"Scientists Find Out What Killed Millions of Starfish"

"A new study shows warmer ocean temperatures are likely responsible for the mass die-off, threatening the biodiversity of marine life from Alaska to Mexico."

An epidemic swept across North America’s West Coast three years ago, but most people hardly noticed.

That’s because the disease targeted starfish—millions of starfish.

From Alaska to Baja California, starfish populations have been decimated by sea star wasting syndrome, a disease that turns the darlings of the tide pool world into heaping piles of goo within days of exposure.

Scientists have observed wasting events hitting coastal starfish populations before, but nothing like this epidemic, which researchers are calling the single largest, most geographically widespread marine disease ever recorded.

Sea stars, or starfish, are what’s known as a keystone species, important to maintaining biodiversity in marine environments. But an epidemic that swept across the West Coast killed millions of the multi-limbed animals—wiping out up to 95 percent of populations in some regions. Now, a new study is showing warming ocean temperatures might make mass die-offs more severe.

Without starfish to keep mussel populations in check, the sharp-shelled bivalves would push out other marine species, damaging the biodiversity of habitats along the West Coast.

The team analyzed water temperature records taken before, during, and after the wasting episode at locations around the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound in Washington state. They found that as water temperatures rose across the region, so did the risk of infection for sea stars. Sites where water temperatures rose the most left sea stars at highest risk of infection.

Researchers also placed sea stars in aquarium tanks set to temperatures ranging from 54 degrees to 66 degrees Fahrenheit. The hotter the tank, the more quickly starfish succumbed to wasting, Harvell said.

“That confirmed that water temperature can affect mortality,” she said.

With ocean temperatures steadily increasing thanks in part to human-induced climate change, the future of sea stars could be threatened.

The sheer size of this latest wasting event has scientists concerned. Melissa Miner, a marine biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said sea star populations are still decimated across nearly all of the West Coast...

On a walk amid tide pools in Newport Beach’s Crystal Cove State Park last week, this reporter did not spot a single starfish. In October 2014, scientists found 191 starfishalong the same rocky reef. Now, there appeared to be an abundance of mussels lining the rocks—the ochre starfish’s favorite meal.

"Lyme disease surges north, and Canada moves out of denial"

Article in the 'Daily Climate'

Scientists long expected climate change to harm human health. But one of the clearest signs of health risks in a warming world has emerged in one of the world’s most advanced economies, as Canada belatedly struggles to cope with Lyme disease's migration in North America. 

Canada should have seen this coming. In the United States, reported cases of Lyme disease have increased from fewer than 10,000 reported cases in 1991 to more than 27,000 cases by 2013. Canada was well-positioned to be affected by the spread of the disease. As early as 2005, modeling published by researcher Nicholas Ogden, then at the University of Montreal, indicated that the geographic range of the Lyme-carrying tick could expand northward significantly due to climate change in this century. 

Scientists long have anticipated that global warming would harm human health, and the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report highlights the risk for poor populations that don't have access to quality health care or other public services. For example, the risk of heat stroke is greatest in areas without access to power for air conditioning, and water-borne illnesses like cholera and intestinal viruses flourish in areas without safe drinking water. 

But one of the clearest signs of the changing health risks in a warming world has emerged in two of the world's most advanced economies, the United States and Canada, as Lyme disease spreads in North America. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this year added Lyme disease to its list of climate change indicators, a report meant to aid in public understanding of the effects of warming that scientists have been able to document....

'An emerging clinical problem'
The doctors presented their findings in April at an American College of Rheumatology symposium but declined to talk to The Daily Climate about their research until it is published in a medical journal. They are still working on finalizing their paper, an IWK Health Centre spokeswoman said. But in the abstract presented at that meeting, they called Lyme arthritis "an emerging clinical problem in Nova Scotia," with cases expected to continue to rise. 

Untreated, Lyme disease can spread to joints, the nervous system, and even the heart. Heart block due to Lyme carditis can develop in minutes or hours, and is a rare but fatal complication. A more common problem that causes even greater concern in the health community: Lyme patients with symptoms persisting long after antibiotic treatment. There's great controversy over how long antibiotic treatment should be continued in such cases and who should bear the costs. The issue underscores the importance of early detection. "Almost always the persistent cases are in patients who were not treated early," said the CDC's Beard. 

Robert Strang, Nova Scotia's chief public health officer, says one problem with diagnosis has been that Lyme involves "a lot of non-specific symptoms." Of the cluster of pediatric arthritis cases at IWK, he said, "that case series reminded us that there are joint and neurologic and cardiac ways that Lyme disease can present itself."...
 

"Antibiotic resistance will mean the end of just about everything as we know it"

From Salon.com

In the United States, 2 million people are infected with drug-resistant “superbugs” every year, and at least 23,000 die as a result. Such numbers, journalist Maryn McKenna suggests, will seem trivial if we reach the point when all antibiotics are no longer effective — something that’s on track to become a reality.

Considering the full implications of a post-antibiotic era, McKenna concludes that it wouldn’t be so different from the apocalypse. And to know what we’re facing, we need only look at where we’ve come from:

Before antibiotics, five women died out of every 1,000 who gave birth. One out of nine people who got a skin infection died, even from something as simple as a scrape or an insect bite. Three out of ten people who contracted pneumonia died from it. Ear infections caused deafness; sore throats were followed by heart failure. In a post-antibiotic era, would you mess around with power tools? Let your kid climb a tree? Have another child?

To start with, McKenna writes, the loss of antibiotics will mean the end of modern medicine as we know it, impeding everything from surgery to chemotherapy to the far more prosaic:

At UCLA, [Dr. Brad] Spellberg treated a woman with what appeared to be an everyday urinary-tract infection — except that it was not quelled by the first round of antibiotics, or the second. By the time he saw her, she was in septic shock, and the infection had destroyed the bones in her spine. A last-ditch course of the only remaining antibiotic saved her life, but she lost the use of her legs. “This is what we’re in danger of,” he says. “People who are living normal lives who develop almost untreatable infections.”  ....

_______________________________________________

Note: As terrible as it is to have people dying from simple infections, our current medical advantages are not sustainable. Antibiotics are partly responsible for our over-population problem. Various diseases are part of the normal processes that keep people in check. Of course, very few would choose to do without those advantages, if given a choice. Nature taking it's course, is not such a bad thing, however, for life on the planet as a whole.

Roundup... "May Be Causing Animal Miscarriages and Infertility"

From farmandranchfreedom.org

Letter by COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber Emeritus Professor, Purdue University to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack->


January 16, 2011

Dear Secretary Vilsack:

A team of senior plant and animal scientists have recently brought to my attention the discovery of an electron microscopic pathogen that appears to significantly impact the health of plants, animals, and probably human beings. Based on a review of the data, it is widespread, very serious, and is in much higher concentrations in Roundup Ready (RR) soybeans and corn—suggesting a link with the RR gene or more likely the presence of Roundup. This organism appears NEW to science!

