Planetary Ruin

The farmer at the centre of the first foot and mouth outbreak in Surrey has spoken of his shock at discovering his cattle were infected with the disease.
 
Farmer Roger PrideRoger Pride, who runs Woolford’s farm with his wife Valerie, said they were victims of circumstances beyond their control.

In a statement read at a news conference by Anthony Gibson from the National Farmers’ Union, Mr Pride described the moment when it was confirmed his animals were infected.

He said: “For a moment we couldn’t believe it. We were completely shocked and devastated.

“It felt as if our whole world was turned upside-down.”

He also said he believed floods may have carried the disease to his farm, because water from an overflowing sewer had spread across his fields.

Earlier, it was confirmed that a second outbreak of foot and mouth had been found on another farm, inside the three kilometre exclusion zone.

The cattle there had already been destroyed because of fears that they had the disease.

The NFU is now in discussions with Defra about shutting all footpaths and rights of way in the area to prevent further contamination.

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In another attempt to cause death and decease through the shear stupidity of science…. Can scientists guarantee that meat that is grown in a lab, by means other than the natural order, will have unforseen consequences?

Dutch researchers are trying to grow pork meat in a laboratory with the goal of feeding millions without the need to raise and slaughter animals.

“We’re trying to make meat without having to kill animals,” Bernard Roelen, a veterinary science professor at Utrecht University, said in an interview.

Although it is in its early stages, the idea is to replace harvesting meat from livestock with a process that eliminates the need for animal feed, transport, land use and the methane expelled by animals, which all hurt the environment, he said.

“Keeping animals just to eat them is in fact not so good for the environment,” said Roelen. “Animals need to grow, and animals produce many things that you do not eat.”

Developed nations are expected to consume an average of 43 kg per capita of poultry, beef, pork and other meats this year, an amount that rises around 2 percent annually, data from the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation shows.

Asked whether people would be repulsed by lab-grown meat, Roelen said he believed there would be enough demand, as much of what people eat today is already extensively processed, from the feed that animals consume to the conditions under which they are raised and the preparation of meat after slaughter.

“I can imagine that some people will have problems with it,” he said. “People might think it is artificial. But some people might not realize that some part of the meat they eat is artificial.”

Research is also under way in the United States, including one experiment funded by U.S. space agency NASA to see whether meat can be grown for astronauts during long space missions.

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Drug-resistant staph infections have spread to the urban poor, rising almost seven-fold in recent years in some Chicago neighborhoods, a new study finds.

Researchers said the crowded living conditions of public housing and jails may speed up the person-to-person spread of infection.

The superbugs, first seen mainly in hospitals and nursing homes, have turned up recently among athletes, prisoners and people who get illegal tattoos.

Called methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, these staph germs can cause skin infections that in rare cases have led to pneumonia, bloodstream infections and a painful, flesh-destroying condition. MRSA is hard to treat because the bacteria have developed resistance to the penicillin drug family.

From 2000 to 2005, the infection rate seen in patients seeking care at Chicago’s main public hospital and its affiliated clinics climbed from 24 cases per 100,000 to 164 cases per 100,000, the study found.

Dr. Bala Hota of Chicago’s Stroger Hospital, a lead author of the study, said the increase is similar to that seen in other cities.

Public housing could be a bridge between high-risk people, the researchers wrote in their study, which appears in Monday’s Archives of Internal Medicine.

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