Outbreaks of Foodborne Illnesses Are Becoming Harder to Detect

New diagnostic tests for common foodborne pathogens such as Salmonella, Campylobacter, and Escherichia coli may hinder the ability of public health officials to detect multistate outbreaks. The problem is an inability to trace contamination to its source.

In 2009 Alicia Cronquist, an epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment noticed that several rural clinics in her state had switched from traditional laboratory tests that relied on growing a culture to rapid nonculture tests. In the past, when patients were suspected of having certain foodborne illnesses, doctors routinely sent a stool sample to a laboratory, which detected a range of potential bacterial culprits. (Some foodborne infections, like Listeria, are diagnosed with blood tests.) An isolate, or sample of the bacterial colony at fault, would then be forwarded to local, state or federal officials, who had the DNA tested to determine the organism's specific strain. The telling DNA sequence, or "fingerprint," was entered into the PulseNet system so that public health officials could see if samples from other newly diagnosed patients matched the information in the database. Analysis of when and where people contracted an infection of that specific strain can help lead to the source of contamination, allowing investigators to remedy the situation.

But, Cronquist says, over the course of a year, a clear shift in the types of tests being run in local labs had resulted in much less information being shared with her department. "We saw our surveillance data changing, and by 2010, almost 15 percent of total case reports were using the nonculture tests," she says.

The new tests do have a lot going for them. They provide quicker results to the physician and patient. They are often less expensive and, in some cases, may not require a stool sample at all. What is more, some of them can spot pathogens that the culture-based tests do not and diagnose more infections.

Tennessee's state epidemiologist Timothy F. Jones notes, for instance, that culture tests for E. coli look for the 0157 strain, which is among the bacteria that produce the Shiga toxin; that strain infamously accounted for the outbreak of food poisoning from spinach this year. "With the new rapid tests," he says, "we can actually detect the whole class of Shiga-toxin producing bacteria. The rapid test is detecting additional bacteria we would have missed before."

But adoption of the new tests has meant that health officials, like Cronquist, are not always getting the isolate required to do the DNA fingerprinting that is needed to help identify a source of contamination, such as E. coli in lettuce or salmonella in raw spinach.

In that way, Jones says, "these rapid tests put us back where we were when we didn't have the ability to do [DNA] fingerprinting."

The trend is particularly worrisome because other ways of protecting the public from foodborne illnesses are also stumbling. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in six Americans (or 48 million) become sick from a foodborne disease each year and 3,000 die. A study released late last month by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group indicated the problem is not improving in part because laws like the Food Modernization Safety Act continue to languish in the White House's Office of Management and Budget. And a federal monitoring program—the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Microbiological Data Program, which tested produce for pathogens—began to be shut down on November 12. 

Jay M. Lieberman, medical director of infectious diseases for Quest Diagnostics, which serves approximately half the physicians and hospitals in the U.S., says that the wide adoption of the new tests means that public health officials will need to come up with new ways to monitor and respond to new outbreaks. For example, health officials will need to work with the labs to figure out how to get an isolate or find another way to characterize pathogens.

"By connecting cases, we can find problems in the food supply we might not have found," says John Besser, deputy chief of theCDC's Enteric Diseases Laboratory Branch. "The challenge for us is to develop a test that will provide all the information that we need without going to the isolate step. That's a significant challenge, but we all believe it's doable."

At present, no one is working on developing a test that can help public health officials trace outbreaks, though several companies continue to develop the new nonculture tests, including Abbott Laboratories, BD, Cepheid and Luminex. Besser says he expects laboratories to quickly adopt them when they become available. For the labs, the new tests mean quicker, cheaper results requiring fewer highly trained staff.

Although the problem of tracking pathogens related to foodborne illness is new, similar concerns were raised when nonculture tests were developed for detecting the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea.

"When it comes to gonorrhea, almost all testing is done by nonculture techniques now," explains Quest's Lieberman. In response to that sea change, the CDC set up a surveillance project that allows it to monitor trends in a new way. At specified labs in 28 cities across the U.S., cultures are run and isolates taken from samples collected from the first 25 men found to have urethral gonorrhea each month. With that limited data set, public health officials can still track outbreaks while also allowing for broader use of the new nonculture tests.

Although that procedure has worked well for gonorrhea, whether it will also work for foodborne illnesses remains an open question.

An irony of all of this, says the CDC's Besser, is that the new tests for foodborne pathogens may be better than the old ones, but if they disrupt the public health systems, they "could result in a lot more people getting sick. That is the unintended consequence."

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=food-poisoning-outbreaks-become-harder-to-detect

Those bugs ‘are going to outsmart us’

It is what scientists and environmentalists regard as one of nature’s great ironies: Fifteen years ago, genetically engineered seeds promised to reduce the amount of poisons used on the land, but today they are forcing farmers to use more — and sometimes more toxic — chemicals to protect their crops.

