Lene Johansen

OK, so say we accept the premise that CO2 causes global warming, is there any case where energy use will be beneficial for the planet? Yes, according to New Scientist:

They say the use of biogas plants, which store the decomposing manure and capture the natural gas it releases, could improve rural farmers’ livelihoods, while protecting the environment.

Biogas digesters are used across the Indian subcontinent, Africa, and Latin America, but few rigorous studies have been done of their overall costs and benefits. So Govindasamy Agoramoorthy of Tajen University and Minna Hsu of National Sun Yat-sen University, both in Taiwan, surveyed 125 rural households in India that use biogas plants.

Humane Society of the US just released another expose video on animal cruelty in the meat industry. They argue for more regulation so that the responsibility for downer cattle is firmly placed on someone’s shoulder.

Their ultimate goal is to eliminate factory farming, where cattle are raised one place, transported to a feedlot where they pack on a lot of weight, and then transported to a meat packing plant where they are finally slaughtered. It is meat production by bussing, and it is part of the reason why we have downer cattle, which HSUS are so concerned about.

HSUS, which is not related to your local Humane Society in any way, shape, or form, is arguing for more regulation. They want regulation that says who is responsible for downer cattle at the meat packing plant, at the auction houses, and anywhere else. No one seem to take care of them when the truck driver cannot hand off a walking animal to the next link in the chain that takes the cattle from the farmers pastures to your dinner table.

I propose that the regulation caused the factory farming in the first place. There are two reasons for why I make that argument:
1. Regulation cost money; small slaughterhouses cannot afford the excessive cost of following USDA’s detailed guidelines and reporting routines.
2. USDA has been pushing for larger slaughterhouses, because it cost them more to supervise small operations.

The number of meatpacking plants in the U.S. has reduced drastically from almost 2,500 in 1974, to about 900 today. This has in part been a result of the cost and efficiency of using new technology, but there is another component to the story, which is not told very often. Reason started telling the story with a brief list of how regulation prevents Virginia farmer Joel Salatin to do what he wants with the products from his farm. Salatin has published several books on how to make organic, local food systems profitable. His most recent book Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front is a tale of how his battle with USDA.

Salatin also has impeccable credentials from the organic food movement, and food snob Michael Pollan’s recent book the Omnivore’s Dilemma featured several chapter of Salatin’s farming methods and thoughts on supplying food for people. Salatin has been trying to establish a slaughterhouse because he does not want to ship is cattle offsite for slaughter. The USDA will have nothing of it. USDA do not mind that he slaughters onsite, they do not mind that he gives away the beef he slaughtered on the farm, but they will not let him sell it.

Salatin tried to establish a slaughterhouse with an acquaintance. After much ado, the USDA finally issued the permits. Once the plant was in operation, the USDA pulled the inspector because he was not processing animals fast enough. I was not aware that the USDA’s mission was to increase productivity in individual slaughterhouses, they only have to verify that it is done right, and even that is something that other organizations seems to do better.

The other story I have about misguided regulation of the meat supply is a story from the New York Times. Animal rights activists are pushing to ban the slaughter of horses all together, and have already succeeded in doing so in Illinois and in Texas. The result is that horses are now transported all the way to Canada for slaughter. Regulation is causing more industrialized farming, instead of achieving the activists goals of a

New Scientist recently mentioned a really cool method for cellulose based ethanol in their daily 60-second science podcast. During the second world war, our GI’s had a problem with a cloth eating fungus that ate through tents and shirts.

It sounds like something out of a bad science fiction novel. During World War II, a fungus called Tricoderma reesei ate its way through US military uniforms and tents in the South Pacific. It chewed up the cloth and used special enzymes to convert the indigestible cellulose into simple sugars. Now that infamous fungus is getting some good publicity. It looks like it might hold a key to improving the production of biofuels.

Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory published a paper on the fungus’s genetic sequence in this week’s Nature Biotechnology. The organism uses a surprisingly small number of genes to produce its cellulose-munching enzymes. Scientists say this means its production is extremely efficient. They hope to capitalize on the genetic information to find more efficient and cheaper ways to break down cellulose for ethanol in biofuel production. That cellulose could come from a native plant like switchgrass, or even from municipal waste. And fuel from waste, say scientists, is a more carbon-neutral way to power our cars. Which might make veterans forgive the fungus that ate their shirts.

