Chemical Agriculture Gets Its Champion
Organic Lifestyle Comments (0)
The list of corporate cronies who will soon run the new, sad reality show in Washington, DC, gets uglier by the day, writes Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association.
Here’s one appointment that may have escaped your notice, Cummins reports. Under the incoming Trump Administration, the CEO of the company that brought us Napalm, Agent Orange, Chlorpyrifos, 2,4-D, and, along with Monsanto, GMO crops, will head up the “American Manufacturing Council.”
It’s a safe bet that Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, won’t care one whit about how much poison his company unleashes on you and your food. On December 10, President-Elect Donald Trump pulled Dow’s Liveris up on stage at the Deltaplex Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., to announce that the head of the chemical giant will lead Trump’s “American Manufacturing Council.”
As the two men “showered each other with praise,” said a Wall Street Journal report, Liveris reportedly told the crowd, “I tingle with pride listening to you.”
In a list of talking points drafted by Trump’s National Advisory Committee for Agriculture and Rural Issues, this was talking point #10: The Trump-Pence administration will use the best available science to determine appropriate regulations for the food and agriculture sector; agriculture will NOT be regulated based upon the latest trend on social media.
With Dow’s CEO in charge of the “American Manufacturing Council,” there’s no doubt that the so-called “best available science” will be as pro-poison and pro-GMO as it gets.
“We’ve got ideas and we’ve got plans,” Liveris told the cheering crowd in Grand Rapids.
Thanks for pointing this out, Ronnie. I haven’t read a word about it in any other source.
***
EPA PANEL TO DETERMINE GLYPHOSATE’S CARCINOGENICITY
Stefanie Spear of EcoWatch reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to evaluate “the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate,” the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.
For years, Monsanto has claimed that glyphosate is safe, advertising at one time that Roundup was “safer than table salt” and “practically non-toxic.”
However, many studies contradict Monsanto’s assertions. In March, 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, concluded that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen.” Then in July, 2016, an IARC scientist, Dr. Kurt Straif, defended the agency’s assessment that glyphosate probably causes cancer in humans. Dr. Straif stated that:
“Our evaluation was a review of all the published scientific literature on glyphosate and this was done by the world’s best experts on the topic that in addition don’t have any conflicts of interest that could bias their assessment.
“They concluded that, yes, glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans based on three strings of evidence, that is clear evidence of cancer in experimental animals, limited evidence for cancer for humans from real-world exposures, of exposed farmers, and also strong evidence that it can damage the genes from any kind of other toxicological studies.”
The SAP meetings now taking place were originally scheduled for mid-October, but the EPA postponed them only a few of days before they were to begin due to “changes in the availability of experts for the peer review panel.”
According to Carey Gillam, research director for U.S. Right to Know, the EPA’s decision to postpone the meetings came after an intense lobbying campaign led by CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agricultural businesses. CropLife initially fought to keep the SAP meetings from happening at all, then said if the meetings were to be held, “any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate” should be excluded from participating.
In a letter to the EPA, CropLife singled out epidemiologist Dr. Peter Infante, who the lobbying firm felt should be “replaced with an epidemiologist without such patent bias.” As the only epidemiologist slated to be on the panel, CropLife felt that Dr. Infante may have had enhanced influence on the epidemiological evaluation on glyphosate.
Dr. Infante has testified on behalf of plaintiffs suing Monsanto over chemical exposure. Nonetheless, Dr. Infante is one of the leading experts in his field, having spent the better part of a storied career protecting the public from harmful chemicals.
Dr. Infante spent 24 years working for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where he determined cancer risks to those working on developing toxic chemicals, including arsenic, asbestos and formaldehyde. He has also served as an expert epidemiology consultant for a number of world bodies, including the World Trade Organization and the EPA.
CropLife’s letter to the EPA was sent two days before the agency announced that the glyphosate meetings would be postponed. Many accused the EPA of kowtowing to lobbyists and the businesses they represent. The accusations only grew louder when Dr. Infante’s name was no longer on the list of panelists scheduled for the December meetings.