This is highly sensitive information that could result in a collapse of US soy and corn export markets and significant disruption of domestic food and feed supplies. On the other hand, this new organism may already be responsible for significant harm (see below). My colleagues and I are therefore moving our investigation forward with speed and discretion, and seek assistance from the USDA and other entities to identify the pathogen’s source, prevalence, implications, and remedies.

We are informing the USDA of our findings at this early stage, specifically due to your pending decision regarding approval of RR alfalfa. Naturally, if either the RR gene or Roundup itself is a promoter or co-factor of this pathogen, then such approval could be a calamity. Based on the current evidence, the only reasonable action at this time would be to delay deregulation at least until sufficient data has exonerated the RR system, if it does.

For the past 40 years, I have been a scientist in the professional and military agencies that evaluate and prepare for natural and manmade biological threats, including germ warfare and disease outbreaks. Based on this experience, I believe the threat we are facing from this pathogen is unique and of a high risk status. In layman’s terms, it should be treated as an emergency.

A diverse set of researchers working on this problem have contributed various pieces of the puzzle, which together presents the following disturbing scenario:

Unique Physical Properties

This previously unknown organism is only visible under an electron microscope (36,000X), with an approximate size range equal to a medium size virus. It is able to reproduce and appears to be a micro-fungal-like organism. If so, it would be the first such micro-fungus ever identified. There is strong evidence that this infectious agent promotes diseases of both plants and mammals, which is very rare.

Pathogen Location and Concentration

It is found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready soybean meal and corn, distillers meal, fermentation feed products, pig stomach contents, and pig and cattle placentas.

Linked with Outbreaks of Plant Disease

The organism is prolific in plants infected with two pervasive diseases that are driving down yields and farmer income—sudden death syndrome (SDS) in soy, and Goss’ wilt in corn. The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).

Implicated in Animal Reproductive Failure

Laboratory tests have confirmed the presence of this organism in a wide variety of livestock that have experienced spontaneous abortions and infertility. Preliminary results from ongoing research have also been able to reproduce abortions in a clinical setting.

The pathogen may explain the escalating frequency of infertility and spontaneous abortions over the past few years in US cattle, dairy, swine, and horse operations. These include recent reports of infertility rates in dairy heifers of over 20%, and spontaneous abortions in cattle as high as 45%.

For example, 450 of 1,000 pregnant heifers fed wheatlege experienced spontaneous abortions. Over the same period, another 1,000 heifers from the same herd that were raised on hay had no abortions. High concentrations of the pathogen were confirmed on the wheatlege, which likely had been under weed management using glyphosate.

Recommendations

In summary, because of the high titer of this new animal pathogen in Roundup Ready crops, and its association with plant and animal diseases that are reaching epidemic proportions, we request USDA’s participation in a multi-agency investigation, and an immediate moratorium on the deregulation of RR crops until the causal/predisposing relationship with glyphosate and/or RR plants can be ruled out as a threat to crop and animal production and human health.

It is urgent to examine whether the side-effects of glyphosate use may have facilitated the growth of this pathogen, or allowed it to cause greater harm to weakened plant and animal hosts. It is well-documented that glyphosate promotes soil pathogens and is already implicated with the increase of more than 40 plant diseases; it dismantles plant defenses by chelating vital nutrients; and it reduces the bioavailability of nutrients in feed, which in turn can cause animal disorders. To properly evaluate these factors, we request access to the relevant USDA data.

I have studied plant pathogens for more than 50 years. We are now seeing an unprecedented trend of increasing plant and animal diseases and disorders. This pathogen may be instrumental to understanding and solving this problem. It deserves immediate attention with significant resources to avoid a general collapse of our critical agricultural infrastructure.

Sincerely,

COL (Ret.) Don M. Huber
Emeritus Professor, Purdue University
APS Coordinator, USDA National Plant Disease Recovery System (NPDRS)

"Half a Billion Eggs Recalled for Salmonella Contamination"

It's nice to have lots of local people to get fresh eggs from...

WASHINGTON, DC, August 20, 2010 (ENS) - An outbreak of the bacterium Salmonella enteritidis that has sickened hundreds of people across the country has led to an urgent nationwide recall of eggs that now includes two Iowa farms.
The original recall announced August 13 and expanded Wednesday covers 380 million eggs produced by Wright County Egg of Galt, Iowa. Today a second farm, Hillandale Farms of Iowa, said it will recall 170 million eggs after tests confirmed salmonella.

The more than half a billion eggs affected by the recalls are packaged under different brand names and distributed nationwide.

"Don't eat recalled eggs," warns the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The agency says consumers should throw away the recalled eggs or return the product to the store for a refund.

Salmonella enteritidis can be inside perfectly normal-appearing eggs, and if the eggs are eaten raw or undercooked, the bacterium can cause illness.

Salmonella can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems.

Symptoms of salmonella poisoning such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, and fever may appear within 12 hours of eating the eggs, or may take as long as 72 hours to show up. Because the symptoms are like flu symptoms some people may not know they are sick because of what they have eaten.

"Individuals who think they might have become ill from eating recalled eggs should consult their health care providers. If consumers are unsure about the source of their eggs, they are urged not to eat them and to discard them immediately," the FDA says.

First issued August 13 and expanded on Wednesday, the recall of eggs in their shells, or "shell eggs," is part of an ongoing intensive investigation by local, state, and federal officials into what caused the recent cases of salmonella.

The recall affects eggs shipped since May 16, 2010 to food wholesalers, distribution centers and food service companies in 17 states: California, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Iowa...


On August 13, Wright County Egg conducted a nationwide recall of shell eggs on three of its five farms. Further epidemiologic and traceback information led to Wright County Egg expanding its recall on August 18 to cover all five of its farms.

The FDA has activated its emergency operations command center with scientists, investigators, epidemiologists, and communication experts.

In addition, the FDA deployed an initial team of 10 investigators to Wright County Egg in Iowa to inspect the farms and determine the source of the contamination. More investigators are being deployed to help on-site, looking to find the source of the contamination.

Investigators are performing environmental assessments of farm conditions and practices including pest and rodent controls, biosecurity plans, environmental monitoring, sanitary controls, and feed sources.

The FDA is initiating effectiveness checks of the recall, conducting checks at retail stores, wholesalers and distributors to make sure the recalled shell eggs are being removed from the market.

"Unlike eggborne salmonellosis of past decades, the current epidemic is due to intact and disinfected grade A eggs," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a federal agency. "Salmonella enteritidis silently infects the ovaries of healthy appearing hens and contaminates the eggs before the shells are formed."

