Smithfield blamed for swine flu by Mexican press

A nursing sow at a factory hog farm in North Carolina.
photo by Sally Kneidel

I got a call Wednesday morning from a reporter in Europe who's doing a story about the connection between Smithfield's hog operations in the Mexican town of Perote (in the state of Veracruz) and the outbreak of swine flu in Mexico. The Perote factory farm, operated under a Smithfield subsidiary called Granjas Carroll, raises 950,000 hogs per year, according to Smithfield's corporate website.

I had heard the connection between Smithfield and the recent outbreak of swine flu mentioned on the Jim Lehrer News Hour both Monday and Tuesday (April 27, 28) but I haven't seen the connection in a U.S. print media yet. Mexican newspapers are definitely blaming Smithfield, papers such as this one in Vera Cruz and this one in Mexico City.

The reporter who called me said he'd heard that I had been inside a Smithfield factory farm here in North Carolina where I live (true) and wanted to know what it was like. So I told him. I've talked about that visit on this blog before and will later again later this week.

As you probably know, this new H1N1 "swine flu" strain—a virus with recombined pieces of swine, avian, and human viruses—is suspected of infecting 2,498 people in Mexico and killing 168. For an unknown reason, the infections in Mexico have caused more serious disease than infections in the U.S. or elsewhere. As of Thursday morning (April 30), 93 confirmed cases have occurred in the U.S., but only one death. The World Health Organization and other sources have warned that the outbreak could reach global pandemic levels....or could fizzle out.

I was not surprised when I first heard that Smithfield Foods might be involved in the swine flu situation. After researching our books Veggie Revolution and Going Green, both of which are in part about factory farms, I know something about how Smithfield operates, about their priorities.

Smithfield is the world’s largest hog producer. The corporation operates the world's largest hog-processing plant (slaughtering and packaging) on the bank of North Carolina's Cape Fear River, in the tiny town of Tar Heel, NC. The workers in the plant slaughter more than 32,000 hogs every day. NC has more hogs than any other state, except Iowa, most of which are raised by huge factory farms under contract to Smithfield on the low-income coastal plain of NC.

Why North Carolina? Land is cheap. Our climate is moderate, so the hog-confinement sheds require modest heating bills and cooling bills, if any. Our environmental regulations are slack; enforcement is sporadic. So when those 10-acre hog-waste lagoons spill or rupture, no one pays much attention to the brown slime oozing downhill to the nearest surface waters. No one except the neighbors.

But most inviting of all to Smithfield and other meatpackers, North Carolina is the least unionized state in the United States. Labor is cheap! The rapid influx of immigrants from Mexico has made the situation even sweeter for employers such as the Smithfield Corporation, whose only consideration is shaving pennies off of production costs. This allows them to offer the cheapest cuts of meat, to outcompete other meatpackers and secure the business of high-volume retailers such as Wal-Mart. Which maximizes profits for Smithfield's shareholders. That's what it's all about. The shareholders.

Latin American immigrants are desirable employees because they don't complain about the extremely dangerous production line down in Tar Heel, where income is measured by carcasses and cuts per minute. Undocumented immigrants are the most attractive employees of all - if they complain or lose a finger or cripple a hand, a threat of deportation or firing will silence the complaint right quick. To read interviews with Smithfield and Tyson workers in North Carolina, check out the excellent research document by Human Rights Watch entitled Blood, Sweat, and Fear. You can find different copies of it by googling the name of the document.

As I mentioned to the reporter who called yesterday, I suspect that the swine raised by Smithfield in Vera Cruz are in sheds that have open sides. Mexico is hot. If the sheds didn't have open sides, they'd have to be air-conditioned. I've seen hog sheds on factory farms here in NC with 40,000 hogs crammed neck and neck, the sows in spaces too tight to even turn around or stretch or groom themselves. Those closed metal sheds would get very hot with a tropical or subtropical sun beating down. I know that poultry factory farms in tropical countries such as Viet Nam have open sides to save money on cooling costs. Here in NC, with a less extreme climate, animals can survive in sheds that are sealed and windowless, safe from public scrutiny. A few exhaust fans will create an adequate breeze for cooling in summer.

