Thanks Bjorn, I hadn't read this report, but I'm not surprised. This is much bigger than FDA cares to admit. They talked about agro/bio-terrorism at our ports but there's no program in place to look at these products.
And as Jim comments, this is not a new thing. Our cat became ill in August. Exactly like Jim describes in his dog, there are changes in mood and mental function that are unexplained by "kidney" problems.
Here's an interesting article "Filler in animal feed is open secret in China"
The reason we buy wheat gluten from China is that it's so much cheaper that it's still cheaper and higher in protein than what we can get here. Maybe that's because they figured out how to add an ingredient that is normally toxic waste and is costly to dispose of. This ingredient also fools the test that determines the value of the gluten. It looks like a digestable protein which translates directly into $$$. So, we pay big money for something that is normally a nuisance to the Chinese plastics industry. The most amazingly crooked and criminal thing about the deal is that the melamine is actually noticable to the naked eye in the gluten. Every salesman and testing agent that has seen or tested this bad gluten should be rounded up and put on trial for this. A jury should get the facts and some samples of the raw gluten so that they can see that this was not a mistake. It wasn't terrorism either. It was pure greed with a lack of any care of what would happen when someone ate it. When you start thinking about this, you come to some conclusions that make some people look very bad. Here's one; This stuff is labeled for Human consumption but it's not being used in any foods directly sold to Humans for their consumption. In my mind this says that someone noticed that this stuff was bad and decided that only pets, pigs and chickens would be fed it because they can't talk and tell what a poor food substitute this is. This is a simple case of many people making undeserved money and at the same time making victims out of the defenseless. The courts consider a pet's value as $0.00. The food suppliers know this and have no fear of paying a loss when they die. Their only liability is the vet bills. And that's only when you can prove that the pets health problems are directly related to the food. I bet the amount they actually paid in liability on this is a very small amount. I'm willing to bet that if this was investigated thoroughly that they starting selling this stuff to pig and chicken farmers AFTER they knew it was contaminated. They weren't even willing to take the loss of their recalled product. They recalled it and then sold it to the farmers.
Fish food too. For the last few years I've noticed a big increase in the number of fish we raise for our pond dying of kidney disease (belly sides turn orange, then they die). Fish food is composed almost entirely of wheat and rice glutens.
Vikki 1969 Goldenrod Yellow / black 400 convertible numbers matching
I just checked our fishfood and it has it too. We have had quite a few fish die 'of old age' we thought. Because there isn't the normal signs of sickness that you see in the fish that die.
If you go back and Edit your quote, or if you can no longer Edit choose Reply off the menu under this post, click File Manager, then put that file location in the box and click Add. Then click Done, then Submit your post, and the pic will show up on the forum.
Vikki 1969 Goldenrod Yellow / black 400 convertible numbers matching
She's a Hemingway cat. Many of the cats at his estate in the FL Keys have six toes. She looks like a friend’s cat, Spooky. She could put that extra claw to good use like an extra thumb.
Cool! We had a parts car we called the 'catbird' because the cats were living in it. One day, I was taking a window regulator out of it and this cat came flying out of nowhere and scared the bejesus out of me. I was sad to see the junk/scrap guy take that one away. Ever see mice jumping ship as the wrecker hauls a car away? Darn cats never did take care of the mice problem!
The FDA released Mela-chicken as suited for human consumption. Twenty million chickens fed on melamine, released for human purchase at your grocery store and with no labeling to indicate this food adulteration. I would switch to a vegetarian diet, but I'm not sure genetic modifed grain is safer. Hopefully the grain is safer when it's fermented into Shiner Bock.
The FDA released Mela-chicken as suited for human consumption. Twenty million chickens fed on melamine, released for human purchase at your grocery store and with no labeling to indicate this food adulteration. I would switch to a vegetarian diet, but I'm not sure genetic modifed grain is safer. Hopefully the grain is safer when it's fermented into Shiner Bock.
wonder if we`re just poisoning ourselves off the planet? Guess we dont have to worry about global warming, if theres no food...lol
anyone seen this?:
interesting ,to say the least...
