(Photo credit: pennstatelive)

Travis Arp is Ph.D. student at Colorado State University studying Meat Science and “grew up on a farm.” He says in the comments section of his post that 1,500,000 additional cattle will need to be raised to meet the shortfall due to the closure of three of four of Beef Product Inc,’s plants. That should [...]]]>

(Photo credit: pennstatelive)

Travis Arp is Ph.D. student at Colorado State University studying Meat Science and “grew up on a farm.” He says in the comments section of his post that 1,500,000 additional cattle will need to be raised to meet the shortfall due to the closure of three of four of Beef Product Inc,’s plants. That should drive up the cost of ground beef and move some marginal lands into cattle production and feed production.

Reblogged from The Meat of the Issues:

So it has come to this.  Three weeks of reporting on the LFTB controversy and ABC has achieved their goals…some intentional and some maybe not-so-intentional.  Regardless, they have thoroughly and effectively scared the slime out of the U.S. consumer.

For anyone involved in the meat industry, our world has revolved around this topic for the better part of the last month; debunking myths, trying to spread factual information, fielding unending numbers of questions from consumers, and fighting an onslaught of negative press that has snow balled so large it crashed into three of the four BPI plants that produce finely textured lean beef and made them shut their doors.

Read more… 761 more words of Travis Arp’s post.

Related articles

• Dot Earth Blog: Why I’m O.K. with ‘Pink Slime’ in Ground Beef (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Consumer beefs with red meat put producers on defensive (usatoday.com)
• LFTB, BeefisBeef (trackmycrop.wordpress.com)

(Photo credit: jkblacker)

My latest article for the Lake County Record-Bee Green Scene page:

Regular readers of the Timberati blog or the Green Chain column know that I am not chemo-phobic. In fact, I enjoy eating chemicals because all foods are chemicals.

To be afraid of chemicals is to fear our world. We cannot escape chemicals; they surround us. After all, water is a chemical, carbohydrates are chemicals, lipids and [...]]]>

(Photo credit: jkblacker)

My latest article for the Lake County Record-Bee Green Scene page:

Regular readers of the Timberati blog or the Green Chain column know that I am not chemo-phobic. In fact, I enjoy eating chemicals because all foods are chemicals.

To be afraid of chemicals is to fear our world. We cannot escape chemicals; they surround us. After all, water is a chemical, carbohydrates are chemicals, lipids and proteins are chemicals, amino acids are chemicals, and vitamins are chemicals. In a (chemical) nutshell, without chemicals there is no life. We are made of chemicals, and the chemical reactions in our bodies’ cells turn food into energy so that we may function.

As Deborah Blum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, said about what people mean when they say “chemical-free,” “They mean a product free — so far as they know — of industrial or synthetic chemical compounds. It’s a concept invented by a marketing genius to sell products…”

We chemically fuel ourselves in the morning. You probably start the day with coffee, as I do; it’s a veritable witches’ brew of 2,000 chemical compounds, including: benzo(a)pyrene, benzaldehyde, benzene, benzofuran, caffeic acid, catechol, 1,2,5,6-dibenz(a)anthracene, ethyl benzene, furan, furfural, hydrogen peroxide, hydroquinone, d-limonene, and 4-methylcatechol. Tea is not much better. In fact, all food is naturally loaded with chemical poisons, toxins, carcinogens and mutagens because Nature put it there.

Consider any potato, organically grown or conventionally grown matters not a whit. It provides three times the calories per acre of rye or wheat and it is easy to grow. It is not sexy but it is filling and nutritious. Yet, “the potato is a regular Chernobyl among vegetables,” writes P. J. O’Rourke in his 1994 book, All the Trouble in the World, “Within the dread spud we find solanine, chaconine, amylase inhibitors, and isonavones —which, respectively, cause gastrointestinal-tract irritation, harm your nervous system, interfere with digestive enzymes, and mimic female sex-hormone activity. An extra helping of au gratin and you’re a toilet-bound neurasthenic hermaphrodite with gas. If you live that long. Potatoes also contain arsenic.”

