Miami couple forced to rip out 17-year-old veggie garden in their front yard Fruit, flowers, and flamingos are fine in a Miami Shores front yard, but a veggie garden is “inconsistent with the city’s aesthetic character.” That’s why Hermine Ricketts and Tom Carroll were ordered to ax the vegetable garden they’d had for 17 years or pay a daily $50 fine. (Judging by its reputation for tacky tropical print shirts, I’m not sure how much “aesthetic character” Miami actually has, but whatever, city officials.) Here’s Ricketts’ and Carroll’s story in a cutely animated nutshell: Sadly, this is no isolated case. A Michigan woman faced 93 days in jail for planting a garden in her front yard, a Tennessee man’s sunflowers and veggies were deemed a “nuisance,” and an Oklahoma woman’s strawberries, mint, and fruit trees were bulldozed because they were too tall. Now The Institute for Justice’s Food Freedom Initiative, which created the video above, is trying to protect Americans’ rights to grow our own food.
Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health and Environmental Nightmare January 24, 2010 | Like this article? Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. Americans love their shrimp. In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how shrimp are farmed in one region of India. Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA, and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp, they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10 different antibiotics. Understanding the shrimp that supplies our nation's voracious appetite is quite complex. A more responsible farming system involves closed, inland ponds that use their wastewater for agricultural irrigation instead of allowing it to pollute oceans or other waterways. One more consideration, even in these cleaner systems, is the wild fish used to feed farmed shrimp.
As You Sow: Environmental Health - Nanomaterials It is reported that nanotechnology is already being used in food and food related products but, due to the food industry's lack of transparency on the issue, concrete information about whether, and how much, nanomaterials are being used in food products is difficult to obtain. In order to begin answering this question, As You Sow filed the first shareholder resolutions on nanomaterials and food safety in 2008 asking Kraft and McDonald's to report on their use of nanomaterials in their products and packaging. In 2009, our dialogue with McDonald's resulted in the company publicly stating that it "does not currently support the use by suppliers of nano-engineered materials in the production of any of our food, packaging, and toys." Kraft also responded with a public statement about their use of nanomaterials in food and food packaging including that "If we ever intend to use nanotechnology, we will make sure that the appropriate environmental, health and safety concerns have been addressed."
As You Sow: Issue Brief on Nanomaterials Slipping Through the Cracks is designed to inform companies, investors, and consumers about the emerging use of engineered nanomaterials in food and food related products. It highlights the potential risks of nanotechnology for companies who are knowingly or unknowingly using it in their products and for public health. As You Sow and other leading investors surveyed 25,000 food manufacturers and tested a range of popular donuts; the results of both inquiries proved that nanomaterials are currently being used in food products. To test more food products for the presence of nanomaterials, As You Sow has also launched a crowdfunding campaign. The majority of food companies have not been responsive in providing information about their specific uses, plans, and policies on this topic and no U.S. laws require disclosure. Slipping Through the Cracks presents:
Methodology | EWG's 2013 Shopper's Guide to Pesticides in Produce™ Finding Healthier Food People don't want to consume pesticides with their food and water. The most recent government pesticide tests establish the widespread presence of pesticide residues on conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables and in tap water. In government tests analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, detectable pesticide residues were found on 67 percent of food samples after they had been washed or peeled. ^ back to top The Dirty Dozen Plus™ For the past nine years, EWG has scrutinized pesticide-testing data generated by scientists at the U.S. Highlights of this year's Dirty Dozen™ The most contaminated fruits are apples, strawberries, grapes, peaches and imported nectarines. Plus Two food crops – summer squash and leafy greens -- did not qualify for the Dirty Dozen list under the traditional EWG Shopper's Guide ratings methodology but raised special concerns because many samples test positive for: -- Organophosphate pesticides. The U.S. Pesticides in Baby Food Drinking water
How Your Chicken Dinner Is Creating a Drug-Resistant Superbug - Maryn McKenna Continuing to treat urinary tract infections as a short-term, routine ailment rather than a long-term food safety issue risks turning the responsible bacteria into a major health crisis. kusabi/Flickr Adrienne LeBeouf recognized the symptoms when they started. The burning and the urge to head to the bathroom signaled a urinary tract infection, a painful but everyday annoyance that afflicts up to 8 million U.S. women a year. LeBeouf, who is 29 and works as a medical assistant, headed to her doctor, assuming that a quick course of antibiotics would send the UTI on its way. That was two years ago, and LeBeouf has suffered recurring bouts of cystitis ever since. There is no national registry for drug-resistant infections, and so no one can say for sure how many resistant UTIs there are. Dr. But the origin of these newly resistant E. coli has been a mystery -- except to a small group of researchers in several countries. The U.S. In 2005, University of Minnesota professor of medicine Dr. Dr.
