The Cornucopia Institute reports that GMO salmon is being sold as sushi and sashimi in Canada. AquaBounty Technologies is a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company that produces genetically modified fish called “AquAdvantage,” that they say is “The World’s Most Sustainable Salmon.”

AquaBounty is the first and only company selling genetically engineered salmon. Scientists inserted a growth-hormone gene from Chinook salmon and genetic regulatory elements from the ocean pout into Atlantic salmon.

Although AquaBounty, the makers of engineered fast-growing salmon, have refused to tell the public where their product is being sold, their CEO recently bragged to investors that it is being used in the Canadian buyer’s “high-end sashimi lines, not their frozen prepared foods.” Consumers must continue to be wary of the origin of their food: know your farmer!” – The Cornucopia Institute

Ron Stotish, AquaBounty’s CEO, told investors last Thursday that they have sold 4.5 tonnes of it in Canada so far this year, and that,

The people who bought our fish were very happy with it. They put it in their high-end sashimi lines, not their frozen prepared foods.”

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

In Canada, GM fish does not have to be labeled as such. Consequently, customers may not know if the salmon they ordered is genetically modified.

AquaAdvantage Salmon is engineered to grow at twice the rate of regular salmon while consuming up to 2 percent less feed than regular farmed salmon.

This is an untenable situation. The fact that, once again, the company has let slip a piece of information to investors — but is information Canadian consumers need and don’t have — exposes how much it is that Canadians need labelling.” – Lucy Sharratt of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network

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The FDA has approved AquAdvantage salmon for human consumption, but wild salmon is big business for Alaska, so Senator Lisa Murkowski and other Alaskan officials in Congress got the FDA to block AquAdvantage imports until new GMO labeling regulations are in effect for food labels.  Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced the amendment prohibiting the import of the GM eggs needed to produce AquaBounty’s salmon, and she co-sponsored legislation mandating the labeling of genetically engineered salmon.

Missouri is the first state in the U.S. to ban the word “meat” on faux meat products like garden burgers and Tofurky. Using the term “plant-based meats,” and “vegan faux-meat” can find the business owner in jail for up to a year. This law was brought to you by The Missouri Cattlemen’s Association.

The legislation defines meat as ‘any edible portion of livestock or poultry carcass or part thereof’ and requires that any labeled meat product is derived ‘in whole or in part, from livestock or poultry.’ Violators of this definition will henceforth be subject to up to one year in prison and fines of up to $1,000.” – Forbe’s

Must Read: Meat and Dairy Industry On Course To Contribute More Global pollution Than OIL Companies

The law will also apply to “clean meat” which is produced by growing and multiplying cells in a lab. Animal rights organizations and environmental groups aren’t keen on the new law. It’s estimated that if we switched to eating lab-grown meat, we would cut agriculture emissions by 96%.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4nL_NtunKU

Must Read: FDA Commissioner to Issue New Non-Dairy Milk Guidelines

Missouri is the first state but not likely the last. The American beef industry has been lobbying to get “meat” banned from vegetable-based products for years, and meat industries want the ban to be nationwide.

The industry has cause for concern. TreeHugger says,

Americans ate 20 percent less beef in 2014 than they did in 2005. Veggie meat substitutes, by contrast, are a growing industry. And who knows what’ll happen when lab-based meats start making it into grocery stores.”

Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested 45 products with conventionally grown oats and found glyphosate in 43 of them. They also tested 16 different products using organic oats. The products tested included breakfast cereals like lucky charms and cheerios, granola, and snack bars in addition to whole oats and instant oats. While the organic samples better,tter , five of the samples registered positive for glyphosate. Quaker Old Fashioned Oats, Quaker Simply Granola, Giant Instant Oatmeal, and Quaker Dinosaur Eggs Instant Oatmeal had particularly high levels of glyphosate. A glyphosate risk assessment found that children are likely to have the highest levels of dietary exposure to the chemical, and this study from EWG is a wake-up call. Alexis Temkin, Ph.D., a toxicologist and the author of the study, says,

Parents shouldn’t worry about whether feeding their children healthy oat foods will also expose them to a chemical linked to cancer. The government must take steps to protect our most vulnerable populations…”

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Glyphosate and Health

Roundup has been in all of the news lately, as a California jury recently ruled that the herbicide was the cause of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It makes sense that the legal victory came in the state of California, where glyphosate has been listed as a cause of cancer on their Proposition 65 list since July of 2017. The court case will likely prove instrumental in the continued investigation of how Roundup impacts human health, but this far from the first time the herbicide has been linked to cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic, or cancer-causing, in 2015, a categorization Monsanto (and now Bayer) has been vigorously arguing ever since. The herbicide has also been linked to a plethora of other health concerns like Alzheimer’s, birth defects, respiratory illness, Parkinson’s disease, reproductive issues, and several conditions linked gut disruption (obesity, Irritable Bowel Disease, Colitis, and Leaky Gut).

