dr Teweldeberhan.
Advocating for the regulation of GMOs, Eco Yeshmachoch Mahiber, a local Consumers association, expressed concerns over the impacts of genetically modified food saying it is hazardous to the natural environment, and sees the generation and use of GMOs as "intolerable." "The generation and use of GMO as intolerable meddling with biological processes that have naturally evolved over long periods of time," said Director of the Association, during the conference.
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Violating human dignity is root of all conflict, says Vatican official
Carol Glatz report for the Catholic News Service :
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Not respecting human dignity lies at the root of all conflict, including the renewed violence in the Gaza Strip, said a top Vatican official and longtime diplomat.
Religious tensions play a minor role in fueling world conflicts; rather, countless economic and social injustices are what foment violence, said Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.
"For decades, human dignity has been trampled in the Gaza Strip; hatred and homicidal fundamentalism find fodder" in social and economic injustice, he said in an interview published in the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, Jan. 1.
He said the use of arms in the Middle East must stop because "dialogue is the only possible way to bring peace" in the Holy Land.
The "fresh, ferocious outbreak of violence" and renewed military action in Gaza will not break the cycle of attacks and reprisals in the Holy Land, he said.
"The current excessive imbalance between military spending and development aid -- (which) exists everywhere, including the Gaza Strip -- shows a deep distrust in the power of dialogue, a deep distrust in the human being," said the cardinal. Only dialogue can end the world's conflicts, he added.
But talks must include rectifying long-standing injustices, he said.
The international community, diplomats and local governments must remember that "the source of every conflict, not to mention the degradation of the environment and the social and economic injustices" that trigger the many crises plaguing communities today, is "contempt for, neglect of, or only partial agreement with the principle of respect for human dignity," he said.
In the article that appeared in the Vatican newspaper's first issue of 2009, Cardinal Martino assessed a variety of world events and issues that attracted the attention of the Vatican in 2008.
He said the scandal of hunger in the world continues to be of concern.
Famine and lack of nutrition are to be blamed on the poor distribution of plentiful foodstuffs, not overpopulation, he said.
The responsibility for the food crisis "is in the hands of unscrupulous people who focus only on profit and certainly not on the well-being of all people," said Cardinal Martino.
A more just system of distribution and not the manufacturing of genetically modified foods is the key to addressing the problem, he said.
"If one wants to pursue GMOs (genetically modified organisms) one can freely do so, but without hiding that it's a way to make more profits," he said.
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