Here in Lake County and all over the state, volunteers are circulating petitions to put genetically modified food – or GMO – labeling on the California ballot.

If the considerable body of scientific evidence pointing to health risks associated with GMO consumption is not sufficient motivation for you to sign, then please, do it to restore free market capitalism.

Do it to end the Corporate Agriculture Welfare State.

Eighty percent of all our GMO crops go directly to animal feed, mostly factory-farmed livestock and poultry. An industry which, like GMO crops themselves, is heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.

GMO crops would not be able to compete economically in a real free market (i.e., without government welfare checks) because the cost of producing the GMO end-product exceeds the value of that product on the market.

Yes, it costs more to plant, grow and harvest a bushel of GMO soy or corn than that bushel is worth, per the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Taxpayers have been making up the difference.

Therefore, GMO crops are welfare crops.

Search the prices of GMO soy verses non-GMO soy and organic soy. You will find that, per CBOT, non-GMO soy sells for 10 to 30 percent more than what is paid for GMO soy per bushel and organic soy brings in at least twice the price of GMO soy.

American taxpayers have been carrying Big Ag on our backs for too long already. GMO labeling will correct many wrongs currently plaguing the Wall-Street-rigged US farming system.

And by the way, one fear-tactic you will hear from the Biotech lobbying industry is that GMO labeling would drive up the cost of food. Not true.

And here’s why:

While it may be true that a majority of processed foods on the average American supermarket shelf today contain GMO ingredients, the percentage of GMO is usually low, and usually from vegetable oil ingredients.

In every case where giant food manufacturers sell overseas, they are already making an equivalent product without GMOs, to avoid overseas GMO labeling laws.

Ergo, a vanilla wafer made for the US market contains GMO ingredients, while the same company’s vanilla wafer made for export is made without GMO veggie oil.

When GMO labeling passes here in the USA (and since no company wants to admit to GMO ingredients) it will be a relatively pain-free process for those food manufacturers to simply start using GMO-free vegetable oil in all their products, not just the ones they export to other countries.

Almost overnight (and well before any labeling deadline approaches) the 70 to 80 percent of processed foods currently using GMO veggie oil will no longer contain any GMO ingredients.

One industry that will be significantly impacted by GMO labeling is factory-farmed livestock and poultry, which is already the source of many health problems.

Even without E. coli and other outbreaks, standard operating procedures – such as daily hormone and antibiotic supplements – in these factory farms negatively impact our health. We are long overdue for a serious overhaul of that entire industry.

I am a meat and poultry eater myself, but I regard the health risks of eating factory-farmed food to be unacceptable. Also unacceptable: huge amounts of tax money needed to subsidize increased health costs resulting from chronic diseases associated with the factory-farmed meat that most Americans eat daily.

If GMO labeling can provide the impetus to clean up our factory farm situation, that will be an added benefit of passing this bill here in California.

Deb Baumann lives in Upper Lake, Calif.

You’ve seen the commercials about starving children in other parts of the world, but did you know that there are starving children right here in Lake County?

According to a Food and Nutrition Survey in 2010, 18 percent of Lake County residents are living in below poverty conditions and do not have access to a stable source of food throughout the year.

They cope in various ways, including the use of food stamps, free meal programs for children and by using church or community sponsored food pantries.

United Christian Parish (UCP) does not have the only food pantry in the county but I would like to share a little about how it functions as indicative of needs and service in our community.

UCP has always had some kind of food ministry to feed the hungry and we have been proud participants and supporters of the Free Kitchen Project since its inception, but in 2008 we determined we needed to do something more.  

As with many other churches, prior to that time we tried to help people on a case by case basis but always felt we were falling short of what people needed.

In response we decided to open a food pantry that would provide one week’s worth of food for any family that needed it.  

Further, we would let the families have some choice in the kind of food they received, but they would be limited to using the pantry once every three months.

We offer this service all year round, by appointment Tuesday through Thursday.

In 2008 when we first opened we provided one week’s worth of food for 196 adults and 128 children for a total of 324 people.

By 2011 that number grew to 272 adults and 180 children for an annual total of 452 people.  

How were we able to provide a week’s worth of food for 452 people last year, and how can you help feed even more next year?