Dr. Infante told Delta FarmPress that he was “mystified” by the EPA’s decision to remove him from the meetings. “I didn’t choose to leave the panel,” he said. “No … I was removed from the panel. I’m totally mystified by it.”
The EPA’s move was also surprising to environmental advocacy groups, who say it is highly unusual for the agency to remove a panelist from a Scientific Advisory Panel.
“The industry wants to say that our own government scientists, the top ones in their fields, aren’t good enough for these panels,” said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, after the SAP meetings were postponed in October. “If the EPA wants to add extra epidemiologists that is great but why didn’t they do it before? They are doing this because of pressure from industry.”
According to Gillam, “the delay and the maneuvering by industry to influence panel participation does little to bolster consumer confidence for the likelihood of an objective outcome.”
The EPA said it will issue a risk assessment for glyphosate by spring of 2017.
Jeff Cox adds: With Trump’s choice of climate denier Scott Pruitt as the next administrator of the EPA starting January 20, and with Trump’s stated goal of cutting EPA’s budget by 80 percent, it seems certain that glyphosate will get a ringing safety endorsement by the spring of 2017.
***
NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM BEING CO-OPTED BY AGRIBUSINESS
In a letter to the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, The Cornucopia Institute has requested an independent audit of the National Organic Program (NOP), charging a multiplicity of illegal actions and inactions. The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group alleges that the National Organic Program has failed to enforce the laws governing organic agriculture, thereby allowing multinational corporate agribusinesses to squeeze out family-scale farmers, compromising the integrity of the organic label.
If the independent Inspector General responds to Cornucopia’s request, this will not be the first audit that they have performed at the request of the watchdog group. Past audits have been highly critical of the National Organic Program’s accreditation program overseeing organic certification.
“By failing to vigorously enforce the organic standards, USDA political appointees and NOP management have betrayed ethical family farmers and businesses, along with consumer trust,” stated Mark A. Kastel, Cornucopia’s codirector. “The NOP has ceded control of organic rulemaking and enforcement to lobbyists from the nation’s most powerful agribusinesses.”
Cornucopia’s letter cites a number of serious enforcement violations including: allowing soil-less hydroponic/container growing, which substitutes liquid fertilizers for careful stewardship of soil; allowing documented cases of “willful” violations on factory dairies confining livestock instead of grazing; and allowing as many as 200,000 “organic” chickens to be kept in single buildings without outdoor access.
***
ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION WANTS ECO-CONSOLIDATION
“One of our favorite themes at Organic Consumers Association is the need for all of us to move away from single-issue organizing to galvanizing our many movements—peace, social justice, food and farming, campaign finance reform, faith, environment and climate —around a shared determination to stand up to corruption and to defend our basic rights and our common home,” the group announced in a press release.
“If we can break out of our single-issue silos, we will create a movement, indeed a revolution, so powerful that we will succeed in redirecting our financial and human resources toward the regeneration of our soils, our food, our economies, our health. And in so doing, restore climate stability.
OCA says that’s why the Standing Rock protest was so inspirational: “Because it united us.” Five hundred clergy members from 20 different religious groups gathered at the Standing Rock camp. Musicians Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Jason Mraz held a benefit concert. Bill McKibben, 350.org, and other climate groups got involved. The Code Pink peace and human rights activists participated, as did actress and 60s anti-war activist Jane Fonda.
And then there were the thousands of veterans who descended on the Standing Rock camp, vowing to defend the water protectors from any attempt by “law enforcement” to remove them.
Maybe most importantly, indigenous peoples from tribes around the world took notice of Standing Rock and many sent folks to join in the protection of sacred places and clean water.
“At OCA, what started out as a fundraising drive to provide an organic Thanksgiving dinner for the water protectors, turned into something bigger. We knew that our message—that we are all connected, that we are all fighting the same battle, that we are all one movement—resonated when in just two days our members donated $40,000, ten times more than the $4,000 we asked for, to provide food and other supplies for the camp,” wrote Katherine Paul, associate director of the Organic Consumers Association.
