Documental de Isabel Coixet sobre la desaparición del mar de Aral…
Translation of Spanish Narration and partial transcripts by Desert Rose ( Family Survival Protocol)
Documentary By Isabel Coixet about the disappearance of the Aral Sea
Opening Introduction by Isabel Coixet
Aral The Lost Sea is a documentary that I filmed a few years ago that deals with what is to me one of the greatest ecological mysteries and environmental disasters that exist in the world. The disappearance of an immense interior body of water of what was once the coastal city of Moynaq which lies between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan ,an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south. In this documentary we go over the events that have transpired. Showing what has happened there since the fated moment , when the Old Soviet Union signed a decree to deviate two rivers that fed this body of water. Allowing them to use the water for the irrigation of cotton crops. Resulting in one of the greatest ecological disasters who’s devastating results still linger to this day. It is my hope that this documentary will awaken in us the ability to question what has happened and whether it could have been avoided.
A Production of Miss Wasabi
For
We Are Water Foundation
The objective of the foundation is to minimize the negative effects connected to the availability of water throughout the world. An indispensable resource for the life and dignity of the Peoples. In general to increase awareness and collaborate on development projects to this end.
Aral. The Lost Sea
Directed by Isabel Coixet
English Narration By Sir Ben Kingsley
An Explanation:
They needed cotton. Or so decided the Authorities of the time. Cotton must be planted they decided to provide to all of Russia. Even if to achieve this , the Aral Sea, “would have to die like a soldier in battle”.
The Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking, especially since the 1960′s due to the diversion of the rivers that flow into it by the former Soviet Union. The situation is so bad that in some places, the shoreline has recede more than 100km from where it used to be. Fishing villages now lie in barren desert wasteland and the fish stocks are gone. Frequent dust storms carry polluted, toxic dust across the region and the local climate has even shifted without the water’s moderating properties resulting in scorchingly hot summers and brutally cold winters.
It sounded like an interesting place to see where man has interfered with the course of nature so I just had to go there.
KUWAIT CITY, Aug 2: An earthquake of 4.2 magnitude on the Richter scale that struck Kuwait 40 km NW of Salmiya at around 7.30 am Thursday was felt by residents in Salmiya.
Though no casualties were reported, some residents complained the quake mildly upset some of their household arrangements. There were a few broken cutlery. Some residents living near the Salmiya garden said they felt the tremor in two short spells in a span of a few seconds.
Most of the residents were asleep and came to know about it from neighbors who experienced the tremor. Melissa, a resident, said she first noticed tea rippling in the cup in her hand before she realized that the whole house was shaking a bit. “It was a little scary.”
Mujib said it was his first experience of a tremor and initially thought that he was feeling woozy. “It occurred as I was getting up after bending down to pick something up from the floor. I thought I was losing balance as it happens sometimes when you suddenly change positions.”
Thambi felt the quake on the street when he was returning after a short walk. “This is my second experience of earthquake, both were in Kuwait. This one was very mild. Last time, I felt the quake like a strong vibration lasting more than 30 seconds.”
Thambi faltered in his step when the quake occurred, but that was just for a second or two. “Soon after that, I saw a dog running wildly to and fro, barking intensely.”
Khalil Rasul was woken up by a book that fell on his head. But he went back to sleep only to learn about the quake from blogs later.
An online journal had earlier quoted earthquake expert and Assist. Manager of Kuwait University for Scientific Affairs Dr. Ferial Bu Rabee as saying that Kuwait may be vulnerable to a powerful earthquake that can reach up to 8 degrees on Richter scale.
The expert said that such an earthquake can strike southern part of Iran and thus impact bordering GCC countries. She further added that an 8.1 tremor on Richter scale hit the same area of southern Iran back in 1945 and caused huge tsunami waves that reached Karachi and Bombay which are approx. 1,100 kms away from Iran.
She warned that Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran may be vulnerable if an earthquake strikes, such seen recently in Japan. She advised GCC countries to give up their ambitions concerning the construction of nuclear power stations, arguing that “they are time bombs that will destroy the region when the anticipated earthquake strikes.”
Some researchers suggest that there may be a link between large earthquakes world-wide. Other point out that there is no connection and the earthquakes do not trigger each other. The cluster could just as well be the result of random chance, scientist say.
The past decade has been plagued with what seems to be a cluster of large earthquakes, with massive quakes striking Sumatra, Chile, Haiti and Japan since 2004.
Each of the devastating quakes in the 2000s drew huge media coverage and required extensive rebuilding and economic restoration.
The intense interest in the earthquakes has led some to wonder if we are living in the middle of an “age of great quakes,” similar to a global cluster of quakes in the 1960s.It’s important to know whether these clusters occur because big earthquakes trigger others across the world, Parsons and Geist of the US Geological Survey say, in order to predict whether more severely destructive quakes might be on the way. To determine if the quake clusters in the 1960s and 2000s could be attributed to random chance, the researchers looked at the timing between the world’s largest earthquakes–magnitude 8.3 and above–at one-year intervals during the past 100 years.
They compared simulated lists of large quakes and the list of real quakes during this time with the between-quake intervals expected from a random process.
The intervals between the real-life large quakes are similar to what would be expected from a random process, they found. In other words, the global hazard of large earthquakes is constant in time. Except in the case of local aftershocks, the probability of a new large quake occurring isn’t related to past global quakes.
Aerial photo of the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo Plain, northwest of Los Angeles Image credit: Leohotens
This could be disappointing news for researchers who thought global communication between quakes might offer a way to predict the most severe seismic activity. But there also may be some good news after a decade of destruction.
If global great earthquakes are occurring at random, the authors say, then a specific number of quakes that cluster together within a short time is unlikely to be repeated in a similar way over a 100-year span.
In addition, if quakes were communicating at global distances, after a big quake, the entire planet would essentially be an aftershock zone. MessageToEagle.com based on information provided by Seismological Society of America
(Reuters) – Across the bay of Naples from Pompeii, where thousands were incinerated by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, lies a hidden “super volcano” that could kill millions in a catastrophe many times worse, scientists say.
The boiling mud and sulphurous steam holes of the area west of Naples known as the Campi Flegrei or Phlegraean Fields, from the Greek word for burning, are a major tourist attraction.
But the zone of intense seismic activity, which the ancients thought was the entrance to hell, also could pose a danger of global proportions with millions of people literally living on top of a potential future volcanic eruption.
“These areas can give rise to the only eruptions that can have global catastrophic effects comparable to major meteorite impacts,” said Giuseppe De Natale, head of a project to drill deep under the earth to monitor the molten “caldera”.
One such meteorite impact is thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago when debris thrown into the atmosphere from the huge explosion plunged the earth into darkness.
Scientists plan to drill 3.5 km (2.2 miles) below the surface to monitor the huge chamber of molten rock near Pompeii and give early warning of any eruption from a 13-km-wide collapsed volcanic caldera.
The Campi Flegrei are similar to the Yellowstone caldera in the U.S. state of Wyoming but of more concern because they are in an area populated by around 3 million people in the Naples hinterland.
“Fortunately, it is extremely rare for these areas to erupt at their full capacity, as it is extremely rare for large meteorites to hit the earth,” De Natale told Reuters.
“But some of these areas, in particular the Campi Flegrei, are densely populated and therefore even small eruptions, which are the most probable, fortunately, can pose risks for the population,” said De Natale, from the Vesuvius observatory at Italy’s National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology.
“That is why the Campi Flegrei absolutely must be studied and monitored. I wouldn’t say like others, but much more than the others exactly because of the danger given that millions of people live in the volcano.”
However, the project, funded by the multi-national International Continental Scientific Drilling Programme, has run into major opposition from some local scientists who say the drilling itself could cause a dangerous eruption or earthquake.
EXPLOSION?
Benedetto De Vivo, a geochemist at Naples University, has said the drilling could cause an explosion.
The Naples city council blocked the project in 2010 but it resumed on the site of an abandoned steel mill at Bagnoli, west of Naples, late last month after the recently elected new mayor, Luigi De Magistris, gave the go-ahead.
De Natale scoffed at the objections, saying that the drilling was perfectly safe and that similar probes had been sent down by mining projects looking for sources of thermal energy in the 1980s and earlier.
“There were dozens of drillings in the past, with much less secure instruments for industrial motives and nobody said anything,” he said.
He added that those raising objections were not experts on drilling and that their suggestions of potential earthquakes or escapes of magma or liquid molten rock, had been exaggerated by the local press.
“Some of the things they suggested are laughable,” he said, adding that the project’s priority will be scientific knowledge and safety of the local population rather than industrial exploitation as in the past.
“We believe the security of millions of people deserves the most powerful methods of inquiry without thinking too much about the economic aspect,” he said.
He added that drilling is the only way to discover the geological history of the area because successive eruptions buried previous evidence. The probe has already found volcanic rock from a major eruption 15,000 years ago.
De Natale’s team has begun drilling a pilot hole at the Bagnoli site, where a long jetty built to load steel is used by joggers and courting couples enjoying the spectacular Neapolitan sunsets.
The pilot hole is aimed not only at studying the stratification of the area but to establish a deep geological observatory with new instruments which De Natale says are many times more sensitive than those in the past.
“This will increase by a thousand or 10,000 times our ability to detect small episodes that are precursors of future eruptions,” he said.
MOVEMENT OF EARTH’S SURFACE
The project also aims to study the cause of a phenomenon known as bradyseism which is a gradual raising and lowering of the earth’s surface because of deep volcanic activity. This is episodic but in the latest phase the ground has risen by 3.5 m (yards) in 15 years, the most since medieval times.
This movement forced the evacuation of 30,000 people temporarily from Pozzuoli in the 1980s and a fishing harbor in the old part of the town was completely abandoned.
Once work is complete on the pilot hole, scientists plan to drill much deeper, to around 3.5 km where temperatures are at around 500 degrees C (930 F). But De Natale said this could take another 18 months and the area for the second phase has not yet been decided.