Over the Threshold

In 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency labeled glyphosate as a cancer risk. That categorization was reversed in 1991, and since then the government organization has become one of Monsanto’s most important assets. The EPA has expressed nothing but support for the weed-killer since 1991. The agency disagreed with the IARC’s findings, issuing a rebuttal a year later. Email correspondence between a high-ranking official at the EPA and Monsanto employees detailing the official’s efforts to squash glyphosate investigations emerged in 2017. The EPA’s has also imposed exceptionally lenient safety standards on glyphosate, as the federal agency’s safe levels of exposure to the herbicide are 60 times higher than the state of California’s.

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Collateral Damage

The EPA, especially considering the business-friendly, environmentally ambivalent Trump administration, is not likely to care about the damage glyphosate has and is doing. EWG president Ken Cook says,

We will petition the Environmental Protection Agency to do its job and end uses of glyphosate that resulted in the contamination we report today…But we very much doubt our petition will be acted upon by President Trump’s lawless EPA. So we’re calling on the companies to make these iconic products with clean ingredients.”

It will be difficult. This study shows that even organic products can have glyphosate on them…because it’s everywhere. Taking on the world’s most-used herbicide is a daunting task, and consumer dollars will be a big part of how businesses choose to handle it.

Sources:

• Glyphosate — It’s What’s for Breakfast: Study Finds Cancer-Causing Weedkiller in Popular Oatmeal, Cereals, and Snack Bars – Alternet
• Breakfast With a Dose of Roundup? – Environmental Working Group
• Widely used herbicide linked to cancer – Nature.com
• 15 Health Problems Linked to Monsanto’s Roundup – EcoWatch
• New Study Shows EPA ‘Safe’ Levels of Glyphosate Not Safe at All – Care2
• How Monsanto Captured the EPA (And Twisted Science) To Keep Glyphosate on the Market – In These Times

Salmon season isn’t coming to a close on a high note, as August saw a massive farmed salmon escape, and the Chinese government decided it is acceptable to sell rainbow trout as salmon. Both incidents point to a breakdown in the quality and health of the salmon available to the consumer. Escaped farmed salmon mean more diseases affecting wild salmon, and China has basically sanctioned mislabeled fish. Eating fish is more fraught with issues than ever before.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

Farmed Salmon Escape

Between 2,000 and 3,000 farmed salmon escaped from their enclosures off the coast of Newfoundland in Eastern Canada when a rope came undone. Cooke Aquacultures didn’t notify local authorities of the breach, which was only noticed when fishermen noticed farmed salmon in their catches. The company has pledged to work the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to recapture the escapees. The lack of transparency has others expressing concerns as to how many breaches have actually occurred. According to Atlantic Salmon Federation coordinator, Steve Sutton on CBC Radio’s The Broadcast,

It raises the question of how many times have other escapes happened where nobody has seen the fish and nobody knows the difference…This is a public resource, public waters. They should be required to report these things to the public as soon as they have the information.”

This isn’t the first time Cooke Aquacultures has experienced a significant breach. The company is responsible for a 2017 spill that resulted in more than 100,000 Atlantic salmon escaping into the Salish Sea near Washington state. It’s hard to know exactly how many salmon have escaped since the inception of open aquaculture pens, though aquaculture firms are required to report any losses. Still, this doesn’t always happen, and Cooke Aquacultures doesn’t seem to have a procedure in place for notifying the authorities quickly and effectively. Will we start seeing stricter enforcement of policies now that GM salmon is on the market?

Trout or Salmon…Who Cares!

In other salmon news, the Chinese government has given the ok for rainbow trout to be labeled and sold as salmon. This makes sense from a biological standpoint, as both fish are part of the salmonid family (this family includes over 200 different species of fish). The similarities don’t extend to other key issues identified by scientists and consumers – salmon is a saltwater fish, and rainbow trout is a freshwater fish. Freshwater fish have a higher likelihood of parasites, especially when served in raw applications like sushi.

This dicate also leaves the door open for more instances of incorrectly labeled fish, a serious issue faced by seafood regulators worldwide. According to the advocacy group Oceana, one in five fish is labeled incorrectly. Often times a cheaper fish is substituted for a more expensive one, although there have been cases of people distributing endangered or protected species for consumption.

Related: Nitrates from Cured Meat Have Been Linked to Mania in New Study

Is It Too Late?

None of this bodes well for the continuing quality of the seafood we consume, especially salmon. Salmon used to be one of the simple fish. Good quality, wild-caught Pacific salmon was a safe, healthy option that came with fewer ethical or environmental concerns than other popular seafood choices.  But it’s no longer simple.

Salmon doesn’t need to actually be salmon. Salmonids can be substituted for one another. We also can’t be sure it’s the species we think we’re getting as thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon escape yearly, crowding out and endangering wild salmon. Salmon escapes are likely to become even more serious issues now that genetically modified salmon is on the shelves.

