"We've Never Seen Anything Like This" Mutations and Deformities in Gulf Seafood Post BP Spill

The words "We've never seen anything like it" are repeated by scientists, seafood processors and fishermen throughout the gulf region. A feature article from Al Jazeera English, Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists, examines the alarming abnormalities turning up in fish, shrimp, crab and other species since the BP oil spill.

We are really witnessing only the beginning of the fallout from this disaster. While sea creatures with mutated genomes may not actively contain oil or toxic chemicals, how will these mutations impact their survival? Fishers interviewed in that article are reporting massive decreases in the catches. I don't see how BP can ever make this right. How do you compensate a country for wiping out one of their richest sources of food?

BP's Deepwater Horizon spill and the subsequent, unprecedented dump of toxic chemical dispersants has damaged fisheries and affected the genomes of gulf seafood.

Along with collapsing fisheries, signs of malignant impact on the regional ecosystem are ominous: horribly mutated shrimp, fish with oozing sores, underdeveloped blue crabs lacking claws, eyeless crabs and shrimp - and interviewees' fingers point towards BP's oil pollution disaster as being the cause.

The Al Jazeera piece is a must read. I can't do it justice here with just a few paragraphs but here are some quotes from various fishers and scientists interviewed for the article. The eerily constant refrain of "we've never seen anything like this" runs through the piece.

Tracy Kuhn and her husband Mike Roberts, commercial fishers from Louisiana:

Read More:

HTTP://WWW.DAILYKOS.COM/STORY/2012/04/18/1084285/--WE-VE-NEVER-SEEN-ANYTHING-LIKE-THIS-MUTATIONS-AND-DEFORMITIES-IN-GULF-SEAFOOD-POST-BP-SPILL

Meghann Myers - Grant to boost use of food stamps at farmers markets

Farmers markets are a popular source of reasonably priced fresh produce, but across the country many accept only cash or checks – a big problem for low-income shoppers using food stamps. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to change that.

Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan this week announced a $4 million grant for states to help implement wireless technology that will allow more farmers markets to accept Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or food stamps.

Markets need wireless Internet or land-line connections in order to accept payments from customers using government benefits, a system known as Electronic Benefits Transfer. The system isn’t always available for outdoor markets in parks or parking lots, and small markets often can’t afford to set up the technology.

Two years ago, Jeff Dabbelt of Lexington Farmers Market in Lexington, Ky., set up a machine on his own to accept EBT payments. “I had to convince my directors that it was going to be worth the additional cost,” he said.

Last year, the market brought in $14,000 from EBT cards, Dabbelt said.

Read More:

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/10/148443/grant-to-boost-use-of-food-stamps.html

Urge The FDA To Stop Targeting DMAA

CITIZENS FOR HEALTH

ACTION ALERT

In April 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a Warning Letter to manufacturers of products containing 1,3 dimethylamylamine, also known as DMAA, claiming that DMAA is a “new dietary ingredient,” one which would require an advance notification to the FDA before marketing. DMAA is a naturally occurring ingredient in the geranium plant that is found in the oil obtained from the steam distillation of the stems and leaves of geranium, a plant that has been consumed as a food for well over a century.

DMAA is also an ingredient in popular weight loss and fitness dietary supplements, and produces a sensation equivalent to drinking two or three cups of coffee. Most DMAA-containing dietary supplements are made with an exact, synthetically produced copy of the naturally-occurring dietary ingredient – as is the case with many widely recognized dietary supplements, such as beta-alanine, vitamin C, beta carotene, lycopene, alpha lipoic acid and various amino acids.

A Shot Across The Bow From FDA

Citizens for Health understands the FDA’s putative interest in protecting all of us from dangerous products. However, the agency is clearly overstepping its bounds in this case by using “nonbinding recommendations” (from a draft guidance document no less) to pressure dietary supplement makers into taking their products off the market with no definitive evidence of risk. The FDA is effectively denying American citizens the right to choose for themselves which products to buy.