His team has developed new fiber optic sensors able to withstand the extreme heat that would have destroyed earlier electronic equipment.
“We will be able to identify the smallest signs of a future eruption…this is an enormous mitigation of the volcanic risk,” he said.
De Natale says there will be no risk of an escape of magma because the molten chamber is at 7-km depth or lower and sensors will give ample warning of temperatures that reach 1,000 degrees C at the molten core.
“We will stop everything if we detect temperatures at 500 degrees…we can close the top of the drilling hole hermetically in a fraction of a second,” he said.
Local people are divided on whether the drilling could be dangerous.
“There is a risk that the drilling can lead to a shift of the earth’s surface and if that happened, rather than helping to predict future problems, they will be creating them,” Pozzuoli student Marco Laporta said.
Many are more sanguine. “Back in the 1980s they said we would all be blown up and we weren’t,” pensioner Luigi Bruni said.
(Writing by Barry Moody; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Firefighters in Russia’s Siberia had extinguished 45 forest fires covering 522 hectares of forest in the past 24 hours, but 131 wildfires were still burning on the area of almost 15,000 hectares, the regional forestry department said Friday. A total of 29 wildfires covering an area of more than 5,000 hectares were localized, and 14,948 hectares of forest continued to burn in the Krasnoyarsk Krai, Tomsk Region, Tuva, Khakassia and Irkutsk Region. Some 3,000 people, 412 units of fire-fighting equipment and 24 aircrafts have been mobilized to fight the blazes, which are believed to be caused by hot and dry weather in the region where the temperature reaches 35 degrees. Reports said the wildfires posed no threat to populated areas or industry.
A wildfire whipped by gusty, southerly winds swept through rural woodlands north and south of Oklahoma City on Friday, burning several homes as firefighters struggled to contain it in 113-degree heat. Oklahoma’s emergency management officials said 25 structures had burned east of Noble, including a handful of homes, and several homes near Luther, north of Oklahoma City, were threatened. Hundreds of residents were told to leave their homes as flames spread through treetops. The state Highway Patrol closed part of the main highway between Oklahoma City and Tulsa because of the Luther-area fire, which may have been deliberately set. Local deputies were looking into reports about passengers in a pickup truck who were seen throwing out newspapers that had been set on fire. “I loaded the kids up, grabbed my dogs, and it didn’t even look like I had time to load the livestock, so I just got out of there,” said Bo Ireland, who lives a few miles from where the Noble-area fire started. “It looked to me that, if the wind shifted even a little bit, I would be in the path of that fire. It was just too close.” There were no immediate reports of injuries or livestock losses. Dayle Bishop stood in a convenience store parking lot about 2 miles away from his house, saying he was pessimistic about his home’s chances. “I know it’s gone,” said Bishop, who works nights as a nurse. “Didn’t even have time to get anything out.” But he noted “it’s just stuff,” and said he may not have made it out of his home had a woman not knocked on his door and woken him up.Charles Wright was with his daughter, Christina, along with their cat, at a makeshift evacuation center doubling as a staging area for fire engines, ambulances and other emergency equipment. He said law enforcement ordered them to leave their home in Norman. “Praying for miracles. Praying for the best, that’s all we can do,” said Wright, who managed to pack some clothes, jewelry and legal papers before fleeing. Ruth Hood splashed water onto two Chihuahua puppies that she grabbed along with several other animals and her children, and left as flames burned in her neighbor’s yard. She said she couldn’t be sure her home would survive. “No guarantee,” Hood said. With the ongoing drought, high temperatures and gusty winds, it took little for fires to begin and spread — and there was little crews could do to fight them. “It’s difficult for the firefighters to get into the area because it’s heavily wooded on either side of the smaller roads. When the winds are blowing 25 mph it just blows the embers and fireballs across the roads as if they weren’t even there,” said Jerry Lojka with the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management. At mid-afternoon Friday, the temperature at nearby Norman was 113. Winds were from the south and southwest at 14 mph, gusting to 24 mph. “I can tell you the temperatures and the wind are not helping the situation at all. Some homes have been lost in the fire unfortunately, but we don’t know how many,” said Meghan McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland County Sheriff’s office.Russell Moore, 53, who lives in the Noble area, said he was outside in his yard when a sheriff’s deputy drove down the road and told people to leave. He and his son went to a shelter set up at Noble City Hall, but planned to go to his daughter’s home in Norman. “About all we saw was smoke and a little bit of ash raining down from the sky,” Moore said. “Everybody was piling into their vehicles and leaving as we were.” Lojka said an Oklahoma National Guard helicopter has been dispatched to a fast-moving blaze in Luther, northeast of Oklahoma City. He also said helicopters were helping ground crews with a fire near Mannford and Drumright in Creek County. Helicopters from the National Guard and the Bureau of Indian Affairs were fighting a fire in Creek County. The Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office said it was investigating reports that someone in a black pickup truck near Luther was tossing out newspapers that had been set on fire. The blaze and smoke led the Oklahoma Highway Patrol to shut down part of the Turner Turnpike, which carries Interstate 44 between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Traffic was rerouted onto old U.S. Route 66, the famed two-lane highway that crisscrosses Oklahoma. The state was monitoring 11 fires in all Friday afternoon. Gov. Mary Fallin announced a statewide burn ban as the fire danger heightened. She previously had announced a state of emergency for all 77 counties due to the extreme drought.
As a wildfire’s flames raced to the edge of Lame Deer’s town limits, police drove the streets with loudspeakers blaring orders for residents of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation community to grab their most important belongings and get out. Buses were waiting to carry people from danger area, which on Thursday night suddenly meant the entire town of 2,000. Desi Small-Rodriguez, a volunteer with the tribe’s disaster and emergency services department, recalled the chaotic scene as the Chalky Fire threatened to burn down the seat of the southeastern Montana reservation. “A lot of people were walking with their belongings, getting on buses, trying to find rides, getting out as told,” Small-Rodriguez said Friday. About 250 people stayed at a Red Cross shelter 25 miles away at the St. Labre Mission. Others took shelter with friends and relatives on other parts of the reservation. Those with no place to go camped out on lawns in nearby communities, or they just refused to leave. The fire had already burned two homes earlier in the day, then wind from a cold front whipped up the flames and drove the fire straight toward town. Things looked grim to Carol Raymond, Rosebud County’s head of disaster and emergency services, who had driven from Forsyth to see firsthand what was happening. “I figured the whole town of Lame Deer would go up in flames,” Raymond said. Firefighters worked overnight trying to keep the flames back. At one point early Friday, the fire jumped Highway 212, but firefighters contained it with a back burn of the surrounding area, and the wildfire skirted around town without destroying any buildings or causing any injuries, Small-Rodriguez said. On Friday, the smoke was choking the town, but rain was assisting firefighters. A red-flag warning was to be in effect until evening, and firefighters prepared for gusty winds and possible thunderstorms. The mandatory evacuation remained in effect.
The state is sending firefighters and managers to help battle a 1,000-acre wildfire in the southeast corner of Washington. Other firefighters also are trying to contain a 10,000-acre wildfire in central Washington. The new fire broke out Thursday afternoon five miles south of Asotin and is burning grass, brush and wheat. The state Emergency Operations Center at Camp Murray has been activated to coordinate state assistance. Overnight winds forced firefighters to retreat at the central Washington fire as it grew to 10,000 acres – more than 15 square miles. Spokesman Dan Garner at the incident management center at Brewster High School says no structures are threatened. The fire broke out Wednesday near Pateros and Brewster. It’s burning grass, brush, scattered timber and some wheat land.
Two measures announced today by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack are meant to bring relief to farmers and ranchers nationwide as drought conditions have now caused more than half of all counties to be declared disaster areas.
After adding 218 counties in 12 states to the list of designated disaster areas, Vilsack announced two new ways that farmers and ranchers could seek relief. The first is a 3.8 million-acre expansion of emergency haying and grazing areas on conservation land. The second is a 30-day grace period that crop insurance companies have agreed to to extend to farmers on their premiums.
“The assistance announced today will help U.S. livestock producers dealing with climbing feed prices, critical shortages of hay and deteriorating pasturelands. Responding to my request, crop insurance companies indicated that producers can forgo interest penalties to help our nation’s farm families struggling with cash flow challenges. The Obama Administration intends to continue helping those who farm or ranch and live and work in rural America through this period of hardship,” Vilsack said in a statement.
About 66 percent of the nation’s hay acreage and 73 percent of the nation’s cattle acreage is experiencing drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The 3.8 million acres of conservation land made available for emergency haying and grazing must be used in accordance with rules that will minimize any impact to these areas, the USDA said. The agency said it will conduct follow-up monitoring and evaluation.
The counties designated today are in the following states: Arkansas, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wyoming.
Public Service Company of New Mexico said nearly 3,000 customers on Santa Fe’s south side were without electric power for more than two hours Friday evening after lightning struck the local power grid. Spokesman Frederick Bermudez said he couldn’t pinpoint where the lightning hit but said it knocked out power from 5:35 p.m. to 7:45 p.m. to 2,916 homes, businesses and institutions in an area bounded by St. Michael’s Drive on the north, Old Galisteo Road on the south, Old Pecos Trail on the east and Entrada de Santiago on the west. Much of Santa Fe was pounded by heavy rain with lightning and sudden high winds late Friday afternoon, suddenly swelling the Santa Fe River and other areas with swift flows of storm water. A driver on St. Michael’s Drive reported seeing thin funnel cloud on the horizon at about 5:45 p.m. “It was probably a dust devil, but we’ve been seeing that a lot this year,” said Brian Guyer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Albuquerque. “We’ve had some strong winds in Santa Fe today.” Guyer said the peak wind speed recorded at Santa Fe on Friday was 41 mph. Between two-tenths and four-tenths of an inch of rain fell — not a lot by most standards but what Guyer said was the heaviest rain the city has seen so far this summer. “You had a ton of lightning, some around the Plaza and a lot of lighting strikes up in the foothills,” he said. “It’s still dry, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we might see some fires by tomorrow.”
