GAO: BUSH ADMIN IS FULL OF IT

Government cost estimates of a new program that will require meat packages to be labeled with their countries of origin are "questionable and not well supported," congressional auditors said last week. [Sorry, I meant to get this up sooner.] The USDA said the cost of paperwork for the first year of the program would be $1.9 billion - but the GAO says the USDA "could provide no documentation to support its estimates," and it assumed an hourly rate of $50 for processors to develop and keep a record system, which was more than double the hourly rates it used in recent estimates for other programs. A Republican senator reminded us why this is important: Mike Enzi, R-Wyo said, "On shoes, they tell you what the country of origin is. On underwear they tell you what the country of origin is ... but I tell you those things that you wear can't hurt you nearly as much as the things you put in your body." If, that is, you put dead flesh into your body.

JUST MONKEYS

Monkeys in a food-handout experiment got enraged when treated unequally and threw their food out of the cage in protest. Kevin McCabe, who studies cooperation at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, US, says the results suggest that the ability to recognise unjust treatment is rooted in basic biological mechanisms. Too bad most humans are no longer able to recognize unjust treatment - like, say, keeping monkeys in cages for fun experiments like this.

HUNTERS AIM, SHOOT FOOT

That's the headline of Joel McNally's Capital Times column this week, in which he notes that the bloodthirsters' insistence on pushing through a dove hunt and posing for photos showing off their prowess at killing small birds probably did their cause much more harm than good. "Large beasts crashing around Wisconsin woods joyously blowing mourning doves out of the sky are like aging dinosaurs destroying their own habitat and hastening the day of their own extinction." Awww... it's Mourning in America!

ANOTHER LISTERIA RECALL

Kayem Foods Inc, a Chelsea, Mass., firm, is voluntarily recalling approximately 9,230 pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry products suspected of being contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Whatever happened to that war on listeria, anyway?

CHRONIC PROBLEM

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) isn't going awway, and it turns out that it spreads "more easily among deer herds than originally thought, particularly when animals cluster together during the winter, according to wildlife researchers in Colorado and Wyoming. ...Miller and Williams noted that concentrating deer in captivity or feeding them artificially (baiting) in the wild made transmission of the disease more likely." But even if hunters could give up deer-baiting, it still might not be enough: "Prions, the infectious proteins believed to be at the root of chronic wasting disease, stick to some soil types, suggesting the landscape may serve as a reservoir for chronic wasting disease," a study found. Great. Just great.

LITTLE. YELLOW. SAME DIFFERENCE.

Pennsylvania's Agricultural Secretary, Dennis C. Wolff, is lobbying the USDA to put butter back in the nation's school-lunch program. Why? Because it would help PA dairy farmers, including Dennis C. Wolff. Starting from the minimal point that margarine has trans fats, Wolff tries to argue that butter is more nutritious, listing trace elements that can be found in it, but copiously avoiding mentioning saturated fat (or trans fats, which are also in butter, but in lesser amounts). Wolff even admits that the nutritional differences between butter and margarine are minimal. "But having said that," he asked, "why not use butter?" Gosh, why not? Maybe because unlike vegetable oil, we have to steal it from a calf? Maybe because we don't need it? Maybe because we might want to take a stand for once against corporate profiteers-cum-politicians warping children's diets in order to make a buck for themselves and their cronies? Hard to say.

MORE PROBLEMS WITH EATING CRAP

Experts in the UK have identified a new "killer strain" of E.coli - Escherichia coli 026 - that isn't picked up in current tests and "could soon be posing a serious public health threat." (via vegan porn) And on the other end, a new study shows that children who survive food poisoning from E.coli-contaminated meat can suffer from kidney problems for the rest of their lives. Another reason to avoid crappy food.

FIBER, FIBER, IT'S GOOD FOR YOUR HEART

From the sun-rises-in-the-east dept: "The likelihood of developing heart disease is indeed lower [between 10 and 15 percent] with a diet high in fiber, especially water-soluble fiber, according to a study in the latest issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association. Here's a page with some tips on where to get fiber, but I can simplify it for you: PLANT FOODS. One more time - all plant foods have fiber, zero animal foods have fiber.

VICTIMOLOGY

"Cow-Calf farmers fear they are next BSE victims" whines CBC Saskatchewan. Awww - those poor, poor victims. "Not being able to sell out cows and our yearlings in the summer time," Mervin Stoll says. "That market is gone and we're not going to be able to get it back." Stop! I'm already crying over your inability to sell out calves and yearlings! But the story goes on to report that "Stoll's neighbour Kevin Mercer says if the government doesn't act soon, the future of the cattle industry in Saskatchewan is at risk." So, see, there is an upside after all.

SARS REDUX

Just when you thought it was safe to listen to health officials - the ones who said SARS was dead & buried a couple months ago, comes news that hey! SARS is back! And in case you missed it when it was only informed speculation, it's now official: SARS came to us from overcrowded food animals. Keep that in mind if this wave is anything like the last one.

LONNNNGGGGGGING

I guess this shows how far I've drifted from the mainstream - I can't figure out whether this animation is supposed to be funny - to the general public - or a consciousness-raiser. 'Cause for me, it's neither. The "joke," if it is that, is pretty apparent from the first snapshot, and it just draaaaags on and on while you wait for the obvious punchline. But it's so cheesily done that I can't see it melting any hearts either. Is it me? Someone care to clue me in? (via Everlasting Blort)

EGGS-ACTLY

As another example of how the most extreme tactics to get a message across may not always carry the day, here's a Washington Post article about a supposedly kinder, gentler approach by Compassion Over Killing. If nothing else, the group has a hook that's gotten them this major coverage, exposing WP readers to facts they wouldn't otherwise encounter. And generating great quotes like the one from this egg producer, who says banning cages would only drive up the cost of eggs. "Do they weigh the animal's life, which is genetically designed to be in that environment to lay eggs, do they weigh that at a greater importance than the opportunity of someone to go out and buy cheap food?" I love it when they spell out job one like that.

