Farms Reduce Livestock Antibiotic Usage For First Time, Report Shows
The yearly Food and Drug Administration report on the sale of “medically important” antibiotics for food-producing animals has been released, and it’s good news. For the first time since the FDA started tracking these sales in 2009, sales of medically important antibiotics have gone down. They decreased by 14 percent in 2016, and a new FDA policy makes it likely that the trend will continue.
Why Have Sales Dropped?
There has been a concentrated effort from the scientific and medical communities to bring awareness to the issue of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In 2017, the FDA asked manufacturers to stop selling medically important antibiotics for the use of animal farming. Though this policy request occurred past the deadline for the 2016 yearly report, it does coincide with Canadian and European pushes for livestock raised with fewer antibiotics. With the United States government beginning to take this issue seriously, the sale and use of medically important antibiotics will likely continue to decrease.
There are still quite a few questions though. Without a massive overhaul of the factory farming system, farmers need something to replace these antibiotics. Non-antibiotic treatments are in the work, but data on how that could potentially affect humans hasn’t surfaced.
Another concern is the language continually being used – medically important antibiotics. One of the most important reported cases of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is the development of a colistin-resistant bacteria. Colistin was not considered a medically important antibiotic because of the kidney damage it causes, and the product only became medically important when other antibiotics were failing. According to the World Health Organization, there are not enough antibiotics being developed to deal with superbugs. What is the likelihood that one of the medically non-important antibiotics becomes medically necessary?
In addition to tracking sales, this is the first year that the FDA broke down the sale of antibiotics by animal type, giving a clearer picture of the relationship between food-producing animals and our medication. Restaurants and supermarkets have focused on delivering antibiotic-free chicken, and that’s reflected in the numbers. Poultry accounts for only 15 percent of medically important antibiotic sales, while swine and cattle account for 37 and 43 percent, respectively. It’s not clear that changes in restaurant policy have changed those figures, but it’s silly to think that the company that sells the 37 million nuggets a day doesn’t change the way that chicken is produced.
This report is a good sign for a couple of reasons. First, we have a more detailed breakdown of which animals are receiving more antibiotics. Secondly, all of the consumer pressure placed on corporations and governments for healthier options can actually have an effect. The free flow of information can bring about change, but we’re running out of time for that. Continued progress is a must.
Can Eating Crickets Solve Two Sustainability Issues at Once?
Finland has approved bread made from cricket flour to sell in supermarkets. Before you say ewww or gross, think about it for a minute. We live on a rapidly changing planet with an increasing number of people, and we need food. Our current system is flawed and overwhelmed, and easily manufactured alternatives to resource hungry, unhealthy factory farmed meat are desperately needed. Are crickets a healthy, sustainable, and most importantly palatable alternative to our current problematic proteins?
Healthy Protein
When it comes down to the numbers, crickets are a nutritional powerhouse. A serving of cricket flour provides more than twice the protein of a steak, contains almost a fifth of the daily recommended value of B12, and is rich in calcium and iron. Whole crickets have the additional benefit of chitin, their exoskeleton. The chitin is a prebiotic, benefiting already existing good bacteria. They also offer a high-protein, gluten-free flour substitute. The image above is pasta made with cricket flower.
Sustainability
Here is where the debate about how beneficial crickets actually are gets interesting. Crickets need less water, space, and food than any of the animals we currently farm for food. They are also able to eat a more varied diet and lead to decreased rates of methane gases, deforestation, and toxic animal waste. The bugs also convert what they eat to an edible product 12 times more efficiently than cows and twice as efficiently as chickens. But if crickets farmers are looking only for efficiency, they are missing a chance to achieve a higher level of sustainability with their product.
For crickets to reach the size required for harvest in the shortest period of time, they need to be fed a grain diet. But this is problematic, as all it does is repeat the same cow, pig, and chicken system that isn’t sustainable. With a different diet of food waste, cricket production is only slightly more efficient than chicken farming. Yet Americans throw away a full third of all food grown in the country. The most exciting possibility here is that crickets farmed correctly have the ability to ameliorate two serious issues facing the world – hunger and food waste.
The -Ick Factor
Many information sources on crickets and other edible bugs used to focus on whether or not anyone would eat them. As of 2017, that ship has sailed, and articles now focus on what’s going to win the new food race – bugs or lab meat. Never mind that bugs have and still are eaten by more than 2 billion people worldwide on a daily basis.
Americans and much of the food popularized here is easy, aesthetically pleasing food. A chicken is no longer comprised of bones and tendons and skin. It comes pale and perfected wrapped in plastic or processed and put back together in a nugget shape. We become so accustomed to fruit or vegetables in a single form that anything that deviates from that is treated as an absurdity.
