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

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

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

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

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

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

The industry has cause for concern. TreeHugger says,

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

Electromagnetic Radiation From Power Lines and Cell Towers Disorientates Birds, Insects, Affects Plant Health

EKLIPSE is a UK based organization that aims to, “…improve the integration of emerging issues into policy development related to or impacting on biodiversity and ecosystem services.” The Telegraph reports that the nonprofit research group analyzed 97 studies and came to the conclusion that radiation from power lines, wi-fi, broadcast transmitters, and cellular towers pose a “credible risk” to wildlife and also degrades plant health. They warn that the upcoming 5G rollout could cause greater harm.

Animals including birds, mammals, insects and many others use the earth’s geomagnetic field as a magnetic compass. The EKLIPSE report showed that the magnetic orientation of birds, insects, spiders, and other animals including mammals can be disrupted by electromagnetic radiation. The report also established that these radiations also have an adverse effect on plant metabolism.

The report stated that “…serious impacts on the environment could not be ruled out.” They are asking for 5G transmitters to be placed away from areas where placement is likely to harm wildlife. The UK charity Buglife, after reviewing the report, is suggesting that 5g transmitters not be placed near LED street lamps, due to the fact that these lights attract insects and would thereby increase their exposure to the radiation.

The authors of the review concluded that there is

…an urgent need to strengthen the scientific basis of the knowledge on EMR and their potential impacts on wildlife.

… In particular, there is a need to base future research on sound, high-quality, replicable experiments so that credible, transparent and easily accessible evidence can inform society and policy-makers to make decisions and frame their policies.”

Matt Shardlow, CEO of Buglife, brought up a very good point:

We apply limits to all types of pollution to protect the habitability of our environment, but as yet, even in Europe, the safe limits of electromagnetic radiation have not been determined, let alone applied.”

This isn’t the first report on potential dangers with Electromagnetic Radiation.

A study from 2010 suggested that this electromagnetic radiation may be accelerating or causing a decline of certain animal and insect populations.

In the mid-1990s the cell phone industry commissioned a comprehensive research group called Wireless Technology Research to study cell phone health concerns. Dr. George Carlo oversaw the research. The commission started to reveal that there were serious health concerns with cell phone usage and then the industry decided to bury the results.

Researchers have been sounding the alarm for years.

The main health concern with electromagnetic radiation emitted by smart meters and other wireless technologies is that EMF and RF cause a breakdown in the communication between cells in the body, interrupting DNA repair and weakening tissue and organ function. These are the findings of Dr. George Carlo, who oversaw a comprehensive research group commissioned by the cell phone industry in the mid-1990s.” – James F. Tracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Related Reading:

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

On July 1st, Seattle became the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws and utensils. In 2008 an ordinance was passed that banned any one-time-use food-service items that aren’t recyclable or compostable, but the city made an exception for straws and utensils. Back then, biodegradable utensils and straws weren’t widely available. The exemption ended on June 30, and businesses can be fined $250 if they don’t comply.

Image credit: David Suzuki: Straws Suck

Our shoes, our clothing, our contact lenses, chewing gum, food containers, and so much more – all made of plastic. It’s in our salt, our food, and it’s in our water. Plastic may be the most insidious and enduring product we’ve ever produced. It is suffocating our planet and causing catastrophic pollution, much of it hidden and microscopic.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

Here’s a video about a whale dying from eating a plastic DVD case. Here’s a sea turtle with a straw stuck up its nose. Also, check out the documentary, Plastic Ocean.

People in the U.S. discard an estimated 500 million straws every day. Since Seattle has taken a stand against this completely unnecessary plastic waste hopefully others will follow suit.

Related Reading:

• Microplastics In Tap Water and Beer Around the Great Lakes, and Everywhere Else
• Drinking Bottled Water Means Drinking Microplastics, According To Damning New Study
• Many Hand-me-down Plastic Toys Are Toxic for Kids

Source:

• Seattle Becomes First Major U.S. City to Ban Straws – Washington Post

The majority of bacteria found on supermarket meat is antibiotic resistant, according to the Environmental Working Group. The EWG follows the Food and Drug Administration’s yearly bacterial contamination and resistance tests, and the analysis of the most recently released year, 2015, shows that almost 80% of bacteria discovered on supermarket meats is resistant to antibiotics. The bacteria detected, including salmonella and Enterococcus faecalis, demonstrated resistance to crucial antibiotics like amoxicillin and tetracyclines. To listen to the FDA, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the meat aisle at the grocery store is not an issue, but Dawn Undurraga, EWG’s nutritionist and author of the report, sees things differently.

Consumers need to know about potential contamination of the meat they eat, so they can be vigilant about food safety, especially when cooking for children, pregnant women, older adults or the immune-compromised…By choosing organic meat and meat raised without antibiotics, consumers can help reduce the amount of antibiotics used in farm animals and slow the spread of drug resistance…”

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

What to Look For

Different types of meat registered at different levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and the winner of the title most resistant goes to ground turkey. Seventy-nine percent of ground turkey tested positive for antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This continues a trend, as 73% of salmonella detected on turkey in 2014 was resistant to at least one antibiotic. Other types of meat tested also displayed antibiotic-resistant, though not on the same level, with pork chops at 71%, ground beef at 62%, and chicken breasts, leg, wings, and thighs at 36%.

Tetracyclines were another major point of concern. These are the most used class of antibiotics in food animals, and it shows in the percentage of bacteria that are resistant to that specific class. The bacteria responsible for an estimated 80 percent of human infections, Enterococcus faecalis, had significant resistance to tetracyclines across the different meats tested. Enterococcus faecalis on pork had the highest numbers, with 84 percent of bacteria present demonstrating tetracycline resistance. Chicken showed 71 percent resistance, and 26 percent of the bacteria found on beef registered resistance.

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

The Resistance is Growing

The meat industry in the U.S. is deeply flawed. E.coli has developed resistance to all 14 of the antibiotics the FDA tested in 2014. Salmonella was not far behind, developing resistance to 13 of the tested antibiotics. Several countries have limited or banned meat imports from the U.S., either due to chemicals that are given to animals during their life (pork treated with ractopamine is rejected by China) or the final treatment of meat for sale (chlorine-washed chicken in the European Union). The recent report released from the FDA suggests that those things are unlikely to change in a timely fashion.

So how do you protect yourself? With how quickly antibiotic resistance is evolving, the only meat you can eat that’s guaranteed to be free of resistant bacteria is no meat. If that’s not an option you’re ok with, make sure you’re buying responsibly raised meat, not treated with antibiotics and free range. Find your local farmer and talk to him about his animal treatment practices. Know where your food is coming from.

Sources:

• Supermarket Meat Still Superbugged, Federal Data Show – EWG
• 2015 NARMS Integrated Report – FDA.gov
• Superbugs Found in Most U.S. Supermarket Meat – Organic Consumers
• Chlorine Wash Doesn’t Remove Salmonella on Chicken – Organic Lifestyle Magazine

The majority of chicken for purchase in the United States has been subjected to a chlorine cleaning, a simple yet problematic procedure currently banned by the European Union. Farming practices in the U.S. like overcrowding and lax welfare standards have prompted companies to wash poultry with chlorinated water to meet health and safety standards. The E.U. does not accept treated poultry, but American poultry producers hoping to sell their wares in a post-Brexit Britain may be stymied by a new study that found bacteria like salmonella and listeria remained active after the controversial chlorine wash.

False Positives

Microbiologists from the University of Southhampton discovered that the American chicken cleaning process does more to camouflage the bacteria than it does to neutralize it. The chlorine washing makes it impossible to culture the chicken in a lab, making poultry treated like this appear less likely to spread food poisoning. Professor William Keevil led the university team behind the study from Southhampton.

We therefore tested the strains of listeria and salmonella that we had chlorine-washed on nematodes [roundworms], which have a relatively complex digestive system…All of them died. Many companies and scientists have built their reputations promoting anti-microbial products. This research questions everything they’ve done.”

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

Bigger Does Not Mean Better

Faulty food safety tests and American factory farming are a dangerous combination.

The majority of the British population is against introducing American poultry that’s been treated with chlorine. Poultry farmers in the U.K. concentrate their food safety efforts on the birds while they’re still alive, relying on smaller flock densities to avoid rampant infections. The conditions in U.S. poultry facilities allow bacteria to thrive. Instances of food poisoning may be ten times higher in the U.S. than in Europe. The U.S. has a much bigger system, but farmers choose sustainability for short-term gain.

If the U.K. accepts American chicken that has been treated with the chlorine wash at the end of its production cycle, the impact on public health could be serious. Kath Dalmeny, the chief executive of British food and farming pressure group Sustain, described the Southampton research as a wake-up call:

Those dead nematodes are telling us something. This research suggests US chlorine washing may give a false impression of food safety. Proper food safety relies on clean production methods with high animal welfare, resilience to disease, and full traceability and labeling – not just end-of-pipe chemical washes.”