Potatoes and coffee are but two examples, the point is the presence of natural poisons, toxins, carcinogens and mutagens applies to virtually all foods.

The ‘chemicals are bad’ mantra begins, as Deborah Blum points out, when food producers intentionally put chemicals, synthetic chemicals especially (usually for preserving and extending shelf life), in our food. Never mind that people have practiced food preservation using chemicals for several millennia. For instance they have used sodium chloride (salt), dihydrogen monoxide (water) and acetic acid (vinegar) to preserve various vegetables by pickling them to have them through the winter.

Which brings us to the use of ammonia (NH3) and boneless lean beef trimmings (BLBT) or what detractors, such as U.S. Department of Agriculture whistleblower, Gerald Zirnstein, and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, sneeringly call ‘Pink Slime.’

On March 7, ABC News ran a story titled, “70 Percent of Ground Beef at Supermarkets Contains ‘Pink Slime’” The story contends that at some time between 1989 and 1993 former undersecretary of agriculture, Joann Smith okayed the use of BLBT over the objections of some USDA scientists, and upon leaving the USDA, was rewarded with an appointment to a board of directors for one of Beef Products, Incorporated’s (BPI) suppliers.

BPI uses centrifuges to separate bits of meat from fat to make BLBT. According to a 2008 story in the Washington Post, around 1998 Eldon Roth and his engineers at BPI, the makers of BLBT, “began working with ammonium hydroxide, a food additive already approved by federal regulators for use in processing cheese, chocolate and soda. It also exists naturally in beef.” Because pathogens such as E.coli O157:H7 are used to the acidic conditions in the intestinal tract, Roth hoped that lowering the pH would “create less hospitable conditions for bacteria.” It did.

There you have it. Around 14 years ago, BPI developed a way to treat bits of meat with a USDA approved anti-microbial food additive that is used in sodas, cheeses and chocolates. In other words, we have been eating ‘Pink Slime’ without complaining for over a decade and swallowing ammonium hydroxide even longer.

No one is accusing BPI of creating an unsafe product, only one that sounds icky.

This is a first-world problem friends, worrying about icky-sounding food. “Until comparatively recently,” Rob Lyons writes in Panic on Plate, “there was only one question that the majority of people needed to ask in relation to food: how will we get enough?”

BPI’s produces safer ground beef, reduces waste and keeps down food costs. Shame on them!

“Waiter, may I have some more chemicals, please?”

Update (3/26/2012):

J. Patrick Boyle of the American Meat Institute has issued a statement about ABC News’ report:

Congratulations, ABC World News. Your relentless coverage and uninformed criticism of a safe and wholesome beef product has now delivered a hook for yet another nightly news broadcast.

Today, a three-week war waged on a beef product called lean finely textured beef came to a painful head as hundreds of people lost their jobs when one of the primary processors shuttered three plants. While lean finely texture beef was given a catchy and clever nickname in ‘pink slime,’ the impact of alarming broadcasts about this safe and wholesome beef product by Jamie Oliver, ABC News and others are no joke to those families that are now out of work.

Lean finely textured beef has been processed for two decades, blended into ground beef at very low levels to enhance the leanness of ground beef and safely consumed. But the frenzy of misinformation that has swirled during the last several weeks gives new meaning to Winston Churchill’s great quote, ‘A lie gets half way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.’

Sources:

“70 Percent of Ground Beef at Supermarkets Contains ‘Pink Slime’” ABC News By Jim Avila, Mar 7, 2012 7:52pm http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/03/70-percent-of-ground-beef-at-supermarkets-contains-pink-slime/ (accessed March 19, 2012)

“All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty” by P. J. O’Rourke, 1994

“Ammonium Hydroxide.” Beef Products Inc. http://beefproducts.com/ammonium_hydroxide.php (accessed March 19, 2012)

“BPI Ground Beef Gets Support From Food Safety Leaders” Food Safety News by Dan Flynn Mar 09, 2012

“Chemical-Free Nonsense” Los Angeles Times By Deborah Blum, January 22, 2012. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/22/opinion/la-oe-blum-chemicals-20120122 (accessed March 19, 2012).

