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.”

Air pollution leads to people losing the equivalent of one year of education, says a new study conducted in China. Developing countries are more likely to have poor air quality, and 95% of the world’s population is breathing unsafe air. This has resulted in an estimated 6.5 million premature deaths worldwide from air pollution in 2016. We’re aware of the toxic effects of air pollution on our health and environment, but this study looks at some of the more subtle side effects of unsafe air. A year’s worth of education is what people are losing on average. Xi Chen at Yale School of Public Health in the US, a member of the research team, said,

Polluted air can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year, which is huge…But we know the effect is worse for the elderly, especially those over 64, and for men, and for those with low education. If we calculate [the loss] for those, it may be a few years of education.”

The Susceptible

In addition to the elderly, at-risk populations include children, men, low-educated people, and individuals with mental disorders. This study also identified how air pollution impacts cognitive ability. Subjects were more likely to lose language ability, rather than math ability. Longer exposure also meant a greater decrease in these abilities and a greater likelihood of developing dementia and mental illness.

Recommended: Myth of Moderate Alcohol Benefits Debunked, and How Science Gets Corrupted

China

China is notorious for their poor air quality. More than half of the people that die from air pollution every year, more than three million people, live in China and India. The government has been focused on improving their air quality, closing down 500 factories, forcing 300,000 older cars off the roads, and reducing coal consumption by a whopping 30 percent. But that is likely not enough. Less than three years ago, the smog and air pollution in Beijing was at eight times the level considered healthy by the World Health Organization.

Can We Fix It?

Air pollution is a serious health hazard. Like many of the emerging causes of disease, it is a problem of our own making. Factories in all of their forms (industrial and farmed) have permanently altered our atmosphere and left billions worldwide at an increased risk of physical conditions like heart disease, emphysema, cancer, and asthma, among others. Studies have previously confirmed that air pollution can affect cognitive performance, but now the link between the loss of overall intelligence and air pollution has been drawn.

Recommended: Glyphosate Found in the Majority of Oat-Based Products

China has already put programs in place to combat air pollution. That will provide crucial intel into whether or not air pollution can be effectively dealt with for ourselves and the next generation.

Sources:

• Air pollution causes ‘huge’ reduction in intelligence, study reveals – Guardian
• Beijing creates anti-smog police to tackle air polluters – Guardian
• Pollution Linked to Nine Million Deaths A Year Worldwide – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• Pollution linked to one in six deaths – BBC News

We’ve all heard many times that a glass of wine a day is good for you. Improbable, considering what alcohol does to the gut, but study after study seemed to verify alcohol’s heart-health benefits. The only problem was that the studies never actually said that moderate alcohol consumption is healthy. In fact, most studies simply pointed to potential benefits of red wine, and the studies were flawed in many ways, but the news ran with the idea that a regular drink is good for us because this is what most of us wanted to believe.

How Industry Corrupts Science

One recent study was attempting to lay the doubts to rest and confirm that a drink or two a day was, in fact, beneficial to our health. The problem is that this study was funded by the alcohol industry.

One of the many problems with previous alcohol studies is that if you compare a group of people who only drink a moderate amount to people who don’t drink you’re comparing people with restraint to people who may or may not have restraint with other lifestyle choices. A person who only has one glass of wine a day is likely going to have more willpower than the average person. For instance, maybe many members of the non-drinking control group don’t like alcohol but instead smokes and eats junk food all day.

A proper study on the effects of alcohol would randomly assign one group of people to drink a moderate amount while they assign another group of people to abstain. This is tough to do with a large enough control group, but in 2013 the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), set out to do just that. The Moderate Alcohol and Cardiovascular Health study was poised to be a breakthrough in public health. The 10-year, $100 million government trial is now underway.

The NIH is said to be one of the world’s foremost medical research centers. it’s a federal agency that invests more than $30 billion of taxpayer money into health research yearly. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism is an agency under NIH  that oversees the alcohol industry.

The idea is to pay thousands of people to drink in four continents. This amounted to 3,500 daily drinks for six years. The math proved to be incredibly expensive. NIH decided to rely on the alcohol industry to foot the bill. In October of 2017 Wired reported that,

Five corporations—Anheuser-Busch InBev, Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Heineken, and Carlsberg—have since provided a total of $67 million. The foundation is seeking another $23 million, according to its director of development, Julie Wolf-Rodda.”

In May of 2018, The New York Times published a scathing report that showed the NIH’s ties to the alcohol industry. The article opens with:

It was going to be a study that could change the American diet, a huge clinical trial that might well deliver all the medical evidence needed to recommend a daily alcoholic drink as part of a healthy lifestyle.

That was how two prominent scientists and a senior federal health official pitched the project during a presentation at the luxurious Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2014. And the audience members who were being asked to help pay for the $100 million study seemed receptive: They were all liquor company executives.