Read More:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/750/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=10473

Martha Rosenberg - Processed Foods: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Food You Eat

Thanks to factory farming's massive economies of scale, a lot of food today is disgusting or cruel or disgusting and cruel. Just when people stopped talking about cantaloupes with deadly listeria, "pink slime" hit the news. And just when people stopped talking about pink slime, ground beef treated with ammonia to kill germs, mad cow hit the news. Does anyone even remember the arsenic in the fruit juice?

Food scandals are so costly to Big Food, it has repeatedly tried to kill the messenger rather than clean up its act. In the 1990s it pushed through "food disparagement" laws under which Oprah Winfrey herself was sued by cattlemen in 1997 (Winfrey said she would never eat a hamburger again upon learning that cows were being fed to cows). Winfrey was acquitted and cow cannibalism was made illegal but the US still lost $3 billion in beef exports when a first mad cow was discovered in 2003. April's new mad cow will not help foreign trade.

Last year, Big Food introduced Animal Facility Interference laws in several states which make it a crime to "produce, distribute or possess photos and video taken without permission at an agricultural facility." The bills also criminalize lying on an application to work at an agriculture facility "with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the Owner"--in an effort to stop the flow of grisly undercover videos. The first facility interference offense would be an aggravated misdemeanor but subsequent offenses could be felonies.

Read More:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-rosenberg/processed-food_b_1501073.html

Rady Ananda - New study: Amish prove raw milk promotes health in children

An international team of researchers recently confirmed that children who drink fresh milk – unprocessed and unpasteurized – have a better immune response to allergens and are far less likely to develop asthma.

Researchers from Indiana, Switzerland, and Germany ran surveys and tests on Swiss and US children aged 6-12 years and submitted their results to the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology last month. [1]

Because the Amish emigrated from Switzerland, and are thus genetically similar, the team compared Northern Indiana Amish farm children with today’s Swiss kids. Though rural kids are known to be healthier than city kids, the team found that the Amish have a superior immune response to allergens and asthma than even Swiss farm kids have.

“Finally a health professional in America conducted research into the low incidence of allergies among farm kids,” said Kimberly Hartke, publicist for the Weston A. Price Foundation in an email to Food Freedom News. “This research validates what European researchers have already discovered: Raw milk is health-promoting.”

Over the past century, the US and Europe have seen a spike in “allergic sensitization” reaching more than half the population of both regions, says lead researcher Mark Holbreich. Concurrently, studies in the last decade continue to demonstrate “that certain populations have a significantly lower prevalence of allergic sensitization and a lower prevalence of asthma.”

Read More:

http://foodfreedomgroup.com/2012/05/09/raw-milk-promotes-health/#more-21545

Paige Aarhus - Africa's Frankenfoods

In the sprawling hills of the Kangundo district in Kenya’s Eastern Province, just a few hours outside of capital city Nairobi, Fred Kiambaa has been farming the same small, steep plot of land for more than 20 years.

Born and raised just outside Kathiini Village in Kangundo, Kiambaa knows the ups and downs of agriculture in this semi-arid region. He walks up a set of switchbacks to Kangundo’s plateaus to tend his fields each morning and seldom travels further than a few miles from his plot.

Right now, all that remains of his maize crop are rows of dry husks. Harvest season finished just two weeks ago, and the haul was meager this time around.

“Water is the big problem, it’s always water. We have many boreholes, but when there is no rain, it’s still difficult,” he said.

Kiambaa and his wife, Mary, only harvested 440 pounds of maize this season, compared to their usual 2,200. They have six children, meaning there will be many lean months before the next harvest, and worse: Though March is Kenya’s rainiest month, it’s been mostly dry so far.

“The rain surely is not coming well this year. Rain is the key. We can only pray,” he said.

Read More:

http://www.indypendent.org/africas-frankenfoods

Christopher Wanjek - Salt a Leading Killer Worldwide, Scientists Say

Want to save a few million premature deaths each year? Regulate salt, said researchers at the World Nutrition Rio2012 meeting held here last week.

"Salt [added to food] is the major cause of high blood pressure, and high blood pressure is the major cause of death worldwide," said Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary, University of London. "The evidence for salt [in causing premature death] is overwhelming, equivalent to the onus of smoking."

Salt, or sodium chloride, is essential for human health; we need about 350 milligrams of sodium daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That's about the weight of half a raisin. Unfortunately, Americans consume on average about 3,500 milligrams of sodium daily.

Most of that sodium comes not from the saltshaker but rather from processed foods, in amounts unrealized by most consumers. A bag of potato chips might be an obvious culprit; one serving contains more than 250 milligrams of sodium. But so does a single slice of store-bought bread or a bowl of breakfast cereal. The bigger offenders are canned vegetables, canned soups and frozen dinners, each with around 1,000 milligrams of sodium.

Read More:

http://www.livescience.com/20179-salt-leading-killer-worldwide.html

Soybeans Soaked in Warm Water Naturally Release Key Cancer-Fighting Substance

Soybeans soaking in warm water could become a new "green" source for production of a cancer-fighting substance now manufactured in a complicated and time-consuming industrial process, scientists are reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Hari B. Krishnan and colleagues explain that the substance, Bowman-Birk Protease Inhibitor (BBI), has shown promise for preventing certain forms of cancer in clinical trials. Those human tests resulted from evidence of BBI's beneficial effects, including indications that BBI derived from the large amounts of soybeans in traditional Japanese diets might underpin low cancer mortality rates in Japan. However, the current method of extracting BBI from soybeans is time-consuming and involves harsh chemicals. The scientists set out to see if there might be a greener and more environmentally friendly way of obtaining BBI.

They found that soybean seeds incubated in water at 122 degrees Fahrenheit naturally release large amounts of BBI that can easily be harvested from the water. The protein appeared to be active, with tests showing that it stopped breast cancer cells from dividing in a laboratory dish. "The abundance of BBI in soybean seed exudates by incubating the seeds in warm water provides a simple and alternative method to isolate this low molecular weight protein," the researchers said.

Read More:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120509123858.htm

Eric Holt-Giménez - We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People… and Still Can’t End Hunger

A new a study* from McGill University and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature compared organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. Researchers found that on average, conventional systems out-yielded organic farms by 25%—mostly for grains, and depending on conditions.

Embracing the current conventional wisdom, the authors argue for a combination of conventional and organic farming to meet “the twin challenge of feeding a growing population, with rising demand for meat and high-calorie diets, while simultaneously minimizing its global environmental impacts.”

Unfortunately, neither the study nor the conventional wisdom addresses the real cause of hunger.

Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050. But the people making less than $2 a day—most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviably small plots of land—can’t afford to buy this food.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/08-2

Tom Philpott - How Your College Is Selling Out to Big Ag

Last week, the University of Illinois' College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) in Champaign-Urbana made a momentous announcement: it has accepted a $250,000 grant from genetically modified seed/agrichemical giant Monsanto to create an endowed chair for the "Agricultural Communications Program" it runs with the College of Communications.

The university's press release [1] quotes Monsanto's vice president of technology communications giving a taste of its vision for the investment:

With the population expecting to reach 9 billion by 2030, farmers from Illinois and beyond will be asked to produce more crops while using fewer resources. At Monsanto we are committed to bringing farmers advanced ag technologies to help them meet this challenge. Effectively communicating farmers’ efforts to feed, clothe and fuel a rapidly growing population is a major part of the solution.

A cynic might translate that statemenpt this way: In order to maintain highly profitable and hotly contested [2] business model, we'll need a new generation of PR professionals to construct and disseminate our marketing message.

Read More:

http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/05/how-agribusiness-dominates-public-ag-research