I'm betting it turns out that the sheds in Veracruz are open on the sides and that hogs and chickens are raised on the same property (as is often the case on Smithfield farms in the Southeast that we visited). If the sheds in Veracruz are open-sided, wild birds can fly back and forth between the chicken and hog sheds, eating the chow that falls on the floor, leaving their virus-laden droppings to be munched, and carrying viruses back and forth between the sheds, allowing a jumble of bird and pig viruses to mutate in the pigs into a virus that can infect humans. Pigs are more likely to brew and harbor a new virus that can infect humans, because as mammals, they are more closely related to us than birds are.

But we'll see. Maybe it'll turn out that Smithfield isn't involved at all. Or maybe the corporate-dominated U.S. media will downplay any involvement. Either way, I'm interested in seeing how it develops. And I'm hoping very much that the swine flu peaks soon and then fizzles into oblivion.

Sally Kneidel, PhD

See this post on BasilandSpice

Keywords:: Smithfield swine flu Vera Cruz Perote Sally Kneidel hog farm factory hog farm factory farm virus

Mama monkeys give in to tantrums...when others are watching

Photo by Stuart Semple
Female rhesus macaques and their babies cluster amiably, but an infant tantrum can disrupt the scene

Have you ever been in a public place when your toddler throws a tantrum? I have and it's pretty embarrassing. Not because of the crying, per se, but because onlookers may glare. In fact, I admit to occasionally looking with disapproval myself at other parents who ignore their babies' loud distress. It's distressing to me to listen to it.

Does the presence of disapproving onlookers have any effect on how human moms react to tantrums? You bet.

Turns out the same dynamic goes on in troops of monkeys.

Behavioral scientist Stuart Semple & his colleagues studied monkey tantrums and bystander reactions by watching rhesus macaques that roam freely on the island of Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. Baby monkeys wanting to be nursed when mom wasn’t willing often started shrieking. For more than 300 outbursts of baby crying, the scientists noted which other monkeys, if any, were within two meters. The team also noted how mom, baby and the bystanders interacted.

The researchers found that the monkey mothers are twice as likely to let a howling infant have its way during very public tantrums than during more private moments, says Stuart Semple of Roehampton University in London.

Not a bad decision on mom’s part. A baby rhesus monkey makes a high-pitched, grating shriek that Semple calls “pretty harsh stuff.” Onlookers get restless and irritable; in fact, a mom and unhappy baby are 30 times more likely to suffer aggression from a bystander during a crying bout than they would in quiet times. Onlookers within two meters made threatening gestures, or even chased, grabbed or bit the mother or the infant.

Most of the aggression came from monkeys that weren't close relatives and outranked mom in the social hierarchy. Her relatives proved more tolerant.

When moms and babies weren’t close to other monkeys, rebuffed babies that started shrieking were allowed to nurse 39 percent of the time, the researchers found. With just relatives nearby, the babies’ luck rose to 53 percent. But with unrelated onlookers that outranked mom in the dominance hierarchy, babies won the tantrum 81 percent of the time.

Photo by Stuart Semple
If baby cries when they're alone, the tantrum has only a 39% chance of changing mom's mind.

Mom herself gets agitated by the baby’s crying. Analyzing records of mothers' behavior, the researchers calculated that a female on average was 400 times more likely to get aggressive toward her baby when it was crying than when it wasn't. Wow! That surprised me! Must be lots of adult monkeys out there with unresolved "issues" with mom! I tend to think of non-human mammals as always being kind and attentive to their young. But I guess not...

Studies of communication often focus on just two parties, the one sending the message and the intended receiver, Semple says. But the real world is full of other eyes and ears, ones that senders and receivers often react to. “We need to start thinking about communication in more realistic terms,” he says.

Research has found that nonhuman primates pay attention to eavesdropping bystanders, “but this is the first demonstration that communication between mother and infant is affected by an audience,” says behavioral biologist Dario Maestripieri of the University of Chicago.