“Eating ‘Pink Slime’: Why It’s NBD (No Big Deal).” JetLagged Magazine. http://jetlaggedmagazine.com/snobby-scholar/eating-pink-slime (accessed March 22, 2012).

“Engineering a Safer Burger” Washington Post by Annys Shin, June 12, 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/11/AR2008061103656.html?sid=ST2008061200002 (accessed March 19, 2012)

“Lies, damned lies and ‘pink slime’.” Panic on a Plate blog by Rob Lyons. http://www.paniconaplate.com/index.php/site/article/liesdamnedliesandpink_slime/ (accessed March 22, 2012)

“Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed An Eating Disorder” by Rob Lyons, 2011

“Q&A with Elisabeth Hagen, Part II: Poultry, ‘Pink Slime’ and Labeling. ” Food Safety News http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/03/qa-with-elisabeth-hagen-part-ii-poultry-pink-slime-and-labeling/ (accessed March 22, 2012)

“Questions and Answers about Ammonium Hydroxide Use in Food Production.” Food Insight. http://www.foodinsight.org/Resources/Detail.aspx?topic=QuestionsandAnswersaboutAmmoniumHydroxideUseinFood_Production (accessed March 19, 2012)

“Thanksgiving dinner hazard.” American Council on Science and Health. http://www.wnd.com/2002/11/16035/ (accessed March 20, 2012).

“The Truth About Jamie Oliver’s ‘Pink Slime’” Huffington Post – UK. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/rob-lyons/jamie-olivers-pink-slimeb1240983.html (Accessed February 2, 2012)

Related articles

• Grocery Stores Respond To Pink Slime Outcry (pittsburgh.cbslocal.com)
• Wegmans Transitioning Away From ‘Pink Slime’ Beef (baltimore.cbslocal.com)
• Editorial – Pink slime: Where’s the beef (bostonglobe.com)

Do you think that what commercials want to sell you and people promoting a “green” lifestyle are miles apart? They are not as far apart as you might think.

Commercials sell a fantasy world; the message is usually: “If you buy this, you will be sexually desirable.” Commercials come from advertisers whose job it is tell you a story to suspend your disbelief and imagine that you could be cool.

There are also messages targeted by those in the green community: “If you do [this], you will be [...]]]> My latest Green Chain column for the Lake County Record-Bee:

Do you think that what commercials want to sell you and people promoting a “green” lifestyle are miles apart? They are not as far apart as you might think.

Commercials sell a fantasy world; the message is usually: “If you buy this, you will be sexually desirable.” Commercials come from advertisers whose job it is tell you a story to suspend your disbelief and imagine that you could be cool.

There are also messages targeted by those in the green community: “If you do [this], you will be green” or, more frequently, “People who do [this] are not green—stop them before they do more harm!”

“Slogans and sound bites masquerade as scientific fact,” is what Tom Knudsen wrote in a 2001 Sacramento Bee Special Report titled “Environment, Inc.” Inoculating yourself against bogus bromides requires that you be aware and learn the facts.

A green lifestyle means that you support the wise and sustainable use of our earth’s resources. So, frugality is the ultimate goal and wasting anything–land, wood, paper, minerals, time, energy–is not, by definition, “green.” If you want to “live simply, so that others can simply live,” do not waste your time or treasure on quack products.

Here is a list of some red flags for you to watch for:

1. Claims couched in scientific gibberish

Quacks and charlatans have long used highfalutin gibberish to make a useless product sound legitimate. The Iraqi government bought, to the tune of $40,000 each, 150 “ADE-651” bomb detection devices. Each ADE-651 consisted of a telescoping antenna that swiveled on a palm-sized plastic box with a plastic RFID chip inside. The manufacturer claimed it used “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction” to locate bombs. These worthless pieces of plastic and metal do not do anything and so have meant hundred of deaths and injuries due to bombs going through checkpoints undetected.

2. The product sounds scientific

During the 1940s, Dr. William Koch, a Detroit physician and homeopathic practitioner, claimed that he had synthesized a substance he called glyoxylide. Glyoxylide was an antidote to the “toxins,” that caused ailments including diabetes and cancer. This miracle drug worked even at the minute level of one part per trillion. Glyoxylide was merely distilled water.

