Rising Meat Consumption, Calorie Intake Complicate Efforts To Conserve Essential Phosphorus Resource

From the 21 January 2013 article at Medical News Today

Dietary changes since the early 1960s have fueled a sharp increase in the amount of mined phosphorus used to produce the food consumed by the average person over the course of a year, according to a new study led by researchers at McGill University.

Between 1961 and 2007, rising meat consumption and total calorie intake underpinned a 38% increase in the world’s per capita “phosphorus footprint,” the researchers conclude in a paper published online in Environmental Research Letters.

The findings underscore a significant challenge to efforts to sustainably manage the supply of mined phosphorus, a non-renewable resource widely used as fertilizer. When phosphorus is lost through agricultural runoff or sewage systems, it can pollute waterways downstream. In addition, because deposits are heavily concentrated in a few countries, global supplies and prices for the resource are vulnerable to geopolitical tensions…..

 

Read the entire article here

Related articles

• Dietary shifts driving up phosphorus use (eurekalert.org)
• How to cut phosphate fertilizer use (environmentalresearchweb.org)
• FDA Quietly Ancreases Allowed Radiation Doses of Meats for Human Consumption (truthistreason.net)
• Farm soil determines environmental fate of phosphorous (esciencenews.com)
• Soil controls where phosphorus ends up (futurity.org)
• MMSD ordered to provide ‘green infrastructure’ for storm water (jsonline.com)

 

The Future Of Food: Algae, Insects and Lab-Grown Meat?

From the 3 February 2012 post at Art of the STEM – Science Art Culture Cohabitate

How can we feed the 2.5 billion more people – an extra China and India – likely to be alive in 2050? The UN says we will have to nearly double our food production and governments say we should adopt new technologies and avoid waste, but however you cut it, there are already one billion chronically hungry people, there’s little more virgin land to open up, climate change will only make farming harder to grow food in most places, the oceans are overfished, and much of the world faces growing water shortages.

Fifty years ago, when the world’s population was around half what it is now, the answer to looming famines was “the green revolution” – a massive increase in the use of hybrid seeds and chemical fertilisers. It worked, but at a great ecological price. We grow nearly twice as much food as we did just a generation ago, but we use three times as much water from rivers and underground supplies.

Food, farm and water technologists will have to find new ways to grow more crops in places that until now were hard or impossible to farm. It may need a total rethink over how we use land and water. So enter a new generation of radical farmers, novel foods and bright ideas…….

 

Related articles

• Can Algae Feed the World and Fuel the Planet? A Q&A with Craig Venter (scientificamerican.com)
• Environmental Benefits of lab-grown meat and genetically engineered fish (nextbigfuture.com)
• The future of food (foodsecuritysm.wordpress.com)
• Alternative Foods in Famines, by ShepherdFarmerGeek (survivalblog.com)
• Lab-Grown Meat: Food of the Future (foodservicewarehouse.com)
• Another helping of grasshopper? (msnbc.msn.com)

One Quarter Of U.S. Poultry And Meat Tainted With Resistant Bacteria

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From a 15 April 2011 Medical News Today article

7% of poultry and meat samples were found to be contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, and half of those with bacteria resistant to three or more classes of antibiotics, researchers from the Translational Genomics Research Institute wrote in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases[full text].

Strains of drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus, also known as S. aureus, are bacteria associated with several human diseases and appear to be widespread in the poultry and meat sold in American retail outlets. The researchers were surprised the contamination rate was so high.

The authors explain that theirs is the first nationwide assessment of contamination of the U.S. food supply with antibiotic resistant S. aureus.

According to the results of genetic (DNA) tests that were carried out, it appears that the major source of contamination is from livestock (farm animals).

Proper cooking of S. aureus tainted poultry and meats should kill off all bacteria. However, there is a risk of human infection if the food is not handled properly during the preparation of meals….

…Senior author, Lance B. Price, Ph.D., said:

“For the first time, we know how much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Staph, and it is substantial.

The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today.”

The authors explained that highly industrialized farming, where animals are densely packed together and fed steady low doses of antibiotic, are perfect breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria to thrive, and then make their way into humans.

Dr. Price said:

“Antibiotics are the most important drugs that we have to treat Staph infections; but when Staph are resistant to three, four, five or even nine different antibiotics – like we saw in this study – that leaves physicians few options.”

Paul S. Keim, Ph.D., co-author, said:

“The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria – including Staph – remains a major challenge in clinical medicine.

This study shows that much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with multidrug-resistant Staph. Now we need to determine what this means in terms of risk to the consumer.”…

Free range and other meat and poultry terms

From the Mayo Clinic article

“Free range,” “natural” and “antibiotic-free” are among the common terms on meat, poultry and egg packages today. Do these terms guide your purchases either because of concerns about food quality or animal welfare? Then you should know that terms such as free range, antibiotic-free, natural and others may not actually mean what you think they do. In some cases, terms you find on packages are regulated under federal organic rules, while others are standard regardless of organic status. Other terms aren’t regulated at all, and some may have no relevance to animal welfare even if they sound like they do. Take a closer look.

The article goes on to define terms as antibiotic-free, cage-free, certified humane, chemical free, free-range or free roaming, grain fed, grass fed, hormone free, naturally raised, pasture raised, vegetarian fed

Some related Mayo Clinic articles

• What is BPA? Should I be worried about it?
• Vegetable juice: As good as whole vegetables
• Nutrition labels: Deciphering health claims
• Fast food: 5 ways to healthier meals
• Organic foods: Are they safer? More nutritious?
• Sodium nitrate in meat: Heart disease risk factor?
• Nutrition rating system: What’s behind the new food labels?

A sampling of organic food Web sites (via Internet Public Library)

• National Organic Program (US Department of Agriculture)

Information about the organic standards program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Explains the “USDA Organic” labels found on food and beverage packaging, marketing phrases (such as “organic,” which “must consist of at least 95 percent organically produced ingredients (excluding water and salt)”), news and updates, and material for producers and retailers.

• Organic Center

This advocacy site for organic farming features articles and reports on subjects such as pesticides in foods, nutritional quality, antioxidants, and food safety. Also find links to related sites. From an organization whose mission is “to generate credible, peer reviewed scientific information and communicate the verifiable benefits of organic farming and products to society.”

• Organic Consumers Association

A “national consumer advocacy organization committed to educating, uniting, and organizing organic consumers. We will actively work to protect the integrity of organic food, and dramatically increase its accessibility to the point where sustainable agriculture becomes the dominant form of food and fiber production in the US and across the world.” Provides news, calendar of events, book reviews, links to other resources.

FDA Urges Limiting Antibiotics in Meat

The continued use of antimicrobial drugs to promote growth in chickens, cattle and other livestock is tied to antibiotic resistance and should be phased out for that purpose, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Monday.

News item may be found here.