swine flu: the mis-information

As we have all heard, there are great concerns over a possible pandemic of swine flu.

While I do not think this should be taken lightly, I do think the media is not providing the entire truth to this story.  Whether this becomes serious or not, only time will tell.  But the one fact that is not being told is that we (the public and consumer) have in our power the possibility of this absolutely NOT getting worse in the future.  But, they don’t want you to know this.

You may find in the various reports that the great omission is how this all happened.  So, I am going to tell you:

This all happened because of our insatiable desire for meat, and our unethical treatment of animals.

There.  Done.  You are not in the dark anymore.  Don’t you feel better.

In order to have enough meat to provide for U.S. consumption, corporations create Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s), or factory farms.  These are farms where large volumes of animals are raised and slaughtered to produce as much food, as quickly as possible. They have developed ways to grow these animals to as large as they can in the shortest of times.  Most of this is because they fill them with growth hormones.

Because of the confined nature of the farm, along with the use of hormones, they have to do disastrous things to these animals.  For example, pigs don’t like to be contained.  It naturally makes them nervous, and with the addition of hormones, that behavior can get worse.  As a result, many pigs have taken up the habit of gnawing on things.. any things.  There is a tendency for the animals to gnaw off another animals tail.  To prevent this, instead of changing the way they raise these animals, because that would affect the bottom line, they simply cut off each pigs tail.  This is one resaon, all the animals have to be on a cocktail of antibiotics to prevent infection and disease.

The combination of the hormones and the antibiotics has led to an ever increasing resistant strain of bacterium and viri.  Which in turn leads to an ever-increasing dose of antibiotics, and the circle continues.  So, we are now in a situation where we have extremely resistant strains of this virus migrating whereever the pork is being delivered.

Hence… swine flu outbreak.

And before you jump on the anti-mexican, anti-immigration ship… aside from the fact it is racist, it is also ill-informed:

In the last several years, U.S. hog conglomerates have opened giant swine CAFOs south of the border, including dozens around Mexico City in the neighboring states of Mexico and Puebla. Smithfield Foods also reportedly operates a huge swine facility in the State of Veracruz. Many of these CAFOs raise tens of thousands of pigs at a time. Cheaper labor costs and a desire to enter the Latin American market are drawing more industrialized agriculture to Mexico all the time, wiping out smaller, traditional farms, which now account for only a small portion of swine production in Mexico.

This is not a fault of Mexico or Mexicans.  This is UNITED STATES corporations using international policy to grow swine in such a way that is leading to the death of these people.  THIS country is the sole holder of the blame.

The only way we can fight this current outbreak is through the localized treatment of individuals with the hope that we have an antibiotic strong enough to counter the swine flu.

The only way we can prevent this in the future is stop our current practices of how we raise animals for consumption.  The only way that can stop is when we, the consumer, demand better food and eat less meat.

are you chicken?

In the final days of Bush’s administration, there will be many press releases on last minute rulings. As has been posted in the past, this administration seems to have it out for the environment.

One of the midnight regulations expected to occur is a ruling on poultry farms that exempts them from having to report there emissions due to ammonia or other noxious pollutants. This comes on the heals of an investigation from the Environmental Integrity Group (EIP) that shows the levels of ammonia released from these farms is at higher levels than most factories.

Multiple studies have shown that broiler producers in the top 10 states released an estimated
481,764,049 pounds of ammonia in 2007, or more than eight times the combined total reported
by industrial sources – such as steel mills and oil refineries. Egg laying operations released an estimated 221,551,888 pounds of ammonia in 2007

Ammonia is an irritant to the mucus membrane system (eyes, nose, throat), causing burns and respiratory issues. Although the EPA has never placed limits on acceptable levels, OSHA has. The concentrations released at factory farms greatly exceeds OSHA levels. The poultry industry has requested the exemption under the “right-to-know” laws; which essentially translates into “if they don’t ask, don’t tell”. Implications are that rural towns could be completely left in the dark about the air quality in their towns and the potential health impact.

You can get more information through the EIP press release, HERE.

deadly bacteria found in meat

In my book, there are two things at the top of my list for what you can do to help stop Climate Change. The first one, stop watching television, which requires a more lengthy discussion at another time. The second, stop (preferred option) or dramatically reduce your meat intake.

