Hey everyone, I just launched my new photoblog. Go check it out and let me know how you like it. Enjoy!
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Eating Animals Is Making Us Sick
I came across this article today and thought my readers (if i have any) would like to read it. enjoy!
New York (CNN) -- Like most people, I'd given some thought to what meat actually is, but until I became a father and faced the prospect of having to make food choices on someone else's behalf, there was no urgency to get to the bottom of things.
I'm a novelist and never had it in mind to write nonfiction. Frankly, I doubt I'll ever do it again. But the subject of animal agriculture, at this moment, is something no one should ignore. As a writer, putting words on the page is how I pay attention.
If the way we raise animals for food isn't the most important problem in the world right now, it's arguably the No. 1 cause of global warming: The United Nations reports the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.
It's the No. 1 cause of animal suffering, a decisive factor in the creation of zoonotic diseases like bird and swine flu, and the list goes on. It is the problem with the most deafening silence surrounding it.
Even the most political people, the most thoughtful and engaged, tend not to "go there." And for good reason. Going there can be extremely uncomfortable. Food is not just what we put in our mouths to fill up; it is culture and identity. Reason plays some role in our decisions about food, but it's rarely driving the car.
We need a better way to talk about eating animals, a way that doesn't ignore or even just shruggingly accept things like habits, cravings, family and history but rather incorporates them into the conversation. The more they are allowed in, the more able we will be to follow our best instincts. And although there are many respectable ways to think about meat, there is not a person on Earth whose best instincts would lead him or her to factory farming.
My book, "Eating Animals," addresses factory farming from numerous perspectives: animal welfare, the environment, the price paid by rural communities, the economic costs. In two essays, I will share some of what I've learned about how the way we raise animals for food affects human health.
What we eat and what we are
Why aren't more people aware of, and angry about, the rates of avoidable food-borne illness? Perhaps it doesn't seem obvious that something is amiss simply because anything that happens all the time -- like meat, especially poultry, becoming infected by pathogens -- tends to fade into the background.
Whatever the case, if you know what to look for, the pathogen problem comes into terrifying focus. For example, the next time a friend has a sudden "flu" -- what folks sometimes misdescribe as "the stomach flu" -- ask a few questions. Was your friend's illness one of those "24-hour flus" that come and go quickly: retch or crap, then relief? The diagnosis isn't quite so simple, but if the answer to this question is yes, your friend probably didn't have the flu at all.
He or she was probably suffering from one of the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated happen in America each year. Your friend didn't "catch a bug" so much as eat a bug. And in all likelihood, that bug was created by factory farming.
Beyond the sheer number of illnesses linked to factory farming, we know that factory farms are contributing to the growth of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens simply because these farms consume so many antimicrobials.
We have to go to a doctor to obtain antibiotics and other antimicrobials as a public-health measure to limit the number of such drugs being taken by humans. We accept this inconvenience because of its medical importance. Microbes eventually adapt to antimicrobials, and we want to make sure it is the truly sick who benefit from the finite number of uses any antimicrobial will have before the microbes learn how to survive it.
On a typical factory farm, drugs are fed to animals with every meal. In poultry factory farms, they almost have to be. It's a perfect storm: The animals have been bred to such extremes that sickness is inevitable, and the living conditions promote illness.
Industry saw this problem from the beginning, but rather than accept less-productive animals, it compensated for the animals' compromised immunity with drugs. As a result, farmed animals are fed antibiotics nontherapeutically: that is, before they get sick.
In the United States, about 3 million pounds of antibiotics are given to humans each year, but a whopping 17.8 million pounds are fed to livestock -- at least, that is what the industry claims.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimated that the industry underreported its antibiotic use by at least 40 percent.
The group calculated that 24.6 million pounds of antibiotics were fed to chickens, pigs and other farmed animals, counting only nontherapeutic uses. And that was in 2001. In other words, for every dose of antibiotics taken by a sick human, eight doses are given to a "healthy" animal.
The implications for creating drug-resistant pathogens are quite straightforward. Study after study has shown that antimicrobial resistance follows quickly on the heels of the introduction of new drugs on factory farms.
