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POPSFlu Knocks Out Elton's Tour Ticket holders for Elton John's Red Piano Tour will have to have to wait a little longer to see the Grammy winner tickle his famed ivories. The 62-year-old "Rocket Man" crooner was forced to cancel several concerts in the U.K. and Ireland and postpone three stateside gigs after he was doubly hit with an E-coli bacterial infection and the flu (the normal, not swine, variety) last week. Sir Elton is being treated at King Edward VII hospital in Marylebone London, according to the Daily Mail. The veteran performer was taken there Friday after his condition worsened and he was forced to cancel another performance in Dublin.
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POPS2 Deaths Possibly Linked to Beef Recall They were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28. They were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28.
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POPSScientists Create New Life Form to Clean Up Water "We're kind of making a new machine," said Dan Tarjan, a senior majoring in biology at University of Virginia. The live machine is to be entered in The International Genetically Engineered Machine competition, which will be held Halloween weekend at MIT. The annual competition is built on the premise that life can be broken down into a warehouse of off-the-shelf, interchangeable parts and reassembled into creatures that have never existed. Over 100 teams will use synthetic biology (similar to genetic engineering) to show that DNA building blocks (BioBricks) don’t have to come from nature and can be designed and built from standardized parts that behave predictably. The hope is that these tiny factories will produce clean biofuels, powerful new medicines and environmental pollution sponges. Good luck to all contestants.
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POPSWarning: Eating Meat May Cause Sickness, Paralysis and Death
In short, E. coli didn't just "happen" to the meat industry -- it's a consequence of industrial practices. But nowhere in the article (or in the halls of the USDA or the largescale beef producers for that matter) is the possibility of moving away from this corn-based system raised as a solution for the industrial system. Surprisingly, the article includes virtually no proposed solutions for this crisis -- just vague assurances that the USDA isn't "standing still" on the issue. In reality, the industry focuses exclusively on "managing" the ongoing presence of E. coli O157 though the development of an E. coli vaccine for cows, and irradiation or chemical washes for the meat. All of which are attempts to mask the risks of a failed system and represent an institutionalizing of the underlying failures. And none of which make me ever want to touch industrial meat again. Indeed, if there ever was a powerful argument for eating only grass-fed beef from small producers, this article is it. T
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POPSWhere is the beef from? Take Action Remember the clip about the young woman paralyzed from the e-coli in bad burger beef? Here's a chance to tell Washington to take steps to give us better protection.
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POPSWarning: This product may cause sickness, paralysis, and death
Given the number of times that beef has been recalled due to contamination in just the past few years, doesn’t it make sense to stop eating it? How many of you have stopped? Stephanie Smith didn’t stop. She is currently in a coma, near death, and paralyzed from eating a single hamburger. E. coli O157 got into industrial beef in the first place because the meat industry insists on feeding cows corn—something they cannot easily digest—instead of grass. Among other things, corn feeding requires cows to be fed a steady dose of antibiotics, which has led to the rise of antibiotic resistance among various pathogens. But more importantly, it has caused very real changes in the cow’s gut which has allowed this toxic strain of E. coli to take hold, a strain that research suggests cannot survive in the gut of cows that eat only grass. The simple solution would be to feed cows grass. But, that solution cannot fatten cattle quickly enough to suit our current appetite for it.
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POPSWhere's the Beef - Coming From? USDA Inspected - so it's safe - right? Well it used to be, when there were enough government inspectors on the job. But take 99 out of the 100 there used to be and the results is lots of people get sick, some die, and some get paralyzed for life like then-22 year-old dance instructor Stephanie Smith. Why is the US meat market less safe than in Japan or Europe? Ideology, not science. Greed, not any care for the consumer.
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POPSThe Burger That Shattered Her Life Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states. Ms. Smith’s reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.
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POPSChina Bans US Chicken Feet? It is always about the money, it is always about the money, it is always about the money. People, health, environment, and combating disease or job loss? Way down the list. Plus, what kind of great minds do we have in Congress? Avian influenza and cooked chicken - no connection. Food poisoning from E coli, you bet but not avian influenza.
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POPSE.coli children 'seriously ill' E.COLI Bacterium is found in the intestines of animals and humans 950 recorded cases in England and Wales last year 20 people died in the worst recorded UK outbreak, linked to a church lunch in Strathclyde 13 years ago
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POPSGenome engineering goes high speed "In a paper published Sunday in Nature, Church and Wang describe how they turned E. coli bacteria into factories for lycopene, an antioxidant that might have anti-cancer properties. In just three days, they ended up with billions of cells containing various combinations of 24 lycopene-linked genes. Some cells produced five times more lycopene than usual. According to Church, the process would normally take months, even years." Needless to say how good it is. Just great, great news!
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POPSAntibiotic Resistance at Factory Farms More (way more at article website): Kellogg Schwab, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Water and Health, refers to a typical pig farm manure lagoon that he sampled. "There were 10 million E. coli per liter . Ten million. And you have a hundred million liters in some of those pits. So you can have trillions of bacteria present, of which 89 percent are resistant to drugs. That's a massive amount that in a rain event can contaminate the environment." One day, a Bloomberg School colleague down the hall from Silbergeld came back from a weekend on the Eastern Shore complaining about how disgusting she'd found having to drive behind a truck hauling chickens to a processing plant. They found that the air in the car and both surfaces showed increased levels of enterococci after they'd driven behind the chicken trucks. Graham had trapped the flies near poultry farms on the Eastern Shore and found resistant staph and enterococci on them.
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POPSFive Foods You Shouldn't Eat Raw 4. Beef and pork: Avoiding raw meat is a no-brainer, until you see it on the menu with an appetizing name like tartare or carpaccio. There’s a long list of diseases you could get from raw meat, so I’ll mention only one: neurocysticercosis, a parasite from undercooked pork that crawls from your intestine up to your brain, where it can live for years and cause seizures. …and finally, no “Everybody Panic!” list is complete without at least one way you might inadvertently kill your child: 5. Honey: Honey contains bacterial spores that cause botulism, a disease that’s usually fatal if untreated. While adults and children have high stomach acid levels that kill the spores in honey, infants do not. Children less than a year old should not eat honey.
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