On his blog, T. Boone Pickens pointed out just how much shale gas the U.S. has within its mainland. Boone is calling the U.S. “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”
Check out the fortune you may be sitting on.
The yellow splotchers are where the “gold” lies.
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Samuel Jackson
Research Assistant Professor
Office of Bioenergy Programs
Expertise:
Samuel Jackson can discuss bioenergy, specifically the production of cellulosic ethanol, and feedstock production, harvesting, logistics and storage.
Expertise Categories: Bioenergy | Forestry
Contact Information
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 865-946-1124
Web: http://www.utbioenergy.org/
If you’re a CLIQ user, you’re probably aware that the device suffers from the occasional lag and wonkiness. Combine that with the battery life issues and touchscreen accuracy problems, and you have quite the ordeal on your hands.
The 1.4.8 software update claims to fix the following issues:
It’s not Android 2.1, but it’s still worth a look. CLIQ users, get your download on and report back with your findings!
Via Engadget Mobile
Después de la carrera de Malasia, en donde Sebastian Vettel esta vez no tuvo problemas para alzarse con el triunfo, la organización del circuito malayo ya trabaja en la carrera del próximo año, tratando de atraer más espectadores al circuito que contó con unos tres cuartos de su capacidad total. Además se planean ciertas mejoras a las instalaciones de la pista.
Un gizmo de reciente lanzamiento y que seguramente ayudará mucho al seguimiento de las carreras dentro y fuera del paddock, es el iPad, que tiene disponible una aplicación para seguir todo el detalle de las carreras. Seguramente, en los próximos meses vamos a ver a unos cuantos espectadores e integrantes de equipo con su iPad en mano en los circuitos.
Mientras tanto, Bernie Ecclestone sigue empeñado en llevar a la Fórmula 1 adonde nunca ha llegado y en seguir llenando sus bolsillos. Y claro, al meter más carreras en el calendario, habrá que eliminar otras para dar lugar a los nuevos escenarios. Una de las carreras que peligra es alguna de las dos que se disputan en España, aunque todavía no hay nada en concreto.
Kimi Raikkonen ha ido mejorando muchísimo en el WRC, incluso pudo terminar en Jordania sin ningún accidente, pero aún no se decide si quiere seguir compitiendo en rally o si quiere regresar a la Fórmula 1, algo que el finlandés decidirá con el correr de los meses.
Si bien en el pasado a Ecclestone no le preocupó demasiado la falta de entretenimiento de la Fórmula 1, parece que después de la floja carrera de Malasia, su interés por más adelantamientos volvió a la palestra. Por ello, ya se están llevando a cabo las primeras conversaciones entre los equipos y la FIA, para hacer más competitiva a la Fórmula 1 y que vuelva el espectáculo que tanto queremos.
Pedro de la Rosa no ha tenido mucha suerte en las tres primeras carreras del año a pesar de ser un excelente piloto y, desgraciadamente, siempre hay rumores que amenazan la estabilidad de ciertos pilotos y equipos. Uno de ellos, decía que el venezolano Pastor Maldonado, piloto de GP2, está buscando la manera de entrar a la Fórmula 1 y una de ellas era que Sauber dejara de lado a Pedro cuando el gran circo llegara a las carreras europeas. Por suerte, el propio Maldonado desmintió la noticia, aunque dijo que sigue intentando la llegada a algún equipo.
Toda la actualidad que rodea al mundo de las carreras podrán seguirla día a día en Recta de Meta, con las últimas noticias relevantes y los datos más actuales de las principales categorías en el mundo.