Doubling Down

The U.S. has long been able to rely on its status as a world leader to find markets for our products. There is a distinct possibility that period is over, and that isn’t a bad thing. Factory farmed chicken might be cheaper from a money standpoint, but the world has only seen a portion of the actual bill in terms of our health, the environment, and human rights. In that respect, the chlorine wash is an apt metaphor. The chicken has the appearance of clean chicken, but dig a little deeper and you’ll find it’s all on the surface.

Recommended:

• How to Avoid GMOs in 2018 – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering
• Best Cooking Oils – Health benefits, Smoke Point, Which to Use and Avoid
• Homemade Vegan Nut Milk Recipes
• Does Meat Cause Cancer? Yes and no…

Sources:

• Chicken safety fear as chlorine washing fails bacteria tests – The Guardian
• Will modern American farming methods soon dominate British agriculture? – New Food Magazine
• Too fat to stand and their flesh rots while they’re alive: The REAL reason America’s ‘Frankenchickens’ have to be washed with chlorine as US industrial farming practices are exposed ahead of possible post-Brexit trade deal – Daily Mail

H1N1, a flu virus originating from birds and commonly identified as swine flu, has been discovered in dogs from the Guangxi region of China. These animals were brought to the vet after showing symptoms consistent with canine influenza, and researchers published their analysis of the 16 strains of flu they found. The most notable discovery was H1N1, the swine flu strain responsible for the 2009 pandemic that resulted in more than 200,000 deaths. Study co-author Adolfo García-Sastre, director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, says there is a reason to be cautious.

Related: How Viruses Work and How to Prevent and Eliminate Them Naturally

In our study, what we have found is another set of viruses that come from swine that are originally avian in origin, and now they are jumping into dogs and have been reassorted with other viruses in dogs. We now have H1N1, H3N2, and H3N8 in dogs. They are starting to interact with each other. This is very reminiscent of what happened in swine ten years before the H1N1 pandemic.”

Adaptable Influenza

The continuing battle to correctly guess the dominant flu strain of the season showcases how adaptive and varied the flu is. Often pandemics originate in animals, usually birds or swine. While dogs have never been considered a significant carrier of the virus, more varied and potentially strains have been showing up in canine tests. The potential for a devastating flu pandemic that we aren’t prepared for is high in man’s best friend. There have been documented instances of viruses from avian, porcine, and equine sources successfully jumping to dogs, and that’s a potential flu cocktail that humans don’t have immunity against.

Can It Affect Us?

Does that even matter? There is no case of a human ever being infected by canine flu.

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Humans have previously been infected by the strain of flu found in the dogs, H1N1, but previous exposure has come from birds, who were the original carriers. Of course, H1N1 is now more closely identified with pigs, after 2009 swine flu outbreak. H1N1 became the dominant strain of flu in 1998, and the virus was seriously affecting humans within ten years. Before then, the idea that humans would be suffering from swine flu was farfetched.

It’s important to note that vaccination efforts were unsuccessful in both pigs and humans, primarily due to how fast the virus evolves. H1N1 also showed resistance to Tamiflu, the controversial antiviral drug. Healthcare professionals in the U.S. ended up using vaccines nearly identical to the seasonal flu vaccine, which is a daunting prospect in light of how poorly that immunization performed this year. If the discovery of an adaptable H1N1 virus in dogs follows the same trajectory as H1N1 did in pigs, do we have any good solutions?  In cases of avian flu, farmers eliminate diseased birds from the flock immediately. Is that even an option when many Americans consider their dog a member of the family?

Recommended: How to Cure Lyme Disease, and Virtually Any Other Bacterial Infection, Naturally

The More You Know

Scientists repeatedly mention how diverse canine flu strains are becoming, and there isn’t a push to figure out why. Perhaps part of the answer is the proximity of the animals to the ultimate disease incubators – us.

The further we continue down the rabbit hole of our health care system, the more it becomes clear that we have dramatically underestimated our opponents. Our answers to the problems posed by bacteria and viruses have seemed to inspire those pathogens to greater and more creative heights at a speed not seen in nature.

Sources:

• Dogs Can Be A Future Risk for Future Influenza Panic – ASM
• Rise of dog flu strains could increase risk of next human pandemic, scientists warn – Independent
• 2009 Swine-Flu Death Toll 10 Times Higher Than Thought – Live Science
• Timeline: The secret history of swine flu – Live Science