industryterm:food chain

High radiation levels found in giant clams near U.S. nuclear dump in Marshall Islands - Los Angeles Times
▻https://www.latimes.com/science/environment/la-me-marshall-islands-dome-is-leaking-radiation-20190528-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/resizer/pGlpccBZOkhONatwziPIcHQOo3A=/1200x0/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/EK3YEU234JCJ5AWDIHFU5OOTJY.jpg

Researchers have found high levels of radiation in giant clams near the Central Pacific site where the United States entombed waste from nuclear testing almost four decades ago, raising concerns the contamination is spreading from the dump site’s tainted groundwater into the ocean and the food chain.

The findings from the Marshall Islands suggest that radiation is either leaking from the waste site — which U.S. officials reject — or that authorities did not adequately clean up radiation left behind from past weapons testing, as some in the Marshall Islands claim.

#déchets #nucléaire #contamination #chaine_alimentaire

But it is worse than that, par Marc Doll
▻https://www.facebook.com/SoilLifeQuadra/posts/10156656875720199

I realize there is something I have known for some time but have never said, and, since I have just spent another 4 hours of my life in climate change academia I have to get this out of my system.

Please understand that many you reading this won’t live to an old age... and likely will start scrolling after one or 2 more paragraphs... (edit...Ok I was wrong on this point. This is now my 2nd most shared post of all time..(edit)...make that my most shared)

The IPCC report and Paris accord are incredibly overly optimistic and that commits the world to a target that means the death of hundreds of millions if not more.

But it is worse than that.

Even the commitments made by countries in the Paris accord don’t get us to a 2 degree world.

But it is worse than that.

The 2 degree target is now unattainable (unless of course the entirety of civilization does a 180 today...) and is based on geo-engineering the climate of the earth as well as the sequestering of every molecule of carbon we have produced since 1987, as well as every molecule we are producing today,as well as every molecule we produce tomorrow.... with magical technologies that don’t exist, wont exist and, even if they did would likely cause as many if not more problems than they fix.

But it is worse than that.

The 2 degree target of the IPCC does not factor in the feedback loops such as the increase absorption of heat due to a drastic reduction in the albedo (reflectivity) effect caused by the 70% loss of arctic ice,..- the release of methane from a thawing arctic. (there is more energy stored in the arctic methane than there is in coal in the world). This is called the methane dragon. If the process of the release of the methane, currently frozen in the soil and ocean beds of the arctic, which may have already begun, but if it spins out of control we are looking a an 8 degree rise in temperature.

But it is worse than that.

The report which gives us 12 years to get our head’s out of our arses underestimated the amount of heat stored in the world’s oceans, as we descovered in mid-January by 40%... so no , we don’t have 12 more years.

But it is worse than that.

The IPCC report ignores the effects of humans messing up the Nitrogen cycle through agricultural fertilizers and more... Don’t go down this rabbit hole if you want to sleep at night.

But it is worse than that.

Sea level rise will not be gradual. Even assuming that the billions of tons of water that is currently being dumped down to the ground level of Greenland isn’t creating a lubricant which eventually will allow the ice to free-flow into the northern oceans; it is only the friction to the islands surface that is currently holding the ice back. Then consider the same process is happening in Antarctica but is also coupled with the disappearance of the ice shelves which act as buttresses holding the glaciers from free flowing into the southern ocean. then factor in thermal expansions; the simple fact that warmer water takes up more space and It becomes clear that we are not looking at maintaining the current 3.4mm/yr increase in sea level rise (which incidentally is terrifying when you multiply it out over decades and centuries.) We will be looking at major calving events that will result in much bigger yearly increases coupled with an exponential increase in glacial melting. We know that every increase of 100ppm of C02 increases sea level by about 100 feet. We have already baked in 130 feet of sea level rise. It is just a question of how long it is going to take to get there... and then keep on rising..

But it is worse than that.

Insects are disappearing at 6 times the speed of larger animals and at a rate of about 2.5% of their biomass every year. These are our pollinators. These are links in our food chain. These represent the basic functioning of every terrestrial ecosystem.

But it is worse than that.

58% of the biomass of vertebrae life on earth has been lost since 1970. That is basically in my lifetime!

But it is worse than that.

The amount of Carbon we add to the atmosphere is equal to a yearly a human caused forest fire 20% bigger than the continent of Africa. Yes, that is every single year!

But it is worse than that.

Drought in nearly every food producing place in the world is expected to intensify by mid-century and make them basically unusable by the end of the century... Then factor in the end of Phosphorus (China and Russia have already stopped exporting it knowing this) and the depletion of aquifers and you come to the conclusion that feeding the planet becomes impossible.

But it is worse than that.

We can no longer save the society that we live in and many of us are going to be dead long before our life expectancy would suggest.

If your idea of hope is having some slightly modified Standard of living going forward and live to ripe old age... there is no hope. This civilization is over...

..but there is hope..

There is a way for some to come through this and have an enjoyable life on the other side. Every day we delay can be measured in human lives. There will come a day of inaction when that number includes someone you love, yourself or myself.

So we have 2 options.