For example, in 1995, when the Food and Drug Administration approved fluoroquinolones -- such as Cipro -- for use in chickens against the protest of the Centers for Disease Control, the percentage of bacteria resistant to this powerful new class of antibiotics rose from almost zero to 18 percent by 2002.
A broader study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed an eightfold increase in antimicrobial resistance from 1992 to 1997 and linked this increase to the use of antimicrobials in farmed chickens. As far back as the late 1960s, scientists have warned against the nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in farmed-animal feed.
Today, institutions as diverse as the American Medical Association; the Centers for Disease Control; the Institute of Medicine, a division of the National Academy of Sciences; and the World Health Organization have linked nontherapeutic antibiotic use on factory farms with increased antimicrobial resistance and called for a ban.
Still, the factory farm industry has effectively opposed such a ban in the United States. And, unsurprisingly, the limited bans in other countries are only a limited solution.
There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.
What is the source of the industry's immense power? We give it to them. We have chosen, unwittingly, to fund this industry on a massive scale by eating factory-farmed animal products. And we do so daily.
The same conditions that lead at least 76 million Americans to become ill from their food annually and that promote antimicrobial resistance also contribute to the risk of a pandemic.
At a remarkable 2004 conference, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) put their tremendous resources together to evaluate the available information on "emerging zoonotic diseases" or those spread by humans-to- animals and animals-to-humans.
At the time of the conference, H5N1 and SARS topped the list of feared emerging zoonotic diseases. Today, the H1N1 swine flu would be the pathogen enemy No. 1.
The scientists distinguished between "primary risk factors" for zoonotic diseases and mere "amplification risk factors," which affect only the rate at which a disease spreads. Their examples of primary risk factors were "change to an agricultural production system or consumption patterns." What particular agricultural and consumer changes did they have in mind?
First in a list of four main risk factors was "increasing demand for animal protein," which is a way of saying that demand for meat, eggs, and dairy is a "primary factor" influencing emerging zoonotic diseases. This demand for animal products, the report continues, leads to "changes in farming practices." Lest we have any confusion about the "changes" that are relevant, poultry factory farms are singled out.
Similar conclusions were reached by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, which brought together industry experts and experts from the WHO, OIE and USDA. Their 2005 report argued that a major impact of factory farming is "the rapid selection and amplification of pathogens that arise from a virulent ancestor (frequently by subtle mutation), thus there is increasing risk for disease entrance and/or dissemination."
Breeding genetically uniform and sickness-prone birds in the overcrowded, stressful, feces-infested and artificially lit conditions of factory farms promotes the growth and mutation of pathogens. The "cost of increased efficiency," the report concludes, is increased global risk for diseases. Our choice is simple: cheap chicken or our health.
Today, the factory farm-pandemic link couldn't be more lucid. The primary ancestor of the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak originated at a hog factory farm in America's most hog-factory-rich state, North Carolina, and then quickly spread throughout the Americas.
It was in these factory farms that scientists saw, for the first time, viruses that combined genetic material from bird, pig and human viruses. Scientists at Columbia and Princeton Universities have actually been able to trace six of the eight genetic segments of the most feared virus in the world directly to U.S. factory farms.
Perhaps in the back of our minds we already understand, without all the science, that something terribly wrong is happening. We know that it cannot possibly be healthy to raise such grotesque animals in such grossly unnatural conditions. We know that if someone offers to show us a film on how our meat is produced, it will be a horror film.
We perhaps know more than we care to admit, keeping it down in the dark places of our memory -- disavowed. When we eat factory-farmed meat, we live on tortured flesh. Increasingly, those sick animals are making us sick.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jonathan Safran Foer.
Friday, October 09, 2009
Israel: Stop Blocking School Supplies From Entering Gaza
(Jerusalem) - Israeli authorities should immediately lift restrictions that have left students in Gaza's public schools without textbooks and the most basic school supplies, such as notebooks and pens, Human Rights Watch said today. Israel severely limits imports into Gaza of a wide variety of basic goods, from food to construction materials.
More than a month into the school year, the Israeli restrictions have caused severe shortages that leave students unable to afford supplies such as notebooks. Students are obliged to share or take turns studying from used textbooks and workbooks. Some did not receive any books for this year's classes. Supplies smuggled through tunnels underneath Gaza's southern border with Egypt have failed to make up for the shortages caused by Israel's arbitrary restrictions on imports of educational materials.