There are many reasons why I think you should get away from meat and you can go HERE for one of my articles on the topic. But it has been shown time and time again that the meat industry is, I think, the third leading cause of greenhouse gases, water usage, dead zones in soil, and the list goes on.

Yesterday, new data was released that highlights another reason that you need to stay away from meat: Tainted meats point to superbug C. diff in food, via MSNBC.

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile, a gut bug known as C. diff.

Here is what C. diff is:
C. diff has long been a common, usually benign bug associated with simple, easily treated diarrhea in older patients in hospitals and nursing homes. About 3 percent of healthy adults harbor the bacteria with no problem. But overuse of antibiotics has allowed the germ to develop resistance in recent years, doctors said, creating the toxic new type that stumps traditional treatment.

About 80 percent of C. difficile infections now occur in hospital or health care settings — and the number of infections is rising. About 13 in every 1,000 hospital patients is infected or colonized with the bacteria, a rate between 6.5 and 20 times higher than previously estimated, according to figures released last week by the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, or APIC.

Of course, the CDC says there is no link between tainted meat and the disease. This is the CDC that is under the direction of the Bush Administration and we all know their policies behind science. Meaning, don’t trust them. They are under a similar branch as the Bisphenol-A passing FDA.

One of the reasons the CDC feels so confident in their claim is that it takes weeks to get symptoms after ingesting C. diff, which makes finding it’s source nearly impossible. This bug is very hard to kill, in fact it DOES survive most cooking techniques.

In other words, this is not good and I highly recommend, if you do choose to eat meat, know where it came from.

they aren’t “super”markets, they’re “corn”markets

Even though it may seem contradictory to what “see” in the market, a huge percentage of our farming is commodity farming, specifically corn farming. In fact, when people talk about farms being subsidized, it is not all farms, it is only commodity farms (soy, cotton, wheat, and corn).

Corn is the biggest. As we know it is used as a sweetener and an ethanol, but did you know it goes into the box that your cereal is in? And, by the way, the cereal, too? In fact, corn is in everything. There is not one aisle, except ironically the produce aisle, where you do not see corn on a daily basis.

Even your meat.

What? You think I am insane, don’t you?

Some brief history… in the past, our livestock was raised eating grass, or worms, or our extra food. It benefits us for them to eat this way. Take the cow, for example. Grass is an amazing plant high in fiber and nutrients, like omega oils. We want those nutrients but it is nearly impossible for us to digest grass to get those things out. The cow has evolved over centuries to be ruminants just to be able to digest this food. The nutrients are absorbed into its cell tissue, we eat the cow, we get nutrition that we would otherwise have no access to. It is the circle of life. Cows were healthy walking around all day long, munching on clover, not standing in its own waste.

And then, demand for cow went up and farmers needed to get it raised, killed and out to market in the shortest time possible. Grass became a limitation and so they started working with the surplus from the corn growers and gave that to the cattle. But, they aren’t designed to eat the corn. So they get sick… hence, an increase in antibiotics. Not to mention that they are now contained, standing in inches deep of their own fecal material, so they need even more antibiotics.

Oooh… and, here’s a fun fact. Did you know that grass fed cattle does not have “marbling”? That this is a consequence of grain/corn fed cattle, and as a result ranchers heavily marketed to the USDA to make “marbling” a positive quality and a rating system, when in fact it is a sign of a diseased animal. Yum.

Why am I bringing this up? I just read an interesting article from some scientists out of Hawaii that studied the chemical composition of food from restaurants all over the country.

“The pair found that 100% of the chicken in these three chains had been reared on corn alone. Some 93% of the beef came from cows that had been fed a corn-only diet.” And, “the team was even able to determine what type of oil the fries had been cooked in – a mixture of vegetable oils at McDonald’s and Burger King, corn oil at Wendy’s. In fact, of 160 products purchased at Wendy’s, the researchers did not find a single one without some corn component.”

One conclusion: …notes that government subsidies that favour corn have encouraged pesticide- and fertiliser-intensive monoculture farming in the US. “We are using corn in ways that are completely unsustainable,” says Hird.

