Post-humus porker

The Enviropig, the freakin franken porker that should only be a cartoon character, appears to be close to government approval, a Canwest News Service reported on Friday and confirmed here.

"The technology is simple, if you know how to raise pigs, you know how to raise Enviropigs!"
uh...depends on how ya raise a pig.
I'd compost that phosphorousy manure, feed the crops - let the oinkers have a bit of grass even.
But Enviropig is engineered to shit minimal phosphorous so the waste can get flushed (and not pollute waterways). Factory farming steps out of the circle of the farm.

From a 1999 Globe story on the lab chops: "After they get a handle on phosphorus, the scientists want to take a look at nitrogen, the other major pollutant found in pig manure and the one associated with its rank odour."

This kind of treason to our farm animal genome meets with so little pause, alarm or resistance because there are too many other distractions: wars, earthquakes, famine, olympics. We have no ethical roadmaps drawn out for the designers of our food. We as consumers and farmers need to start excercising our rights to choose what we eat.
The pig might help us do it. Who wants to eat it? 10-30% of Canadians? That isn't enough stakeholder to excite profits to the lifescience pioneers.


artist Nathan Meltz


A perfect factory pig is no surprise and has been talked about for awhile now. Water pollution and stink are the sticky bits in public interfaces and so the genes spliced in Ecopig are logical. But what else are they up to? Monsanto lurks in the wings and has patents on pigs. With declining numbers of small farms and pig breeds fewer and further between, the road ahead could look like porkicide.

Have we lost the right to eat food as god/goddess/motherearth made it, or shall we ride this ugly piggy to the courts before it goes to market?

We need to mobilize and take to the Supreme Court, the right to choose what we eat (labeling) as a matter of conscience and religion.

hogs and the swine flu

flooded hog factory

"In September 1999, almost immediately after receiving two strikes from Hurricane Dennis, Hurricane Floyd came roaring through Eastern North Carolina. In his path lay nearly 2,000 factory farm cesspools loaded with hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic fecal waste, wastewater treatment plants, factories and communities, many of which were in the flood plain." source and photo

And is this a coincidence that the year before this flooding a "highly pathogenic strain" wiped out thousands of sows in North Carolina:

"Since its identification during the Great Depression, H1N1 swine flu had only drifted slightly from its original genome. Then in 1998 a highly pathogenic strain began to decimate sows on a farm in North Carolina and new, more virulent versions began to appear almost yearly, including a variant of H1N1 that contained the internal genes of H3N2 (the other type-A flu circulating among humans)".

From Common Dreams; Swine Flu Crisis Lays Bare the Meat Industry's Monstrous Power

And see Tom Philpott: Swine-flu outbreak could be linked to Smithfield factory farms
regarding the epicenter in big Hog country Vera Cruz

Are most cloned animals transgenic?

"Genetic modification is inevitable in the cloning process. In fact, premature death and disease outbreaks are common in cloned animals. “Genetic uniformity [leaves] them prone to disease outbreaks or even bioterrorism. With traditional breeding you’re trying to improve the genetics. Cloning freezes it at one moment,” says Rostov. The same is true for in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination".

See Cloned Meat; the Varsity
for this quote and other critical points concerning cloned meat.

food choices; freedom of conscious

One of the problems with economic hardships, climate extremes and international turmoil is the opportunity this presents to corporations to have (their) unscrupulous legislators pass nasty bills. No one has much time to think about the consequence of transferring wealth to the banks, let alone the acceptance of cloned meat or draconian food safety bills.

Decisions are being made for us, in regard to what is substantially equivalent, what is morally acceptable, and what is safe. Not only is the impetus for these decisions driven by corporate agriculture and "proven" safe by scientist in their employ, but it is determining the shape of our food landscape precisely because we have little choice - it is invisible. We have organic, we have known (witnessed) food.

But farmers choices for feed, safe location, seed and small scale equipment are thinning too. Because of the nature of farming's precious resources (soil, seed, knowledge) the stage is being set for industrial agriculture and it makes "natural" farming more onerous, makes the journey along the "cowpathes" harder to find. Our edges, our boundaries are being pushed.

Its remarkable to me that there is little outcry regarding the sale of unlabeled cloned meat. If I was a religious adherent I'd want to press for freedom of religion - what a violation for this and unlabeled transgenic food. To know what I put in my temple, should be a fundamental choice of conscious.

I wish the impenetrable resignation and acquiescence that seems to have befallen the masses would lift in regard to real food security. It underpins most, if not all, our planetary dissolution. Once disconnected from the means for independent sustenance, it will be a long and difficult road back.

green wash: novel viruses sprayed on food and crops

photo
Bacteriophages are viruses that attack bacteria. They have been compared to “space ships that are able to carry genetic material between susceptible cells and then reproduce in those cells” (Kutter, 1997). Bacteriophages are, in fact, very simple organisms that consist of genetic material (DNA or RNA) surrounded by a protein coat, a hollow protein tail and tail fibers". source

" ... recent advances in molecular biology have also allowed for the development of novel phage-derived antimicrobial agents, such as lysins and non-replicative phage-based lethal agents. Much of the research and development of these technologies has been conducted on a small scale, resulting in numerous peer-reviewed publications and patents, but very few commercially available products to date. While the data available on many of these phage-based antimicrobials appears promising on a laboratory or pilot scale, their true efficacy will be explicitly realized once these technologies enter into broad clinical or commercial availability". here

There true "efficacy" may well be "realized", now that this experiment is being conducted in the societial lab with commercial release of several products and this link which also discusses the lack of testing and probable dangers.
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Interesting note Bacteriophages "are very useful nano-structure tools".
Phages are also being used to produce nanowires: sensors and chips because of the "excellent template" of phages and their ability to self-replicate rapidly. For a startling article of the advances and commercial releases of novel phages and nanotechnology applications see the PDF Biotechnological Exploit of Bacteriophage Research

A leader in the technology: Wageningen, Food Valley Netherlands:
"Convergence of micro systems, fluidics, functional molecular cell design, and supra-molecular chemistry now brings all food size structures within reach, says Dr. Frans Kampers, director of BioNT (www.biont.wur.nl), the Wageningen, Netherlands-based research center focused on the fundamental science and technology of micro- and nanosystems and their applications in food and health. Kampers is the center’s strategic research coordinator in bio-nanotechnology. His remit encompasses quality assurance through sensing and diagnostics, food design, safety monitoring and control, innovative processing, encapsulation and delivery, and packaging and logistics.

The center’s location in Wageningen is no accident. This area aims to become to the food industry what San Jose, Calif., area is to the semiconductor industry. It’s even referred to as Food Valley (www.foodvalley.nl/english/default.aspx).

EBI Food Safety (www.ebifoodsafety.com), also in Wageningen, has developed the first commercial bacteriophage product, ListexTM, which targets Listeria monocytogenes-pathogenics with a 30% mortality rate. ListexTM was granted the U.S. FDA-GRAS (generally regarded as safe) approval in October 2006; organic EU approval in June 2007, and an extension of GRAS approval from the FDA and USDA for use with all food products susceptible to Listeria" read more