According to a new study, broccoli appears to lower the risk of lung cancer in smokers and ex-smokers.
A research team studied lung-cancer patients and people without the disease who had similar diets and smoking habits. Among smokers, the protective effect of cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli ranged from a 20 percent reduction in risk to a 55 percent reduction, depending on the type of vegetable consumed and the duration and intensity of smoking.
Raw vegetables were the only kind found to offer protection to current smokers.
Sources:
Whiotv.com November 19, 2008
25 November 2008
Should Cancer Drugs Be Used to Treat Diabetics?
Two common cancer drugs have been shown to both prevent and reverse type 1 diabetes in a mouse model of the disease. The drugs are imatinib (marketed as Gleevec) and sunitinib (marketed as Sutent). Both were found to put type 1 diabetes into remission in 80 percent of the test mice and work permanently in 80 percent of those that go into remission.
So, should they be hailed as a new miracle treatment? I wouldn’t be so hasty. Gleevec, for example, kills heart muscle cells and can cause severe congestive heart failure. If the cure is worse than the disease, this doesn’t seem to be a great benefit.
A better way is to prevent type 1 diabetes in the first place, using natural means like vitamin D.
Sources:
Physorg.com November 18, 2008
So, should they be hailed as a new miracle treatment? I wouldn’t be so hasty. Gleevec, for example, kills heart muscle cells and can cause severe congestive heart failure. If the cure is worse than the disease, this doesn’t seem to be a great benefit.
A better way is to prevent type 1 diabetes in the first place, using natural means like vitamin D.
Sources:
Physorg.com November 18, 2008
Prominent Physician Advises Against Flu Shots
Dr. Donald Miller, a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington, recommends avoiding the flu shot and taking vitamin D instead. According to Dr. Miller, “Seventy percent of doctors do not get a flu shot.”
Health officials say that every winter 36,000 people will die from it. But the National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone -- more than 34,000 of the “36,000″ flu deaths are actually pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. In fact, a systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo. But there is also a risk of harm from the flu vaccine itself, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde it contains.
Sources:
Eco Child’s Play November 18, 2008
Health officials say that every winter 36,000 people will die from it. But the National Vital Statistics Reports compiled by the CDC show that only 1,138 deaths a year occur due to influenza alone -- more than 34,000 of the “36,000″ flu deaths are actually pneumonic and cardiovascular deaths.
There is also a lack of evidence that young children benefit from flu shots. In fact, a systematic review of 51 studies involving 260,000 children age 6 to 23 months found no evidence that the flu vaccine is any more effective than a placebo. But there is also a risk of harm from the flu vaccine itself, particularly from the mercury, aluminum, and formaldehyde it contains.
Sources:
Eco Child’s Play November 18, 2008
Why Vaccine Injured Kids are Rarely Compensated
by Barbara Loe Fisher
On Nov. 14, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 into law, instituting first-time vaccine safety reforms in the U.S. vaccination system and creating the first no-fault federal vaccine injury compensation program alternative to a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers and pediatricians. Twenty-two years later, on Nov. 18, 2008, I made a statement to the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) and questioned whether the compensation program is fatally flawed and so broken that it should be repealed. Many parents are wondering whether it would be better to return to civil court without restrictions to sue vaccine manufacturers and doctors for injuries and deaths their children suffered after receiving federally recommended vaccines.
During its two-decade history, two out of three individuals applying for federal vaccine injury compensation have been turned away empty-handed even though to date $1.8 billion has been awarded to more than 2,200 plaintiff's out of some 12,000 who have applied. Today, nearly 5,000 vaccine injury claims are sitting in limbo because they represent children, who suffered brain and immune system dysfunction after vaccination but have been diagnosed with regressive autism, which is not recognized by the program as a compensable event. There is $2.7 billion sitting in the Trust Fund which could have been awarded to vaccine victims.
At the time of the law's creation in 1986, Congress said they were committed to setting up a fair, expedited, non-adversarial, less traumatic, less expensive no-fault compensation mechanism alternative to civil litigation. But Congress also acknowledged that any legislation providing liability protection must also be equally committed to preventing vaccine harm. The Act contains strong safety provisions, including first-time mandates for doctors to record and report serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths after vaccination and give parents written benefit and risk information before a child is vaccinated.