[JURIST] The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday that Azerbaijan violated parliamentary candidate Namat Aliyev’s rights to stand freely and fairly in the country’s 2005 elections. Aliyev alleged that the government violated his rights under Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which ensures the free expression of the people in the selection of a country’s legislature. Aliyev accused the Azerbaijan electoral commission and courts of failing to thoroughly investigate irregularities and breaches of electoral law in the election. The ECHR found:
What was at stake in those proceedings was not only the alleged infringement of the applicant’s individual rights but also, on a more general level, the State’s compliance with its positive duty to hold free and fair elections. Therefore, even assuming that the courts in the present case might have been unable to decide the case solely on the basis of the evidence submitted by the applicant, the material put before them was nevertheless strong enough to require them to take additional steps to obtain more information and verify the accuracy of the applicant’s allegations which cast doubt on the free and fair character of the elections in his constituency.The ECHR found support for its decision in a report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on the elections. The ECHR ordered Azerbaijan to pay a 7,500 Euro fine.The Aliyev ruling is the 24th ECHR decision against Azerbaijan and comes as the country prepares to again hold parliamentary elections in November. Earlier this month, Popular Front Party leader Ali Karimli wrote an editorial expressing concerns about the political situation in Azerbaijan. In December 2008, a referendum was approved that eliminated term limits for the country’s president. Incumbent president Ilham Aliyev was elected president in 2003 following the death of his father Heydar Aliyev, a prominent leader in the the oil- and gas-rich former Soviet republic since 1969. In October 2008, I. Aliyev was reelected with nearly 90% of the vote, though the election was boycotted by opposition parties and was internationally criticized for failing to meet democratic standards. Aliyev has been accused by members of the press of heavy-handed repression of the media.
Firefox has released a new beta of their web browser called Firefox “Lorentz,” a test build of Firefox 3.6.3 that’s designed to minimized crashes. Previously, when a plugin caused a crash in Firefox, the whole browser went down in flames too. But in Lorentz, this will no longer be the case. The page running the errant plugin will offer you the ability to submit a crash report while the rest of the browser remains up-and-running like usual. The improved stability is due to Lorentz’s process isolation, a feature which runs plugins as processes separate from the web browser itself.
Does this sound familiar? It should, if you’re a Google Chrome user.
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Google Chrome, the speedy little web browser from the Internet search giant, introduced the idea of isolated processes when the browser launched back in fall 2008. As explained by a Googler on the company’s official blog, Chrome put “each tab in an isolated sandbox,” so it could “prevent one tab from crashing another.”
The same philosophy is now seen in Firefox’s latest. The Lorentz build, which initially focuses on just Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Silverlight, isolates plugins in separate instances, too. The end result? A browser that doesn’t completely tank quite so often.
If you do end up with a page that goes rogue, however, the screen turns grey and you’re notified of the plugin crash by way of a text message and a sad-faced lego-like logo. (See picture).
This image also seems to be cribbed from Chrome’s playbook as it closely resembles the sad tab image that accompanies Google Chrome’s “Aw Snap!” message that appears when something goes wrong with a web page. (Then again, a sad computer icon isn’t anything new, as Mac users will certainly tell you.) But in this case, it’s another reminder of how Firefox, once thought to be leading the way in browser innovations, now seems to be following in Google’s footsteps.
That said, Firefox enthusiasts are sure to welcome this change. And if you want to get all hacker-ish, you can even configure Firefox to isolate more plugins, too, as the Mozilla Links blog explains (via LifeHacker):
To have the Adobe Reader plugin running on its own process, create a boolean preference in about:config, name it dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nppdf32.dll, set it to true, and restart. For Java, the preference must be named dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npjp2.dll. You just need to know the name of the library (which you get from about:plugins), and create the preference accordingly.
To try Lorentz for yourself, you can grab the latest build here.
With the University of California’s publication of Sarah Gridley’s Green is the Orator, her recent nomination for a Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and a recipient of a $20,000 Creative Workforce Fellowship from Cuyahoga County’s Community Partnership for Arts and Culture, the Case Western Reserve University poet and assistant professor of English says 2010 is off to a good start.
Green is the Orator follows five years after her first publication, Weather Eye Open (2005). The public will have the opportunity to hear Gridley read selections from her two volumes of poems during Writer’s Week on Monday, April 19, from 8-9:30 p.m. in Guilford House Parlor.
Titled Writing Home: Eco-poets of Maine, Montana, and Ohio, and funded by the Helen Buchman Sharnoff Endowed Fund for Poetry, the reading features work by Gridley and two visiting poets: Melissa Kwasny, the author of The Nine Senses (forthcoming), Reading Novalis in Montana, Thistle, and The Archival Birds; and Richard Miles, the author of Boat of Two Shores.