Why? Because pests have done what nature always does — adapt. Just as some bacteria have become resistant to antibiotic drugs, a growing number of superweeds and superbugs in the nation’s farm fields are proving invulnerable to the tons of pesticides that go hand in hand with genetically modified seeds.

The rising tide of pesticides is alarming many scientists and environmentalists about their effect on what’s left of the North American prairie ecosystem, which survives in and around the vast “green deserts” of row crops that now stretch across the Upper Midwest.

“There are now 80 million acres of treated corn,” said Eric Mader, an ecologist with the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. “That’s a huge volume of pesticides applied for one crop.”

What’s next, they say, is even worse. To combat the growing wave of resistant weeds and bugs, biotech companies like Monsanto and Dow Chemical Company are poised to launch a whole new arsenal of genetically modified seeds that will accelerate the chemical warfare. Some are designed for use with older, more toxic herbicides that scientists say pose an even greater risk to the environment and human health.

In recent years, scientists have identified an estimated 23 weeds around the world that no longer die when doused with Roundup.

The next generation of genetically modified seeds, designed to combat the new resistant pests, will work for a while, skeptics concede. But eventually, they say, nature will evolve again.

Many scientists say the evolution in farming and the widespread Roundup use already has contributed to the demise of the prairie and many of its species, including milkweed, bees and butterflies. The prospect of widespread use of even more toxic herbicides is alarming, they said.

“We’re going back 20 years, and that scares me,” said Mace Vaughan, a pollinator conservation specialist with the Xerces Society.

There is another solution, say Potter and Ostlie, but one that can work against the economic interests of farmers and pesticide companies: Plant something else for a while. Alternating corn and soybeans, and mixing in other crops from season to season, can improve the soil and defeat the bugs and weeds, say agronomists.

“Rotate. That’s how you get rid of it,” he said. “Rotate, rotate, rotate.”

http://healthimpactnews.com/2012/pests-adapt-to-gmos-requiring-more-pesticides-for-gm-crops/

We're Eating What? The Drugstore in U.S. Meat

Food consumers seldom hear about the drugs oestradiol-17, zeranol, trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate and the names are certainly not on meat labels. But those synthetic growth hormones are central to U.S. meat production, especially beef, and the reason Europe has banned a lot of U.S. meat since 1989.

Zeranol, widely used as a growth promoter in the U.S. beef industry, is known for its "ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells" like the "known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol (DES)," says the Breast Cancer Fund, a group dedicated to identifying and eliminating environmental causes of breast cancer.   Zeranol may "play a critical role in mammary tumorigenesis" and "be a risk factor for breast cancer," agrees a recent paper from the College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering at China Agricultural University in Beijing.

Why is such a drug, that requires "Appropriate Personal Protective Equipment" for use-- "laboratory coat, gloves, safety glasses and mask"--routinely used in U.S. meat production and not even labeled?

Melengestrol acetate, a synthetic progestin put in feed, is 30 times as active as natural progesterone, says the European Commission (EC) and trenbolone acetate, a synthetic androgen, is several times more active than testosterone. Trenbolone acetate is administered as ear implants commonly seen at livestock operations. Operators say the implants and the ears are removed from the human food supply at the slaughterhouse. Do they become feed for other animals?

Why does the European Commission ban meat made with such chemicals?   "There is an association between steroid hormones and certain cancers and an indication that meat consumption is possibly associated with increased risks of breast cancer and prostate cancer," says the EC's Committee on Veterinary Measures. "The highest rates of breast cancer are observed in North America, where hormone-treated meat consumption is highest in the world," it says, adding that the same statistics apply to prostate cancer.

In fact, Kwang Hwa, Korea, has only seven new cases of breast cancer per 100,000 people, says the EC report, whereas non-Hispanic Caucasians in Los Angeles have 103 new cases per 100,000 people. The breast cancer rate also increases among immigrant groups when they move to the U.S., says the report, suggesting causes are not genetic but environmental. In the overarching search for a "cure," is the "cause" of a lot of possible U.S. breast cancer overlooked?

Another growth drug used in U.S. beef, pork and turkey--yes turkey--is ractopamine an asthma-like drug called a beta agonist. Like growth hormones, ractopamine lets livestock operators produce more weight more quickly from their animals. Ractopamine was integrated into the food supply under reporters' and consumers' radar more than ten years ago. It became a favorite on U.S. farms when its ability to increase muscle by "repartitioning" nutrients and slowing protein degradation was discovered in a laboratory.