But few of the safety provisions have been enforced and, as I testified in Congress in 1999 and again at the Nov. 18 ACCV meeting, there has been a betrayal of the promise that was made to parents about how the compensation program would be implemented. Obtaining compensation has become a highly adversarial, time-consuming, traumatic and expensive process for families of vaccine injured children and far too many vaccine victims have been denied compensation while vaccine makers and doctors have enjoyed liability protection and dozens of doses of nine new vaccines have been added to the childhood vaccine schedule.
I pointed out that federal court judges are beginning to look back at the legislative history of the Act, which so clearly affirms the intent of Congress when creating it. In recent court decisions, judges have agreed with parents and their attorneys that the compensation program has become far too difficult for plaintiffs. A recent state Supreme Court ruling also reiterated that Congress never intended to shield vaccine manufacturers from ALL liability for vaccine injuries and deaths when it could be demonstrated that a safer product could have been marketed.
In a Supreme Court of Georgia ruling on October 6, 2008 in American Home Products v. Ferrari, the justices unanimously held that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act does not give a vaccine manufacturer blanket immunity from vaccine injury lawsuits if it can be proven that the company could have made a safer vaccine. Georgia Supreme Court Justice George Carley wrote that the 1986 law and "the congressional intent behind it shows that the Vaccine Act does not pre-empt all design defect claims." He added that Congress did not "use language which indicates that use of the compensation system is mandatory" but only "an appealing alternative" to the courts.
JusticeCarley wrote that there is no evidence that "FDA approval alone renders a vaccine unavoidably safe" and said "We hesitate to hold that a manufacturer is excused from making changes it knows will improve its product merely because an older, more dangerous version received FDA approval," adding that to do so would have "the perverse effect" of granting complete immunity from liability to an entire industry and he concluded that "in the absence of any clear and manifest congressional purpose to achieve that result, we must reject such a far-reaching interpretation."
During the ACCV meeting, longtime plaintiff's attorney Sherry Drew gave a moving description of the suffering that families with vaccine injured children endure and, during public comment at the end of the meeting, Jim Moody, of SafeMinds, and Vicky Debold, RN, PhD joined me in urging the Committee to recommend to the new Secretary of DHHS that more vaccine injured children be compensated. This was echoed by outgoing parent ACCV member Tawny Buck, of Alaska, who has a DPT vaccine injured daughter and new ACCV parent member Sarah Hoiberg, of Florida, who has a DTaP vaccine injured daughter.
In the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, the Institute of Medicine was directed to review the medical literature for scientific evidence that vaccines can cause injury and death, which resulted in landmark reports to Congress in 1991 and 1994 providing that evidence. IOM announced at the ACCV meeting that it has recently been contracted by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) to assemble a Committee of scientific experts to review of the medical literature for evidence regarding the biological mechanisms for injury and death in association with varicella zoster (chicken pox), hepatitis B, meningococcal and HPV vaccine. There will be several public workshops during the Committee's two-year study.
NVIC has been calling for basic science research into the biological mechanisms of vaccine injury and death for more than two decades. Without understanding how and why vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction, there will be no way to develop pathological profiles to help scientifically confirm whether or not an individual has been injured or died from vaccination.
The truth about vaccine risks lies in the science, properly designed and conducted. The upcoming IOM review may be hampered by a lack of biological mechanism studies published in the medical literature but the review is also an opportunity to point the way to fill in those gaps in knowledge and the need for additional research that could become part of a national vaccine safety research agenda.
In the absence of scientific certainty, all children who regress into poor health after vaccination should be given a fair hearing in the federal vaccine injury compensation program and generously compensated when no other plausible cause can be found for what happened to them after vaccination. Congress intended the vaccine injury compensation program to be non-adversarial, fair, generous and humane. If it cannot function the way it was intended to function, then parents have every right to call for its repeal and a return to unrestricted lawsuits.
Sources:
National Vaccine Information Center
On Nov. 14, 1986, President Ronald Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 into law, instituting first-time vaccine safety reforms in the U.S. vaccination system and creating the first no-fault federal vaccine injury compensation program alternative to a lawsuit against vaccine manufacturers and pediatricians. Twenty-two years later, on Nov. 18, 2008, I made a statement to the Advisory Commission on Childhood Vaccines (ACCV) and questioned whether the compensation program is fatally flawed and so broken that it should be repealed. Many parents are wondering whether it would be better to return to civil court without restrictions to sue vaccine manufacturers and doctors for injuries and deaths their children suffered after receiving federally recommended vaccines.