—Cynthia Graber

The Scientist has research grants as a theme this month, and the cover story tries to figure out what happens when NIH grants are denied because of budget cuts. The agency has gone from a 19.7 percent approval rating on Type 1 grants in 1999 to 9.1 percent approval rating in 2005. For Type 2 grants the approval rating has gone from more than 55 percent in 1999 to about 33 percent in 2005.

I am not pointing this out because I lament the loss of research funding, I think this type of funding belong in the private arena and should be funneled through 503(c)’s. I am pointing this out because this is a great story about the end results of the horse-trading that goes on in Congress.

This man’s laboratory might be the $100,000 spent by Congress on the High Falls Film Festival in Rochester, NY or the $200,000 spent on the American Cotton Museum in Greenville, TX. Not that I mind buying rich congress people tickets to museum openings and film festivals, but do they have to be so expensive?

The upcoming CEI dinner is a great alternative. It is amuch cheaper for taxpayers and we can offer speaking presidents, authors, great food, and great company.

Something is wrong with the FDA. They doubled their staffing at the beginning of the 1990′s, which lead to a temporary decrease in processing speed, but bureaucratic inertia soon set in and approval times slowed down again.

FDA is going to increase their staff with 1,300 people by October, which will be paid for increased industry fees. It is pretty drastic that a government agency increase their staffing with 13 percent, but industry can afford the increased fees right? It actually only means that the increased cost will be passed down to you and me, also known as Joe and Jill consumer. Grandma will have more expensive drugs at the pharmacy and your sister’s friend who is a single mom will not be able to afford that breast milk pump she needs to go back to work.

FDA also announced a blackmail plan, ehem, I mean incentive plan, to encourage industry to develop more medications against tropical diseases. If they do develop this, FDA will issue them a tradable voucher that will guarantee them a 6-month review time on other medications. That sounds like a great deal right? 6 months is the maximum review time that FDA is allowed for a drug application according to the law, the fact that they routinely disregards this means that people are suffering and dying, waiting for FDA to approve the drugs that helped them immensely when they participated in the trials. While FDA is dragging its feet on approving drugs that could save lives and alleviate suffering for regular people, the bureaucracy is bloating up like a balloon.

We have an obesity epidemic in the federal bureaucracy in my opinion.

As reports of food prices going through the ceiling are trickling in, some of the countries that traditionally reject plants bred with molecular plant breeding methods (PMBs) are reconsidering.

Japan’s largest corn processor have started buying PMB corn for human consumption, although Japan have permitted PMBs for animal feed.

63,000 tons of PMB corn arrived in Seoul, South Korea on Thursday last week and officials said that they couldn’t get hold of enough non-PMB corn because the European’s are sweeping the small supply that exists off the market.

The trouble with getting hold of non-PMB crops has hurt inside Europe too, a corner stone factory that processed food oils in my hometown in Norway shut down in 2005, and EU official’s thinks that the rice in food prices might sway the European political opposition against PMBs, we can only hope and see…

As a science writer with a liberal arts/ social studies background, I frequently run into brick walls where I do not have detailed enough knowledge about the subject. Physics will be one of those subjects where I gladly admit to being more ignorant than I ought to. Messages from my friend Miranda Hvinden frequently sends me looking for definitions as well (she is a microbiologist and a smart cookie) because she sometimes delves into details beyond my scope of knowledge. I frequently turn to Wikipedia to get the scope of scientific theories and definitions of technical terms.

I used to love the online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica when I was in undergraduate school. I studied comparative religion and intellectual history, and the trusty old Britannica gave me run downs and overviews that got me into the subject matter quicker. The science journal Nature published a study where the accuracy of these two encyclopedic giants where ranked as pretty even when it came to the number of inaccuracies, to the chagrin of subscription based Encyclopedia Britannica.

I write quite a bit about politicized science issues, such as global warming and stem cells and plant biotechnology. And I can tell you that I never turn to Wikipedia on any of these issues. If it is an issue in the political arena, Wikipedia is not your friend. EVER! One of the columnists at the Financial Post has discovered this, because he actually spends some time editing articles on Wikipedia.