Hundreds of people residing near Beas river have been evacuated to safe places after flash flood caused by torrential rain over Dhundi peaks at south portal of Rohtang tunnel flooded the Seri rivulet, a tributary to Beas river, on Friday at 8pm. People living close to river between Palchan and Kullu are being evacuated and traffic on national highway has been stopped. Till last report received from Palchan (near Dhundi) at 10.30pm, level of the river was rising continuously and police were evacuating the people from Bahang village, 6km from Manali. According to police, there is no report of any casualty. Sandeep Kumar, a resident of Bahang village, said people are trying to save the household accessories amid chaotic atmosphere and conditions have become even worse after power failure. “Everything was normal till late evening but the situation changed suddenly after 8pm when river water, mixed with sludge, started engulfing its banks. People are risking their lives to remove the household stuffs,” he said. An engineer working with a hydel project near Palchan said over phone that roaring sound of river is shaking the foundation of the houses. “Nobody is going to sleep tonight. Villagers have gathered at many places and are guarding the river banks with floodlights,” he said. According to villagers it is a cloudburst which might have caused devastation at its source on mountains. Kullu deputy commissioner Amitabh Awasthi said , police are patrolling the river banks and have directed people to move to safe places. “We have closed the traffic on national highway. We shall keep an eye on the situation throughout the night,” he said.
Doctors were slow to respond to an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda because symptoms weren’t always typical, but a World Health Organization official said Friday that authorities are halting the spread of the deadly disease. Joaquim Saweka, the WHO representative in Uganda, told reporters in the capital Kampala that everyone known to have had contact with Ebola victims has been isolated. Ugandan health officials have created an “Ebola contact list” with names of people who had even the slightest contact with those who contracted Ebola. The list now bears 176 names. “The structure put in place is more than adequate,” Saweka said. “We are isolating the suspected or confirmed cases.” Ebola was confirmed in Uganda on July 28, several days after villagers were dying in a remote corner of western Uganda. Ugandan officials were slow to investigate possible Ebola because the victims did not show the usual symptoms, such as coughing blood. At least 16 Ugandans have died of the disease. Delays in confirming Ebola allowed the disease to spread to more villages deep in the western district of Kibaale, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said.”The doctors in Kibaale say the symptoms were a bit atypical of Ebola,” Museveni said in a national address Monday. “They were not clearly like Ebola symptoms. Because of that delay, the sickness spread to another village.” Saweka said that organizations such as Doctors Without Borders and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are helping Ugandan officials to control the spread of Ebola. This is the fourth outbreak of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatized in northern Uganda. Ebola is highly infectious and kills quickly. The disease was first reported in 1976 in Congo and is named for the river where it was recognized, according to the CDC. The aid group Doctors Without Borders said in a statement on Wednesday that the first victim of the Ebola outbreak was a 3-month-old girl and that of the 65 people who attended her funeral, 15 later contracted the deadly disease. Funerals in Uganda are typically elaborate affairs that draw huge crowds. Health officials have now taken on the task of safely burying the bodies of Ebola victims, Saweka said.
KAMPALA, Uganda — Six more patients suspected to have Ebola have been admitted to the hospital days after investigators confirmed an outbreak of the highly infectious disease in a remote corner of western Uganda, a health official said on Monday.
Stephen Byaruhanga, health secretary of the affected Kibaale district, said possible cases of Ebola, at first concentrated in a single village, are now being reported in more villages.
“It’s no longer just one village. There are many villages affected,” Byaruhanga said.
In a national address, Uganda’s president advised against unnecessary contact among people, saying suspected cases of Ebola should be reported immediately to health officials.
Officials from Uganda’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization announced on Saturday that the deadly Ebola virus killed 14 Ugandans this month, ending weeks of speculation about the cause of a strange illness that had some people fleeing their homes in the absence of reliable answers.
If the six new cases are confirmed as Ebola, it would bring to 26 the number of Ugandans infected with Ebola.
This is the fourth occurrence of Ebola in Uganda since 2000, when the disease killed 224 people and left hundreds more traumatized in northern Uganda. At least 42 people were killed in another outbreak in 2007, and there was a lone Ebola case in 2011.
Investigators took nearly a month to confirm Ebola’s presence in Uganda this year. In Kibaale, a district with 600,000 residents, some villagers started abandoning their homes to escape what they thought was an illness caused by bad luck. One family lost nine members, and a clinical officer and her 4-month-old baby died from Ebola, Byaruhanga said.
The confirmation of Ebola’s presence in the area has spread anxiety among sick villagers, who are refusing to go to the hospital for fear they don’t have Ebola and will contract it there. All suspected Ebola patients have been isolated at one hospital where patients admitted with other illnesses fled after Ebola was announced. Only the hospital’s maternity ward still has patients, officials said, highlighting the deadly reputation of Ebola.
At least 10 people admitted to the Sukraraj Tropical and Disease Control Hospital in Nepali capital Kathmandu have tested positive for cholera. The hospital laboratory said Vibrio Cholera belonging to 01 Ogawa stereotype was detected in all the patients. Doctors at hospital attributed the spread of cholera and diarrhea infection in Kathmandu to contaminated water, according to Saturday’s Republica daily. “Most of the patients who came to the hospital said that they had drunk water supplied by Kathmandu Upatyaka Kahanepani Limited without boiling or treatment,” Tulsha Adhikari, a nursing staff said. She said whole families had been infected and some were brought to the hospital by their neighbors as all family members were sick.
Biohazard name:
Cholera
Biohazard level:
2/4 Medium
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that cause only mild disease to humans, or are difficult to contract via aerosol in a lab setting, such as hepatitis A, B, and C, influenza A, Lyme disease, salmonella, mumps, measles, scrapie, dengue fever, and HIV. “Routine diagnostic work with clinical specimens can be done safely at Biosafety Level 2, using Biosafety Level 2 practices and procedures. Research work (including co-cultivation, virus replication studies, or manipulations involving concentrated virus) can be done in a BSL-2 (P2) facility, using BSL-3 practices and procedures. Virus production activities, including virus concentrations, require a BSL-3 (P3) facility and use of BSL-3 practices and procedures”, see Recommended Biosafety Levels for Infectious Agents.
Five children in South Waziristan have died from measles during the past week, an official said. “Non-availability of measles vaccines has become a big problem and if the desired vaccines were not made available, the situation could slip out of hand,” Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan, agency surgeon, told Central Asia Online August 3. Measles has affected about 400 children, of whom about 100 were hospitalised, he said. He warned of an outbreak throughout the agency if medics failed to immunise children immediately. Letters regarding the unavailability of measles vaccine have gone to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) directorate of health, he said, expressing hope the vaccine would become available in a few days. The Taliban have refused to allow polio vaccination in areas of South Waziristan they control, endangering more than 157,000 children below age 5, he said. The directorate has received the agency surgeon’s letter and is sending vaccines to South Waziristan, FATA Health Director Dr. Fawad Khan said. “We have also started vaccination in Mohmand, Bajaur and Khyber agencies, where measles had killed several children besides sending hundreds to hospitals,” he said.
Biohazard name:
Measles (fatal)
Biohazard level:
3/4 Hight
Biohazard desc.:
Bacteria and viruses that can cause severe to fatal disease in humans, but for which vaccines or other treatments exist, such as anthrax, West Nile virus, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, SARS virus, variola virus (smallpox), tuberculosis, typhus, Rift Valley fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, yellow fever, and malaria. Among parasites Plasmodium falciparum, which causes Malaria, and Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes trypanosomiasis, also come under this level.
Aug. 3, 2012 — With 16 new human cases in the last three weeks — 12 in the last week alone — an outbreak of a variant strain of swine flu is giving CDC officials the jitters.
What worries officials is that the new flu, officially called variant type A H3N2 or H3N2v, carries the M gene from the human H1N1 pandemic flu bug. This gene makes it easier for flu bugs to infect humans and spread among them.
The first human case was detected in July 2011. Since then there have been 29 reported cases, although more cases likely have gone unreported.
“Since the fall of 2011 there has been a big increase in these types of infections,” Joseph Bresee, MD, of the CDC’s Influenza Division, said at a news conference held to announce the new cases. “All 29 cases have had H3N2v with the M gene of pandemic H1N1. This may confer increased transmissibility to and among humans.”
Last year, three people caught the bug from another person. As far as the CDC can tell, that hasn’t happened this year. And there’s been no sustained spread of the new swine flu bug among people.
All the cases so far had contact with pigs. Most cases have been children who came into contact with infected pigs at state fairs. Ten of this week’s new cases were in Ohio. One was in Indiana and another was in Hawaii.
According to Lisa Ferguson of the USDA, the virus has been detected in pigs in 11 states.
Flu is common among pigs, and every year a few people catch a swine flu bug. But this new swine flu looks different.
“We have detected cases of this virus with increasing frequency,” Bresee said. “We expect further cases of human infection, either with contact with swine or from limited human-to-human spread. We expect some of the cases will be severe.”
H3N2v Swine Flu Symptoms
Fortunately, the new flu hasn’t been more serious than seasonal flu. The symptoms are the same: fever, cough, sore throat, muscle aches, and headaches. Everyone infected so far this year got better without having to be hospitalized. Last year there were three hospitalizations, all in people with underlying conditions known to increase risk of severe flu. There have been no deaths.
Current flu drugs should be just as effective against the new swine flu as against seasonal flu. However, current flu vaccines do not protect against the new swine flu. A vaccine has been produced, and Bresee says it soon will be tested in clinical trials.
Is this the beginning of a new flu pandemic? Maybe. Maybe not. Flu is among the most unpredictable of viruses. H3N2v could become a pandemic virus this year, in 20 years, or never.
A fatal influenza outbreak at two Hunter disability centers is continuing to spread, with more people contracting the illness.
Already three deaths have been reported at Newcastle’s Stockton Center and the Kanangra Center at Morisset over the past week.
Another five people were diagnosed with a respiratory illness yesterday and tests are expected to confirm they have succumbed to H3N2 strain which would make a total of 56 cases at the two centers.
Both centers remain in lockdown with strict infection controls now in place for the 450 residents.
Hunter New England Health is urging people with flu like symptoms not to visit hospitals or aged care facilities.
The Health network says a daily assessment is being made of the residents.
For the first time astronomers have detected the last gasps of a star being torn apart by a previously dormant giant black hole.
The signals, which came from a galaxy 3.9 billion light years away, were x-rays generated by matter heated to millions of degrees and torn apart as material from the star crosses the black hole’s event horizon.
Known as quasi-periodic oscillations, they are a characteristic feature of stellar black holes, which have about 10 times the mass of the Sun.
Dr Rubens Reis from the University of Michigan is the lead author of the paper published today in the journal Science.
Dr Reis says the findings confirm the constancy of black hole physics.
“This is telling us that the same physical phenomenon we observe in stellar mass black holes is also happening in black holes a million times the mass of the Sun, and in black holes that were previously asleep,” he said.
Dr Reis and colleagues first detected the event with NASA’s Swift Gamma Ray Burst Telescope last year, but did not pick up the oscillations at that time.
The blips in the signals were detected in follow-up observations using the joint Japanese-NASA Suzaku and the European Space Agency ZMM-Newton orbiting X-ray observatories.
“You can think of it as hearing the star scream as it gets devoured,” said University of Michigan astronomy professor Jon Miller, who co-authored the paper.
The oscillating signal repeats at a characteristic frequency, which would sound like an ultra-low D sharp.
On the edge
The oscillations were occurring once every 200 seconds, meaning the stellar material was orbiting less than 9.3 million kilometres from the centre of the black hole.
“Our discovery opens the possibility of studying orbits close to black holes that are very distant,” Professor Miller said.
Professor Joss Bland-Hawthorne from the University of Sydney says it is the closest we have ever seen material to the event horizon of a distant super-massive black hole.
“If this material was any closer, it would pass beyond the event horizon and you presumably wouldn’t see it,” Professor Bland-Hawthorne said.
“This is where the effects of general relativity become extreme.”
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that variations in the long-term reversal rate of the Earth’s magnetic field may be caused by changes in heat flow from the Earth’s core into the base of the overlying mantle.
The Earth is made up of a solid inner core, surrounded by a liquid outer core, in turn covered by a thicker or more viscous mantle, and ultimately by the solid crust beneath our feet.
The magnetic field is generated by the motions of the liquid iron alloy in the outer core, approximately 3,000 km beneath the Earth’s crust. These motions occur because the core is losing heat to the overlying solid mantle that extends up to the crust on which we live.
The mantle itself is also in motion but at much slower speeds of millimetres per year as opposed to millimetres per second in the core. This mantle motion is responsible for the drifting of the continents at the surface as well as earthquakes, volcanoes, and changes in the climate over millions of years.
At intervals of hundreds of thousands of years, the North and South magnetic poles reverse and scientists can tell from rock formations precisely at what periods in the past this took place. The most recent reversal happened 780,000 years ago.
Magnetic field variations happen on timescales of months to millions of years. Much of the magnetic field’s variation is thought to be sporadic but new research, led by Liverpool scientists, has found that over long timescales, this variability may be related to the changing pattern of heat loss across the core-mantle boundary occurring over millions of years.
The team performed a detailed synthesis based on latest findings from a number of different areas including the ancient geomagnetic field and its record in rocks, motions in the mantle caused by motions of the continents and the process responsible for generating the magnetic field in the core.
Dr Andrew Biggin, from the University’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “The magnetic field has undergone big changes in its behaviour that might be due to the mantle’s controlling influence on the core.
In particular, we focused on the time interval between around 200 and 80 million years ago – when dinosaurs were still around – when the magnetic field initially started reversing its polarity very frequently. During this period the polarity was reversing up to 10 times every million years; however 50 million years later, it stopped reversing altogether for nearly 40 million years.
“When these changes in the magnetic field were taking place, the whole of the Earth’s crust and mantle, including all of the continents, were undergoing a big rotation with respect to the geographic and time-averaged geomagnetic poles – the points defining the Earth’s axis of rotation.
“We suspect that this process, called True Polar Wander and caused by the changing density distribution in the mantle, will have changed the pattern of heat flowing out of the core in such a manner as to cause the magnetic field to first become less stable, with lots of reversals, and then become much more stable – and stop reversing.”
The team believes this may not be the only explanation and conjecture that this big drop in the frequency of reversals may also be related to a similar decrease in the number of ‘large igneous provinces’ (LIPs) or concentrated outpourings of magma from the Earth’s core, 50 million years later.
The last LIP happened around 16 million years ago and produced the Columbia Plateau in the North West US. LIPs are thought to be produced by hot plumes of material rising from thermal instabilities near the bottom boundary of the mantle.
The team believes the 50 million year time lag between the magnetic field changing and the occurrence of the LIPs could represent the time it takes for the plumes to travel 2,890 km through the mantle.
If this link were correct it would mean that the rather unstable magnetic field observed in the last 50 million years predicts that a considerable number of LIPs will erupt over the next 50 million years. This in turn could have major implications for the surface conditions – for climate and for life itself.
The research, published in Nature Geoscience, is a collaboration between the University of Liverpool, GFZ Potsdam, IPGP Paris, the University of Oslo and Utrecht University. Future research at Liverpool, is planned and already underway to develop a new tool for understanding the Earth’s system.
Large numbers of jellyfish have been swarming near nine thermal power plants on Ise Bay. Chubu Electric Power Co. estimates that there are close to 24,000 tons of the sea creatures swimming around the area, twice the usual level and the second-most recorded in the past decade. Measures are being taken to ensure the jellyfish don’t clog the power plants’ water intakes and disrupt their operations. Chubu Electric launched a research project in 1999 to predict the number of jellyfish in Ise Bay. They discovered that most jellyfish larvae transform into polyps in three major areas: near the port of Nagoya; along the coast of the Chita Peninsula from Tokoname to Morozaki, Minamichita, in Aichi Prefecture; and along the coast of the Shima Peninsula from Matsusaka to Toba in Mie Prefecture. Every winter, the research group collects samples of polyps and compares them with past results to predict how many larvae will develop into adult jellyfish in the following year. Last winter’s findings indicated the number this year would be 1.5 to 1.8 times higher than usual. “We don’t know the reason why the number is so high this year, but we need to monitor the situation closely,” said Minoru Hamada, 46, an assistant project manager in Chubu Electric’s technology development department.If jellyfish block the water intake, a power plant can’t draw enough water from the sea to cool the steam used to turn the turbine, and the plant has to reduce its electricity output. Each plant has adopted various measures, including putting up nets, to stop the jellyfish from swimming too close, but this is only effective when dealing with small numbers. It is not enough to prevent large amounts of jellyfish from swimming in all at once. The number of jellyfish near the thermal power plants usually peaks in July, August and September. However, this year they started gathering around the plants in May, resulting in reduced electricity output at three of the plants for a total of nine days. They were the Hekinan plant in Hekinan, Aichi Prefecture, the Shin-Nagoya plant in Nagoya and the Kawagoe plant in Kawagoe, Mie Prefecture. It’s a pressing problem for Chubu Electric because it has become increasingly dependent on thermal energy since its Hamaoka nuclear plant has been shut down over quake and tsunami fears. “The effect of the jellyfish isn’t fully known yet, but it can have a serious impact on electricity output if they keep increasing, especially during this season when there is high electricity demand,” a Chubu Electric official said. “We need to monitor the jellyfish further and take actions swiftly if necessary.”
Biohazard name:
Jellyfish invasion
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
They say the new virus could help shed light on how Hendra and related Nipah viruses cause disease and death in animals and humans. Hendra is able to infect horses and, in seven known cases, people have caught the infection from horses. Four of them died as a result.
The new virus is named Cedar after the Queensland location where it was discovered.
Initial studies by scientists with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) have discovered one surprising key difference – the Cedar virus does not cause illness in several animal species normally susceptible to Hendra and Nipah.
However, they say it is still too early to rule out the possibility that Cedar virus may cause illness and death in horses or other animals.
The new discovery had significant potential implications for protecting animals and humans from the Hendra and Nipah viruses. This tantalising difference may help scientists understand how to better manage and control its deadly cousins.
The findings have been announced today in the journal, PLoS Pathogens, published by the Public Library of Science.
Gary Crameri, a research scientist with the bat virus team at CSIRO’s Australian Animal Health Laboratory in Geelong, Victoria, said the new discovery had significant potential implications for protecting animals and humans from the Hendra and Nipah viruses.
“The significance of discovering a new henipavirus that doesn’t cause disease is that it may help us narrow down what it is about the genetic makeup of viruses like Hendra and Nipah that does cause disease and death,” Crameri said.
“The more that we can learn about bat-borne viruses, the better chance we have of developing anti-virals and vaccines to help protect human health, Australia’s livestock industry and our export trade from the threat of current and emerging animal diseases.
“Over 70 per cent of people and animals infected with Hendra and Nipah viruses die. This ranks henipaviruses amongst the deadliest viruses in existence, yet little is known about just how such viruses actually cause disease or death.”
The discovery was a result of a close partnership with Biosecurity Queensland which played an important role by collecting and screening samples from bat colonies across Queensland.
Dr Hume Field, of Biosecurity Queensland, said field work with bats was an essential part of research into identifying new viruses.
“Bats are being implicated as the natural host of a growing number of viruses in Australia and overseas, yet they appear to tolerate infection themselves, making bat research increasingly important.”
Bats have been identified as playing a role in the spread of viruses including Ebola, Marburg, SARS and Melaka, yet they are an essential part of a diverse ecosystem through their role as pollinators, seed dispersers and insect regulators.
The discovery is part of ongoing research by CSIRO to target diseases that threaten animals, people and the environment and is part of CSIRO’s wider biosecurity effort. It follows CSIRO’s development towards a horse vaccine against Hendra virus.
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MessageToEagle.com – There has been a great deal of hype over the coming new age. Written in sacred texts, carved in stone all over the world and in the alignment of stars above heralding the dawn of Aquarius, we are reminded to ‘awaken’ and ‘remember’.
Science and spirituality is coming together as the new energies rise our consciousness to a higher level.
But is this new? Or are we seeing our world with new eyes?
In all ancient teachings it has been written the time will come when the veils will be lifted one by one and a new world will be born.
It may have been written in different ways, but none the less, the meaning is the same. Changes are coming, and love will lead the way.
We have in fact lost our real connection with ancient knowledge.Knowledge that science will discover it has always known all along.
Pythagoras was known as ‘the father of numbers’.
He was a mathematician and philosopher, best known for the Pythagorean theorem
He, along with his wife, opened a school for men and women alike, studying religion, philosophy, math and music.
He believed that numbers defined and expressed everything in nature and the universe, including musical notes.
Pythagoras and Nikola Tesla. Image credit: MessageToEagle.com
He recognized the numerical value in everything. The unfolding patterns in Natures scheme of things. Sacred geometry was born and the soul given divine meaning and everlasting life.
The term ‘First do no harm’ has its roots in these teachings. The commitment in the Hippocratic oath as well as an oath in many sacred texts.
There were no sciences or scientists. There were alchemists, sorcerer, and magicians. Whatever title they might have had, they all sought the same knowledge by the same means.
Often combining a deep philosophical out look on nature along with an insatiable curiosity, they could heal the sick and teach a greater understanding of our world and universe.
Aristotle turned much into science before the rise of religion drove most underground.
While discovering how the universe worked, many texts were written in symbols and codes for fear of the work being labeled ‘magic’ and condemned and themselves discredited.
Galileo himself, father of modern astronomy and physics, after discovering planets and gaining an accurate knowledge of their orbits amongst his other incredible discoveries, was ordered to Rome to stand trial for heresy. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Everything we know and do in modern science today was developed by the alchemists. Not only did they know about chemistry, they knew about consciousness. They knew about hypnosis and trance, and knew other worlds. Worlds that can only be understood today by quantum physics.
Sadly, as each discovered something new and wonderful, or gained a greater understanding, a sudden political shift would take place. They would find themselves branded as sorcerers and often lost their lives, leaving their legacy to those who followed.
Galileo Galilei. Image credit: MessageToEagle.com
In their quest for answers, it is given a new name along with new perimeters.
More knowledge is gathered and understood, more wisdom gained.
The tree of life has grown, it’s branches are dividing and spreading as the seasons come and go. But it’s still the same tree. The branches still share the same roots.
We might all see it differently, but it’s still the same one. It is one. We are one. We are everything that was and will be.
Nikola Tesla said ‘If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration’.
He knew without a doubt anything and everything was possible…
Written by Jedda Challenger
@ MessageToEagle.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or part without the express written permission of MessageToEagle.com
The unofficial death count of last year’s Listeria outbreak linked to cantaloupes rose from 32 to 33 Wednesday as the Montana Department of Health confirmed that the death of an outbreak victim there was a result of his Listeria infection.
The victim, a 75-year-old Bozeman, Montana man who died in January, was only recently recognized as a victim of the outbreak. Food Safety Newsreported about the possible link. The connection was first made when PulseNet discovered that a clinical sample of Listeria from the man’s stool was indistinguishable from a rare genetic fingerprint of Listeria found on a cantaloupe from an outbreak victim’s home. PulseNet compares pathogen samples across the U.S. using a DNA mapping technique called pulsed field gel electrophoresis, or PFGE.
“We finished the investigation July 18 and the CDC is adding him to the death toll,” Job Ebelt, a spokesman for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services told The Packer. However, CDC told Food Safety News that it has not yet officially counted the man’s death as one of those that resulted from outbreak, and is currently only counting him as a victim.
“We’re saying at least 30 deaths and one miscarriage,” confirmed Lola Russel, a spokeswoman for the CDC. “The death count is something that’s based on us reviewing death certificates, and that’s a process. Just because a state counts it does not mean we’re increasing that number right then,” she said.
PROVIDENCE — For all its efforts in the last 15 years or so, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hasn’t really moved the meter that much when it comes to improving the safety of raw and lightly cooked sprouts that Americans increasingly like to eat.
Sprouts were given special attention Wednesday at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) meeting this week in Rhode Island.
From 1990 until midway through 2011, there were at least 46 major outbreaks involving sprouts, said FDA’s Tong-Jen (T-J) Fu. The problem is that the conditions seeds need to grow sprouts are also ideal for growing pathogens.
Many of those outbreaks have occurred since 1999, the year FDA issued its non-binding “guidance” document to help sprout growers. “Implementation has been an issue,” explains Fu.
Fixing the problem that good sprouting conditions are also good for growing pathogens isn’t easy.
“Whatever is good for growing the seeds is good for microbial growth,” says Mansour Samadpour, who runs a commercial food lab in Lake Forest Park, WA.
Fu says Salmonella growth is the most common contaminant for sprouts, but E. coli O157:H7 and Listeria are also known to taint sprouting seeds. In the sprouting process, seeds are often found to be the exact cause of outbreaks.
Fu also notes that people often take the seeds home for “home sprouting,” which she says could add to the risks.
On multiple occasions since 1999, FDA has also issued public warnings about sprouts, starting out with a notice warning about alfalfa sprouts. It was then amended to include a public health warning about all sprouts.
FDA’s Michelle Smith said the agency was originally concerned about raw sprouts, but has since changed that part of the warning to include “raw and lightly cooked” sprouts.
Amid growing consumer awareness about antibiotics used to raise food animals, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is taking a look at some of the claims made on meat packages, including “antibiotic free.”
In a letter responding to concerns raised by Consumers Union, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said FSIS has developed updated guidance material on labels that it will send to meat companies and the agency plans to investigate unapproved label claims.
“Under FSIS guidelines, when producers/companies request to make the marketing claim “raised without antibiotics” on their labels, we inform them that this means “no antibiotics in their feed water or injection including no ionophores” during the animal’s life,” said Vilsack.
CU sent a letter to USDA in June asking that the department look into three unapproved label claims that the group found on meat packages: antibiotic free, no antibiotic growth promotants, and no antibiotic residues. In a recent shopping survey, CU found more than 20 different antibiotic-related claims on meat packages (see the group’s list to the left).
CU points out that these claims may confuse or mislead consumers.
Salmonella from a recalled raw tuna product served in sushi and known as Nakaochi scrape has now sickened at least 425 individuals in 28 states and the District of Columbia. Of those ill, 55 have been hospitalized.
In its final outbreak update, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that the outbreak appears to be over, though additional cases may surface in the next several months if unaware food establishments continue serving the product, which is sold frozen and has a long shelf-life.
The victims of the tuna scrape outbreak were infected with one of two Salmonella strains. In total, 410 fell ill with Salmonella Bareilly, while Salmonella Nchanga sickened 15.
The recalled Nakaochi scrape was produced by Moon Marine USA Corporation. Retailers carrying the product are asked not to serve it.
The outbreak’s epidemiological curve, featured below, shows that a significant number of victims acquired their infections after the April 13 tuna scrape recall, suggesting food establishments continued to serve it for some time.
The number of individuals sickened in a Shigella outbreak in Upstate New York has risen from 45 – at last report – to 69, while the source of the bacteria remains unclear.
The outbreak is affecting residents of Onondaga County, located in the central northern New York. The county’s health department announced the increase in cases Friday. Health officials there are still not sure what is causing the outbreak.
Shigella infection, or shigellosis is characterized by fever, stomach cramps and diarrhea that can be painful and contain blood or mucous. Symptoms usually appear 1 to 3 days after exposure and resolve in about a week.
If you think you may have contracted shigellosis, contact your healthcare provider.
For more information on this outbreak, see Food Safety News’ previous reports:
The Washington State Department of Health (WDH) has closed recreational shellfish harvesting in six counties near Puget Sound after dangerous levels of the biotoxin Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) were discovered. Commercially harvested shellfish are not included in the closure and should be safe to eat, according to public health authorities.
The six counties affected by the recreational shellfish harvest closure are in the central and southern areas of the sound. They are: Jefferson, Island, Snohomish, Kitsap, King and Pierce counties. Warning signs have been posted at beaches in these areas.
Shellfish included in the closure are: clams, oysters, mussels, scallops, geoduck, and other mollusks. Crab is not included in the closure, but “crab butter,” the yellow goo that clings to the inside of the shell is.
Cases of Salmonella Montevideo from Live Poultry Rise to 76
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has counted an additional 10 cases of Salmonella Montevideo linked to live poultry since last month, bringing the new case count to 76 people across 22 states. Of those ill, 17 have been hospitalized.
The live birds originated at Estes Hatchery, a mail-order hatchery in Springfield, Missouri.
A locally owned single location restaurant in California’s Orange County is getting some valuable service from its local health department — keeping its name from being associated with an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak.
That secret involves romaine lettuce the unnamed restaurant served last April giving E. coli O157:H7 to nine of its customers, and causing the restaurant to voluntarily close for the investigation. The restaurant management was so cooperative that four months later, the Orange County (OC) Health Care Agency is still keeping the name of the restaurant a secret.
Deanne Thompson, public information officer for the OC Health Care Agency, says naming the restaurant now (it was not named then either) would “not serve a useful purpose.”
OC apparently wanted to keep the whole event secret, and the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) went along.
At the time, OC Health put out nary a word about the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak and in a county where restaurant closures are an obsession; there was not a word about this one. Thompson says it was not listed because the closure was voluntary.
OC Health — with more than 11,000 restaurants, food trucks and other food establishments under its regulation — currently lists 88 closures by its inspectors in the last 60 days.
At least 200 people fell ill last week with Norovirus infections connected to a Mexican restaurant in Michigan’s Ottowa County.
The Ottowa County Health Department began investigating the outbreak on Thursday of last week and by this week had linked the illnesses to Margarita’s Restaurant of Holland, MI, which was shut down after it was determined to be the outbreak source.
It is not clear whether victims included both customers and employees or only customers.
Norovirus is transmitted through the fecal-oral route. Food handlers who contract Norovirus should stay home from work 48-72 hours after symptoms end to prevent the spread of infection, says the Ottowa County Health Department.
Provincial public health and milk marketing regulations that have prevented the sale or distribution of raw milk in Canada for the past 80 years are about to be challenged in the Ontario Court of Appeal.
The often precedent-setting Ontario Court of Appeal, where same-sex marriage in Canada first got its stamp of approval, is second only to the Supreme Court of Canada. And the high federal court reviews only about 3 percent of Ontario Court of Appeal decisions.
Conflicting and some say confused lower court cases over the fate of raw milk dairy farmer Michael Schmidt, who was first acquitted in 2010 and then convicted in 2011 for distributing raw milk through a cow-share successful appeal request. (Unlike the U.S., the prosecution in Canada can appeal when they lose).
Schmidt, who was sentenced on similar charges in 1994 when he was fined $3,500 and placed on probation for two years, was operating a cow share scheme for 150 families, who had paid $300 each for shares of 26 dairy cows.
A Colorado-based company is recalling a limited number of tapanades, cheeses and salsas because they may contain onions that were recalled last week due to potential contamination with Listeria.
Sartori Inspirations LLC issued the voluntary recall Thursday after Gills Onions of Oxnard, California recalled some of its diced yellow onions on July 18 because a sample had tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. Sartori makes some of its products with these onions.
Those products – sold at some Whole Foods Market stores – include tapanades, smoked gouda, pimento cheese, spinach feta dip and a variety of salsas packaged in both 7 oz. clear plastic and 5 lb. white plastic tubs. The following is a list of the specific products subject to recall. Code information can be found on the side of each container.
A California-based company is recalling approximately 79 pounds of chicken and yam pie products because they may have been made with a curry paste that contains shrimp, but shrimp - a known allergen – is not listed as an ingredient.
Piccadilly Fine Foods of Santa Clara, CA issued a voluntary recall of the products Thursday after a label inspection by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) revealed that the recipe for the pies had been temporarily changed, but that the ingredient change was not reflected on packaging.
Chopped yellow and white onions distributed by Gills Onions has triggered more recalls, as more food makers announced they were using the onions, which were first recalled on July 18 for possible Listeria contamination.
No illnesses have yet been reported in relation to these recalls.
1. Garden Fresh Foods, Inc. is recalling various ready-to-eat salads, slaw, salsa, bean and dip products under various brands and code dates. Products were distributed in AZ, CA, FL, IA, IL, IN, MA, MI, MN, MO, PA, TX, and WI.
3. Spartan Stores, Inc. recalled its Three Bean Salad and 10 oz. Broccoli Stir Fry sold between July 13 and 26.
4. Publix Super Markets issued a recall of custom-made sub sandwiches that may have contained chopped onions connected to the recall, sold from July 7 through 26.
Stop & Shop Recalls Calico Bean Salad for Listeria
Northeast grocery chain Stop & Shop Supermarket Company LLC announced Friday that it removed Calico Bean Salad made by Costa Fruit & Produce from their stores due to possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination.
The salad was sold in stores’ salad bar, but the company said no illnesses have been reported.
The company is asking that customers who purchased the product between July 18, 2012 and July 26, 2012 discard any unused portions and bring their purchase receipt to Stop & Shop for a full refund.
A California company is recalling approximately 5,610 pounds of its barbecue chicken salad because the product contains diced onions that were recalled for potential Listeria contamination last week.
Huxtable’s Kitchen of Vernon, CA issued a voluntary recall of the BBQ chicken salads Friday after another company – Gill’s Onions – announced last week that a sample of its diced onions had tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes. Huxtable’s, which uses onions processed by Gill’s in its barbecue chicken salad, was notified of the potential contamination by a supplier and alerted USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the problem.
The Huxtable’s products subject to recall are sold in 14.5 ounce trays and labeled as “TRADER JOE’S BBQ CHICKEN SALAD” Friday.
A Mississippi firm is recalling approximately 314 pounds of sausage products because they may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.
Enslin & Son Packing Company of Hattiesburg, MS, issued a voluntary recall of it’s “Cedar Grove Red Hots” Friday after the company received test results showing that the product had tested positive for Listeria. Product had already been shipped to retail establishments in Meridian and Philadelphia, MS when the company acquired the test results.
LSG Sky Chefs is recalling certain chicken wraps because they are made with diced onions that were recalled by another company last week after a sample of the onions tested positive for Listeria monocytogenes.
Orlando, Florida-based LSG issued a is voluntarily recalling about 735 pounds of ready-to-eat chipotle chicken wraps Friday after being notified of the onion recall issued by Gill’s Onions last week. LSG uses onions processed by Gill’s in the pico de gallo contained in its wraps.
This is the third recall of product made with Gill’s Onions since the initial recall was announced. Food Safety News reported on the other two in these notices:
North Carolina’s Burch Farms and Hannaford Supermarkets on Saturday initiated a recall of 580 crates of whole Athena cantaloupes sent to New York due to possible contamination of Listeria monocytogenes.
The cantaloupes were shipped July 15. No illnesses have been linked to this outbreak.
The cantaloupes sport a red label that reads ‘Burch Farms’ and ‘Cantaloupe PLU 4319.’ Health officials are urging those who purchased the cantaloupes to dispose of them.
Last August, Listeria-contaminated Rocky Ford cantaloupes grown at Jensen Farms in Colorado caused one of the deadliest foodborne illness outbreaks in U.S. history, sickening at least 147 and killing 33. Jensen Farms filed for bankruptcy in May.
Tony Downs Foods Company of Minnesota is recalling 70,500 pounds of premium chunk chicken for mislabeling and an undeclared allergen. The products may actually contain “Beef with Gravy” that contains wheat, one of the major food allergens, that is not declared on the label.
The product is 12.5-ounce cans of “Tyson Premium Chunk Chicken.” The code date of “8965 248A 12139″ and “Best by May 18, 2015″ are ink-jetted on the bottom of each recalled can. Each label has the number “P-65″ inside the USDA mark of inspection. Correctly labeled cans are ink-jetted with the code “1392TDM4600″ and “P65″ beneath a “Use by May 18 2015″ date and are not part of this recall.
The chicken was produced on May 18, 2012 and distributed to retail establishments nationwide. There have been no reports of adverse reactions associated with the consumption of this product. If you have questions, call the Tyson Consumer Hotline at 866-328-3156.
San Francisco Herb and Natural Food Company Recalls Products
The San Francisco Herb and Natural Food Company is recalling 16 products for potential contamination of filth. There was a mouse infestation at the company’s Fremont warehouse. The products were sold mostly over the internet in the U.S. No illnesses have been reported in connection with the consumption of these products. For questions, call Dr. Fahimeh Niroomand at 510-770-1215 extension 115.
Each package weighs one pound. The Lot numbers are on a small, white rectangular sticker on the bottom half of the back of the package. The products recalled include:
A New York-based company is recalling a Colombian-style cheese product because it may be contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The recall comes a week after the New York State Department of Agriculture (NYSDA) warned consumers not to eat this same cheese because it had not been properly pasteurized.
Tita Corp. of Glendale, NY issued a voluntary recall of its “Queso Colombiano, Colombian Style Cheese” Saturday after samples of the product were found to contain “high levels of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria,” according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The samples that tested positive for Staph bacteria were taken by an NYSDA Division of Milk Control and Dairy Services inspector on July 25, 2012, just 8 days after the Division had found that milk used to make this cheese had been improperly pasteurized, meaning that it’s possible for pathogens to survive in the product.
Publix Super Markets is recalling custom sub sandwiches made with recalled Gills Onions. The onions were recalled on July 19, 2012 for possible Listeria monocytogenes contamination. The recall includes any custom made sub sandwiches with sliced onions sold at the Publix Deli department from July 7, 2012 through July 26, 2012.
The onions were shipped to stores in Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Publix stores in Florida are not included in this recall. No illnesses have been reported to date in connection with the sliced onions.
In the ninth derivative recall so far, Spartan Stores is recalling two products that contain Gills Onions. The onions, which may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, were recalled on July 19, 2012.
The recalled products include Three Bean Salad sold at the deli, and 10-ounce Broccoli Stir Fry sold in the product department. There has been no “confirmation” of illnesses associated with the consumption of these products reported to Spartan Stores. If anyone has eaten these products and gotten sick, they should contact their healthcare provider.
Those products should be discarded or returned to the place of purchase for a full refund or replacement. If you have questions, you can contact Spartan Stores’ Consumer Affairs at 1-800-451-8500. You can also contact Gills Onions Customer Service at 1-888-220-0436.
An Alaskan company is recalling its smoked salmon products because they are labeled with improper instructions that could, if followed, lead to the product’s contamination with Clostridium botulinum bacteria.
Interior Alaska Fish Processors Inc., based in Fairbanks, AK, issued a voluntary recall of its “Santa’s Smokehouse” brand hot-smoked vacuum packed salmon products Tuesday because they bear a label indicating that they can be kept under refrigeration, when in fact they cannot, according to 2KTUU.com.
