Wildlife forced out of California ‘salad bowl’ by food safety regulations

The Guardian - In California’s ‘salad bowl’ – a landscape portioned into emerald fields of spinach, lettuce, kale, and other leafy vegetables, grown to satiate the nation’s appetite for greens – hush-hush food safety standards are deforesting land and forcing wildlife out. These practices are unnecessary for ensuring safe food, say experts in a new study, and yet they spell marginalisation for a number of species.

The Californian Salinas Valley is the fertile, riverside floodplain where salad growing is concentrated in the state, and where 70% of America’s greens are produced. It is also near to the site of one the most devastating bacterial outbreaks in recent American history. In 2006, E coli bacteria found nestling in the folds of spinach leaves killed five people, and sickened over 200 others.

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Transgenics: A new breed

Nature - When the first genetically modified (GM) organisms were being developed for the farm, says Anastasia Bodnar, “we were promised rocket jet packs” — futuristic, ultra-nutritious crops that would bring exotic produce to the supermarket and help to feed a hungry world.

Yet so far, she says, the technology has bestowed most of its benefits on agribusiness — almost always through crops modified to withstand weed-killing chemicals or resist insect pests. This has allowed farmers to increase yields and spray less pesticide than they might have otherwise.

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Biotechnology: Africa and Asia need a rational debate on GM crops

By Christopher J. M. Whitty, Monty Jones, Alan Tollervey and Tim Wheeler
Nature - In Europe, scientists, politicians, industry representatives and environmentalists often present genetically modified (GM) crops either as a key part of the solution to world hunger or as a pointless but dramatic threat to health and safety. Neither position is well founded.

Recently, the often shrill debate that has unfolded in some European countries, including France and the United Kingdom, for the past 20 years has been spilling over to developing economies. The government of India, for instance, is considering banning all field trials of GM crops for the next decade — a move that could hurt large- and small-scale farmers by blocking their access to certain crop varieties that have been modified to grow better in local conditions, including types of cotton, soya bean and tomato. Meanwhile, in Kenya, where more than one-quarter of the population is malnourished, the government chose to ban the import of GM food at the end of last year but not GM crop research1. Like similar rulings made in Europe, such decisions seem to be based in part on emotional responses to the technology.

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Scientists create hybrid flu that can go airborne

By Ed Young

Nature - As the world is transfixed by a new H7N9 bird flu virus spreading through China, a study reminds us that a different avian influenza — H5N1 — still poses a pandemic threat.

A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs. The results are published in Science1.

Flu hybrids can arise naturally when two viral strains infect the same cell and exchange genes. This process, known as reassortment, produced the strains responsible for at least three past flu pandemics, including the one in 2009.

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Fields of gold – Research on transgenic crops must be done outside industry if it is to fulfil its early promise.

Nature – It was 30 years ago this month that scientists first published the news that they could place functional foreign genes into plant cells. The feat promised to launch an exciting phase in biotechnology, in which desired traits and abilities could be coaxed into plants used for food, fibres and even fuel. Genetically modified (GM) crops promised to make life easier and nature’s bounty even more desirable.

As a series of articles in this week’s Nature explores, things have not worked out that way. The future matters more than the past, but when it comes to GM crops, the past is instructive.

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European bees get a chance at sweeter, safer life

By Charlie Dunmore

MSN News - The European Commission said on Monday it would go ahead and impose a temporary ban on three of the world’s most widely used pesticides because of fears they harm bees, despite European Union governments failing to agree on the issue.
In a vote on Monday, EU officials could not decide whether to impose a two-year ban — with some exceptions — on a class of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, produced mainly by Germany’s Bayer and Switzerland’s Syngenta.

Campylobacter, E. coli Cases Rise; Salmonella Falls

The Poultry Site – Campylobacteriosis is the most reported zoonotic disease in humans, with a continuous increase in reported cases over the last five years, according to the annual report on zoonoses and food-borne outbreaks in the European Union.

The trend in reported human cases of verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC/STEC) has also been increasing since 2008 and was further strengthened due to the outbreak in the summer of 2011. However, Salmonella cases in humans have continued to fall, marking a decrease for the seventh consecutive year.

The report, which has just been published for 2011, produced jointly by the European Food Safety Authority and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) supports the European Commission and EU Member States in monitoring risks related to zoonotic diseases.

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Scientists confirm new H7N9 bird flu came from chickens

By Kate Kelland

Reuters — Chinese scientists have confirmed for the first time that a new strain of bird flu that has killed 23 people in China has been transmitted to humans from chickens.

In a study published online in the Lancet medical journal, the scientists echoed previous statements from the World Health Organization and Chinese officials that there is as yet no evidence of human-to-human transmission of this virus.

The H7N9 strain has infected 109 people in China since it was first detected in March. The WHO warned on Wednesday that this strain is “one of the most lethal” flu viruses and is transmitted more easily than the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which has killed hundreds around the world since 2003….. >>Continue Reading<<

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China poultry losses top $1.6B due to bird flu scare

MSN News - China’s poultry sector has recorded losses of more than $1.6 billion since reports emerged of a new strain of bird flu two weeks ago, an official at the country’s National Poultry Industry Association said Tuesday.
Authorities have slaughtered thousands of birds and closed live poultry markets in Shanghai and Beijing in an attempt to reduce the rate of human infection and allay growing fears about the H7N9 virus.

Ethics, Antibiotics, Consumer Opinion Shaping Buying Decisions

The Poultry Site - Inside the store, ethics drops down the list of priorities and price, freshness, quality and brand take over.

However, while ethical production might not seem so important for the individual consumer in making the buying decision, it is very important politically for the store, the processor and the producer and comes to the fore when mistakes are made and publicised.

Speaking at the recent National Office for Animal Health conference in London on Britain’s Food Industry and dispelling myths about livestock production, David Evans, (pictured) the head of agriculture at the supermarket chain Morrisons, said that consumers views on ethical production are very broad and also inconsistent.

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