And, I hope he doesn’t mind, but I also really liked this comment:
The problems with corn also include nitrogen fertilizer runoff that has been cited in several scientific reports and a number of news articles as causing expanding dead zones off the USA Gulf Coast and in the Atlantic. What should be done for animal feed is turning to alfalfa and related legumes with some soybean meals as soybeans also give oil perhaps to be used as fuel or made into a butter. Soybean milk substitutes would avoid cows that belch methane.

But the one certain step needed is to forget biofuels. Why? Because they are only a carbon dioxide recycling process that removes not one carbon atom from the balance of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. We need to get a shift for hydrogen, which seems to be getting ignored especially by big energy tangled with big oil that fears several trillion dollars in refineries and oil field investments will be wiped out. We should also be expanding windmills for electricity as they would be recovering some of the energy lost by burning fossil fuels causing global warming.

Dr. J.Singmaster, Fremont, CA, USA

“Vote with your fork. You get three votes a day.” – Michael Pollan, Food Fight

HERE is the article

trend alert

Do you remember when I posted about Tazmanian Devils and their likely extinction?

You can go HERE to read the original post. Essentially, the Tazmanian Devil will be extinct in 10-20 years because of a rare form a cancer that is spreading throughout the population. I accurately write “spreading” since they have found this cancer has been able to mutate itself to be contagious. And, why is it contagious? Because of lack of biodiversity.

I warned everyone in that post about the possibility of other animals being afflicted with disease because of selective inbreeding and lack of space for animals to roam.

Well…. hate to say I told you so, but alas…. I told you so.

An analysis of commercial chicken populations around the world by William M. Muir of Purdue University and colleagues has revealed the extent of the problem. Fifty percent or more of the diversity of ancestral breeds has been lost, they report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That could make chicken production more susceptible to disease outbreaks for which resistant genes have disappeared.

Just a note, chickens don’t really exist outside of commercial facilities, so it is silly to make it seem like they are some special population. Let’s just say “chicken populations”

You can find the whole article HERE

another one bite the dust

While you all were getting your fill of High Fructose Corn Syrup disguised as a tasty treat, George W. Bush was poisoning your water supply.

Thousands of factory farms will be exempt from needing permits that limit water pollution thanks to a new Bush Administration rule signed today. In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency did not adopt improved controls for bacteria and other pathogens that can pose risks to human health and wildlife.

The new rule:

– Creates a loophole allowing facility operators to avoid permits by claiming they won’t have a discharge.
– Adopts a scheme that allows facilities to avoid certain environmental enforcement. For instance, if an operator certifies that the facility won’t have a discharge, environmental authorities will ignore enforcement action, even if the facility discharges to the nation’s waters.
– Rejects improvements in technology that would reduce harmful bacteria and other pathogens contained in animal waste, missing an opportunity to prevent water pollution and threats to public health.

Look… the Bush Administration is not stupid. They understand that by signing these policies into law it is going to take a lot of effort by the next administration to overturn them, assuming they will care. He just allowed for your water to be polluted for years and years.

Human rights violation? anyone?

you can read the whole press release from the NRDC, HERE.

help wanted

As some of you know, I fancy myself a writer. I had changed careers from being a biochemist, to acting, finally landing on screenwriting. In my pursuit, I felt I needed to learn more about being on set, interacting with people to form connections and open doors. I am fortunate to have a friend in the industry that has hired me occasionally as her assistant to learn what I can about the “industry”.

When I started to pursue a career in this industry, I will admit that I was very naïve about anything concerning the environment. Yes, I knew to conserve water. And, I knew to run my air conditioning, when I did run it, at a high thermostat setting in “off” hours to not effect the power grid. But, I was not aware of what I know and believe now.

This week, I was asked to assist on location for a television program, and I accepted the job. About an hour in, I was already horrified and looked like a deer in headlights as I watched the abuse to our environment happen before my eyes.

First off, I will give you some numbers:
- 10 semi trucks
- 7 trailers
- 2 generators
- 100 or more crew, plus their individual cars
- 25 extras, plus their cars
- 4 transportation vans
- 2 catering trucks
- 2 port-a-potties
- 3 dumpsters
- One truck needed to deliver and set up tent
- 1 process truck (this is a flat bed that a car and all camera equipment sit on, while it drives around, so you can have shots that give the car the appearance of moving.
- 6 police officers and motorcycles
- All the food and water needed for catering and craft services
o I counted 15-20 bags of ice
o 25 cases of bottled water
o Plastic, non-biodegradable plates, utensils, and cups
And my personal favorite….
- a fuel truck

Maybe you’re in the industry, or maybe not, and you are thinking to yourself this may not be as bad as it seems. In fact, as film shoots go, this may even be good. But I want to give you more information than just the numbers.