The Times article reported that documents and interviews proved that the NIH courted the alcohol industry with a plan to endorse moderate drinking as healthy. The alcohol industry previewed the trial design and was allowed to vet the researchers.

Besides the industry influence, two other major problems with the study include the fact that the study is too short to see increases in cancers and other health issues that could be linked to alcohol consumption and too many people are excluded from the study. People are not allowed to partake in the study if they have never had a drink or have a history of addiction, psychiatric care, liver problems, kidney problems, and certain cancers.

You’re picking off the people who are most likely to have the harms.” – Dr. Richard Saitz, chair of the Department of Community Health Sciences at Boston University

Incidentally, research has shown that alcohol consumption in any amount increases the risk of breast cancer.

A month after the Times article was published Stat News published an article titled, NIH rejected a study of alcohol advertising while pursuing industry funding for other research.

…at the 2015 meeting the director, George Koob, would leap out of his seat and scream at the scientists after their PowerPoint presentation on research the agency had eagerly funded on the association between alcohol marketing and underage drinking. ‘I don’t fucking care!’ Koob yelled, referring to alcohol advertising, according to the scientists.

Fortunately, thanks to all of the journalist reporting on this corrupt clinical trial, NIH terminated it last June.

A New Study Not Funded By Big Alcohol

It may not be wise to put any credence into a vaccination study funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, but they aren’t tied to the alcohol industry. The Lancet has just published a study stating that all alcohol consumption is a health risk, moderate or not.

The Global Burden of Disease study looked at alcohol consumption in 195 countries between 1990 and 2016 and analyzed data or people ranging in age from 15 to 95. Researchers compared people who completely abstained from alcohol to those who had one alcoholic drink per day and to people who drank more.

With the non-drinking group, 914 people out of 100,000 developed an alcohol-related health problem such as cancer or suffered an injury. An extra four people would suffer an alcohol-related health problem or injury if they drank one alcoholic drink a day.

For people who had two alcoholic drinks a day, 63 more developed a condition within a year and for those who consumed five drinks every day, there was an increase of 338 people, who developed a health problem. Two alcoholic drinks a day equated to 63 more people developing a health condition, and five drinks every day increased the number of people who developed a health problem to 338.

The study reports:

Alcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero.”

To an individual, the one drink a day idea doesn’t look like much statistically but keep in mind, the study is looking at one year. It’s taking into account people’s drinking habits and health within one year’s time. This does not represent the likelihood that one may be diagnosed with cancer after drinking a glass of wine every day for a decade. It’s near certain that the longer one drinks regularly the greater the risk of adverse health effects. In addition, Prof Sonia Saxena points out that while, “One drink a day does represent a small increased risk but adjust that to the UK population as a whole and it represents a far bigger number, and most people are not drinking just one drink a day.”

Conclusion

Alcohol has a few health benefits, but this doesn’t make it healthy. Every health benefit alcohol can provide is better achieved through diet and exercise. To put it bluntly, nobody who suffers from chronic disease can get well while consuming alcohol.

Our biggest concern with alcohol consumption is that it severely disrupts the gut flora. Beneficial bacteria gets killed and washed away, as well as pathogenic microbes, but guess what gets left behind. Yeast. It’s incredibly difficult to kill Candida spores. Alcohol irritates the gut lining and harms the healthy gut microbiome. Then it raises blood sugar, and Candida is left to flourish in its wake. For more on how this works, check out Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections.

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.

Related: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

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

Bayer is dealing with the fallout from the 289 million dollar verdict against its new acquisition, Monsanto. Now that a jury has found the world’s most popular herbicide, glyphosate, guilty of causing a California man’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the German pharmaceutical company faces increased scrutiny from regulators, shareholders, and the public. The number of lawsuits in the U.S. increased dramatically by the end of July.

Bayer finalized their Monsanto deal on July 7th, and the company has spent much of that time putting out legal and financial fires. Since the verdict, Bayer share prices have dropped over 10 percent. Monsanto’s reported yearly income in 2017 was over 2.2 billion dollars, but the impact of their recent court defeat on the company’s overall income could be huge. It remains to be seen if Bayer will regret the 66 billion dollars they paid for Monsanto.

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

The Floodgates Open

Bayer has experienced a significant uptick in complaints brought against them in response to the recent jury decision. In the U.S., the number of lawsuits jumped from 5,200 to over 8,000. Some legal analyst were expecting the number of lawsuits to be higher, but it’s clear that Bayer’s transition will not be a smooth one from a legal standpoint. The news doesn’t seem to bother Bayer CEO Werner Baumann, who outlined the companies’ response to these complaints.

