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Washing Enzyme A fruit market and restaurant on the Danforth have been severely damaged in a two-alarm blaze Wednesday morning. Fire crews were dispatched to the scene at around 8:15 a.m. after a fire broke out at 2541 Danforth Avenue, just west of Main Street. Janny's Fruit Market and Smiley's Restaurant were affected by the blaze as were about six apartments located on top of the businesses. The health department has been called in to assess the situation inside the establishments, said Capt. Adrian Ratushniak with Toronto Fire Services. Ratushniak said officials are investigating how the blaze was sparked but that it appears it began on the building's main level before creeping up to the third floor. "We're not sure how many smoke alarms were put into this particular unit," he said. "We're going to take a look through it and investigate." It took about an hour to get the blaze under control, said Ratushniak. About 60 firefighters responded to the scene. Ratushniak didn't know if the shops were open for business at the time the fire broke out. There have been no reports of injuries. Fire trucks have been cleared from the scene though one truck will remain on the scene for the early part of the afternoon to help with the investigation.
2008-06-12 09:57:19

Washing EnzymeDuring debate on the bill in June, Senators Feinstein, Boxer andObama voted to send the bill back to the House. Sen. McCain, asMcCain is ought to do, stubbornly voted “nay,’ hewingto his principled opposition to pork barrel politics. During thedebate, Sen. Boxer summarized the environmental left’sconcerns with the bill as it was taking shape, opposing any effortto drill for America’s oil and gas resources offshore,opposing the ability to import liquefied natural gas, and opposingnuclear power. To Boxer’s credit, she expressed skepticismover ethanol’s environmental impact. McCain’sopposition was mainly rooted in corn ethanol’s huge federalsubsidies, already totaling well over $40 billion in the 10 yearsbefore the 2005 vote in the Senate. California legislators have gotten into the act as well,introducing multiple bills to increase the use of ethanol, cutgreenhouse gas emissions by mandate, and reduce oil production– all in the name of the environment. That many of the billsoperate at cross purposes to each other or to federal law is nomatter; the appearance of action is more important than outcome inthe Alice in Wonderland world of politics. The benefit of experience has now shown us what uncriticallistening to political pressure groups can give us. Corn ethanolhas been touted by a phalanx of groups from the right and left,including environmental organizations such as the Natural ResourcesDefense Council, national security conservatives, and, of course,the farm industry. Corn ethanol’s central promise was thatit would enhance “energy security” by reducing oilimports while reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The facts of corn ethanol are otherwise. In exchange for whatamounts to a whopping $0.51 per gallon subsidy for ethanol blenders(reduced to $0.45 per gallon in the recent Farm Bill), Americanfarmers have produced record amounts of corn. This has resulted inmaking a fuel that takes more energy to produce than we get out ofit, increased food prices around the world, increased use of fossilfuel-based fertilizers and pesticides, and increased greenhouse gasemissions. How did this happen? To grow more corn, farmers reduced soy beanproduction, much of which shifted to Brazil. To grow more soybeans, Brazilians cut down rain forest – this, of course, hasruinous implications for greenhouse gas emissions, one of thesupposed benefits of turning corn into vehicle fuel. In addition to being bad environmental policy, corn ethanolsubsidies have added misery to the world’s poor. Accordingto U.S. Department of Agriculture, about one-fifth of the bigrun-up in world food prices has been caused by U.S. corn-ethanolsubsidies. International organizations peg food price increasesdue to corn ethanol much higher, at 40 percent. With food riots inMexico, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Haiti, our corn ethanolsubsidies are dangerously immoral as well as foolish. Less than a month ago, I had the chance to summarize my oppositionto corn ethanol subsidies at an educational symposium. "Energy Alternatives: America's Challenge in the GlobalEconomy" was sponsored by the University of California,Irvine, the Milken Institute, and the New Majority CaliforniaEnergy Task Force on May 13. Speaking on a panel immediately afterformer governor, and current California State Attorney GeneralJerry Brown spoke – surprisingly, Brown had favorable wordsfor nuclear power – I boosted modern nuclear power as a wayto reduce greenhouse gases and reduce our reliance on importedfossil fuels. During my talk I warned that not every renewable energy source ishelpful in the effort to address global warming, specificallysingling out corn ethanol because it is, "…destroyingBrazilian rainforest as soybean production has shifted from theU.S., it is also starving people in the third world and causingunrest." My remarks caused a bit of a stir, causing another panelist, AnneKorin, an energy policy analyst and co-chair of the Set AmericaFree coalition