Wake the fuck up. If we do we will only have to experience the end of our society as we know it aka...the inevitable economic collapse which is now unavoidable, but be able to save and rebuild something new on the other side. This would require a deep adaptation. Words like sustainability would need to be seen as toxic and our focus needs be on regeneration. Regeneration of soil, forests, grasslands, oceans etc.... This is all possible.

Option 2 is the path we are on thinking that we can slowly adapt to change. This not only ensures we experience collapse but also condemns humanity to not just economic and social collapse but in a 4-6 or even an 8 degree world... extinction.

I am sick of pipeline discussions. I am sick of any argument that is predicated on the defeatist assumption that we will continue to burn oil at an ever increasing rate simply because it is what we have always done. Fact is if we do we are not just fucked, we are dead. I am sick of people who don’t understand how their food is produced, and its effect on the climate.(both carnivores who eat feed-lot meat and vegans who eat industrially-produced-mono-cropped-veggies as they are equally guilty here. The consumption of either is devastating). I am sick of the tons of shiny new clothes people are wearing without realizing 1 Kg of cotton takes over 10 thousand Liters of water and incredible amounts of energy to produce. I am sickened by the amount of that same clothing hits the landfill in near new condition. I am sick of the argument that our oil is less poisonous than someone else’s. Firstly, no it isn’t and secondly, It doesn’t fucking matter. I am sick of people that can’t even handle the ridiculously-small, only-the-tip-of- the-iceberg-of-changes we need to accept; a carbon tax. I am sick of the fact that the political will seems only capable of focusing on the individual consumer through small measures like a carbon tax but no elected Party seems to have the fortitude to enact policies that take it to the small handful of companies that are responsible for 70% of our current C02 production. I am sick of my own hypocrisy that allows me to still use fossil fuels for transportation. I am sick of those who use hypocrisy as an argument against action. I am sick of the Leadership of my country that argues we can have economic growth and survivable environment... we can’t. I am sickened by the normalizing of the leadership of our Southern neighbour who as the most polluting nation in the world officially ignores even the tragedy that is the Paris accord. I am sick of the politicians I worked to get elected being impotent on this subject. Naheed and Greg I’m looking at you. (BTW...Druh, you are an exception) I am sick that the next image I put up of my kids, cheese, pets or bread is going to gain immeasurably more attention than a post such as this which actually has meaning... I am sick about the fact that all the information I referenced here is easily discoverable in scientific journals through a simple google search but will be characterized by many as hyperbolic.

I am confused as to who I am more upset with. Those who have fallen for the denier propaganda, those who choose to be willfully ignorant, those who understand this issue and throw their hands up in a fit of lazy despair or those who are as cognitive as I am to the urgency of this issue yet continue living day-to-day feeling self-satisfied with their recycling, electric car, voting record or some other equally inane lifestyle modification while waiting for society to hit the tipping point so they don’t have to actually put their values into practice (which despite my recent life changes still more or less includes me). All that said...

There is a path forward.

But every day we delay the path forward includes fewer of us. Build community, build resilience, work for food security, think regeneration, plant food producing trees, think perennial food production, turn your waste products into resources, eat food that does not mine the soil and is locally produced, eat meat that is grass fed in a holistic or intensively rotated (ideally holistically grazed in a silvopasture ) that is used to provide nutrients to vegetation, get to know a farmer or become one yourself, park your car, do not vote for anyone who either ignores climate change or says we can have our cake and eat it too, quit your job if it is fossil fuel related (it is better than losing it... which you will), stop buying shit, stop buying expensive cars and overly large houses and then complain that local planet saving food costs more than Costco. Stop buying things that are designed to break and be disposed-of, let go of this society slowly and by your own volition (its better than being forced to do it quickly), Rip up your lawn and plant a garden with perennial veggies, fruit bushes, fruit trees and nut trees. Learn to compost your own poop (it is easy and doesn’t stink). Buy an apple with a blemish, Get a smaller house on a bigger lot and regenerate that land, Plant a guerrilla garden on a city road allowance. Return to the multi-generational house, Realize that growth has only been a thing in human civilization for 250 years and it is about to end and make preparations for this change. Teach this to your children. Buy only the necessities, don’t buy new clothes-go to the thrift store. Don’t use single use plastic or if you do re-purpose it, Unplug your garberator and compost everything, Relearn old forgotten skills. Don’t let yourself get away with the argument that the plane is going there anyway when you book a holiday. Understand that there is no such thing as the new normal because next year will be worse, Understand before you make the argument that we need to reduce human population ... meaning the population elsewhere... that it is not overpopulation in China or India that is causing the current problem... It is us and our “western” lifestyle, Understand that those that are currently arguing against refugees and climate change are both increasing the effects of climate change and causing millions of climate refugees... which will be arriving on Canada’s doorstep because Canada, due to our size and Northern Latitude, will on the whole have some of the best climate refuges. Understand that the densification of cities is condemning those in that density to a food-less future. Stop tolerating the middle ground on climate change. there is no middle ground on gravity, the earth is round, and we are on the verge of collapse.

–----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At last check over 25000 shares. Thank you for reading.

Thanks to Dr. Eric Rignot, Rupert Read , Dr. Jim Anderson, everyone at Berkely Earth those that put keep C02.earth and Environmental Advanced Sciences on FB upto date and so many other climate scientists who’s work have inspired this piece. Thanks as well to the 16 yr old Gretta Thunburg who gave me the courage to take what was in my head and put it to paper,. I encourage you to dig deep. Listen to talks where scientist are talking to scientists. They are less likely then to use the conservative filters they impose on themselves and you will get to the cutting edge.

*on a personal note, since I post about my children, I don’t accept friend requests from people I haven’t met. That said as of today, I have figured out how to enable the “follow” button on my account. I have been blown away by all the fantastic and heartfelt messages and commitments to change I have received due to this post and look forward to reading them.

Ruffling feathers and the power of telling our own stories
▻https://africasacountry.com/2019/03/ruffling-feathers-and-the-power-of-telling-our-own-stories

In November 2018, the South African fast food chain Chicken Licken launched a new ad campaign. “A long long

A game of chicken: how Indian poultry farming is creating global #superbugs

On a farm in the Rangareddy district in India, near the southern metropolis of Hyderabad, a clutch of chicks has just been delivered. Some 5,000 birds peck at one another, loitering around a warehouse which will become cramped as they grow. Outside the shed, stacks of bags contain the feed they will eat during their five-week-long lives. Some of them gulp down a yellow liquid from plastic containers - a sugar water fed to the chicks from the moment they arrive, the farm caretaker explains. “Now the supervisor will come,” she adds, “and we will have to start with whatever medicines he would ask us to give the chicks.”

The medicines are antibiotics, given to the birds to protect them against diseases or to make them gain weight faster so more can be grown each year at greater profit. One drug typically given this way is colistin. Doctors call it the “last hope” antibiotic because it is used to treat patients who are critically ill with infections which have become resistant to nearly all other drugs. The World Health Organisation has called for the use of such antibiotics, which it calls “critically important to human medicine”, to be restricted in animals and banned as growth promoters. Their continued use in farming increases the chance bacteria will develop resistance to them, leaving them useless when treating patients.

Yet thousands of tonnes of veterinary colistin was shipped to countries including Vietnam, India, South Korea and Russia in 2016, the Bureau can reveal. In India at least five animal pharmaceutical companies are openly advertising products containing colistin as growth promoters.

One of these companies, Venky’s, is also a major poultry producer. Apart from selling animal medicines and creating its own chicken meals, it also supplies meat directly and indirectly to fast food chains in India such as KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Dominos.

https://assets2.thebureauinvestigates.com/uploads/_storyImageLarge/HY3BP6.jpg?mtime=20170412145332#.jpg

▻https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-01-30/a-game-of-chicken-how-indian-poultry-farming-is-creating-glob
#inde #antibiotiques #santé

Walmart’s Veggie-Tracking B.L.T.: Blockchain Lettuce Technology - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/business/walmart-blockchain-lettuce.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/09/25/business/25leafygreens/25leafygreens-facebookJumbo.jpg

When dozens of people across the country got sick from eating contaminated romaine lettuce this spring, Walmart did what many grocers would do: It cleared every shred off its shelves, just to be safe.

Walmart says it now has a better system for pinpointing which batches of leafy green vegetables might be contaminated. After a two-year pilot project, the retailer announced on Monday that it would be using a blockchain, the type of database technology behind Bitcoin, to keep track of every bag of spinach and head of lettuce.

By this time next year, more than 100 farms that supply Walmart with leafy green vegetables will be required to input detailed information about their food into a blockchain database developed by I.B.M. for Walmart and several other retailers exploring similar moves.

The burgeoning blockchain industry has generated a great deal of buzz, investment and experimentation. Central banks are exploring whether it would be good for tracking money flows. Eastman Kodak has explored a blockchain platform that could help photographers manage their collections and record ownership of their work, while a group of reporters and investors are using the technology to start a series of news publications.

“I can’t see how doing this in a blockchain data format will make this magical in any way,” said David Gerard, the author of “Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain.”

“I think it’s mostly a P.R. move, so these companies can sell themselves as blockchain leaders,” he said.

Walmart’s embrace of the blockchain highlights how difficult it still is for grocers, including the nation’s largest, to keep track of their food.

Last year, Walmart conducted an experiment trying to trace the source of sliced mangos.

It took seven days for Walmart employees to locate the farm in Mexico that grew the fruit. With the blockchain software developed by IBM, the mangos could be tracked in a matter of seconds, according to Walmart.

“The food chain is not always linear,” said Frank Yiannas, vice president for food safety at Walmart.

At each stop along the way, people handling produce for Walmart will make an entry on the blockchain, signing off when they receive it and then when they move it onto the next person in the chain. IBM and Walmart say they are already tracking other products like yogurt and poultry on the system.

Blockchains are supposed to make it possible to keep updated databases without any central authority in charge. But currently, all of the records for the Walmart blockchain are being stored on IBM’s cloud computers, for Walmart’s use. That has led to questions about why a distributed database like a blockchain is even necessary.

“The idea is right but the execution seems off,” said Simon Taylor, the co-founder of 11:FS, a consulting firm that advises companies on blockchain adoption. “IBM took new tech that doesn’t need a middleman and made themselves the middleman.”

