industryterm:food chains

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.

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

$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

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

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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

Decline of predators such as wolves throws food chains out of whack, report says - The Washington Post
►http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/decline-of-predators-such-as-wolves-throws-food-chains-out-of-whack-report-says/2011/07/14/gIQAaeY1EI_story.html

Finalement le loup était gentil:

The decline of large predators such as big cats, wolves, sharks and giant whales may be “humankind’s most pervasive influence on the natural world,” causing prey animals to swell in population and throw food chains out of balance, a new report says.
(...)
“Recent research suggests that the disappearance of these animals reverberates further than previously anticipated,” says the report, “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth.” In addition to creating an overabundance of prey, the dwindling number of predators contributes to the spread of disease, wildfires and invasive species.

#environnement