Other baby primates besides humans and macaques throw tantrums, says behavioral biologist Liesbeth Sterck of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. The Thomas langurs she watches certainly do. However, she points out that langurs do more "allomothering," caring for infants other than their own, than rhesus macaques do. That behavior may affect the dynamics in this and other species, she says.

Semple and his colleagues report online March 10 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. time.

Source: Susan Milius. Public tantrums defeat monkey moms too. Science News. April 11, 2009. Vol. 175 #8

Keywords:: monkey behavior rhesus macaques Stuart Semple Sally Kneidel maternal behavior monkey aggression primate behavior primate aggression primate mothering

Links to some of my previous posts on this blog about monkeys and chimps:
(to find others, enter "primates" in the search bar above)

Angry chimp reveals "uniquely human" trait

Monkeys and parrots pouring in from the jungle

Almonds or pizza? Capuchins are smarter than we thought

Exciting new discovery: chimps' short-term memory is better than humans'

Chimps share the human trait of altruism

Monkeys can estimate numbers as well as Duke students

U.S. labs import thousands of wild-caught primates

Chimps and gibbons have human elements to their speech

Research shows older females preferred as mates

Top 6 ways to protect wildlife from commercial trade

Wildlife trade, forestry, and the value of activism

Monkeylala (by Ken Kneidel)

Lice from fish farms attack wild salmon

Wild young salmon burdened with fish-farm lice
Image credit: Alexandra Morton, Science News

Humans wolf down more than 9 million metric tons of farmed fish every year. Lots of consumers believe farmed fish are a more eco-friendly diet choice than wild fish, many of which are declining due to overharvesting and climate change. But a growing body of scientific studies suggest that fish farms, or aquaculture pens, are not friendly at all to aquatic environments or consumers. Fish in crowded pens, just like livestock in crowded pens, are prone to illness and parasites. Farmed fish are customarily doused with fungicides, parasite medicines, antibiotics, and dyes to render their flesh an appetizing color. All of these substances leak out into the surrounding waters.

One recent study, presented February 15 at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, concluded that fish farms in the Pacific Northwest are dangerous to wild salmon. When inch-long young pink salmon and chum salmon swim down the area's coastal rivers toward the ocean, many pass fish farms or aquaculture pens in coastal inlets. These wild juveniles often pick up sea lice that are abundant in the crowded aquaculture pens and drift outside the pens.

The lice suck blood from the tiny fish, and the wounds are also an opening for harmful bacteria and viruses. According to Martin Krkošek of the University of Washington in Seattle, mortality to wild young salmon passing by lice-infested fish farms can be as high as 95 percent.

In addition to making the young fish sick, the parasite load also affects their predator-avoidance behaviors, so that the young salmon are more likely to be eaten by predatory birds and bigger fish. Experiments have shown that while healthy young salmon dart away from a bird diving into the water, the lice-laden youngsters take longer to seek shelter and are thus more vulnerable. The lice-burdened little salmon are also less likely to seek shelter inside a fish school, straggling along on the outside of the school instead, where they are quickly picked off by predatory fish.

Says Felipe Cabello of New York Medical College in Valhalla, who also presented at the conference, fish farms are the new frontier of excessive antibiotic use. Factory farms for livestock have long been criticized for feeding 70% of the United States' antibiotics to poultry, hogs, and cattle simply for weight gain, a practice that contributes to the growing immunity of bacteria to antibiotics. Fish farms are now exacerbating the problem.

Fish farming was once seen as a way to avoid overharvesting wild fish, and to feed the world’s growing population. But many scientists now say that farms should concentrate on shellfish and on fish that are low on the food chain. Farming carnivores such as salmon doesn't make sense, because more fish must be taken from oceans to feed the farmed salmon than is produced by the farms.