Unlike other veterinary drugs used in U.S. meat that are withdrawn before slaughter (or thrown away as ears) ractopamine is begun in the days before slaughter and never withdrawn. It is given to cattle for their last 28 to 42 days, to pigs for their last 28 days, and to turkeys for their last seven to 14 days. Marketed as Paylean for pigs, as Optaflexx for cattle, and as Topmax for turkeys, ractopamine is not just banned in Europe, it is banned in 160 countries.

Public health officials and livestock specialists are increasingly questioning the drug's wide and often clandestine use. "Ractopamine usage benefits producers, but not consumers. It is bad for animal welfare and has some bad effects on humans," said Donald Broom, a professor at the University of Cambridge's department of veterinary medicine, at a forum on the topic in Taipei earlier this year.

In China, the Sichuan Pork Trade Chamber of Commerce reported that more than 1,700 people have been "poisoned" from eating   Paylean-fed pigs since 1998 in 2007, it seized U.S. pork for its ractopamine residues.

Thanks to the black hand of Big Meat on USDA and FDA policies, the drugstore in U.S. meat is largely hidden from food consumers. So are the health effects of the cheap, ubiquitous and unwholesome meat. END

http://www.opednews.com/articles/We-re-Eating-What-The-Dru-by-Martha-Rosenberg-121127-485.html

More Research Shows Positivity Adds Years to Life

A multitude of factors contribute to longevity, like diet and activity level. Research is packing weight to evidence that positivity does more than make life more pleasant, however; it makes it longer.

A Yale School of Public Health study found older individuals with positive attitudes about aging experienced a lower likelihood of suffering from—or a greater chance of recovering from—disabilities and sickness.

Positive or Negative Associations with Age Add (or Subtract) Years of Life

Every month, researchers interviewed the same 598 people of at least 70 years of age (the average age being 79) who, at the beginning of the study, had no disabilities. (Being free of disabilities constituted four activities for this study: bathing, dressing, moving from a chair, and walking.)

Participants were asked for five terms or phrases they believed described the elderly, which the researchers then graphed on a five-point scale. In example, the negative descriptor, “decrepit,” scored 1 on the scale, while a positive descriptor like “spry” scored a 5. This continued for up to 129 months in addition to each participant filling out home-based assessments every 18 months for 10 years.

Compiled evidence suggested that positive associations with aging allowed people to live more independently in later years.

Thoughts can Help Reduce and Reverse Health Risks

“This result suggests that how the old view their aging process could have an effect on how they experience it,” says lead researcher Becca R. Levy. “In previous studies, we have found that older individuals with positive age stereotypes tend to show lower cardiovascular response to stress and they tend to engage in healthier activities, which may help to explain our current findings.”

This isn’t Levy’s first foray into the subject; she published another study in 2002 showing that people with positive outlooks on aging lived on average 7.6 years longer than their more pessimistic counterparts. Earlier this year, the journal Psychosomatic Medicine published a study indicating that a positive outlook could help reduce and even reverse increasing health risks inherent in older age.

Evidence Piling Up

The idea of the metaphysical influencing the physical is nothing new but has until recently been assumed to be the stuff of hocus pocus and quackery. It seems hardly like the National Institutes of Health to throw $9.5 million on quackery, though. The study in question involved 756 participants in three studies showing the positive thoughts and health affirmations helped create behavioral changes and physical transformation.

Even if you’re not convinced, what’s the hurt in a little smile?

http://naturalsociety.com/research-positivity-adds-years-to-life/?utm_source=Natural+Society&utm_campaign=ffa1d34c4d-Email+37%3A+11%2F23%2F2012&utm_medium=email

A 4°C World Will Be Devastating But Can Be Avoided

Washington, DC  – Without further action to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions the world could be as much as 4°C warmer by 2060, threatening the world with devastating food shortages, extreme weather and sea-level rise, according to the World Bank in a new report published today on climate change titled Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided.  This is the first climate report published under the new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, signaling a new more aggressive focus on climate change.

The report, which focuses on the impacts of a world 4°C hotter by the end of the century, predicts that sea-levels could rise by more than a meter by 2100, flooding cities in Mozambique, Bangladesh and Venezuela and devastating small island states and river delta regions when combined with projected increased intensity of tropical storms. Changes in water systems such as predicted increasing droughts and extreme rainfall are predicted to double in magnitude in a 4°C world, damaging ecosystems, increasing species extinction, and impacting food security.

“This report should be a wakeup call to the world that we must work harder and faster to combat climate change,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “Rapid cuts in CO2 emissions are necessary to stabilize long-term temperatures, but in the near-term, aggressively addressing short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) such as black carbon, methane, tropospheric ozone, and HFCs can provide rapid climate, health, and food security benefits, particularly in the critical vulnerable regions that are already suffering some of the worst impacts of climate change.”