In Reading Novalis in Montana, Kwasny, who lives outside Jefferson City, Montana, carefully sorts out the overlaps and disconnects between book knowledge and direct perceptions of the natural world. In Boat of Two Shores, Miles, a professional stonemason, explores the borders of selfhood in rural, coastal Washington County, Maine.
Gridley returned to her hometown of Cleveland four years ago to become a visiting lecturer in poetry at CWRU. After living near woods and ocean in Maine for six years, under the “big sky” of Montana for two years earning her MFA, and in Iowa farmland for six months while a visiting professor at the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, she says a top priority was locating the city’s green spaces.
She found a nearby “gem” — Lake View Cemetery. Situated on an escarpment overlooking Lake Erie, rich in geological and horticultural wonders, the cemetery contains an old Ohio bluestone quarry site, and trees dating back to the founding of the city over 200 years ago.
Gridley says the green space offered her a place of solitude and reflection, and that one poem in the book was directly inspired by a geological walking tour she took there with Joe Hannibal, a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.
In writing Green is the Orator, Gridley says she became fascinated with Normandi Ellis’s translation of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Awakening Osiris — especially the line, “I am blessed by mortality.”
During the writing of the new book, Gridley experienced a series of deaths and found her poems becoming “intersecting sites of eulogy and elegy — of praise and grief for a finite life.”
Attracted to the word “green” for its double sense of vitality and naïveté, she derived her title from a line in Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Repetitions of a Young Captain”: “The choice is made. Green is the orator/Of our passionate height. He wears a tufted green,/And tosses green for those for whom green speaks.//Secrete us in reality. It is there/My orator. Let this giantness fall down/And come to nothing. Let the rainy arcs//And pathetic magnificences dry in the sky.”
In the world of academia where the general objective is to produce one book after another, Gridley says she tries to remember what drew her to poetry in the first place (its resistance to hurry), and to pace her writing according to slower rhythms and deeper instincts.
She hopes to impart this sense of concentration and attention to her students, she says, adding they generate a lot of energy and inspiration for her own work.
Teaching and writing complement each other well, Gridley says, but in her practice of poetry, retreat plays an important role.
“Kwasny and Miles provide great models for conserving and articulating ‘green solitude’ — for making time and space for the more-than-human world — and that is why I so wanted to bring them into contact with my students.”
Gridley hopes to use her Creative Workforce Fellowship toward a leave in the fall — to open up some space for her next writing project and to think creatively about future course offerings and teaching practices.
Go online for more information about the Poetry Reading on April 19.
Mark Kerrigan, the brother of Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan, pleaded not guilty today to manslaughter charges in the death of his elderly father.
Kerrigan, 45, stands accused of fighting with his dad in what prosecutors called a “drunken rage” that was so brutal the 70-year-old’s larynx was fractured. The Chief Medical Examiner ultimately determined that Daniel Kerrigan died on January 24th from cardiac dysrhythmia, a condition allegedly brought on by the intense physical struggle.
“We allege that the defendant’s violent reckless actions and complete disregard for his father’s safety and well-being endangered Daniel Kerrigan’s life and resulted in the substantial harm that led to his untimely death,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement released by his office yesterday. “This defendant should have known that the cruel acts that he committed against his elderly father, including grabbing him by the neck with enough force to cause a fracture, were highly likely to result in substantial harm and endanger his father’s life. Compounding these tragic circumstances is the fact that we allege the altercation by the defendant began because he wasn’t allowed to use the family telephone late that night, a seemingly trivial issue that we allege triggered the defendant’s drunken rage and led to his committing the malicious acts that led to the death of his elderly father.”
According to prosecutors, the events leading up to the elder Kerrigan’s death started early in the evening when Mark Kerrigan argued with an unnamed female at the family home.
Stoneham police responded to a 911 call after she called for help because Mark Kerrigan allegedly would not allow her to leave. Daniel Kerrigan returned home to help calm the situation and Stoneham police left after speaking with all the parties.
Over the next six hours, said prosecutors, the defendant started to drink liquor and argue with his parents over the use of the phone. Mark Kerrigan had been calling the unnamed woman, leaving over a dozen messages on her cell phone.
Prosecutors say Daniel Kerrigan refused further access to the phone causing his son to became angry and aggressive.
According to the statement released by the District Attorney’s office:
“Sometime after midnight, the defendant came into his parent’s bedroom screaming obscenities and yelling about the telephone not working. The victim and his wife went downstairs to the kitchen in an attempt to talk to their son. The defendant then allegedly engaged in a heated argument with the victim, which escalated to a violent physical altercation where the defendant allegedly pushed, grabbed and shoved the victim, resulting in several pictures falling off the wall. The defendant then allegedly forcibly grabbed the victim around the neck, causing a compression fracture to the left thyroid cartilage of his larynx, and the victim fell to the kitchen floor onto his back, unconscious.
The defendant’s mother then called 911 and during her recorded call for help, the defendant is heard screaming obscenities at his father and yelling at him.”
When first responders got to the scene the elder Kerrigan was unconscious.
According to prosecutors, Mark Kerrigan tried to hide a bottle of scotch and refused to obey police orders. Obviously intoxicated, say authorities, Kerrigan fought and swore at the officers telling police that his father was “faking it.”
Daniel Kerrigan was rushed to Winchester Hospital and pronounced dead an hour later.
The Kerrigan family has been standing by Mark Kerrigan and released the following statement through their attorney yesterday:
“We are deeply disappointed at the continued prosecution of Mark Kerrigan. We disagree with the decision to indict and look forward to the facts being considered by an impartial jury. The Kerrigan family continues to believe that he is not responsible for the death of their beloved Daniel Kerrigan. Mark Kerrigan has been living at home supporting and caring for his mother and is in complete compliance with all conditions of his pre-trial release and we see no reason that the situation should change.”
The judge raised Mark Kerrigan’s bail to $25,000 and the Kerrigan family released the following statement today:
“The Kerrigans are extremely pleased to have Mark back at home where he belongs”.
The iPad won’t charge with all USB chargers. But that’s because your USB chargers are weak. The reVIVE II Dual USB Charger can charge both your iPad and your other weakling gadget. The reVIVE II is not weak. More »
Art Cashin of UBS spoke on CNBC late yesterday about what he, and many traders on the floor, are thinking about treasury auctions and actions in the euro. Conspiracies abound.
Join the conversation about this story »
WASHINGTON–Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who told President Obama he will retire this summer, is a Chicago native, whose family has long-time ties to the city. Bill Barnhart is a Chicago journalist whose Stevens biography, written with Gene Schlickman, “John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life,” will be published next month by Northern Illinois University Press.
Barnhart highlighted Stevens Chicago connections for the Chicago Sun-Times:
1. Stevens’s father and grandfather built what was the world’s biggest hotel, The Stevens, on South Michigan Avenue, now the Chicago Hilton. That’s where the “S” crest above all the doors comes from.
2. His great uncle was Charles A. Stevens, owner of the former landmark Chas. A Stevens women’s apparel shop on State Street.
3. Stevens had an indirect brush with the law in his teenage years when his father and grandfather were indicted for embezzlement from the family business. His father, Ernest J. Stevens, was convicted in 1933, but the conviction was reversed by the Illinois Supreme Court.
4. Stevens grew up on 58th Street in Hyde Park, when to the U. of C. Laboratory Schools and the U. of C. undergraduate college. One of his mentors at college was Normal Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It. He was chairman of the board of the Chicago Maroon student newspaper during the restive years as America geared up for World War II. (His law degree is from Northwestern.)
5. Stevens is a life-long Chicago Cubs fan. He recalled being at Wrigley Field when Babe Ruth at the plate signaled to fans in the bleachers where he planned to hit his next home run .
6. When the Picasso statute was unveiled in Chicago, Stevens wrote a letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune speculating that the statute depicted a GOP elephant, erected by Mayor Richard J. Daley as a trophy to the Democratic Party.
7. Stevens’s first major dissent as a judge of the seventh Circuit U.DS. Court of Appeals came in the case of the Milwaukee priest Father James Groppi, who was jailed for disrupting the Wisconsin legislature in a protest over the treatment of poor people. Steven’s dissent was affirmed later, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the 7th Circuit’s majority opinion.
8. Stevens represented baseball owner Charley Finley, who was an insurance executive with offices on Michigan Avenue. Finley and Stevens were exact opposites in personality – Finley was crude and loud. But Stevens helped Finley move the Athletics from Kansas City to Oakland.
