Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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FireAntz Wrapping Up the Year by BRITTNEY NOE If you have not gotten enough of the Fayetteville FireAntz, you have one last chance to see them in action on Saturday, March 23, as they host the Columbus Cottonmouths. The game will be Cape Fear Eye Associates Night. Fans get to enjoy music performed by Michael Macias, a young pianist from Fayetteville who is visually impaired, but does not let it stop him from doing what he loves. This young man's love for music helps others cope with their disabilities. He is one amazing young man and fans won't want to miss him at the last FireAntz game. The puck drops at 7:30 p.m., at the Crown Coliseum. After the game on Saturday, there will be a jersey auction. The FireAntz will auction off their white home jerseys and it will be the last chance to get your favorite FireAntz player's jersey from this season. It's been a busy but fun-filled year for the FireAntz. With the season coming to an end, let's look back at what all the FireAntz have done this year. They had six different specialty nights with specialty jerseys to include: two Military Nights, Operation Toy Drop Night, Ladies Night, 10th Anniversary Night and St. Patrick's Night. They also teamed up with local businesses to help give back to the community. When it came to Operation Toy Drop, they joined forces with the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command to collect toys around Christmas time to help families in the Fayetteville community have a better Christmas. The Breast Care Center at Cape Fear Valley benefitted from Ladies Night, thanks to the joint efforts of Highland OB GYN and the FireAntz. Systel and the FireAntz teamed up to help FAPS (Fayetteville Animal Protection Society) for pet adoption night. On FAPS Night the FireAntz fans adopted every pet that was seen at the game. Not only at games did the FireAntz help, they were also out there during the week in Fayetteville where fans found them supporting organizations in the community. The Fayetteville FireAntz were seen at local blood drives trying to get their fans and everyone they could to help our local blood bank, The Blood Donor Center. Also the Fayetteville FireAntz, Buffalo Wild Wings and the FireAntz fans had a fundraiser, Eat Wings Raise Funds, to help to local organizations at Cape Fear Valley Hospital, Friends of Children and Cape Fear Valley Breast Care Center. The FireAntz know that some of their biggest fans are youth and to give back to them this season, players went out to visit local schools. FireAntz players were seen at Prime Time, a local after school program, at New Century Elementary, Honeycutt Elementary and Loyd Auman Elementary just to name a few. The FireAntz players have also visited local recreation centers such as the Gray's Creek and Cliffdale centers. It has been one busy season for the FireAntz Organization on and off the ice. The Fayetteville FireAntz would like to thank everyone for your support and cannot wait to see everyone again next year. If you already counting down the days to the 2012-2013 sea- son opening night, make sure you have your season tickets. To purchase season tickets or if you have any questions give the Fayetteville FireAntz Office a call at 321-0123. BRITTNEY NOE, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcomin- gweekly.com Organic Farmers to Feds — Just Label It From the Editors of Environmental Magazine Dear EarthTalk: Can you fill me in on what the "Just Label It" campaign is and what it is trying to accomplish? — Eric Altieri, Columbus, OH Just Label It is an effort spearheaded by organic farmers and food producers, consumer and public health advo- cates and environmentalists to persuade the federal gov- ernment to require that foods with genetically engineered (GE) ingredients be labeled accordingly. Consumers have a right, they believe, to be able to make informed choices about which foods they put into their bodies and support with their pocketbooks. Most Americans aren't aware that some 80 percent of processed foods at grocery stores contain GE (also known as "genetically modified," or GM) ingredients — yet in polls, 93 percent of us support the notion of mandatory labeling of such foods. At present the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn't require labels for foods with GE ingredients. Proponents of Just Label It worry that genetically en- gineered plants (and animals) could wreak havoc on human health and natural ecosystems, given how little we know about them and their ability to proliferate beyond our control. Among the concerns: There has been no long-term health safety testing on GE ingredients because they are so new; unexpected mutations can occur which can introduce unknown toxins into the food supply; the increasing use of herbicide-resistant genes in crops is leading to the overuse of herbicides in general; and the planting of GE crops that are programmed to generate their own pesticides means that more pesticides are in our farms and fields than ever before. Perhaps most wor- risome of all is that, unlike chemical pollution or even nuclear contamination, so-called "genetic pollution" (as some critics refer to GE) cannot be cleaned up 18 UCW MARCH 21-27, 2012 after the fact once the proverbial genie is out of the bottle. "What unifies many of us is the belief that it's our right to know," Just Label It organizers report. The idea for the campaign grew out of a 2011 meeting of organic stakeholders organized by Organic Voices, a project that documents the oral history of organic farming and sus- tainable agriculture. The first order of business for the Just Label It cam- paign was to submit a legal petition — written by at- torneys at the non-profit Center for Food Safety — to the FDA in September 2011 calling for the mandatory labeling of GE foods for sale in the United States. At this point, FDA is taking public comments on the petition and will issue a final ruling on it later in 2012. Consumers can make their opinions on the topic heard by FDA regulators by customizing and submitting the form letter available at the JustLabelIt.org home page. To date some 600,000 people have sent along comments to the FDA due to the campaign's outreach efforts. Just Label It aims to get that number to one million by the end of spring 2012, and is now working with 450 differ- ent partner groups to help spread the word. Campaign organizers are hoping that this outpouring of support will resonate with FDA regulators when it comes time for them to decide whether or not the U.S. should join almost 50 other countries — including South Korea, Brazil, China, and the European Union — in requiring GE labeling across the board. CONTACTS: Just Label It, www.justlabelit.org; FDA, www.fda.gov; Center for Food Safety, www.centerforfoodsafety.org; Organic Voices, www.organicvoices.com. EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E - The Environmental Magazine ( www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM