Various and Sundry
Nov. 9th, 2005 07:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brdgtA Is for Ancient, Describing an Alphabet Found Near Jerusalem
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C's on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimel's, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.
Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.
If they are right, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of an abecedary - the letters of the alphabet written out in their traditional sequence. Several scholars who have examined the inscription tend to support that view.
Experts in ancient writing said the find showed that at this stage the Hebrew alphabet was still in transition from its Phoenician roots, but recognizably Hebrew. The Phoenicians lived on the coast north of Israel, in today's Lebanon, and are considered the originators of alphabetic writing, several centuries earlier.
The discovery of the stone will be reported in detail next week in Philadelphia, but was described in interviews with Ron E. Tappy, the archaeologist at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary who directed the dig.
"All successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," he said.
The research is supported by an anonymous donor to the seminary, which has a long history in archaeological field work. The project is also associated with the American Schools of Oriental Research and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, in Jerusalem.
Frank Moore Cross Jr., a Harvard expert on early Hebrew inscriptions who was not involved in the research, said the inscription "is a very early Hebrew alphabet, maybe the earliest, and the letters I have studied are what I would expect to find in the 10th century" before Christ.
P. Kyle McCarter Jr., an authority on ancient Middle Eastern writing at Johns Hopkins University, was more cautious, describing the inscription as "a Phoenician type of alphabet that is being adapted." But he added, "I do believe it is proto-Hebrew, but I can't prove it for certain."
Lawrence E. Stager, an archaeologist at Harvard engaged in other excavations in Israel, said the pottery styles at the site "fit perfectly with the 10th century, which makes this an exceedingly rare inscription." But he added that more extensive radiocarbon dating would be needed to establish the site's chronology.
The Tel Zayit stone was uncovered at an eight-acre site in the region of ancient Judah, south of Jerusalem, and 18 miles inland from Ashkelon, an ancient Philistine port.
The two lines of incised letters, apparently the 22 symbols of the Hebrew alphabet, were on one face of the 40-pound stone. A bowl-shaped hollow was carved in the other side, suggesting that the stone had been a drinking vessel for cult rituals, Dr. Tappy said. The stone, he added, may have been embedded in the wall because of a belief in the alphabet's power to ward off evil.
In a study of the alphabet, Dr. McCarter noted that the Phoenician-based letters were "beginning to show their own characteristics." The Phoenician symbol for what is the equivalent of a K is a three-stroke trident; in the transitional inscription, the right stroke is elongated, beginning to look like a backward K.
Another baffling peculiarity is that in four cases the letters are reversed in sequence; an F, for example, comes before an E.
The inscription was found in the context of a substantial network of buildings at the site, which led Dr. Tappy to propose that Tel Zayit was probably an important border town established by an expanding Israelite kingdom based in Jerusalem.
A border town of such size and culture, Dr. Tappy said, suggested a centralized bureaucracy, political leadership and literacy levels that seemed to support the biblical image of the unified kingdom of David and Solomon in the 10th century B.C.
"That puts us right in the middle of the squabble over whether anything important happened in Israel in that century," Dr. Stager said.
A vocal minority of scholars contend that the Bible's picture of the 10th century B.C. as a golden age in Israelite history is insupportable. Some archaeological evidence, they say, suggests that David and Solomon were little more than tribal chieftains and that it was another century before a true political state emerged.
Dr. Tappy acknowledged that he was inviting controversy by his interpretation of the Tel Zayit stone and other artifacts as evidence of a fairly advanced political system 3,000 years ago. Critics who may accept the date and description of the inscription are expected to challenge him when he reports on the findings next week in Philadelphia at meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature.
School Board: Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.
Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.
The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.
"I think voters were tired of the trial, they were tired of intelligent design, they were tired of everything that this school board brought about," said Bernadette Reinking, who was among the winners.
The election will not alter the facts on which the judge must decide the case. But if the intelligent design policy is defeated in court, the new school board could refuse to pursue an appeal. It could also withdraw the policy, a step that many challengers said they intended to take.
"We are all for it being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class," said Judy McIlvaine, a member of the winning slate. "It is not a science."
The vote counts were close, but of the 16 candidates the one with the fewest votes was Mr. Bonsell, the driving force behind the intelligent design policy. Testimony at the trial revealed that Mr. Bonsell had initially insisted that creationism get equal time in the classroom with evolution.