But this is exactly why we should be eating crickets. Where before bugs required a strong stomach and a minimal gag reflex, they are now an easy food. Like milkshakes? There’s a fast food chain that offered one with crickets. Finland is offering bread at the supermarket. Multiple companies offer a cricket protein powder for smoothies or various cricket snacks for a boost during the day.
Get in The Game
People in the tropics are more likely to consume bugs, as the colder Northern weather makes it difficult for a population to depend on bugs as a food source. Good news, it’s getting warmer!
All (not funny) kidding aside, crickets have the potential to feed the world. We have the opportunity to steer the production of a potentially major part of the food supply. Give crickets a try, and see if you can surprise yourself. But most importantly, be picky about the quality of crickets you consume. We’ve already seen where the factory farming model takes us. Let’s learn something from it.
What are your thoughts? Would you eat food with crickets as an ingredient? What could go wrong?
The Key to Happiness is Going Vegan, Affirms World Happiness Expert
Matthieu Ricard is a former French genetic scientist, Tibetan monk, and author of Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill. His designation as the world’s happiest man is the result of a scientific research done on him and other advanced meditation practitioners in 2012, where during a meditation on compassion, 256 sensors on his skull measured levels of gamma rays in his brain never before reported in the history of neuroscience. Even though Matthieu is widely known and respected, the wise monk shows no sign of ego, as he kindly shares with the world the secret to finding true happiness.
Why We Cannot be Happy Eating Animals
On a video Matthieu participated in for PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), he demonstrates how the act of buying and eating animals creates a domino effect of negativity in all aspects of our life.
First of all, the animals, with 60 billion land animals and a trillion sea animals killed each year. Next, the environment, since the whole chain of factory farming involved in meat production today is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases nowadays, after homes and before transportation. Poverty in the world: 800 million tons of grains that could feed 1 billion people are sent from developing countries towards rich countries for meat production.
“So the first victims are, of course, animals, but everyone else loses too! Even human health! The WHO (World Health Organization) published a report showing that the regular consumption of meat was bad for health.”
So let’s be logical. If we ask the people of every nation whether they would like to live in a world filled with beauty, safety, prosperity, joy, kindness, love, peace, laughter, justice… most are likely to say yes. But to truly create such reality we must produce more of these acts (beauty, peace, love, justice and etc.) individually, so that this may turn into a ripple effect, creating this new collective reality. But how will we achieve such life when we are taking away innocent beings from their families and societies, forgetting that they are capable of feeling the same emotions we do, such as trust, love, joy, and fear and then serving them on our plates?
According to Matthieu,
…When you see the intensive conditions in which dairy cows are raised, for instance, it’s absolutely unimaginable. They are confined to stalls during their short lives, unable to see the sky, and when they become less productive, they are eliminated. When you know that 10 to 15 percent of them, sometimes more, are cut up into pieces while they were still conscious because they were improperly stunned, they die little by little, it’s unimaginable. But this is the reality of their lives, every day, all year long.”
So we must urgently ask ourselves, can any kind of death bring true happiness? Is it ethical and just? Will this act bring more fulfillment into our individual lives or consequently to our collective experience?
That’s right, the answer is no.
The Key to Happiness
Matthieu reveals the key to happiness and it´s simpler than we thought.
He says: “True happiness can be attained when we avoid causing pain to others…”
Matthieu’s wise words become even more interesting when we take a look at the results from the 2010 happiness survey done on Harvard´s class of 1980. It turns out that the number one item listed as one of utmost importance to achieve happiness is doing good for others.
This strongly correlates to what Matthieu has shared with us. Happiness is to think of others (people and animals) and keep from bringing them suffering, it is to think of the world and the future generations, the environment and ourselves (our health) doing what is morally correct.
How Meat Consumption is Hurting our Health and Planet
“The human appetite for animal flesh is a driving force behind virtually every major category of environmental damage now threatening the human future—deforestation, erosion, fresh water scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, social injustice, the destabilization of communities, and the spread of disease.” Says the World Watch Institute.
But how much in numbers are we truly talking?
The millennium ecosystem assessment shows that meat and dairy products are responsible for:
70% of global freshwater consumption
It takes around 147 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of corn. A single beef steer or a heifer can eat 1,000 or more pounds of feed over a few months (since they are often fed corn and soy feed to achieve a speedier growth), consuming large amounts of water that could be preserved instead.
