Animal, Vegetable, Miserable

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From GARY STEINER
NYT Op-Ed Contributor

LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?

Some of these questions, which reach a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, pertain to the ways in which animals are treated. (Did your turkey get to live outdoors?) Others focus on the question of how eating the animals in question will affect the consumer’s health and well-being. (Was it given hormones and antibiotics?)

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption. And even when people ask this question, they almost always find a variety of resourceful answers that purport to justify the killing and consumption of animals in the name of human welfare. Strict ethical vegans, of which I am one, are customarily excoriated for equating our society’s treatment of animals with mass murder. Can anyone seriously consider animal suffering even remotely comparable to human suffering? Those who answer with a resounding no typically argue in one of two ways.

Some suggest that human beings but not animals are made in God’s image and hence stand in much closer proximity to the divine than any non-human animal; according to this line of thought, animals were made expressly for the sake of humans and may be used without scruple to satisfy their needs and desires.

Ukiah Mendocino: Who’s Polluting Our Local Water?

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From RON EPSTEIN
Ukiah

Across the nation, the system that Congress created to protect the nation’s waters under the Clean Water Act of 1972 today often fails to prevent pollution. The New York Times has compiled data on more than 200,000 facilities that have permits to discharge pollutants and collected responses from states regarding compliance. Information about facilities contained in this database comes from two sources: the Environmental Protection Agency and the California State Water Resources Control Board. The database does not contain information submitted by the states.

Go to 95482 map and list here→

Go to story Toxic Waters at NYT here→
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Take Action! Help Stop the Planting of 260,000 Genetically Engineered Trees in the U.S.

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From RON EPSTEIN
Ukiah

June 17, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Please help stop this ecological nightmare before it begins. No recall of the GE genes from the environment will be possible. Where they will go, how they will interact with other species and viruses no one knows…

Ron
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Dangerous Genetically Engineered (GE) Eucalyptus Trees on Fast-Track to Large-Scale Release in the U.S.

ACTION NEEDED BY JULY 6! Tell the USDA NO WAY to ArborGen’s Eucalyptus Frankentrees

In an unprecedented move toward commercial large-scale release of GE forest trees in the United States, GE tree giant ArborGen is petitioning the U.S. government to be allowed to plant an estimated 260,000 flowering GE eucalyptus trees across seven southern U.S. states on 330 acres in so-called “field trials.”

The mass-planting of 260,000 flowering GE eucalyptus trees is a major step toward the unregulated development of large-scale GE eucalyptus plantations in the U.S. ArborGen has already requested permission for the commercial planting of GE cold tolerant eucalyptus clones across the U.S. South. The government is expected to issue their decision on this later this year.

Government approval of GE eucalyptus trees will set a dangerous precedent to allow other experimental GE forest trees, including poplar and pine, that would inevitably and irreversibly contaminate native trees with destructive GE traits, devastating forest ecosystems and wildlife. Once GE trees escape, there is no way to call them back.

The only way to stop genetic contamination of native forests is to ban the commercial release of GE trees before it is too late.

TAKE ACTION! Tell the USDA that GE cold-tolerant eucalyptus plantations pose an unprecedented threat to U.S. forests and wildlife. Tell them to reject ArborGen’s request to plant more than a quarter of a million dangerous alien GE trees on nearly 30 sites across the Southern U.S. Since these field trials are a concrete step toward unregulated commercial growing of dangerous GE eucalyptus, they must be rejected.

For more information about the STOP GE Trees Campaign, click here.

Climate Change Cover-Up

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From Ron Epstein

5/5/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Are you aware that there has been a widespread cover-up of a major cause of global warming, and that former Vice-President Al Gore, our current President Barack Obama, and the EPA are all complicit? What is being covered up? Meat-eating is a major cause of global warming. Big Macs and bacon are destroying the planet.

1) Basic facts about meat-eating and global warming

According to a 2006 United Nations report, the raising of livestock for meat consumption is directly responsible for 18 percent of global warming emissions. All the different forms of transportation combined–cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes–only account for 13 percent. World-wide home and office emissions are only 8 percent.

The senior author of that U.N. report wrote, “[T]he livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. And it accounts for respectively 37 percent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 percent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.” (http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2006/1000448/index.html)

The most emissions-intensive foods are red meat and dairy products. According to the World Watch Institute, world meat consumption has increased fivefold since 1950, and in the US it has doubled since 1950.

Selling Out America

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From Ron Epstein

Blame Wall Street for the current financial crisis. Investment banks, hedge funds and commercial banks made reckless bets using borrowed money. They created and trafficked in exotic investment vehicles that even top Wall Street executives — not to mention firm directors — did not understand. They hid risky investments in off balance-sheet vehicles or capitalized on their legal status to cloak investments altogether.