***
TRUMP CABINET PICKS ARE BAD NEWS FOR FOOD SAFETY GROUPS
“With all eyes on the Trump administration’s likely picks for his Cabinet, we’ve been closely following the nominations of appointees most likely to make an impact on the food movement,” says the Center for Food Safety. “And we won’t sugarcoat this: so far, it’s bad news.”
It’s becoming clear that a Donald Trump presidency means key Administration officials will try to dismantle some of the gains we’ve fought for over the past 20 years, and in some cases will even ally with big corporations.
President-elect Trump has denied climate change, promised to cancel the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency. His nominees are cut from the same cloth.
For starters, Trump has just nominated oil and gas industry darling Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA to stop vital protections for public health, including crucial regulations against smog and toxic pollutants like mercury and arsenic. Pruitt also supported Oklahoma’s failed “Right to Farm” bill which would have protected corporate and factory farms at the expense of family farmers and animal welfare, and prevented local communities from passing laws to protect their water and public health.
Add to the list Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration. Price has been a consistent opponent of food safety laws while in Congress, voting against the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act and the Food Safety Modernization Act. He voted for the DARK Act twice, and voted to repeal Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for beef, pork, and chicken.
***
FIRST CROP OF PERIGORD TRUFFLES HARVESTED AND SOLD IN OREGON
Dr. Charles Lefevre, internationally renowned mycologist and co-founder of The Oregon Truffle Festival (Jan. 20-29), has worked with growers across North America since 2000 to plant orchards of oak and hazelnut seedlings inoculated with truffles through his company, New World Truffieres.
His first customer, Pat Long of Corvallis, unearthed the first Perigord truffle (Tuber melanosporum) grown in Oregon in 2013. Last week, Long’s first harvest of this winter season produced enough truffles for a commercial sale to James Beard Award-nominated chef Matt Bennett of Sybaris Bistro in Albany, Oregon, making this the first sizable crop of Perigord truffles grown in the Pacific Northwest. With 12 more weeks of harvests ahead in several Pacific Northwest orchards, Dr. Lefevre anticipates the upcoming cultivated truffle season to be the most productive yet.
“We’re seeing many of our customer’s orchards throughout the United States on the verge of or producing significant quantities of truffles this year,” says Dr. Lefevre. “The large increases in truffle production this year are a clear product of management activities in the orchards, and represent a breakthrough in our ability to farm Perigord truffles in North America. Over the past decade, we have encountered, understood, and finally surpassed the major hurdles complicating truffle production on this continent.”
Because one of the world’s most valuable culinary ingredients are also highly perishable, truffles quickly lose their prized aroma. The aim of cultivating truffles is to provide a source closer to the consumer, so that diners can enjoy truffles at their peak ripeness as they do in Europe where truffles have been historically abundant. Dr. Lefevre has had more success in achieving this goal than any other truffle cultivator in North America, as most of the cultivated truffles on the continent are being produced by his customers. Oregon’s native foraged truffles, particularly Oregon Black and Oregon Winter White truffles, are harvested and prepared by chefs in season each year at the Oregon Truffle Festival. This year, the Oregon-grown Perigord truffles will be served alongside wild Oregon truffles for the first time.
New World Truffieres is an established pioneer in truffle cultivation in North America, as Dr. Charles Lefevre developed his own method for inoculating host tree seedlings with truffle spores while still a graduate student at Oregon State University in 2000. His trees were also the first to produce cultivated Burgundy truffles (British Columbia, 2013) and Bianchetto truffles (Idaho, 2012) in North America and the first to produce cultivated Pecan truffles in the world. Each year since 2007, Dr. Lefevre has gathered international truffle industry experts to share information, research and advances in truffle science at the annual Truffle Growers Forum at the Oregon Truffle Festival, in addition to promoting the North American truffle industry and appreciation through the festival’s myriad seminars, truffle hunts, truffle dog trainings, tastings and dinners featuring some of the West Coast’s most renowned chefs.
###
The list of corporate cronies who will soon run the new, sad reality show in Washington, DC, gets uglier by the day, writes Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association.
