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The latest adaventure of Kratos didn’t disappoint as the latest NPD chart reveals that Sony Santa Monica’s God of War III was the single-best selling SKU for the month of March with over 1.10 million units sold.

The Icelandic volcano that began disrupting flights early Thursday in the UK is spreading deeper into Europe, promising to cause more trouble wherever it goes.

The Belfast Telegraph reports:

Another Met Office review is expected to determine flight arrangements until 6pm tonight but aviation analysts warned that flights would be disrupted for days to come as airlines battled to clear the backlog and ensure planes were in the right place to run a normal service.

It had been hoped that a number of flights between Northern Ireland and Scotland would be allowed to go ahead, but a spokesman for George Best Belfast City Airport said no flights would leave before midday.

Bloomberg also reports that air traffic could be disrupted through the weekend. And Sky News reports that while the ash will soon depart from the UK, Scandinavia could get slammed next.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Here’s The Real Impact Of The Volcano Ash Crisis In Europe
• Travel Warning: Here’s What You Need To Know About The Icelandic Volcano Halting European Travel
• Is Europe About To Scream?

All my life I have lived in the fast lane. When I was 26 I led a remarkable community activity that involved over six thousand people each week. In praise of what happened, the local newspaper wrote an editorial about my efforts entitled “The Human Dynamo”.

In different forms that level of activity was repeated over the next forty years. A time and motion study was made of my activities many years ago and its conclusion staggered me. For one, I discovered the researcher who stayed with me for four weeks continuously, calculated that I spent 114 hours every week on my work. I changed my methods of work from that time on. From putting more hours into my work, I developed ways of putting more work into my hours.

For more than fifty years I have given on average over 14 speeches, sermons and lectures every week, including on television and radio. Every one I prepared and typed personally. Interviews, recordings, chairing meetings, and the like, was a daily way of life. In Parliament in retirement, similar activities still occur.

That is living in the fast lane. Every year I used to fly to over 100 destinations. I do not do that now. I have learned to take some time in the slow lane. This last week was in the slow lane.

I did not work on the computer at all. I wrote no articles and gave no speeches. I made no broadcasts nor gave any interviews. I did not attend a meeting. I did not Tweet or correspond on the Blackberry.

I caught a train and travelled for thirty hours non-stop. I caught a couple of boats and walked a great deal. I swam a little. I talked a lot with my wife only. We prayed for five elderly friends who are doing it tough with illness and frailty. We prayed for some young adults in stressful situations.

Now I am refreshed. It is exactly one year to the state election. From now until then, it is the fast lane.

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

The Federal Government has stated that it intends to increase the population of Australia. It is estimated by Treasury that the number of Australian citizens will reach 35 million by 2049. The Federal government has identified that, to meet the challenge of the increasing population, major cities will have to increase their urban density. For this reason, the Federal Government has recently hinted that it is considering taking the initiative, and might extend its responsibilities to include housing development, land release and infrastructure — functions currently controlled by State and Local governments.

Australia’s capital cities will have to expand considerably to house new migrants. Increased urbanisation, when not accompanied by appropriate town planning, is associated with higher rates of chronic disease. Despite the migration drive, Australia’s population will continue to age, and by 2056 one in four Australians will be over the age of 65 years.

According to a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, increasing urbanisation is associated with higher rates of obesity, asthma and depression, unless it is accompanied by appropriate town planning that provides adequate pedestrian amenities, limits pollution, ensures public safety, encourages social cohesiveness, and allows access to fresh food.

An important finding was that major metropolitan teaching hospitals operate on a bed occupancy rate of 95% or above. The report noted that hospital overcrowding was the most serious cause of reduced patient safety. It is clear that, even at Australia’s current population of only about 20 million people, the public health system is struggling to cope with demand.

The Garling Inquiry concluded in 2008 that the New South Wales health system is in a state of crisis. An independent analysis by the Australian Medical Association has concluded that Australian public hospitals are dysfunctional, operating at full or above-full capacity, and urgently in need of increased capital funding. Australian health services are already heavily burdened. Health professionals must engage with governments to ensure that appropriate plans are put in place to accommodate the increased burden of disease that will accompany a more populous Australia.

An obesity expert from the United Kingdom believes Australia has overtaken America as having one of the unhealthiest diets in the world. Dr Tim Lobstein is the Director of Policy and Programmes for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. He is in Western Australia with Jane Landon from the National Heart Forum to host a number of public lectures on obesity for the Public Health Advocacy Institute.