Cutting SLCPs can reduce the rate of global warming in half for the next several decades, cut the rate of warming over the elevated regions of the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau by at least half, and the rate of warming in the Arctic by two-thirds over the next 30 years, while saving millions of lives per year and preventing billions of dollars in crop losses.  Fast-action strategies to reduce SLCPs combined with necessary reductions in carbon dioxide are essential for slowing already accelerating extreme weather events in the near-term, while maintaining global temperature at or below 2°C above preindustrial levels through the end of the century.

“Reducing emissions of these short-lived climate forcers is critical for protecting the world’s vulnerable peoples and vulnerable ecosystems,” said Zaelke.  “When we talk about sustainable development,” Zaelke added, “this is precisely what we mean. These measures reduce climate change, save lives, provide access to clean energy, and improve food security all at once.”

http://www.enn.com/press_releases/4098

Africa: Calling for a GMO-Free Continent

South African smallholder farmer Motlasi Musi is not happy with the African Centre for Biosafety’s call for his country and Africa to ban the cultivation, import and export of all genetically modified maize. “I eat genetically modified maize, which I have been growing on my farm for more than seven years, and I am still alive,” he declared.

Musi, 57, a maize farmer in the Fun Valley area of Olifantsvlei, outside Johannesburg, and a beneficiary of South Africa’s Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development program, has embraced the science of biotechnology with gusto.

“What have changed are my yields and my income.” He said that he earned about 225 dollars more per hectare for his GM maize crop than he did when farming ordinary maize.

He said that he was helping reduce food insecurity in South Africa by growing and selling GM maize.

“Biotechnology has a very big role in food security,” Musi told IPS. “The climate has changed and I know that with drought-tolerant seed I have a tool to fight climate change. I cannot guarantee that the rain will come and I if plant crops which are not drought tolerant, I could get into debt and lose my farm.”

A report in April 2012 by the Climate Emergency Institute titled “The Impact of Climate Change on South Africa” said the country is experiencing a gradual, yet steady, change in climate with temperatures showing a significant increase over the last 60 years. Temperatures in South Africa are predicted to rise in costal regions by one to two degrees Celsius by 2050.

But the ACB does not believe that GMOs can deliver food security on the continent, specifically in South Africa, a leading African producer of GMOs.

The organization is behind an African Civil Society statement calling for a ban on GM maize in South Africa and on the continent, which it hopes to submit to African governments. To date 656 signatures have been collected on the online statement, including those of 160 African organizations.

“We have sent an open letter to our minister of agriculture in October to ban GM maize in South Africa,” Haidee Swanby, an officer with ACB, told IPS.

“We (South Africa) have been cultivating, importing and exporting GM crops for 14 years with absolutely no impact on food security whatsoever. In fact, a bag of mealie meal is 84 percent more expensive than it was four or five years ago due to international prices and the extensive use of maize for biofuel production.”

Swanby said there was a need to improve access to food, by addressing poverty, unemployment and issues around land tenure, service delivery, infrastructure, access to markets, and unfair global trade practices.

“Genetically modified food has never been labelled in South Africa so there is no way to know if it is causing health problems,” Swanby said, calling for a rigorous scientific study into the health implications of GM food.

“If someone is getting sick, how are they going to trace it back to GMOs when they don’t know they’re eating them? We want more science, not less!”

The ACB has a supporter in Friends of the Earth International, which is also lobbying for aGMO-free Africa.

The organization’s coordinator Nnimmo Bassey told IPS that GMOs do not deliver on the promises made by the biotechnology industry. He argued that hunger in Africa is used as an excuse to contaminate and erode genetic diversity on the continent.

Bassey said that GM crops are neither more nutritious nor better yielding nor use fewer pesticides and herbicides. And he said they are unsafe for humans and for the environment.

“It is all about market colonization,” Bassey told IPS. “GM crops would neither produce food security nor meet nutrition deficits. The way forward is food sovereignty – Africans must determine what crops are suitable culturally and environmentally. Up to 80 percent of our food needs are met by smallholder farmers. These people need support and inputs for integrated agro-ecological crop management. Africa should ideally be a GMO-free continent.

Friends of the Earth International cites failed GMO experiments in Africa with Bt cotton (a strain of cotton that had the Bacillus thuringiensis bacterium inserted into its genetic code) in Burkina Faso and South Africa where they had been touted as the crops to pull smallholder farmers out of poverty.

Global developer and supplier of plant genetics, including hybrid seed, DuPont Pioneer, said that the effect of switching from saved seed to hybrid seed is dramatic.

The company’s vice president responsible for Asia, Africa and China, Daniel Jacobi, told IPS that of the 24 million hectares of maize planted annually in sub-Saharan Africa, about a third was hybrid seed.