#Blockchain #IBM #Wallmart #Foutaise

On product management & #humanity
▻https://hackernoon.com/on-product-management-humanity-ad80e9f4ccd4?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3--

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How the best product teams exploit homo sapiens’ defining traitBy Winston Christie-Blick | product manager at productboardThe best product managers are masterful illusionists. And to work their magic, they exploit a trait that is unique to humans — or to be more precise, to homo sapiens.After all, it is this trait that gave us an edge over our brawnier, heartier neanderthal brethren and explains why we sapiens have imposed ourselves at the top of the food chain wherever we’ve settled on Earth, even amidst predatory saber tooth tigers, imposing mammoths and mastodons.That trait is the ability to #mythologize, to imagine entities that don’t physically exist, perceive them as though they were real, and to do so collectively.Such is the claim made by Yuval Noah Harari in his bestselling Sapiens: A (...)

#books #design-for-humans #product-management

Maybe It’s Not Just #addiction
▻https://hackernoon.com/blind-to-vigilance-7e9b72ab2ad4?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

Technologists often oversimplify. Consider the contemporary tendency to describe all types of heavy smartphone usage as addiction. Smartphones and apps certainly have some built-in addictiveness thanks to a number of surreptitious #design patterns. But addiction is not the whole story. And in some cases, I’d argue it’s the wrong story altogether.Users are not just addicted: they are also (and more often) being vigilant.Vigilance is the allocation of significant attentional resources to perform sustained watchfulness. This watchfulness is extreme and associated with self-preservation; for example, a zebra keeping eyes and ears open for predators while also grazing. Animals who aren’t at the top of the food chain spend considerable time and energy being vigilant.We humans are of course at (...)

#distraction #vigilance #attention

$180bn investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge | Environment | The Guardian

▻https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/180bn-investment-in-plastic-factories-feeds-global-packaging-binge

https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/35887366ad622a348e56fde2d8f128a4182d4c91/0_57_5760_3456/master/5760.jpg?w=1200&h=630&q=55&auto=format&usm=12&fit=crop&crop=faces%2Centropy&bm=normal&ba=bottom%2Cleft&blend64=aHR0cHM6Ly91cGxvYWRzLmd1aW0uY28udWsvMjAxNi8wNS8yNS9vdmVybGF5LWxvZ28tMTIwMC05MF9vcHQucG5n&s=35da0dff61bc568c30c8a8a176a06ddb

The global plastic binge which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the US.

Fossil fuel companies are among those who have ploughed more than $180bn since 2010 into new “cracking” facilities that will produce the raw material for everyday plastics from packaging to bottles, trays and cartons.

#environnement #déchets #plastique #production_de_plastique #lobbies

The Agrifood Atlas: how corporations are tightening their stranglehold on people’s food | Friends of the Earth Europe
▻http://www.foeeurope.org/agrifood-atlas-corporations-stranglehold-food-311117

New research published today shows the dramatic impacts of the global food system being rapidly monopolised by ever-fewer, ever-larger corporations at every stage of the food chain. This alarming trend poses risks to consumer choice, jobs and working conditions and food production in the future, warn the authors of the Agrifood Atlas.

Between 2015 and 2016, five of the largest 12 mergers between publicly-traded companies came in the agrifood sector, with a total value of almost US $500 billion.

The authors raise concerns that the growing consolidation in the food chain is causing:

Less consumer choice: increased monopolies are putting the food chain into even fewer hands. Almost half of all food sold in the EU comes from just ten supermarket chains and 50 food processing companies account for half of all global food sales. Only four companies produce 60% of the world’s baby food.
A risk to future food production: merged agrifood corporations are driving industrialisation along the whole food chain, with 20% of the world’s agricultural land now degraded.
Job cuts and low wages: The current wave of mergers in the processing industries – such as Kraft-Heinz and AB Inbev-SAB Miller – were driven by cost saving calculations, and led to thousands of job cuts.
Price pressure through buyers’ cartels: Food retailers and processors put pressure on their suppliers, squeezing out smaller producers, and poor working conditions and low pay exist along the food chain. Around 80% of the global tea market is controlled by just three corporations.
A situation where the poorest stay hungry despite an oversupply of food. The global harvest of edible crops is today equal to around 4,600 kcal per person per day – but more than half of this is lost in storage, via distribution, food waste and being fed to livestock.

▻http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/agriculture/2017/agrifood_atlas.pdf

#atlas #cartographie #visualisation #alimentation #agriculture

Ex-DEA agent: Opioid crisis fueled by drug industry and Congress - CBS News
▻https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ex-dea-agent-opioid-crisis-fueled-by-drug-industry-and-congress

https://cbsnews1.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/2017/10/15/a4f772be-190d-43a2-b630-d8de31f90ae2/dea-capitol.jpg

Whistleblower Joe Rannazzisi says drug distributors pumped opioids into U.S. communities — knowing that people were dying — and says industry lobbyists and Congress derailed the DEA’s efforts to stop it

Joe Rannazzisi is a tough, blunt former DEA deputy assistant administrator with a law degree, a pharmacy degree and a smoldering rage at the unrelenting death toll from opioids. His greatest ire is reserved for the distributors — some of them multibillion dollar, Fortune 500 companies. They are the middlemen that ship the pain pills from manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson to drug stores all over the country. Rannazzisi accuses the distributors of fueling the opioid epidemic by turning a blind eye to pain pills being diverted to illicit use.

BILL WHITAKER: Had you ever seen anything like that before?

JOE RANNAZZISI: Never. In fact— it was my opinion that this made the whole crack epidemic look like nothing.

JOE RANNAZZISI These weren’t kids slinging crack on the corner. These were professionals who were doing it. They were just drug dealers in lab coats.

A distributor’s representative told us the problem is not distributors but doctors who overprescribe pain medication, but the distributors know exactly how many pills go to every drug store they supply. And they are required under the Controlled Substances Act to report and stop what the DEA calls “suspicious orders” — such as unusually large or frequent shipments of opioids. But DEA investigators say many distributors ignored that requirement.

JIM GELDHOF: They had a business plan. Their plan was to sell a lotta pills and make a lot of money. And they did both of those very well.

In 2008, the DEA slapped McKesson, the country’s largest drug distributor, with a $13.2 million dollar fine. That same year, Cardinal Health paid a $34 million fine. Both companies were penalized by the DEA for filling hundreds of suspicious orders — millions of pills.

Over the last seven years, distributors’ fines have totaled more than $341 million. The companies cried foul and complained to Congress that DEA regulations were vague and the agency was treating them like a foreign drug cartel. In a letter, the healthcare distribution alliance, which represents distributors, told us they wanted to work with the DEA. Effective enforcement, they wrote, “must be a two-way street.”

Jim Geldhof says his investigations were getting bogged down too. He was looking into one mid-sized distributor that had shipped more than 28 million pain pills to pharmacies in West Virginia over five years. About 11 million of those pills wound up in Mingo County, population 25,000. Suddenly, he said, he ran into roadblocks from one of attorney Jonathan Novak’s bosses.

JIM GELDHOF: “I spent a year working on this case. I sent it down there and it’s never good enough. Every time I talked to this guy he wants something else. And I get it for ’em and that’s still not good enough.” You know? And this goes on and on and on. When this— these roadblocks keep— get thrown up in your face, at that point you know they just don’t want the case.

He said one big reason for the slowdown: DC’s notorious revolving door. Novak said he saw a parade of DEA lawyers switch sides and jump to high-paying jobs defending the drug industry. Once they’d made the leap, they lobbied their former colleagues, novak’s bosses, and argued the dea’s cases were weak and ultimately would lose in court. It had a chilling effect on dea litigators.

JONATHAN NOVAK: Some of the best and the brightest former DEA attorneys are now on the other side and know all of the — the — the weak points. Their fingerprints are on, memos and policy and — and — and emails going out where you see this concoction of what they might argue in the future.

The bill, introduced in the House by Pennsylvania Congressman Tom Marino and Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, was promoted as a way to ensure that patients had access to the pain medication they needed.

Jonathan Novak, who worked in the DEA’s legal office, says what the bill really did was strip the agency of its ability to immediately freeze suspicious shipments of prescription narcotics to keep drugs off U.S. streets — what the DEA calls diversion.

JONATHAN NOVAK: You’re not gonna be able to hold anyone higher up the food chain accountable.

BILL WHITAKER: Because of this law?

JONATHAN NOVAK: Because of this law

Tom Marino a été proposé par Trump pour devenir le “drug czar” de la la Maison Blanche... mais il a du se retirer suite à cette émission.

Who drafted the legislation that would have such a dire effect? The answer came in another internal Justice Department email released to 60 Minutes and The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act: “Linden Barber used to work for the DEA. He wrote the Marino bill.”

Ad: Hi, My name is Linden Barber. I’m the director of the DEA litigation and compliance practice at Quarles and Brady’s Health Law Group.

Barber went through the revolving door. He left his job as associate chief counsel of the DEA and within a month joined a law firm where he lobbied Congress on behalf of drug companies and wrote legislation. He advertised what he could offer a client facing DEA scrutiny.

Ad continued: If you have a DEA compliance issue, or you’re facing a government investigation, or you’re having administrative or civil litigation involving the Controlled Substances Act, I’d be happy to hear from you.

JONATHAN NOVAK: It’s not surprising that this bill, that has intimate knowledge of the way that DEA, you know, regulations are enforced, the way that those laws work, was written by someone who spent a lot of time there, charged a lot of cases there.

#Opioids #Big_pharma #Lobbies #Pantouflage

The great nutrient collapse
▻http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511

Rising CO2 revs up photosynthesis, the process that helps plants transform sunlight to food. This makes plants grow, but it also leads them to pack in more carbohydrates like glucose at the expense of other nutrients that we depend on, like protein, iron and zinc.

[...] Within the category of plants known as “C3”―which includes approximately 95 percent of plant species on earth, including ones we eat like wheat, rice, barley and potatoes―elevated CO2 has been shown to drive down important minerals like calcium, potassium, zinc and iron. The data we have, which look at how plants would respond to the kind of CO2 concentrations we may see in our lifetimes, show these important minerals drop by 8 percent, on average. The same conditions have been shown to drive down the protein content of C3 crops, in some cases significantly, with wheat and rice dropping 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

#climat #agriculture #alimentation

He was told he could pursue his research interests as long as he brought in funding, but he struggled. Biology grant makers said his proposals were too math-heavy; math grant makers said his proposals contained too much biology.

