Pew Commission says industrial scale farm animal production poses “Unacceptable” risks to public health, environment

From FoodDemocracy:

May 2, 2008

The current industrial farm animal production (IFAP) system often poses unacceptable risks to public health, the environment and the welfare of the animals themselves, according to an extensive 2½-year examination conducted by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP), in a study released yesterday.

Commissioners have determined that the negative effects of the IFAP system are too great and the scientific evidence is too strong to ignore. Significant changes must be implemented and must start now. And while some areas of animal agriculture have recognized these threats and have taken action, it is clear that the industry has a long way to go.

Public Health

Over the past five decades, the number of farms producing animals for food has fallen dramatically, yet the number of food animals produced has remained roughly constant. It is the concentration of farm animals in larger and larger numbers in close proximity to one another, along with the potential of IFAP facilities to affect people, that give rise to many of the public health concerns that are attributed to IFAP. Animals in such close confinement, along with some of the feed and animal management methods employed in the system, increase pathogen risks and magnify opportunities for transmission from animals to humans. This increased risk is due to at least three factors: prolonged worker contact with animals, increased pathogen transmission within a herd or flock, and the increased opportunities for the generation of antimicrobial resistant bacteria (due to imprudent antimicrobial use) or new strains of viruses. Stresses induced by confinement may also increase the likelihood of infection and illness in animal populations.

 

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The beneficial prion, evolution and the origin of life

Filed under: DNA, biology, evolution, origin of life, prion — takaita @ 11:01 pm

This article is speculating about evolution of species which is not based on changes in DNA.

Horizontal Gene Transfer
Currently, evolution is seen as DNA-based, because DNA is regarded as the only part of organisms that is inherited. DNA is the blueprint for an organism in the next generation. Richard Dawkins, in his book “The Selfish Gene” even shifted the focus of natural selection from complete genomes (species) to single genes. There is recently some unrest about Horizontal Gene Transfer (HTG, also called Lateral Gene Transfer). HTG is troubling, because it impacts our view of the tree of life. If genes are tranfered from one species to another, then the Tree of Life no longer has only branches (where species split of), but also knots (where the genome of different species are mixed to produce a new species).

Horizontal Gene Transfer is however not the only reason that the Tree of Life might have knots. There are researched cases of new species developed from hybridization of two other species, for example in the butterfly genus Heliconius and cichlids in Lake Tanganyika (fishes in East Africa).

The beneficial prion
A prion is an infectious protein. Some diseases are caused by prions, such as the Mad Cow Disease. A protein is a long chain of amino acids. Proteins can carry out their function in a cell because they have a special three-dimensional shape. Some proteins can be folded in different shapes. When such a protein has been folded differently, it will no longer be able to carry out the function it used to do. Prions are proteins that are shaped differently and also have the ability to refold other proteins into their own shape. The latter makes prions infectious. Once a single prion comes into a cell, it folds another protein. After finishing the job, there are two differently shaped proteins which each can fold another protein into their own shape. Then there are four, eight, sixteen etc of them.

It is interesting to notice that prions are self replicators. They require a very specific substrate which is only found in certain living cells.

 

MORE from Takaita:  http://urlet.com/frequency.deport

Did Neandertals die off because of cannibalism and transmissible spongiform encephalopathies?

So there’s this hypotheses that Neandertal extinction was due to cannibalism. This is an alternative but complementary hypothesis to the climate change one. In an upcoming paper in Medical Hypotheses, Simon Underdown investigates this hypotheses by looking at Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs). The paper is titled, “A potential role for Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies in Neanderthal extinction.”

http://urlet.com/drinking.perky