Monthly Archive for February, 2006

Fiji Times–New research in Scotland and Luxembourg has found that kava is a cure for two types of cancers.

Published on February 16, 2006 in 'Awa (Kava Kava).

RESEARCHERS who discovered that kava is a cure for two types of cancer should convince Europe to lift its ban, says Agriculture Minister Ilaitia Tuisese. He was commenting on the research findings of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and the Laboratoire de Biologie Moleculaire du Cancer, a medical school in Luxembourgh which found that kava compounds inhibit the activation of a nuclear factor important in the production of cancer cells.

“It’s good news but there’s a ban in the European market and right now we can’t look forward to speeding up on the yaqona (kava) production,” Mr Tuisese said.

“Perhaps they (researchers) can help us convince the European market and assist in lifting the ban. The latest findings confirm what people have been saying all along that kava was not harmful to health.”

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Del Monte quitting pineapple here | The Honolulu Advertiser

Published on February 2, 2006 in General Ag News and Notes and Pineapple.

honadv

  • Del Monte’s news of closure stuns, upsets workers
  • Union optimistic about retraining, aid

By Dan Nakaso and Will Hoover
Advertiser Staff Writers

Del Monte Fresh Produce will plant its last pineapple crop this month at the Kunia plantation and cease its more than century-old Hawai’i operation at the end of 2008, eliminating the jobs of more than 700 pineapple workers on O’ahu.

Some of the Del Monte employees include husbands, wives and children in the same families, said Fred Galdones, president of the ILWU’s Local 142, which represents the unionized workers.

"It will have a very far-reaching effect on the families," said Galdones, whose union represented thousands of sugar workers who lost their jobs when O’ahu’s sugar industry died a decade ago. "Like the sugar workers, this will be very traumatic for those families."

State Rep. Michael Magaoay, D-46th (Kahuku, North Shore, Schofield), who grew up in the Mill Camp of the now-defunct Waialua Sugar plantation, said: "We need to look at the hysteria that people are going to have."

Del Monte’s decision will leave Dole Food Co. as the only major pineapple grower on O’ahu. Dole employs about 250 unionized workers, Galdones said.

Maui Land & Pineapple’s subsidiary, Maui Pineapple Co., remains the state’s largest pineapple producer, with operations on more than 6,000 acres on Maui, according to Brian Nishida, Maui Pineapple’s president and CEO.

In 2004, Hawai’i’s pineapple industry employed 1,200 workers, according to state figures.

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