Mad or Sick Cows: Largest Recall of Ground Beef In US History

A California meat company on Sunday issued the largest beef recall in history, 143 million pounds, some of which was used in school lunch programs, Department of Agriculture officials announced.

The recall by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, based in Chino, Calif., comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

The video raised questions about the safety of the meat, because cows that cannot walk, called downer cows, pose an added risk of diseases including mad cow disease. The federal government has banned downer cows from the food supply.

There were 21 recalls of beef related to the potentially deadly strain of E. coli last year, compared with eight in 2006 and five in 2005.
By ANDREW MARTIN

For the rest of this New York Times story, go here.

NVDL: Eating a lot of beef is bad for everyone, maybe even everything. It's not healthy (it leads to heart disease and some cancers), it leads to quick weight gain, and people simply aren't deisnged to be carnivores. Let's start eating less meat. That's something you and I can do. The number of resources one animal consumes is enormous: water, antibiotics, feed, transport, refrigeration... With meat, less is more.

Lekker Kos? Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler

A SEA change in the consumption of a resource that Americans take for granted may be in store — something cheap, plentiful, widely enjoyed and a part of daily life. And it isn’t oil. It’s meat.

The two commodities share a great deal: Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible.

Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests.

Just this week, the president of Brazil announced emergency measures to halt the burning and cutting of the country’s rain forests for crop and grazing land. In the last five months alone, the government says, 1,250 square miles were lost.

The world’s total meat supply was 71 million tons in 1961. In 2007, it was estimated to be 284 million tons. Per capita consumption has more than doubled over that period. (In the developing world, it rose twice as fast, doubling in the last 20 years.) World meat consumption is expected to double again by 2050, which one expert, Henning Steinfeld of the United Nations, says is resulting in a “relentless growth in livestock production.”

Americans eat about the same amount of meat as we have for some time, about eight ounces a day, roughly twice the global average. At about 5 percent of the world’s population, we “process” (that is, grow and kill) nearly 10 billion animals a year, more than 15 percent of the world’s total.

Growing meat (it’s hard to use the word “raising” when applied to animals in factory farms) uses so many resources that it’s a challenge to enumerate them all. But consider: an estimated 30 percent of the earth’s ice-free land is directly or indirectly involved in livestock production, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which also estimates that livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases — more than transportation.

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.

Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

By MARK BITTMAN
For the rest of this excellent and incisive New York Times article, go here.

Weather Awareness Zapping the Zeitgeist

Some of the most potent tools (to fight cow-induced-climate-change) at our disposal right now include UGC and blogs. What is the weather doing in the world down your street? Grassroots journalists can provide the answers. This can be as simple as looking at monthly mean temperatures for local areas (the newspaper usually provides these figures) and checking to what extent aberrations are occurring. I was doing that for a few months in Bloem, and noticed just how out of whack the rainfall was getting.



Here's a real time experiment. Usually at this time of year, people express surprise that warm weather has suddenly arrived. A friend of ours has his birthday in the last week of September. He says that every year a cold front hits in that last week (in South Africa) and it always catches everyone by surprise. The only reason he is never surprised, is he's always looking forward to his birthday by the end of September, and has come to associate that time with the season's Last Big Cold Front. So let's see if it happens. If it doesn't, well that will be unusual.

I think it truly becomes alarming when we get a global perspective. Try this: google 'unusual weather' (in the NEWS category) right now.
" Flooding along the fringes of the Sahara counts under the surprise category."
You'll also read about fires. What people don't realise is that floods and fires are the bread and butter of global warming. Fires of course, lead to more global warming, and more fires. We're seeing 'climate change' starting to balloon in our local Zeitgeist. And Africa and South Africa are likely to bear the brunt of this global conundrum.

Read the final Stern Report here.

Meanwhile: Climate campaign to stop ill wind
by Mark Sweney

The Guardian

The Vegetarian Society is to raise awareness of "emissions" from cattle as a leading cause of global warming with an ad campaign using the strapline "Silent but deadly".

Sir Paul McCartney and daughter Stella are patrons of the Vegetarian Society, which argues that "damaging gaseous emissions" from farmed animals exceed those from the world's entire transport system. The campaign, which features a close-up of the rear of a cow, will include a range of "Silent but deadly" postcards and press ads that will run in environmental and ethical magazines over the coming months.