For those of you who don’t know, when you are on location, you have a base camp and you have the actual location. In this case, they were about a mile apart. Base camp had been set up in a big department store parking lot, which was paved with black top. (I only bring that up because black top is much hotter than poured concrete lots.) The location was a nice little residential neighborhood, lined with sycamores.

The trucks starting arriving at 430am. There are big semi’s that hold all of the equipment (cameras, lighting, sound, etc.), which is then transferred to smaller semi trucks which are taken to location. The talent trailers and restrooms are the size of a semi truck, and as I said, we had seven of them. I am only telling you this so you understand the scale… we filled a parking lot with all of the trucks, trailers, generators, catering, tent, individual cars and dumpsters…. Ooh, and you can’t forget our very own fuel truck!

You may be wondering why a fuel truck was even needed. Well, first off, because the shoot revolved around a scene that takes place in a car… which, by the way, we had to have three of the exact same car. But, since driving is built into the scene, fuel had to be available. We also had six motorcycle officers, which meant we had to have fuel available to them. They drive along with the shoot and ensure there are proper street closures and protection from bystanders being hurt. We also had four transportation vans that went back and forth between base camp and set. And, because it was a street scene the 25 extras that were hired (but as far as I could tell were not even used) had to have their cars, as well. But, here is another reason that the fuel truck had to be available….all of those trucks and trailers and catering that I mentioned….they run idle all day long for upwards of 16 hours. Why? Well, the best answer I could get is that it is because the air conditioning needs to be running. And when I asked “why?” to that, the answer in return was “because that’s just what we do”.

Now, it’s one thing to have these running when they are at a site full of activity and people need to get out of the sun to avoid overheating or burns. But, all of these idling trucks were at base camp. While all of the 125 people there that day were a mile away filming, these trucks were sitting by themselves, with a lone security guard (who by the way had to sit outside), with their A/C running just in case. And, I literally mean “just in case”. Trailer’s are used by the talent and we had seven that day… trailer’s that is, not talent. We had three actors on set. The other four trailers were back-up…because you know… just in case! And, in all honesty, I don’t have an issue with back up. I think on a hot day, with 125 people, you need to make sure, for safety reasons, that if someone needs to be cool, we have the resources to make them cool. I do have issue with the fact that the back-up was up and running. It seems logical to me that you would have the back up there, just in case, and then let it sit idle when it is needed. But to have it running empty, all day long, is ridiculous.

As you would expect, I have to dedicate some time in this post to food. Catering served two meals, breakfast and lunch, at base camp. Craft services is available all day, on set, providing water or other drinks, and snack items as people see fit to give themselves a munchy. I am not sure where to start with this because, if you have read any of my posts, you would guess that it left a lot to be desired from my point of view. I don’t agree with the availability of candy and donuts and other sweet or fattening items, and the lack of availability of fruit. I am going to assume that falls into the category of demand and supply. However, to not have a healthy alternative is irrational and irresponsible in my opinion. I think the two things that stood out the most to me was the waste of food at lunch time and the abundance of bottled water.

All told, catering, unlike craft services, does a nice job of providing a well balanced, variety of food for the cast and crew. There is salad and fruit and other items that can help you choose to be healthful. However, as with many things, the opposite is available as well. The lunch menu consisted of grilled salmon, chicken and beef with sides of mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus and steamed vegetables. Of course, in order to have all options available to every single person, they have to cook an over abundance of each item. I am not sure what all was cooked and discarded because I only saw what happened to the beef.

I haven’t written a post about beef and the factory farming, called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO), associated with cattle. Needless to say, when I do, chances are you will stop eating it. To see the pile stacked next to the grill was horrifying enough. But to see it get thrown away, because they over prepared and they can’t do anything with it, was depressing. (For all those people who argue that we have to have industrial farming and agriculture because of “all the starving people” in the world, I really want to know how all of our over abundance is going to help anyone in a third world country when we throw it away!) The waste of food that I saw with my own eyes, and can only imagine the rest, is unacceptable. Not only because of the destruction the production of that food has done to our environment, but also because there are people who could have used that food instead of going to a local fast food chain. I do not know what the fix is in getting that food to the less fortunate, but I know it can start by not purchasing and preparing too much to begin with.