and a director of the Institute for the Analysis ofGlobal Security (IAGS), to strongly defend corn ethanol at theconclusion of the conference. Ms. Korin passionately stated thatcorn ethanol is not causing a rise in world food prices sinceAmerican farmers are exporting more grain than ever. She alsoemphatically disputed the notion that corn ethanol was causing anydestruction of the Amazonian rainforest, pointing out that sugarcane is grown outside of the rainforest region in Brazil. As I previously cited, Anne Korin's first statement regarding foodprices is flat wrong according to government officials who tracksuch things. Further, to someone in the third world spending 80percent of their income on food, any increase in the cost of foodis devastating and can push their family into starvation. ThatU.S. farm and energy policy is abetting this artificial famine isunconscionable. Ms. Korin's second assertion completely misses the mark. I neverlinked the destruction of the rainforest in Brazil to sugar cane;rather, I linked it to the U.S. appetite for corn ethanol which hasdisplaced domestic soybean production to nations such as Brazilwhere they have cut down rainforest to put more land intoproduction. According to a study by the University of Minnesotaand the Nature Conservancy published in Science in February, 2008, increased demand for corn ethanol iscontributing to the conversion of the Brazilian Amazon intofarmland as Brazilian farmers grow the soybeans U.S. farmers usedto grow. If we want more affordable ethanol, the best U.S. policy would beto drop our $0.54 per gallon tariff on ethanol imported fromnations such as Brazil where they make ethanol from sugar cane. Sugar cane, by the way, is eight times more efficient at makingfuel than corn and it is grown in the southern U.S. Better yet, we can open up Alaska and our offshore territories tooil and gas drilling. Rather than begging the Saudis to pump moreoil we should pump more of our own – sadly, that wouldrequire our living in the real world where hard choices have to bemade. Further, we should produce far more clean and affordableelectricity, using nuclear power, rather than coal and natural gas. If global warming is the problem many say it is, then nuclearpower has to play a major role in its solution since nuclear powermakes the most amount of energy for the least amount of greenhousegas emissions of any source of energy. Fortunately, after some 30years of effort, the Department of Energy a few days ago finallyapplied for a license to operate Yucca Mountain in Nevada as arepository for spent nuclear fuel. Too bad we are not yet doingwhat the French do: recycle nuclear fuel, reducing waste by about96 percent. The bottom line is this: we need to base our energy and globalgreenhouse gas reduction policies on sound science and economics,not simply on what may be good for a few well-placed interestgroups. CRO Chuck DeVore represents 450,000 people in the California StateAssembly in coastal Orange County. He retired from the ArmyNational Guard as a lieutenant colonel. From 1986 to 1988 he was aReagan White House appointee in the Pentagon. DeVore co-authoredChina Attacks with Steven Mosher. The book was translated intoChinese for sale in Taiwan. See: www.ChuckDeVore.com . copyright 2008 Chuck DeVore
2008-06-12 09:54:37

Washing EnzymeOthers, particularly large outfits in the Tenderloin, are seekingcreative new ways to cut costs, but not services, in this grave newworld. They are clubbing together to buy in bulk, paying upfront tolock in prices months down the road, or swapping out specific foodsin search of cheaper staples. "I've been doing this almost 14 years now, and this is the mostchallenging time of all, primarily because of costs we simply can'tcontrol," said Tom Nolan, the executive director of Project OpenHand, which provides 2,600 meals a day to homebound patientssuffering from HIV/AIDS and other diseases like cancer. Among those costs are fuel for meal deliveries in town and freightto bring the food here from growing areas, as well as soaring costsof the food itself. "Every article I read says that food inflation is 5 or 6 percent,"said Dan Schuman, director of operations at Project Open Hand. "Butwhen I drill down into the categories of what I actually buy, it'smuch higher: canned tuna is up 50 percent. Meat is up 12 to 18percent. Dried beans are up 30 to 40 percent. Milk is up 33percent. Cheese is up 50 percent. Eggs are up 66 percent. Rice isup 30 percent in just the last four months, and there are actuallyshortages." Eggs, once a cheap protein source, are so expensive that the SanFrancisco Food Bank, which supplies most nonprofit food programs,no longer buys them. At Glide Foundation, the cost of a meal is up more than 10 percentfrom a year ago. At St. Anthony Foundation, which cooks an averageof 2,600 hot meals daily, it's risen from 33 cents a plate to 40cents a plate -- an 18 percent increase in three months. ExecutiveDirector Father John Hardin expects that food costs will be up atotal of 25 percent within the next three months. "It's not what you would call luxury items," Hardin said. "It'sthe basics: bread, milk, cheese, eggs, rice, grains. Things likethat are just skyrocketing." Several factors are to blame for today's high food prices,including corn being grown for ethanol, weak