I just read a very interesting article on ENS (Environmental New Service) website. It included a letter to Congressional leaders from medical and scientific experts urging Obama’s Cancer Plan to expand to include cancer prevention. The article stated: “It is now beyond dispute in the independent scientific community that environmental and occupational exposures to carcinogens are the primary cause of non-smoking related cancers. An October 2007 publication on environmental and occupational causes of cancer by one of us (Dr. Richard Clapp) further emphasized that the increasing incidence of cancer is due to preventable exposures to carcinogens in the workplace and environment.”
Since 1975 exposure to cancer causing agents in the environment has increased. Remember the early 70’s the Clean Air and Water Act was enacted because we were polluting horribly. All the reports I’ve read say our air and water have indeed cleaned up a great deal since the early 70’s. Yet this letter states that more work related and environmental pollutants are causing the majority of cancers and that trend began in the mid 70’s. Hmmm.
The NCI still claims 94% of all cancers are caused by smoking, obesity, sun, yada, yada, yada and only 6% to environmental factors. But that consensus came from a 1981 report from Sir Richard Doll in the U.K. Here is where motive changes how we should view Sir Doll’s report. He was also a consultant for Monsanto, and the asbestos industry. Just before he died in 2002, “Doll admitted that most cancers, other than those related to smoking and hormones, “are induced by exposure to chemicals often environmental.”
This was scary stuff I was reading. We’ve been mislead for quite awhile. We are not causing our own cancers as much as we have been lead to believe. There is a list of cancers increasing at a rapid rate caused by factors not under our control. It is clear that other agencies besides the NCI need be involved in the prevention of cancer like the EPA, FDA, and OSHA. The agencies that can control the rise of preventable cancers because what we are breathing, drinking, and eating is affecting our health.
And as far as new cures for cancer, this letter had disturbing facts, but not hard to believe. I’m helping my mother through the aftermath of cancer and do not trust that the standard route works all that well either. My suspicions were confirmed when I read:
Furthermore, the NCI has touted the imminent success of new cancer treatments – promises that have seldom borne out, and which have been widely questioned by the independent scientific community. For instance, in 2004, Nobel Laureate Leland Hartwell, President of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Control Center, warned that Congress and the public are paying NCI $4.7 billion a year, most of which is spent on “promoting ineffective drugs” for terminal disease.
Well then, there you have it. Cancer is more easily preventable than cureable.
I’m behind on blogging but that doesn’t mean I haven’t noticed issues hitting the news lately. The other night I caught just 5 minutes on CNN’s Cafferty File that ticked me off at the stupidity of our media. Cafferty reported that the U.K. did a study and it turns out that raising sheep for food adds to the U.K’s carbon footprint big time. By time Cafferty was finished explaining that eating lamb is adding to global warming he was shaking his head and grinning. So he ended the segment by posting the question: “Are you willing to change your diet to combat global warming?”
I wanted to smack him up the side of the head. Or better yet, take Cafferty and Wolf Blitzer, who joined in the merriment, on an impromptu visit to a large CAFO and have them inhale the fumes from a pink tinged open air lagoon of waste that oozes methane into the atmosphere. Another reporter that did that almost passed out.
The reporters at CNN obviously didn’t take that into consideration. As a major news source one would think they would be up on articles like this: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2367646, or http://www.alternet.org/environment/140059/our_appetite_for_animals_is_taking_us_toward_apolcalypse/?page=2 or http://www.cok.net/lit/veg.php or any of dozens written by our own Dept. of Agriculture or CRS (Congressional Research Service) reports to Congress that show our food animals are detrimental to the environment.
On cok.net it stated that a U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Health reported that 5 tons of animal manure is produced annually for every person in the U.S. Considering our population is 300 million and 5 tons equals 10,000 lbs., well I just found my calculator doesn’t have enough decimal points so that’s 1 billion, 500 million tons of manure annually. The water that is polluted as a result is a whole other blog!
So what’s not to understand here? A billion tons of manure is a heck of a lot of methane. Since the U.K. loves its mutton, I can see where their report came from. Sheep top their list of carbon footprint devils.