"Integrating modern and traditional medicine"

From the Science and Development Network:

Traditional medicine (TM) is due a revival. For millennia, people around the world have healed the sick with herbal or animal-derived remedies, handed down through generations.

In Africa and Asia, 80 per cent of the population still uses traditional remedies rather than modern medicine for primary healthcare.

And in developed nations, TM is rapidly gaining appeal. Estimates suggest up to 80 per cent of the population has tried a therapy such as acupuncture or homeopathy. And a survey conducted earlier this year found that 74 per cent of US medical students believe that Western medicine would benefit by integrating traditional or alternative therapies and practices. [1]

The industry is worth big money. In 2005, traditional medicines worth US$14 billion were sold in China. And in 2007, Brazil saw revenues of US$160 million from traditional therapies — part of a global market of more than US$60 billion. [2, 3]

The truth is that modern medicine is desperately short of new treatments. It takes years for a new drug to get through the research and development pipeline to manufacture and the cost is enormous.

And growing drug resistance, in part caused by the misuse of medications, has rendered several antibiotics and other life-saving drugs useless.

Both these trends mean that scientists and pharmaceutical companies are urgently looking for new drug sources and are increasingly turning their eyes to traditional medicine.

A few major triumphs have stoked interest in traditional medicine as a source for highly successful and lucrative drugs. The best known of these is artemisinin used to treat malaria.

Across the globe, researchers, policymakers, pharmaceutical companies and traditional healers are joining forces to bring TM into the 21st century.

In some ways, it is already here. Nearly a quarter of all modern medicines are derived from natural products, many of which were first used in traditional remedies.

Table 1: Selected modern drugs that come from traditional medicine_________________
Drug

What it is for

Derived from

Originally used in
_________________

Artemisinin

Anti-malarial

Produced by the Chinese herb Qinghao or sweet wormwood

Traditional Chinese medicine for chills and fevers
_________________

Cromoglycate

Asthma prophylaxis

Synthetic compound based on khellin, active ingredient of the khella plant

Traditional Middle Eastern remedies for asthma. Khellin has also traditionally been used in Egypt to treat kidney stones
_________________

Etoposide

Anti-cancer

Synthesized from podophyllotoxin, produced by the mandrake plant

Various remedies in Chinese, Japanese and Eastern folk medicine
_________________

Hirudin

Anticoagulant

Salivary glands in leeches, now produced by genetic engineering

Traditional remedies across the globe, from Shui Zhi medicine in China to 18th and 19th century medicine in Europe
_________________

Lovastatin

To lower cholesterol

Foods such as oyster mushrooms and red yeast rice.

Used to synthesize other compounds such as mevastatin and pravastatin

Mushrooms are used to treat a wide range of illnesses in traditional medicine in China, Japan, Eastern Europe and Russia
_________________

Opiates

Analgesic

Unripe poppy seeds

Traditional Arab, Chinese, European, Indian and North African medicines as pain relief and to treat range of illnesses including diarrhoea, coughs and asthma
_________________

Quinine

Anti-malarial

Bark of the cinchona tree

Traditional remedies to treat fevers and shivers in South America
_________________

Vinca alkaloids

(vincristine, vinblastine)

Anti-cancer

Rosy periwinkle

Various folk remedies across the world, including use as an anti-diabetic in Jamaica, to treat wasp stings in Indian traditional medicine, as eyewash in Cuba, as love potion in medieval Europe
_________________

Bisphenol A update

Science Update: A Dangerous Disruption
Read full coverage of the 2010 Annual Meeting from AAAS.org and Science.

There's more troubling news about bisphenol A:

The chemical compound is used in the production of some plastics--look for those with recycling symbol #7. In an interview with Science Update, AAAS's 60-second radio show, neuroendocrinologist Heather Patisaul of North Carolina State University says bisphenol A exposure disrupts reproductive development in both rats and humans.

"What happens with our rats is they go through puberty too early," Patisaul said, "and this mirrors what we’re seeing in girls in the U.S., where the age of puberty is getting lower."

Patisaul spoke at a symposium Saturday at the AAAS Annual Meeting on the consequences of endocrine disupting agents.

In a separate symposium, researchers explored the link between bisphenol A and other synthetic chemicals with breast cancer.
---
Also:

The researchers are examining "critical windows" of breast tissue development, to find out when and how chemicals might prompt the development of cancer. Breast cancer "can take years to develop," said Suzanne Fenton, a researcher at the National Institute of Environmental Health, which may mean that some cancers have their roots in early toxic exposures.

At the same time, scientists need to know more about exactly which chemicals have the potential to be toxic for breast cells. Some agents that mimic the actions of estrogen are known to cause cancer, according to California Environmental Protection Agency scientist Lauren Zeise. But she warned that there are many other chemically-driven pathways to cancer, and it can be difficult to test for these pathways when "we are exposed to any particular agent in a sea of chemicals."

Recent regulatory changes in the European Union, which require the chemical industry to disclose more of the properties and hazards of their products, could result in a flood of new data to help solve some of these problems, the panelists agreed.

Problems with antibiotics in agriculture

AP

FRANKENSTEIN, Mo. – The mystery started the day farmer Russ Kremer got between a jealous boar and a sow in heat.

The boar gored Kremer in the knee with a razor-sharp tusk. The burly pig farmer shrugged it off, figuring: "You pour the blood out of your boot and go on."

But Kremer's red-hot leg ballooned to double its size. A strep infection spread, threatening his life and baffling doctors. Two months of multiple antibiotics did virtually nothing.

The answer was flowing in the veins of the boar. The animal had been fed low doses of penicillin, spawning a strain of strep that was resistant to other antibiotics. That drug-resistant germ passed to Kremer.

Like Kremer, more and more Americans — many of them living far from barns and pastures — are at risk from the widespread practice of feeding livestock antibiotics. These animals grow faster, but they can also develop drug-resistant infections that are passed on to people. The issue is now gaining attention because of interest from a new White House administration and a flurry of new research tying antibiotic use in animals to drug resistance in people.

Researchers say the overuse of antibiotics in humans and animals has led to a plague of drug-resistant infections that killed more than 65,000 people in the U.S. last year — more than prostate and breast cancer combined. And in a nation that used about 35 million pounds of antibiotics last year, 70 percent of the drugs went to pigs, chickens and cows. Worldwide, it's 50 percent.

"This is a living breathing problem, it's the big bad wolf and it's knocking at our door," said Dr. Vance Fowler, an infectious disease specialist at Duke University. "It's here. It's arrived."

The rise in the use of antibiotics is part of a growing problem of soaring drug resistance worldwide, The Associated Press found in a six-month look at the issue. As a result, killer diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and staph are resurging in new and more deadly forms.