9. Stevens is a champion bridge player. Many Chicagoans peg their memories of Stevens to bridge.
10. Steven’s experience with Chicago politics, including misdeeds by two Illinois Supreme Court judges, shaped his view of the law, especially his dislike of any sort of legal immunity for politicians. He ruled against President Clinton, for example, in the infamous Paula Jones case.
Remember those days when you always needed a phone book to look up a number? First you had to find the phone book, then find the number, hope that number was the right number and so on. The developers for Android Yellow Pages remember that well, so they reinvented the phone book for us.
This simple to use App, goes right off the your GPS to help you find the searched location. There’s also the option of doing a voice search. Free [Market link]
Research In Motion today agreed to purchase QNX Software Systems from Harman International for an undisclosed amount. The move signals RIM’s further intent to add its products to vehicles, and complements last May’s purchase of Dash Navigation, a maker of Internet-connected, in-car GPS devices.
QNX Software Systems creates middleware and real-time operating systems for embedded devices such as in-vehicle entertainment systems, but don’t count on RIM to limit its efforts. An interesting connected car project on QNX’s web site expands possibilities far beyond simple audio or video playback. Mike Lazaridis, president and co-CEO, at RIM hinted at looking beyond the basics with this comment from the news release. “[W]e look forward to ongoing collaboration between Harman, QNX and RIM to further integrate and enhance the user experience between smartphones and in-vehicle audio and infotainment systems.”
Few major mobile platforms have gained a presence in automobiles, but RIM appears poised to try. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s SYNC is making inroads into the nascent market; the system, which is in more than 2 million vehicles, recently added Wi-Fi support. With an increasing number of consumers craving real-time information on the go, connected car systems are the next frontier. And given RIM’s core competency of connecting people with information, the QNX buy, as well as the prior Dash purchase, are making clear the path down which RIM plans to travel.
Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):
In 2010, EVs Will Need More Than Just an Electric Motor
Images courtesy of Foundry27
By Matt Holdridge
Tom Woods did an interview on April 7, 2010 with Brian Wilson on 1370 AM WSPD in Toledo, Ohio regarding state nullification of federal law and the critisism of it.
As Tom writes in today’s featured article,
Over the past few years, but especially during the past several months, there has been an extraordinary revival of interest in Thomas Jefferson’s idea of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. According to Jefferson, if the federal government were to monopolize constitutional interpretation, it would of course interpret the Constitution in its own favor and consistently uncover previously unknown reservoirs of additional federal power. Only a fool would consent to such a system, thought Jefferson, and the peoples of the states were not fools.
Needless to say, nullification is nowhere to be found on the three-by-five card on which our betters have written out the range of allowable opinion, so it has been greeted with the usual hysteria from predictable quarters.
Listen to Tom’s interview with Brian here.
Also, don’t forget that you can hear Tom speak on the subject live at the C4L Iowa Regional Conference on May 14-16, 2010.
[JURIST] Former South Korean Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook was acquitted Friday of bribery charges by the Seoul Central District Court. Han was accused of accepting $50,000 from former Korea Express CEO Kwak Young-wook in 2007 in exchange for helping him become president of Korea South-East Power Co., an affiliate of the state-run Korea Electric Power Corporation. The prosecution had relied on Kwak’s testimony as the primary evidence against Han, but the court found his statements contradictory and unconvincing. It also found Kwak guilty of embezzlement charges unrelated to the bribery charges against Han. Han’s supporters hope that the acquittal will help the opposition leader politically, as she plans to run for mayor in upcoming June elections. The prosecution plans to appeal the decision.
The acquittal temporarily ends legal troubles for the former prime minister. In December, Han was indicted for bribery the week after a court issued a warrant for her arrest. Han served as the country’s first female prime minister under president Roh Moo-hyun. Roh, who was himself the target of a bribery investigation, died in May from an apparent suicide. Shortly before his death, prosecutors had questioned Roh on suspicion that he accepted up to $6 million in bribes from Park Yeon-cha, a financial supporter who is also CEO of a shoe manufacturing company.