This misleading label implies that consumers may keep the fish in conditions that could in actuality allow for the growth of Clostridium botulinum, which produces botulinum toxins that attack the human nervous system, leading to paralysis.
Ken’s Foods Inc. is recalling some food service dressings and sauces that contain onions that are part of the Gills Onions recall. The onions may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes. Fresh Point processes the onions for Ken’s Foods; their supplier is Gills Onions.
The products recalled include these products. Ken’s Tartar Sauce in 4/1 gallon containers, with number KE0666 and MFG number 09/JUL/12. Ken’s Tartar Sauce in 100/1.5-ounce cups, with number KE0666A5 and EXP: 011313. Dickey’s BBQ Bean in 10/48-ounce pouches, with number DI2063 and USE BY date of 11MAR13. Golden Corral Tartar in 4/1 gallon containers, with number GD2517 and MFG: 17/JUL/12. Lee’s Cole Slaw in 14/40 ounce pouches, with number FQ2103 and MFG: 23JUL12. Fatz Tartar Sauce, in 4/1 gallon containers, with number FD0666 and MFG: 23/JUL/12.
Truth be told, the lecture format of most of the symposia at the International Association for Food Protection annual meeting can get a little sleepy.
The meeting, which ended Wednesday, is not known for sharp sticks in the eye or put down quips. The one exception was the “current controversies” section that used a sort of modified college debate format to go through three food safety issues quickly with no apologies for any hard feelings.
There was one caveat. Not only were the views expressed by the debaters not necessarily representative of their organizations, they were not necessarily their own. Like good college debaters everywhere, they might have just ended up with that side or the argument.
The debaters, however, tried their best, since they wanted to sway the audience, which was polled electronically before and after both sides had their say and took questions.
The first topic was whether the pasteurization of all ground beef and ground poultry should be mandated. Speaking in favor was Kroger Company’s W. Payton Pruett; opposed was the American Meat Institute Foundation’s Betsy Booren.
Before the debate began, the audience split 71.4 opposed to the proposal, 28.6 in favor.
Pruett started by saying that Kroger stores have been on the receiving end of about half of all the 68 recent recalls of ground meat products, and the time has come to just accept that sampling and testing cannot substitute for good kill step.
Just as we reached a point where it was appropriate for milk, juice, and eggs to go through pasteurization, Pruett said that time has now arrived for ground meat. He said pasteurization would cut down on recalls and reduce illnesses.
Booren said the $4.8 billion local food movement, small and very small meat businesses and anyone who values choice in a country with an abundance of food would be ill served by a pasteurization mandate.
In rebuttal, Pruett said his company’s stores have already removed choice from their customers by not selling raw milk.”What we sell in our stores is pasteurized milk,” he said. ”We’ve taken away that customer choice. This is a case of where we have to take control.”
That left an opening for Booren to question whether Pruett’s company is motivated by its concern for public health or its fear of possibilities litigation over the sale of raw milk with its potential for contamination.
In raising her concerns about how pasteurization might change the taste and texture of ground meat products, Booren brought up some of the early tests on radiated meat coming out with a “wet dog” smell.
In the end, the House remained unmoved with only about 2 percent moving to the pro-pasteurization side.
In just over 15 minutes, it was all over and two more debaters had stepped up to argue about whether Clostridium difficile colitis is a foodborne illness. C. diff is a species of gram-positive bacteria, most associated with diarrheal disease picked up in hospital settings.
Going at it over this one was Glenn Songer from Iowa State University at Ames and Brandi Limbago from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The number of Americans falling ill from foodborne pathogens remained steady or marginally worsened in the latter half of the 2000s, and 2011 turned out to show little difference, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which released its annual report of foodborne illness data for 2011 on Friday evening.
While the data showed a promising five-year decline of E. coli O157:H7 and Shigella infections since 2007, infection rates stagnated or slightly grew for a number of other notable bacteria, including Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria.
As a whole, the data have some food safety advocates reemphasizing the importance of implementing measures of the Food Safety Modernization Act, signed into law by President Obama in January 2011 and designed to shift the focus of U.S. food safety from a reactive system to something more preventative. Many of the act’s central rules have blown past implementation deadlines, including new food import standards and domestic preventative control requirements.
According to the data, Salmonella, Campylobacter and Listeria continue to infect numbers well beyond goals set by the U.S. government for 2010:
For every 100,000 people, 16.5 fell ill with Salmonella in 2011 and 17.5 the year before, despite a goal to reduce that number to 6.8 by then. Similarly, Campylobacter infected 14.3 in 2011 (surpassing the 12.3-person goal), and 0.28 were sickened by Listeria (just above the 2010 goal of 0.24).
At the same time, however, E. coli O157 rates fell to 0.98, just below its goal of 1.0. That’s down from 1.20 in 2007, 1.69 in 2002 and 2.62 in 1996, the year the CDC first began compiling yearly reports on these pathogens.
For a brief period last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture got behind the international “Meatless Monday” campaign by calling on its employees to choose vegetarian options on Mondays.
“While a vegetarian diet could have a beneficial impact on a person’s health and the environment, many people are not ready to make that commitment. Because Meatless Monday involves only one day a week, it is a small change that could produce big results,” read the USDA’s internal newsletter “Greening Headquarters Update,” dated Monday, June 23.
The piece — which pointed out that animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and uses up large amounts of resources — was revoked Wednesday after the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) roundly condemned the agency’s anti-meat stance, calling it an “animal rights extremist campaign to ultimately end meat consumption.”
“This is truly an awakening statement by USDA, which strongly indicates that USDA does not understand the efforts being made in rural America to produce food and fiber for a growing global population in a very sustainable way,” said NCBA President J.D. Alexander in a statement Wednesday. “USDA was created to provide a platform to promote and sustain rural America in order to feed the world. This move by USDA should be condemned by anyone who believes agriculture is fundamental to sustaining life on this planet.”
Lawmakers from beef-producing states also criticized the agency’s Meatless Monday endorsement.
“I will eat more meat on Monday to compensate for stupid USDA recommendation abt [sic] a meatless Monday,” tweeted Senator Chuck Grassley Grassley (R-IA) Wednesday.
Grassley’s sentiments were echoed by representative Steve King (R), also of Iowa.
“USDA HQ meatless Mondays!!! At the Dept. Of Agriculture? Heresy! I’m not grazing there. I will have double rib-eye Mondays instead,” he tweeted.
By Wednesday afternoon, USDA’s press center had tweeted the following statement:
“USDA does not endorse Meatless Monday. Statement on USDA site posted w/o proper clearance. It has been removed.”
The announcement was greeted with approval by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association.
“USDA did right by scrapping this statement and acknowledging the important role of America’s farm and ranch families in providing food for the world,” said NCBA in a statement later that day.
“USDA denouncing support of the Meatless Monday campaign is an important step in correcting misinformation about the safety and sustainability of U.S. beef production.”
In the latest news in the ongoing raw-milk legal saga, 65-year-old James Stewart, founder of Rawesome Foods in Los Angeles County, California, was strong-armed on July 26 by a trio of tough-looking men in street clothes driving unmarked luxury cars who handcuffed him and then slammed him against the back of a car, pressing his face up against the window.
Rawesome Foods is a members-only co-op that specializes in unprocessed foods, including raw milk.
“Why are you treating me so horribly,” the visibly shaken Stewart asked, as someone videotaped what the trio repeatedly referred to as ‘an arrest.’
As he was led to the back seat of the car, Stewart, his voice breaking with emotion, told the person videotaping the scene, “They’re arresting me.”
From there, he was taken to the Ventura County Jail, where a court officer described him as a “flight risk” and refused to grant bail.
Turns out that the three men were members of a bond bailsman retrieval team, which in California have certain police powers, among them the ability to arrest people who have jumped bail. And it turns out that Stewart had, in fact, jumped bail, having failed to show up for two court appearances.
In one of cases, he was out on a $30,000 bail in Los Angeles County on charges of illegally selling raw milk. In the other, he was out of a $100,000 bail in Ventura County on charges of illegally raising funds for Sharon Palmer’s Healthy Family Farms, according to an article in The Complete Patient.
Palmer supplies Rawesome Foods with raw goat milk and other dairy products from what is known as a ‘herdshare.’ Under a herdshare arrangement, the members don’t consider themselves as buying the milk since they own the animals. Palmer has no license to sell raw milk in California, a state which does allow retail sales of raw milk but which also has very strict laws governing raw-milk production and sales.
Adding another dimension to this drama, raw-milk dairy farmer Mark McAfee, owner of Organic Pastures, the largest raw-milk producer in the nation, was the person who put up $100,000 in personal collateral for the bond in Venice County. In doing so, he put his house on the line, knowing that if Stewart failed to make the necessary court appearances, he could lose his home.
In an interview with Food Safety News after Stewart’s July 26 arrest, McAfee said that he had contacted the bond company because Stewart had told him he wasn’t going to attend the hearings.
“He refused to do that,” McAfee said. “He said he’d go into hiding.”
Stewart told Natural News that McAfee was there at the arrest and watched him being taken away by the bail-bond trio.
McAfee confirmed that, saying that he was the one who found Stewart.
“I was the one who hired the bail agents to arrest James,” he said.
According to the Complete Patient article, the bail bond agents and McAfee tried to convince Stewart both the day before the arrest and the day of the arrest to turn himself in. But their pleas were in vain.
“I didn’t want to lose my house,” McAfee said, in explaining why he had contacted and worked with the bail bondsmen.
McAfee said Stewart had fired the highly qualified lawyer working on the case and opted instead to work with what McAfee described as a “non-lawyer type” from Las Vegas. He had apparently bought into the notion of the ‘sovereign man,’ which urges people to claim their ‘Common Law Inherent Rights’ and defend themselves against “all levels of abuse from Government and Statutes.”
