Here's where red tape and bureaucracy meet ignorance and stupidity. We're treating plants like the dangerous chemicals that run around with the guise of being medicine. Plants are harmless. You would never dream of banning alfalfa, but the plant has one of the highest sources of vitamins of any plant known on the planet. Of course something with a natural, more digestable, more usable form of vitamin is going to help whatever ailment you have, along with a sensible diet free from preservatives. So why aren't you allowed to SAY this? Because the drug companies have a big business out there, and they're doing just about everything they can to corner the market on everything health related. If you get sick, they want to be the ones you turn to in order to get better. They've almost wiped common sense in health care off the map. Yes, they've been able to patent plants. The way they do it is to genetically modify the plant, and if they make a substantial change to the makeup of the plant, they can 'own' it. You really don't have to worry about this unless some seeds from some GMO happen to blow into your garden and you happen to unknowingly sell them and an inspector happens to come by your table and happens to decide to inspect it. It's more of a problem with soy and corn. There are definitely ways to do it... I'd go by a health food store and ask them to share what they know. We have to stick together and they'd probably be willing to help you out, even if you might be competition. There's more to be gained in standing together than being cutthroat in terms of competition. Asking someone local would be best, since they have firsthand knowledge of the market you're going into. They might even buy some of your product. May only good things happen for you!

As ltilton and noogy has mentioned, there are a myriad of restrictions for many states, both in shipping in and out of all fruits and vegetables. And all politics aside - diseases can threaten some of our very important commercial orchard industries. These companies aren't all "fat cats". In fact, most of our commercial growers are smaller operations. Many are multi-generation family enterprises. Some have been in their communities for over a hundred years and employ large numbers of that communities' residents. We have to be very careful not to fall into the political rhetoric and say stuff that sounds right, but in fact, is not anchored in fact. Personally, I'm not for big government either, my politics lean to states' rights and less big government. But, there IS a place for government overseeing, and when it comes to our United States commercial food industry, those restrictions and inspections have actually kept HLB from spreading at pandemic rates. That's what happened in China - not enough government overseeing and inspection and it has decimated their cherished citrus industry. We got caught with our pants down in Florida. The Dept. of Agriculture in conjunction with each citrus states' own depts. of food and agriculture (the CDFA for me here in California) are not going to make that same mistake. We can't stop HLB. But, we can slow it way, way down. And hopefully enough to allow those researchers around the world to either develop resistant cultivars (several have been developed that look promising, but there are over 3,000 different citrus cultivars!), or find a way to treat the disease or better, inoculate existing citrus trees (this research has shown some very, very exciting results). We're just trying to keep ahead of the floodgates right now. Just to give you an idea of what the state of California is considering for trying to stem the spread of HLB: if they find that it has spread from the original discovery site (border of Los Angeles and Orange County), one of the control methods they are considering and is on the table, is forcing every homeowner who has citrus trees growing in their yard to cut them down. I can't tell you the reaction this news had at my local CRFG meeting. Nearly every single member of my local CRFG has at least one citrus tree in their yard. Most, like myself, have many. Hopefully it will not come to this, that would be the end of an era for us here in S. California, where cities were created on our citrus industry (Riverside, San Bernardino, many cities in Orange County.) Folks, I don't mean to jump up and down on a soapbox, but we just have to be so very careful what we say, and the rhetoric we espouse on a public forum. I'm glad you've all given me the opportunity to enlighten folks, and not get slammed for it. I am a native-born Californian that literally grew up in a Valencia orange orchard. Many of my family friends grew citrus here for commercial use (mostly navel oranges for in-hand eating, and some juice oranges as well.) I have become good friends with Clausen's Nursery here in Vista, that moved from growing citrus commercially to growing citrus trees for the wholesale market, and kindly open their doors to us retail customers. They're concerned that their three generation family business is in jeopardy. HLB may put their entire family and extended family, as well as all their employees out of business. I look over their beautiful 20 acres of lovely citrus trees and just cried the other day. All that could be lost due to one person's selfish interests. It really put things in perspective for me. They are the nicest people, they don't make a huge profit, and they do it because they love it. So, better that you "spread the harvest" within your neighborhood. Share your citrus with your close neighbors. Be sure they don't propagate citrus from any of your seeds and just eat the lovely fruit. Hopefully we can find a control method soon. The clock is ticking for us here in California, Arizona, Texas, and all the other citrus belt states. We don't want to end up like Florida. Patty S.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/09/20/monsantos-gm-corn-and-cancer-in-rats-real-scientists-deeply-unimpressed-politics-not-science-perhaps/ "Their claim is that the rats fed GM corn and Roundup got more such tumours earlier than the control group. The criticism of this finding is that the control group was simply too small to allow such an observation to be made with any certainty. And they have not conducted, or at least not presented, the standard statistical tests which would allow they or us to determine whether the results were the outcome of pure blind chance." http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/09/anti-gmo-researchers-used-science-publication-to-manipulate-the-press/ "Any journalist that wanted to receive an advance copy was required to sign a non-disclosure agreement before receiving one. That agreement prohibited the outlet from sharing the results with any outside experts before the embargo lifted. In other words, if a press outlet wanted to be one of the first to cover the story, it would have to run the story without having any experts sanity check the paper." "The embargo lifted during a live press conference from the researchers, hosted in London in cooperation with the Sustainable Food Trust. The SFT conveniently had a press release prepared; a release claiming that the research was "supported by independent research organization, CRIIGEN." However, this neglected to note that the paper's lead author, Eric Seralini, is on the CRIIGEN board." Conflict of interest, and keeping the newspapers from doing any fact checking before publication ... that's not accepted protocol. https://embargowatch.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/stenographers-anyone-gmo-rat-study-co-sponsor-engineered-embargo-to-prevent-scrutiny/ " One of the main reasons for embargoes �" if you take many journals at their word �" is to give reporters more time to write better stories. Part of how you do that is talking to outside experts. And scientists �" ones interested in science, anyway, not those interested in spin and political points �" should welcome that kind of scrutiny."

Schrems was surprised to discover, among the 1,222 pages of data covering three years of Facebook activity, not only deleted wall posts and messages, some with sensitive personal information, but e-mail addresses he'd deleted and names he'd removed from his friends list. Well of course it's still there. It off the page but still archived. that goes for almost anything and everything you post on the net. It's not a Facebook issue. It's part of the new age we live in. You can burn a letter or paper doc. You can't burn content off the internet. You can clean your own house but once it's out thee it is out there. I hope he has what it takes to be a better lawyer. He's not a very savvy IT guy. LOL