John Volpe of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, who also presented at the conference, is on a research team that’s trying to assess the sustainability of aquaculture. The Global Aquaculture Performance Index evaluates a country’s fish farms using several parameters, such as water quality and the amount of disease and parasites. The global production of farmed fish is growing, and most of the farmed fish are high in the food chain and need to be fed other fish. It's not sustainable, nor does it make sense. "It's farming the tigers of the sea," Volpe says.

Source: Rachel Ehrenberg. "Lice-laced salmon are easy dinner." Science News. March 14, 2009.

For more information on fish farms, see our book Going Green and our previous post on the subject. Sally Kneidel, PhD

This post now syndicated on Fox Business online

Keywords:: salmon fish farms aquaculture sustainability Sally Kneidel fish lice Science News antibiotic immunity Fox Business

Is sitting too much a disease? It is for me.

I spend a lot of time sitting at the computer, at work and at home. It hurts my back, and lately it's been a factor in my gaining weight. I read in the paper this week that some doctors now believe sitting is so unhealthy you could call it a disease. I believe it. I feel it!

Interactivity research, the science of studying our sedentary existence, suggests that our bodies go into something like a computer's sleep mode when we're slumped at the computer or slouched on the couch watching TV.

A survey of more than 6,000 American adults revealed that we spend about 8 hours a day in a chair. When we sit for so long, our fat-burning enzymes stop working. We may be burning an average of 1,000 fewer calories daily than a generation ago.

It's also well-documented, as any psychologist will tell you, that exercise can be a powerful contributor to our emotional well-being.

What's the solution? Walk as much as you can, even if it means walking up and down the halls at work every couple hours. The more active you are, the more of a routine it becomes. We're creatures of habit, and sitting is a damaging routine.

A book that may be a useful resource: Move a Little, Lose a Lot by Dr. James Levine, who directs the Active Life research team at the Mayo Clinic. The book is co-authored by Selene Yeager.

Source:
"Sit too much? Walk it off" Charlotte Observer, April 10, 2009.
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/464/story/647741.html

Keywords: sitting too much weight gain fat Kneidel Sally Kneidel

Our mantises hatched! Great for the garden!

Sadie Kneidel at age 6, with an adult praying mantis full of eggs. Photo by Sally Kneidel.

We used to keep praying mantises a lot, back when I was a science teacher and the kids were little. I used the picture of Sadie above in a book I wrote for teachers in 1993: Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method. This particular mantis was one of our favorites, she was quite tame. She laid her egg case soon after the picture was taken and then died, as they always do after they've reproduced. Just like the spider Charlotte in Charlotte's Web. But when her egg case hatched the following spring, we raised her youngsters in one of my classes. When school was out for summer, we released them all outdoors.

Ken (my husband) is still teaching biology, and last fall he found a praying mantis egg case on a twig. He broke the twig off and put it in a "sleeve cage." He left the cage outside all winter, so the eggs would hatch at the proper time, in spring. (Indoor heat will speed their development and make them hatch unnaturally early, in mid-winter.)

Yesterday (April 10) something exciting happened - our mantis egg case in the sleeve cage hatched!

The sleeve cage on our deck. The sleeve lets you put your hand inside without taking the lid off. Photo by Sally Kneidel.


The mantis hatchlings inside. The egg case is visible on the twig in the center. The little specks on the mesh lid are the hatchlings. (Click on photo to enlarge.) Photo by Sally Kneidel

The mantis nymphs emerging from the egg case. Photo by Sally Kneidel.

Just-hatched mantises wandering around the sleeve cage. Photo by Sally Kneidel

The young mantises don't eat for the first day or two after hatching. We give them water by spraying a fine mist onto the sides of the cage; they'll drink the droplets. (Adults will readily drink from a spoon, while sitting on your hand!) Today Ken fed them for the first time. They're predators, and have to eat live insects. Ken gave them some fruit flies that he raised on banana mush, in a little vial. You can buy the vials, flies, and dried banana flakes from a science supply company. Sleeve-cage too.

A vial of banana mush and fruit flies. You can see the flies on the side of the vial just below the sponge. Photo by Sally Kneidel.