One incumbent, James Cashman, said he would contest the vote because a voting machine in one precinct recorded no votes for him, while others recorded hundreds.
He said that school spending and a new teacher contract, not intelligent design, were the determining issues. "We ran a very conservative school board, and obviously there are people who want to see more money spent," he said.
One board member, Heather Geesey, was not up for re-election.
The school board voted in October 2004 to require ninth grade biology students to hear a brief statement at the start of the semester saying that there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, that intelligent design was an alternative and that students could learn more about it by reading a textbook "Of Pandas and People," available in the high school library.
The board was sued by 11 Dover parents who contended that intelligent design was religious creationism in new packaging, and that the board was trying to impose its religion on students. The parents were represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a private law firm, Pepper Hamilton LLP.
An Organic Cash Cow
By KIM SEVERSON, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
Alexis Gersten, a Long Island dentist, never thought about what she poured over her cereal until her son turned 1.
"Having a new milk drinker, I sort of wanted to start him off on the right foot," she said.
Ms. Gersten worried about what synthetic growth hormones, pesticides and antibiotics might do to her child and to the environment. She was concerned about the health of the cows and the survival of local farmers. So she became one of the new mothers who are making milk the fastest growing slice of the organic market. "Some of my friends who don't really think about feeding their children organic food will feed them organic milk," she said.
Milk represents all that is wholesome. Add the word organic, and the purity of milk's image only increases. But a carton of organic milk does not come without complications. It is expensive. Some brands are processed so that an unopened carton can last for months. And an organic seal does not necessarily mean the cows are grazing on pasture or that the milk is local.
Organic milk accounts for more than 3 percent of all milk sold in the United States. But with an annual growth rate of 23 percent in an era when overall milk consumption is dropping by 8 percent a year, organic milk has made the nation's $10.2 billion-a-year dairy industry take notice.
Horizon Organic, which controls 55 percent of the market, is selling $16 million worth of organic milk a month. It is owned by Dean Foods, the nation's largest dairy producer. Groupe Danone, the French dairy giant, owns Stonyfield Farm. Large grocers, including Whole Foods Market and Safeway, have organic house brands. Wal-Mart even sells it.
"It's being held back only by supply now," said George Siemon, chief executive of Organic Valley. A Wisconsin dairy cooperative that Mr. Siemon began in 1988, it is the second-largest seller of organic milk in the country.
Milk is considered a gateway to organic food. Along with produce it is one of the first organic products a consumer will buy, according to the Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash.
The ethos of organic milk - one that its cartons reinforce - conjures lush pastures dotted with grazing animals, their milk production driven by nothing more than nature's hand and a helpful family farmer.
But choosing organic milk doesn't guarantee much beyond this: It comes from a cow whose milk production was not prompted by an artificial growth hormone, whose feed was not grown with pesticides and which had "access to pasture," a term so vague it could mean that a cow might spend most of its milk-producing life confined to a feed lot eating grain and not grass.
Exactly how much time cows should spend grazing before their milk can carry the government's organic label is under scrutiny. Several hundred farmers and organic advocates want organic dairy rules tightened so that cows have more than what they call token access to pasture.
The issue may be ultimately decided in court, said Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute in Wisconsin. His organization is fighting the rise of confinement organic dairies, which, by his estimate, account for about 30 percent of the organic milk sold.
So, what's a well-intentioned milk drinker to do? Decide what matters to you most.
First, weigh the importance of the organic label. Milk from the Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson Valley, which is sold in bottles at Manhattan's Greenmarkets, is not certified organic. The dairy uses no artificial growth hormones, but it treats sick animals with antibiotics. In the summer the animals eat mostly pasture; in the winter they eat hay with grain mixed in.
It is a sustainable operation whose owners decided that the term "organic" was becoming co-opted by large corporations, and that the extra cost of the federal organic label was not worth it. For some, milk that has not traveled far and that comes from cows in small pasture-based operations is more important than an official stamp.
Many connoisseurs say the best milk comes from cows who eat mostly grass. The flavor is more complex, and varies with the seasons. In addition, a grass diet leads to milk with as much as five times the amount of conjugated linoleic acid, which some studies using animal models show can help fight cancer. And grazing is better for the cows' health than a diet of grain.