3. The product claims to rid the body of toxins

Ridding our bodies of toxic substances are the jobs of our livers and kidneys, and if they are healthy, they do just fine. We send most bad things into a toilet. And, no, it is not possible not to put toxic substances in your body. As examples: honey contains benzyl acetate; chocolate contains an alkaloid, theobromine; brussels sprouts, cabbages, cauliflower, collard greens, and horseradishes contain allyl isothiocyanate; and neochlorogenic acid lurks in apples, apricots, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cherries, coffee, kale, peaches, and pears. These are but a few examples; the list includes all food. (Ames, 1990)

Everything has a toxic dose and everything has a non-toxic dose. Let me repeat that last statement because it is critical to our understanding the world. EVERYTHING we come in contact with can be toxic and harm us, including water and oxygen. Paracelsus, the father of modern toxicology, put it this way: “Sola dosis facit venenum (only the dose makes the poison).”

4. Anecdotes and testimonials alone support the claims

Stories have power. We believe stories. That is why commercials work. Vice-President Dan Quayle supposedly said, “We should develop anti-satellite weapons because we could not have prevailed [against the Soviet Union] without them in ‘Red Storm Rising’.” While a number of my friends, rightfully, knock Quayle here for his naïveté, they see no irony to reference Huxley’s “Brave New World” when explaining their worries over genetic engineering.

Stories alone without numbers to back them up are misleading. The next time you see a diet commercial, check the small print below the celebrity spokesperson: “Results not typical.”

5. Attacks and name calling

When a group or product attacks critics as being in the employ of Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Oil, or Big Bogeyman, you should wonder about the people making the accusations. Name-calling is a way of ducking an issue and muddying the message without addressing the facts. The meme that big industries are evil is just too trite. You know, the world is not as simple as that.

***

These are but a few of the red flags to watch for. Your time, money, or talent should not be wasted. After all, being wasteful is not green.

Related articles

• Magic Wand Bomb Detector Deemed Fraudulent, Inventor Imprisoned (techcrunch.com)
• Drive against quackery urged (nation.com.pk)
• For Mice and Men, Dose Doth Make the Poison (timberati.com)

Alternatively, we could double our farmland and cultivate over 80% [...]]]> Norman Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution, estimated we could feed four billion people if we used organic farming. The earth now is home to seven billion people and will probably go to nine billion before leveling off and declining, according to the United Nations. Organic farming means 50% of our world population would die horrible deaths. Who should decide who lives?

Alternatively, we could double our farmland and cultivate over 80% of our earth’s land. Goodbye, rainforests.

Yes, there is another alternative, to lower population growth, but that is already occurring. The answer is not less food but more food and wealth to have that trend continue. (See this animated chart at gapminder.org) Population growth is plummeting. Not one country has a higher birth rate now than it had in 1960. “Most environmentalists still haven’t gotten the word,” writes Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame), “On every part of every continent and in every culture (even Mormon [his words]), birth rates are headed down. They reach replacement level and keep dropping.”

Why is it that organic farming cannot support as many people that conventional farming can? It turns out that pesticides and fertilizers both cut down on losses to pests and boost growth of the plants. Fossil fuels allow conventional farming to use less land than organic methods. “By spending not much energy to make fertilizer and run machinery — and trivial amounts of energy to ship the stuff we grow from the places it grows best,” writes Stephen Budiansky, a former editor of the scientific journal, Nature.

Organic farming is less efficient than conventional farming; as a result, the earth suffers. Without pesticides and fertilizers boosting yields, we have to press more land into production, land that was forested before being pressed into agricultural use.

Converting land to agricultural use is the prime cause of deforestation, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) . Let me repeat that because it bears repeating.

Converting land to agricultural use is the prime cause of deforestation.

Conventional farming needs fewer acres. There is real environmental degradation in organic agriculture because it requires an average of 30% more than conventional agriculture.

“We have spared and conserved hundreds of millions of acres of land that otherwise would have had to be brought into agricultural production. That’s land that protects wildlife, that adds scenic beauty.- Stephen Budiansky

That means we spare wetlands, grasslands, forests, and rainforests from being cleared for agriculture.

