Egypt Becomes A Pigsty Without Pigs

In an attempt to curb the spread of HINI influenza, commonly referred to as ’swine flu’, Egypt’s officials ordered the culling of every single pig in the nation.  Egyptian officials now claim that the measure was not related to the swine flu pandemic, but rather about cleaning up the filth in a local neighborhood that [...]

September 25, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics  No Comments

Time Magazine Takes A Bite Out Of Cheap Food

Usually when the mainstream media talks about the plight of factory farmed animals and their deleterious effect on the environment, they do so in passing.  It’s almost a casual afterthought to the story about why eating red meat will kill you faster, if it gets mentioned at all.  Enter Times (online) magazine.  The article Getting [...]

August 24, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics  One Comment

Lab-Grown Meat, The Future Is Soon

Flipping to the resources page of the New Harvest website, a non-profit whose mission is to promote and advance meat substitutes, you find twice as many popular articles on the subject of lab-grown meat as there are technical articles on it.  Test-tube meat, in vitro meat, cultured meat or whatever name you call it may [...]

July 20, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Science & Technology  No Comments

Factory Farmed Animals Hog All The Antibiotics

70% of the antibiotics produced in the US go to animals that are not sick.  Amassed together in small spaces, diseases can flourish and rapidly spread to all of the confined animals so the purveyors of Concentrated Animal Feed Operations (CAFOs)  use them as a preventative measure, but also to stimulate growth.  Both practices are [...]

July 15, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology  One Comment

(Re)Name That Flu!

NPR is taking up Fiona Feck’s challenge to have the public resolve the swine flu/H1N1 virus name controversy.
According to The New York Times:  ”Maybe, she suggested, there could be a competition, and members of the public could come up with a better name.”
What thou asks of the internet, thou shalt recieve.   From Twitter (#NameThatFlu) [...]

May 5, 2009  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts  2 Comments

Swine Flu Renamed To Please Pork Producers

Lobbyists’ requests to the World Health Organization to rename the swine flu to something more innocuous were denied the other day. Predictably, the name ’swine flu’ has had people scrambling away from pork products. Egypt has slaughtered its 300,000 pigs in its effort to prevent local outbreak (link).
The name “is jeopardizing and may [...]

April 29, 2009  Tags: , , , , , , ,   Posted in: Health, Politics, Science & Technology  No Comments

Pork Safety: Free-Range Versus Factory-Farmed

A Pork Safety Study Taken to Task
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James McWilliams, an Op-Ed contributor to the New York Times, wrote about a recent study published in the journal Foodborne Pathogens and Disease that seemed to dispute the commonly held opinion that free-range pork is safer to eat than factory-farmed pigs.
The authors studied the prevalence of trichinella, toxoplasma, and salmonella [...]

April 13, 2009  Tags: , , ,   Posted in: Health, Science & Technology  2 Comments

Bacon–It Used to Taste Even Better

Over the years, the flavor of bacon and pork has been severely diminished as quantity has become valued over quality. Consumers should know that choosing the cheaper meat has had dire consequences for their palate.
Here’s the skinny on what happened to flavorful, fat pigs:
The American fear of fat and the need for quick/cheap meat has [...]

November 19, 2008  Tags: , , , ,   Posted in: Fun Food Facts, Health, Politics  3 Comments