SALMONELLA BEHAVING CURIOUSLY

A bizarre salmonella outbreak at Olympic test events in Athens hit 62 members of German rowing team, while a rash of salmonella outbreaks have been reported across the UK. An expert says the source of these outbreaks is probably food-based. Well, yeah. "Salmonella is the second most common cause of food poisoning after campylobacter. It has been found in unpasteurised milk, eggs and raw egg products, meat and poultry. Although thorough cooking will kill the bacteria, cross-contamination of ready-to-eat foods can occur through contaminated utensils and hands." More news as it comes in.

YOU CAN'T FIGHT MEAT HALL

Well, that was a long weekend, assited by Blogger being unavailable for some reason last night. But here's something from last week that didn't get posted yet: Dangerous toxins, namely dioxin and agent orange, making their way into the food supply via meat. On the issue of pregnant women passing dioxin to their children, a spokesman agrees that dioxin is dangerous, but adds, "You can't outright ban the use of 11 billion pounds of fat in animal food a year because of practical realities of political pressure from the meat council. And "Agent Orange found in some Vietnamese food" says the headline, while the specifics are buried deep in the story. "The highest levels were found in ducks: up to 343 parts per trillion, compared with a usual level of less than 0.1 part per trillion. ... Even higher dioxin levels were found in animal fats, which are considered a delicacy in Vietnam."

SORRY, BUT BOMBING IS VIOLENCE

I got some yeas and some nays at a recent conference where I argued that animal-rights activists should disavow any tactics that smack of terrorism, specifically singling out SHAC. Now a new bunch of fanatics, "the Revolutionary Cells," has bombed a building of some business somehow affiliated with Huntingdon, and SHAC, who has linked to the bomber's statement, can't even be moved to say they're against bombing buildings. SHAC president Kevin Jonas makes a general statement about non-violence, then turns around and says "If I were Huntingdon or Chiron, I'd be worried." Yeah, and if I were an animal rights activist, I'd be worried. Because these clowns are making us all look like hypocritical nincompoops, and are making the job of all of us who try to spread the word of the true meaning veganism harder - if not impossible.

MILK KILLS CHOCOLATE'S BENEFITS

By now just about everybody's seen the "Chocolate is good for you" story, based on a small but intriguing study. Of course the media in general are treating the phrase at face value, implying that the garbage Americans call chocolate is included in this. But some stories specifically explain otherwise: "European researchers say eating milk chocolate, which is most commonly used in candy bars, does not raise antioxidant levels in the bloodstream. They found the same discouraging result among patients who drank milk while eating dark chocolate. The results suggest that milk and other dairy products somehow discourage the body's ability to absorb the protective compounds in chocolate. Only subjects who ate dark chocolate showed a temporary increase in their antioxidant levels." And New Scientist goes further, reporting that the researchers "speculate that milk may also have the same effect on other antioxidant-rich foods, including fruit and green vegetables."

AMERICANS GETTING CHEESIER

Didn't think it was possible? Think again. Actually, that's CNN's headline, in which apparently "cheesy" is now a new synonym for "fat." And rightfully so: We're eating six times as much cheese now as in the '40s, and it shows.

A PUNCH IN THE HEAD

I would've put this at the end of the last post, but can't be sure it's E.Coli-related. Why? Because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a recall of meat products from a Southern Ontario plant, but refused to say what health concern spurred the recall. Unsurprisingly, the plant has a history of health/safety violations, but the refusal to identify the threat to consumers, that's, well, out of the ordinary.
UPDATE 8/27: "An Aylmer meat packing plant was shut down by the provincial government because of an investigation into "illegal processing" of dead animals, the Star has learned." What a downer.
UPDATE: 8/29: "Tainted-meat scandal 'another punch in the head' for beef industry" ... coming soon: KO.

MORE BATTLES IN WAR ON E.COLI

They all blur together, don't they? I assumed this recall "expansion" (to 659,000 pounds) was tied to the one I blogged on the 5th, but no, this is a whole different state, different company, different "does business as" pseudonym. Same problem: Fecal matter on the meat people are eating, making them sick. And in the case of J&B Meats, it is the same company - same as last summer, as this Illinois meatpacker recalls 76,000 pounds of meat, following up on an incident from June 2002 when people at a picnic were sickened by the company's feces-laden meat. Hey, at least J&B's not selling E.coli-laced meat door-to-door like these bozos in Seattle!

And in related stories, the much-ballyhooed solution of blasting the fecal matter with radiation got a big thumbs-down from Consumer Reports, the main problems being that irradiated meat tastes bad and fails to kill all bacteria, which probably won't help the "low demand" problem such as this one affecting Indiana. Maybe they should just concentrate on stopping people from mentioning stuff like "So they're saying it's totally fine for students to eat feces in their meat as long as it's been irradiated." See, that can't be helping.

ATKINS vs. HEALTH

Hey! I'm back, finally. Lotsa stuff piling up. No time for sentence subjects. Must get on with it:

The Atkins diet is banned by a hospital in England, with a senior dietitian there explaining that "There is no evidence to suggest that the Atkins Diet has any medical benefits" (in fact, the NY Post reminds us, the possible side effects include death). The hospital ban was provoked by a British panel of experts calling the diet 'pseudo-science', though there's a sidebar story about the big "conflict of interest" in the chair receiving money from flour concerns. No, really! Meanwhile, here in the US, there's no such thing as a conflict of interest - as long as your interest is meat and dairy!