38% of total land use
In various nations of the world, you see lands being taken over, Amazonian forests cut down for soy production for cattle, banks of wild streams muddied and trampled by grazers in New Zealand, countries like Greece that were rich in woodlands are now dry and taken over by goats.
19% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions
Because cows chew on grass, and their digestive system works differently than ours, they end up releasing a lot of methane into the air and atmosphere. So, the more meat-eating humans, the more cows, the more methane, the more greenhouse gasses, and the worse it will be for the planet.
A scientific study that was done also indicates that the long-term consumption of red meat, and specially processed meat, is associated with an increased risk of mortality, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, colorectal cancer in both women and men.
But this isn’t the only source to share such information.
Dr. Marco Springmann from the Oxford Martin School, says: “Imbalanced diets, such as diets low in fruits and vegetables, and high in red and processed meat, are responsible for the greatest health burden globally…”
All of the above data show us that this lifestyle is extremely harmful to our health and for the planet, as it’s not sustainable. As the world population increases, the tendency is for the demand of meat production to increase, which could mean that we are looking at an unavoidable worldwide point of no return.
Watch this video for a quick 3-minute summary.
How a Vegan Lifestyle can Change the World
According to the recent 2016 Oxford study, a vegan diet could bring various benefits, such as:
Save 8 million lives by 2050 – The study concludes that almost half of the avoided deaths would be due to the reduction of the consumption of red meat as the other half would be a result of an increased fruit and vegetable intake as well as calorie reduction causing fewer people to be obese or overweight.
Save money on healthcare – About 700 to 1.000 billion US dollars.
Avoid climate-related damages – Which would have otherwise cost 1.5 trillion dollars.
Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2/3 – By adopting vegan dietary guidelines we could cut out 70% of these emissions which would bring an economic benefit of as much as 570 billion US dollars.
To summarize on the greenhouse gases matter, Nick Hewitt, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry in the Department of Environmental Science at Lancaster University says “The biggest lifestyle choice you could make to reduce greenhouse gasses is to stop eating meat. It’s hard to think of another single lifestyle change we could make that would have the same effect.”
Bringing Happiness to the World
We have enough scientific evidence supporting the numerous problems within the animal-based product industries, as well as we are aware of how it negatively affects our health, our environment and the animals themselves. For those of you who comprehend this and are asking yourselves what you can do now, the answer is simple — Take action! Be the example, and exclude meat products from your plates, choose vegetarian and vegan options, bring awareness to your friends, family, and colleagues. Your actions will bring about a ripple effect, that will turn our collective reality into one free of suffering, full of environmental restoration, better human and animal health, which inevitably brings about greater feelings of joy, purpose, and love. Happiness takes courage and effort, so the Tibetan monk and former scientist, a true master of happiness and compassion, humbly makes a plea— he asks that we become vegan like him.
Why the U.S. Washes and Refrigerates Eggs, & Why Other Countries Don’t
American eggs are federally required to be washed and sanitized and then refrigerated. There are a few reasons for this, but the main reason is that our factory farms are disgusting. In Europe, eggs sold in supermarkets are not legally allowed to be washed.
I live in Mexico and one of the first things I noticed at the grocery stores here is that they do not refrigerate the eggs. They’re sold on a shelf with dry goods generally, like sugar or canned milk products. There are many options from tiny spotted ones to big brown ones, but they’re unwashed and unchilled. – Lily Da Vine
The FDA states that eggs must be sterilized and chilled to reduce the likelihood of salmonella infections. Much of the world focuses on, and/or legislated to place emphasis on, producing cleaner eggs. American chicken factories, on the other hand, are legendarily filthy, and we don’t seem motivated to change that.
Abysmal factory farming conditions are what create the problematic salmonella superbug (the same is true for eColi). Eggs become contaminated with salmonella in one of two ways, by either contaminating the egg internally upon production (due to a chicken with infected ovaries), or when the egg becomes in contact with contaminated chicken manure, and salmonella sticks to the porous shell.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbqv1SuQJ0s
So the United States, in typical fashion, has decided that instead of regulating the farms to produce healthier food, we need to wash, sanitize, and cook our eggs. If you like raw eggs, be sure they aren’t factory farmed, and especially not American factory-farmed!
So what about real farm fresh eggs from a healthy farm where the eggs have room to run around, and they all get a healthy natural diet? Those eggs should be gently cleaned off, but not washed or made wet. There is a protective coating around the eggs that you want to preserve. If the eggs do get washed they should then be refrigerated or used shortly thereafter.
If you can’t produce your own eggs try finding a local farmer who does not wash or chill their eggs, and simply leaves them on the counter when you get home. Wash them just before you use them (if you want).
