U.S. Government-Subsidized Meat Killing Native Americans

By Kelly Grens

United States - Native Americans who often ate processed meat in a can, generically known as "spam" and a common food on reservations, one subsidized by the government -- had a two-fold increased risk of developing diabetes over those who ate little or none, according to a U.S. study.
Native Americans are at especially high risk of developing diabetes, with nearly half having the condition by age 55.

Researchers writing in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition surveyed 2,000 Native Americans from Arizona, Oklahoma and North and South Dakota to look into potential reasons for the high rate.
"A lot of communities in this study are in very rural areas with limited access to grocery stores... and they want to eat foods that have a long shelf life," said Amanda Fretts, the lead author and a researcher at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

None of the survey participants, whose average age was 35, had diabetes at the start of the study when they answered questions about diet and other health and lifestyle factors.

After five years, a follow-up survey found that 243 people had developed diabetes.
Among the 500 people in the original study group who ate the most canned processed meat, 85 developed diabetes. In contrast, among the 500 people who ate the least amount of "spam," just 44 developed the disease.

Though Spam is a brand-name pork product, the lower-case term is also used to describe any kind of processed, canned meat, Fretts said. Canned meat is available freely to many Native Americans on reservations as part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food assistance program.

Fretts and her colleagues found that unprocessed meat did not have the same relationship with diabetes, with people equally likely to develop diabetes regardless of how much hamburger or cuts of pork or beef they ate.

"I think what this study indicates is processed meats should be a priority for reduction (in the diet), especially among American Indians where they can go to food assistance programs and they can get discounted spam," said Dariush Mozaffarian, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who was not involved in the study.

Mozaffarian and his colleagues two years ago conducted an analysis that found that processed meats were tied to a 19 percent higher diabetes risk, while unprocessed meats were neutral.

"I think the biggest difference between processed and unprocessed meats is sodium," he said, though he added that there is no clear explanation for the link of processed meats and diabetes.

Fretts and her colleagues noted that the people who ate the most processed meats tended also to be heavier, with larger waistlines, raising the possibility that processed meats contribute to obesity, which raises the risk of diabetes.

In an emailed statement to Reuters Health, The American Meat Institute, which represents companies that process meat, said that "processed meats are a safe and nutritious part of a balanced diet."

Fretts said the study could not prove that eating processed meats was to blame for the increased risk of diabetes.
"I think there needs to be more follow-up," she said.

Honeybee problem nearing a ‘critical point’

By Clare Thompson

Anyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.


Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

"We are inching our way toward a critical tipping point," said Steve Ellis, secretary of the National Honey Bee Advisory Board (NHBAB) and a beekeeper for 35 years. Last year he had so many abnormal bee die-offs that he'll qualify for disaster relief from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).

In addition to continued reports of CCD -- a still somewhat mysterious phenomenon in which entire bee colonies literally disappear, alien-abduction style, leaving not even their dead bodies behind -- bee populations are suffering poor health in general, and experiencing shorter life spans and diminished vitality. And while parasites, pathogens, and habitat loss can deal blows to bee health, research increasingly points to pesticides as the primary culprit.

"In the industry we believe pesticides play an important role in what's going on," said Dave Hackenberg, co-chair of the NHBAB and a beekeeper in Pennsylvania.

Of particular concern is a group of pesticides, chemically similar to nicotine, called neonicotinoids (neonics for short), and one in particular called clothianidin. Instead of being sprayed, neonics are used to treat seeds, so that they're absorbed by the plant's vascular system, and then end up attacking the central nervous systems of bees that come to collect pollen. Virtually all of today's genetically engineered Bt corn is treated with neonics. The chemical industry alleges that bees don't like to collect corn pollen, but new research shows that not only do bees indeed forage in corn, but they also have multiple other routes of exposure to neonics.

The Purdue University study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, found high levels of clothianidin in planter exhaust spewed during the spring sowing of treated maize seed. It also found neonics in the soil of unplanted fields nearby those planted with Bt corn, on dandelions growing near those fields, in dead bees found near hive entrances, and in pollen stored in the hives.

Evidence already pointed to the presence of neonic-contaminated pollen as a factor in CCD. As Hackenberg explained, "The insects start taking [the pesticide] home, and it contaminates everywhere the insect came from." These new revelations about the pervasiveness of neonics in bees' habitats only strengthen the case against using the insecticides.

The irony, of course, is that farmers use these chemicals to protect their crops from destructive insects, but in so doing, they harm other insects essential to their crops' production -- a catch-22 that Hackenberg said speaks to the fact that "we have become a nation driven by the chemical industry." In addition to beekeeping, he owns two farms, and even when crop analysts recommend spraying pesticides on his crops to kill an aphid population, for example, he knows that "if I spray, I'm going to kill all the beneficial insects." But most farmers, lacking Hackenberg's awareness of bee populations, follow the advice of the crop adviser -- who, these days, is likely to be paid by the chemical industry, rather than by a state university or another independent entity.

Beekeepers have already teamed up with groups representing the almond and blueberry industries -- both of which depend on honey bee pollination -- to tackle the need for education among farmers. "A lot of [farm groups] are recognizing that we need more resources devoted to pollinator protection," Ellis said. "We need that same level of commitment on a national basis, from our USDA and EPA and the agricultural chemical industry."

Unfortunately, it was the EPA itself that green-lit clothianidin and other neonics for commercial use, despite its own scientists' clear warnings about the chemicals' effects on bees and other pollinators. That doesn't bode well for the chances of getting neonics off the market now, even in light of the Purdue study's findings.
"The agency has, in most cases, sided with pesticide manufacturers and worked to fast-track the approval of new products, and failed in cases when there's clear evidence of harm to take those products off the market," Towers said.

Since this is an election year -- a time when no one wants to make Big Ag (and its money) mad -- beekeepers may have to suffer another season of losses before there's any hope of action on the EPA's part. But when one out of every three bites of food on Americans' plates results directly from honey bee pollination, there's no question that the fate of these insects will determine our own as eaters.

Ellis, for his part, thinks that figuring out a way to solve the bee crisis could be a catalyst for larger reform within our agriculture system. "If we can protect that pollinator base, it's going to have ripple effects ... for wildlife, for human health," he said. "It will bring up subjects that need to be looked at, of groundwater and surface water -- all the connected subjects associated [with] chemical use and agriculture."

Odd Stories: Stay Septical people.

West Palm Beach – A three-person toilet paper scheme the perpetrators in jail.

Officials in Florida say the people involved in the con gained more than a million dollars from the plot. More than a dozen people were told they require special toilet paper to prevent their septic tanks from damage due to a federal regulation on toilet paper. They also sold customers what they call a “Septic Remedy treatment”, which would eliminate their customers' need to purge the tanks. Also available was special soap and detergent.

The trio, Christopher Lincoln, Mary Moore and Joseph Nouerand, plead guilty to the crime of wire fraud and say they will help authorities in obtaining information on another three people. The company under which they operated, FBK Products, presented itself as affiliated with the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture

For the record the EPA does not regulate septic systems despite what the company claims.

They are facing more around 20 years in jail.