In response, the pressure against the use of antibiotics in agriculture is rising. The World Health Organization concluded this year that surging antibiotic resistance is one of the leading threats to human health, and the White House last month said the problem is "urgent."

"If we're not careful with antibiotics and the programs to administer them, we're going to be in a post antibiotic era," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, who was tapped to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this year.

Also this year, the three federal agencies tasked with protecting public health — the Food and Drug Administration, CDC and U.S. Department of Agriculture — declared drug-resistant diseases stemming from antibiotic use in animals a "serious emerging concern." And FDA deputy commissioner Dr. Joshua Sharfstein told Congress this summer that farmers need to stop feeding antibiotics to healthy farm animals.

Farm groups and pharmaceutical companies argue that drugs keep animals healthy and meat costs low, and have defeated a series of proposed limits on their use.
_______
America's farmers give their pigs, cows and chickens about 8 percent more antibiotics each year, usually to heal lung, skin or blood infections. However, 13 percent of the antibiotics administered on farms last year were fed to healthy animals to make them grow faster. Antibiotics also save as much as 30 percent in feed costs among young swine, although the savings fade as pigs get older, according to a new USDA study.

However, these animals can develop germs that are immune to the antibiotics. The germs then rub into scratches on farmworkers' arms, causing oozing infections. They blow into neighboring communities in dust clouds, run off into lakes and rivers during heavy rains, and are sliced into roasts, chops and hocks and sent to our dinner tables.

"Antibiotic-resistant microorganisms generated in the guts of pigs in the Iowa countryside don't stay on the farm," said Union of Concerned Scientists Food and Environment director Margaret Mellon.

More than 20 percent of all human cases of a deadly drug-resistant staph infection in the Netherlands could be traced to an animal strain, according to a study published online in a CDC journal. Federal food safety studies routinely find drug resistant bacteria in beef, chicken and pork sold in supermarkets, and 20 percent of people who get salmonella have a drug resistant strain, according to the CDC.

Here's how it happens: In the early '90s, farmers in several countries, including the U.S., started feeding animals fluoroquinolones, a family of antibiotics that includes drugs such as ciprofloxacin. In the following years, the once powerful antibiotic Cipro stopped working 80 percent of the time on some of the deadliest human infections it used to wipe out. Twelve years later, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study linking people infected with a Cipro-resistant bacteria to pork they had eaten.

Johns Hopkins University health sciences professor Ellen Silbergeld, who has reviewed every major study on this issue, said there's no doubt drug use in farm animals is a "major driver of antimicrobial resistance worldwide."

"We have data to show it's in wastewaters and it goes to aquaculture and it goes here and there," agreed Dr. Stuart Levy, an expert on antibiotic resistance at Tufts University in Boston. "Antibiotic use in animals impacts everything." ...

"...the factory farm-swine flu link"

From Grist:

“Since last spring and the onset of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza outbreak in humans, USDA has consistently asked that the media stop calling this “novel” pandemic virus “swine flu.” By continuing to mislabel the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus that is affecting human populations around the world, the media is causing undue and undeserved harm to America’s agriculture industry, especially to pork producers.”
—From the USDA Website

Novelist-turned-anti-meat-pamphleteer Jonathan Safran Foer made a stark claim about swine flu on The Ellen DeGeneres Show recenly:

This swine flu that’s now an epidemic, they’ve been able to trace it back to a farm in North Carolina… A hog farm. Nobody knows this. Nobody talks about it. We’ve been told this lie that it came from Mexico.

Well, the situation is even worse than Foer suggests. Authorities aren’t actually saying the novel strain of swine flu “came from Mexico.” That would be uncomfortable, because it first cropped up there a few miles from vast hog operations run by U.S. pork giant Smithfield.

But they are insisting that “pork is safe”—and doing little or nothing to monitor hog confinements for evidence of infection.

For years before the current outbreak, scientists openly worried that CAFOs (concentrated animal feedlot operations) provided excellent arenas for the generation and spread of dangerous new flu varieties.

Yet another bit of evidence on this score crossed my desk this week: a “News Focus” piece that ran in Science back in 2003 called “Chasing the Fickle Swine Flu.” (PDF) It’s jumping-off point is the very incident Foer pointed to on Ellen—the outbreak of a novel strain of flu, genetically related to the current strain, on a North Carolina farm in 1998. The opening is worth quoting at length:

One of the first signs of trouble was a barking cough that resounded through a North Carolina farm in August 1998. Every pig in an operation of 2400 animals
sickened, with symptoms similar to those caused by the human flu: high fever, poor appetite, and lethargy. Pregnant sows were hit hardest, and almost 10% aborted
their litters, says veterinary virologist Gene Erickson of the Rollins Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory in Raleigh. Many piglets that survived in utero were later born small and weak, and some 50 sows died.

The culprit, a new strain of swine influenza to which the animals had little immunity, left veterinarians and virologists alike puzzled. Although related flu strains in birds, humans, and pigs outside North America constantly evolve, only one influenza subtype had sickened North American pigs since 1930. That spell was suddenly broken about 4 years ago, and a quick succession of new flu viruses has been sweeping through North America’s 100 million pigs ever since. This winter, for example, up to 15% of the 4- to 7-week-old piglets on a large Minnesota farm died, even though their mothers had been vaccinated against swine flu, says veterinary pathologist Kurt Rossow of the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Here we have a phenomenon I’ve written about before: the flu strains circulating through the U.S. swine herd didn’t mutate much after 1930—until 1998. The novel strain that emerged in a North Carolina CAFO then was devastating for pigs, whose immune systems did not recognize it; but luckily, it didn’t have the genetic chops to jump to humans.

By 2003, scientists were actively worried that would soon change, the Science article reveals.

“Within the swine population, we now have a mammalian-adapted virus that is extremely promiscuous,” one researcher told the magazine. “We could end up with a dangerous virus,” i.e., a mutation that jumps to humans.

And researchers were looking to the CAFO as the site where such a thing could rear up. In the 1990s, hog farming underwent an unprecedented process of intensification and consolidation. As Science put it:

In the past decade, big swine producers have gotten bigger, and many small producers have gone out of business. The percentage of farms with 5000 or more animals surged from 18% in 1993 to 53% in 2002, according to Rodger Ott, an agricultural statistician at the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Washington, D.C.

Back in 2003, there was no taboo about stating the obvious:

“With a group of 5000 animals, if a novel virus shows up, it will have more opportunity to replicate and potentially spread than in a group of 100 pigs on a small farm,” [University of Minnesota veterinary pathologist Kurt] Rossow says.

...Even a veterinary expert for Schering-Plough, the pharmaceutical giant (now owned by Merck) with a large position in the swine-vaccine market, seemed a little concerned about the situation—not just the vaccine treadmill, but the whole game of factory hog farming.

Schering-Plough veterinarian Terri Wasmoen acknowledges that vaccines “may be pressuring change.” But she also notes that larger hog confinement operations and more shipping from state to state may play a role. “We need epidemiological work to understand these issues, and there is no funding now,” she says.

That last bit is jaw-dropping for several reasons. Here are two: 1) With a known and obvious public-health threat brewing, public-health authorities had zero political will to even muster funding to study it; and 2) a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company was minting profits from a growing market it knew contained a serious public-health risk, yet could itself find “no funding” to research it.

Well, here we are, six years later. The scenario that scientists feared and predicted would unfold has unfolded: a novel strain of H1N1 has jumped to humans, and is now spreading rapidly. Scientists are now hoping the strain won’t mutate into one that’s more difficult to shake off. But as we know now, hope doesn’t do much to stop the evolution of flu strains. There remains no large-scale effort to investigate CAFOs as engines of new swine flu strains—or even monitor them for infections....

Multidrug-Resistant Staph Found on Puget Sound Beaches

From ENS:

Samples of sand and water from five beaches around the Puget Sound have tested positive for a multidrug resistant form of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus. This potentially fatal strain of staph is resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it.

Dr. Marilyn Roberts, a professor of environmental and health science at the University of Washington in Seattle, Firday reported the first isolation of Methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, from marine and beach sand samples taken from public beaches in Washington state.

Speaking at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco, Dr. Roberts did not identify the individual beaches where the dangerous bacteria was found.

She said the MRSA bacteria was found in samples at four urban beaches and one rural beach about 10 miles apart around the Puget Sound.

"We found the same strain in three different beaches," said Roberts. "It's possible there was a common source. It could have been a hospital, could have been a person or people, but we don't really know where it came from or how three beaches got same strain," she told colleagues at the conference.

Most MRSA infections occur in hospitals or other health care settings, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers. More recently, another type of MRSA has occurred among otherwise healthy people in the wider community. This community-associated MRSA is responsible for serious skin and soft tissue infections and for a serious form of pneumonia.

Dr. Roberts said, "In most cases people who acquire it do not have an association with hospitals, do not work there, do not visit there, so the assumption is you've got MRSA out in the environment."

She said sewage outflows were the most likely source of the MRSA found on the sampled beaches...

"The fact that we found these organisms suggests that the level was much higher that one would have thought," she said.

"We don't really know the risk for people going to the beach," said Dr. Roberts. She cited a survey of 27,000 people published this year in the "Journal of Epidemiology" that found that people who dug in the sand or were completely covered by sand were much more likely to come down with a diarrheal disaease than those who did not engage in these activities and suggested that being covered with sand might also be a risk factor for MRSA...

Because the Puget Sound water is cold, between 50 and 58 degrees, and MRSA is salt-resistant, the organism can survive, Roberts said, and she added that it can also survive hospital cleaning and the laundering of hospital linens.

"All disinfectants do not give you a 100 percent kill," she said. "Hot water does a better job than cold water, but virtually nothing that anyone has will give 100 percent rate kill unless you autoclave," she said of the process used to sterilize surgical instruments by heating them under pressure.

Pesticide linked to Parkinson's disease

From The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center:

Pesticide levels in blood linked to Parkinson's disease, researchers find

DALLAS — People with Parkinson’s disease have significantly higher blood levels of a particular pesticide than healthy people or those with Alzheimer’s disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

In a study appearing in the July issue of Archives of Neurology, researchers found the pesticide beta-HCH (hexachlorocyclohexane) in 76 percent of people with Parkinson’s, compared with 40 percent of healthy controls and 30 percent of those with Alzheimer’s.

The finding might provide the basis for a beta-HCH blood test to identify individuals at risk for developing Parkinson’s disease. The results also point the way to more research on environmental causes of Parkinson’s.

“There’s been a link between pesticide use and Parkinson’s disease for a long time, but never a specific pesticide,” said Dr. Dwight German, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and a senior author of the paper. “This is particularly important because the disease is not diagnosed until after significant nerve damage has occurred. A test for this risk factor might allow for early detection and protective treatment.”

About 1 million people in the U.S. have Parkinson’s, a number expected to rise as the population ages. The disease occurs when brain cells in particular regions die, causing tremors, cognitive problems and a host of other symptoms...

“Much higher levels of the beta-HCH were in the air, water and food chain when the Parkinson’s patients were in their 20s and 30s,” Dr. German said. “Also, the half-life of the pesticide is seven to eight years, so it stays in the body for a long time.”

Parkinson’s disease is more common among rural men than other demographic groups, but it is not a matter of a single factor causing the devastating disease, Dr. German said.

“Some people with Parkinson’s might have the disease because of exposure to environmental pesticides, but there are also genes known to play a role in the condition,” Dr. German said.

Although the current study points to an interesting link between the pesticide beta-HCH and Parkinson’s, there could be other pesticides involved with the disease, he said.

For example, the pesticide lindane often contains beta-HCH, but lindane breaks down faster. Beta-HCH might simply be a sign that someone was exposed to lindane, with lindane actually causing the damage to the brain, the researchers said...

"Virus, Crisis: Perfect Storm Hits Chile Salmon Industry"

PUERTO CHACABUCO (Reuters) - A deadly fish virus and scarce credit have clobbered the salmon sector in Chile, the world's No. 2 producer, and industry workers like Cecilia Leue are panicked.

Packing choice cuts of bright orange Atlantic salmon at a plant in the town of Puerto Chacabuco in Chilean Patagonia, dressed from head to toe in white plastic overalls, Leue has watched the industry shed 6,000 jobs since infectious salmon anemia (ISA) emerged in 2007. She worries she could be next

"Fish is the only industry here. The issue of the ISA virus worries us a lot," the 20-year-old said through a mask.

"Scarce work because of the ISA virus affects us all," she added, stacking packets of salmon destined for a supermarket in Germany. "We are all worried how the market will react."

Leue and a team of around 650 workers wash, decapitate, gut, section and pack around 110 tonnes of Atlantic salmon a day.

Chile exported a record 445,000 tonnes of salmon and trout in 2008, worth just under $2.4 billion, up sharply from 2007 levels of 397,000 tonnes as salmon farmers harvested fish early to avoid ISA, which is like a deadly flu or cold for the most common Salar species, or Atlantic salmon.

But Chile's leading industry association, SalmonChile, expects output to fall around 30 percent in 2009 to around 320,000 tonnes because early harvesting will mean production gaps this year and sees similar output levels in 2010.

It expects to see a recovery in 2011. Salmon is one of Chile's main exports after copper, fruit and wood pulp.