The earth cannot afford organic. We cannot afford organic. The ineluctable tradeoff comes down to land for agriculture versus land for wildlife. We should always pick nature and habitat over ‘natural’ food and terroir. Agriculture, whether organic or conventional fragments and diminishes habitat, displaces wildlife, and uses toxic pesticides (yes, organic farmers use “natural” pesticides).

Nearly half the world uses wood for cook and heat, which contributes significantly to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

In this video, Matt Palmer, filmmaker and photographer, raises good points about how we produce our energy and its consequences–intended and otherwise.

Energy is important to everyone and every process on earth. We want energy to power our lives. So, as [...]]]>

Nearly half the world uses wood for cook and heat, which contributes significantly to deforestation. (Image credit: Freefoto.com)

In this video, Matt Palmer, filmmaker and photographer, raises good points about how we produce our energy and its consequences–intended and otherwise.

Energy is important to everyone and every process on earth. We want energy to power our lives. So, as Robert Bryce, author of Power Hungry, reminds us, “We put energy in a conversion device to make power: a plane, a truck, even ourselves.” [watch "What's a Watt?"] Power is what we want. Energy converts to power to allow work. (And work is “the transfer of energy from one physical system to another.” – American Heritage Dictionary)

Palmer, in this video, considers the scope of our energy needs, what it would take to re-tool the world to non-fossil fuel based systems, and:

What does it mean to say: “Dirty Oil,” “Clean Energy,” “Renewable,” “Sustainable.”

In the project, he wants to through “Constant critical thinking,” “Challenge the idea that fossil fuels are only bad, and that alternative energies are free and benign and free from resource limits.”

“Unintended Consequences” began as an idea to do a feature film that examines the unintended consequences of different energy sources from oil sands, natural gas, and coal to alternative energy sources like wind, solar, and bio fuels, in order to forge an understanding of the impacts that come from our use of energy. So some of the central conflicts we intend to examine include questions like: how do we or can we reconcile our desire to maintain our standard of living at a time of population growth and increasing energy demand given the finite natural resources available to harness energy and the myriad of unintended consequences (social, political, environmental and economic) that result from our consumption of energy? How can we build a rational, pragmatic and optimistic framework from which to bring man, energy, environment, and technology into harmony?…The goal of the “Unintended Consequences Documentary Project” is to challenge all sides in the global energy debate from energy companies to environmental organizations to consumers to think critically about what we think we know, our assumptions, our biases, and our emotional connections to the issue. – Matt Palmer producer of the Unintended Consequences Documentary Project

Does he mean what he says he wants? So far, few people willingly do the math of alternative energy sources. However, the salt crystal lamp in the background gives me pause because they are complete quackery (according to one site I visited their salt crystal lamps “neutralize the positive ions generated by electrical devices,” thus “give your body the same relaxed feeling you experience when enjoying a day at the beach.”). It’s possibly nothing but a gift from his wife.

In corresponding with Matt Palmer, I recommended two books: Matt Ridley’s, The Rational Optimist and Robert Bryce’s, Power Hungry. He wrote that The Rational Optimist was next on his list. If he could interview Ridley and Bryce, that would be good.

Ridley know numbers, plus he can convey ideas simply. In the foreword of his book he writes, “I find that my disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change…(H)uman progress has, on balance, been a good thing…(The world) is richer, healthier, and kinder too, as much because of commerce as despite it.”

You see, the more we trade goods and services, the more we trade ideas as well. Those ideas “have sex” he says. Like DNA recombining to make unique individuals, bits of ideas cross-fertilize with others to make better ways of doing things. “In a nutshell,” Ridley says, “the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth.” For instance, changing from using animals to using machines, which need power, for farming freed up 30 percent more land, since machines don’t need pasture. Using petroleum to produce nitrogen fertilizers also freed up land, since with fertilization we require less land to be as productive. That freed land then could be used to grow more food or fiber or returned to its natural state.

Which do you think is better: fossil fuel or alternative energy sources? Why?