Our food pantry has in the past been stocked solely by members of the congregation. This year we received several large group donations that enabled us to significantly increase our giving ability.

Students and staff at Terrace Middle School completely stocked our pantry through a food drive before the holidays and throughout the year we received food donations from the Early Lake Lions Club, Kiwanis, Strong Financial customers, Weight Watchers, Konocti Christian Academy and through partnerships with groups such as the Free Kitchen who received grants and food from Sutter Lakeside and Grocery Outlet in addition to others.

In short – we did it through community partnerships.

All this month the “Stop Hunger Now: Lake County CAN!” food drive has been collecting food to help fight hunger not just in Lake County but around the world.

In addition to stocking food pantries around the lake we will be preparing 20,000 meals to ship overseas to a country where the people are not only “food insecure” but are actually dying from starvation.

On Friday, March 30, and Saturday, March 31, the seven United Methodist churches throughout the county will organize all of the food received and distribute it to food pantries in Lakeport, Upper Lake, Clearlake Oaks, Clearlake, Middletown, Lower Lake and Kelseyville.

You can still participate in Stop Hunger Now: Lake County CAN! by bringing a donation of food to the Upper Lake United Methodist Church, 604 Clover Valley Road, from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Friday, March 30, or to Clearlake United Methodist Church, 14521 Pearl Ave., from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 31.

You can deliver your food and go, or you can stay to take part in special events planned for the day.

More information is available at www.lakecountycan.org .

Can Lake County make a difference and help stop hunger now? Lake County CAN!

Shannon Kimbell-Auth is pastor of United Christian Parish in Lakeport, Calif.

We are what we love. “Rend your hearts and not your garments,” says the prophet Joel.

Lent is a matter of the heart! “Yet even now, says the LORD, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” This is the church’s Lenten call to repentance, and this is what we are setting out to do in these following 40 days.

First we have to have an authentic understanding of “repentance.”

The Greek word for repentance, “metanoia,” denotes a change of mind, a reorientation, a fundamental transformation of outlook of our vision of the world, and of our own self; and a new way of loving ourselves, loving others, and loving God. In other words: a “change of heart.”

It involves not mere regret of past evil but of our recognition of the distorted vision of our own condition, in which sin, by separating us from God, has reduced us to a divided, autonomous existence, depriving us of both our natural glory and our freedom.

Rather than mere dwelling on human sinfulness, repentance becomes the realization of human insufficiency and limitation.

Repentance then should not be accompanied by a preoccupation with our guilt but by an awareness of our estrangement from God and from each other.

This meaning of repentance replaces its negative connotation with a positive one, focusing on the communion with God that we are aiming for rather than the alienation that we are leaving behind.

Why did Jesus single out prayer, fasting and almsgiving? The Jewish religion in the time of Jesus considered these three practices as the principle works of the religious life. These were seen as the key signs of a pious person, the three great pillars on which a righteous life was based.

But Jesus pointed to the heart of the matter. Why do you pray, fast and give alms? To give glory to God? Or to draw attention to yourself so that others may notice and think highly of you?

Our Lord warns his disciples, and us, of self-seeking glory – the preoccupation with looking good and seeking praise from others.

True piety is something more than feeling good about yourself or looking holy. True piety is loving devotion to God. It is an attitude of awe, reverence, worship and obedience.

So why the ashes? Being strewed with ashes is an ancient sign of humility. It is dust – matter of the earth – which the ancient scriptures, and modern science, tell us we are made of. In other words – dirt!

And humility is definitely a dirty word in our modern culture. The word itself comes from the Latin word for dirt or soil. That’s why we call the soil in our gardens – humus! It’s from the same root word. So humility just means being down to earth, having your feet on the ground. That’s not so bad is it?

It's expressed beautifully in an old Shaker hymn:

'Tis the gift to be simple,
'tis the gift to be free,
'tis the gift to come down
where we ought to be,
and when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained
to bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed,
to turn, turn, will be our delight
till by turning, turning we come round right.

That’s the starting point! It is only when we have our feet firmly planted on the ground that we can turn around and rechart our course.

And that’s humility. It is only when we are not so full of ourselves that we can be filled with God.

And that is what Jesus offers us. It is communion with God our loving Father. It is coming home to the loving arms of our Father who awaits us, who longs for us. In God alone we find the fullness of life, happiness and love. God wants to renew us each day and give us new hearts of love and compassion.

