Category Archives: environment

Sell Out Nutrition Group Lobbies Against Healthier School Meals It Sought, Citing Cost – NYTimes.com

{Big corporations want profit and care not if children suffer!}

“They sold their souls to the devil,” said Stanley C. Garnett, a former Agriculture Department official who ran the agency’s child nutrition division. He was a member of the School Nutrition Association who resigned in protest of the lobbying campaign.

The devils in this case, the association’s critics say, are the dozens of food companies that have paid millions in sponsorship fees to the School Nutrition Association, covering over half of its $10.5 million annual budget.

Reacting to the association’s change of heart, the House Appropriations Committee has passed a spending bill with a provision that would allow schools to waive the nutrition standards during the school year that begins in the fall. A vote by the full House is tentatively set after the Fourth of July recess. A similar amendment was offered for Senate spending bills, but Democrats canceled the debate after disagreeing with Republicans over that and other amendments.

via Nutrition Group Lobbies Against Healthier School Meals It Sought, Citing Cost – NYTimes.com.

Poverty, Greed, and Unintended Harm – Costa Rica Enforces Green Justice | Inter Press Service

As well as inspecting specific cases, the TAA carries out “environmental sweeps,” their term for inspection tours lasting several days, with the purpose of putting a stop to ecological damage in a given territory.

The TAA has already halted 200 real estate projects on the Pacific coast and 40 on the Atlantic coast since the sweeps started in 2008, its president said.

But the “bad guys” do not give up. Only days after Sánchez’s inspection trip, another group of lawyers, experts and judges visited mangrove swamps in Puntarenas, in the Central Pacific region, 80 kilometres east of the provincial capital, to investigate another complaint.

They found a scene of devastation: 25 hectares of mangrove had been reduced to ashes by invaders who were already planting maize and sugarcane.

“They go on and on, and if we let them they would devour the whole zone. They burn down the mangroves and use the land for farming,” forest biologist Alexis Madrigal, the coordinator of TAA’s technical department, told IPS at the scene.

via Costa Rica Enforces Green Justice | Inter Press Service.

Israeli groups call for more settlements in response to the killing of the three settlers

A group of Israeli settlers led by the mayor of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement, Benny Kashriel, set up a tent today in the area between the settlement and Jerusalem, known as Area E1.

Kashriel called on the Israeli authorities to construct new settlement units in the area in response to the killing of the three Israeli settlers.

Construction in E1 is very controversial, as building settlements there would create a physical link between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem, dividing East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and its Palestinian population centers. It would also divide the West Bank into two almost separate parts, jeopardizing the prospects of a contiguous Palestinian state.

Moreover, the Israeli right-wing political women’s group Women in Green also set up a tent, in order to pressure the authorities to build new settlements in the area between Jeba’at Auz and Gush Etzion, in the north of Hebron.

via Israeli groups call for more settlements in response to the killing of the three settlers.

Interior Department Releases Report on Bison Management

The report, “DOI Bison Report: Looking Forward” outlines plans to work cooperatively with tribes, states, landowners, conservation groups, commercial bison producers, agricultural interests and others interested in bison to restore the nation’s bison population to a proper ecological and cultural role on appropriate landscapes within its historical range.

via Interior Department Releases Report on Bison Management.

No Bison input – no wolves or cougars to do nature’s work – people know best how to slaughter and decide how many Bison are OK from a human perspective and not a natural perspective…

Liberia: At Redemption Hospital – Fear Grips Nurses, Patients After Ebola Outbreak (Page 2 of 2)

“We have been working since the outbreak of Ebola here but the fear is there and you cannot erase that. Working has slow down because the patients are not coming like before. Some of the patients on beds before the outbreak also left,” one of the nurses stated.

According to them, patients are afraid of being admitted at the hospital.

The nurses said some residents of the community are allegedly engage into stigmatizing health workers at the hospital.

“Even if we are in our bus passing, they (residents) will be on the road calling us Ebola, Ebola and so, the patients themselves are not coming because they are afraid,” another nurse added.

Meanwhile, the nurses have called for more awareness to be made to help curtail the spread of Ebola in Liberia.

The nurses urged citizens to report cases of persons showing symptoms of the Ebola virus including constant vomiting, fever, amongst others to the hospital.

Prior to the outbreak of the Ebola virus, the Redemption Hospital provides free medical treatment to hundreds of patients on a daily basis.

Sometimes ago, the administration of the hospital called on the GOL and donor partners to help provide more beds to the hospital to help curtail the influx of patients.

But presently, most of the hospital beds are left unoccupied because patients are not seeking medical treatment there.

via allAfrica.com: Liberia: At Redemption Hospital – Fear Grips Nurses, Patients After Ebola Outbreak (Page 2 of 2).

Zhejiang bans urban live poultry trading – People’s Daily Online

{Personally, I am vegan but this is THE way to lower risk of this flu and new ones!}

Live poultry trading has been banned in urban areas of east China’s Zhejiang Province for good from Tuesday to control the spread of bird flu.

Zhejiang recorded a higher number of human cases of bird flu infections than any other province in 2013.

Many live poultry markets closed when a bird flu case was found. But markets reopened at a later date.

Fearing the spread of bird flu, Zhejiang has decided to completely close all live poultry markets in urban areas.

From now on, only dead and plucked poultry can be traded in urban markets, according to the provincial government.

Agricultural authorities in Zhejiang have begun to advocate standardized poultry cultivation so meat can be traced back to its producers.

Consumers are worried they may not be able to determine whether dead poultry was healthy, whereas they can when buying live poultry.

The authorities will also develop a process where poultry can be killed and plucked by machines on a large scale.

via Zhejiang bans urban live poultry trading – People’s Daily Online.

Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com

One day in May, Colt Ringer, 28, limped along near Ms. Vargas’s trailer wearing a dusty black cowboy hat and carrying a .22-caliber Magnum revolver and .45-caliber pistol in holsters at his hip. He was returning home empty-handed after hunting feral hogs, which he kills for sport and for food.

“All of us are poor, in our own way,” he said. “I don’t get nothing off these wells right out here, because I don’t own the land. That just goes to show the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rule.”

via Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com.

Eat Drink Better | Healthy recipes, good food: sustainable eats for a healthy lifestyle!

Dutch farmers actually bought in (which is amazing since the Netherlands is Europe’s biggest meat exporter). And in 2013, the ministry announced that between 2007 and 2012, the Netherlands saw a 56% decrease in antibiotic sales to farms without any significant negative impact on efficiency or financial results. Modern Farmer describes the impact on animal and human health:

So has all this attention to detail actually helped animal and human antibiotic resistance? Early data says yes. The 2013 edition of the Netherlands’ annual report on antibiotic usage in animals shows resistant bacteria declining in pigs, veal, chickens and dairy cattle. What will really prove its worth, though, is whether antibiotic-resistant infections decline in humans too.

Evidence shows that there has been no further increase in the number of human infections. But we’ll have to wait to see if the number goes down.

So the Dutch took a risk that paid off — prioritizing animal and human health by redesigning agricultural norms. Will other countries follow their example? Why shouldn’t they?

via Eat Drink Better | Healthy recipes, good food: sustainable eats for a healthy lifestyle!.

Text of H.R. 4899: AKA: Drill Baby Drill – Damn the Environment – Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014 (Passed the House (Engrossed) version) – GovTrack.us

Text of the Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014

This bill passed in the House on June 26, 2014 and goes to the Senate next for consideration. The text of the bill below is as of Jun 26, 2014 (Passed the House (Engrossed)).

via Text of H.R. 4899: Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014 (Passed the House (Engrossed) version) – GovTrack.us.