And where does Cafferty live that he hasn’t noticed we’re a nation of obese people eating far more meat than any other country on earth? We want national health care so we can continue to neglect our own health? We should be willing to change our diet to save ourselves, yet we don’t do it. No one considers that our obesity might end up being a detriment to our ever getting national health care because obesity is a ridiculous and preventable drain on any health system for the disease it produces. By following the guidelines for healthy eating, we will help ourselves, help the environment, and possibly stop the horrible abuse of food animals by eliminating CAFO’s altogether.
After I blogged about Smithfield Foods and factory farming again, a person named Gig from causecast.org, another community of people trying to make a difference, commented about the label “free range” relative to the eggs she bought. Thank you Gig!
Natural, free range, and cage free poultry is practically a myth in America unless you’re buying from a small farmer and can see how your chicken was raised. Otherwise, what you’re eating is sometimes sick, and/or barely alive no different than the condition of factory farmed animals. And, Green Choices states: ” The Organic Food Production Act of 1990 and the National Organic Program explicitly require that organic meat and meat products must come from animals that have been raised outdoors. However, the USDA has drawn a distinction between chickens and other animals. While ruminant animals are guaranteed continuous access to the outdoors without confinement, chickens are not guaranteed continuous outdoor access and can be confined.” As for egg laying hens, they fair even worse. We need to pressure the USDA to change this, considering many of us have sworn off red meat, and so poultry consumption is at an all time high.
Luckily, I get my eggs and milk from Calder’s Dairy right here in Monroe, but Gig led me to look for a You Tube video about the misnomer of what we believe to be “free range” regarding egg laying hens. At first, I found videos from small legitimate free-range poultry farms, but then I found the one she referred to and others like it. In short we’re being duped by labeling. Like so much of our legislation, it’s full of loopholes for large corporations/lobbies to get away with chicken torture.
The videos are horrible exposes about what we do to the poultry we eat. I knew the horrors of factory farmed chickens and avoid buying any old chicken, but the idea of free range or natural isn’t much better. If you think you’re eating a wholesome product, humanely treated, it must be labeled as such.
Watch the following video thanks to You Tube and Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary:
My mother and father were both from farm families and my mom refers to chickens as “sweet, little hens.” When I saw this video, I wanted to cry. I immediately looked for websites where I could get reputable reports about labeling practices regarding poultry products. I read blogs where bloggers truly believe the law is the law and companies would be sued if they didn’t do what their label said. Suuuuuuuuure. Then I read about a local company, a big farm somewhere, that actually advertised on TV that their chickens loved living there, that is, until someone got in there with a camera and taped the awful conditions.
There were websites that led the reader to believe ALL chicken farms are horrible, and labels are close to useless. But then I found a website that led me to some good sources of info. The first two links I’ve listed below were especially useful and middle of the road to help the busy consumer understand the labels when looking for humanely raised, as well as, additive free poultry.
Bottom line the label should read “Humanely raised and handled.” The next best choice is a “Food Alliance” certification. After that pick “organic” simply because the gov’t. enforces stricter rules on the organic label than “free range” or “cage free,” but it still doesn’t mean the chickens were treated humanely.
Labels that say “free range or free roaming” are misleading because the USDA requires that the animals have access to the outdoors, but it doesn’t say for how long and there’s no verification. What’s more, the rules don’t apply to eggs,” according to a newsletter on shopsmart.typepad.com. No verification—does that mean self-regulating?
The “cage-free” label isn’t much better according to the same article: “It may sound like the chickens were free to peck around in the fresh air, but unless the eggs are labeled Certified Humane, there might be no independent group verifying how the animals are treated. Also, this label doesn’t necessarily mean that the chickens went outdoors. They may have been cooped up inside a screened in porch or a dirty barn.”
And finally, the “natural” label, well it just means no artificial ingredients were used during processing. It doesn’t mean the poultry wasn’t given antibiotics along the way, which leads me to ask: “Why do you think antibiotic use was so widespread in the meatpacking industry to begin with?” The animals were sick. How many years did we eat that? Nothing seems to have changed. We’re still eating sick animals only now they don’t get antibiotics—and are probably in worse condition.