[...] It’s not just in the fields of math and biology that this issue has fallen through the cracks. To say that it’s little known that key crops are getting less nutritious due to rising CO2 is an understatement. It is simply not discussed in the agriculture, public health or nutrition communities. At all.

#recherche

You’ll never want to buy synthetic clothing after watching ’The Story of Microfibers’ : TreeHugger
▻http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-fashion/microfibers-may-be-small-theyre-enormous-problem.html

http://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2017/03/plastic_clothing.png.600x315_q90_crop-smart.png

Earlier this month, the Story of Stuff released its newest video on the problem of microfibers. The three-minute film offers a short yet powerful explanation of how the miniscule bits of synthetic fibers washing off our clothes are creating an environmental catastrophe in the #oceans.

The microfiber pieces are smaller than a grain of rice, measuring less than 5 millimeters in length, which mean they cannot be filtered out by washing machines or even waste water treatment plants. They get flushed out into waterways and oceans, where they act like little sponges, attracting and absorbing other toxic chemicals around them, like motor oil and pesticides. Eventually they climb their way up the food chain, until they reach human bellies at mealtime.

▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqkekY5t7KY&feature=youtu.be

#vêtements #synthétiques #pollution #chaine_alimentaire #toxiques #empoisonnement

Beyond Monsanto’s GMO Cotton: Why Consumers Need to Care What We Wear
▻http://ronnie.organicconsumers.org/beyond-monsantos-gmo-cotton-why-consumers-need-to-care-what

3. GMO and toxic cotton: You’re eating it. Keep in mind that most of the world’s highly contaminated cotton seeds and cotton gin trash end up in animal feed (especially non-organic dairy) and in low-grade vegetable cooking oils, purchased by consumers or used in fast food restaurants and school cafeterias. Non-organic cotton is one of the most toxic crops on the planet.

Government regulatory agencies, prompted by large cotton farmers and the garment industry, falsely claim that cotton is not a “food crop,” (in spite of the fact that 60 percent of what is harvested by weight ends up in the food chain). This means that super-toxic pesticides and herbicides are allowed to be sprayed, in copious quantities, on the cotton plant. So-called cotton by-products—cotton seeds, cotton seed oil and cotton gin trash—end up being sold and consumed as ingredients in both animal feed and human food. The pesticide residues in cottonseed accumulates in the fatty tissues of dairy cows, and are passed on in the milk and dairy products consumed by humans. Cottonseed oil is routinely laced into a variety of food products, from vitamins to potato chips, and is often addes to olive oil without being labeled. This means that GMOs and pesticide residues from cotton crops find their way into a wide range of non-organic food products, triggering health issues including food allergies, cancer and liver, kidney and immune system damage.

[...]

7. Chemical-intensive clothing poses dangers to human health. Skin is the body’s largest organ. One of its major jobs is to protect internal systems. But skin also acts as a conduit, a way of entering the bloodstream through absorption. Chemicals and #pesticides from synthetic materials and non-organic cotton make their way into human bodies through our skin. If you care about what you put in your body, you must also care what you put on your body. Health issues from such toxic chemical exposure range from headache to asthma to cancer.

#OGM #santé #coton

Atomic Suicide : The Tale of the Sailors and the Seals – RadChick Radiation Research & Mitigation
▻https://radchickblog.wordpress.com/2014/01/26/atomic-suicide-the-tale-of-sailors-and-seals

https://radchickblog.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/seal-sick-2.jpg

Navy sailor Lindsay Cooper knew something was wrong when billows of metallic-tasting snow began drifting over USS Ronald Reagan. She and scores of crewmates watched a sudden storm blow toward them from the tsunami-torn coast of Fukushima, Japan. Lindsay didn’t know it then, but the snow was caused by the freezing Pacific air mixing with a plume of radioactive steam. “As soon as you step foot on the flight deck and went outside you had this taste of like aluminum foil. We thought that we had felt a plume because there was kind of this warm air that went past the ship and you could kind of tell the differences between jet exhaust — we didn’t have any jets going around at the time. It was like 20 degrees outside and you could feel this warm air and you kind of enjoyed it at first and then you’re like, ‘Is that aluminum foil that I taste?’

Within about 5 days of those initial plumes, the seals would have had their first taste of aluminium foil, too. Some by direct inhalation, more by what landed in the snow and revolitalized later. What landed in the ocean, quickly worked its way through the food chain. Plutonium, Americium, Uranium, and other highly toxic elements were found a few months later in every single organism tested in Alaskan waters, by the US Department of Energy. That’s extremely bad news if you’re a seal, or anything else that eats seafood from the Pacific. Although the fishing industry, various deceitful news outlets, and paid government scientists seem to want you to believe otherwise.

The Alaskan Dispatch reported in the Fall of 2011: “Indigenous hunters in Alaska’s Arctic noticed ice seals they rely on for food and other uses covered in oozing sores and losing hair. They were sick and some were dying. As of this month, despite the international group of scientists and researchers the declaration pulled together, no cause has been officially identified for the illness plaguing the ice seals. Walruses and polar bears have turned up with similar ailments. Some of the animals were found to also have bleeding and swelling in their lungs, livers, lymph nodes and other internal organs.