Demand for salmon is firm on international markets and prices are near record highs despite the impact of the global crisis, industry officials say, but the crisis is closing avenues to financing needed to combat the virus.

DOUBLE-WHAMMY

"We call it the perfect storm," said Emilio Rodriguez, who heads operations for Acuinova Chile in the Chacabuco area, part of the Pescanova group which is one of Chile's top 10 producers. "The industry is being pounded on two sides."

"You have the outside world, which will not finance you in times of (global) crisis ... and to that you have to add the sanitary crisis affecting the industry."

Atlantic salmon takes three years to grow from egg to adult, so early harvest means producers miss out on harvesting fully-grown fish later in the cycle.

"We know it is a crisis which is going to last all of 2009 and part of 2010," said Rodriguez, whose company has turned increasingly from Atlantic salmon to other species like Cojo salmon favored in Japan and trout, to which ISA is not fatal.

World No. 1 seafood producer, Norway's Marine Harvest, the biggest industry player in Chile, said last month a "dramatic" deterioration in Chile meant it would no longer be able to break even in that market this year. It expects sales volumes will fall to 30,000 tonnes in 2009.

Chile's salmon industry has faced a series of fish diseases in recent years, as well as algae...

"Crops absorb livestock antibiotics"

By Matthew Cimitile
Environmental Health News

For half a century, meat producers have fed antibiotics to farm animals to increase their growth and stave off infections. Now scientists have discovered that those drugs are sprouting up in unexpected places.

Vegetables such as corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when grown in soil fertilized with livestock manure, according to tests conducted at the University of Minnesota.

Today, close to 70 percent of the total antibiotics and related drugs produced in the United States are fed to cattle, pigs and poultry, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. Although this practice sustains a growing demand for meat, it also generates public health fears associated with the expanding presence of antibiotics in the food chain.

People have long been exposed to antibiotics in meat and milk. Now, the new research shows that they also may be ingesting them from vegetables, perhaps even ones grown on organic farms.

The Minnesota researchers planted corn, green onion and cabbage in manure-treated soil in 2005 to evaluate the environmental impacts of feeding antibiotics to livestock. Six weeks later, the crops were analyzed and found to absorb chlortetracycline, a drug widely used to treat diseases in livestock. In another study in 2007, corn, lettuce and potato were planted in soil treated with liquid hog manure. They, too, accumulated concentrations of an antibiotic, named Sulfamethazine, also commonly used in livestock.

As the amount of antibiotics in the soil increased, so too did the levels taken up by the corn, potatoes and other plants.
“Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure,” said Holly Dolliver, a member of the Minnesota research team and now a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. “A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (U.S.) agricultural land.”

Manure, widely used as a substitute for chemical fertilizer, adds nutrients that help plants grow. It is often used in organic farming.

The scientists found that although their crops were only propagated in greenhouses for six weeks--far less than a normal growing season--antibiotics were absorbed readily into their leaves. If grown for a full season, drugs most likely would find their way into parts of plants that humans eat, said Dolliver.

Less than 0.1 percent of antibiotics applied to soil were absorbed into the corn, lettuce and other plants. Though a tiny amount, health implications for people consuming such small, cumulative doses are largely unknown.

“The antibiotic accumulation in plants is just another negative consequence of our animal agriculture industry and not surprising given the quantity fed to livestock,” said Steve Roach, public health program director for the non-profit Food Animal Concerns Trust.

For highly processed plants such as corn, the drugs would most likely be removed, added Dolliver. But many food crops such as spinach and lettuce are not processed, only washed, allowing antibiotics to remain.

“Nobody particularly eats corn or soybean directly,” said Satish Gupta, a University of Minnesota professor of soil science and study leader. “But there are crops I am much more worried about, like cabbage and lettuce, because these are leaves we eat directly and consume raw.”

One finding that particularly worries food scientists is the accumulation of antibiotics within potato tubers. Tubers are an enlarged, underground stem that uptake and store nutrients from the soil. In crops like potatoes, carrots and radishes, it is the part humans eat.

“Since these tubers and root crops are in direct contact with the soil they may show a greater propensity for (antibiotic) uptake,” said Gupta.

Health officials fear that eating vegetables and meat laced with drugs meant to treat infections can promote resistant strains of bacteria in food and the environment.

Toxic Dumping & (So-called) Pirates

Even the Jellyfish won't survive this sort of thing. Radioactive waste, etc.

The main media only talks of pirates - not that the people are trying to stop toxic dumping.

Apparently, European, US and Asian shipping firms made some kind of agreement in the early 1990s with Somalia's politicians and militia leaders. So they figure it is their dumping ground. The citizens of Somalia don't see it that way.

While the hijackings have been described as the work of criminals, (UN) officials admit the problem of waste dumped off the coast of Somalia may be a reason why ships have been commandeered.

In September, a Ukrainian freighter with Russian tanks on board, anti-aircraft guns and heavy weaponry was seized by Somali pirates and ransom negotiations are ongoing.

From the BBC:

...You know, our problem is not piracy. It is illegal dumping.

These problems have been going for sometime and the world knows about it. The Americans have been here in the region for a long time now - they know about the pollution.

Instead, no, the world is only talking about the pirates and the money involved.

Meanwhile, there has been something else going on and it has been going on for years. There are many dumpings made in our sea, so much rubbish.

It is dumped in our seas and it washes up on our coastline and spreads into our area.

A few nights ago, some tanks came out from the high sea and they cracked it seems and now they are leaking into the water and into the air.

The first people fell ill yesterday afternoon. People are reporting mysterious illnesses; they are talking about it as though it were chicken pox - but it is not exactly like that either. Their skin is bad. They are sneezing, coughing and vomiting.

This is the first time it has been like this; that people have such very, very bad sickness.

The people who have these symptoms are the ones who wake early, before it is light, and herd their livestock to the shore to graze. The animals are sick from drinking the water and the people who washed in the water are now suffering.

From BSN

The escapades of Somali pirates made headlines last week. But the media has ignored the injustice behind the phenomenon.

When the Asian tsunami of Christmas 2005 washed ashore on the east coast of Africa, it uncovered a great scandal.

Tons of radioactive waste and toxic chemicals drifted onto the beaches after the giant wave dislodged them from the sea bed off Somalia. Tens of thousands of Somalis fell ill after coming into contact with this cocktail. They complained to the United Nations (UN), which began an investigation. "There are reports from villagers of a wide range of medical problems such as mouth bleeds, abdominal hemorrhages, unusual skin disorders and breathing difficulties," the UN noted.

Some 300 people are believed to have died from the poisonous chemicals. Many European, US and Asian shipping firms – notably Switzerland’s Achair Partners and Italy’s Progresso – signed dumping deals in the early 1990s with Somalia’s politicians and militia leaders.

