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Smithfield Farms CAFO Flu

Following Lzyjo’s suggestion on my previous post, and since we’re suppose to stop calling it Swine Flu, here’s my new name for it.

My last post prompted a few comments and emails that really made clear a number of people are very worried about it.  Of course I am too.  At the same time, I’m really upset how the situation is being managed by the various health and government agencies, and I want to say some things about this.

We are all operating under the unexplicable rule that only information that’s 100% confirmed and not considered to endanger the interests of the food industry, gets released to the public.  If the food industry has the clout to change the name of the disease, of course they have the clout to manage the entire investigation of the virus, lead it in directions of their choosing, determine the way the situation is explained and suppress any information they don’t want made public.  The public doesn’t have access to any independent person or agency, completely up to date with the situation, who is free to express honest opinions and assessments over events and news.

In my opinion, this is the same thing as being lied to.  Just being lied to doesn’t necessarily make the situation better or worse than it seems, but it means news that comes through traditional sources just can’t be trusted, and that’s something I find very disturbing.  We all know we’re being lied to, and that makes everything that much less certain and means we worry more.

I’m not any sort of expert on viruses or pandemics, but let me recap some of what’s been talked about in some of the more independent news sources on the Internet.  Of course little of this information is ‘official’ or confirmed, but I believe it to be all or mostly true.

This flu outbreak occurred more than one month before it was made public, in the Mexican city of La Gloria.  Government officials ignored repeated warnings that an infectious outbreak was under way.  It was reported at one point that 60% of the residents of the city of La Gloria had a mysterious respiratory problem, and we now know this was probably the Smithfield Farms CAFO Flu.  Now obviously 60% of the residents of this city didn’t die!  It’s something that’s far from mostly fatal.  It’s a dangerous flu, but most people who contract it do not die.

Every year roughly 36,000 people die from the common flu in the US, and the death toll of the Smithfield Farms CAFO Flu is no where near this number yet.  In addition, we are reaching the end of flu season this year in the northern hemisphere.

Scientists have frequently warned in the past that CAFO (factory farm) pig operations should not be located near CAFO chicken and other bird operations, because of the possibility of different flu viruses simultaneously infecting the same host and sharing DNA.  There are a number of CAFO chicken operations near to the Smithfield Farms CAFO in La Gloria, and that is almost certainly why this virus developed and why it contains DNA from a number of different species.

If a month ago 60% of the population of La Gloria was infected, and now the infection is in an advanced state in Mexico City, there are a huge number of infections under way! Quite likely millions of people, some of whom will experience little more than a runny nose but be infectious nonetheless.

Traditional news media is giving us the body count, like soldiers returning from war in body bags. This is a very misleading statistic!  For a while there was a little information on the number of suspected and confirmed cases — this was a lot more useful, but this information has just vanished.  The way they are presenting the body count without any assessment of the number of actual infections leads everyone to believe that people are dying as they become infected.

Scientists in the UK have begun looking into the virus, and have concluded there is nothing unusually dangerous about it, especially when compared to the H5N1 bird flu.

Don’t get me wrong, people are of course dying from the Smithfield Farms CAFO flu, and protecting yourself is a good idea.  At the same time, if you live anywhere in the areas of outbreaks, it’s not a time to panic.  It’s not a time to fear Mexicans just because of their ethnicity, as other people are likely to be infected now too.

Use common sense, don’t go to crowded places, cover your mouth when you sneeze and wash your hands often.

If you want to read more, here are some good news sources:

http://www.grain.org

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

http://www.grist.org/

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Fruit and Vegetable Guide

I recently came across this Fruit and Vegetable Guide in Dutch (intended to be printed out and folded for easy reference while you are shopping), made by Dutch food organization Weet Wat Je Eet (WWJE) (Know What You’re Eating), and I thought the information in it was interesting enough to take a stab at a translation.  Of course the information is firstly most interesting for Dutch people, then for people living in Europe, but there is some more general stuff as well.  We do live in the age of the global marketplace.  It’s the kind of thing that those of us who buy fruit and vegetables from the supermarket should really be thinking about.

As well as buying certified organic products, another good way of choosing your supermarket produce is according to what usually has high levels of pesticides.  For example, if you know bell peppers (in particular from Spain) are normally high in pesticides it might be a good idea to look for organic bell peppers.  On the other hand, there may not be a lot of point looking for organic cabbage, because this doesn’t normally have a lot of pesticide residue anyway.

[begin translation]

Fruit and Vegetable Guide

Don’t take a risk!

As consumers we consume chemical pesticides residues every day.  WWJE found 14 different residues in a box of strawberries.  Is this bad?

It’s certainly something to be concerned about.  Scientific studies show even small amounts of these chemicals can still be bad for our health.  Combinations of pesticides are also a special risk.