The second thing that stood out was the high volume of bottled water. If you are reading this, and have any notion of environmental impact, you know this is a small consumption that you can stop and would result in a dramatic effect to our planet. The volume of water bottles in our landfills is horrifying, made more so by the fact that they are plastic, therefore are not going to decompose. And, as I have already mentioned before, the leaching of the plastic has increased the amount of toxins in our bodies. But, the more significant aspect of this issue in regards to this film set is that there was not one recycling bin for all those bottles; which meant these bottles had only one destination…to join their friends at the landfill and sit there for centuries.

The first thing I want you to consider, after telling you about my experience, is that this same situation happens everyday, in many locations, all around the world. According to www.imdb.com, there are 650 films currently filming, with an additional 1,000 television shows. There are an untold amount of films in pre-production getting ready to start any day. They film in Los Angeles, New York, Canada, Australia, Europe… I doubt there is one country that doesn’t produce films. The show I was on is very small scale. A film set can be double or triple the size and can last for days and weeks. The environmental impact is undeniable and unquantifiable.

And, also, let’s think about this… what do we do it for? The show I was working on, I can, in all honesty, call it pure CRAP. It has no value to our society, at all. It doesn’t educate, it has no moral compass and, in my opinion, it doesn’t even entertain. So is the environmental impact and destruction equal to the value of it being made, aired, or watched? I think in many cases, the answer is an emphatic and resolute “no”. I think many of you would agree that you would rather not have the “Desperate Housewives of Orange County” or “Hannah Montana” in production and on the air; if in return, it means you can have a world that your children can grow up in, right? And, even if you argue that you watch some shows for entertainment value, I will argue back, when did being around your friends, or your children, or reading a book stop being entertaining? And, more importantly, isn’t it more critical to be a part of a community and a society where we are connecting with one another, as opposed to being a zombie in front of a television?

The last thing I want to mention to get you thinking is something I realized on Wednesday, when I was working. It may sound silly to you, but I got something about the television industry that I had never really comprehended before; 100% of television is paid for by advertizing. Television is not like film. To see a film, you the viewer pays for what you want to see. Television is paid for by Wal-Mart, Target, Sears, McDonald’s, Petco, and obviously, it can go on and on and on. My point is this: when you watch a show, I ask you to pay attention to the commercials. If you are someone, like myself, that does not want to support Wal-Mart, then we better not watch a TV show that has a Wal-Mart commercial, because they paid for that show. This is why the newspapers print the top TV shows for the week… advertisers want to know where they should put their ads for the most visibility. I have been watching television for a very long time, and I just got this, so it may not hit you right away like it has me… but, I really want you to grasp this fully. Television is paid for with the sole interest of us continuing to being consumers. It is not produced so we will be entertained. It is produced so we will purchase more, since that is the only thing our economy is based on; consumer confidence. So when we watch television thinking that the ads are filler for the show, I challenge that and say in reality the show is filler to show us ads.

Do you really want to destroy our home because Target wants to sell you cheap contact solution? Is our environment worth the $0.40 savings that the same product would cost at Long’s, a company as far as I can tell does not buy advertising space?

As always, I never am trying to tell you what to do. My only intention is to make sure we are the most active and aware consumers we can be. I want to make sure when you sit down in front of the television, you are just a bit more conscious and conscientious of how that show was truly made and what the impact truly is.

Now, I have a more important discussion to have with myself. I have been working toward a goal for a few years because I thought I wanted to be a part of this industry. Right now, I am faced with an ethical dilemma, which only I can answer for myself. I sit here and wonder how Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz, Ed Begley Jr. and Darryl Hannah can do it; do you buy offsets? Do you turn a blind eye? I know that my first decision is to watch only that which benefits society and to write what I feel contributes and not harms. I know this is an ongoing discussion and I will stay in the conversation to make the best decision for me and the ones I love, which is all I ever ask of anyone. Get all the information you can, and then do your absolute best.

I wanted to take more pictures, but it isn’t allowed because of confidentiality. Hopefully, these can give you some idea of scale of the largeness of this shoot: