E. Coli - Yeah that too should make you think of Big Agro, Big Pharma and the Meat Industry

UPDATE: Forensic evidence emerges that European e.coli superbug was bioengineered to produce human fatalities

Source: Taco Bell and E.Coli

Everytime you hear about a new fancy disease, what do you make of it?
Chances are that you hear the 5 min sound bites on TV, panic and immediately decide you are not going to eat the spinach or the tomatoes or the eggs or whatever the latest source of the disease might be. You quarantine yourself if there is say swine flu. Its like the Dept of Homeland Security flipped the switch from Orange to Red!

If you consider yourself wise, I want you to know that often the first word should not be your first impression. I will just relate to you a few possibilities and then leave you with a few links that make the case.

Here are the possibilities:
- The media is telling you something because they need a story to tell.
- The govt is telling you a story because they need a law to be passed.
- The Big Agro Companies like Monsanto, Conagra and Cargill are making up stories to discredit small farmers so they can run them out of business.
- The Big Pharma have just let lose a new strain of a virus because they need to sell a new drug.

Here are a couple of powerful articles that dig deeper into the most recently alarm around E.Coli. If there is anything you take away from it, I hope it will be that we cannot trust big businesses. Our best hope is to return to living with nature the way nature intended things to be:

- consume less of the planets resources even if you can afford to buy another cell phone, another car or a city and a half.
- take care of your health by eating only organic foods
- Supporting locally grown fruits and vegetables
- Cut down on meat because it carries the most disease and it consumes the most virtual water.
- Tip the minimum wage workers

Now for the readings (homework):

E. Coli: Blame the Meat, Not the Sprouts

Germany: Tests show no proof that sprouts from organic farm are cause of E. coli outbreak

Just How Contaminated Is the Fish and Meat That We Eat?

 

Seattle - America's First Zero Waste/Carbon-Neutral City

This gave me quite a kick! Its the first city in America thats on its way to being carbon neutral. The city is applying all the common sense principles possible to make this happen. Now this is how true conservatism works.

Here's a sampling of what they are doing (some of these you could directly implement at your homes and offices too)


- Food waste is collected weekly and gets used for compost. Bye Bye Methane (emanating from garbage dumps and landfills causing more global warming)

- Incentives for product stewardship (a.k.a. "extended producer responsibility"). This means producers are responsible for recycling and disposing off of what they produce. They get a financial incentive for this.

- Reduce garbage by banning non-recyclables (eg plastic bags and styrofoam cups and other dinning hall culprits).

- Expanding reuse and recycling to include back programs for products like pharmaceuticals, paint, and electronic products.

- Expanding recycling to take care of construction and demolition waste

Complete article from Yes! Magazine at http://www.yesmagazine.org/blogs/richard-conlin/waste-not-seattles-road-to-zero-trash?utm_source=wkly20100820&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=titleConlin