tagged w/ Pork
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Read it, Republican freshman in a frenzied fight over pork in the military budget, while they scrub those details from their website documents !Read it, Republican freshman in a frenzied fight over pork in the military budget,... more
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Chicago Tribune...
Humane Society files complaint against Smithfield Foods for animal welfare claims
PHOTO: Sows in gestation crates at an Illinois farm. (Heather Charles/Chicago Tribune)
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November 02, 2011|By Monica Eng | Tribune Reporter
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A day after Smithfield Foods launched a campaign to illustrate its commitments to sustainability, the Humane Society of the United States filed a complaint to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charging that Smithfield--the world's largest pork producer--is making false claims.
In question are the claims that Smithfield producers provide their hogs with "ideal" living conditions and that their animals' "every need is met." The HSUS believes these are not supportable when "the vast majority of its breeding sows are confined in gestation crates — metal cages that virtually immobilize animals for nearly their entire lives."
Gestation crates--in which sows are impregnated and remain for most of their pregnancy without the ability to turn around-- have long been targeted by the Society and other animal rights groups.
On the company's new smithfieldcommitments.com site, it says that it is trying to phase out gestation stalls at company-owned sow farms, as opposed to those of contract producers, and replace them with group housing.
"By the end of 2011, we will have 30 percent of sows on company farms in group gestation housing facilities. We have been making significant capital expenditures to increase the number of farm conversions."
Smithfield responded to the report with a statement saying:
"We are proud of our unparalleled track record as a sustainable food producer and stand confidently behind our company’s public statements concerning animal care and environmental stewardship."
As in the past, the HSUS is urging large food service companies, including McDonald's, to use their buying influence to pressure suppliers to change animal welfare practices more quickly.
“McDonald's has publicly recognized that these crates are not good for animals, but it still buys pork from pigs bred using this cruel system,” stated Paul Shapiro, senior director of farm animal protection at The HSUS. “It’s time for McDonald’s to get gestation crates out of its supply chain.”
This afternoon McDonald's Susan Forsell, Vice President of Quality Systems responded by saying:
"McDonald’s has been a long-time supporter of alternatives to gestation stalls, and we will continue to support the efforts of Smithfield Foods and all of our suppliers to phase them out. Smithfield Foods was the first major pork producer that committed to phasing out gestation stalls, and we support the company’s transparency and progress toward this goal.
"More than a decade ago, McDonald’s developed Animal Welfare Guiding Principles in conjunction with leading independent animal welfare experts, including renowned scientist Dr. Temple Grandin. We expect our suppliers to follow these principles, adhere to our commitment to continuous improvement and incorporate industry-leading management practices in animal welfare. We hold our suppliers accountable for compliance with our principles."
.Chicago Tribune...
Humane Society files complaint against Smithfield Foods for... more
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The Loews Coronado Bay Resort Executive Chef Gabriel Morales Mistral Chef Patrick Ponsaty created a Cellar Series most will enjoy. I say most because if you do not enjoy seafood, wine, & great conversation then this isn't for you.
A wine pairing with an unusual twist. Tasting different years of the same vintage. I was impressed!
Click on the link and check out the menu along with my photos from the meal.The Loews Coronado Bay Resort Executive Chef Gabriel Morales Mistral Chef Patrick... more
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Flaying and beheading the cows and lambs helped some of the volunteers maintain a sense of separation from the slaughter, but pigs are handled differently. Since they aren't skinned and cut up early on, even the volunteers with the strongest stomachs have trouble watching the process for slaughtering and processing pork. Who will step up to help finish the job and serve the meal?
Ever wonder where your food comes from? In each episode of "Kill It, Cook It, Eat It," a diverse group of participants is challenged to procure their main course the old-fashioned way: by hunting and killing their chosen prey, butchering it in the slaughterhouse, helping to prepare it in the kitchen, and ultimately sampling it at the dinner table. Some may enjoy the process while others recoil, but for each diner it's an intense journey that just may change their perspectives -- and appetites -- forever.
Watch the premiere of "Kill It, Cook It, Eat It" on Tuesday, January 11 at 10/9c on Current TV.Flaying and beheading the cows and lambs helped some of the volunteers maintain a... more
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U.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics
Photo: At Elite Pork, a large pork farm in Ralson, Iowa, pigs are fed antibiotics for weeks after weaning to ward off possible illness.
By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: September 14, 2010
RALSTON, Iowa — Piglets hop, scurry and squeal their way to the far corner of the pen, eyeing an approaching human. “It shows that they’re healthy animals,” Craig Rowles, the owner of a large pork farm here, said with pride.
The questions over antibiotics come at a time when animal confinement methods and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under attack.
Mr. Rowles says he keeps his pigs fit by feeding them antibiotics for weeks after weaning, to ward off possible illness in that vulnerable period. And for months after that, he administers an antibiotic that promotes faster growth with less feed.
Dispensing antibiotics to healthy animals is routine on the large, concentrated farms that now dominate American agriculture. But the practice is increasingly condemned by medical experts who say it contributes to a growing scourge of modern medicine: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, including dangerous E. coli strains that account for millions of bladder infections each year, as well as resistant types of salmonella and other microbes.
Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.
The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid.
Scores of scientific groups, including the American Medical Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are calling for even stronger action that would bar most uses of key antibiotics in healthy animals, including use for disease prevention, as with Mr. Rowles’s piglets. Such a bill is gaining traction in Congress.
“Is producing the cheapest food in the world our only goal?” asked Dr. Gail R. Hansen, a veterinarian and senior officer of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which has campaigned for new limits on farm antibiotics. “Those who say there is no evidence of risk are discounting 40 years of science. To wait until there’s nothing we can do about it doesn’t seem like the wisest course.”
With the backing of some leading veterinary scientists, farmers assert that the risks are remote and are outweighed by improved animal health and lower food costs. “There is no conclusive scientific evidence that antibiotics used in food animals have a significant impact on the effectiveness of antibiotics in people,” the National Pork Producers Council said.
But leading medical experts say the threat is real and growing. Proponents of strong controls note that the European Union barred most nontreatment uses of antibiotics in 2006 and that farmers there have adapted without major costs. Following a similar path in the United States, they argue, would have barely perceptible effects on consumer prices.
Resistance can evolve whenever drugs are used against bacteria or other microbes because substrains that are less susceptible to the treatment will survive and multiply.
Drug use in humans, including overuse and misapplication, clearly accounts for a large share of the surge in antibiotic resistant infections, a huge problem in hospitals in particular. Yet biologists and infectious disease specialists say there is also enormous circumstantial and genetic evidence that antibiotics in farming are adding to the threat.
Livestock and poultry have been identified as the most likely sources of drug-resistant strains of microbes like salmonella and campylobacter that have caused outbreaks of severe intestinal illness in people and of E. coli strains that cause serious bladder, blood and other infections. (Resistant strains have not been implicated in the recent outbreak of salmonella contamination in eggs.)
In a letter to Congress in July, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cited “compelling evidence” of a “clear link between antibiotic use in animals and antibiotic resistance in humans.”
As drug-resistant strains of microbes evolve on the farms, they are passed along in meat sold in grocery stores. They can infect people as they handle the uncooked product or when eating, if cooking is not thorough. The dangerous strains can also enter the environment via manure or the clothes of farm workers.
Genetic studies of drug-resistant E. coli strains found on poultry and beef in grocery stores and strains in sick patients have found them to be virtually identical, and further evidence also indicated that the resistant microbes evolved on farms and were transferred to consumers, said Dr. James R. Johnson, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota. Hospitals now find that up to 30 percent of urinary infections do not respond to the front-line treatments, ciprofloxacin and the drug known as Bactrim or Septra, and that resistance to key newer antibiotics is also emerging. E. coli is also implicated in serious blood, brain and other infections.