The next few weeks will be filled with discussions about the future of U.S.-Mexico relations in fighting drug cartel violence.
The Houston Chronicle reports that next week, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee on border affairs, will meet with State Department officials to discuss the expansion of the Merida Initiative, a program that helps Mexico with equipment and training. He is also planning a subcommittee hearing to decide the best way to send military equipment to Mexico, fast-track training initiatives and cooperate with the Mexican military and law enforcement to fight cartel violence.
Cuellar’s planned meetings come after lawmakers met with Mexican president Felipe Calderon earlier this week. Cuellar and Reps. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) and Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.), who met Calderon in Mexico City, said yesterday they will attempt to expedite aid, including helicopters and other equipment, to the Mexican government to help them fight drug cartel violence. Reyes said Obama and Calderón have been working to develop a “next phase” of assistance, since the government’s Merida Initiative, a program that helps Mexico with equipment and training, is in its last year.
The kind of violence they intend to mitigate? The kind happening throughout Cuidad Juarez. Since U.S. authorities now believe Juarez’s trafficking routes are controlled by Mexico’s most powerful cartel leader, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman of the Sinaloa cartel, drug traffickers could become more powerful now than ever, and violence could get worse.
From Cuellar’s press release:
“The consensus between the United States and Mexico is that we need a forward-thinking strategy built on more interoperability between our law enforcement and more direct investments in stabilizing local Mexican communities,” said Congressman Cuellar. “President Calderon said we’ll begin to see a similar initiative unfold in Ciudad Juarez that is centered on strengthening rule of law and expanding investments in social and economic infrastructure”…
Moving forward, Congressmen Cuellar, Reyes and Pastor will continue to make recommendations to Congress regarding Mexico and the Mérida Initiative program, in addition to matters related to ongoing southern border security.
These border lawmakers seem intent on taking steps to mitigate Mexico’s drug war. And not a moment too soon: According to StopTheDrugWar.org, the total body count since Calderon took office in 2006 is 19,032; this year alone, 2,721 have been killed.
How will the Court change with Stevens gone?
More than with the Souter-Sotomayor switch which was predicted to be and has so far proven to be an even swap.
Stevens is the liberal leader of the Court. If not in legal thinking then certainly in leadership/seniority and ability to cull together a five vote majority. It is Stevens who is often credited with bringing Justice Anthony Kennedy to the liberal side in the close 5-4 cases. It is unlikely that a new justice will have that pull.
HOWEVER, the loss of Stevens will put Kennedy in a position of power to craft his own five member majority. Under Court protocol the Chief Justice has the power to assign opinions when he is in the majority. The longest tenured Associate Justice has that power when the Chief Justice is in the minority. Stevens has been in that position for nearly two decades. It will now fall to Justice Antonin Scalia. But since Chief Justice John Roberts and Scalia are often on the same side and unlikely to diverge in the future, Kennedy as next in line has the power to control the outcome of cases unlike ever before. As the notorious swing vote on the Court Kennedy can now effectively hold each side hostage for the outcome he desires. The question is which side will most often bend to what Kennedy demands? My prediction is that Kennedy who is more often than not (by about 2-1) with the conservatives on the close cases will now be leading more rulings with the liberals.
The Last Call Sheet of 24 the Series (pix)
I still remember those lovely sleepless nights when I first discovered 24 on DVDs. To me, the only proper way to watch 24 is to watch all 24 episodes back to back. So during that ~24 hours, I had a few frozen quick meals, instant noodles, and very optional showers.
Good Night, Good Luck, & Thanks to all the casts and crews of 24!
[HT Rodney]
Filed under: drama, Love, Lovemarks, people, Television, united states 
by Tom Philpott
In Meat Wagon, we round up the latest outrages from the meat and livestock industries.
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Nasty, brutish, and short: the facts of life for hens in an egg factory. Moral of this story on inhumane practices in the egg industry: when a few huge companies dominate production of a commodity in a low-profit-margin industry, they zealously cut costs at every level of production. The key goal is to maximize output. Above a certain level, the company churns out a profit. Below that level, it loses cascading amounts of money for its shareholders.
If you happen to be a cog in the operation—say, a hen in an egg-laying shed with 300,000 other birds—life will be painful and short. And the end won’t be pretty.