The columnist updated some incorrect information about one of the scientists who has involved himself in the global warming debate, but found out that his edits where immediately removed over and over again. The same person always did the removal.

Someone called Tabletop was undoing my edits, and, following what I suppose is Wikietiquette, also explained why. “Note that Peiser has retracted this critique and admits that he was wrong!” Tabletop said.

I undid Tabletop’s undoing of my edits, thinking I had an unassailable response: “Tabletop’s changes claim to represent Peiser’s views. I have checked with Peiser and he disputes Tabletop’s version.”

Tabletop undid my undid, claiming I could not speak for Peiser.

Why can Tabletop speak for Peiser but not I, who have his permission?, I thought. I redid Tabletop’s undid and protested: “Tabletop is distorting Peiser. She does not speak for him. Peiser has approved my description of events concerning him.”

Tabletop parried: “We have a reliable source to this. What Peiser has said to *you* is irrelevant.”

The columnist, whose name is Lawrence Solomon, ran into another mischaracterization of the views of a scientist that is active in the global warming debate. This time, politically correct Wikipedia entries where removing serious accounts of this person’s scientific track record and insinuating that he believes in Martians. Solomon has obviously given up contributing to Wikipedia by now, so he recounts the man’s science credentials in the Financial Post column instead of wasting his time on work that will be tossed out by less accurate writers with an angle.

By now, his columns and his edits have actually riled up some of the zealots that use Wikipedia as a political propaganda tool. Solomon posts another column where he shares the advice he has gotten from experienced Wikipedians, they all tell him not to write under his real name. This is counter intuitive for someone who writes for a living:

But how odd a thought that a writer would want anonymity. Or maybe not so odd. In the real world, those who want anonymity are either ashamed of their conduct — say, poison pen writers– or fear for their safety — say, writers inside China criticizing their government. In the world of Wicked Pedia, the same two reasons rule.

The world of online socializing can get ugly fast, because people feel anonymous behind their computers in their own homes. Anyone who has spent time on the Paleolithic bulletin board systems and UseNet can tell the tale that it always was so, and always will be so. Wikipedia is no different.

Solomon is not the only person who has run into pranksters and zealots with too much time on their hands on Wikipedia. Participants in the public debate have been declared dead, implied as participants in assignations and other criminal activities, and it is a problem that Wikipedia recognizes as a major obstacle to the quality of the Wikipedia brand. However, since Jimmy Wales proclaimed that he would operate with “stable” and audited entries in 2005, little has changed. We still have these issues.

I will continue to use Wikipedia for technical stuff, such as double checking the definitions of enzymes and ribosomes. I will also continue the rule that my professors at the Missouri School of Journalism drilled into my head, always verify the information from one source with another source. In the meantime know that Wikipedia is not a reliable source for information about political issues, or people that are involved in public debate about political issues.

How long should it take to lift an import ban, when all the parties agree that there are no health safety or science issues involved? In the EU, it has taken 11 years and it is still working on the issue.

My buddy Richard North, author and former food safety inspector blogged about the EU ban on US poultry imports recently, when EU promised to deliver a “progress report” on their efforts to lift the import ban.

According to North, the EU banned US poultry imports because US poultry farmers wash the poultry in a disinfectant to eliminate pathogens such as e. coli and such. This is not allowed in the EU, so they stopped importing poultry from the US. EU’s version of the FDA has said this practice is not only safe, but desirable. EU bureaucrats however, know how angry EU poultry farmers will be if the ban is lifted, so they are dragging their feet, just like they do in every other case of import bans on agricultural products.

North says if it comes down to the safety of EU consumers and the coddling of EU food producers, EU will choose coddling any day. Gods forbid that the benevolent government should protect the consumers they repeatedly claim they protect!

-And the answer to the question in the headline? I don’t know, cause the EU has yet to lift an import ban of importance…

EU was supposed to have an authoritative discussion on plants bred with molecular plant breeding techniques (PMB’s) in May. The organization has been fined by the WTO for using PMB bans as a trade barrier but stubborn politicians are blackmailing each other with approvals and denials of various organisms, costing consumers and companies billions of Euros. According the story from Reuters, it does not seem that the May discussion will resolve any issues either…