“For those of us in the public health community, the evidence is unambiguously clear,” Dr. Johnson said. “Most of the E. coli resistance in humans can be traced to food-animal sources.”
The proposed Food and Drug Administration guidelines focus on the use of antibiotics to speed growth. Just how antibiotics have this effect, which has been known for decades, is unclear, but scientists suspect that the drugs improve the absorption of nutrients as they prevent low-grade disease.
Mr. Rowles, the proprietor of Elite Pork and a trained veterinarian himself, estimates that by feeding his pigs an antibiotic in their final months he is saving $1 to $3 per animal in feed costs. For the consumer, this is negligible, but from his perspective it looms larger because, he said, in good years his net profit is only $7 to $10 per animal.
More contentious is the routine use of antibiotics to prevent disease, as Mr. Rowles and other pork producers do with newly weaned pigs.
Dr. James McKean, an extension veterinarian at Iowa State University, said experience in Denmark, Europe’s leading pork producer, showed that ending the practice would result in more illness, suffering and death among pigs, and cause a jump in antibiotic treatments of actual disease. Dr. McKean estimated that a ban on most nontreatment uses of antibiotics would raise the cost of pork by 5 cents a pound.
Others counter that farmers in Denmark have learned to hold down illness in young pigs by extending the weaning period, altering feeds and providing more space and veterinary scrutiny of the animals. Some of the drugs used in prevention by farmers like Mr. Rowles would also be permitted under the measure before Congress because they are not used in human medicine.
“In the end, the producers will do what is right,” Mr. Rowles said. “We will make sure we deliver a product that meets the needs of consumers.”
“My only concern is that we make decisions in a scientific fashion, not a political fashion,” he said.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/09/15/us/15farm-span/15farm-span-articleLarge-v2.jpgU.S. Meat Farmers Brace for Limits on Antibiotics
Photo: At Elite Pork, a large... more
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A group calling for "resistance to the Islamization of France" is using Facebook to advertise an anti-Muslim party at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris Friday. Some 7,000 have RSVPed already.
French organizers of a so-called “pork sausage and booze” party in Paris – designed as a deliberate provocation against Muslims – will move it from a heavily Muslim neighborhood to the Arc de Triomphe on Friday.
The group, "Identity Block," called the new venue “Plan B,” after Paris police banned their bash this week on grounds of maintaining public order.
Advertised on Facebook and receiving some 7,000 RSVPs, the party is billed as a “resistance to the Islamization of France.” It was initially planned to take place next to a mosque in the 18th district after Friday prayers, and on the same day as the English-Algerian World Cup soccer match.
The date holds meaning for the French: On June 18, 1940, Charles DeGaulle issued his famous call for the French to resist Nazi occupation in World War II.
“Identity Block” is an assortment of mostly French right-wing groups.
Today, the group sent out a press release, calling upon “all Parisians … and French” to meet at the Arc de Triomphe Friday to eat ham and drink grape juice, fly French flags, protest the police ban, and listen to speeches against “religious control of public space” in France – a reference to the majority Arab-Muslim Goutte d’Or neighborhood where the sausage and wine party was to be held.
Fadela Amara, a French federal minister of Algerian origin, calls the implicit protest against Muslims "hateful, racist, and xenophobic."
The idea to gather at the Arc de Triomphe is described by Identity Block as symbolic, since it was where 2,000 schoolboys defied a Nazi ban on protest and marched against the occupying forces some 70 years ago.
The plan to hold a pork-and-wine bash in Goutte d’Or, where the overcrowded mosque spills into the streets on Fridays, was considered provocative enough to cause a riot. Islam forbids the consumption of pork and alcoholic beverages.
But it is also the latest and most public example of France’s current identity and culture wars aimed mainly at Muslims. In the past year, a controversial “national identity” debate run by the ruling party has gone along with a nearly completed federal ban in public places of the full-length veil or burqa worn by Muslim women. France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim population, some 4 million, most of whom are of North African origin.