------------------ What We Now Know - Honey Bees and Food Supply - By Shannara Johnson
"If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would have four years left to live," said Albert Einstein. "No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man." The question many beekeepers and scientists are asking themselves these days is, are we there already?
Recently, there's been a great media buzz about the mysterious disappearance of hundreds of millions of honey bees in the United States. Beekeepers have helplessly stood by while up to 95% of their bees vanished into thin air. One Midwestern beekeeper lost 11,000 of his 13,000 hives, others in 24 states face losses of 60% to 80% on average. Internationally, the same phenomenon--to a lesser degree--has surfaced in Canada, Poland, Spain, Germany, and other European countries.
What's the cause of the "colony collapse syndrome," as it is now called? No one knows for sure, though there are plenty of theories. Award-winning TV producer, investigative reporter and editor of Earthfiles.com Linda Moulton-Howe talked to various scientists about the bee bane. "Penn State entomologist Diana Cox-Foster, Ph.D., analyzed some bees found in deserted hives," reports Moulton-Howe. "Dr. Cox-Foster has seen as many as five different viruses and unidentified fungi in the bees. She says that is two times more pathogens than she's ever seen before in honey bees."
Something is compromising the bees' immune systems, other scientists agree; among the suspected culprits are modern pesticides and GM crops. And while no one agent might be solely responsible for the bees' disease, Moulton-Howe wonders "what happens when farmers spray herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and rodenticides on land that has also genetically modified crops with pesticides built in?"
As an example, Monsanto's "Round-up Ready" crops, which are modified to withstand the spraying of herbicides, are widely used in the U.S. Recently, though, weeds have developed a Round-up resistance--resulting in frustrated farmers spraying more and more of the weed killer, in combination with others, on their fields.
Eric Mussen, an entomologist and Extension Apiculturist at UC-Davis, also found that some fungicides approved by the EPA for bee safety, while not killing adult bees, are fatal for bee larvae and young bees.
How did the EPA react to his warnings?
"Well, they said they wanted to see some evidence or some data," Mussen told Earthfiles.com. "So, I sent them the evidence. And I cannot see that anything has changed since then and that was a couple of years ago."
Another hypothesis is that nicotine-based pesticides, which have emerged in the last six years, might be messing with the memory of the honey bees, rendering them incapable of finding their way back to the hive.
"The interesting thing [...] is that bees are leaving the colony and not coming back," states Jerry Hayes, chief of the Apiary section at Florida's Department of Agriculture, "which is highly unusual for a social insect to leave a queen and its brood or young behind. They are seemingly going out and can't find their way back home.
"Imidachloprid [the most common nicotine-based pesticide], when it is used to control termites, does exactly the same thing. One of the methods it uses to kill termites is that the termites feed on this material and then go out to feed and can't remember how to get home." It also causes their immune systems to collapse, says Hayes, adding that imidachloprid has recently evolved from a mere seed treatment to a foliage spray, often combined with fungicides to increase its efficacy.
Mounting stress for the bees might be another factor, suggested a February 23 article in the New York Times. There are fewer and fewer beekeepers in the U.S., who are trucking their hives on 18-wheelers around the country to serve increasing demand from their customers. "Bees are being raised to survive a shorter off-season, to be ready to pollinate once the almond bloom begins in February. This has most likely lowered their immunity to viruses."
But it's not just viruses. Mites are also a big problem, "and the insecticides used to try to kill mites are harming the ability of queen bees to spawn as many worker bees. The queens are living half as long as they did just a few years ago."
But how dire is our situation due to the loss of honey bees? Honey bees pollinate fruit and nut trees, melons and vegetables in the U.S., a $14.5 billion industry. A 2006 study by an international research team found that pollinators affect more than one-third of the world's crop production, increasing the output of 87 of the leading food crops worldwide.