Or you can catch your own fruit flies by putting a rotting fruit in an open jar on its side, outdoors. When the jar has lots of fruit flies in it, slap the lid on fast. Then put the jar in the refrigerator for a few minutes until the flies slow down. Then you can dump them into the cage with the hatchlings. For very small mantises, fruit flies are a good size. But as the mantises grow, they'll start to eat each other. That's the time to either separate them or release them outdoors.

Praying mantis egg cases are often sold as "natural pest control" for gardens. As indiscriminate predators, they go after any and all insects that are eating your vegetables. So let them go in the garden! Of course, you can't do this if you're using pesticides, which will kill the mantises too.

We'll be letting our little mantises go in our garden in a little while, after Ken has shared them with his biology classes. He uses them to talk about population growth, metamorphosis, predation and competition, ecological interactions between species, and so on. After we turn them loose, I hope they stay close by as they mature over the summer. If we're lucky, a few of them will survive to lay egg cases in our yard. And we'll get to repeat the treat of mantis hatching day next year too!

Male mantis eating. (Males are slender and fly.) Courtesy of www.fnal.gov


Adult mantis. Note spines on front legs for holding prey.
Courtesy of http://collabowiki.wikispaces.com

For more info on raising mantises:

Sally Kneidel, PhD. Creepy Crawlies and the Scientific Method. Fulcrum Publishing.

Sally Kneidel, PhD. Pet Bugs. John Wiley & Sons.

Keywords: mantis praying mantis natural pest control biological pest control garden pests teaching metamorphosis teaching with mantises raising mantises mantis egg case Creepy Crawlies Pet Bugs Sally Kneidel fruit flies sleeve cage homeschool science lesson

I visited the builders of SunGarden Houses, lovely passive-solar homes

A SunGarden House under construction. Landscaping is added when construction is finished. Note the durable steel roof and exterior walls covered with low-maintenance stucco.

I spent most of this past week in Chapel Hill and Durham on business, and I stayed the nights with my friends Kathleen Jardine and Jim Cameron. We had a blast. On Wednesday I toured one of the homes that their company SunGarden Houses is currently building.

Kathleen and Jim are my hero homebuilders. They build highly durable, gorgeous, passive-solar homes in Pittsboro NC and thereabouts. They also offer their blueprints and step-by-step building instructions for sale on their web site, www.sungardenhouses.com.

Their homes use far less energy for heating, cooling, and lighting than conventional homes. They have all the charm of a French cottage, but require almost no maintenance, with their long-lasting steel roofs and tinted-concrete floors that need no polish or re-finishing ever. Because of the durability of the roof, floors, and AAC walls, these houses use fewer materials over the life of the house, and keep waste materials like shingles out of the waste stream.

The floors of tinted, scored concrete look like handsome stone or tile but are maintenance-free. A concrete floor is the best thermal mass for absorbing heat during winter days and emitting it during cold nights to help heat the home.

I love to brag about their houses because I think Kathleen and Jim are both conservation geniuses. Heating and cooling homes is one of the top 3 ways American consumers use energy, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. But Jim and Kathleen are living and propagating an affordable, beautiful, and green solution.

Co-designer Kathleen Jardine (right) chats with Echo, a member of the SunGarden work crew. Note again the steel roof and tinted stucco on the exterior walls. Homeowners can choose different colors for roofing, stucco, and floors.

Jim gives a final trim to a piece of piece of wood.

A lovely tile backsplash, and in the background, the wide expanse of south-facing windows that are essential for a passive-solar design.

An inviting front porch, from the built-in benches to the hand-painted tile by the window corners (click on photos to enlarge).

The front porch and optional eave decorations of the house.

One of dozens of aesthetic options for the interior.

Solar thermal panels on the south-facing roof, to heat water for domestic use and to provide radiant floor heat, via water pipes embedded in the concrete floors.


Later, after we went back to Kathleen and Jim's own SunGarden home, Kathleen and I enjoyed a glass of Malbec by the garden and burbling pond. SunGarden Houses are designed to annex the great outdoors, to increase the sense of living space.