COMMENT AT CIVICANIMAL.COMA group calling for "resistance to the Islamization of France" is using... more
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A short documentary about local farming, sanctuary farming and animal suffering in the meat industry.A short documentary about local farming, sanctuary farming and animal suffering in the... more
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It is a frightening picture: beef contaminated with toxic heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics making its way into the nation's supermarkets.
Phyllis K. Fong, the Agriculture Department's inspector general, looked at how beef is tested for harmful substances.
According to her new report, inspectors charged with checking cattle for disease and meat for contaminants were, "unable to determine if meat has unacceptable levels of... potentially hazardous substances [and do] not test for pesticides... determined to be of high risk."
The inspectors also failed to test beef for 23 pesticides, the report says.
The study -- entitled the National Residue Program for Cattle Audit Report -- says there are no standards for how much of certain dangerous substances, such as copper and highly toxic dioxin, is too much for someone to eat. As a result, meat containing these substances has gotten into the nation's food supply, it finds.
The report says the health danger to people who eat this beef is a "growing concern," and calls for better coordination among the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety of the country's meat supply.
"When it comes to this particular issue of these foreign chemicals, pollutants, antibiotics, things like that -- they haven't been doing enough, that's what's clear," says Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group.
The audit report, which took place in 2007 and 2008, cited instances when inspectors found beef containing excessive levels of contaminants, but declined to recall it.
"I think the thing that was most alarming was when lab tests were failed, there was no real concerted effort to recall the failed supply," says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
The report also found that the metal copper has made its way into American beef.
Often a waste product from industry, it can seep into the water that's fed to cattle.
In one incident in 2008, Mexican officials refused a shipment of U.S. beef because it contained more copper than Mexico allows.
America has no such restriction.
Copper can be dangerous if consumed in food over the long term. It is known to cause jaundice and kidney failure and can even be fatal.
"The Mexicans refused the meat that was going into their country yet there was nothing that could be done to prevent American consumers from being exposed to that," says David Acheson, former managing director for FDA Food and Import Safety. "That certainly is totally unacceptable in my book!"
ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/report-contaminated-meat-supermarkets/story?id=10375805It is a frightening picture: beef contaminated with toxic heavy metals, pesticides and... more
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Everybody knows that the internet has a bacon fetish. It's one of the tastiest animal products, but as my friend the nutritionist says: "I love the smell of bacon in the morning. It smells like obesity." Some think this trend is coming to an end, but I'm not so sure. And that is what sparked this work of meme historical fiction.
Now to present you with the second piece of meme historical fiction ever written. This time Josh Heller has teamed up with darling of the genre, Andrew Fitzgerald to co-write this piece:
Bacon had retained it's grip over the internet for years. In the early days it seemed like a new bacon blog popped up every other day. Then on a fateful late summer morning, the New York Times released an article that changed everything. "It’s Hip to Be Round" claimed to show a new trend: male hipsters showing off their pot bellies. The moment this article hit the blogstands, the face of bacon as we know it.
Within hours hipsters around the world were mobilized. From the lofts of Williamsburg to the warehouses of Hackney emanded a change.
Historians time the start of the backlash to the destruction by looting and firebombing of the Brooklyn “offices” of popular “blog” This is why you’re fat. The rage of the thin was not to be contained just to that, the offices of Tumblr itself were next and authorities just barely rescued company founder David Karp from a slow herb-roasting in a health-conscious man-sized George Foreman Grill.
Within days, cooler heads prevailed, with such calming voices as writer Michael Pollan’s eventually drowning out the bloodthirsty (most notably Jonathan Safran Foer who famously called for Americans to “Burn down your McDonalds, Tear apart your Wendys, Rip your Arby's limb from pork-y limb...”). Pollan suggested that of all the high fat items to be singled out, perhaps bacon was the worst offender, and could be replaced. He suggested quinoa, a largely unheard-of grain.
Quinoanaise became a popular product for so-called "quinoatarians"
Within weeks items such as quinoa and eggs, quinoa cheese (veggie) burgers, and even the late night snack quinoa-wrapped hot dogs were available nationwide in great abundance. It was only perhaps six months later that a book deal was announced for popular FriendFeed account This is Why You’re Thin which featured many pieces of what the nutritiono-blogosphere termed “quinoaporn”.
This "quinoatarian" made a "quinbra."Everybody knows that the internet has a bacon fetish. It's one of the tastiest... more
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I've lived in Britain for two years now and thanks to a lorry parked near Current headquarters, I finally understand how the natives define romance...
Just watch her burst that egg yolk. Mmmm.
This Valentine's Day, like the rest of Britain, I'm going to cuddle up with my lover over a plate of fried pork.I've lived in Britain for two years now and thanks to a lorry parked near Current... more
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dlamb
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added this
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1 year ago
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HARRISBURG, Pa. – U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an influential critic of the Iraq War whose congressional career was shadowed by questions about his ethics, died Monday. He was 77.
The Pennsylvania Democrat had been suffering complications from gallbladder surgery. He died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., spokesman Matthew Mazonkey said.
For the Full Story and life of "king of Pork" Rep. John Murtha .... Video...http://ctpatriot1970.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/king-of-pork-rep-john-murtha-iraq-war-critic-dead-at-77-amid-ethics-probes-video/
In 1974 Murtha, then an officer in the Marine Reserves, became the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress. One of Congress’ most hawkish Democrats, he wielded considerable clout for two decades as the ranking Democrat on the House subcommittee that oversees Pentagon spending.HARRISBURG, Pa. – U.S. Rep. John Murtha, an influential critic of the Iraq War... more
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Argentina's presidente is one pork lovin' lady claiming it will add more fuego to your love life than Viagra ever could and she would know, she's tried it!! Theres no evidence proving that eating pork is an aphrodisiac but with I'm sure there will be plenty of couples out there conducting studys of their own.Argentina's presidente is one pork lovin' lady claiming it will add more... more
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WHACKO-TV traveled to the farms of upstate New York to capture the footage of a major breakup. While everyone is curious about Tiger and Elin, or Brad and Angelina's possible split, we were there live as the goofy guy with the Viking hat broke-up with his pig wife. You won't see this on the history channel.WHACKO-TV traveled to the farms of upstate New York to capture the footage of a major... more
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Jan. 16-18
The Minnesota Pork Congress at the Minneapolis Convention Center kicks off Jan. 16 with the Taste of Elegance Culinary Judging at 2:30 p.m., followed by the Taste of Elegance Culinary Awards at 6:30 p.m. at the Minneapolis Hilton.
At the show Jan. 17, an all-morning Custom Manure Applicators Workshop covering nitrate testing, manure value, business economics, business insurance and labor issues will be offered.
Morning sessions also include how to become a successful supervisor and a market outlook by John Lawrence of Iowa State University.
Afternoon program features “The Corn Conundrum: A Mini-Conference on the Use of Corn in the Pork Industry.” Topics include:Jan. 16-18
The Minnesota Pork Congress at the Minneapolis Convention Center kicks off... more
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They don't even want our anti-biotic fed, chlorinated chicken, or our pork. This should be a wake-up call to the U.S. But nope. Instead the powers that be are going to deride Russia and file a protest.They don't even want our anti-biotic fed, chlorinated chicken, or our pork. This... more
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Five foods that pay big benefits for your health … and can even lower your risk to heart disease and cancer. Get more information at bodbeat.comFive foods that pay big benefits for your health … and can even lower your risk... more
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The hit blog This Is Why You’re Fat, a showcase of the world’s unhealthiest cuisine, is now a svelte little book. Author Jessica Amason talks to Rachel Syme about the Gross-Food Movement.The hit blog This Is Why You’re Fat, a showcase of the world’s... more
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