During its two-decade history, two out of three individuals applying for federal vaccine injury compensation have been turned away empty-handed even though to date $1.8 billion has been awarded to more than 2,200 plaintiff's out of some 12,000 who have applied. Today, nearly 5,000 vaccine injury claims are sitting in limbo because they represent children, who suffered brain and immune system dysfunction after vaccination but have been diagnosed with regressive autism, which is not recognized by the program as a compensable event. There is $2.7 billion sitting in the Trust Fund which could have been awarded to vaccine victims.
At the time of the law's creation in 1986, Congress said they were committed to setting up a fair, expedited, non-adversarial, less traumatic, less expensive no-fault compensation mechanism alternative to civil litigation. But Congress also acknowledged that any legislation providing liability protection must also be equally committed to preventing vaccine harm. The Act contains strong safety provisions, including first-time mandates for doctors to record and report serious health problems, hospitalizations, injuries and deaths after vaccination and give parents written benefit and risk information before a child is vaccinated.
But few of the safety provisions have been enforced and, as I testified in Congress in 1999 and again at the Nov. 18 ACCV meeting, there has been a betrayal of the promise that was made to parents about how the compensation program would be implemented. Obtaining compensation has become a highly adversarial, time-consuming, traumatic and expensive process for families of vaccine injured children and far too many vaccine victims have been denied compensation while vaccine makers and doctors have enjoyed liability protection and dozens of doses of nine new vaccines have been added to the childhood vaccine schedule.
I pointed out that federal court judges are beginning to look back at the legislative history of the Act, which so clearly affirms the intent of Congress when creating it. In recent court decisions, judges have agreed with parents and their attorneys that the compensation program has become far too difficult for plaintiffs. A recent state Supreme Court ruling also reiterated that Congress never intended to shield vaccine manufacturers from ALL liability for vaccine injuries and deaths when it could be demonstrated that a safer product could have been marketed.
In a Supreme Court of Georgia ruling on October 6, 2008 in American Home Products v. Ferrari, the justices unanimously held that the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act does not give a vaccine manufacturer blanket immunity from vaccine injury lawsuits if it can be proven that the company could have made a safer vaccine. Georgia Supreme Court Justice George Carley wrote that the 1986 law and "the congressional intent behind it shows that the Vaccine Act does not pre-empt all design defect claims." He added that Congress did not "use language which indicates that use of the compensation system is mandatory" but only "an appealing alternative" to the courts.
JusticeCarley wrote that there is no evidence that "FDA approval alone renders a vaccine unavoidably safe" and said "We hesitate to hold that a manufacturer is excused from making changes it knows will improve its product merely because an older, more dangerous version received FDA approval," adding that to do so would have "the perverse effect" of granting complete immunity from liability to an entire industry and he concluded that "in the absence of any clear and manifest congressional purpose to achieve that result, we must reject such a far-reaching interpretation."
During the ACCV meeting, longtime plaintiff's attorney Sherry Drew gave a moving description of the suffering that families with vaccine injured children endure and, during public comment at the end of the meeting, Jim Moody, of SafeMinds, and Vicky Debold, RN, PhD joined me in urging the Committee to recommend to the new Secretary of DHHS that more vaccine injured children be compensated. This was echoed by outgoing parent ACCV member Tawny Buck, of Alaska, who has a DPT vaccine injured daughter and new ACCV parent member Sarah Hoiberg, of Florida, who has a DTaP vaccine injured daughter.
In the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act, the Institute of Medicine was directed to review the medical literature for scientific evidence that vaccines can cause injury and death, which resulted in landmark reports to Congress in 1991 and 1994 providing that evidence. IOM announced at the ACCV meeting that it has recently been contracted by the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) to assemble a Committee of scientific experts to review of the medical literature for evidence regarding the biological mechanisms for injury and death in association with varicella zoster (chicken pox), hepatitis B, meningococcal and HPV vaccine. There will be several public workshops during the Committee's two-year study.
NVIC has been calling for basic science research into the biological mechanisms of vaccine injury and death for more than two decades. Without understanding how and why vaccines can cause brain and immune system dysfunction, there will be no way to develop pathological profiles to help scientifically confirm whether or not an individual has been injured or died from vaccination.
The truth about vaccine risks lies in the science, properly designed and conducted. The upcoming IOM review may be hampered by a lack of biological mechanism studies published in the medical literature but the review is also an opportunity to point the way to fill in those gaps in knowledge and the need for additional research that could become part of a national vaccine safety research agenda.