Children?  Pregnant?  Don’t take a risk!  Eat sufficient quantities of fruits and vegetables, this is important for your health.  In particular for born or unborn children, choose food you know is safe.  Growing children who are exposed to too many agricultural poisons can have learning and attention problems, as well as neurological and developmental problems.  Therefore, don’t take a risk and always buy clean fruits and vegetables.

How do I buy fruits and vegetables without chemical residues?

Fruits and vegetables are delicious and healthy, especially if they contain little or no agricultural chemical residues.  Unfortunately you can’t see these chemicals.  How do you know if produce is clean?  This Fruit and Vegetable Guide will give advice for this.  Take it with you in your wallet or purse!

1.  Choose Organic –  [the guide then gives some information about what the EKO (Europen Certified Organic) means and how to find stores that sell certified produce in the Netherlands]

2.  Choose the right Supermarket – [The guide then gives some advice on which supermarkets sell produce with the lowest pesticide residues in the Netherlands, according to WWJE tests].  The green stripe is the number of products tested that didn’t have any residues.  The red are the products that did contain residues.  The red circle with the slash were the number of products where the residues were above legal standards, and the skull and crossbones shows levels that represented health risks.

3.  Choose Dutch produce – The Duch food authorities tested produce in 2007 and found 2% contained residues above legal levels.  For other countries in and outside of the EU on average this was 10%.  In particular produce from Turkey, Italy and Spain were regularly seriously contaminated.  In addition, since combinations of pesticides can pose a special risk, it should be noted that products from Turkey contained on average 4 different chemicals, while Dutch products contained on average 1.3 different chemicals.  Our advice:  buy Dutch products.

4.  Choose clean products.  Research by the Dutch food authority has shown that some types of fruits and vegetables are normally clean, while others are normally contaminated with residues.  In the table you can see which are the cleanest and dirtiest.  It should be noted that in general vegetables are cleaner than fruits.  For children and pregnant women our advice is:  choose the cleanest types.  If you want to eat mandarines or grapes, buy organic!

Fruit

Cleanest

  • Kiwi
  • Passion Fruit
  • Plums
  • Bananas
  • Papaya

Dirtiest

  • Grapes
  • Mandarines
  • Lemons
  • Strawberries
  • Oranges

Vegetables

Cleanest

  • Green Cabbage
  • Red Cabbage
  • Asparagus
  • Cauliflower
  • Onions

Dirtiest

  • Cucumber
  • Bell Peppers (especially from Spain!)
  • Leaf Lettuce
  • Iceburg Lettuce
  • Endive

The law does not offer enough protection.  Unfortunately what is legal and what is safe are not the same thing.  It happens often that foods are legal, but according to international norms are unhealthy.  WWJE therefore holds supermarkets to stricter rules, as long as the laws are not sufficient.  A number of supermarkets in Germany have adopted their own stricter standards than what the law requires.

[It then goes on to explain their ongoing campaign in the Netherlands, and gives websites to look for more information]

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Fava Beans as Cattle Feed?

Sue recently left a comment on my fava bean post, and asked the following question:

Can Fava Beans (dried seed) be used to feed cattle? And if so is there anything that needs to be done to them?

It’s a great question, but unfortunately I don’t have the answer.  Is there anyone out there with cattle experience who could answer the question?

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Hops

hop_pole1

One of the plants I’m really excited about at the moment are hops Miss Fuggles just sent to me.  She sent me rhizomes from her three different varieties; Fuggles, Mathon and Cobb.  I don’t honestly know a lot about hops, but I’m eager to see how they grow.  I understand they can grow to 25ft (6 meters), but I understand these varieties won’t grow so tall.  At the moment I’m planning on about 16ft (4 meters).  If they get bigger, I’ll have to figure something else out.

I understand hops also like to grow vertically, but I don’t have any good way of building a 4 meter tall vertical structure in my garden, and the best I could come up with is what you see in the picture above, a pole with rope tied to the top at an angle.

Has anyone else grown hops?  Am I doing something terribly wrong?

hop_shoots

All three varieties survived the trip in the mail, and have started to grow.  They all look a bit like this right now.

As always, once these become established in my garden, I’ll be happy to send out more rhizomes to anyone else interested.

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Planting at the White House Garden

flotus_garden4909

It’s planting time at the White House.  Here’s their blog post about it.

The First Lady looks more comfortably dressed for the garden this time!  Of course shoes are key, and we can’t see those here.

Update:  Since making this post, I’ve since seen in the Washington Post blog (after a mention on KGI) that they planted 25 varieties of heirloom vegetables, including a bed of varieties favored by Thomas Jefferson and a variety of Dutch lettuce.  It’s not clear if the garden is completely heirloom, but heirloom varieties are prominently featured!

The first lady also mentioned on her recent trip to Europe a great deal of attention was paid to her garden plans.  I can certainly confirm, there’s a lot of interest here in the garden, and lots of people are watching.