And after THAT, we got down to some serious jammin', on Jim's guitar, keyboard, and bongos.

I love my long-time buddies Jim and Kathleen. I'm proud to know them too. Because, unlike most of us, they've found a way to make a livelihood out of protecting the planet and the atmosphere, by promoting passive-solar & durable housing. I hope Obama will get the picture and offer strong incentives for passive-solar design for everyone in this country.

To read more about Jim and Kathleen's constructions and their philosophy of green-building, check out our book Going Green or their web site, www.sungardenhouses.com.

Photos and text by Sally Kneidel, PhD

Keywords:: SunGarden Houses passive solar Kathleen Jardine Jim Cameron durable houses steel roof AAC block concrete floors

Obama invites me and you to email him our opinions

I heard on NPR a couple of days ago that the White House website (www.whitehouse.gov) now has an e-mail link where anyone can write a note to President Obama. I didn't really believe it, but I went online to check, and there it was. You just scroll down the opening page to the word "contact" on the right. Click on that word, and you'll go to the page with the little box waiting for your comment.

Above the space for you to write, it says:
"President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history. To send questions, comments, concerns, or well-wishes to the President or his staff, please use the form below."

You can write 5000 characters. Or less. Thank you Mr. Obama. Your predecessor never asked.

I knew right away what I want to say to Mr. Obama. I think I'll start with "Dear Barack" because most people probably don't.

I'm not gonna talk about the stuff on the front page of the newspaper: Obama's economic recovery plan, or reducing taxes for 95% of Americans, or ending the war in Iraq, or solutions for the drug trade over the Mexican border. That's all important, today. But it's all stuff that will be forgotten in 1000 years. Most of it won't make any difference in 1000 years. People will always have wars, use drugs, fight over borders, gripe about taxes ---- those struggles have been around as long as civilization has existed, and before. It's our human nature to have those particular struggles.

Here's what really matters, to me. We're entering a period of mass extinctions, where the majority of biologists agree that 25 - 75% of existing species are likely to go extinct within the next hundred years. This mass extinction is not like previous mass extinctions that occurred due to meteor impacts or glacial movements. In earlier extinctions, the surviving creatures had a variety of rich habitats remaining on Earth. They could adapt and evolve to fill these nurturing habitats. That's not the case now. We're fouling and destroying almost all habitats, most of them beyond recovery. Oceans, temperate forests, tropical forests, grasslands - all of them. Some by means of overharvesting, some by means of pollution, some by way of climate change. To me this is what really matters, because in 1000 years, in a million years, these habitats will still be trashed beyond recovery. And the animals will still be extinct. Forever. And not to be replaced by something new.
So that's what I'm going to say to Barack. Tomorrow I'll write it, after tonight's basketball games are over and I can say it in my clearest voice. "Please protect wildlife," I'll say, "so that the trillions of people to follow us on this planet won't have to live in a world without birds, without bears, without lions or wolves or whales. Think on down the line. You're probably good at that."

Keywords:: Obama wildlife extinctions white house

Angry chimp reveals a "uniquely-human" ability

Santino the chimp, photo courtesy of www.telegraph.co.uk

Santino the angry chimp is famous. You can google his name and find dozens of stories about him, in science journals and popular media.

It's not his anger that's making him famous, but how he plans ahead for his fits of rage.

Santino, a 30-year-old resident of the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, has been observed collecting and stockpiling stones in his enclosure to use as future weapons. Later, when zoo visitors get on his nerves in a big way, he grabs stones from his cache to hurl at the annoying voyeurs!

He has also been observed tapping the concrete rocks in his enclosure to identify the weak parts, then dislodging a piece. If the chunk is too big to throw, he breaks it into smaller pieces.

The newsworthy part of this story is not that Santino makes tools; we have abundant documentation of primates and birds making tools, mostly as food-gathering implements.

The remarkable feature here is that Santino is planning for his future outbursts of temper.

Planning is a cognitive ability generally attributed only to humans. Or at least, we have little verifiable evidence of planning in non-human animals.