In the absence of scientific certainty, all children who regress into poor health after vaccination should be given a fair hearing in the federal vaccine injury compensation program and generously compensated when no other plausible cause can be found for what happened to them after vaccination. Congress intended the vaccine injury compensation program to be non-adversarial, fair, generous and humane. If it cannot function the way it was intended to function, then parents have every right to call for its repeal and a return to unrestricted lawsuits.
Sources:
National Vaccine Information Center
Vaccine-Related Chronic Fatigue Syndrome In An Individual Demonstrating Aluminium Overload
cienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2008) — A team of scientists have investigated a case of vaccine-associated chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and macrophagic myofasciitis in an individual demonstrating aluminium overload.
This is the first report linking aluminium overload with either of the two conditions and the possibility is considered that the coincident aluminium overload contributed significantly to the severity of these conditions in a patient.
The team, led by Dr Chris Exley, of the Birchall Centre at Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, has found a possible mechanism whereby vaccination involving aluminium-containing adjuvants could trigger the cascade of immunological events that are associated with autoimmune conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome and macrophagic myofasciitis.
The CFS in a 43-year-old man, with no history of previous illness, followed a course of five vaccinations, each of which included an aluminium-based adjuvant. The latter are extremely effective immunogens in their own right and so improve the immune response to whichever antigen is administered in their presence. While the course of vaccinations was cited by an industrial injuries tribunal as the cause of the CFS in the individual, it was not likely to be a cause of the elevated body burden of aluminium. The latter was probably ongoing at the time when the vaccinations were administered and it is proposed that the cause of the CFS in this individual was a heightened immune response, initially to the aluminium in each of the adjuvants and thereafter spreading to other significant body stores of aluminium.
The result was a severe and ongoing immune response to elevated body stores of aluminium, which was initiated by a course of five aluminium adjuvant-based vaccinations within a short period of time. There are strong precedents for delayed hypersensitivity to aluminium in children receiving vaccinations which include aluminium-based adjuvants, with as many as 1% of recipients showing such a response.
While the use of aluminium-based adjuvants may be safe, it is also possible that for a significant number of individuals they may represent a significant health risk, such as was found in this case. With this in mind the ongoing programme of mass vaccination of young women in the UK against the human papilloma virus (HPV) with a vaccine which uses an aluminium based adjuvant may not be without similar risks.
Recent press coverage of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome has highlighted the potentially debilitating nature of this disease and related conditions. The cause of CFS is unknown.
Adapted from materials provided by Keele University, via AlphaGalileo.
This is the first report linking aluminium overload with either of the two conditions and the possibility is considered that the coincident aluminium overload contributed significantly to the severity of these conditions in a patient.
The team, led by Dr Chris Exley, of the Birchall Centre at Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, has found a possible mechanism whereby vaccination involving aluminium-containing adjuvants could trigger the cascade of immunological events that are associated with autoimmune conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome and macrophagic myofasciitis.
The CFS in a 43-year-old man, with no history of previous illness, followed a course of five vaccinations, each of which included an aluminium-based adjuvant. The latter are extremely effective immunogens in their own right and so improve the immune response to whichever antigen is administered in their presence. While the course of vaccinations was cited by an industrial injuries tribunal as the cause of the CFS in the individual, it was not likely to be a cause of the elevated body burden of aluminium. The latter was probably ongoing at the time when the vaccinations were administered and it is proposed that the cause of the CFS in this individual was a heightened immune response, initially to the aluminium in each of the adjuvants and thereafter spreading to other significant body stores of aluminium.
The result was a severe and ongoing immune response to elevated body stores of aluminium, which was initiated by a course of five aluminium adjuvant-based vaccinations within a short period of time. There are strong precedents for delayed hypersensitivity to aluminium in children receiving vaccinations which include aluminium-based adjuvants, with as many as 1% of recipients showing such a response.
While the use of aluminium-based adjuvants may be safe, it is also possible that for a significant number of individuals they may represent a significant health risk, such as was found in this case. With this in mind the ongoing programme of mass vaccination of young women in the UK against the human papilloma virus (HPV) with a vaccine which uses an aluminium based adjuvant may not be without similar risks.
Recent press coverage of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome has highlighted the potentially debilitating nature of this disease and related conditions. The cause of CFS is unknown.
Adapted from materials provided by Keele University, via AlphaGalileo.
26 percent of sleepless children become overweight
Universite de Montreal researchers have found that 1 quarter of children who sleep fewer than 10 hours a night become overweight by age 6
Between the ages of six months and six years old, close to 90 percent of children have at least one sleep-related problem. Among the most common issues are night terrors, teeth-grinding and bed-wetting.
For the majority, it's simply a stage that passes. But at least 30 percent of children in this age group have difficulties sleeping six consecutive hours – either because they can't fall into slumber or they can't stay asleep. While the effects of lack of sleep on learning are well documented, researchers at the Université de Montréal have found sleepless children can become overweight and hyperactive.
Jacques Montplaisir, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of Sleep Disorders Center at Sacré-Coeur Hospital said that 26 percent of children that sleep fewer than 10 hours a night between two and half years and six years are overweight. The figure drops to 15 percent of those that sleep 10 hours and falls to 10 percent among those that sleep 11 hours.
The research team analyzed a sample of 1,138 children and found: 26 percent of kids who didn't sleep enough were overweight, 18.5 percent carried extra weight, while 7.4 percent were obese.
The relationship between sleep and weight could be explained by a change in the secretion of hormones that's brought on by lack of sleep. "When we sleep less, our stomach secretes more of the hormone that stimulates appetite," Montplaisir explains. "And we also produce less of the hormone whose function is to reduce the intake of food."
Naps don't compensate for nightly lack of sleep, Montplaisir pointed out. According to the same study, inadequate sleep could also lead to hyperactivity. Twenty-two percent of children who slept fewer than 10 hours at age two and a half suffered hyperactivity at six years old, which is twice the rate seen in those who slept 10 to 11 hours per night.
Is it possible that hyperactive children sleep less or that under-slept children become hyperactive? According to Montplaisir, the second scenario is correct. "In adults, inadequate sleep translates into sleepiness, but in children it creates excitement," he says.
Children were also given a cognitive performance test in which they had to copy a picture using blocks of two colours. Among the children who lacked sleep, 41 percent did poorly, whereas only 17 to 21 percent of children with 10 or 11 hours of sleep per night performed badly.
Problems experienced in childhood risk continuing into later years if nothing is done and Montplaisir suggests a new specialty in which sleep problems can be nipped in the bud.
###
Between the ages of six months and six years old, close to 90 percent of children have at least one sleep-related problem. Among the most common issues are night terrors, teeth-grinding and bed-wetting.
For the majority, it's simply a stage that passes. But at least 30 percent of children in this age group have difficulties sleeping six consecutive hours – either because they can't fall into slumber or they can't stay asleep. While the effects of lack of sleep on learning are well documented, researchers at the Université de Montréal have found sleepless children can become overweight and hyperactive.
Jacques Montplaisir, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and director of Sleep Disorders Center at Sacré-Coeur Hospital said that 26 percent of children that sleep fewer than 10 hours a night between two and half years and six years are overweight. The figure drops to 15 percent of those that sleep 10 hours and falls to 10 percent among those that sleep 11 hours.
The research team analyzed a sample of 1,138 children and found: 26 percent of kids who didn't sleep enough were overweight, 18.5 percent carried extra weight, while 7.4 percent were obese.
The relationship between sleep and weight could be explained by a change in the secretion of hormones that's brought on by lack of sleep. "When we sleep less, our stomach secretes more of the hormone that stimulates appetite," Montplaisir explains. "And we also produce less of the hormone whose function is to reduce the intake of food."
Naps don't compensate for nightly lack of sleep, Montplaisir pointed out. According to the same study, inadequate sleep could also lead to hyperactivity. Twenty-two percent of children who slept fewer than 10 hours at age two and a half suffered hyperactivity at six years old, which is twice the rate seen in those who slept 10 to 11 hours per night.
Is it possible that hyperactive children sleep less or that under-slept children become hyperactive? According to Montplaisir, the second scenario is correct. "In adults, inadequate sleep translates into sleepiness, but in children it creates excitement," he says.
Children were also given a cognitive performance test in which they had to copy a picture using blocks of two colours. Among the children who lacked sleep, 41 percent did poorly, whereas only 17 to 21 percent of children with 10 or 11 hours of sleep per night performed badly.
Problems experienced in childhood risk continuing into later years if nothing is done and Montplaisir suggests a new specialty in which sleep problems can be nipped in the bud.
###
What You Need to Know About Farmed Fish
By Bob Zimway
La Vida Locavore, November 17, 2008
Straight to the Source
Enjoy that wild salmon, it could be extinct-- or at least unobtainable-- in your lifetime. This is the message I get the more I look into it. It's one reason why I write on the behalf of wild salmon, because it is so good as a food, and such an inspiring work of nature, but it is becoming so rare. What would the Pacific Northwest, my home, be like without it? The rivers would seem barren. The orcas in the ocean would starve and diminish. The Web of Life would fray badly.