Dr Lobstein says Australia’s diet has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. “We’ve found that your diets here in Australia are more fatty and oily than American diets, and we thought America was one of the worst in the world. You’ve overtaken America. Your diets are now 40 per cent calories from fats and oils and that’s a pretty shocking statistic – you should be down nearer 20. Your sugars are high, alcohol is about double what’s the recommended level of intake, and your fruit and veg are a bit under par”, he said.

Both Dr Lobstein and Ms Landon are particularly concerned about the diets of Australia’s children. He estimates about 90,000 kids in Western Australia are overweight or obese. “It means each family practice in Western Australia has probably about 2,000 overweight adults and 200 overweight kids to deal with, and they don’t really know what to do because losing weight is a real battle.”

The challenge, according to Dr Lobstein, is whether Australia can beat the trend. Failure to do so will compromise the health of our nation.

Reference: Deborah Pelser, Super size me: Is a big Australia good for our health, Medical Journal of Australia, 12 April 2010.

Might We Suggest…

• Motorola DEXT has UK Talking Android
  Greetings all, London calling. I know that a lot of you  are regular readers of Androidguys.com and like me, don’t originate from the US of A.  I hope that by being able to contribute a post or t…

May 31st is the 108th anniversary of the signing of The Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the Boer War in 1902. This year the celebration falls on Sunday 30 May. It is likely that most living Australians’ only cultural reference to that war may be the film Breaker Morant, which tells the tale of Lieutenants Peter Handcock and Harry “The Breaker” Morant being executed by the British for war crimes committed against prisoners and a German missionary.

The movie was a legal drama that did not educate its viewers about the background of the war itself, which was fought between the British and the Dutch Boer settlers in South Africa. The pre-federation population of Australia had a very high proportion of British immigrants who had strong ties to “The Mother Country”, and many thousands of Australian men volunteered to fight for Britain. And many Australian women paid their own passage and expenses to go serve as nurses. As a matter of interest there were also more than 43,000 Australian horses sent to the war that never returned.

In Canberra there are beautiful structures commemorating the service of our countrymen and women in wars throughout our history, and there is even a memorial to our most respected adversary – that being Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli. But there is no national memorial to those who died in the Boer War serving between 1899 when war broke out and 1902 when it finally ended. This is an inexplicable oversight that will soon be remedied by the efforts of the descendants of those 23,000 men and women who fought, served or nursed, and the 1000 who died. The National Boer War Memorial will be constructed in Anzac Parade, Canberra based on the winning design of the competition currently open to artists, sculptors and designers across the land.

The rest of New South Wales has not been so lax in their observance of the war. There are 124 memorials to honour those who served in the Boer War. St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney will soon be installing a plaque to honour the service of Mary Julia Anderson who served in the 3rd Victorian Bushman’s Contingent from March 1900, nursing in Rhodesia, Mafeking, and Springfontein. The Australian medical care was known to be of such excellence that British soldiers had labels sewn into their uniforms directing that, if injured, they wished to be sent to the NSW Army Medical Corps field hospital rather than to the British. This became so widespread that there was a British Parliamentary Inquiry resulting in NSW practices being adopted by the British field hospitals.

If you are interested in attending any of the commemorations across the state contact your RSL or Local Council what events have been planned. All of our history is worth knowing, remembering, and honouring. The National Boer War Memorial Association website has many more stories, reports, photographs, war diaries, correspondence and descriptions of memorials: http://www.bwm.org.au/site/Home.asp

Filed under: Performance, Europe, Videos, Ferrari, Military

Ferrari brought out the big guns last night for the official presentation of the new 599 GTO. A big gun in its own right, it was presented by the company’s chairman Luca di Montezemolo, chief executive Amedeo Felisa and vice-chairman Pierro Ferrari, son of the legendary Enzo. Which is a good thing considering the venue: Modena’s Ducal Palace military academy… the same location, incidentally, that sister company Maserati chose to unveil the Quattroporte Automatic over three years ago.