Here’s one appointment that may have escaped your notice, Cummins reports. Under the incoming Trump Administration, the CEO of the company that brought us Napalm, Agent Orange, Chlorpyrifos, 2,4-D, and, along with Monsanto, GMO crops, will head up the “American Manufacturing Council.”
It’s a safe bet that Andrew Liveris, CEO of Dow Chemical, won’t care one whit about how much poison his company unleashes on you and your food. On December 10, President-Elect Donald Trump pulled Dow’s Liveris up on stage at the Deltaplex Arena in Grand Rapids, Mich., to announce that the head of the chemical giant will lead Trump’s “American Manufacturing Council.”
As the two men “showered each other with praise,” said a Wall Street Journal report, Liveris reportedly told the crowd, “I tingle with pride listening to you.”
In a list of talking points drafted by Trump’s National Advisory Committee for Agriculture and Rural Issues, this was talking point #10: The Trump-Pence administration will use the best available science to determine appropriate regulations for the food and agriculture sector; agriculture will NOT be regulated based upon the latest trend on social media.
With Dow’s CEO in charge of the “American Manufacturing Council,” there’s no doubt that the so-called “best available science” will be as pro-poison and pro-GMO as it gets.
“We’ve got ideas and we’ve got plans,” Liveris told the cheering crowd in Grand Rapids.
Thanks for pointing this out, Ronnie. I haven’t read a word about it in any other source.
***
EPA PANEL TO DETERMINE GLYPHOSATE’S CARCINOGENICITY
Stefanie Spear of EcoWatch reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is conducting a Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) to evaluate “the carcinogenic potential of the herbicide glyphosate,” the active ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup.
For years, Monsanto has claimed that glyphosate is safe, advertising at one time that Roundup was “safer than table salt” and “practically non-toxic.”
However, many studies contradict Monsanto’s assertions. In March, 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, concluded that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen.” Then in July, 2016, an IARC scientist, Dr. Kurt Straif, defended the agency’s assessment that glyphosate probably causes cancer in humans. Dr. Straif stated that:
“Our evaluation was a review of all the published scientific literature on glyphosate and this was done by the world’s best experts on the topic that in addition don’t have any conflicts of interest that could bias their assessment.
“They concluded that, yes, glyphosate is probably carcinogenic to humans based on three strings of evidence, that is clear evidence of cancer in experimental animals, limited evidence for cancer for humans from real-world exposures, of exposed farmers, and also strong evidence that it can damage the genes from any kind of other toxicological studies.”
The SAP meetings now taking place were originally scheduled for mid-October, but the EPA postponed them only a few of days before they were to begin due to “changes in the availability of experts for the peer review panel.”
According to Carey Gillam, research director for U.S. Right to Know, the EPA’s decision to postpone the meetings came after an intense lobbying campaign led by CropLife America, which represents the interests of Monsanto and other agricultural businesses. CropLife initially fought to keep the SAP meetings from happening at all, then said if the meetings were to be held, “any person who has publicly expressed an opinion regarding the carcinogenicity of glyphosate” should be excluded from participating.
In a letter to the EPA, CropLife singled out epidemiologist Dr. Peter Infante, who the lobbying firm felt should be “replaced with an epidemiologist without such patent bias.” As the only epidemiologist slated to be on the panel, CropLife felt that Dr. Infante may have had enhanced influence on the epidemiological evaluation on glyphosate.
Dr. Infante has testified on behalf of plaintiffs suing Monsanto over chemical exposure. Nonetheless, Dr. Infante is one of the leading experts in his field, having spent the better part of a storied career protecting the public from harmful chemicals.
Dr. Infante spent 24 years working for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, where he determined cancer risks to those working on developing toxic chemicals, including arsenic, asbestos and formaldehyde. He has also served as an expert epidemiology consultant for a number of world bodies, including the World Trade Organization and the EPA.
CropLife’s letter to the EPA was sent two days before the agency announced that the glyphosate meetings would be postponed. Many accused the EPA of kowtowing to lobbyists and the businesses they represent. The accusations only grew louder when Dr. Infante’s name was no longer on the list of panelists scheduled for the December meetings.
