Faux meat: The protein of the future?

Faux meat: The protein of the future?: Faux meats like the Beyond Burger and other plant-based protein alternatives threaten growth of animal agriculture sectors.

Germany culls 77,000 poultry as bird flu found on farms.

Germany culling some 77,000 poultry as bird flu found on farms The culling of about 77,000 turkeys, chickens and ducks is underway after bird flu of the highly contagious H5N8 strain was found on farms in a major poultry production region in the north German state of Lower Saxony. On three farms where H5N8 was found and three others which had contact with them the culling of 55,000 birds was started over the Christmas weekend and should be completed on Tuesday, the Lower Saxony agriculture ministry said in a statement. The contagious H5N8 strain has been found in more than 500 wild birds in Germany in recent weeks. Outbreaks on farms have been rare after the government introduced tough sanitary rules to prevent infection by wild birds, including orders to keep poultry indoors in high-risk regions. Several European countries and Israel have found cases of H5N8 bird flu in the past few weeks and some ordered poultry flocks be kept indoors to prevent the disease spreading. France has widened high-risk restrictions to the entire country after the detection of several cases of the H5N8 strain. South Korea has mobilized its armed forces to help in its biggest-ever poultry cull as the spread of a highly contagious strain bird flu continued, with another 1.6 million birds ordered to be destroyed in affected areas. more

Genetics,environment and 2-faced births in animals.

A calf with four eyes, two noses and two mouths. Her middle two eyes share a socket. The calf dubbed lucky by owner is believed to be a blessing and the family is doing all to make lucky comfortable. Two-faced births don’t happen only to cattle,as seen in the case of Frank and Louie (also known as FrankenLouie) which was what is called a diprosopus or craniofacial duplication, also known as being a “Janus cat” — a two-faced cat. Janus was a Greek god with two faces, because he was considered to look both to the future and the past. Most Janus cats don’t survive for long. But Frank and Louie lived for 15 years. The Massachusetts cat behaved more like a dog than a cat, according to its owner, and walked on a leash and loved car rides. Darrh Bullock, an extension professor in the department of animal and food sciences at the University of Kentucky, said that calves like Lucky are “extremely rare. He said that Lucky’s two heads are not necessarily a genetic effect, but could have been caused by environmental influences such as hormonal imbalances or some sort of chemical that happened to get into the mother during the developmental stage of the fetus. The 2 headed calf is a result of splitting of the embryo that just doesn’t go very far,as fully splitting the embryo would wind up as identical twins. Jonathan Beever, a professor of genetics, genomics and bioinformatics at the University of Illinois, recently worked on a project, primarily with Angus cattle, on “developmental duplications.” Such duplications appear to be an inherited recessive genetic condition. Beever said a calf in Iowa was born with two heads and lived 16-18 months until it was sent to market.“Even with that condition he was viable,” Beever said. “There are 25,000 different genes that control how an animal develops,” Beever said. “When one of them gets disrupted, that allows things to happen that aren’t normally supposed to happen.” Beever said that Lucky is probably not one of those mutations, “but it gives us insight that something happened during that developmental time period, probably day 18 to 25, during pregnancy and the body decided to develop like that.” excerpts http://www.heraldonline.com/

Antibiotic Cream Could Prevent Lyme Disease.

A research published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases found a topical gel containing azithromycin prevented Lyme disease infection when applied twice a day for three days within 72 hours of being bitten by a tick. Of the 1,000 patients bitten by a tick and treated with the gel, none developed Lyme disease while seven people in the placebo group did. In the group receiving a placebo, seven patients contracted Lyme. Discovered in the United States in 1975, the disease is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected black-legged ticks.This has flu-like symptoms such as muscle and joint ache, headache, nausea vomiting and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans. When untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system. People suspected of having the disease usually have to take a strong dose of antibiotics for a period of three weeks.Prevention is to stay away from tick infested areas,use tick sprays and also ensure pets are tick free by reducing tick population in the environment. Reactions to tick bites also vary in individuals with some cases more fulminating than others,but the prolonged outcome of disease is joint disorders,usually resulting in arthritis,facial paralysis and intermittent pain in bone,muscle,joint and tendons.

Bird flu strikes a veterinarian in cat shelter in New York.

A vet at a New York City animal shelter where cats were infected with a strain of bird flu has also been infected. Although the vet only had mild illness from the virus which was short lived and has resolved completely. The bird flu strain affecting cats in the New York shelter was reported earlier here and the twist to the story is that bird flu rarely infects cats but this strain defiled that and the same strain also infected the veterinarian who had been testing the sick cats, giving him prolonged contact with them. People can and do catch flu from animals — and vice-versa. Pigs commonly both catch flu from people and transmit it. The ongoing occasional human cases of H5N1 bird flu and H7N2 bird flu are traced to poultry markets. The influenza virus is of public health concern because of the ability to mutate and possibility of re-assortment between animal flu and human flu producing a new strain that can be extremely dangerous,although this H7N2 has not recombined . Vets, doctors and other scientists keep an eye on bird flu because it can and does spread to people and has the potential to cause epidemics. So far, H7N2 hasn't. It has only ever infected a few people. . more

Toddler dies from organ failure after being fed raw milk by his naturopathic parents.

According to a coroner in Victoria, Australia, a three-year-old’s death from organ failure was most likely due to his parents allowing him to consume raw, unpasteurized “bath milk.”The Guardian reports that the boy was placed on a “gluten-free and organic diet” in the summer of 2014 under the advice of a naturopathic doctor. The boy’s parents regularly consumed “Mountain View Organic Bath Milk,” which is distinctly labeled “not for human consumption.” As the coroner discovered, the parents sometimes added a small amount to the boy’s drinks. Health officials warn that unpasteurized milk contains pathogens such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, shiga toxin-producing E coli and listeria.more The consumption of raw milk is deadly and should be avoided, read

Food waste and climate change.

Food waste as insignificant as it may seem,it takes its toll on the environment.Food waste in land fills,contribute to methane emissions heating up the environment. food waste, basically are food that are thrown away before or after it spoils. There are various factors that influence food waste such as 1) color, especially farm produce when individual preferences leads to dumping food even whenits not bad. 2) shape so many throw food away because they believe its shape is not conforming although the food is good. 3) food waste arise largely from taste disparity,many actually buy food expecting it to taste a particular way,and if the taste is not what they imagined,its tossed. Food waste arising from spoilage ,handling and storage problems are major factors at play here but irrespective of how or why the food got in the bin,its warming up the atmosphere. Methane emission generated from food in land fills are contributing to climate change. Methane is about 27 times more potent than carbon at trapping heat. Data has shown that greenhouse gas emissions related to the food supply quadrupled during the last 50 years.