"Israel's blockade affects every aspect of life in Gaza, and is even preventing students from having basic school supplies," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "What possible justification can there be for blocking school supplies, which effectively deprives children of their right to an education?"
Riyadh Lubbad, a principal at al-Karmel secondary school in Gaza City, told Human Rights Watch, "Some books from the curriculum were not printed due to the lack of ink and paper. It is particularly bad for history, geography, and English-language classes."
Salim Ayoub, an 11th-grade student at al-Karmel, said, "In our English class we have one book for every two students. When I get the workbook [with exercises] my classmate has the textbook, and we exchange them. Our class was lucky. Other English classes don't have books at all."
Ayoub said that students cannot afford notebooks: "There were no notebooks at all in the market at the beginning of school. Later, I found notebooks that came from the tunnels [from Egypt] but they were expensive. You're supposed to have three notebooks per subject, but I bought one or two."
Another 11th-grade student at al-Karmel, Mohamed Abu Karsh, said, "The curriculum needs about 20 notebooks. I only could afford to buy 10."
According to the United Nations, the armed conflict in Gaza last December and January destroyed 18 of Gaza's 641 schools, with a total of more than 440,000 students, and damaged 280 others. Because Israel has barred almost all shipments of construction materials, damaged schools have not been rebuilt or repaired, and 15,000 students whose schools were damaged during the war have been transferred to other schools. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) also had to cancel plans to build new schools because of the lack of construction materials.
Article 50 of the Fourth Geneva Convention concerning occupied territories requires the occupying power to "facilitate the proper working of all institutions devoted to the care and education of children."
Falah Lubbad is one of 20 or 30 Gaza importers who deal with stationery. "I used to get notebooks from a factory in Hebron, but we can't import from the West Bank now," he told Human Rights Watch. Notebooks smuggled from Egypt cost 70 percent more to import, he said, making them unaffordable for many students. "I didn't try to import through the tunnels because the notebooks are too expensive and poor quality, and many are torn when they arrive. I'm also out of pens, erasers, and stationery for university students." Lubbad said he was paying storage fees for 15 truckloads of stationery in Israel that had not been granted approval to enter Gaza; eight of the truckloads had been held up since September 2008.
Israel has allowed only two truckloads of stationery to enter Gaza in 2009, while nearly 120 truckloads of stationery were waiting for Israeli clearance to enter as of August 25, according to the UN's IRIN news agency. When the current school year began in late August, IRIN reported, public and private schools serving more than 240,000 students in Gaza lacked education materials. UNRWA schools have an additional 207,250 students.
Khaled Raddi, a spokesman for the Hamas education ministry, told Human Rights Watch that Gaza's schools faced a "severe shortage" of stationery, ink, and paper. UNRWA has been unable to print 10 percent of required textbooks because Israel has not approved the necessary ink and paper imports, Aidan O'Leary, an agency official who oversees school programs, told Human Rights Watch. Israel has also not approved imports of 5,000 school desks for UNRWA students, and 4,000 tables and chairs for teachers in classrooms.
"Because we don't have enough space for our students, we need to import portable container classrooms, but we are still waiting for them," O'Leary said. His agency has not been able to distribute stationery and pencils to students as planned, he said.
The United States, Israel's largest foreign donor, pledged US$300 million in humanitarian aid for Gaza in March at a donor's conference on post-war aid to Gaza in Egypt. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said at the conference, "A child growing up in Gaza without shelter, health care, or an education has the same right to go to school, see a doctor, and live with a roof over her head as a child growing up in your country or mine." In aletter to Clinton, Human Rights Watch called on the United States, as Israel's most important political, military and financial backer, to dissociate itself from the blockade and to speak out against it.
"Children in Gaza are suffering from punitive restrictions while the United States and other allies of Israel have failed to take a firm stand against this policy, prolonging the effects of the war," Whitson said.
