Friday, December 16, 2011

Lawsuit Update

For those of you keeping tabs on the lawsuit against 16 current and former OFC Board members, there are many new documents to take a look at. On the case page at the Center for Constitutional Rights, you can find:

All of the original lawsuit documents (including the lawsuit itself and the defendants' response/special motion to strike)

New documents, including: Plaintiffs' opposition to Defendants' motion (as well as supplemental declarations from Susan Trinin, Jeff Trinin, Linda Davis, Kent Davis, Susan Mayer, Tibor Breuer, Jon Haber, Nancy Koppelman, and Michael Lowsky)

Defendants' reply to opposition (as well as supplemental declarations from Grace Cox, John Nason, and Jayne Kaszynski)

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Proposed Board Agenda for this Thursday Dec. 15

My apologies for the lateness of this posting! We generally try to get these posted a week in advance of the meeting.

Board meetings occur at our downtown office location (610 Columbia Ave SE) and are open to the membership.


Proposed Board Agenda for December 15, 2011 6:30-9:30 pm


Agenda
Announcements 2 min
Mission Statement/Agenda Review 3 min
Commitments Review/Minutes Review 3 min
Member Comment 10 min
BPC Report 5 min
New Vice President selection 5 min
Committee Reports 20 min
Expansion Committee Direction Brainstorm 45 min
2012 Budget 20 min
Executive Session [Personnel/Hiring] 60 min
Meeting Eval/Commitments/Next facilitator 2 min

Total Meeting Time: 2 hours 55 mins

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Golden Glen Butter Recall

Yikes, another dairy recall! The Co-op has actually discontinued Golden Glen products, but we have been selling the last of these butters at our Westside location. We've pulled the remaining ones from our shelves; please check to see if you have any on hand, and return them for a refund!

The following info is from Food Safety News

Golden Glen Creamery of Bow, WA is voluntarily recalling butter produced on Nov. 2, 2011 because it has the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

A surveillance sample of the butter collected and analyzed by the Washington State Department of Agriculture was found to be positive for Listeria monocytogenes, according to the recall announcement. The creamery says it has ceased production and distribution of the butter as it, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Washington State Department of Agriculture continue their investigation to determine what caused the problem.

No illnesses have been reported.

The butter was distributed between Nov. 7 and Nov. 28 and is in circulation to date.

The recalled butter is in 4 oz. plastic round containers with tamper-evident seals. The labels read in part: "Herbes de Provence Butter" or "Northwest Mushroom Trio Butter," along with "GOLDEN GLEN CREAMERY"and "Natural handcrafted cheese produced by the Jensen ladies." The top label has the three-digit code 767.

Consumers are urged to destroy the butter or return it to the place of purchase for a full refund. For more information contact Golden Glen Creamery at 360-766-6455 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST Monday through Friday, or by email at info@goldenglencreamery.com.

Earlier this month, Golden Glen Creamery recalled about 20 pounds of cheddar cheese distributed in Washington state after a surveillance sample tested positive for Listeria.

Listeria can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

The dirt on composting plastic bags!

This is re-posted from Thad Curtz's OlyBlog post! Biobags, of course, are available at the Co-op.


The City's citizen Utility Advisory Committee got an update on various recycling issues from staff at our monthly meeting yesterday. Thanks at least in part to some steady negotiating by our Public Works staff, the company that composts the yard waste and organics from our big green bins has decided that it can deal with several additional brands of compostable bags.

(Unfortunately, lots of the plastic items that are advertised as "compostable" don't actually break down in the particular fast hot processes that commercial facilities use. Silver Springs goes from dumping to finished compost in 30 days. (They have some photos here. If scraps of plastic are left, they're completely sterile, but customers apparently hate how they look, so it's a big problem for the companies.)

You can now use:

1. All sizes of 1.0 and 1.2 mil Heritage Bio-Tuf bags
2. All sizes of EcoSafe bags (S011)
3. All sizes of BIOBAGS
4. All sizes of GLAD Compostable bags (78162, 78163)



(I'm relieved, because I really like using one of these as a liner in the plastic tub for kitchen scraps that the City hands out. You can just pull the bag out and throw it in the green bin when it gets full, and it makes keeping the tub clean a lot easier.) The Coop and Bayview both stopped stocking the ones I was using, because they had trouble getting them, so I hope this change will mean it's easy to buy some brand that works locally again.