And it is fraying now.
What are the alternatives?
Declining ocean fish stocks have led to a rapid growth in fish farming. Let's see how that's working out.
Think farmed fish are the answer? Think again:
The total world aquaculture production contributes to the global fish supply. Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food sectors, with production increasing from 10 million tonnes in 1990 to 29 million tonnes in 1997 (FAO, 1999). More than 220 species of finfish and shellfish are farmed today.
However, carnivorous farmed fish are fed on high levels of fish meal and fish oil and require a fish biomass input superior to the fish biomass produced. For the ten species of fish most commonly farmed , an average of 1.9kg of wild fish is required for every kilogram of fish raised. Unfortunately, there is an increase in the production trend of carnivorous fish (such as salmon or shrimp), rather than herbivorous or filter feeder fish. Small pelagic fish mainly provide the fish meal and fish oils used for aquaculture feed. Aquaculture's growing needs increase pressures existing on wild fisheries for small pelagic fish, which already suffer from overexploitation and are strained by climate changes resulting from the El Niño warming effect.
Pelagic fish are oily fish that live in the deep sea. This group includes herring, sardines and anchovies. Perfectly good fish in their own right, less likely to contain heavy metals as do the larger predator species, and in my opinion what we should be eating instead of tuna and farmed salmon.
Fish as food and fish food; a redundant article perhaps but I feel the need to show how the message is coming in from many authoritative sources:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One-third of the world's ocean fish catch is ground up for animal feed, a potential problem for marine ecosystems and a waste of a resource that could directly nourish humans, scientists said on Wednesday.
The fish being used to feed pigs, chickens and farm-raised fish are often thought of as bait, including anchovies, sardines, menhaden and other small- to medium-sized species, researchers wrote in a study to be published in November in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
These so-called forage fish account for 37 percent, or 31.5 million tons, of all fish taken from the world's oceans each year, the study said. Ninety percent of that catch is turned into fish meal or fish oil, most of which is used as agricultural and aquacultural feed.
Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, called these numbers "staggering."
A recent study (pdf) on salmon mortality in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers has put the spotlight on the effects of farmed salmon lice that infest wild smolts coming out of the Fraser. A 2005 study found a correlation between proximity of fish farms and lice infestation. The fish farm industry refutes that and says that it is closely monitoring lice in its rearing pens. They apply lice killer, how and how much, I don't know, and what effect the chemicals have on the fish and on fish-as-food I don't know. But it's troubling.
Ocean Fish in Steep Decline Fish farming get its food from the oceans. This fact leads one to ask how the sources of the world's wild fish are doing. Bummer.
A bleak warning from the UK:
A hidden catastrophe is unfolding off the coasts of Britain which could leave our seas filled with only algae and jellyfish, a leading conservation organisation warns today. The Marine Conservation Society says severe overfishing is the biggest environmental threat facing Britain and is having a profound effect on marine ecosystems. The warning comes in Silent Seas, a report released as the government prepares its marine bill for parliament.
The report comes the day after the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, which advises Europe's politicians on fish stocks, warned that parts of the North Sea should be closed to mackerel fishing because stocks of the species could be on the brink of collapse.
Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS, said: "There's a moral imperative: we simply shouldn't be living in such a way that drives species to extinction."
What's even worse is how the food-fish are obtained: trawling, where the ocean floor is scoured of everything, brought to the surface, picked through for say, shrimp, and then the other 95% of sea life, now dead, are thrown back.
An excellent Nat Geo article describes a harrowing decline in valauble food species, exemplified by the crash of the bluefin tuna
Once, giant bluefin migrated by the millions throughout the Atlantic Basin and the Mediterranean Sea, their flesh so important to the people of the ancient world that they painted the tuna's likeness on cave walls and minted its image on coins.
But, uh oh, bluefin tuna makes the best sushi.
Over the past decade, a high-tech armada, often guided by spotter planes, has pursued giant bluefin from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, annually netting tens of thousands of the fish, many of them illegally. The bluefin are fattened offshore in sea cages before being shot and butchered for the sushi and steak markets in Japan, America, and Europe. So many giant bluefin have been hauled out of the Mediterranean that the population is in danger of collapse. Meanwhile, European and North African officials have done little to stop the slaughter.