The grand gala, which also involved the participation of Ferrari factory test drivers and military cadets in front of a crowd of 500 clients, almost seems like overkill. Never mind that the fastest road car ever built by Ferrari speaks for itself, and that the supercar is set for an additional unveiling at Beijing Motor Show later this month. But the 599 GTO, according to reports, is already sold out. All 599 examples of it. Which means that, even if you’ve got the £300,000 asking price, the closest you’re likely to get is via the video after the jump. Check it out. (It’s actually dubbed over in English this time!)

[Source: Ferrari]

Continue reading Video: Ferrari 599 GTO already sold out before presentation at Italian military academy

Video: Ferrari 599 GTO already sold out before presentation at Italian military academy originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Salvage crews have raised the stern or rear portion of a South Korean Navy ship that mysteriously sunk in the Yellow Sea on March 26th. The bodies of 36 crew members were also recovered.

Initial reports suggested a North Korean torpedo may have been responsible. But just as tensions between the two rivals were escalating, the cause of the incident became murkier. What is clear is some sort of explosion caused the Cheonan to split in two and then sink.

Many of the crew members were rescued by South Korean ships that rushed to the scene, but at least 44 sailors were trapped inside and killed.

If not a North Korean torpedo, among the possible causes are a sea mine left over from the 1950-53 Korean War, or some kind of accident aboard the Cheonan. The North Koreans have denied any role in sinking the ship.

Sailors from the U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet have been on the scene assisting South Korea. In fact, approximately 750 U.S. service members are supporting salvage efforts.

South Korean contractors are raising the stern and bow, but American divers have been providing technical assistance as well as working with South Korean Navy divers on the debris area across approximately four miles of ocean floor.

The USNS Salvor has also been providing side scan sonar to sweep the debris field for objects that may be useful for the investigation.

The Salvor crew is also providing medical support with a decompression chamber onboard that is being used by both South Korean and U.S. divers. A U.S. Navy Diving Medical Officer, who specializes in diving medical issues, is also on the scene.

The government in Seoul has also requested that American, British, Australian, and Swedish experts participate in a joint investigation.

The results of that investigation could stir up an old feud, or allow both Seoul and Pyongyang to return to the six-party talks over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Europe! You’re so quirky. Specifically one Crowne Plaza Hotel in Denmark, which rewards guests who pedal on electricity-generating exercise bikes for 15 minutes with food. How long would I have to ride for a minibar pass? More »

14 April 2010.

Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, Dr Gordon Moyes AC, is urging the public to make submissions to the government’s independent Food Labelling Review if they share his concern over the genetically modified (GM) foods now coming into the Australian food supply.

Dr Moyes explained, “Consumers have the absolute right to know what they are buying to feed their families, and appropriate standards for labelling of foods, which will be monitored and enforced, are crucial.” Just last week it was announced that a GM soybean rejected by the EU and India has been approved for Australia because the tests run by the company that sells it says it is safe.

“What incentive does any company have to report truthfully? Has Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) never heard of ‘conflict of interest’, or know that bias can influence perception, or that data can be made to say anything? We need people guarding our population not yielding to pressure from multinational agribusiness!” claimed Dr Moyes. In contrast, an independent study revealed that the GM soybean had the same toxin as a GM eggplant that was rejected by the Indian government because it caused liver damage in rats.

Dr Moyes added, “The only GM food crops currently produced in Australia are canola and cotton but nearly all processed foods contain some GM products. And that is happening because Food Standards Australia New Zealand permits manufacturers to use a wide range of imported ingredients like GM soybeans, canola, corn, rice, sugarbeet, and potatoes, with absolutely no requirement that the foods be labelled to inform consumers. That is shocking, and needs to be addressed urgently.”

Dr Moyes believes strongly that every family has the right to know if their food comes from GM crops or animals fed GM crops, either directly or indirectly, and to make the choice of whether or not they are willing to take that risk. It should be a basic requirement that manufacturers disclose fully any use of GM ingredients no matter how small a proportion of the food.

Dr Moyes stated, “The public health of Australians is paramount, not multinational commercial interests. The precautionary principle says that if a policy has any suspected risk of causing harm, then in the absence of scientific consensus it simply must not be enacted. The greater the potential risk means the greater is the requirement for strict standards of independent evidence. Lacking that I say label all GM food clearly so the public can avoid it!” Make your submission at www.foodlabellingreview.gov.au by 14 May 2010. END.

At least a dozen global food companies collaborate toward practical, cost effective solutions to reduce the climate impact of specific farming systems.