Canada is kicking off a $600,000 project to map the genome of Listeria bacteria so that more rapid tests can be developed.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), Genome Canada, and Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions are teaming up to help protect consumers from the serious foodborne illness.
The 18-month research initiative is being funded with $250,000 each from Genome Canada and CFIA, and $100,000 from Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions.
Currently, it takes at least five days to confirm the presence of Listeria. Genomic mapping could improve accuracy and cut the time it takes for both the government and industry to identify Listeria contamination.
In 2008, a Listeria outbreak caused by ready-to-eat meats produced by Maple Leaf Foods in Toronto killed 22 mostly elderly Canadians. The 40 percent fatality rate was among the highest ever experience in a foodborne illness outbreak anywhere in North America.
The federal government has released its 2010 data on antibiotic resistance among Salmonella and Campylobacter in both food animals and humans. While some strains, such as Salmonella Heidelberg, became more resistant to certain drugs between 2009 and 2010, resistance among many serotypes has decreased or remained steady over the past few years.
The figures were published by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), housed at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. The program, which tracks trends in resistance among foodborne bacteria, was launched in 1996 as a collaborative effort between FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The 2010 findings varied widely from strain to strain and drug to drug, but a few trends emerged.
Resistance in Salmonella
Between 2009 and 2010, multidrug resistance – resistant to three or more antibiotics – dropped or stayed the same among most non-Typhoidal Salmonella, which are the second most common source of foodborne illness and the leading cause of hospitalization among foodborne pathogens. Overall, multidrug resistance in human isolates was at an all-time low since 1996.
The strain most commonly resistant to three or more drugs was Typhimurium (a non-Typhoidal serotype, contrary to what its name suggests); 44 percent of these isolates were multidrug resistant.
The two strains that grew in resistance between 2009 and 2010 were Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Serotype I 4,[5],12:i:- (some serotypes are not named). The latter serotype has been discovered more and more frequently in humans and meat over the past 10 years, according to Dr. Patrick McDermott, Director of NARMS.
Interestingly, the presence of Salmonella Dublin in food animals has steadily increased since 1997, and this strain accounts for 55 percent of multidrug resistant Salmonella found in cattle at slaughter, which rose 6 percent between 2007 and 2009. The presence of Heidelberg in meat animals rose between 2009 and 2010.
Scientists also found that resistance to ceftriaxone – an antibiotic used to treat human Salmonella infections – was higher in 2010 among Salmonella Heidelberg isolates from both humans and poultry than it had been in 2009, with the exception of isolates from retail chicken breasts.
Ceftriaxone is a member of the cephalosporin class of antimicrobials, which the FDA limited for use in food animals in April of this year in order to “preserve the effectiveness of cephalosporin drugs for treating disease in humans.”
The action prohibits the “extra-label” use of these drugs, meaning that they may not be used at improper dosages or to prevent disease, and only those cephalosporins that are not intended for human or companion animal use may be used in food animals.
“Serotype Heidelberg is an important poultry-associated serotype where ceftriaxone resistance has gone up,” explains McDermott. “FDA will continue to monitor resistance in this serotype following implementation of the extralabel use prohibition.”
According to the NARMS data, ceftriaxone resistance among human strains rose from 8 percent in 2008 to 21 percent in 2009 and again to 24 percent in 2010. Among isolates from chickens at slaughter, resistance to the drug increased from 8.5 percent in 2008 to 18 percent in 2009 and then again to 32 percent in 2010. Resistance in isolates from retail ground turkey and turkeys at slaughter increased from 3.5 percent and 13 percent, respectively, in 2008 to 10 and 33 percent in 2009, and then rose to 24 and 36 percent in 2010.
Among isolates from retail chicken breast, resistance rose from 17 percent in 2008 to 32 percent in 2009 before declining to 24 percent in 2010.
The highest prevalence of ceftriaxone resistance among these meats was found among Typhimurium strains, 81 percent of which were resistant to the drug. Indeed ceftriaxone-resistant Typhumurium has increased in overall prevalence when isolated from chicken breasts, rising from 44 percent in 2007 to 61 percent in 2010.
A similar rise in ceftriaxone resistance was observed in samples taken from animals at slaughter. Resistance in isolates from cattle and turkeys was at its highest since 1997.
In total, the number of samples tested for Salmonella in 2010 included 2,474 samples from humans, 400 from retail meats and 1,073 from healthy food animals at slaughter.
On July 18, I attended a meeting at the USDA to get an update on the status of poultry exports to the U.S. from the People’s Republic of China. When I returned from the meeting, I saw an email alert from the Food and Drug Administration entitled, “Questions and Answers Regarding Chicken Jerky Treats from China.” The press statement detailed FDA’s investigation into complaints from dog owners who claimed their pets got sick from eating chicken jerky dog treats imported from China. The Chinese will stop at nothing to force its dubious chicken into the U.S. market to unsuspecting consumers, I thought. What an ironic example of how screwed up our food safety system really is.
The USDA has a fairly elaborate process to approve imported meat and poultry products for human consumption. If there are no major issues with the exporting country’s food safety system, it takes about two years between the time a country applies to USDA and publication of the final regulations approving its application. Unfortunately, such a system is not in place for other imported foods that are regulated by the FDA, including pet food.
Food & Water Watch has led a campaign to prevent China to export their poultry products for human consumption since 2005 when the Bush Administration supported regulation to allow China to export processed poultry products to the United States. China first asked the USDA for approval to export its poultry products to the U.S. in 2003. Even though 2004 USDA audits turned up unsanitary conditions in several Chinese poultry plants they visited, and there had been several outbreaks of H5N1 bird flu in Chinese poultry flocks that killed thousands of animals and some humans, the Bush Administration proceeded to propose the new regulation in November 2005 anyway.
Furthermore, the slaughter facilities in China did not meet USDA inspection requirements. So, the proposed regulation restricted any poultry exported to the U.S. to products where the raw poultry came from “approved sources.” At the time, the only “approved sources” were the U.S. or Canada, which meant that North American poultry slaughterhouses could ship their raw carcasses to China to be cooked and the finished products could then be shipped back to the U.S. in order for U.S consumers to “enjoy” them. As ridiculous as that sounds, the Bush Administration approved that rule in April 2006 over the objections of most of the people who commented on the proposed rule, including Food & Water Watch. When the rule was published, USDA estimated that approximately 2.5 million pounds of this exported processed poultry from China would be consumed annually.
Since no U.S. or Canadian poultry processing company stepped forward to take advantage of such a wonderful opportunity, the Chinese stepped up pressure on USDA to permit it to ship processed poultry originating in China directly into the U.S. Then, Congress intervened. Led by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the Congress in 2008 and 2009 explicitly prohibited USDA from spending any money to implement or propose any regulations that would permit China to export processed poultry products to the U.S. In response, China filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization (WTO) arguing that the U.S. was treating its poultry products unfairly. Big U.S. agribusiness put pressure on the new Obama Administration in 2009 to have the congressional ban lifted because the Chinese had threatened retaliatory action on U.S. agricultural exports to China. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative began to lobby Congress to have the ban lifted. The 2010 spending bill for USDA lifted the ban and China eventually won its WTO case against the U.S. Even though the Chinese prevailed, it meant that USDA had to restart its review process of the Chinese food safety system.
The Chinese have been less than cooperative in this new review by USDA. According to the verbal report I received from USDA officials on July 18, the Chinese government did not permit USDA inspectors back into their poultry processing facilities until December 2010. USDA inspectors, once again, found food safety deficiencies in those plants. The Chinese wrote to USDA in early 2012 that the deficiencies identified in 2010 audit had been corrected but have yet to schedule a time for USDA inspectors verify Chinese poultry facilities themselves. Why were the Chinese dragging their feet in completing the review process when they have made it such a big trade issue? The July 18 FDA alert on Chinese chicken jerky dog treats offered a major clue. I asked Food & Water Watch’s research department to dig into the volume of pet food imports from China and this is what the found:
The two federal agencies in charge of food safety in the U.S. have jointly published a manual of advice for avoiding foodborne illness during pregnancy.
Pregnant women are at higher risk for severe illness from certain foodborne pathogens, including Listeria monocytogenes and Toxoplasma gondii, because hormonal changes render their immune systems more susceptible to infection. Listeria, Toxoplasma and other bugs can be dangerous or even fatal to both the mother and her unborn baby.
“Food Safety for Pregnant Women” was released Wednesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture along with updated versions of five pre-existing food safety booklets for other groups of people at risk for serious illness from food poisoning. These include guides for cancer patients, transplant recipients, people with HIV/AIDS, older adults and people with diabetes.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
MessageToEagle.com – A while back scientists expressed that 
After adding 218 counties in 12 states to the list of designated disaster areas, Vilsack announced two new ways that farmers and ranchers could seek relief. The first is a 3.8 million-acre expansion of emergency haying and grazing areas on conservation land. The second is a 30-day grace period that crop insurance companies have agreed to to extend to farmers on their premiums.
MessageToEagle.com – There has been a great deal of hype over the coming new age. Written in sacred texts, carved in stone all over the world and in the alignment of stars above heralding the dawn of Aquarius, we are reminded to ‘awaken’ and ‘remember’.
Galileo Galilei. Image credit: MessageToEagle.com
In a letter responding to concerns raised by Consumers Union, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said FSIS has developed updated guidance material on labels that it will send to meat companies and the agency plans to investigate unapproved label claims.
The San Francisco Herb and Natural Food Company is recalling 16 products for potential contamination of filth. There was a mouse infestation at the company’s Fremont warehouse. The products were sold mostly over the internet in the U.S. No illnesses have been reported in connection with the consumption of these products. For questions, call Dr. Fahimeh Niroomand at 510-770-1215 extension 115.
Publix Super Markets is recalling custom sub sandwiches made with 
Ken’s Foods Inc. is recalling some food service dressings and sauces that contain onions that are part of the 