United States Accused of Planting Avian Flu in Recent H7N9 Outbreak Janet C. PhelanActivist Post Amidst allegations by a highly placed Colonel in the Chinese army that the U.S. has released a bioweapon in Mainland China, concerns are ramping up that this year's version of the avian flu, H7N9, may turn into a major pandemic. The last few years have seen several false alarms on the pandemic front. Neither the bird flu of 2004 nor the swine flu of 2009-2010 ended up being of much concern, although agencies from the WHO on down certainly created quite a flurry around both of these flu bugs. H7N9 has already shown itself to have a high mortality rate, higher in fact than the Spanish flu of 1918, which caused 50 million deaths worldwide. According to Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health, security and the environment, "This is definitely one of the most lethal influenza viruses that we have seen so far." Already, there are questions as to whether H7N9 has mutated and is now transmissible from human to human.
Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low-Wage Jobs in the Fast-Food Industry October 15, 2013, by Sylvia Allegretto, Marc Doussard, Dave Graham-Squire, Ken Jacobs, Dan Thompson and Jeremy Thompson » Full Report » California Legislative Hearing Testimony » Press Release » Press Coverage Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollments in America's major public benefits programs are from working families. But many of them work in jobs that pay wages so low that their paychecks do not generate enough income to provide for life's basic necessities. This report estimates the public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry. More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole.
Consume This First | Food Intelligence for Families Who Eat ractopamine The ban on U.S. pork and beef exports to Russia over ractopamine is costly for American producers, but not as much as was recently reported by the U.S. Ambassador. U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul told a Moscow business newspaper that the year-old ban had cost America’s pork and beef industries $4-5 billion. The ban… Continue Reading A new U.S. The sale of Smithfield Foods, the United States’ largest pork producer, to Shuanghui International, China’s largest meat company, raises new questions about the future of ractopamine, a controversial growth-promoting drug that is widely used in U.S. pork production and has long been the subject of trade disputes. Thirty-three U.S. senators from livestock states, including Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Thad Cochran (R-MS), chairwoman and ranking member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, on Tuesday sent a letter to U.S. Animal rights and food safety groups are petitioning the U.S.
See Global Research - 5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action - 5 Gyres – Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action The research we are doing The 5 Gyres team collects samples of the oceans surface to quantity the mass, size, color and type of plastic pollution floating in the gyres. We are also collecting fish to study the ingestion of microplastic particles. See our master timeline “What is the abundance of plastic pollution in the 5 Subtropical Gyres” We will use a manta trawl to collect 50 surface samples from each of the North and South Atlantic gyres. “Are surface foraging fish in the Sargasso Sea ingesting micro-plastic particles?” Foraging nocturnal fish caught during our expeditions are dissected to analyze stomach contents. “How do we analyze our samples?” Sea surface samples are returned to the lab for analysis. Have Trawl- Will Travel In order to understand if plastic pollution exists in the 5 gyres, we have built 5 trawls to loan to vessels of opportunity. Step 1. The Suitcase Manta Trawl The Suitcase Manta Trawl has a 60cm wide mouth that dips 25cm into the sea surface. The Winged Trawl