This meant they could use the coast as a toxic dumping ground. This practice became widespread as the country descended into civil war. Nick Nuttall of the UN Environment Program said, "European companies found it was very cheap to get rid of the waste.

"It cost as little as £1.70 a ton, whereas waste disposal costs in Europe was something like £670 a ton. "And the waste is of many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, hospital wastes, chemical wastes – you name it."

But despite the evidence uncovered by the tsunami, an investigation into the practice of toxic dumping was dropped. There was no compensation and no clean up. In 2006 Somali fishermen complained to the UN that foreign fishing fleets were using the breakdown of the state to plunder their fish stocks. These foreign fleets often recruited Somali militias to intimidate local fishermen.

Despite repeated requests, the UN refused to act. Meanwhile the warships of global powers that patrol the strategically important Gulf of Aden did not sink or seize any vessels dumping toxic chemicals off the coast.

So angry Somalis, whose waters were being poisoned and whose livelihoods were threatened, took matters into their own hands. Fishermen began to arm themselves and attempted to act as unofficial coastguards. They began to seize ships in late 2005. These were released after a ransom was paid. Among them were cargo vessels, luxury cruise liners and tuna fishing boats.

Januna Ali Jama, a Somali pirate leader, explained that their actions were motivated by attempts to stop the toxic dumping. He said that the £5.4 million ransom they demanded for the return of a Ukrainian ship would go towards cleaning up the mess.

Ali Jama said the pirates were "reacting to the toxic waste that has been continually dumped on the shores of our country for nearly 20 years. "The Somali coastline has been destroyed. We believe this money is nothing compared to the devastation that we have seen on the seas."

Foreclosed US Pools Get Mosquito-Eating Fish

PHOENIX - Authorities in Arizona are stepping up a program to put mosquito-gobbling minnows into the stagnant pools of foreclosed or abandoned homes to prevent an outbreak of West Nile virus.

Public health workers in Maricopa County, which includes the cities of the Phoenix valley, are breeding thousands of so-called mosquitofish to gobble up larvae that thrive in the green pools of abandoned homes across the county.
The tiny, silvery fish are being offered to residents and municipal authorities across the parched desert county, which has tens of thousands of swimming pools, and one of the highest foreclosure rates in the United States.

"The abandoned pools become a stagnant little swamp that breeds mosquitoes in the middle of a neighborhood," said John Townsend, Maricopa County Vector Control manager.

"It is an important public health issue to keep the mosquito population down ... and the fish are very effective at that," he added.

West Nile virus, which came to the United States from Africa in the late 1990s, is now endemic in the county. Severe cases can produce high fever, stupor, tremors and paralysis, and can prove fatal.

In the first three months of the year, 17,214 homes in Maricopa County were offered for foreclosure sales, a more than three-fold rise on the previous year, according to RealtyStore.com.

In addition, an unknown number of local homes were simply abandoned as the owners skipped out on their spiraling debts, many leaving untreated backyard pools to stagnate, local authorities say.

To meet a sharp increase in reports of green pools, Townsend said the county has begun a program to breed 40,000 mosquitofish this year using tanks at Phoenix Zoo, and is making the voracious minnows available countywide.

The fish are proving an attractive alternative to chemicals or pesticides...

"More killer germs resisting world's antibiotics"

From McClatchy Newspapers

The threat of death-defying bacteria, stubborn organisms that refuse to be conquered by antibiotic medicines, is growing more alarming.

Infectious microbes that used to be able to resist only one drug, such as penicillin or methicillin, now resist multiple drugs. Some can survive virtually every weapon in doctors' medicine cabinets.

``This is very worrisome,'' said Stuart Levy, a microbiologist at Tufts University in Boston. ``In many cases, there might be only one or no drugs to treat (an infection). We are not keeping up with the bacteria.''

Two troubling recent developments:

Some bacteria have acquired the ability to ``eat'' the very antibiotic medicines that are supposed to eat them.
``Almost all the drugs that we consider as our mainline defense against bacterial infections are at risk from bacteria that not only resist the drugs but eat them for breakfast,'' George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, wrote in the April 4 issue of the journal Science.

A lethal new form of tuberculosis, known as XDR-TB, that's virtually impossible to cure has exploded in Africa, Asia and Russia. There are also a small number of cases in the United States.
These XDR-TB bacteria possess ``such extensive drug resistance as to be nearly untreatable with currently available drugs,'' Sarita Shah, a epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, reported in the Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.

Wildlife Suffering Due to Farmer's E-coli responses

I thought it sounded like the e-coli problem (ie spinach) was probably from factory farmed animals and bad waste practices. At any rate - there has to be a better solution than what they are doing... (From the Wall Street Jounal)

Farmers around California's "Salad Bowl" have mounted an assault against wildlife to appease buyers who worry about E. coli in their leafy greens.

About one-third of the farmers surveyed in the region have cleared wide swaths of land surrounding their fields, leaving felled trees scattered along the Salinas River. Most used poisons, traps or fences to keep out frogs, squirrels and other wildlife last year, according to a Monterey County Resource Conservation District survey. Some farmers let ponds and irrigation reservoirs -- potentially prime wildlife habitat -- go dry.

But the effort to eradicate the threat of E. coli rests on squishy science. Some fresh-produce processors and food retailers impose tough restrictions on the farmers they buy from. They have banned many animals, including tadpoles, that haven't shown a high risk of carrying the dangerous E. coli strain that caused the 2006 outbreak, killed three people and sickened 200 more. While that crisis was linked to fresh spinach grown in the Salinas Valley, the Food and Drug Administration hasn't been able to nail down the cause. It cited feral pigs and cattle grazing nearby as suspects. Throughout the region, farmers are struggling with problems their predecessors faced going back to the origins of agriculture: How to keep hungry herbivores out of their fields. Now the worry isn't so much what they eat, but what they leave behind...

Caught in the middle is wildlife whose complicity in the transmission of E. coli is unconfirmed. And farmers. While fresh-produce farmers are forced to absorb skyrocketing food-safety costs, not all of the measures are justified by science. "Nobody wants unsafe food, but at what cost? As a society, I don't think we answered that," says Rob Atwill, who heads the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of California at Davis. He and other scientists are studying the risk of E. coli contamination from wildlife...

With no single standard among processors and retailers, many farmers struggle to meet the toughest ones. One set of rules -- 17 pages -- was written by the Food Safety Leadership Council, a group of food-service companies including McDonald's Corp., Walt Disney Co.'s Walt Disney World Resort and Darden Restaurants Inc., whose restaurant chains include Red Lobster. It states farmers must "reduce the presence of reptiles, insects, birds, rodents or other potential sources of contamination...through evaluation of adjacent land and elimination of possible vector attractants (rotting fruit, cull piles, etc)."...