This blog repeatedly says poultry but it’s about chicken. Turkey is another story I found. Most turkey has been genetically altered so badly they have to be artificially inseminated. What? That’s right. Look it up on the Internet. That info is everywhere. Some turkeys are so heavy that they are literally crippled by the weight and can’t walk.
I went shopping at a regular grocery store today. I found “organic” along with the “free range” logo and immediately didn’t trust it. The “free range” threw me. I did buy some Miller Amish Country brand. I looked up the Miller website last night, and read their testimonial, then tried to find a You Tube expose on Miller. So far there are none. The only problem is that Miller relies on smaller Amish farms collectively. Who is checking those farms? I read one blogger who lives near some Amish poultry farms and says they are not organic or humane.
I am sooooo happy Smithfield Foods is in the limelight over the swine flu even it didn’t originate at any Smithfield locations. This is the filthiest, most evil business I’ve encountered. I posted a blog long ago for everyone to read a most disturbing article about what we do to our food animals in this country, and how it comes back to kick us in the butt in the form of pollution.
The article “Boss Hog” in Rolling Stone Magazine was the biggest eye-opener I’ve ever read. Since reading that article and blogging about it, I have not touched red meat except for buffalo and/or organic free range beef only once in a blue moon. The poultry I eat is free range. I will not be a part of a system that does what we do to food animals. I’ve since joined American Farmland Trust, FACT, and Farm Sanctuary.
I’ve said this before. We have cute little movies about cute little talking pigs like “Charlotte’s Web,” but if we showed our children what we do to what we’ve deemed “highly intelligent” animals before we eat them, they would have nightmares forever. Heck, after reading “Boss Hog,” I had nightmares.
CAFO’s are nothing but cesspools. Ever wonder why we see “No antibiotics” on meat packages now? It’s to make the meat appear as more wholesome, when in fact the animals were given antibiotics to keep them healthy in CAFO’s in the first place. The animals are so stressed they literally chew on the steel bars, cannot lie down, and even have to give birth that way. They are often sickly like the “downed cow” every one witnessed being shoved to extermination on video. This is what this big, moral country allows, while we’re obese, and continue to consume more meat than any other nation.
That aside, large corporations like Smithfield are in the pocket of legislators and literally get away with big time pollution. Huge open-air lagoons of waste, after-birth, blood, pesticides, fatty residue from the slaughterhouses, and what used to be antibiotics run over into groundwater, wetlands, and streams. Heck they spray this mixture on surrounding fields and call it “nutrient loading.”
There are over 200 CAFO’s in Michigan, mostly owned by Dutch companies. We had a chance to limit them not long ago. Members of our congress wanted to stop any more from coming here, and to set up stricter guidelines by citing what happened in N.C. as a result of Smithfield Foods. But our illustrious senate decided that CAFOs brought too much money to Michigan (AG lobby), and that Michigan’s stance would be business as usual allowing CAFO’s to basically self-regulate because we have few inspectors left. And that Michigan would deal with a bad CAFO situation if and when it happened.
Well, now this has happened. According to an article in Huff Post, “Last year, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production issued a lengthy report on factory farming that included research on emerging forms of avian-swine-human influenza viruses.” The Pew Commission stated that pig or avian flu seldom transmitted to humans. However, the commission also warned:
The continual cycling of swine influenza viruses and other animal pathogens in large herds or flocks provides increased opportunity for the generation of novel viruses through mutation or recombinant events that could result in more efficient human-to-human transmission of these viruses. In addition, agricultural workers serve as a bridging population between their communities and the animals in large confinement facilities. This bridging increases the risk of novel virus generation in that human viruses may enter the herds or flocks and adapt to the animals.