"We believe in the benefits of grass," Mr. Siemon of Organic Valley said, not that all of the 534 farmers who sell the cooperative milk can meet its pasture standards. Weather and other factors can mean cows' diets must be supplemented with grain.
For Horizon, the issue is supply and demand, said Caragh McLaughlin, brand manager for the company. The diet of Horizon cows can be as much as 40 percent grain, whether the animals are at one of the 300 family-run dairies that sell milk to Horizon or its two large company-owned operations. One is a 4,500-head dairy in Idaho, the other a 600-head facility in Maryland. All Horizon cows have access to pasture.
There is also the issue of pasteurized and ultrapasteurized, a question that weighs shelf life against taste and geography.
Dairies pasteurize milk to kill bacteria and other pathogens that can make people sick and to keep it fresher longer. In pasteurization milk is heated to about 162 degrees for at least 15 seconds. Dairies then stamp cartons with a sell-by date generally from 10 to 16 days after processing. In ultrapasteurization the milk temperature is raised to 280 degrees for about two seconds, then quickly chilled. The sell-by date can be several weeks in the future. For example, a brand of ultrapasteurized milk purchased at a New York store on Nov. 2 had a sell-by date of Jan. 2.
Ultrapasteurized milk can taste creamier than traditionally pasteurized milk, but it can also take on a cooked or burnt flavor. Research is still being done on how much the process compromises the milk's nutritional profile. Because the nature of the milk protein is changed at such high temperatures, ultrapasteurized cream can take longer to whip and never quite achieves the same light, fluffy texture. With either method, an opened carton will stay fresh for only about a week.
For the nation's top organic milk producers, ultrapasteurizing has been a godsend. "The availability of ultrapasteurization has allowed organic milk to enter markets it might not otherwise," Ms. McLaughlin of Horizon said.
At Organic Valley, where almost two-thirds of the milk is ultrapasteurized, its panels of tasters prefer it, Mr. Siemon said.
But for purists, unpasteurized, or raw milk, is the only way to go. It can be delicious and more nutritious, but finding raw milk takes a lot of work. In most states it can be sold legally only on the farm or through clubs in which people buy shares of a cow and divide the milk. And raw milk can pose a health hazard, especially for people with weakened immune systems.
In some parts of the country, finding organic milk is more work than some people are willing to put in. René Nuñez, a Los Angeles lawyer who does much of the shopping and cooking for his wife and two young children, has seen organic milk at Trader Joe's. But that store is a long drive from his house in Pasadena. "We just shop at your regular supermarket down the street and it's not there," he said.
Other milk shoppers care only about price. At Pathmark, a half-gallon of regular milk was $1.70. The same size of Horizon Organic milk was $4.29. Organic milk is so expensive that most state governments consider it a luxury item and will not pay for it under low-income food programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
Ann Lickteig, a mother of four in Burlington, Vt., stopped buying organic milk when it reached nearly $5 a gallon. Now she goes to a local store on Mondays, when milk from a local dairy is on sale for $2.99 a gallon.
"I buy the milk that says no growth hormones, but I don't know that that's the only thing to worry about," she said. "I don't want my kids exposed to potentially harmful chemicals, but I haven't done the research myself."
For some parents, cost does not matter. Nor do the intricacies of the organic pasture rules. They search for the organic label and buy it, no matter what.
"I look at what I pay for everything else, but I don't for the milk," said Ms. Gersten, the Long Island dentist. "Buying any other milk for him is just not an option."
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
In the 10th century B.C., in the hill country south of Jerusalem, a scribe carved his A B C's on a limestone boulder - actually, his aleph-beth-gimel's, for the string of letters appears to be an early rendering of the emergent Hebrew alphabet.
Archaeologists digging in July at the site, Tel Zayit, found the inscribed stone in the wall of an ancient building. After an analysis of the layers of ruins, the discoverers concluded that this was the earliest known specimen of the Hebrew alphabet and an important benchmark in the history of writing, they said this week.
If they are right, the stone bears the oldest reliably dated example of an abecedary - the letters of the alphabet written out in their traditional sequence. Several scholars who have examined the inscription tend to support that view.