Meanwhile, Navy personnel began experiencing more severe and mysterious symptoms, including hemorrhaging and cancer. Sebourn, who had been assigned to investigate radiation levels in the air and on American military aircraft, now spends his days going from one specialist to another. After seeing at least 10 doctors and undergoing three MRI’s and two ultrasounds, he still doesn’t know what’s wrong. Sebourn says he very suddenly lost 50 to 60 percent of the power in the right side of his body. This shocked him when he walked into the gym one day and could only do his workout on his left side – he says his right side just didn’t work. Administrative Officer Steven Simmons was on the USS Ronald Reagan too. Simmons suddenly lost 20 to 25 pounds, started running fevers, getting night sweats and tremors, and his lymph nodes started to swell. He can no longer use his legs and spends all of his time in a wheelchair. His weakness has traveled up to his core and arms, and the signals between his brain and his bladder have failed. He uses a catheter every four hours. Other sailors have been diagnosed with immune system failure, blindness and ocular cancers, testicular cancer, lung cancer, colon cancer, and brain cancer.

“As for the people who are saying those levels weren’t very high, normal background radiation, I call bogus to that, because I was the man taking the background levels. If you think 300 times higher than a normal day’s radiation level is fine, than I don’t know what to tell you” says Seybourn. Over 150 sailors are now part of a class-action lawsuit against TEPCO, for lying about the meltdowns, and the risk to military personnel that were participating in the mission.

Toxicity of inhaled plutonium dioxide in beagle dogs.
▻http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8927705

Many baby seals dying of leukemia-linked disorder along California coast — Blamed for over 1/3 of recent deaths at San Francisco Bay rescue center (CHART)
▻http://enenews.com/many-seals-dying-leukemia-linked-disorder-along-california-coast-13-recent-

Si après la lecture des ces articles sur des catastrophes vous avez envie de vous détendre voici un reportage sympa :

Baby seals that practice in pools make better divers — ScienceDaily
▻https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150701214543.htm

https://images.sciencedaily.com/2015/07/150701214543_1_540x360.jpg

#accident_nucléaire #santé #environnement

Abrupt changes in food chains predicted as Southern Ocean acidifies fast: study
▻http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/abrupt-changes-in-food-chains-predicted-as-southern-ocean-acidifies-fast-stu

http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/k/o/v/z/j/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gknd2g.png/1446490390651.jpg

Below a certain pH level, shells of such creatures become more brittle, with implications for fisheries that feed off them since pteropods appear unable to evolve fast enough to cope with the rapidly changing conditions.

“For pteropods it may be very difficult because they can’t run around without a shell,” Professor Timmermann said. “It’s not they dissolve immediately but there’s a much higher energy requirement for them to form the shells.”

Given the sheer scale of the marine creatures involved, “take away this biomass, [and] you have avalanche effects for the rest of the food web”, he said.

#effet_de_serre #co2 #acidification #océan #coquille #chaine_alimentaire

Corporate profits and Africa’s food security - New African Magazine
▻http://newafricanmagazine.com/corporate-profits-africas-food-security

Under the cooperation agreement, African partner countries are requested to change their land ownership and seed laws to facilitate companies’ land tenure and control over the national seed market. This is resulting in massive corporate land grabbing throughout the continent and the enactment of seed laws which criminalise the ability of farmers to freely preserve their own native seeds year on year and exchange them against other varieties to mitigate risks.

Agrochemical corporations have long had their gaze fixed on the seed market. Control over seeds is control over the first link in the food chain, and, beyond, the whole food system. By dictating the patented, corporate-owned seeds farmers can buy, corporations not only reap profits every year, but also assert control over what is being produced.

#nasan #afrique #semences #terres #agro-industrie

Overfishing- The Consequences
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/overfishing

How does overfishing affect you and the planet you live in? This short film quickly explains the food chain of the sea and how overfishing affects more than just our ability to eat certain kinds...

The Colors We Eat - Issue 26: Color
▻http://nautil.us/issue/26/color/the-colors-we-eat

http://static.nautil.us/6581_7aee5d5dfa97b2516e5f639672c7e199.jpg

When it comes to food, color is money. Food companies scan their products on the line with custom colorimeters to ensure mathematically consistent hues. Fruits and vegetables are shipped in chemically “modified” atmospheres, because “better stem and fruit color gives better prices,” according to the website of the delivery company TransFresh. Color is judged by a legion of standards all along the food chain. The hue of orange juice, for example, is carefully calibrated by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Orange Juice Color Standards (Grade-A orange juice from concentrate has to be “not as good as OJ 5 but much better than OJ 6.”) There are few worse fates, in the eyes of federal regulators, than for a berry to be “undercolored.” Oranges and berries are just the beginning. The (...)

Inside the lonely fight against the biggest environmental problem you’ve never heard of | Guardian Sustainable Business | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/oct/27/toxic-plastic-synthetic-microscopic-oceans-microbeads-microfibers-food-

It is not news that microplastic – which the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines as plastic fragments 5mm or smaller – is ubiquitous in all five major ocean gyres. And numerous studies have shown that small organisms readily ingest microplastics, introducing toxic pollutants to the food chain.