To its everlasting discredit, the U.S. meat/livestock industry refuses to allow the media or the general public to enter its facilities. It hides its gruesome practices behind walls—and homilies: “All Rose Acre Farms hens are cared for to make sure all hens are happy at all times. Only a happy hen will lay eggs!” Rose Acre Farms is the nation’s second-largest egg producer. The Humane Society of the United States managed to infiltrate its Iowa facilities and document cruel and highly unsanitary practices. Thank God for HSUS.
A section of Amazon rain forest being cleared for cow pasture. Photo courtesy Greenpeace/Daniel Beltrá. • In June of last year, Greenpeace came out with an excellent report on the Brazilian beef industry’s affect on deforestation: perhaps the single most urgent climate change issue.
As I summarized at the time, the Brazil is already the globe’s leading exporter of both beef and leather. The government, cheered on by the World Bank, wants to see the country double its share in the global beef-products market in the next decade, as part of a push for export-led growth.
The Brazilian government has been investing billions of dollars in infrastructure and loan guarantees to meet that goal—even though “the cattle sector in the Brazilian Amazon is the largest driver of deforestation in the world, responsible for one in every eight hectares destroyed,” according to Greenpeace. Of course, the push for more beef production puts severe pressure on the rainforest, as ranchers expand pastures and hunt for new grazing land. Indeed, the government is literally investing in beef-processing infrastructure in the Amazon region.
At the time of the report, three huge players—Bertin, JBS, and Matrig—processed the great majority of Brazilian beef, and benefited directly from those investments. Since then, JBS has swallowed up Bertin, making it by far the biggest processor in Brazil. Meat Wagon readers will remember that JBS has become a heavyweight in the U.S. meat market—after a string of acquisitions in ‘08 and ‘09, JBS is our third-largest beef packer, second-largest poultry packer, and third-largest pork packer. Indeed, it’s combined global assets make it the largest meat producer in the world, larger even than U.S. behemoth Tyson.
JBS has always denied buying cattle from illegally deforested land, but in its report, Greenpeace proved that claim to be false. In October, JBS signed Greenpeace’s “Zero Deforestation Pledge,” promising to ensure that cattle it buys not come from deforested land. So, how’s that going? So far, not so well:
In a meeting on April 5th with Greenpeace, the major slaughterhouses of Brazil—including JBS/Bertin, Marfrig and Minerva—showed insufficient progress to comply with the first step in the Zero Deforestation Agreement they signed six months ago. Each of the companies reaffirmed their commitment to stopping deforestation of the Amazon by cattle ranchers, however, and asked for more time in order to be in compliance with the agreement.
• Leveling rain forest to create pasture for cattle production is clearly an idiotic practice. Rain forest ecosystems support a dizzying array of species (including humans). Large ruminants are not among them. Making rain forests hospitable to ruminants means obliterating rain forests—unleashing vast amounts of carbon, and sacrificing untold amounts of future carbon-sequestering capacity. Levelling rain forest for beef makes about as much sense as amputating your lungs and eating them for dinner.
However, the globe’s grasslands have long supported ruminants; and ruminants play a vital role in maintaining those ecosystems. So keeping cows on grass in, say, the prairies of Iowa—long since plowed up for corn—makes lots of sense. Which brings us to our next item: this crudely reported NPR segment on grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef.
I say, crudely reported, because the reporter doesn’t seem to understand that all cows start out on grass; the distinction hinges on whether they’re finished on grass or grain. She also shows no appetite to delve too deeply into just what grain-fed cows get in their rations. “The typical corn-fed cows eats just grain from a trough,” she declares, in that singsongy tone of voice favored by kindergarten teachers and many NPR presenters. If only it were true! But I guess discussion of antibiotics, industrial chicken manure, waste from ethanol factories, etc, would have ruined the happy-happy NPR-world tone of the piece.
The interesting part, though, is when she performs a blind taste test of grass-fed vs. corn-fed steaks for two NPR staffers. Both prefer the “more tender” grain-fed sample to the “meatier” grass-fed. Moral of the story: thirty or so years of cheap grain-fed beef has shaped the American palate and made people prize the tender quality of beef from animals that don’t exercise.
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