U.S. to Test Ground Beef in States With Bird-Flu Outbreaks in Dairy Cows
The U.S. government said on Monday it is collecting samples of ground beef at retail stores in states with outbreaks of bird flu in dairy cows for testing but remains confident the meat supply is safe.
Federal officials are seeking to verify the safety of milk and meat after confirming the H5N1 virus in 34 dairy cattle herds in nine states since late March and in one person in Texas.
Both the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization have said the overall public health risk is low, but is higher for those with exposure to infected animals.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture will analyze retail ground beef samples with PCR tests that indicate “whether any viral particles are present,” and conduct two other safety studies, according to a statement. Some dairy cows are processed into ground beef when they grow old.
There’s Never a Good Time to Drink Raw Milk. But Now’s a Really Bad Time as Bird Flu Infects Cows
Scientists who know about the types of pathogens — E. coli and Salmonella among them — that can be transmitted in raw milk generally think drinking unpasteurized milk is a bad idea. But right now, they believe, the danger associated with raw milk may have gone to a whole new level.
“If I were in charge, for the moment I would forbid the selling of raw milk,” said Thijs Kuiken, a pathologist in the department of viroscience at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, who has done research on H5N1 and the damage it inflicts for about two decades.
H5N1 bird flu has been circulating in dairy cow herds in multiple parts of the country, likely for months now. Testing of milk from infected cows shows the virus is present in concentrations that have taken scientists by surprise. They worry that if a raw milk consumer inadvertently drank milk from infected cows, the results could be bad — potentially really bad.
The FDA is urging consumers not to drink raw milk or eat raw milk cheeses. That is a position the agency has long held, because of the other health risks these products hold, but it has re-emphasized it in the current context.
Why We Keep Seeing Egg Prices Spike
Egg prices are rising again. The culprit, again: bird flu. At least, that’s the surface-level reason. In the current wave, according to the CDC, the H5N1 bird flu has been found in over 90 million poultry birds across almost every state since 2022, and has even spread to dairy cattle, with over 30 herds in nine states dealing with an outbreak at the time of this writing.
The last time bird flu struck US farms, in early 2022, egg prices more than doubled during the year, reaching a peak of $4.82 for a dozen in January 2023. During the bird flu outbreak in 2014 to 2015, egg prices also briefly soared.
The H5N1 strain of bird flu is highly contagious and obviously poses a big risk to hens. But the fact that bird flu outbreaks keep battering our food system points to a deeper problem: an agriculture industry that has become brittle thanks to intense market concentration.
The egg industry, like much of the agricultural sector, is commanded by a few heavyweights — the biggest, Cal-Maine Foods, controls 20% of the market — that leave little slack in the system to absorb and isolate shocks like disease.
“It is absolutely a story of corporate profiteering,” says Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at Food & Water Watch. Our food system didn’t become so consolidated — and fragile — by accident. We got here because of three big reasons, Wolf says: by not enforcing environmental laws, by not enforcing antitrust laws, and by giving away “tons of money” to the agriculture industry.
Revealed: Tyson Foods Dumps Millions of Pounds of Toxic Pollutants Into U.S. Rivers and Lakes
Tyson Foods dumped millions of pounds of toxic pollutants directly into American rivers and lakes over the last five years, threatening critical ecosystems, and endangering wildlife and human health, a new investigation reveals.
Nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil and cyanide were among the 371 million lb of pollutants released into waterways by just 41 Tyson slaughterhouses and mega processing plants between 2018 and 2022.
According to research by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the contaminants were dispersed in 87 billion gallons of wastewater — which also contains blood, bacteria and animal feces — and released directly into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands relied on for drinking water, fishing and recreation. The UCS analysis, shared exclusively with the Guardian, is based on the most recent publicly available water pollution data Tyson is required to report under current regulations.
The water pollution from Tyson, a Fortune 100 company and the world’s second-largest meat producer, was spread across 17 states but about half the contaminants were dumped into streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands in Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.
The midwest is already saturated with nitrogen and phosphorus from industrial agriculture — factory farms and synthetics fertilizers — contributing to algal blooms that clog critical water infrastructure, exacerbate respiratory conditions like asthma, and deplete oxygen levels in the sea causing marine life to suffocate and die.
Baby Food Autism Lawsuit Filed Over ‘Staggering Amounts of Toxic Heavy Metals’ in Beech-Nut and Gerber Brands
A Nevada woman has brought a baby food autism lawsuit against two major food manufacturers, indicating they sold products laden with toxic heavy metals that led to developmental problems for her child.
In 2021, a U.S. Congressional report ignited a firestorm of concerns over dangerous levels of lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury found in a number of different popular baby foods, and nearly two years later reports suggest that toxic metals in baby food remain a pervasive problem, with high levels still found in popular brands sold by Gerber, Plum Organics, Sprout, Walmart and others.
Manufacturers of products found to contain high levels of these heavy metals already face hundreds of toxic baby food lawsuits, involving similar allegations that children developed autism spectrum disorders (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorders (ADHD) and other side effects, and the scope of the litigation is expected to continue to expand in the coming years as more families discovery that heavy metals in baby food fed to their children may be the cause of life-long developmental problems.
Garcia’s lawsuit indicates her child was diagnosed with autism at about three years old, after consuming rice cereal, puffs and other products sold by Beech-Nut and Gerber in about 2021. Her complaint indicates that all of the products were contaminated with “substantial quantities” of toxic heavy metals, including lead, arsenic and mercury, which succeeded regulatory limits.
New School Meal Standards Could Put More Local Food on Students’ Lunch Trays
Last week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) finalized long-anticipated changes to the nutrition standards that regulate school meals. Among the changes that attracted the most attention were the first-ever limits on added sugar and a scaled-down plan to reduce salt.
But another small tweak has big implications for the increasing number of schools working to get more fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats produced by nearby farmers onto students’ trays. Starting July 1, when districts put out a call for an unprocessed or minimally processed food — whether it’s tomatoes, taco meat, or tuna — they’ll be able to specify that they’d like it to be “locally grown, locally raised, or locally caught.”
From Petri Dish to Plate: Meet the Company Hoping to Bring Lab-Grown Fish to the Table
The redbrick offices, just north of Hamburg’s River Elbe and a few floors below Carlsberg’s German headquarters, are an unexpectedly low-key setting for a food team gearing up to produce Europe’s first tonne of lab-grown fish.
But inside Bluu Seafood, past the slick open-plan coffee and cake bar, the rooms are dominated by gleaming white tiles, people bustling about in lab coats, rows of broad-bottomed beakers and pieces of equipment more at home in a science-fiction thriller. A 50-litre tank (a bioreactor) is filled with what looks like a cherry-colored energy drink. The liquid, known as “growth medium”, is rich with sugars, minerals, amino acids and proteins designed to give the fish cells that are added to it the boost they need to multiply by the million.
At this early stage, the company’s first planned destination for its products is not the local restaurants but Singapore, a country where cultivated meat is already so well known, that you can chat to taxi drivers about it, says Bluu Seafood co-founder and marine biologist, Sebastian Rakers.
Singapore is committed to reducing its reliance on food imports. Lab-grown fish and meat are part of a national strategy to locally and sustainably produce 30% of the country’s food by 2030. That plan, says Rakers, is “on everyone’s lips.”
Should Bioplastics Be Allowed in Organic Compost?
Steve Ela is an organic fruit grower in western Colorado who relies on compost to nourish his heirloom tomato crop each year. He plants nitrogen-rich legumes and other perennial cover crops amongst his pear, apple, plum, peach, and cherry trees, but he buys a commercial compost product to keep his 100-acre, fourth-generation family farm thriving.
Ela knows first-hand how central compost is to his organic farm — and all organic agriculture. It helps increase yields and the nutrient content of crops, reduce synthetic fertilizer use, and improve soil health and water retention, among other benefits. But he’s concerned that a new proposal to rewrite U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) compost rules could dramatically change the meaning of organic compost for farmers.
The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) currently requires compost to be derived from plant and animal materials, such as manure, food scraps, leaves, and straw. Newspapers or other recycled paper without colored inks are the only synthetic feedstocks allowed.
The proposal, filed by the nonprofit certification and advocacy organization Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI) in November, asks the USDA to allow synthetic, biodegradable food packaging and service ware as a feedstock for certified organic compost produced at commercial and municipal compost facilities.
Because not enough is known about how long biodegradable microplastics may linger in the ground and harm soil life, pollute waterways, or be taken up by plants, many organic farmers and commercial composters are calling for further scientific review or want to see the USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) reject the petition.
Coca-Cola Tops Earnings Estimates, Hikes Revenue Outlook on Higher Prices
Coca-Cola on Tuesday reported quarterly earnings and revenue that beat analysts’ expectations as consumers drank more of its Fanta and Fairlife beverages.
The beverage giant also raised its full-year outlook for organic revenue. Coke reported first-quarter net income attributable to the company of $3.18 billion, or 74 cents per share, up from $3.11 billion, or 72 cents a share, a year earlier.