Furthermore, farmers get a fuller yield from hybrid seeds by using fertilizer and agronomic practices, reducing post-harvest losses and getting the crop to market, he maintained.

“We can spend a long time and gain a lot of productivity in sub-Saharan Africa by doing all those things without ever getting to the introduction of GMOs,” Jacobi said following a tour of the DuPont Pioneer facility in the Midwestern U.S. state of Iowa.

“I think we tend to get wrapped up in the debate about GMOs and how multinational companies are forcing GMOs down the throats of local farmers. I think we ought to be focused on helping farmers do the best job they can do today by using hybrid seed and let us not let those priorities get lost in the big philosophical debate about GMOs.”

AfricaBio, a biotechnology stakeholder association formed in 1999, says a vast majority of the South African population are struggling to meet their daily needs and GM products offer a proven solution.

“For 14 consecutive seasons, South Africans have planted and consumed foods and food products derived from approved GM crops as part of their diet and no confirmed cases of harm to consumers of GM foods have been reported,” AfricaBio chief executive officer Nompumelelo Obokoh told IPS.

Meanwhile, Musi remained unhappy about the call to ban GM maize. “Africans should come to a realization that all this is happening in the name of contraceptive imperialism. Africa missed out during the Green Revolution – we must not miss the Gene Revolution. Let Africans decide for Africa,” he said.

 http://www.nationofchange.org/africa-calling-gmo-free-continent-1353768992

Salmon on the Brink

On one historic day in 1992, I marched through the State Capitol Building and adjoining Senate Offices with hundreds of recreational fishermen, commercial fishermen and environmentalists working for the passage of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). Arrayed in yellow and green commercial fishing slickers and colorful recreational fishing group shirts and jackets, we carried big banners and signs calling for the passage of the CVPIA and restoration of salmon populations.

We marched by the offices of Senator John Seymour, one of the key opponents of the CVPIA, and the crowd spontaneously erupted in raucus shouts of “No More Seymour, “No More Seymour!”

This protest was held long before the draconian restrictions on freedom of speech descended on the Capitol and other state and federal government facilities like a dark, toxic cloud. If we tried to do this today, we would probably be arrested en masse by state and federal police authorities.

The momentum and enthusiasm for salmon restoration in the Central Valley kept building to a point where Congress really had no choice but to pass the bill.

The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in the fall of 1992, set a goal of doubling the Bay-Delta watershed’s Chinook salmon runs from 495,000 to 990,000 wild adult fish by 2002. The legislation also mandated the doubling of other anadromous fish species, including Central Valley steelhead, white sturgeon, green sturgeon, striped bass and American shad, by 2002.

The landmark legislation also made fish and wildlife a purpose of the Central Valley Project for the first time. The CVPIA’s Anadromous Fish Restoration Program was supposed to dedicate 800,000 acre-feet of CVP water every year to environmental protection.

The Act included reforms intended to encourage efficient water use, including authorizing transfers of agricultural water and creating a land retirement program to reduce water use on tainted land. It shortened the term of Central Valley Project (CVP) contracts from 40 to 25 years and required a reduction in agricultural water subsidies.

Unfortunately, a decade after the law’s deadline, the salmon fishery continues to struggle to rebound due, in part, to ineffective enforcement by federal and state agencies and continued excessive pumping of fresh water from the Bay-Delta, primarily for corporate agribusiness interests in the San Joaquin Valley.

According to a new salmon index released by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Golden Gate Salmon Association (GGSA), the Central Valley Chinook salmon fishery has suffered a dramatic collapse over the past decade, now standing at only 13 percent of the population goal required by federal law.

The index was released following the closure of California’s ocean salmon fishing season on Sunday, November 11, and the 20th anniversary of the CVPIA.

The NRDC and GGSA analysis, published in the Salmon Doubling Index, reveals a steady decline in Bay-Delta Chinook salmon from 2003 through 2010, at which point it reached a record low of 7 percent.

While the state and federal governments claimed that ocean conditions prompted the decline, fishing and environmental groups pointed to increased water diversions as a significant cause of this decline. Between 2000 and 2006, freshwater pumping from the Bay-Delta increased 20 percent in comparison to 1975-2000. The record water export year was 2005 until a new record was set in 2011 under the Brown and Obama administrations.

The annual export total via the state and federal Delta pumps was 6,520,000 acre-feet in 2011 – 217,000 acre-feet more than the previous record of 6,303,000 acre-feet set in 2005.

Congressman George Miller: It’s long past time to restore salmon 

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the House author of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, strongly urged the federal government to comply with the law by restoring California salmon.

“Despite indefensible foot-dragging and countless lawsuits, salmon restoration has remained the lynchpin of federal water policy in California for twenty years,” said Rep.Miller. “California salmon support businesses and communities up and down the West coast, and it’s long past time for the federal agencies to take their responsibility to our state’s wild fisheries seriously. The federal government must restore California’s iconic salmon runs to health: that’s the law.”

“Salmon are the canary in the coal mine for the Bay-Delta economy and ecosystem,” said Barry Nelson, senior policy analyst with NRDC’s Water Program. “California salmon, the fishing industry and the Bay-Delta ecosystem all need adequate water flows to maintain their health over the long-term. The Department of the Interior and the State of California need to dramatically step-up efforts to protect the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem and restore salmon populations.”

In 2008, in response to a lawsuit brought by NRDC, Earthjustice and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, stronger federal court-ordered protections went into effect for salmon and other native fish, reducing water pumping from the Bay-Delta.

“In 2011, there was a modest rebound of wild adult Chinook salmon, directly correlating to this reduction in pumping,” according to GGSA and NRDC. “Chinook salmon have a three-year life cycle.”

As a result, the benefits of stronger protections in 2008 are reflected in the numbers of adult fish that returned to spawn in 2011, the groups said. Early federal agency projections predict stronger numbers for this year’s salmon run, which is currently underway. Nevertheless, the salmon index for 2012 will likely remain dramatically short of meeting state and federal goals.

Victor Gonella, president of the Golden Gate Salmon Association, emphasized, “Our salmon runs are essential to California’s natural heritage, to fishing families and to an industry that reaches from the fishing dock to your dinner table. Restoring healthy salmon runs means healthy local food, healthy communities and a healthy economy.”

Gonella said if current laws were enforced and the mandated restoration goal was achieved, the salmon fishing industry would provide a large contribution to the California economy. Consisting of commercial fishing men and women, fresh and salt water recreational anglers, coastal communities, tribes, fish processors, equipment manufacturers, marinas, and food and hospitality, a fully restored California salmon industry would provide $5.6 billion in economic activity annually and tens of thousands of jobs from Santa Barbara to northern Oregon.

“After two closed salmon fishing seasons in 2008 and 2009, and a token season in 2010, fishermen had a chance to fish this year, but we remain far below the healthy runs required by law,” said Zeke Grader, executive director of Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association and GGSA board member. “The stronger runs in 2011 and this year show that, with stronger protections and more effective restoration programs, these magnificent fish will come roaring back.”

Groups Recommend Five Actions for Salmon Recovery 

The groups said state and federal agencies can step-up their efforts to restore salmon by acting on the following recommendations:

*  The Department of the Interior should reform CVPIA water contracts and revamp its salmon doubling efforts in response to a scathing independent review. Specifically, Interior should better manage water and restoration funds dedicated to salmon recovery, incorporate the latest scientific information and appoint a manager to be accountable for the progress of the restoration program.

* The State Water Resources Control Board should set stronger standards to protect salmon in the San Joaquin River and the Bay-Delta ecosystem, in proceedings to revise these standards that are currently underway.

* The state’s Department of Water Resources should incorporate salmon doubling into the Bay Delta Conservation Plan process.

* The Department of Fish and Game should launch an ambitious state salmon restoration effort.

* The Department of the Interior should aggressively implement NRDC’s agreement to restore the salmon run on the San Joaquin River.

The Salmon Doubling Index graphic and a table listing the index by year can be found here.

Restore the Delta: How many fish will be driven to extinction? 

Restore the Delta (RTD) commented on the release of the index in their “Delta Flows” newsletter, asking how many salmon and other fish species must be sacrificed to provide subsidized water to corporate agribusiness interests on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.

“As Barry Nelson of the Natural Resources Defense Council, runs have improved on a few small streams such as Clear, Butte, and Battle creeks as a result of this restoration fund. But on nearly all of the major rivers of the Central Valley – the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, the Stanislaus, the Tuolumne, the Merced and the Cosumnes – salmon numbers have declined, not doubled, over the past two decades,” RTD noted.

“In our last newsletter, we reported on a newly-released study by the U.S. Geological Survey, which found that water exports have degraded conditions for fish in both the Delta and San Francisco Bay. Nelson cites a 2008 independent review of the CVPIA’s restoration program that includes the same findings. (That review is titled Listen to the River.)

According to Nelson, “In remarkably direct language for a review of this type, scientists concluded that meeting CVPIA and ESA obligations will require ‘a significant reduction in the amount of water pumped out of the system.’” But Nelson notes that federal agencies have mostly ignored the recommendations in the review.

“The closest we ever got to meeting the salmon doubling goal was in 2002, when the index peaked at 64.33% of doubling,” RTD said. “It’s been mostly downhill from there. Last year, we were at about 13% of the salmon doubling goal.”