Today, we are called to journey with Jesus in a special season of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Easter, our Christian Passover.

We, too, must follow our Lord in the way of the cross in denying ourselves and taking up our own cross in order to share in the victory of Christ's death and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit is ever ready to transform our hearts and to lead us further into God’s life of love and holiness.

Fr. Leo M. Joseph, O.S.F., is parish priest for St. John’s Parish in Lakeport, Calif.

TNR stands for “trap/neuter/release,” which is a program where unowned cats, whether feral (wild) or simply “strays” are trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated for rabies, and released back into the environment where they were found.

For years Lake County, like most parts of the country, has had a “trap and euthanize” policy which has completely failed to resolve our cat overpopulation problem.  

As has been mentioned in previous articles, Lake County kills five times more cats per capita than any other county in the state. This is a shameful and embarrassing statistic.

Our cat problem has a negative impact on real estate values and the quality of life for our citizens. It generates strife between neighbors, poses health risks to people and their pets, and shocks visitors and prospective homebuyers coming to the area.

There are two types of cats the Lake County Animal Control shelter deals with: truly feral cats which fear humans and cannot be safely handled, and friendly strays which are lost or abandoned by their owners.

They all have one thing in common: most of them are being fed, either intentionally or not, by humans.

Yes, these cats can and do hunt for food, but most of them rely on food provided by well-meaning people who don’t want to see them starve.  

Surveys show that 10 to 20 percent of households feed cats they don’t own. Because of this most experts are calling such unowned cats “community cats.” They are free-roaming cats, some too feral to touch, some very friendly, being fed by people who don’t consider themselves the “owners” but who feed them daily.

Because these people don’t consider themselves owners, they don’t feel responsible to have the cats spayed and neutered, and in many cases the sheer number of cats being fed makes it financially impossible for them to do so.  

If you take a feral cat to the shelter it will almost certainly die there.  It is hard to make a case that they are somehow better off being brought to the shelter where they will sit huddled in a small cage, stressed and frightened, exposed to contagious viruses, for the mandatory three days before they are euthanized.  

The modern TNR program stops the reproductive cycle and gets them back to where they came from within 24 hours. They can live out their lives and the population will decline over time due to natural attrition.

Opponents of TNR usually bring up the negative impact that cats have on wildlife – primarily song birds.

My reply to that is we’ve given “trap and kill” programs a chance for the last 30 plus years and it hasn’t worked. The cats are still there, the birds are still being killed. Do you want to just keep doing what we’ve been doing for the next 30 years?

Others say TNR does not work. Experts in the field say that if managed properly and given enough time, it does work.

Successful TNR programs have reduced euthanasia rates from 30 to 70 percent in Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey, San Diego, North Carolina, Connecticut and Utah.

Still others say TNR is too expensive.

When you add up all the direct and indirect costs of the current “trap and kill” programs it costs the taxpayers about $100 per cat. When you consider how much the county has already spent on a program that hasn’t worked, doesn’t it make sense to try something else?

In our opinion the main reason “trap and kill” has not worked and will never work is that the public will not stand for it.

People who have been feeding stray cats so they won’t starve are certainly not going to participate in a cat extermination program.

In order to get our cat population problem under control we are going to need the help and cooperation of the public, which means finding an alternative to euthanasia.

In January of 2012 local veterinarians created the “Catsnip” program which offers a limited number of free spay and neuter surgeries for Community Cats for one year.  After that time we expect the county to step up with a plan.

We would like to see the county fund a minimum two year TNR pilot program where vouchers would be issued for spay/neuter of community cats.

Lake County Animal Care and Control recently installed a spay/neuter facility for impounded/adopted dogs and cats. They are currently only performing surgery three days a week.

A county-funded TNR program would allow them to utilize their facility full-time. Vouchers could also be used at the SPCA spay/neuter facility on Highway 29, as well as any private practice willing to accept them.

What can you do to help?  

1. If you are feeding community cats and you can’t afford to spay/neuter contact one of the Catsnip coordinators listed below to get on the waiting list for the Catsnip Free Spay/Neuter Program.  Remember, only truly unowned cats qualify for this program.