"My big fear is that it may be too late," said Sergi Tudela, a Spanish marine biologist with the World Wildlife Fund, which has led the struggle to rein in the bluefin fishery. "I have a very graphic image in my mind. It is of the migration of so many buffalo in the American West in the early 19th century. It was the same with bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, a migration of a massive number of animals. And now we are witnessing the same phenomenon happening to giant bluefin tuna that we saw happen with America's buffalo. We are witnessing this, right now, right before our eyes."
And that is just one species.
Popular species such as cod have plummeted from the North Sea to Georges Bank off New England. In the Mediterranean, 12 species of shark are commercially extinct, and swordfish there, which should grow as thick as a telephone pole, are now caught as juveniles and eaten when no bigger than a baseball bat. With many Northern Hemisphere waters fished out, commercial fleets have steamed south, overexploiting once teeming fishing grounds.
Africa's and Asia's surrounding seas are in steep decline. It's happening eveywhere. Bringing the crisis home, here's a bit of the fraying fabric that strikes the hearts of many in the Pacific Northwest. San Juan Islands orcas starving for lack of food.
Right now, looking at the mess we're in in every direction, I'm beginning to get overwhelmed by how bad it is on every front. Economy, energy, food, climate, species extinction, population... population? No one talks about that anymore. I wonder though, when we will....
I'll leave it here.
UPDATE: Here's more on farmed fish problems. Farmed fish have been shown to produce sea lice that harm wild stocks, and the Canadian government has taken this and other farmed fish issues seriously. Last week a production quota scandal arose over Canadian farmed fish.
A central-coast salmon-farming operation has drawn the wrath of environmentalists for violating its licence by pumping out unsustainably high numbers of fish. Living Oceans Society said Monday it was "appalling" that government documents show Mainstream Canada salmon farm sites in the Broughton Archipelago produced as much as twice the tonnage allowed in their licences.
Production limits are supposed to minimize the impact that animal waste from fish farms will have on the local environment, reduce the risks of hyper-concentrations of sea lice, and minimize the health risks that overcrowded sea pens would pose to the fish themselves.
La Vida Locavore, November 17, 2008
Straight to the Source
Enjoy that wild salmon, it could be extinct-- or at least unobtainable-- in your lifetime. This is the message I get the more I look into it. It's one reason why I write on the behalf of wild salmon, because it is so good as a food, and such an inspiring work of nature, but it is becoming so rare. What would the Pacific Northwest, my home, be like without it? The rivers would seem barren. The orcas in the ocean would starve and diminish. The Web of Life would fray badly.
And it is fraying now.
What are the alternatives?
Declining ocean fish stocks have led to a rapid growth in fish farming. Let's see how that's working out.
Think farmed fish are the answer? Think again:
The total world aquaculture production contributes to the global fish supply. Aquaculture is one of the fastest growing food sectors, with production increasing from 10 million tonnes in 1990 to 29 million tonnes in 1997 (FAO, 1999). More than 220 species of finfish and shellfish are farmed today.
However, carnivorous farmed fish are fed on high levels of fish meal and fish oil and require a fish biomass input superior to the fish biomass produced. For the ten species of fish most commonly farmed , an average of 1.9kg of wild fish is required for every kilogram of fish raised. Unfortunately, there is an increase in the production trend of carnivorous fish (such as salmon or shrimp), rather than herbivorous or filter feeder fish. Small pelagic fish mainly provide the fish meal and fish oils used for aquaculture feed. Aquaculture's growing needs increase pressures existing on wild fisheries for small pelagic fish, which already suffer from overexploitation and are strained by climate changes resulting from the El Niño warming effect.
Pelagic fish are oily fish that live in the deep sea. This group includes herring, sardines and anchovies. Perfectly good fish in their own right, less likely to contain heavy metals as do the larger predator species, and in my opinion what we should be eating instead of tuna and farmed salmon.
Fish as food and fish food; a redundant article perhaps but I feel the need to show how the message is coming in from many authoritative sources:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One-third of the world's ocean fish catch is ground up for animal feed, a potential problem for marine ecosystems and a waste of a resource that could directly nourish humans, scientists said on Wednesday.
The fish being used to feed pigs, chickens and farm-raised fish are often thought of as bait, including anchovies, sardines, menhaden and other small- to medium-sized species, researchers wrote in a study to be published in November in the Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
These so-called forage fish account for 37 percent, or 31.5 million tons, of all fish taken from the world's oceans each year, the study said. Ninety percent of that catch is turned into fish meal or fish oil, most of which is used as agricultural and aquacultural feed.