But Browne’s 2011 paper announcing his findings marked a milestone, according to Abigail Barrows, an independent marine research scientist based in Stonington, Maine, who has helped to check for plastic in more than 150 one-liter water samples collected around the world. “He’s fantastic – very well respected” among marine science researchers, says Barrows. “He is a pioneer in microplastics research.

#toxiques

Nanoparticles accumulate quickly in wetlands: Aquatic food chains might be harmed by molecules ’piggybacking’ on carbon nanoparticles — ScienceDaily
▻http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141001102644.htm

http://images.sciencedaily.com/2014/10/141001102644-large.jpg

The Rise of OpenStreetMap

▻http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/02/28/openstreetmap/#!znhbZ

This definition of omnipresent sums up many facets of society. Fast food chains? Everywhere. Reality TV shows? You know the answer. And what about Google? Yup, right again.

http://cdn3.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/02/featzz1-786x305.jpg

What started as a simple search engine back in 1998 is now an omnipresent force, spanning search, email, video, productivity, smartphones, laptops, glasses, navigation and more. And by more, we mean more. Just last month, Google acquired Nest for multiple billions, even though it really only has a (smart) thermostat and smoke detector to its name. But it’s all about the future, and the future is very much about smart homes and the Internet of everything.

#cartographie #osm #open_street_map #crowd_sourcing

Rapid loss of top predators ‘a major environmental threat’
▻http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/rapid-loss-of-top-predators-a-major-environmental-threat

The rapid loss of top predators such as dingoes, leopards and lions is causing an environmental threat comparable to climate change, an international group of scientists has warned.

A study by researchers from Australia, the US and Europe found that removing large carnivores, which has happened worldwide in the past 200 years, causes a raft of harmful reactions to cascade through food chains and landscapes.

Small animals are picked off by feral pests, land is denuded of vegetation as herbivore numbers increase and streams and rivers are even diverted as a result of this loss of carnivores, the ecologists found.

Pollution Rising, Chinese Fear for Soil and Food
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/31/world/asia/good-earth-no-more-soil-pollution-plagues-chinese-countryside.html?_r=0

One-sixth of China’s #arable land — nearly 50 million acres — suffers from soil #pollution, according to a book published this year by the Ministry of Environmental Protection. The book, “Soil Pollution and Physical Health,” said that more than 13 million tons of crops harvested each year were contaminated with heavy metals, and that 22 million acres of farmland were affected by #pesticides.

But the government has refused to divulge details of the pollution, leaving farmers and consumers in the dark about the levels of contaminants in the food chain. The soil survey, completed in 2010, has been locked away as a “state secret.”

(...)

Hunan officials are eager to expand the nonferrous metals industry. In a development plan for the five years ending in 2015, officials have pledged to increase the industry’s revenue by an annual rate of 18 percent, and have approved 80 new projects that have a total investment of under $10 billion.

Given the nationwide health risks, some environmental officials in Beijing have praised recent experiments done by scientists that show certain plants could help clean the soil by absorbing poisons. Still, there has been no sign of action on the State Council’s announced goal for comprehensive monitoring and treatment of soil pollution. Many farmers working their ravaged lands remain fearful and fatalistic.

#metaux_lourds #terres #agriculture #eau

Reports Show Corporate Control Entrenched in Global Food Chain

▻http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/221-transnational-corporations/52528-reports-show-corporate-control-entrenched-in-global-food-chain-.

ETC Group and EcoNexus have issued reports surrounding the corporate control that is entrenched in the global food chain. The reports delve in to the dominance of the agricultural sector particularly in the industrial farm inputs such as animal feed production, livestock breeding, fertilizers/pesticides and seed production amongst others. Their findings show the devastation that these monopolies are causing to local farmers as their local breeds and food crop varieties have been lost.

Voir

▻http://www.etcgroup.org/putting_the_cartel_before_the_horse_2013

▻http://www.etcgroup.org/content/poster-who-will-feed-us-industrial-food-chain-or-peasant-food-webs

▻http://www.econexus.info/sites/econexus/files/Agropoly_Econexus_BerneDeclaration.pdf

▻http://www.econexus.info/publication/agropoly-handful-corporations-control-world-food-production

Ainsi que le rapport de l’ONU sur le droit à l’alimentation

▻http://www.srfood.org/images/stories/pdf/officialreports/20131025_rtf_en.pdf
#agriculture #alimentation

The Autopsy of Chicken Nuggets Reads “Chicken Little”
▻http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00396-3/abstract

To determine the contents of chicken nuggets from 2 national food chains.

Background
Chicken nuggets have become a major component of the American diet. We sought to determine the current composition of this highly processed food.

Methods
Randomly selected nuggets from 2 different national fast food chains were fixed in formalin, sectioned and stained for microscopic analysis.

Results
Striated muscle (chicken meat) was not the predominate component in either nugget. Fat was present in equal or greater quantities along with epithelium, bone, nerve, and connective tissue.

Conclusion
Chicken nuggets are mostly fat, and their name is a misnomer.

#nutrition