2. If you can afford $50 to $65 to spay/neuter the community cat you are already feeding, DO IT! You will be doing yourself and your neighbors a favor. Spayed and neutered cats tend to keep newcomers away so your colony will not keep increasing in size. The SPCA and several private veterinary clinics around the lake offer spay/neuter for Community Cats at a significantly discounted rate. Contact Vicki Chamberlin for more information.

3. Kitten season is here. If you are feeding a community cat who has kittens, trap them ASAP so they can be socialized and hopefully adopted.

4. If you own a barn or warehouse in need of rodent control contact Lake County Animal Care and Control. There is no safer, more effective means of rodent control than a couple of hunting cats.

5. Microchip your cats! Many of the friendly cats brought to Animal Care and Control are owned but never recovered because there is no way to identify them. If you can, keep your cats indoors or inside an escape-proof yard. Studies have shown that confined cats live five times longer on average than free roaming cats.    

6. Attend the next Animal Control Advisory Board meeting scheduled for Monday, March 26, at 1 p.m. at the shelter where this subject will be on the agenda.

7. Let your Supervisor know you support TNR.

8. Volunteer to help! The Catsnip program needs help with trapping and transporting cats.

Catsnip coordinators:

Vicki Chamberlin, Lakeport, 707-263-3958, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Kathy Langlais, Animal Coalition of Lake County, Clearlake, 707-995-0552
Erica Bergstrom, Middletown, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Susan A. Cannon, DVM, and Chris S. Holmes, DVM, work at Wasson Memorial Veterinary Clinic in Lakeport, Calif. Their guest commentary is endorsed by Main Street Veterinary Clinic, Clearlake Veterinary Clinic, Animal Hospital of Lake County and Middletown Animal Hospital.

I am going to leave out most of the story. And, I would add that my troubles were not caused by speculation or risk taking; au contraire, I was trying to consolidate and move to a defensive position financially when I got caught in the housing market debacle.

I pick up the story at the point of my attempt to do a “short sale.”

I contacted a local Realtor, and after entering the date in her company’s computer program, she came up with a value of $140,000. This was about half of my cost for the house and property. However, I had to accept the fact that something is worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.

Fortuitously, I received a cash offer for $120,000, which was just within the 15 percent of appraised value required.

However, The Bank had a separate appraisal for $170,000. The Bank nixed the sale and demanded the Realtor raise the price to their appraisal value, which of course we did.

And, not another person looked at the house, and the short sale period timed out.

I was curious as to why and how The Bank appraisal was so out of line with the market.

The representative for The Bank would not return my calls.

I asked my Realtor to ask the representative why he did not return my calls. He told the Realtor that he was too busy and he would not talk to me by phone, email or any other way. He was just too busy.

I tried to get help from HUD. They could offer no help in this situation.

I emailed my grievances to my Congressman: No word.

After dozens of calls to The Bank, I gave up and attempted to take the next step available: deed in lieu of foreclosure. So, I filled out all the paperwork and submitted it to The Bank.

I was assigned a representative, and was told to vacate the property by Sept. 20, 2011, which I did.

I was told to wait to be contacted for a “walk through.” That call never came.

I called The Bank several times, and my representative finally stopped calling me back.

After three months I called The Bank and was told that my file was with a law firm because there was a lien on the property.

I called the law firm in question and found out that the lien was from Sunrise Bank. So, I got on the net and found that Westamerica Bank had purchased Sunrise Bank.

I called Westamerica and got through to someone who was sympathetic and she promised that she would try to resolve the situation.

This took me, without hyperbole, 10 minutes. It took the person at Westamerica two days to get the error corrected.

Now I figured, I was back on track. So I called The Bank again, and I was told that my paperwork had a “perishable date,” and needed to be redone.

I immediately got the forms and resubmitted the paper work. I did not hear anything for a week and so I called the bank and was told that my file had been closed, and that, according to her computer, I was denied “deed in lieu of” last September. Case closed.

The problem is that my daughter co-signed and, of course, she would like to get the “clock” started for the seven-year period it takes to clear her credit.

So, I called The Bank and they said foreclosure is in the works, and that there is no way to expedite the process, and no way to know when it would take place.