“Meanwhile, export contractors try to scare us all with the specter of higher food costs when they get less than their expected amount of water from the Delta,” the group said. “They don’t mention that contracts for water delivery are meaningless when those contracts promise water that our over-subscribed system doesn’t reliably produce, and promise it to users with last-in-line water rights.”

“How many fish species – species we don’t eat and species we do – are they willing to drive to extinction in order to keep food costs artificially low or almond exports high?” RTD concluded.

While the federal government fails to comply with the provisions of the CVPIA, the Brown and Obama administrations are fast-tracking the Bay Delta Conservation Plan to build the peripheral tunnels. This plan will hasten the extinction of Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt and other species, according to agency and independent scientists.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/23/salmon-on-the-brink/

Rising Seas, Vanishing Coastlines

THE oceans have risen and fallen throughout Earth’s history, following the planet’s natural temperature cycles. Twenty thousand years ago, what is now New York City was at the edge of a giant ice sheet, and the sea was roughly 400 feet lower. But as the last ice age thawed, the sea rose to where it is today.

Now we are in a new warming phase, and the oceans are rising again after thousands of years of stability. As scientists who study sea level change and storm surge, we fear that Hurricane Sandy gave only a modest preview of the dangers to come, as we continue to power our global economy by burning fuels that pollute the air with heat-trapping gases.

This past summer, a disconcerting new scientific study by the climate scientist Michiel Schaeffer and colleagues — published in the journal Nature Climate Change — suggested that no matter how quickly we cut this pollution, we are unlikely to keep the seas from climbing less than five feet.

More than six million Americans live on land less than five feet above the local high tide. (Searchable maps and analyses are available at SurgingSeas.org for every low-lying coastal community in the contiguous United States.) Worse, rising seas raise the launching pad for storm surge, the thick wall of water that the wind can drive ahead of a storm. In a world with oceans that are five feet higher, our calculations show that New York City would average one flood as high as Hurricane Sandy’s about every 15 years, even without accounting for the stronger storms and bigger surges that are likely to result from warming.

Floods reaching five feet above the current high tide line will become increasingly common along the nation’s coastlines well before the seas climb by five feet. Over the last century, the nearly eight-inch rise of the world’s seas has already doubled the chance of “once in a century” floods for many seaside communities.

We hope that with enough time, most of our great coastal cities and regions will be able to prepare for a five-foot increase. Some will not. Barriers that might work in Manhattan would be futile in South Florida, where water would pass underneath them by pushing through porous bedrock.

According to Dr. Schaeffer’s study, immediate and extreme pollution cuts — measures well beyond any discussion now under way — could limit sea level rise to five feet over 300 years. If we stay on our current path, the oceans could rise five feet by the first half of next century, then continue rising even faster. If instead we make moderate shifts in energy and industry — using the kinds of targets that nations have contemplated in international talks but have failed to pursue — sea level could still climb past 12 feet just after 2300. It is hard to imagine what measures might allow many of our great coastal cities to survive a 12-foot increase.

WE might find comfort in the fact that this is just one set of projections, and projections are notoriously tough to get right. But a second study that also came out this past summer erases any such comfort.

Led by the geochemist Andrea Dutton and published in the journal Science, the second paper uses deep history, not model projections, for clues to the future. About 125,000 years ago, before the last ice age, there was a warm period that lasted 10,000 to 15,000 years. It was perhaps a little warmer than today, but cooler than the temperatures that climate scientists expect later in this century without sharp pollution cuts. Dr. Dutton’s research strongly reinforces a prior study led by one of us, which found that the warm-period sea levels rose roughly 20 to 30 feet higher than those of today. We just don’t have a clear picture of how fast that could happen again.

Any sea level forecast must be interpreted carefully: things could be better, or worse.

The Schaeffer study uses the relationship between global temperature and sea level over the past 1,000 years — when it was cool, and the great ice sheets were generally stable — to extrapolate over the next 300 years — when it will be hot, and the ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica may behave differently. Other scientific teams have tried the notoriously difficult task of forecasting ice sheet decay in physical detail, and this has tended to produce slower estimates of sea level rise than the Schaeffer team’s method. But any projection is compromised by the fact that we are sending heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere far faster than anything the planet has seen for at least 55 million years.

The Dutton study comes with caveats, too. Earth’s orbit was different during the last warm period, bringing more sunshine to the Arctic and complicating the analogy with today. But today we are on a path to a planet that will be much hotter than it was in the period Dr. Dutton studied.