So here’s a question. Why are we still eating seafood?

Sources:

• In China, Salmon is Salmon, Even if It’s Trout – NY Times
• Thousands of Farmed Salmon Escape Into the Wild – Modern Farmer
• Deceptive Dishes: Seafood Swaps Found Worldwide – Oceana
• Something Fishy: The Trouble with Atlantic Salmon in the Pacific Northwest – NRDC
• Over 300,000 salmon escaped fish farms in 2016 – BBC News

Within the next few decades, Big Meat and Big Dairy will surpass Big Oil for climate pollution, according to a new study by the non-profits GRAIN and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The jointly published study quantified emissions from 35 of the world’s largest meat and dairy companies.

The non-profit researches analyzed 35 of the meat and dairy industry’s biggest companies. The researchers warned that meat and dairy companies will overtake oil firms as the world’s biggest polluters. The authors of the study say that factory meat and dairy farms are ‘majorly overlooked climate culprits.

Related: How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

According to the report, the five largest meat and dairy corporations—JBS, Tyson, Cargill, Dairy Farmers of America, and Fonterra—are already responsible for more annual greenhouse gas emissions than ExxonMobil, Shell, or BP.

They also found that businesses did a poor job reporting their emissions and targets, and many failed to report emissions entirely or excluded supply chain figures, which amount to 80 to 90 percent of total emissions.

Watch the video below to see how the meat industry could actually help reduce climate change.

Related: Stop Eating Like That and Start Eating Like This – Your Guide to Homeostasis Through Diet

Related:

• FDA Loophole That Allows Farmers To Administer Antibiotics Indefinitely
• The US Has a 2.5 Billion-pound Surplus of Meat and A 1.39 Billion-pound Surplus of Cheese

Antibiotics benefit farmers by speeding up the time it takes livestock to be ready for slaughter. Cows and chickens and other livestock grow faster with antibiotic use than they would otherwise. For cattle, the time from birth to slaughter can be cut in half. But antibiotic resistance is a growing public health concern.  Antibiotic-resistant bacteria like e.coli can be pathogenic to humans and even deadly. Farm water runoff and animal waste are damaging our ecosystems in a myriad of ways. Consequently, in 2017 the FDA was compelled to act.

The C.D.C. states that 23,000 Americans die each year due to antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections and they estimate that more than 400,000 United States residents become ill with infections caused by antibiotic-resistant food-borne bacteria every year. They believe that one in five of these antibiotic-resistant infections may be caused by pathogens from food and animals.

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In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration enacted rules that prohibited antibiotics from being used for growth promotion in livestock. Previously these antibiotics could be purchased over the counter but the new rules require a prescription from a veterinarian.

Despite the ban, it’s widely believed that ranchers still use antibiotics to speed growth. The F.D.A. rules have a glaring loophole: farmers can use antibiotics for disease prevention.

You don’t even need a sick animal in the herd to use antibiotics in the feed and water as long as the justification is ‘disease prevention’ not ‘growth promotion,’ ” Avinash Kar, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council

More in-depth reading: Antibiotics in Meat Could Be Damaging Our Guts & New Report Tracks Rise of Antibiotic Resistance in Humans and Livestock

Our health depends on our gut’s ecosystem. Antibiotics, vaccinations, glyphosate, and GMOs are known to disrupt the bacteria in our gut. If you eat meat, we recommend careful consideration regarding who your buy meat from.

Related Reading:

• We Consume Livestock Vaccines When We Ingest Meat
• Majority Of Meat Contain Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
• How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The factory-farming meat and dairy industries produce more greenhouse gas emissions worldwide than the transportation industry, yet we are producing far more meat and dairy than we can consume.

The US Department of Agriculture also says that our meat producers now have 2.5 billion pounds of meat in cold storage, including chicken, turkey, pork, and beef. We are apparently running out of space to store the excess meat.

The Walls Street Journal reports that newly implemented Chinese and Mexican tariffs are in part to blame, at least for the excess swine. Pork tariffs were set in retaliation for the Trump administration’s tariffs on Mexican and Chinese steel and other goods. We are also producing more beef and poultry due to a reduction in the cost of grain. Meat prices at the grocery store are likely to drop soon.

Thanks to selective breeding, and to a smaller extent, due to Mexican tariffs, the US dairy producers produce more milk than we need. Dairy producers turn excess milk into cheese, which lasts longer in cold storage. Milk and dairy demand drops in the summer. Right now, US dairy producers now have a record of 1.39 billion pounds of cheese in storage, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Vox reports that this equates to enough cheese to give each American citizen 4.6 pounds.

Related: Does Meat Cause Cancer? Yes and no…

Grazing animals could be the answer to climate change. Cows could actually help eliminate desertification. Before we humans took over earth, this planet was covered in grasslands with herds of grazing animals. These animals thinned vegetation and then moved on leaving dung behind. This promotes healthy soil, and in turn, more vegetation.

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