"Every third bite we consume in our diet is dependent on a honey bee to pollinate that food," according to Zac Browning, vice president of the American Beekeeping Federation. And Paul Wenger, VP of the California Farm Bureau Federation, said that with fewer bees, "you'll see lower pollination, lower yields, lower crop production."
So, could we face a national food crisis soon?
It's possible, says Jerry Hayes, wondering if honey bees are the canary in the coal mine. "What are honey bees trying to tell us that we humans should be paying more attention to?"
He thinks having to import more food could be a dilemma in itself: "How much of our food production do we want to turn over to other countries that might be friendly now and not friendly in the future? [...] Then the question is: who fills the gap? And do we become reliant on them? I think I read a figure from the USDA that they project by 2015 that 40% of our vegetables would be coming from China."
Given the, to say it mildly, less-than-perfect environmental track record of the Chinese, we wonder what agents our veggies may be laced with in the future. (Case in point: according to ABC News, it is now suspected that the recent pet food poisoning, which caused renal failure in hundreds of cats, may have been caused by melamine, a toxic fertilizer component found in wheat gluten from China that went into U.S. pet food.)
And as to Hayes' question what honey bees are trying to tell us, it seems pretty clear to us: in the long run, you can't mess around with Mother Nature without facing the consequences.
Bjorn, I have been concerned about the dissappearance of the honey bee. I am not a believer in man-made global warming but the bee story has been worrying me. I have not seen a honey bee yet this year. Wasps and bumble bees, yes, but no honey bees here yet.
There is even some thought that the extensive use of wireless (maybe in the 2ghz areas), may be disorienting their homing capabilities. I think some study of the "why" of this needs to be done and focus off the political global warming hype be shelved.
Very interesting...imidacloprid is the product used extensively in attempting to halt the Emerald Ash Borer. I wonder if the maps of Emerald Ash Borer and honeybee disappearance have a strong correlation?
I thought that this had been figured out already years ago. The honey bees have been going away for quite a few years now. I heard that it was the mites that kill them. Nature has counter acted with a strain of lady bugs that eat the mites. It will take some time for things to turn around. Maybe the honey bees will never come back to the numbers we all remember. I have a lot of bumble bees doing the work on my fruit trees. There are no regular honey bees around here and there hasn't been for years.
Bjorn, I have been concerned about the dissappearance of the honey bee. I am not a believer in man-made global warming but the bee story has been worrying me. I have not seen a honey bee yet this year. Wasps and bumble bees, yes, but no honey bees here yet.
There is even some thought that the extensive use of wireless (maybe in the 2ghz areas), may be disorienting their homing capabilities. I think some study of the "why" of this needs to be done and focus off the political global warming hype be shelved.
yes, I `ve heard that too, cell phone towers misleading bees...
I hope to get an update, my friend Les in Quincy, has a daughter Stacy who works for USDA...here is his take when we spoke about the bees...;
Quote:
Stacy has been keeping me current on this matter. Since she is with the USDA, this is a real topic for them. And a real risk for us in the long term.
then we spoke about Global warming , 1.7F increase over 100 years, vs Mars 1.5F increase obver last 20 :
Quote:
I'll ask Stacy for an update. I don't have any current info about the Martian temperature changes.
Les, being a geologist, has lots of interest in Mars,and keeps up with the landers there...
I have not gotten Stacys latest yet...but will post what she can give us from USDA...when I get it..
The bee varroa and tracheal mites were an issue several years ago, and a lot of colonies were lost. But this new threat is much more devastating, and no biological cause has been officially confirmed. The workers leave the colony and don't come back, which ensures that the colony will die. I've heard reports that even wax moths won't infest the comb in CCD-affected hives, which may indicate that a toxin is in there that repels or kills wax moths.
Ladybugs cannot eat the mites that exist in the throats of bees...it would be a tight fit.
Vikki 1969 Goldenrod Yellow / black 400 convertible numbers matching
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