You might say that a squirrel's stashing nuts for winter is evidence of planning, but it's not necessarily. It's more likely that squirrels instinctively stash nuts as day length begins to shorten, since young squirrels who have never experienced a winter still do it.

True planning shows that an animal is considering what its future feelings will be at a later time.

As it turns out, Santino, as the dominant chimp at the zoo, has been storing and heaving stones over the moat at visitors for at least 11 years. Zookeepers have found and removed hundreds of Santino's caches of stones over the years. Fortunately for visitors, chimps throw underhanded and have terrible aim, so no one has been seriously injured by these "hailstorms" of aggression. And the stones are directed only at zoo visitors, never at the other chimps.

Scientist Mathias Osvath of Lund University says "These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way. It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events.....he first realizes that he can make these and then plans on how to use them. This is more complex than what has been showed before."

For me, Sally, it means that once again we have evidence that humans are not so unique after all. And so, I believe we should stop hogging the world's land and resources for ourselves, and stop fouling the remaining green spaces and waterways with our effluvia. We do not deserve dominion over the scraps of wild habitat and resources that remain.

Santino the chimp with stone in hand, photo courtesy of www.cbc.ca

Keywords:: chimps chimpanzees animal intelligence planning in animals Santino the chimp

Pope values religious dogma over African lives?

On his way to Africa, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday that condoms are not the answer to preventing more HIV infections on the continent. "On the contrary," he said, "it increases the problem."

According to Victor Simpson of the Associated Press, three-fourths of all AIDS deaths worldwide in 2007 were in sub-Saharan Africa. By all accounts, an HIV pandemic is raging throughout this impoverished continent and has been for some time.

Pope Benedict has an alternate solution in mind, something he feels will be more effective than condoms. He and his senior Vatican officials advocate fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as the key weapons in fighting HIV/AIDS.

Well, that's a nice little fantasy that might do well in a Cinderella cartoon. In reality though, such a recommendation shows a ludicrous "head in the sand" lack of awareness of the social structure in many impoverished African nations, and the collapse of social structure as their resources vanish. In the deep poverty that characterizes much of sub-Saharan Africa, women often lack autonomy in their relationships, marital or premarital. Men decide when, where, how often, and with whom sexual relations occur.

In cultures that have been disrupted by the depletion of natural resources, men often move to urban centers seeking work, leaving wives or girlfriends behind, and beginning new relationships in the informal settlements outside of cities. Men pick up HIV in these settlements and carry it back to their villages on their return visits. If they can afford to return.

Women in urban centers, less employable than men, may live in desperate poverty. Unable to farm in the city, they may be forced into the sex trade to feed their children.

On top of these dynamics are traditional spiritual beliefs, held in some areas, that a man's immortality is secured through the number of progeny he leaves behind, which can encourage promiscuity among men who are forced from their homelands in search of work.

So now the pope says, let's suggest to them that they suddenly return to a society where they are all able to remain with their nuclear family, and practice monogamy throughout adolescence and adulthood.

Does the pope read books? Does he watch documentaries? Is he in any way in touch with reality? I think I'll try to mail him "Darwin's Nightmare," an excellent documentary about the collapse of normal cultural life around Tanzania's Lake Victoria, after the collapse of the lake's ecology.

Rebecca Hodes with the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa said if the pope is serious about new HIV infections, he will focus on promoting wide access to condoms. "Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans," said Hodes. Hear, hear. Well said, Ms. Hodes. If only the pope were listening, or interested.

What do you think, readers?

Source: Victor Simpson. March 18, 2009. On Africa trip, pope says condoms won't end AIDS. Associated Press.

Keywords:: pope AIDS HIV Africa condoms

Are media making the recession worse? What do you think?

I think the media, maybe newspapers in particular, are driving consumer fear that is a significant contributor to our current recession. During the course of my day, I rarely think about the recession, other than to wonder if I'll get my contract renewed this year. Even that is largely out of my hands, so I don't think about it much.