Ads will run in publications including Ethical Consumer, Ecologist, the Green Planet and Organic Life, as well as the Friends of the Earth's members' magazine Earth Matters.

"'Silent but deadly' is about getting the reader's attention, making them think and hopefully wanting to find out more about the connection between diet and climate change," said the Vegetarian Society head of communications, Liz O'Neill.

The ad claims that farmed animals produce 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, while the global transport industry accounts for 13.5%.
The advertisement finishes with the line "It's not just a lot of hot air." To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk

Grim Reaper Eyes Poor Countries

Thanks JL
Peter Walker and agencies Tuesday September 18 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Developing countries in Africa and Asia will be among those most affected by climate change, global warming experts will warn today.

Millions of people are likely to face drought, hunger and floods given predicted increases in global temperatures, scientists will say in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The UN-convened body, which is the world's most authoritative organisation on climate change, will today issue the fourth assessment report by its Working Group II. The document names Africa, the Asian mega-deltas, small islands and the Arctic as being most at risk.

According to the report, an interim summary of which was published in April, it is probably too late to avoid some major consequences. The full document was launched this morning at the Royal Geographical Society in central London. It warns that agriculture and human health in developing nations will be hit, along with coral reefs, sea ice, coastal regions, mountains and tundra.

During a two-day meeting in London this week, IPCC experts will discuss its impact on Africa and other vulnerable areas, as well as Britain and Europe.
The interim summary made for grim reading, even after it was toned down following pressure from America, China, India and Saudi Arabia. It said that by 2080, 1.1 billion to 3.2 billion people will face water shortages, and some 200 million to 600 million will face food shortages.

NVDL: Anyone out there pregnant or planning to start a family? Maybe a good time to start reading the news and thinking about what the future will mean, not only for you, but also your puppy's. Our just-in-time one-click get-what-you-want lifestyles are about to slip down a few gears as we move down a few rungs on the Convenience LifeStyle Ladder.

Eat Less Meat!

From Yahoo.com:
Eating less meat may slow climate change

By MARIA CHENG, AP Medical Writer Wed Sep 12, 7:08 PM ET

LONDON - Eating less meat could help slow global warming by reducing the number of livestock and thereby decreasing the amount of methane flatulence from the animals, scientists said on Thursday.

In a special energy and health series of the medical journal The Lancet, experts said people should eat fewer steaks and hamburgers. Reducing global red meat consumption by 10 percent, they said, would cut the gases emitted by cows, sheep and goats that contribute to global warming.

"We are at a significant tipping point," said Geri Brewster, a nutritionist at Northern Westchester Hospital in New York, who was not connected to the study.
"If people knew that they were threatening the environment by eating more meat, they might think twice before ordering a burger," Brewster said.

Other ways of reducing greenhouse gases from farming practices, like feeding animals higher-quality grains, would only have a limited impact on cutting emissions. Gases from animals destined for dinner plates account for nearly a quarter of all emissions worldwide.
"That leaves reducing demand for meat as the only real option," said Dr. John Powles, a public health expert at Cambridge University, one of the study's authors.

The amount of meat eaten varies considerably worldwide. In developed countries, people typically eat about 224 grams per day. But in Africa, most people only get about 31 grams a day.
With demand for meat increasing worldwide, experts worry that this increased livestock production will mean more gases like methane and nitrous oxide heating up the atmosphere. In China, for instance, people are eating double the amount of meat they used to a decade ago.

Powles said that if the global average were 90 grams per day, that would prevent the levels of gases from speeding up climate change.

Eating less red meat would also improve health in general. Powles and his co-authors estimate that reducing meat consumption would reduce the numbers of people with heart disease and cancer. One study has estimated that the risk of colorectal cancer drops by about a third for every 100 grams of red meat that is cut out of your diet.

"As a society, we are overconsuming protein," Brewster said. "If we ate less red meat, it would also help stop the obesity epidemic."

Experts said that it would probably take decades to wane the public off of its meat-eating tendency. "We need to better understand the implications of our diet," said Dr. Maria Neira, director of director of the World Health Organization's department of public health and the environment.

"It is an interesting theory that needs to be further examined," she said. "But eating less meat could definitely be one way to reduce gas emissions and climate change."