Ellen Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and a professor at Stony Brook University in New York, called these numbers "staggering."
A recent study (pdf) on salmon mortality in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers has put the spotlight on the effects of farmed salmon lice that infest wild smolts coming out of the Fraser. A 2005 study found a correlation between proximity of fish farms and lice infestation. The fish farm industry refutes that and says that it is closely monitoring lice in its rearing pens. They apply lice killer, how and how much, I don't know, and what effect the chemicals have on the fish and on fish-as-food I don't know. But it's troubling.
Ocean Fish in Steep Decline Fish farming get its food from the oceans. This fact leads one to ask how the sources of the world's wild fish are doing. Bummer.
A bleak warning from the UK:
A hidden catastrophe is unfolding off the coasts of Britain which could leave our seas filled with only algae and jellyfish, a leading conservation organisation warns today. The Marine Conservation Society says severe overfishing is the biggest environmental threat facing Britain and is having a profound effect on marine ecosystems. The warning comes in Silent Seas, a report released as the government prepares its marine bill for parliament.
The report comes the day after the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas, which advises Europe's politicians on fish stocks, warned that parts of the North Sea should be closed to mackerel fishing because stocks of the species could be on the brink of collapse.
Simon Brockington, head of conservation at the MCS, said: "There's a moral imperative: we simply shouldn't be living in such a way that drives species to extinction."
What's even worse is how the food-fish are obtained: trawling, where the ocean floor is scoured of everything, brought to the surface, picked through for say, shrimp, and then the other 95% of sea life, now dead, are thrown back.
An excellent Nat Geo article describes a harrowing decline in valauble food species, exemplified by the crash of the bluefin tuna
Once, giant bluefin migrated by the millions throughout the Atlantic Basin and the Mediterranean Sea, their flesh so important to the people of the ancient world that they painted the tuna's likeness on cave walls and minted its image on coins.
But, uh oh, bluefin tuna makes the best sushi.
Over the past decade, a high-tech armada, often guided by spotter planes, has pursued giant bluefin from one end of the Mediterranean to the other, annually netting tens of thousands of the fish, many of them illegally. The bluefin are fattened offshore in sea cages before being shot and butchered for the sushi and steak markets in Japan, America, and Europe. So many giant bluefin have been hauled out of the Mediterranean that the population is in danger of collapse. Meanwhile, European and North African officials have done little to stop the slaughter.
"My big fear is that it may be too late," said Sergi Tudela, a Spanish marine biologist with the World Wildlife Fund, which has led the struggle to rein in the bluefin fishery. "I have a very graphic image in my mind. It is of the migration of so many buffalo in the American West in the early 19th century. It was the same with bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, a migration of a massive number of animals. And now we are witnessing the same phenomenon happening to giant bluefin tuna that we saw happen with America's buffalo. We are witnessing this, right now, right before our eyes."
And that is just one species.
Popular species such as cod have plummeted from the North Sea to Georges Bank off New England. In the Mediterranean, 12 species of shark are commercially extinct, and swordfish there, which should grow as thick as a telephone pole, are now caught as juveniles and eaten when no bigger than a baseball bat. With many Northern Hemisphere waters fished out, commercial fleets have steamed south, overexploiting once teeming fishing grounds.
Africa's and Asia's surrounding seas are in steep decline. It's happening eveywhere. Bringing the crisis home, here's a bit of the fraying fabric that strikes the hearts of many in the Pacific Northwest. San Juan Islands orcas starving for lack of food.
Right now, looking at the mess we're in in every direction, I'm beginning to get overwhelmed by how bad it is on every front. Economy, energy, food, climate, species extinction, population... population? No one talks about that anymore. I wonder though, when we will....
I'll leave it here.
UPDATE: Here's more on farmed fish problems. Farmed fish have been shown to produce sea lice that harm wild stocks, and the Canadian government has taken this and other farmed fish issues seriously. Last week a production quota scandal arose over Canadian farmed fish.
A central-coast salmon-farming operation has drawn the wrath of environmentalists for violating its licence by pumping out unsustainably high numbers of fish. Living Oceans Society said Monday it was "appalling" that government documents show Mainstream Canada salmon farm sites in the Broughton Archipelago produced as much as twice the tonnage allowed in their licences.
Production limits are supposed to minimize the impact that animal waste from fish farms will have on the local environment, reduce the risks of hyper-concentrations of sea lice, and minimize the health risks that overcrowded sea pens would pose to the fish themselves.
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