We will vigorously defend this case and all upcoming cases.”

Nothing to See Here, Folks

Baumann’s statement regarding lawsuits is nothing new. Consider the statement obtained from by a Bayer spokesperson after the court decision.

Bayer is confident, based on the strength of the science, the conclusions of regulators around the world and decades of experience, that glyphosate is safe for use and does not cause cancer when used according to the label.”

Now check out this statement from Monsanto in an article about a 2009 study that found Round-up contained an ingredient responsible for cell death.

Roundup has one of the most extensive human health safety and environmental data packages of any pesticide that’s out there…It’s used in public parks, it’s used to protect schools. There’s been a great deal of study on Roundup, and we’re very proud of its performance.”

According to the people that manufacture and make money off of it, Roundup and glyphosate are safe because they’ve always been safe.

Recommended: Best Supplements To Kill Candida and Everything Else You Ever Wanted To Know About Fungal Infections

New Coach, Same Game Plan

The verdict for Dewayne Johnson has been a welcome victory for the people who have been yelling about the harmful effects of glyphosate for years. It also comes at a time when the company is more vulnerable than usual. But Bayer has made it clear they have no intention of disrupting the practices that continue to make money.

Are 8,000 lawsuits in the U.S. costly enough for them to reconsider the damage their products do?

Sources:

• Bayer’s Monsanto faces 8,000 lawsuits on glyphosate – Reuters
• Monsanto Weed Killer Roundup Faces New Doubts on Safety in Unsealed Documents – New York Times
• Weedkiller glyphosate ‘doesn’t cause cancer’ – Bayer – BBC News
• Bayer sees no reason to re-evaluate Monsanto legal risks – Reuters
• Monsanto Lost! Ordered to Pay $289 million in California Roundup Cancer Trial – Organic Lifestyle Magazine
• Weed-Whacking Herbicide Proves Deadly to Human Cells – Scientific American

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

The Environmental Protection Agency under the direction of Scott Pruitt removed a 2012 ban of a harmful pesticide, chlorpyrifos, in 2017, a move that a federal appeals court ruled violated federal law. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has given the government agency 60 days to remove chlorpyrifos from the market. The pesticide is widely used on citrus fruit, apples, corn, wheat, and other crops. It’s been proven harmful to children even in small quantities. The government refused to ban the chemical earlier in March this year, but this split decision ruling demands that the EPA finalize that ban. Appeals Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff wrote in the majority’s opinion,

The panel held that there was no justification for the EPA’s decision in its 2017 order to maintain a tolerance for chlorpyrifos in the face of scientific evidence that its residue on food causes neurodevelopmental damage to children…”

Children at Risk

Chlorpyrifos is one of the leading pesticides listed in cases of pesticide poisonings. In adults, it impairs the nervous system functions and can lead to convulsions, respiratory paralysis, and, in extreme cases, death. Children are especially at risk, as prenatal exposure can lead to health consequences like low birth weight and delayed motor development. Even tiny amounts of the pesticide can lead to neurological conditions in small children from reduced IQ to loss of working memory and attention deficit disorders. It’s been banned from residential use since 2000, and the science supports banning this chemical.

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

The pesticide does have an important backer in its corner, though…the manufacturer of the product, Dow Chemical. In spite of the residential ban and the proven toxicity of the chemical, Dow sells roughly 5 million dollars of chlorpyrifos in the U.S. every year. The company maintains that the science identifying their product as a serious health hazard is flawed and inconclusive. This attitude was echoed by Scott Pruitt when he reversed the Obama administration’s ban of chlorpyrifos use for food crops in March 2017.

Harmful Patterns

Through all of the turmoil that is the Trump Administration, the EPA has developed some distressing patterns of behavior. The first of these is their desire to eliminate many environmentally friendly programs or regulations, particularly those from the Obama era. These withdrawals are often to the detriment of public health, like reversing this ban, withdrawing from the Clean Air Act, and allowing dangerous pesticide use to continue with little oversight.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

The agency also has a tendency to consider the needs of businesses before they consider the environment. The EPA has gone on the record in the last year saying that glyphosate is not carcinogenic. A statement hasn’t been released after the landmark judgment against Monsanto this August, but if business continues as usual, glyphosate will remain “not likely” to cause cancer.

And now the EPA is being called out by an Appeals Court for a chemical that at the very least deserves a closer, objective look. It’s sad to say, but even if this pesticide is removed from use, business will find another to replace it. The EPA will approve it, because business comes first.

 Sources:

• EPA violated law by keeping harmful pesticide on the market, court says – PBS
• Chlorpyrifos The toxic pesticide now harming our children and environment – Earth Justice
• Trump’s EPA Says Glyphosate Not Carcinogenic To People – Organic Lifestyle Magazine