They engaged in unconscionable predatory lending that offered huge profits for a time, but led to dire consequences when the loans proved unpayable. And they created, maintained and justified a housing bubble, the bursting of which has thrown the United States and the world into a deep recession, resulted in a foreclosure epidemic ripping apart communities across the country.

But while Wall Street is culpable for the financial crisis and global recession, others do share responsibility. For the last three decades, financial regulators, Congress and the executive branch have steadily eroded the regulatory system that restrained the financial sector from acting on its own worst tendencies. The post-Depression regulatory system aimed to force disclosure of publicly relevant financial information; established limits on the use of leverage; drew bright lines between different kinds of financial activity and protected regulated commercial banking from investment bank-style risk taking; enforced meaningful limits on economic concentration, especially in the banking sector; provided meaningful consumer protections (including restrictions on usurious interest rates); and contained the financial sector so that it remained subordinate to the real economy. This hodge-podge regulatory system was, of course, highly imperfect, including because it too often failed to deliver on its promises.

But it was not its imperfections that led to the erosion and collapse of that regulatory system. It was a concerted effort by Wall Street, steadily gaining momentum until it reached fever pitch in the late 1990s and continued right through the first half of 2008. Even now, Wall Street continues to defend many of its worst practices. Though it bows to the political reality that new regulation is coming, it aims to reduce the scope and importance of that regulation and, if possible, use the guise of regulation to further remove public controls over its operations.

Keep reading Sold Out (pdf file)→
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What we must do

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From Ron Epstein

Rachel’s Democracy & Health News #1000, February 26, 2009

By Peter Montague

In this final issue of Rachel’s News, I offer the last installment of on our 17-part series, “What We Must Do.”[1]

This series was named after the prescient article, “What We Must Do” by John Platt in Science magazine Nov. 28, 1969, pg. 1115. It is worth (re-)reading Platt’s urgent description of “a storm of crisis problems” 39 years ago, comparing it to our world today, and then asking ourselves if what we are doing with our time seems likely to produce the outcomes we intend and hope for. Are we asking questions that are radical enough, which is to say, questions that get to the roots of our problems?

In that spirit, here are 17 suggestions, all aimed at avoiding the worst as our human population climbs from 6.7 billion to 9 or 10 billion or more by 2050. They are not ranked in order of importance because I think we have to try to do all of them.

1. Learn to live within limits

The toughest problem we humans face is learning to live within limits. I know it’s popular to pretend limits don’t exist, but they do. We live on a small stone hurtling through space, a stone “partly bare, partly dusted with grains of disintegrated rock, upon which rests a thin film of air and water no thicker, relative to the size of the Earth, than the fuzz on a peach.”[2] Furthermore, so far as anyone has been able to discover, ours is the only stone in the universe hospitable to our species. Earth is our only home, so we had better take care of it.

To puny humans, the Earth has always looked immense but just recently we discovered the truth: sometime during the 1970s, the human economy grew so large that it outgrew planet Earth. We humans have exceeded some invisible ecological limits and we are now degrading the planet’s natural capacity to renew itself. We are living in a condition called “overshoot” — like the cartoon Roadrunner who speeds off a cliff, hangs stationary in midair, still running ever faster, until the inevitable crash. To avoid the crash we humans must reduce our footprint by reducing our numbers or by reducing our individual demands upon the ecosystem, or both. Running ever faster won’t help.

In 2005, the authoritative Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA) was published — a five-year study of the condition of the Earth’s ecosystems, involving 1360 scientists from all across the globe. When they announced the first volume, the MEA Board of Directors said, “At the heart of this assessment is a stark warning. Human activity is putting such strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted.”

In 2007, the Global Environment Outlook report (known as GEO-4) was published. GEO-4 concluded (among other things) that human activities now require 54 acres (22 hectares) per person globally, but Earth can provide only 39 acres (16 hectares) per person without suffering permanent degradation. We are living well beyond Earth’s means.

How do horse slaughterhouses work?

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From Ron Epstein

The Montana state legislature endorsed a bill Tuesday that would allow the construction of a horse slaughterhouse. It would be the only such plant in the country—the last three, two in Texas, one in Illinois, were shut down in 2007.

How do horse slaughterhouses work? A lot like cow slaughterhouses. Horses arrive on trucks and trailers, usually after being purchased at one of the many horse auctions across the country. They proceed down a ramp, into a feeding pen, and finally through a chute that leads to a small, brightly lit room. That’s where an employee holds a pressurized gun called a “captive bolt pistol” up to the horse’s forehead and shoots a 4-inch piece of metal about the size of a roll of quarters into its brain. Workers sometimes need to shoot three or four times before the horse stops moving. The horse is then dumped out a side door and strung up by its feet, at which point workers slit its throat and drain the blood. The body is then cut up and sent off to a meat company, usually in France or Belgium, where horse meat is a delicacy. (See a video of the whole process here.)

Keep reading They Shoot Horses Don’t They? at Slate magazine→

See also Equine Protection Network→

and Equine Advocates→

an Unwanted Horse Coalition

and The Humane Sociey→

Hat Tip Jan Allegretti

Image Credit: WIkipedia Commons

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Exposing the links between doctors and Big Pharma

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From Ron Epstein

Republican senator Chuck Grassley has made it his mission to shake up the cosy relationship between doctors, researchers and the pharmaceutical industry. Now he is introducing legislation to force drugs companies to disclose the payments they make to doctors. He tells Jim Giles why he has chosen to be a troublemaker

Does it really matter that some academics and doctors “forget” to declare their income from drug companies?

The public relies on the advice of doctors and has a right to know about financial relationships between those doctors and the companies that make the pharmaceuticals they prescribe. The same goes for leading researchers, as they influence the practice of medicine. If the payments are transparent, I believe that people who have close connections with a company will be a little more cautious about the extent to which they push one drug over another. US taxpayers should also know as they spend billions of dollars on prescription drugs and devices through Medicare and Medicaid.

Last year, you made claims about a psychiatrist using grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to test a drug. You alleged he had not properly disclosed the stock he held in the company that owned the drug – claims which he has denied and which his employer has cleared him of. Can you tell me about that?

I am not able to comment on the specifics of any cases. But I can say that my discovery of undisclosed financial relationships between drug companies and researchers has put pressure on the NIH. It’s a trustee of $24 billion in federal grants each year. It needs to make sure that those receiving its grants manage conflicts of interest.

Keep reading Exposing the links at New Scientist→

How to grow your own fresh air

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From Ron Epstein
Ukiah

Kamal Meattle reported the results of his efforts to fill an office building with plants (video), in an effort to reduce headache, asthma, and other productivity-sapping aliments in thickly polluted India. After researching NASA documents, he concluded that a set of three particular common, waist-high houseplants—areca palm, Mother-in-Law’s Tongue (shown above), and Money Plant—could be combined to scrub the air of carbon dioxide, formaldehyde and other pollutants.

At about four plants per occupant (1200 plants in all), the building’s air freshened considerably, and the health and productivity results were staggering. Eye irritation dropped by 52 percent, lower respiratory symptoms by 34 percent, headaches by 24 percent and asthma by 9 percent. There were fewer sick days, employee productivity increased, and energy costs dropped by 15 percent.

Next stop: a larger-scale experiment in a 1.75-million-square-foot office tower, featuring over 60,000 plants.
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Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

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The solution to pollution is dilution

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From Ron Epstein
Ukiah

“There seem to be only two possible solutions to our toxic waste addiction: (1) secure above-ground waste-storage in concrete buildings, or (2) detoxifying the economy.

“Secure waste storage could occur in multi-story steel-reinforced concrete buildings, with wastes placed only in the upper stories. The first floor would be left empty so regular inspections could examine for leakage or other signs of structural deterioration. Prompt repairs could sequester wastes for as long as humans were able to pay attention and react. When buildings deteriorated (after perhaps 100 years), they could be replaced.

“Such buildings were designed and described by engineers at the Universities of Alabama and Florida in 1988 and again in 1989. They calculated that such buildings would cost less than equivalent storage capacity in double-lined landfills.

“So why are we still using landfills, guaranteed to leak, instead of the cheaper solution, concrete buildings guaranteed to prevent leakage? The answer must be that underground storage is out of sight and out of mind. We can cover it with a high school, a daycare center, or a housing development and wash our hands of the whole sordid mess. Clusters of huge concrete buildings, on the other hand, would stand as perpetual monuments to our foolish, toxic civilization, permanent headstones memorializing cupidity, stupidity, and failure of imagination.”

For the whole story, see Precaution.org→

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The top 11 compounds in US drinking water

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From Ron Epstein
Ukiah

A comprehensive survey of the drinking water for more than 28 million Americans has detected the widespread but low-level presence of pharmaceuticals and hormonally active chemicals.

Little was known about people’s exposure to such compounds from drinking water, so Shane Snyder and colleagues at the Southern Nevada Water Authority in Las Vegas screened tap water from 19 US water utilities for 51 different compounds. The surveys were carried out between 2006 and 2007.

The 11 most frequently detected compounds – all found at extremely low concentrations – were:

Continue reading The top 11 compounds in US drinking water in New Scientist→

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Crops absorb livestock antibiotics, science shows

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From Ron Epstein
Ukiah

Is this a serious problem anywhere in Mendocino County? In organic produce consumed here? How do we find out?
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Consumers have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, even ones grown on organic farms.

January 6, 2009
For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places. Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Today, close to 70 percent of the total antibiotics and related drugs produced in the United States are fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.

Continue reading Crops absorb livestock antibiotics at Environmental Health Service→

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