I happen to be a fan of the Sustainable Food Lab, which is a group of businesses, NGOs and academic institutions working together to accelerate the shift toward sustainable agriculture.  I respect the group’s collaborative approach and believe it should be emulated across other sectors. As I heard someone say at Fortune’s recent Brainstorm Green conference, “Sustainability is a team sport.” Absolutely!

On that happy note, the Sustainable Food Lab (SFL) and the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform announced Wednesday the launch of a comprehensive global climate project to evaluate the greenhouse gas footprint of specific farming systems. The goal is to empower food companies to engage with farmers in their supply chain in an effort to limit greenhouse gas emissions and provide solutions needed to address the environmental impacts of farming.

(more…)

15 April 2010.

Rev Dr Gordon Moyes has expressed his serious concerns relating to the announcement of the Federal Government that the processing of new Sri Lankan and Afghani asylum seekers will be suspended, effective immediately.

Dr Gordon Moyes, a Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, is concerned that the suspension of processing could lead to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, including families and children who are already in distress and under vulnerable conditions.

“This policy shift takes us at a dangerous path and one that is in complete violation of Australia’s obligations under international law in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have seen hundreds of people in prolonged detention suffering from poor mental health. Indefinite detention has dire consequences for a child’s physical and mental wellbeing. While in detention, children see attempted suicides, self-harm and abuse”, said Dr Moyes.

According to Australian Human Rights Commission President, Cathy Branson QC, detainees cannot get adequate access to crucial support services such as legal advice, health and mental health care, and religious support, and that staff and detainees are already under significant strain.

Ms Branson said, “We also hold particular concerns about the impact of this change on families with children and unaccompanied minors. There are already significant numbers of children in immigration detention on Christmas Island. The suspension in processing will mean that any new families or unaccompanied minors arriving could be subjected to prolonged periods in detention.”

Although Dr Moyes has acknowledged community concerns about the recent arrival of asylum seekers by boat, he has reminded both the Federal Government and the Opposition to take a more humane approach. He stated, “Family First supports a strong system of border protection. But it has to be a fair system that treats asylum seekers humanely.”

“Family First supports providing additional resources to ensure detention time are kept to an absolute minimum. Asylum seekers should then be transferred to low security facilities that are more like a home than a prison until their claims can be fully processed. We believe the claims assessment process should be reformed to ensure fast and fair processing of asylum seekers to promptly determine the substance of their claims for refugee status”, Dr Moyes concluded. END.

Can it Rain Cats and Dogs? , by Melvin and Gilda Berger is a well composed book of questions and answers about weather. It is filled with detailed illustrations by Robert Sullivan that correlated to the topics on each page. We all know that children have question after question about anything you can imagine. Weather is a particularly difficult subject but it effects human daily behavior so kids naturally have tons of questions. Can it Rain Cats and Dogs? approaches the questioning in kid friendly ways by simplifying the wording. Examples are “Does air have weight?, Why does the weather keep changing?, and Can you smell rain?”. The book is broken down into sections entitled “Introduction”, “Sun, Air and wind,” “Rain, Snow, and Hail,” and “Wild Weather.”

In today’s note, Gluskin-Sheff economist David Rosenberg is back talking about deflation:

Deflation remains the primary trend, notwithstanding the bounce in commodity
prices that surely are going to act as a significant margin squeeze for retailers.
The headline CPI inflation rate came in at a mere +0.1% in March and the core
was unchanged.  When oil prices first broke above $80/barrel back in 2007, the
inflation rate was closer to 4%.  Then again, the unemployment rate was below
5% and CAPU rates approaching 80%, not near-10% and 70% respectively as is
the case today.  

The economy may be doing better but it could take years to absorb all the slack
evident in the labour, product and housing markets.  The core rate of inflation is
all the way down to +1.1% and the combination of base effects, the lagged
impact of the strong U.S. dollar and the continued decline in residential rents
suggest that this trend will break below 1% by May and could evaporate totally
within a year.  As it now stands, the three-month trend in the core CPI is 18 basis
points below zero, something that has not happened in 50 years.  

There are no shortages of complaints that the disinflation trend is being skewed
by lower rents.  Our response:  rent matters a lot in the consumption basket and
the fact that it is deflating is a sign of stress in both the labour market in terms
of still punishingly high unemployment rates and the effects on income, as well
as in the housing market (i.e., near record high apartment vacancy rate). 
Not only that, but core CPI excluding the rent influence was at +0.1% MoM and
has still hooked lower to +1.7% on a YoY basis and the trend is still on a firm
downtrend. 

The second chart below shows the smoothed CPI index from the
Cleveland Fed– down to 1% YoY, which is a fresh record low.  The bottom line is
that core goods CPI has fallen 0.1% now for two months in a row and the core
PPI for finished consumer goods is pointing to further deflation here in the
coming year, especially as the lagged impact of the firming in the greenback
since last fall.     

The deflationary pressure was widespread across sectors last
month:  Restaurants and toys were both down 0.1%. Appliance prices fell 0.3%
and furniture by 0.3%.  Clothing prices fell 0.4% and are down now for three
months running.  Recreation services (i.e., movie theatres) dropped 0.6%.  Home
improvement, despite how great it was in the retail sales report, also deflated by
0.3% in March.  The prices of housekeeping supplies fell 0.2%.  Autos and parts,
IT services as well as telecom were roughly flat.  So you see, this was hardly a
report that relied solely relied on rental rate declines.  

Join the conversation about this story »

Morocco is situated at the top of the African continent close to Europe. It has both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, and a rugged mountainous interior. Culturally it has a rich culture developed from Arab, Berber, European, and African influences.

The population of about 33 million is predominantly a mixture of Arab and Berber. While Arabic is the official language and over 99% of the population is Sunni Muslim, the remaining 1% are Christian or Jewish. There are an estimated 25,000 foreign Christians living in Morocco including Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, French Protestant and Anglican Church members, with Catholics being the most numerous.

In the past there has been little obvious persecution of Christians by the government. However, things have recently changed. It has been reported that since early March this year the government has been campaigning against the Christians in Morocco. One instance was by the expelling of about 45 expatriate Christians, or not allowing them to return from abroad. This was not directed at any particular ethnic group or nationality, as it included Americans, Europeans, New Zealanders, Africans and Asians.

They were apparently expelled for ‘proselytising’, which is in violation of Moroccan law. While all of them admitted to having conversations about religion with Moroccans, they denied they were guilty of proselytism as defined by the Moroccan Penal Code Article 220 which cites “the use of seduction” to convert Muslims to another religion. None who have been expelled have been charged before a court nor been given any access to legal counsel. They were simply escorted to the border and expelled. But according to Moroccan law if someone has had legal residency for more than 10 years he or she cannot be expelled without a court order.

According to witnesses in Morocco, many of those expelled were from the “Village of Hope”, an orphanage that opened 11 years ago housing more than 30 Moroccan children in a family setting. The orphanage had a strict policy of not proselytising. Every staff member and every visitor had to sign a pledge ‘not to defame the king of Morocco, not to defame the religion of Islam and not to engage in proselytism’. It was known clearly to the government that Christians would run the orphanage when it was issued all the required legal papers.

Large numbers of local people from the village came to the orphanage to protest the expulsions of the foreign staff. Fearing that local villagers could be harmed if things got out of control the staff decided to obey the expulsion order. Other sources state that in the same week the government started a campaign against other Moroccan Christians with people being called in for questioning all over the country and being detained for up to 24 hours. One church leader said the pressure on the indigenous Moroccan church had not been this great in the last 25 years, and could offer no reason for it happening now.

Please note that the Moroccan church has specifically asked not be mentioned in any appeals made to the Moroccan authorities, but they are in dire need of our awareness of their plight and our ongoing prayers for Christians in Morocco and all Islamic countries to have the freedom to practice their religion, to be treated as full citizens under the law and to live in peace with their neighbours.

by Tom Philpott

In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries.

——————-

Would you like those burgers with, or without, hazardous residues? Next time you’re at an eatery whose sourcing practices you don’t trust, avoid the veal. Skip the burger, too. Those are the immediate takeaways from this stomach-turning report (PDF) from the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General. The long-term takeaways are more profound—and disturbing.

The report focuses on the USDA’s system for keeping hazardous chemical residues—“veterinary drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals”—out of the meat supply. You know, meat—the stuff that Americans eat more than a half a pound of per day, on average.

How is the agency doing at this critical task? From reading the report, I’d describe its system as sieve-like—but that would be unfair to sieves. After all, those kitchen implements do at least catch most of the solid bits suspended in a liquid. The USDA routinely lets chemical residues flow right into the nation’s meat supply—without catching a damned thing.

The problem is not trivial, as the report makes clear:

Residues of drugs, pesticides, and heavy metals differ from microbiological pathogens like E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria Monocytogenes, which the public more readily associates with food safety.  While cooking meat properly can destroy these pathogens before they are consumed, no amount of cooking will destroy residues.

In fact … “In some cases, heat may actually break residues down into components that are more harmful to consumers.” [Emphasis mine.]

Evidently, the problem is worst of all for meat from animals raised on dairy farms. Such cows find their way into the beef supply in two ways. “Spent” dairy cows—ie, ones that are too sick or old to lactate—get slaughtered for beef. Their meat is so tough that it’s mainly used as hamburger. As for veal, much of the U.S. veal market is supplied by the male offspring of dairy cows. Such animals are known as “bob veal.”

According to the report, “Plants handling [spent] dairy cows and bob veal were, in 2008, responsible for over 90 percent of residue violations found.”

Now, the USDA’s meat safety arm, the FSIS, knows full well that beef-processing plants that deal with dairy cows tend have the great bulk of residue trouble. But get this, from the report:

FSIS allowed such plants to continue treating residue problems as “not reasonably likely to occur”—the determination that would allow plants to justify not implementing additional procedures to control residues.

One such plant had 211 violations in 2008, the report states—and still was able to operate as though such violations were “not reasonably likely to occur.”

Okay, so why is meat from dairy cows so likely to be tainted with residue? The report puts it bluntly:

Some producers provide antibiotics to dairy cows in order to eliminate an infection after a calf is born.  If the producer perceives that the cow is not improving, he may sell the animal to a slaughter facility so that he can recoup some of his investment in the animal before it dies.  If the producer does not wait long enough for the antibiotic to clear the animal’s system, some of this residue will be retained in the meat that is sold to consumers.

So let’s get this straight: sick cows pumped full of antibiotics are routinely being slaughtered for burger meat.

As for veal …

Farmers are prohibited from selling milk for human consumption from cows that have been medicated with antibiotics (as well as other drugs) until the withdrawal period is over; so instead of just disposing of this tainted milk, producers feed it to their calves.  When the calves are slaughtered, the drug residue from the feed or milk remains in their meat, which is then sold to consumers.

Now do you see why I advised against ordering veal and burgers in the opening paragraph?

Recall that that “spent” dairy cows were at the center of the notorious 143 million-pound beef recall back in 2008, when Humane Society investigators caught workers at a California meat plant cruelly prodding “downer” cows through a slaughter line.  Long-time Meat Wagon readers will remember that, despite the recall, 37 million pounds of that suspect meat made it to school cafeterias. That’s because school cafeterias, with their tight budgets, are forced to buy the cheapest beef possible. And as we learned in the downer-cow scandal, the cheapest beef possible comes from plants that deal with spent dairy cows.

Putting everything together, this report is telling us that meat tainted with residues is routinely making into school cafeterias.

Well, that’s the stuff I found most scandalous in this amazing report. There’s more, too. Apparently, for a lot of nasty chemical residues, the EPA has no minimum tolerance levels. And because the EPA has no minimum tolerance levels, the USDA just lets them pass right on through to the public.

And get this: when the agency positively identifies residue-tainted meat, it … does nothing about it: “We also found that FSIS does not recall meat adulterated with harmful residue, even when it is aware that the meat has failed its laboratory tests.”

To me, this report dramatizes the withering away of the federal government’s ability to protect the public from the negligence of powerful industries. Just as coal mines continue operating despite repeated safety violations, the meat industry churns out tainted product as a matter of course … with the full knowledge of government regulators. (All of this reminded me of the study a while back showing that “people who eat meat and poultry have
significantly higher levels of common flame retardants compared to
vegetarians.”)

The analogy between residues in meat and and unsafe coal mines goes only so far, though. Every once in a while in a coal mine, a spectacular “accident” happens, drawing attention to the safety issue. For residue-tainted meat, the consequences are mainly subtle and cumulative. As the report puts it, “the effects of residue are generally chronic as opposed to acute, which means that they will occur over time, as an individual consumes small traces of the residue.” In other words, heavy eaters of industrial meat—i.e., literally hundreds of millions of Americans, many of them kids—are like the frog in the pot, not noticing that the water is slowly getting hotter and hotter. 

