Archive for the 'Food' Category
USDA Moves to Let Monsanto Perform Its Own Environmental Impact Studies on GMOs
April 24th, 2011Via: Grist: In early April, the USDA made what I’m reading as a second response to Judge White, this one even more craven. To satisfy the legal system’s pesky demand for environmental impact studies of novel GMO crops, the USDA has settled upon a brilliant solution: let the GMO industry conduct its own environmental impact […]
Pesticide Exposure in Pregnancy Linked to Lower IQ in Kids
April 21st, 2011Via: U.S. News and World Report: Three new studies draw a link between prebirth exposure to a class of pesticides widely used on food crops and lower intelligence scores in children. The effect is especially noticeable in kids from a California farming region where they and their mothers were also potentially exposed to pesticides through […]
7 Million Afghans Will Go Hungry Without Aid
April 17th, 2011In other news: Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents Via: Reuters: The United Nations warned on Friday of a looming food aid shortage in Afghanistan that could leave more than 7 million people hungry unless it received urgent cash donations of over $250 million to buy more supplies. Most […]
U.S. Meat Widely Contaminated with Drug-Resistant Bacteria
April 16th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times: Meat in the U.S. may be widely contaminated with strains of drug-resistant bacteria, researchers reported Friday after testing 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey purchased at grocery stores. Nearly half of the samples — 47% — contained strains of Staphylococcus aureus, the type of bacteria that most commonly causes […]
ABB FRIDA Concept Robot for Industrial Dual-Arm Assembly Applications
April 14th, 2011Foxconn assembly line workers make about $3480 per year, or $34,800 over a decade. How much will one of those ABB FRIDA robots (and associated systems) cost? My guess is that Foxconn could pay two human factory workers for a decade for less than the cost of one of those robots. Eventually, though, a single […]
Chicago School Bans Lunches Brought from Home; Students Must Eat Cafeteria Food; Exceptions Made for Medical Reasons
April 11th, 2011Napoleon Dynamite from dazedcracker on Vimeo. Via: WREG: At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria. Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their […]
GMOs Linked to Organ Disruption in 19 Studies
April 11th, 2011Via: Institute for Responsible Technology: A new paper shows that consuming genetically modified (GM) corn or soybeans leads to significant organ disruptions in rats and mice, particularly in livers and kidneys. By reviewing data from 19 animal studies, Professor Gilles-Eric Séralini and others reveal that 9% of the measured parameters, including blood and urine biochemistry, […]
EPA: New Radiation Highs in Little Rock Milk, Philadelphia Drinking Water
April 10th, 2011Via: Forbes: Milk from Little Rock and drinking water from Philadelphia contained the highest levels of Iodine-131 from Japan yet detected by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to data released by EPA Saturday. The Philadelphia sample is below the EPA’s maximum contaminant level (MCL) for iodine-131, but the Little Rock sample is almost three times […]
Fukushima: TEPCO Claims to Have Stopped Leak of Highly Radioactive Water, For Now
April 6th, 2011Your mileage may vary. Via: Bloomberg: Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from a pit near one of the reactors at its stricken nuclear station north of Tokyo, after five days of trying to stem the flow. Related: Fishing Halted in Japan’s Ibaraki After Radioactive Water Contaminates […]
SEAWATER 7.5 MILLION TIMES OVER LEGAL RADIATION LIMIT NEAR FUKUSHIMA NUCLEAR POWER PLANT
April 5th, 2011Reuters: Engineers also plan to build two giant polyester “silt curtains” in the sea to block the spread of more contamination from the plant. Well, good luck with that. I wonder: Is it even possible to entomb that thing in such a way that prevents the radioactive waste products from percolating into the ocean? Via: […]