Experts in ancient writing said the find showed that at this stage the Hebrew alphabet was still in transition from its Phoenician roots, but recognizably Hebrew. The Phoenicians lived on the coast north of Israel, in today's Lebanon, and are considered the originators of alphabetic writing, several centuries earlier.
The discovery of the stone will be reported in detail next week in Philadelphia, but was described in interviews with Ron E. Tappy, the archaeologist at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary who directed the dig.
"All successive alphabets in the ancient world, including the Greek one, derive from this ancestor at Tel Zayit," he said.
The research is supported by an anonymous donor to the seminary, which has a long history in archaeological field work. The project is also associated with the American Schools of Oriental Research and the W. F. Albright Institute for Archaeological Research, in Jerusalem.
Frank Moore Cross Jr., a Harvard expert on early Hebrew inscriptions who was not involved in the research, said the inscription "is a very early Hebrew alphabet, maybe the earliest, and the letters I have studied are what I would expect to find in the 10th century" before Christ.
P. Kyle McCarter Jr., an authority on ancient Middle Eastern writing at Johns Hopkins University, was more cautious, describing the inscription as "a Phoenician type of alphabet that is being adapted." But he added, "I do believe it is proto-Hebrew, but I can't prove it for certain."
Lawrence E. Stager, an archaeologist at Harvard engaged in other excavations in Israel, said the pottery styles at the site "fit perfectly with the 10th century, which makes this an exceedingly rare inscription." But he added that more extensive radiocarbon dating would be needed to establish the site's chronology.
The Tel Zayit stone was uncovered at an eight-acre site in the region of ancient Judah, south of Jerusalem, and 18 miles inland from Ashkelon, an ancient Philistine port.
The two lines of incised letters, apparently the 22 symbols of the Hebrew alphabet, were on one face of the 40-pound stone. A bowl-shaped hollow was carved in the other side, suggesting that the stone had been a drinking vessel for cult rituals, Dr. Tappy said. The stone, he added, may have been embedded in the wall because of a belief in the alphabet's power to ward off evil.
In a study of the alphabet, Dr. McCarter noted that the Phoenician-based letters were "beginning to show their own characteristics." The Phoenician symbol for what is the equivalent of a K is a three-stroke trident; in the transitional inscription, the right stroke is elongated, beginning to look like a backward K.
Another baffling peculiarity is that in four cases the letters are reversed in sequence; an F, for example, comes before an E.
The inscription was found in the context of a substantial network of buildings at the site, which led Dr. Tappy to propose that Tel Zayit was probably an important border town established by an expanding Israelite kingdom based in Jerusalem.
A border town of such size and culture, Dr. Tappy said, suggested a centralized bureaucracy, political leadership and literacy levels that seemed to support the biblical image of the unified kingdom of David and Solomon in the 10th century B.C.
"That puts us right in the middle of the squabble over whether anything important happened in Israel in that century," Dr. Stager said.
A vocal minority of scholars contend that the Bible's picture of the 10th century B.C. as a golden age in Israelite history is insupportable. Some archaeological evidence, they say, suggests that David and Solomon were little more than tribal chieftains and that it was another century before a true political state emerged.
Dr. Tappy acknowledged that he was inviting controversy by his interpretation of the Tel Zayit stone and other artifacts as evidence of a fairly advanced political system 3,000 years ago. Critics who may accept the date and description of the inscription are expected to challenge him when he reports on the findings next week in Philadelphia at meetings of the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Society of Biblical Literature.
School Board: Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.
Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.
The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum. The policy was the subject of a trial in Federal District Court that ended last Friday. A verdict by Judge John E. Jones III is expected by early January.
"I think voters were tired of the trial, they were tired of intelligent design, they were tired of everything that this school board brought about," said Bernadette Reinking, who was among the winners.
The election will not alter the facts on which the judge must decide the case. But if the intelligent design policy is defeated in court, the new school board could refuse to pursue an appeal. It could also withdraw the policy, a step that many challengers said they intended to take.
"We are all for it being discussed, but we do not want to see it in biology class," said Judy McIlvaine, a member of the winning slate. "It is not a science."
The vote counts were close, but of the 16 candidates the one with the fewest votes was Mr. Bonsell, the driving force behind the intelligent design policy. Testimony at the trial revealed that Mr. Bonsell had initially insisted that creationism get equal time in the classroom with evolution.