Other Common Egg Questions: Shell and Yolk Color
The color of the yolks are determined by diet and the freshness of the egg. Hens that get a variety of foods including lots of plants, alfalfa, bugs, for instance, are healthier than hens that have a restricted diet. Healthy chickens have a darker yellow-orange yolk. Factory farmed chickens in the United States typically have diets of wheat, barley, or white corn which produces pale yellow yolks.
Shells are different colors because different chickens lay different eggs.
…egg color is determined by the genetics of the hens. The breed of the hen will indicate what color eggs she will produce. For example, Leghorn chickens lay white eggs while Orpington’s lay brown eggs and Ameraucana produce blue eggs. An Olive Egger, a chicken that lays olive green eggs, is the product of a cross between a hen and rooster that are from a brown egg and a blue egg laying breed. An interesting tip is to look at the chicken’s ear lobes; typically those with white ear lobes produce white eggs.” – Michigan State
Keystone Pipeline Has Leaked More Than 200K Gallons of Oil in South Dakota
Company and state regulators reported Thursday that TransCanada Corp.’s infamous Keystone pipeline has sprung a leak and been shut down. An estimated 210,000 gallons of oil in northeastern South Dakota, has escaped the pipeline. At this time it’s reported that the cause was being investigated.
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota…
Officials stated that the leak did not contaminate any water systems, said Brian Walsh, an environmental scientist manager at the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources. He is also quoted as saying,
Ultimately, the cleanup responsibility lies with TransCanada, and they’ll have to clean it up in compliance with our state regulations.” – MSN News
The Keystone XL pipeline transports crude from Alberta, Canada, to Illinois and Oklahoma. The infostructure can handle nearly 23 million gallons a day.
The Keystone Pipeline is part of a 2,687-mile system that includes the proposed Keystone XL. This pipeline, which has faced persistent opposition from environmental groups, Native American tribes, and some farmers and other landowners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSAEeIkJ_ok
This is the largest Keystone oil spill to date in South Dakota, according to Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources. The leak comes just days before Nebraska officials announce a decision on whether the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, a sister project, can move forward. President Donald Trump issued the federal permit for the Keystone XL project in March, though it had been rejected by the previous administration due to environmental concerns, and many argue the pipeline addition is not even needed.
Trump Is Lifting Ban on Importing Elephant Trophies from Africa
The Trump administration is reported to be reversing the Obama administration’s ban on bringing heads of elephants killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia back to the U.S.
Imports will be allowed for elephants killed between Jan. 21, 2016 and the end of 2018. The decision has been cheered by many hunting and gun rights organizations. The United States and international authorities say the African elephant is an endangered species, and the Obama administration argued that allowing trophy imports of the elephants would harm the animals by encouraging the killing and poaching of them.
Even though elephants are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act, a provision in the act allows the government to give permits to import these trophies if there is evidence that the hunting actually benefits conservation for that species. The official said they have new information from officials in Zimbabwe and Zambia to support reversing the ban to allow trophy hunting permits.” – ABC News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghr1oldTVJc
Legal, well-regulated sport hunting as part of a sound management program can benefit the conservation of certain species by providing incentives to local communities to conserve the species and by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation.” – FWS spokesman
Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump’s sons, are known to be fans of large game hunting.
Newsweek states that the elephant population has declined since 2001 in Zimbabwe and in some regions in Zambia.
Hunters often choose the healthiest or strongest members of animal populations, to have a more impressive trophy, but this can have negative effects on the species overall.
This 2015 poll showed that 86 percent of Americans are opposed to big-game hunting, and 60% of respondents said that it should be illegal.
Monsanto Halts Launch of NemaStrike Chemical After Users Complain of Rashes
Monsanto halted the launch of NemaStrike, a chemical designed to be applied to crop seeds. On November 1st Monsanto pulled the launch, following reports that it caused skin rashes on people. NemaStrike, is designed to protect corn, soybeans, and cotton from worms that reduce yields. The company said it conducted three years of field tests across the United States in preparation for a full launch and that more than 400 people used it this year as part of a trial.
Monsanto called NemaStrike a “blockbuster product”. It’s another setback for the company that has been battling to keep other products on the market lately.
Monsanto said it conducted three years of tests across the U.S. in preparation for the product’s launch. They say more than 400 people used the chemical, and some of the people reported skin problems.
There have been limited cases of skin irritation, including rashes, that appear to be associated with the handling and application of this seed treatment product.” – Brian Naber, U.S. commercial operations lead for Monsanto.