Dr. Infante told Delta FarmPress that he was “mystified” by the EPA’s decision to remove him from the meetings. “I didn’t choose to leave the panel,” he said. “No … I was removed from the panel. I’m totally mystified by it.”
The EPA’s move was also surprising to environmental advocacy groups, who say it is highly unusual for the agency to remove a panelist from a Scientific Advisory Panel.
“The industry wants to say that our own government scientists, the top ones in their fields, aren’t good enough for these panels,” said Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, after the SAP meetings were postponed in October. “If the EPA wants to add extra epidemiologists that is great but why didn’t they do it before? They are doing this because of pressure from industry.”
According to Gillam, “the delay and the maneuvering by industry to influence panel participation does little to bolster consumer confidence for the likelihood of an objective outcome.”
The EPA said it will issue a risk assessment for glyphosate by spring of 2017.
Jeff Cox adds: With Trump’s choice of climate denier Scott Pruitt as the next administrator of the EPA starting January 20, and with Trump’s stated goal of cutting EPA’s budget by 80 percent, it seems certain that glyphosate will get a ringing safety endorsement by the spring of 2017.
***
NATIONAL ORGANIC PROGRAM BEING CO-OPTED BY AGRIBUSINESS
In a letter to the USDA’s Office of Inspector General, The Cornucopia Institute has requested an independent audit of the National Organic Program (NOP), charging a multiplicity of illegal actions and inactions. The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group alleges that the National Organic Program has failed to enforce the laws governing organic agriculture, thereby allowing multinational corporate agribusinesses to squeeze out family-scale farmers, compromising the integrity of the organic label.
If the independent Inspector General responds to Cornucopia’s request, this will not be the first audit that they have performed at the request of the watchdog group. Past audits have been highly critical of the National Organic Program’s accreditation program overseeing organic certification.
“By failing to vigorously enforce the organic standards, USDA political appointees and NOP management have betrayed ethical family farmers and businesses, along with consumer trust,” stated Mark A. Kastel, Cornucopia’s codirector. “The NOP has ceded control of organic rulemaking and enforcement to lobbyists from the nation’s most powerful agribusinesses.”
Cornucopia’s letter cites a number of serious enforcement violations including: allowing soil-less hydroponic/container growing, which substitutes liquid fertilizers for careful stewardship of soil; allowing documented cases of “willful” violations on factory dairies confining livestock instead of grazing; and allowing as many as 200,000 “organic” chickens to be kept in single buildings without outdoor access.
***
ORGANIC CONSUMERS ASSOCIATION WANTS ECO-CONSOLIDATION
“One of our favorite themes at Organic Consumers Association is the need for all of us to move away from single-issue organizing to galvanizing our many movements—peace, social justice, food and farming, campaign finance reform, faith, environment and climate —around a shared determination to stand up to corruption and to defend our basic rights and our common home,” the group announced in a press release.
“If we can break out of our single-issue silos, we will create a movement, indeed a revolution, so powerful that we will succeed in redirecting our financial and human resources toward the regeneration of our soils, our food, our economies, our health. And in so doing, restore climate stability.
OCA says that’s why the Standing Rock protest was so inspirational: “Because it united us.” Five hundred clergy members from 20 different religious groups gathered at the Standing Rock camp. Musicians Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, and Jason Mraz held a benefit concert. Bill McKibben, 350.org, and other climate groups got involved. The Code Pink peace and human rights activists participated, as did actress and 60s anti-war activist Jane Fonda.
And then there were the thousands of veterans who descended on the Standing Rock camp, vowing to defend the water protectors from any attempt by “law enforcement” to remove them.
Maybe most importantly, indigenous peoples from tribes around the world took notice of Standing Rock and many sent folks to join in the protection of sacred places and clean water.
“At OCA, what started out as a fundraising drive to provide an organic Thanksgiving dinner for the water protectors, turned into something bigger. We knew that our message—that we are all connected, that we are all fighting the same battle, that we are all one movement—resonated when in just two days our members donated $40,000, ten times more than the $4,000 we asked for, to provide food and other supplies for the camp,” wrote Katherine Paul, associate director of the Organic Consumers Association.