Reassortant influenza viruses with human components have ravaged the modern swine industry. Such novel viruses not only put the workers and animals at risk of infections, but also potentially increase zoonotic disease transmission risk to the communities where the workers live. For instance, 64% of 63 persons exposed to humans infected with H7N7 avian influenza virus had serological evidence of H7N7 infection following the 2003 Netherlands avian influenza outbreak in poultry. Similarly, the spouses of swine workers who had no direct contact with pigs had increased odds of antibodies against swine influenza virus. Recent modeling work has shown that among communities where a large number of CAFO workers live, there is great potential for these workers to accelerate pandemic influenza virus transmission.
I’ve always wondered how the first CAFO got into Michigan in the first place? Since many of us in Michigan believe we are the main caretakers of the Great Lakes, and are therefore, responsible for the nation’s largest fresh water supply, how on earth could anyone allow CAFO’s and their open-air lagoons of waste to operate here? We know where most of our groundwater runoff is going to end up. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that out.
That’s right. A quarter inch square chip is the workplace of nanotechnology. An engineering team at Tel Aviv University lead by Prof. Shacham-Diamand developed the idea of the chip as a platform that sustains bacteria. The bacteria are genetically engineered and light up when exposed to a pollutants. It’s certainly more humane than allowing our animal kingdom to be the gage for our pollution problems. And it’s more accurate, and timely.Â
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Right now it’s being tested for stressors in water but the potential to use it in stem cell research and for detection of cancer is also promising. So besides helping monitor the health of our environment, this nano technology may be able to predict disease before other devices. The team is working on making lab on a chip more versatile by exposing the bacteria to a variety of toxins and chemicals.
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The article on Science Daily’s website reports that Tel Aviv University is one of the top 5 worldwide that is working with nanotechnology. It also said, “Funded by a $3 million grant from the United States Department of Defense Projects Agency (DARPA), the new lab-on-a-chip could become a defensive weapon that protects America from biological warfare.” So this could be a line of defense against terrorism too.
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My question is can it detect bad peanut butter, or lettuce, or spinach? The FDA suffers from lack of regulators but if they had some of these handy dandy labs, say on their key chains, it would make their work quick and accurate and they could cover a lot more ground, and maybe we wouldn’t be dying from all that self regulation.
There is a draft of new FDA consumer guidelines regarding mercury in fish floating around Capitol Hill that the EPA says it simply will not endorse. The EPA is heads up on this one for a change. They accuse the FDA of being closer to the fishing industry than concern for consumers. The new draft as seen on CNN, states specifically that eating over 12 oz. of fish per week has more advantages than disadvantages for the consumer regardless of mercury content. The EPA questions the science behind this draft.
Pregnant women should play it safe and follow former guidelines for them that limit the consumption of larger fish like albacore tuna to less than 12 oz’s. per week. Mercury poisoning can have adverse affects on the human fetus.
This is an offering by the exiting Bush Administration to the fishing industry. It’s another instance of science being tossed and replaced with ideology hell-bent on helping business regardless of the harm it does to the air, water, earth, animals, plants/trees, and humans. So consumer beware until we have a real FDA again and agencies that we can hopefully trust.
I’ve been wondering how long it would take for religious communities to recognize the cruelty of animal farming; how extremely opposite it is from the idea of kosher where animals are tended with kindness and the ” method of slaughter is a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks or unevenness. This method is painless, causes unconsciousness within two seconds, and is widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible.” A condition under which the meat is further processed is supposed to be extremely sanitary.
This is hardly the definition of a CAFO, where animals are so depressed and frustrated, they chew on the metal bars of their confinement. I’ve written so many blogs about CAFO’s and animal farms. That’s why I was so happy to read an article in the Summer publication of All Animals, by the Humane Society of the U.S., about America’s churches stepping forward to start a grassroots endeavor to restore humane farming.
Methodists support totally natural systems of farming. Jewish rabbis recommend that humans strive to prevent animal suffering. While many other denominations condemn factory farms altogether.