Under international humanitarian law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza, even though it withdrew its permanent military forces and settlers in 2005, because it continues to exercise effective day-to-day control over most aspects of life in Gaza. In addition to its effective control over Gaza's land, air, and sea borders, Israel controls most of the territory's electricity, water, and sewage capacity, as well as its telecommunications networks and population registry.
Israel's blockade violates its duty as an occupying power to safeguard the basic health and welfare of the occupied population, a form of collective punishment against civilians in violation of international humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross, in its authoritative commentary on the Geneva Conventions, states that "[t]he concept of collective punishment must be understood in the broadest sense: it covers not only legal sentences but sanctions and harassment of any sort."
Monday, October 05, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
Friday, September 04, 2009
Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, El Salvador: Finca Matalapa
Pressing some Intelligentsia Los Inmortales, El Salvador: Finca Matalapa. Loving it!
Gaza: Rescind Religious Dress Code for Girls
Gaza: Rescind Religious Dress Code for Girls
Hamas’s Unofficial Orders for ‘Islamic’ Dress Curtail Personal Freedom
(New York) - Hamas authorities in Gaza should suspend all orders that violate personal freedoms, including imposition of an Islamic dress code for female students, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch has received reports from Gaza residents that since the school year opened in late August, schools have been turning away female students for not wearing a headscarf or traditional gown, on the basis of new unofficial orders to schools from Hamas authorities. They are being told they must wear a jilbab, a long traditional gown, and a headscarf. Previously, the uniform typically required for female public school students was a long denim skirt and shirt. The new orders appear to have been issued without any legal basis.
"No one should be forced to wear religious clothing, including the headscarf, to receive an education" said Nadya Khalife, the women's rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa at Human Rights Watch. "These new orders are simply arbitrary."
The Center for Women's Legal Research and Consulting in Gaza reported that Hamas authorities have given orders to school administrators and teachers to pay attention to girls' dress, especially in secondary schools. The center's executive director, Zeinab Ghonaimy, told Human Rights Watch that a school administrator slapped one female student in front of her schoolmates for not wearing the jilbab.
"Physically assaulting students and humiliating them in front of their peers is simply unacceptable, whatever the reason, and especially to force them to wear certain religious clothing in violation of their religious freedom," said Khalife.
That these rules appear to target only female students suggests that they are discriminatory as well as a violation of religious freedom, Human Rights Watch said. It also is inconsistent with the Palestine Basic Law, which guarantees freedom of thought, conscience, and expression. Asma Jahangir, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and her predecessor, Abdelfattah Amor, have both criticized rules that require the wearing of religious dress in public.
In July 2009, Hamas officials initiated what they called a "virtue" campaign, saying they were concerned about increasing "immoral" behavior in Gaza. A Gaza resident told Human Rights Watch that Hamas police questioned women seen socializing with men in public places to determine whether the men were close relatives. Another resident told Human Rights Watch that, on the night of July 9, Hamas police beat up three young men for swimming without shirts.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), describing the crackdown, said, "There are indicators of interference in people's personal lives." A Gaza resident said the "virtue" campaign appeared to have ended in late August, but Hamas has now shifted focus to a "virtuous" dress code for school girls.
Human Rights Watch has criticized the governments of Germany, France, and Turkey for violating religious freedoms by banning religious symbols in schools and denying Muslim women the right to choose to wear headscarves in schools and universities. By the same token, women and girls should be free not to wear religious dress. Amor, the former special rapporteur, urged that dress should not be the subject of political regulation. Jahangir, the current special rapporteur, said that the "use of coercive methods and sanctions applied to individuals who do not wish to wear religious dress or a specific symbol seen as sanctioned by religion" indicates "legislative and administrative actions which typically are incompatible with international human rights law".
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) guarantees people's rights to freedom of religion, including stating that "no one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his [or her] freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his [or her] choice." As the de facto governing power, Hamas has repeatedly committed itself to respect international human rights standards, including in March 2007 in the program of the National Unity Government.
"Women themselves, not the state, should decide what they wear," said Khalife. "Schools can mandate uniforms, but only if the rules are clearly set out in writing and are not arbitrary or disrespectful of students' freedom of religion."
PS. i'm going to be posting more on women's right in education soon. I have a few video clips I want to share that discusses what exactly is taking place in the education system in the west bank and Gaza.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
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