***
TRUMP CABINET PICKS ARE BAD NEWS FOR FOOD SAFETY GROUPS
“With all eyes on the Trump administration’s likely picks for his Cabinet, we’ve been closely following the nominations of appointees most likely to make an impact on the food movement,” says the Center for Food Safety. “And we won’t sugarcoat this: so far, it’s bad news.”
It’s becoming clear that a Donald Trump presidency means key Administration officials will try to dismantle some of the gains we’ve fought for over the past 20 years, and in some cases will even ally with big corporations.
President-elect Trump has denied climate change, promised to cancel the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency. His nominees are cut from the same cloth.
For starters, Trump has just nominated oil and gas industry darling Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA to stop vital protections for public health, including crucial regulations against smog and toxic pollutants like mercury and arsenic. Pruitt also supported Oklahoma’s failed “Right to Farm” bill which would have protected corporate and factory farms at the expense of family farmers and animal welfare, and prevented local communities from passing laws to protect their water and public health.
Add to the list Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), nominated for secretary of Health and Human Services, which oversees the Food and Drug Administration. Price has been a consistent opponent of food safety laws while in Congress, voting against the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act and the Food Safety Modernization Act. He voted for the DARK Act twice, and voted to repeal Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for beef, pork, and chicken.
***
FIRST CROP OF PERIGORD TRUFFLES HARVESTED AND SOLD IN OREGON
Dr. Charles Lefevre, internationally renowned mycologist and co-founder of The Oregon Truffle Festival (Jan. 20-29), has worked with growers across North America since 2000 to plant orchards of oak and hazelnut seedlings inoculated with truffles through his company, New World Truffieres.
His first customer, Pat Long of Corvallis, unearthed the first Perigord truffle (Tuber melanosporum) grown in Oregon in 2013. Last week, Long’s first harvest of this winter season produced enough truffles for a commercial sale to James Beard Award-nominated chef Matt Bennett of Sybaris Bistro in Albany, Oregon, making this the first sizable crop of Perigord truffles grown in the Pacific Northwest. With 12 more weeks of harvests ahead in several Pacific Northwest orchards, Dr. Lefevre anticipates the upcoming cultivated truffle season to be the most productive yet.
“We’re seeing many of our customer’s orchards throughout the United States on the verge of or producing significant quantities of truffles this year,” says Dr. Lefevre. “The large increases in truffle production this year are a clear product of management activities in the orchards, and represent a breakthrough in our ability to farm Perigord truffles in North America. Over the past decade, we have encountered, understood, and finally surpassed the major hurdles complicating truffle production on this continent.”
Because one of the world’s most valuable culinary ingredients are also highly perishable, truffles quickly lose their prized aroma. The aim of cultivating truffles is to provide a source closer to the consumer, so that diners can enjoy truffles at their peak ripeness as they do in Europe where truffles have been historically abundant. Dr. Lefevre has had more success in achieving this goal than any other truffle cultivator in North America, as most of the cultivated truffles on the continent are being produced by his customers. Oregon’s native foraged truffles, particularly Oregon Black and Oregon Winter White truffles, are harvested and prepared by chefs in season each year at the Oregon Truffle Festival. This year, the Oregon-grown Perigord truffles will be served alongside wild Oregon truffles for the first time.
New World Truffieres is an established pioneer in truffle cultivation in North America, as Dr. Charles Lefevre developed his own method for inoculating host tree seedlings with truffle spores while still a graduate student at Oregon State University in 2000. His trees were also the first to produce cultivated Burgundy truffles (British Columbia, 2013) and Bianchetto truffles (Idaho, 2012) in North America and the first to produce cultivated Pecan truffles in the world. Each year since 2007, Dr. Lefevre has gathered international truffle industry experts to share information, research and advances in truffle science at the annual Truffle Growers Forum at the Oregon Truffle Festival, in addition to promoting the North American truffle industry and appreciation through the festival’s myriad seminars, truffle hunts, truffle dog trainings, tastings and dinners featuring some of the West Coast’s most renowned chefs.
###