growing seasonsoverseas and increased demand for grains, meat and dairy frompopulous developing countries like India and China. Experts believethat for many food items, higher prices are not an anomaly, but arehere to stay. Stretching dollars Cutting programs or meals is not seen as an option to makebudgets. With organizations like St. Anthony's buying upwards of 20percent of their food, to be successful, they are adoptinginnovative strategies to stretch dollars. Two years ago, the San Francisco Food Bank, St. AnthonyFoundation, Project Open Hand, Meals on Wheels and Glide Foundationformed a consortium to buy staples like rice and dried beans inbulk. That early, prescient move has proved critical in recenttimes, and they are talking now about what additional food itemsthey might buy together. Sage advice from rice growers led the Food Bank to purchase thisyear's supply in one go -- seven tractor trailer loads of2,000-pound sacks of rice. Volunteers have rebagged the rice in1-pound portions. St. Anthony's has begun securing food on the secondary markets, aspeculative move that so far has helped them lock in lower prices. "The Food Bank really tipped us to that strategy," Hardin said.Another strategy is reaching out to new folks to donate food, andHardin is developing relationships with Safeway, Trader Joe's andBoudin Bakery. Going green, while expensive up-front, has also helped controlcosts. Project Open Hand has replaced most of its fleet oflumbering old vehicles that got nine miles per gallon with 10fuel-efficient Scions. That has meant a 70 percent savings on fuelalone. And because they are smaller, the Scions can be parked inthe basement, saving a further $20,000 on parking fees. Both Project Open Hand and the Food Bank have new solar panelsfrom PG&E that should save them $15,000 in electricity coststhis year. Then there are smaller shifts, like replacing bread with tortillasor buying fattier cuts of meat, as St. Anthony Foundation has done,or subbing mackerel for tuna, which is the practice at Project OpenHand. Finally, there are internal moves, like not filling vacantpositions and instituting salary freezes for the coming fiscalyear. Food Bank in crisis None of the nonprofits could survive without the Food Bank, whichdonates up to 50 percent of the food they need. It is at the heartof the ecology of how San Francisco feeds an estimated 150,000people, many of them children, at daily risk of going hungry. The Food Bank stocks 180 neighborhood food pantries where a familymember might drop in to pick up a week's worth of groceries. Allare oversubscribed and serve 6,000 more people this year than theydid last year. It also provides food to over 400 other nonprofitagencies. "We couldn't do what we do without them," Nolan said of the FoodBank, which provides $1.1 million worth of food to Project OpenHand annually. Over the past few years, the amount of food the U.S. governmentprovides to the San Francisco Food Bank has dropped from 4 millionpounds of commodity food annually to 1 million pounds. Othersources of shelf-stable and packaged food are flat or slightlydown. That's of grave concern to nonprofit agencies. The good news is that the Food Bank has more than made up thosedecreases with fresh produce, which often has higher nutritionalvalue and is more expensive than packaged food. "The more produce we can provide our agencies or clients, the morewe are saving them money or giving our clients food they can'tafford," said Paul Ash, executive director of the San FranciscoFood Bank. But that, too, comes with an edge: Getting fresh produce out intothe community is expensive for the Food Bank and agencies. It mustmove fast and it is expensive to refrigerate. And stressed as charities are by rising costs, they also areseeing more hungry people than ever before. On Memorial Day, St. Anthony Foundation had its busiest day ever,serving almost 4,000 meals. All have seen new faces in their foodlines following the closure of other, smaller food programs. "The line does look different. In many ways, it's a working poorline," said Willa Selden, Glide's CEO. It's not only food programs seeing increased demand and highercosts; clinic visits to Glide are up 20 percent. "We are gettingmany more people coming through all our programs, and at a timewhen there are no more resources," Selden said. City, state and federal funding is not going up with costs. Thatwill lead to increased demand at city soup kitchens, and evenorganizations that receive no city money, like St. AnthonyFoundation, will be hit by city cutbacks, Hardin said, because whenan agency might lose a government contract, there are still hungrypeople who need to be fed and will seek a new place to go. The situation is equally dire outside San Francisco. AlamedaCounty Community Food Bank said that for each of the past sixmonths, it has fielded calls from 300 new families seeking foodassistance. In times like these, the importance of a diverse base of donorsbecomes most clear. Nobody is sure what will happen to donations, which tend to beseasonal, but anecdotal evidence suggests this could be a toughfundraising year. Some of Project Open Hand's small, monthlysubscribers have regretfully stopped giving, Nolan said, and Seldensaid that church service donations are down at Glide.
2008-06-12 09:54:30