One incumbent, James Cashman, said he would contest the vote because a voting machine in one precinct recorded no votes for him, while others recorded hundreds.
He said that school spending and a new teacher contract, not intelligent design, were the determining issues. "We ran a very conservative school board, and obviously there are people who want to see more money spent," he said.
One board member, Heather Geesey, was not up for re-election.
The school board voted in October 2004 to require ninth grade biology students to hear a brief statement at the start of the semester saying that there were "gaps" in the theory of evolution, that intelligent design was an alternative and that students could learn more about it by reading a textbook "Of Pandas and People," available in the high school library.
The board was sued by 11 Dover parents who contended that intelligent design was religious creationism in new packaging, and that the board was trying to impose its religion on students. The parents were represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and a private law firm, Pepper Hamilton LLP.
An Organic Cash Cow
By KIM SEVERSON, The New York Times, November 9, 2005
Alexis Gersten, a Long Island dentist, never thought about what she poured over her cereal until her son turned 1.
"Having a new milk drinker, I sort of wanted to start him off on the right foot," she said.
Ms. Gersten worried about what synthetic growth hormones, pesticides and antibiotics might do to her child and to the environment. She was concerned about the health of the cows and the survival of local farmers. So she became one of the new mothers who are making milk the fastest growing slice of the organic market. "Some of my friends who don't really think about feeding their children organic food will feed them organic milk," she said.
Milk represents all that is wholesome. Add the word organic, and the purity of milk's image only increases. But a carton of organic milk does not come without complications. It is expensive. Some brands are processed so that an unopened carton can last for months. And an organic seal does not necessarily mean the cows are grazing on pasture or that the milk is local.
Organic milk accounts for more than 3 percent of all milk sold in the United States. But with an annual growth rate of 23 percent in an era when overall milk consumption is dropping by 8 percent a year, organic milk has made the nation's $10.2 billion-a-year dairy industry take notice.
Horizon Organic, which controls 55 percent of the market, is selling $16 million worth of organic milk a month. It is owned by Dean Foods, the nation's largest dairy producer. Groupe Danone, the French dairy giant, owns Stonyfield Farm. Large grocers, including Whole Foods Market and Safeway, have organic house brands. Wal-Mart even sells it.
"It's being held back only by supply now," said George Siemon, chief executive of Organic Valley. A Wisconsin dairy cooperative that Mr. Siemon began in 1988, it is the second-largest seller of organic milk in the country.
Milk is considered a gateway to organic food. Along with produce it is one of the first organic products a consumer will buy, according to the Hartman Group, a research firm in Bellevue, Wash.
The ethos of organic milk - one that its cartons reinforce - conjures lush pastures dotted with grazing animals, their milk production driven by nothing more than nature's hand and a helpful family farmer.
But choosing organic milk doesn't guarantee much beyond this: It comes from a cow whose milk production was not prompted by an artificial growth hormone, whose feed was not grown with pesticides and which had "access to pasture," a term so vague it could mean that a cow might spend most of its milk-producing life confined to a feed lot eating grain and not grass.
Exactly how much time cows should spend grazing before their milk can carry the government's organic label is under scrutiny. Several hundred farmers and organic advocates want organic dairy rules tightened so that cows have more than what they call token access to pasture.
The issue may be ultimately decided in court, said Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute in Wisconsin. His organization is fighting the rise of confinement organic dairies, which, by his estimate, account for about 30 percent of the organic milk sold.
So, what's a well-intentioned milk drinker to do? Decide what matters to you most.
First, weigh the importance of the organic label. Milk from the Ronnybrook Farm Dairy in the Hudson Valley, which is sold in bottles at Manhattan's Greenmarkets, is not certified organic. The dairy uses no artificial growth hormones, but it treats sick animals with antibiotics. In the summer the animals eat mostly pasture; in the winter they eat hay with grain mixed in.
It is a sustainable operation whose owners decided that the term "organic" was becoming co-opted by large corporations, and that the extra cost of the federal organic label was not worth it. For some, milk that has not traveled far and that comes from cows in small pasture-based operations is more important than an official stamp.
Many connoisseurs say the best milk comes from cows who eat mostly grass. The flavor is more complex, and varies with the seasons. In addition, a grass diet leads to milk with as much as five times the amount of conjugated linoleic acid, which some studies using animal models show can help fight cancer. And grazing is better for the cows' health than a diet of grain.
