Growl-worthy

With a domain name like growlery.ca, it seems that I ought to provide you with a bit of gowling, yes? If you've run out of growls, please help yourself to one of these:

Terminator Seeds

Few things are more annoying than this terminator seed nonsense. Imagine: some stupid company sells seeds that will grow into plants once, but thereafter produce sterile seeds, so that farmers will be forced to buy new seeds every year. That's bad enough, but when terminator seeds spread into a neighbour's crop without that farmer's knowledge or consent, and when the corporation owning the rights to those seeds then sues the farmer... well, you can see where this is going. It's extremely damaging in all sorts of ways. (See also: Environmentalists sound alarm on 'zombie seeds' at Canada.com, and Terminator Seed Ban Act introduced at the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network website.

No more farmgate sales

We've always been able to buy meat, poultry, and eggs directly from our local farmers. Well, no more. Now the provincial government forbids this, unless the meat was processed in a provincially or federally licensed facility. That means that a cattle farmer on our little island will have to ship his cows to the mainland for slaughter - and then ship the meat back here if he wants to sell it to his neighbours. What sense does that make? Why would a farmer bother to ship his meat back, at added cost? What effect will this have on our ability to buy locally-raised food? More about this at the Tyee: Can't Slaughter Like You Used To.