Rest assured: the FSIS swears it will correct all the wrongs exposed in this report. But also consider this: the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General pointed out many of the same issues in a 2008 report (PDF).  The FSIS swore it would make everything better then, too. The current report was explicitly written to assess the steps that have been taken since then, which doesn’t inspire confidence.

Ethanol waste as livestock feed: it breaks pigs’ hearts
Distillers grains are the the industrial waste left over from the corn-ethanol process.  Used as a livestock feed—as they are, in increasing amounts—distillers grains neatly combine two of my fixations: 1) the structural public-safety and ecological problems with industrial meat production; and 2) the idiocy of committing public money to turning industrial corn into car fuel.

As I’ve shown before, distillers grains in feed rations appear to increase rates of deadly E. coli 0157 in cows. And speaking of that Inspector General’s report, they’re also full of antibiotic residues (turns out that ethanol makers use lots of antibiotics to control the fermentation process).

Well, here’s another doozy: distillers grains are being increasingly added to feed rations for hogs in CAFOs—even though they appear to make hogs sick. You see, distillers grains are often riddled with mycotoxins, micro-fungi that can be quite dangerous. Get this, from a hog-industry trade journal:

Incidence of Mulberry Heart Disease (MHD), a condition of the heart muscle that often leads to sudden death, has become a growing concern in the pig population. Linked to oxidative imbalance, many in the pig industry point to changes in pig rations – particularly the increased use of DDGS (Distiller’s Dried Grains with Solubles) and the threat of more concentrated levels of mycotoxins—as adding fuel to this culprit’s fire.

In fact, pig-industry folks are pretty sure that distiller grains are the problem. Get this:

Evidence can be found in examination of one such production system feeding DDGS. The system was experiencing a number of serious problems with their weaned pigs when they fed DDGS to their breeding herd. In fact, the problems had become so severe that management was going to discontinue feeding DDGS despite a savings of approximately US$0.50 per weaned pig at the time. When DDGS was removed from the ration, the problems diminished. When it was returned to the diet, the problems reappeared. DDGS levels were approximately 20% in gestation and 10% in lactation.

The article also points to research by an Ohio State professor fingering distillers grains as the culprit. Most of us, faced with the specter of a heart condition that “that often leads to sudden death,” might consider eliminating the culprit, distillers grains, from the feed. But …

But with the economic benefits of using distillers grains for pig rations difficult to pass up [ie, they’re so damned cheap!], the days of feeding traditional corn and soy diets are unlikely to return to the extent seen in the past.

So what’s causing the problem? Evidently, distillers grains are full of “free radicals” that damage the pigs’ cells through oxidization. Pretty nasty. The article suggests supplementing pigs’ feed with the antioxidant vitamin E to help keep them alive until slaughter while chowing down on distillers grains. For me, this story represents yet another reason to avoid industrial pork.

 

Related Links:

Scenes from a school cafeteria [slideshow]

What I learned at Michelle Obama’s historic obesity summit

Fred Kirschenmann, winner of NRDC’s Growing Green “Thought Leader” award

Nearly every single year of the past half-decade or so has been touted as “the year of Mobile TV”, the year in which the long-heralded service would finally break through and get widespread adoption. It didn’t happen in 2008, it didn’t happen in 2009, and while the upcoming World Cup is supposed to be a tipping point, we’re not holding our breath. What mobile TV backers don’t seem to realize is that regardless of whatever new technology they come up with, people just really aren’t very interested in mobile TV — particularly when it’s built on a linear, channel-based programming model that’s largely fallen out of favor for standard TV viewing. But that doesn’t stop the announcements, the latest being that a number of broadcasters are banding together to develop a new national mobile TV service using spectrum they control.

Some observers see this as little more than an attempt by broadcasters to head off the FCC, which wants to seize unused broadcast spectrum and refarm it for use by mobile broadband services — just like the FCC did with analog broadcast spectrum. So the broadcasters want to launch a service “to provide content to mobile devices, including live and on-demand video, local and national news from print and electronic sources, as well as sports and entertainment programming” — wait, doesn’t that sound like the mobile web? But they want to use a variation of the ATSC digital broadcast technology to set up their own closed system, and also go out of their way to say that the network can be used to deliver public-safety information during emergencies. But they still don’t explain just how they think they’ll build any interest in these services. Maybe getting that government handout based on spurious public-safety claims is their only hope.

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