"We believe in the benefits of grass," Mr. Siemon of Organic Valley said, not that all of the 534 farmers who sell the cooperative milk can meet its pasture standards. Weather and other factors can mean cows' diets must be supplemented with grain.
For Horizon, the issue is supply and demand, said Caragh McLaughlin, brand manager for the company. The diet of Horizon cows can be as much as 40 percent grain, whether the animals are at one of the 300 family-run dairies that sell milk to Horizon or its two large company-owned operations. One is a 4,500-head dairy in Idaho, the other a 600-head facility in Maryland. All Horizon cows have access to pasture.
There is also the issue of pasteurized and ultrapasteurized, a question that weighs shelf life against taste and geography.
Dairies pasteurize milk to kill bacteria and other pathogens that can make people sick and to keep it fresher longer. In pasteurization milk is heated to about 162 degrees for at least 15 seconds. Dairies then stamp cartons with a sell-by date generally from 10 to 16 days after processing. In ultrapasteurization the milk temperature is raised to 280 degrees for about two seconds, then quickly chilled. The sell-by date can be several weeks in the future. For example, a brand of ultrapasteurized milk purchased at a New York store on Nov. 2 had a sell-by date of Jan. 2.
Ultrapasteurized milk can taste creamier than traditionally pasteurized milk, but it can also take on a cooked or burnt flavor. Research is still being done on how much the process compromises the milk's nutritional profile. Because the nature of the milk protein is changed at such high temperatures, ultrapasteurized cream can take longer to whip and never quite achieves the same light, fluffy texture. With either method, an opened carton will stay fresh for only about a week.
For the nation's top organic milk producers, ultrapasteurizing has been a godsend. "The availability of ultrapasteurization has allowed organic milk to enter markets it might not otherwise," Ms. McLaughlin of Horizon said.
At Organic Valley, where almost two-thirds of the milk is ultrapasteurized, its panels of tasters prefer it, Mr. Siemon said.
But for purists, unpasteurized, or raw milk, is the only way to go. It can be delicious and more nutritious, but finding raw milk takes a lot of work. In most states it can be sold legally only on the farm or through clubs in which people buy shares of a cow and divide the milk. And raw milk can pose a health hazard, especially for people with weakened immune systems.
In some parts of the country, finding organic milk is more work than some people are willing to put in. René Nuñez, a Los Angeles lawyer who does much of the shopping and cooking for his wife and two young children, has seen organic milk at Trader Joe's. But that store is a long drive from his house in Pasadena. "We just shop at your regular supermarket down the street and it's not there," he said.
Other milk shoppers care only about price. At Pathmark, a half-gallon of regular milk was $1.70. The same size of Horizon Organic milk was $4.29. Organic milk is so expensive that most state governments consider it a luxury item and will not pay for it under low-income food programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.
Ann Lickteig, a mother of four in Burlington, Vt., stopped buying organic milk when it reached nearly $5 a gallon. Now she goes to a local store on Mondays, when milk from a local dairy is on sale for $2.99 a gallon.
"I buy the milk that says no growth hormones, but I don't know that that's the only thing to worry about," she said. "I don't want my kids exposed to potentially harmful chemicals, but I haven't done the research myself."
For some parents, cost does not matter. Nor do the intricacies of the organic pasture rules. They search for the organic label and buy it, no matter what.
"I look at what I pay for everything else, but I don't for the milk," said Ms. Gersten, the Long Island dentist. "Buying any other milk for him is just not an option."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Cartography snob Stikes!
Date: 2005-11-09 08:36 pm (UTC)Please be aware that your map of the Gaza strip looks exactly like you ripped out of the Lonely Planet guide book to the area. The one difference between Lonely Planet's map and yours would be that I am sure they correctly labeled the water bodies in a serif font.
Signed,
A better cartographer than you
Re: Cartography snob Stikes!
Date: 2005-11-10 04:40 am (UTC)Fascinating!!! I never knew!
Re: Cartography snob Stikes!
Date: 2005-11-10 06:53 pm (UTC)Water bodies are serif and usually italics (Times is nice) and the rest of the map is San serif. I don't know why, but it's the law.