I had accepted my fate and just wanted the nightmare to end. I just wanted to give back a three year old house that was in perfect order.

I asked for nothing, just closure, after a total of two and a half years since the debacle began.

The Bank was rescued by the taxpayers because it was “too big to fail.” I am thinking now that The Bank should have failed because it was too big.

The Bank, by the way, is servicing the loan, they have no stake in the outcome, they are churning fees no matter what, and the government, which is the ultimate guarantor of the loan, is footing the bill.

Those of you who have preached laissez faire (government non-intervention), I would suggest that if you ever had to deal with The Bank, you would start thinking about another French term: guillotine.

Nelson Strasser lives in Lakeport, Calif.

When you think about it, many of us have had an encounter with an unowned “community cat” whether it is feral, abandoned, a drifter or one looking for new territory.

My most memorable experience was a large tom that paid occasional visits from a nearby feral colony and often fought with my cats.

After numerous wounds and abscesses my cat Toby contracted Feline AIDS (FIV), which is transmitted via cat-to-cat bite wounds. Two years ago his immune system weakened and I had to euthanize him due to an overwhelming infection.

Many of the people feeding unowned felines may not realize the impact these free-roaming cats have on the populations around them.

Anyone providing food to any cat is considered a “caregiver,” like it or not. Caregivers have good intentions but beyond feeding, many are unwilling or unable to have their cats spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and tested for contagious diseases such as FIV and Feline Leukemia (FeLV).

Once a food source is provided cats will be attracted and will congregate, exhibiting group behaviors such as socializing, breeding, hunting, and fighting. Before you know it, a colony has formed and will grow exponentially if the food source can support it.  

The risk of disease is higher in groups of cats since many infectious organisms transmit via saliva, respiratory secretions, and feces. Social grooming, eating/drinking from the same bowl, etc. can transmit the respiratory viruses, Feline Leukemia, and rarely FIV.  

Bite wounds can transmit FIV and Rabies, not to mention lots of bacteria. Fecal material can transmit panleukopenia (a parvovirus) and intestinal parasites.

External parasites such as fleas, ticks, and ear mites thrive within cat colonies since they have a smörgåsbord of individuals to feed from.

Many infections and parasites have “carrier” or latent stages, where the individual appears healthy yet can transmit disease to other cats or people.

And worse yet, a pregnant female can transmit FeLV or FIV to her fetuses, so kittens may be born infected and will appear healthy during the first few months of life.

Often caregivers try to befriend and handle unowned cats, putting themselves at risk for bites and scratches.

Anyone trying to pet or catch a cat with unknown vaccination status should be aware of a few health risks.

Cats are now the most frequently reported domestic rabid (infected with rabies) animal in the U.S., and anyone bitten by an unvaccinated cat should take preventative measures against the disease. For some baffling reason rabies vaccination is not required by law for cats in this state or county.

Cat scratches, often a minor painful nuisance, may transmit Bartonella (aka Cat Scratch Disease) a vague illness of fevers, swollen lymph nodes, aching, and malaise.

All this information may seem a bit alarmist or may discourage some from befriending stray cats altogether.

I would like to reinforce, though, that it is not enough for caregivers to just provide food for community cats.

They should make every attempt to get these cats spayed or neutered, tested for FeLV and FIV (and eliminated from the population if carrying either) and vaccinated against rabies, the respiratory viruses, parvovirus and leukemia.

A trap-neuter-return (TNR) program, such as the new Catsnip program sponsored by Lake County veterinarians, helps accomplish these goals by providing a free surgery and rabies vaccine.

In addition, most of the participating hospitals offer discounted pricing – for cats in the program – for the other feline vaccinations and testing.

Let me reiterate from Dr. Jeff Smith’s previous article that only unowned cats qualify for this free program.

Contacts for the program are: north county – Vicki Chamberlain, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; south county – Animal Coalition of Lake County, 707-995-0552; and Middletown – Erica Bergstrom, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Please consider the health of the surrounding human and animal communities when feeding unowned cats.

Lisa Takesue, DVM, works at Main Street Veterinary Clinic in Lakeport, Calif. Her guest commentary is endorsed by her colleagues at Middletown Animal Hospital, Animal Hospital of Lake County, Wasson Memorial Veterinary Clinic and Clearlake Animal Hospital.