Some smaller farmers opt out. Dale Coke, owner of a 250-acre farm in San Juan Bautista, said he lost $50,000 to $60,000 in sales to Canadian buyers because he isn't participating in a California initiative that set standards for leafy-green growers. Had he signed up, he says, he would have to apply the rules to all of his crops, even though 70% aren't leafy greens. Although Mr. Coke spends more than $10,000 a year on food safety, he sells to wholesalers who don't require him to follow the "draconian measures" imposed by processors, he says. Consumers need to communicate that "they will not tolerate environmental destruction for the production of their leafy greens," says Jo Ann Baumgartner, director of the Wild Farm Alliance. "These current practices in the Salinas Valley are bad for human health and bad for wildlife."

"Stem Rust Never Sleeps"

From New York Times

WITH food prices soaring throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, and shortages threatening hunger and political chaos, the time could not be worse for an epidemic of stem rust in the world’s wheat crops. Yet millions of wheat farmers, small and large, face this spreading and deadly crop infection.

The looming catastrophe can be avoided if the world’s wheat scientists pull together to develop a new generation of stem-rust-resistant varieties of wheat. But scientists must quickly turn their attention to replacing almost all of the commercial wheat grown in the world today. This will require a commitment from many nations, especially the United States, which has lately neglected its role as a leader in agricultural science.

Stem rust, the most feared of all wheat diseases, can turn a healthy crop of wheat into a tangled mass of stems that produce little or no grain. The fungus spores travel in the wind, causing the infection to spread quickly. It has caused major famines since the beginning of history. In North America, huge grain losses occurred in 1903 and 1905 and from 1950 to ’54.

During the 1950s, I and other scientists, first in North America and later throughout the world, developed high-yielding wheat varieties that were resistant to stem rust and other diseases. These improved seeds not only enabled farmers around the world to hold stem rust at bay for more than 50 years but also allowed for greater and more dependable yields. Indeed, with this work, global food supplies rapidly increased and prices dropped.

From 1965 to 1985, the heyday of the Green Revolution, world production of cereal grains — wheat, rice, corn, barley and sorghum — nearly doubled, from 1 billion to 1.8 billion metric tons, and cereal prices dropped by 40 percent.

Today, wheat provides about 20 percent of the food calories for the world’s people. The world wheat harvest now stands at about 600 million metric tons.

In the last decade, global wheat production has not kept pace with rising population, or the increasing per capita demand for wheat products in newly industrializing countries. At the same time, international support for wheat research has declined significantly. And as a consequence, in 2007-08, world wheat stocks (as a percentage of demand) dropped to their lowest level since 1947-48. And prices have steadily climbed to the highest level in 25 years.


The new strains of stem rust, called Ug99 because they were discovered in Uganda in 1999, are much more dangerous than those that, 50 years ago, destroyed as much as 20 percent of the American wheat crop. Today’s lush, high-yielding wheat fields on vast irrigated tracts are ideal environments for the fungus to multiply, so the potential for crop loss is greater than ever...

The Bush administration was initially quick to grasp Ug99’s threat to American wheat production... But more recently, the administration has begun reversing direction. The State Department is recommending ending American support for the international agricultural research centers that helped start the Green Revolution, including all money for wheat research. And significant financial cuts have been proposed for important research centers, including the Department of Agriculture’s essential rust research laboratory in St. Paul.

This shocking short-sightedness goes against the interests not only of American wheat farmers and consumers but of all humanity. It is tantamount to the United States abandoning its pledge to help halve world hunger by 2015...

"...Tropical Virus Moves to Italy"

Panic was spreading this August through this tidy village of 2,000 as one person after another fell ill with weeks of high fever, exhaustion and excruciating bone pain, just as most of Italy was enjoying Ferragosto, its most important summer holiday.

“At one point, I simply couldn’t stand up to get out of the car,” said Antonio Ciano, 62, an elegant retiree in a pashmina scarf and trendy blue glasses. “I fell. I thought, O.K., my time is up. I’m going to die. It was really that dramatic.”

By midmonth, more than 100 people had come down with the same malady. Although the worst symptoms dissipated after a couple of weeks, no doctor could figure out what was wrong.

People blamed pollution in the river. They denounced the government. But most of all they blamed recent immigrants from tropical Africa for bringing the pestilence to their sleepy settlement of pastel stucco homes.

“Why immigrants?” asked Rina Ventura, who owns a shop selling shoes and purses. “I kept thinking of these terrible diseases that you see on TV, like malaria. We were terrified. There was no name and no treatment.”

Oddly, the villagers were both right and wrong. After a month of investigation, Italian public health officials discovered that the people of Castiglione di Cervia were, in fact, suffering from a tropical disease, chikungunya, a relative of dengue fever normally found in the Indian Ocean region. But the immigrants spreading the disease were not humans but insects: tiger mosquitoes, who can thrive in a warming Europe.

Aided by global warming and globalization, Castiglione di Cervia has the dubious distinction of playing host to the first outbreak in modern Europe of a disease that had previously been seen only in the tropics...

"Sea lice killing off wild salmon"

Researchers have new evidence that as the density of salmon farms increases, they can drive nearby wild salmon runs to extinction. The problem is sea lice, a natural parasite that normally attaches to adult salmon with little ill effect and has little contact with vulnerable juvenile salmon. All that changes, however, when fish farms move in.

A study in the journal Science to be published Friday shows that sea lice infestations around salmon farms in British Columbia's Broughton Archipelago have reached a density so high they are killing juvenile wild pink salmon at a rate fast enough to drive local runs to extinction in eight years if nothing is done — and four years have already passed.

"We've seen sea lice infestations on juvenile salmon in Norway, Ireland, Scotland and Canada, but it's been unclear and very contentious what the impact of the sea lice is on the wild salmon population," said Martin Krkosek, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at the Center for Mathematical Biology at the University of Alberta.

"What's really new and exciting about this paper is this is the first time scientists have had enough detailed data to actually measure the impact of sea lice on wild salmon populations," he said.

Principally funded by the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the peer-reviewed study is the latest in a series by a group of scientists trying to push the Canadian government to place more strict regulations on salmon farms to control sea lice.

Based on government stream surveys, the study used a computer model to analyze pink salmon returns in 64 rivers without exposure to salmon farms and seven rivers where young fish must migrate past at least one salmon farm. The study considered returns before and after sea lice infestations were noticed in wild fish in 2001....

When fish farms move in, hundreds of thousands of adults are raised in floating net pens anchored year-round in the channels where the young fish migrate. The study suggested that the density of fish farms reached a tipping point in 2001 that triggered a killer sea lice infestation.

Alexandra Morton, a co-author and director of the Salmon Coast Field Station in the archipelago, said wild salmon are surviving commercial fishing but not sea lice...