HSUS’s “All Creatures Great and Small” campaign plans to call on the religious, I like to say spiritual, individuals to only purchase cage-free eggs. The article says that “participants can make an on line pledge to do so and pass it along to friends as a form of networking. It also said, “They can then download materials to use in youth groups, Sunday schools, sermons, and bulletins.” There is also a documentary from “people whose religion inspired them to make dietary changes.” This particular campaign will be this October during the monthlong feast of St. Francis of Assisi, saint to all animals.
This one small pledge is designed to spread grassroots style and hopefully bring awareness to the spiritually minded about the guidelines in the bible as to what and how we eat. People can argue that the guidelines are in the Old Testament that we’re living the New Testament now. Yet we cannot simply disregard the entire part of the bible that tells us where we came from can we? Without it, we would have no heritage.
At very least, in America, where spiritualism seems to abound these days, it might make us pay better attention to not only what we eat but how it was raised. It could make a big difference in our health and diminish the amount of pollution we unleash into the environment from factory farms. Not bad by-products for a little extra awareness about what we eat.
I read in the Union of Concerned Scientists newsletter, Volume 10, Number 3, Summer 2008, that the U.S. Senate approved bipartisan legislation in March to improve the effectiveness of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Good idea after last summer’s tainted spinach, tainted lettuce, beef recalls, and toxic toys went unchecked.
It seems there has been political interference in the work of CPSC employees like statisticians, psychologists, chemists, and engineers. The legislation is meant to keep science independent of political tactics to ensure consumers remain safe. There are whistle blower protections built in to the legislation that extends to other employees of companies regulated by the CPSC. The agency must also accept anonymous complaints via the Internet.
The Union of Concerned Scientists worked with doctor’s and consumer groups to put this Senate Bill together and encouraged scientists to speak up if they have had political interference in the past.
There is a House Bill that addresses the same problems but lacks the whistle blower protections. The idea now is to combine the bills to become the strongest legislation possible.
I’m certainly glad this is happening, but does it occur to anyone that we are now in the habit of writing legislation to keep the Bush administration’s mitts out of most things scientific, that we’ve had to use the supreme court and federal court judges to get the EPA to act on our behalf relative to the environment, and to get the Dept. of the Interior to move on putting polar bears on the endangered list?
If the agencies that are in existence to keep the public, environment, wildlife and habitat, food, and imports safe are being kept from doing their respective jobs by interference from politicians, then instead of doing this round about and creating new legislation, on top of legislation that already exists, wouldn’t it just be easier to get rid of the politicians affecting the problems? Remember to vote for a heck of a lot more than president this November, like voting out of office those that interfere with our safety, the earth’s safety, and wildlife looking to survive in a safe haven.
The Farm Bill is on the senate floor this morning getting its final going over. The Farm Bill has some very good changes compared to all the years it went on as is. The following is a summary of the new changes to the S2419 Farm Bill I found on gov.track. I highlighted the items that many people and organizations like The Sierra Club pushed to get through.
·The following summary was for the Passage With Amendment for this bill on 2007-12-14. The bill may have changed since then. It hasn’t.
·-Creates a tax penalty for transactions designed exclusively to avoid federal tax (Sec. 12522).
·-Lowers an income tax credit for ethanol blenders from 51 cents to 46 cents after the sale of 7.50 billion gallons (Sec. 12315).
·-Establishes the Agriculture Disaster Relief Trust Fund to provide disaster assistance for crop losses (Sec. 12101).
·-Ends assistance by the year 2010 for persons who have an average adjusted gross income of $750,000 or more and earn less than two-thirds of their average adjusted gross income from farming, ranching, or foresting (Sec. 1704).
·-Reauthorizes the Federal Food and Nutrition Program, the Commodity Distribution Program, and the Nutrition Information and Awareness Pilot Program (Secs. 4801, 4802, 4803).
·-Extends the Conservation Reserve Program and the Wetlands Reserve Program through 2012 (Sec. 2311, 2321).
·-Establishes programs to provide assistance for improving land for wildlife and forests (Sec. 2313, 2331).
·-Establishes a mandatory labeling of country of origin on meats (Sec. 10003).
·-Increases loan rates for sugar producers (Sec. 1501).