There are two basic ways to protect ourselves from sea level rise: reduce it by cutting pollution, or prepare for it by defense and retreat. To do the job, we must do both. We have lost our chance for complete prevention; and preparation alone, without slowing emissions, would — sooner or later — turn our coastal cities into so many Atlantises.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/rising-seas-vanishing-coastlines.html

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst

Food and Water Watch recently demonstrated that the dominant narrative, "100 years" of unconventional oil and gas [1] in the United States, is false. At most, some 50 years of this dirty energy resource may exist beneath our feet.

Bill Powers [2], editor of Powers Energy Investor [3], has a new book set for publication in May 2013 titled, "Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth [4]."

Powers' book will reveal that production rates in all of the shale basins are far lower than the oil and gas industry is claiming and are actually in alarmingly steep decline. In short, the "shale gas bubble [5]" is about to burst.

 

In a recent interview [6], Powers said the "bubble" will end up looking a lot like the housing bubble that burst in 2008-2009 [7], and that U.S. shale gas will last no longer than ten years [6]. He told The Energy Report [6]:

 

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians...In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years.

 

The hotly-anticipated book may explain why shale gas industry giants like Chesapeake Energy have behaved more like real estate companies, making more money flipping over land leases [8] than they do producing actual gas. 

 

Powers told The Energy Report [6]:

 

Put simply: There is production decline in the Haynesville and Barnett shales. Output is declining in the Woodford Shale in Oklahoma. Some of the older shale plays, such as the Fayetteville Shale, are starting to roll over. As these shale plays reverse direction and the Marcellus Shale slows down its production growth, overall U.S. production will fall.

 

Powers believes we are quickly approaching a gas crisis akin to what occured in the 1970's [6] and because of that, prices will soon skyrocket.

 

Art Berman Also Sounds the "Shale Gas Bubble" Alarm 

Arthur Berman, another investment insider, echoed Powers in a recent interview with Oil Price [9], remarking that the decline rates in production in shale basins nationwide are "incredibly high."

 

Berman is a petroleum geologist, Associate Editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geolgists Bulletin and Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He maintains the blog Petroleum Truth Report [10].

 

"In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%," he stated [9]. "They're going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we're talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply."

 

Berman believes there's a possibility that this could lead to an economic crisis akin to which happened during the Big Bank bailouts of 2008 [11].

 

"I add all these things up and it starts to approach the amount of money needed to bail out the banking industry. Where is that money going to come from?," he asked the interviewee [9].

 

Who Will Be Left "Cold, Dark and Hungry" and Living in the "Dark Ages"?

It's a deep dive into shale gas production numbers that have led insiders like Powers, Berman and others to conclude that the behavior of the industry is akin to Enron's behavior in the 1990s [12], described by some as a "Ponzi Scheme [13]" in a June 2011 investigation by The New York Times. 

 

"What a glorious vision of the future: It's cold, it's dark and we're all hungry," Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon said of anti-fracking activists in Sept. 2011 [14]. "I have no interest in turning the clock back to the dark ages like our opponents do."

 

The reality, though, is far murkier. It appears the real culprit "turning the clock back to the dark ages" may actually be the unconventional oil and gas industry after all.

 

Meditation fights flu better than pills

Meditation could be very useful at preventing winter ailments than popping vitamins or herbal remedies as "insurance policy" to stave off colds and flu, a new study has revealed.

According to a study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adults who meditated or did moderately intense exercise, such as a brisk walk, for eight weeks suffered fewer colds than those who did nothing, the Daily Mailreported.

Previous research has found that mindfulness meditation may improve mood, decrease stress, and boost immune function.

The 149 people in this new study were divided into three groups. One performed mindful meditation, a type of meditation that essentially involves focusing the mind on the present.

Another group jogged regularly for eight weeks while the third group did nothing.

The researchers then followed the health of the volunteers through the winter from September to May, although they didn't check whether or not people carried on exercising or meditating after the eight-week period.

The participants were observed for cold and flu symptoms such as a runny nose, stuffiness, sneezing, and sore throat. Nasal wash samples were collected and analysed three days after the symptoms began.

The study, found that meditators missed 76 per cent fewer days of work from September through to May than those who did nothing. Those who had exercised missed 48 per cent fewer days during this period.

In addition, mindful meditation can reduce the duration or severity of acute respiratory infections such by up to 50 per cent, and exercise by up to 40 per cent.

According to the website Scientific America, those who had exercised or meditated suffered for an average of five days; colds of participants in the control group lasted eight.

In addition, tests confirmed that the self-reported length of colds correlated with the level of antibodies in the body, which indicate the presence of a virus.

"Nothing has previously been shown to prevent acute respiratory infections," lead author Dr Bruce Barrett, a family medicine doctor and associate professor at the University said.

"A lot of previous information suggested that meditation and exercise might have prevention benefits, but no high-quality, randomised trial had been done.