The Human Imprint

Vertical farms

Scientific American carries a very interesting article on vertical farming or "skyscraper" farming. Will this be a viable reality? Check it out.

Bird flu endemic in many countries

Nature has carried a report on the latest status of avian influenza H5N1 with sixty-one countries now affected. Nature suggests that experts are  concerned that the disease has become endemic in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Egypt, making eradication impossible. This is an excellent article and worth a read!

MRSA found in pigs and farmworkers

After my report on MRSA on the 4th June a further report has been published on the same subject. Tara Smith, an assistant professor at the University of Iowa Department of Epidemiology, and her graduate researchers found MRSA in more than 70 percent of the pigs they tested on farms in Iowa and Illinois. (They swabbed the noses of 209 pigs on 10 farms.) They also found contamination of the workers on the farms. The pigs were infected with the ST398 strain of MRSA the same as the one in the British cases previously discussed. They do not currently have a test which can identify accurately the presence of MRSA in the meat.

Bird flu in the UK

The Guardian reports that chickens on a farm in Banbury, Oxfordshire have tested positive for the H7 strain of bird flu. All the hens have now been culled. H7 is a different strain to the H5N1 linked to bird flu around the world. The Telegraph report that the H7N7 strain hit poultry in the Netherlands in 2003. A vet died after working with the birds. A H7N2 outbreak occurred in the UK last year, leading to cases of conjunctivitis and a few mild respiratory infections.

The Chief Veterinary Officer has confirmed that the H7 strain in Banbury is highly pathogenic (HPAI) as opposed to a less virulent strain - low pathogenic (LPAI). Fore more information on bird flu follow the link to the Defra website

MRSA variant in European pigs

Three months ago I wrote a post about the state of the pig industry in the UK. The Independent has reported that MRSA has been found in pigs in the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Germany and in other farm animals such as chickens and cattle. Three British people have  now been infected by this animal variant of MRSA and as they have had no contact with livestock it raises concerns that the variant may have entered the food chain. The Independent reports that a survey by the Dutch authorities in 2006 found traces of the bug in 20 per cent of pork products, 21 per cent of chicken meat and 3 per cent of beef. Two thirds of pork eaten in the UK is now from Holland - results to date have been negative in the UK. Follow the link to read the full report.

Organic milk study

The Telegraph reports on a recent report on the health benefits of milk from grass fed cows.  The study shows that what the cows eat affects the quality of the milk produced - I guess that is logical. In the winter the composition of the diet (the cows are inside) means that there is less difference in the nutrient content, but in the summer there is a greater variance. 

The Independent  reports that  grazing provided around 84 per cent of food for cows on organic farms in the summer, compared to 37 per cent for conventionally farmed animals. Silage (preserved grass which is mown in the late spring and summer and then stored and fed to housed cows) will lose some of the nutritional value of fresh grass and with rising fuel prices is now becoming much more expensive to make. There are some conventional systems in the UK that are based on grass fed systems such as those used in New Zealand.  It would be interesting to see if the nutritional difference is as pronounced with these systems.

The problem for the consumer is that at the point of purchase it is impossible to differentiate between production systems other than the simplistic "organic" or "conventional" and ultimately how does the consumer know the "time-frame" when the nutritional difference is worth paying for?

Bird cull in South Korea

I last wrote about bird flu (H5N1) back in April and the human vaccination programme in Japan. The BBC have reported that South Korean officials confirmed that the entire poultry population of Seoul some 15,000 birds have been culled to curb the spread of bird flu. Follow the link to find out more

 

Dioxin scare with mozzarella cheese

Dioxin has been found in the milk of 66 herds of buffalo around Naples. The Guardian reports that Brussels is asking for further information from Italy about the extent of the problem. Japan and South Korea have already banned imports of the cheese.

The BBC report that in a statement, the European Commission said the measures introduced so far were not adequate: "No recall of product potentially contaminated has been carried out, and the surveillance programme on the farms of the Campania region is still too limited". The BBC suggest that a potential source of contamination is currently being investigated i.e. that industrial waste has been illegally dumped on agricultural land used for pasture.

Why is dioxin a problem? Dioxins are highly toxic and carcinogenic (cause cancer). Dioxins are a by-product of industrial production in industries such as chemical and pesticide manufacture, paper bleaching. We have had food safety incidents in the past with this chemical. In 1999, dioxin was found in European animal feed which sparked a continent wide recall centred on Belgium. In 2004, there was another incident with milk in Belgium and the Netherlands and this was believed to have been due to animal feed that was contaminated with potato byproducts.

I have written before about having an effective product recall procedure in place and the interaction between food safety and brand equity. Food safety incidents, such as this one, require an effective, co-ordinated response in order to maintain customer confidence.

How much food do we throw away?

The Independent reports that £20 billion worth of food is thrown away every year in the UK. This is around 20 million tonnes of food i.e. if the population is around 60 million about  1Kg of food per man woman and child every day in the UK!  We bought a compost caddy for the kitchen which holds about 1Kg of food waste, vegetable peelings etc so we could "see" how much waste we were producing and then composting.  I have spoken before about shopping to a list so that you buy what you need rather than what is on offer. This volume of food is enough to meet half of Africa's food import needs. To read more follow the link.

Doomsday seed vault opens

National Geographic reports that the plant equivalent of Noah's Ark has been opened in Norway. The vault which is 620 miles from the North Pole  has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples just in case we need them at some point in the future.