·-Requires the Department of Agriculture to purchase certain dairy products to support their prices, extends the Dairy Export Incentive Program and the Dairy Indemnity Program, and extends the Dairy Promotion and Research Program (Sec. 1601, 1603).
·-Provides a tax credit for energy generated from wind (Sec. 12301).
·-Expands and extends programs that provide credits for renewable fuel production (Sec. 12311, 12312, 12313, 12314).
This Farm Bill doesn’t appear to have any changes since December 2007. The only thing I see missing that is really important is tax incentives for good stewardship of the land, which gives farmers more freedom to rotate the crops of their choice. Our country pretty much locks farmers into 5 crops: corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and hay. As a result of all the corn, we end up with high fructose corn syrup in practically everything that’s packaged. One would think the HFCS would have a high enough caloric value to use as fuel instead of dumping it into our food. I bet some farmers in the Tennessee hills know how to make that stuff into high octane.
I’ve complained about an unscrupulous EPA before, showing that some of its exiting hierarchy was tied to the oil industry. I’ve also tried to get the point across that the Bush administration has dismantled the federal government in small increments handing out contracts to for-profit corporations to do the work our agencies used to do, while cutting the budget drastically in many departments across the board. Sound alright? A lot of people think so—less spending. But do we know who is doing the work instead, how the contract was awarded, who is responsible if something goes wrong, or how much the contractor was actually paid for the job?
Cuts are going to happen. We must pay for the war. But we just don’t know all the things that have been cut, until it’s too late that is. Just last year around this time, the Bush administration planned to cut some $500 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget and was met with fierce opposition in congress. The complaint was that it would shortchange vital environmental programs and was unacceptable. Do ya think?
Now it’s the FDA. The cover of the April 2008 Reader’s Digest asks “Can We Trust the FDA?—Must Read Special Report,” and reveals the Food and Drug Administration is in crisis. Most of the article is about the drugs we take, but the department is responsible for regulating $1.5 trillion in food, as well as, animal feeds and drugs. The article stated that insiders say, “it’s [FDA] woefully underfunded, dangerously understaffed and fractured by bitter internal tensions.” I immediately suspected feuding within the department exists because some people have ethics. In 2004, the FDA came under fire for silencing a staff scientist about antidepressants causing suicidal tendencies in teens. Ditto for the EPA, when scientists testified before congress last year that they were tired of being suppressed, and their findings/reports compromised.
The FDA receives only $2 billion in funding, which sounds like a lot but as the article says “is about what Fairfax County, Virginia, pays for its public schools.” It’s really frightening to read words like “chilling new report” in reference to the department in charge of our food and medicine. Worse yet the “chilling” report was commissioned by the FDA’s own advisory Science Board that also describes it as “nearly out of control.”
Congress has just begun to help shore up the FDA, increasing their funding by $145 million, but hey compared to billions, that’s a drop in the bucket. Of course about a quarter of that went to the drug review branch, another reason to read this story to see how much conflict of interest there is within the FDA relative to the drug industry. But special interests and conflict of interest on the food side of this equation cause an equal amount of damage. We start seeing problems like tainted food, beef, and chicken recalls, lax inspection of CAFO’s and runoff from them that may make its way into our tributaries, and of course really lax inspection of imported food. I watched a program where farm raised shrimp in an Asian country were swimming in polluted water with feces from farm animals. I check what I buy now. I steer clear of imports. I know the FDA isn’t checking.
The article said the public needs to weigh in. Weigh in? Scream for Pete’s sake. This is our bread, this is our health and it’s being handled shabbily. This type of decision-making and ethics is repetitive in the EPA, and more than likely throughout our federal agencies at this point. As I read the five key problems in this industry, they were similar to the EPA’s problems:
· The FDA suffers pressure from industry to speed decisions, and soft-pedal problems.
· Safety of New Drugs. Safety decisions are many times based on inefficient industry studies.
· Sloppy Record Keeping
· Conflicts of Interest
· Muzzled Experts
This list just about says it all doesn’t it? From the looks of things, we’re on our own.