But as soon as I pick up the local newspaper.....here are some headlines from Sunday's newspaper.

• Returning to lessons of the great depression
• Huge cuts likely in [Governor] Perdue's plan
• Unfinished homes worry neighbors
• How will we know when the economy hits bottom?
• No free passes in a deep economic downturn
• Recovery to 'take time' despite hopeful signs
• Economy getting employees down? Try a morale booster
• Job scarcity creating long-distance couples
  
• Digging out of a $3.4 billion budget hole
• Revealed: Who got AIG aid money
• Reading the signs of the bear and bull

And then we read this headline, in the same paper:
Obama: Have 'confidence'

Obama's right. If we can have confidence, then people will begin to spend more, and the economy will benefit. But as long as the media continue to create and foster an atmosphere of fear, who's gonna feel like spending?

Michael Moore said long ago that we're manipulated by fear, generated by the media. I have never felt that truth more than I feel it now. Fear sells newspapers. But what else does it accomplish?

Readers, what do you think?

Keywords:: recession, fear, media-driven recession

Almonds or pizza? Capuchins are even smarter than we thought

White-faced capuchin eating fruit at
Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional, Costa Rica
Photo by Sally Kneidel

I'm thinking about monkeys again tonight. (See my last post about capuchins.) Since that last post, I've read another Science News article about capuchins; this one says they've been shown to use "symbolic thought." At one time, symbolic thought was believed to be a unique and defining attribute of humans. But now capuchins have joined the growing ranks of animals that can think symbolically. Specifically, capuchins have been shown to recognize tokens as symbols for different kids of foods. I was thrilled to see that bit of information, but not too surprised. Capuchins are smart, and I know a little about the power of tokens.

My freshman year at Roanoke College, I had an internship with a clever psychiatrist who worked at a nearby VA hospital. He too experimented with tokens as symbols. He had devised a "token economy" program to motivate severely ill psychiatric patients who couldn't behave acceptably in the hospital. If the patients managed an entire day without eating cigarette butts or smearing feces on the wall or attacking somebody, etc, then they were rewarded with tokens. They could trade the tokens for valued prizes, such as candy bars, or TV time, or even a visit with family off the hospital grounds. The tokens worked well. Even the most troubled of the patients got the idea, and took advantage of it. Violent and noxious misbehavior plummeted on the token-economy ward. My mentor published paper after paper about the success of his model.

So what's the deal with monkeys and tokens? In behavioral experiments, capuchins have learned to regard arbitrary tokens as symbols for different foods, according to primatologist Elsa Addessi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome. These capuchins then spontaneously choose certain tokens over others in ways that correspond to how they choose particular foods over others. The exception occurs when a less preferred token or food is offered in big quantities, which increases its attraction. Yes, we can all relate to that. One toasted almond versus a whole pesto pizza? Easy.

Adessi's team began by establishing a preference ranking for 3 foods among the experimental capuchins. The foods were Cheerios, Parmesan cheese, and sunflower seeds. The monkeys then learned to exchange distinctive tokens for each of the three foods. For example, the capuchin "Carlotta" knew to give the experimenter a green poker chip to receive a Cheerio, a black plastic tube to get a piece of Parmesan cheese, and a brass hook to obtain a sunflower seed.

In the final experiment, the capuchins were allowed to choose from among the tokens that they had learned to associate with particular foods. They almost always chose the tokens that represented the foods they preferred, demonstrating that they understood that the tokens symbolized the food items.

The experiment, published online June 11 in PLoS ONE, shows that capuchins have at least a rudimentary capacity for symbolic thinking, agree the researchers. Symbolic thinking involves the use of an object to represent something other than itself. The finding is significant to evolutionary biology because these South American monkeys diverged from primate ancestors of modern humans about 35 million years ago - which suggests that symbolic thinking has been around for a lot longer than we thought. After all, Homo sapiens has existed as a distinct species for only about 200,000 years. Symbolic thinking is pretty significant in our own development. Humans have used symbolic thinking to develop spoken and written languages, among other things.

Experimenters have been trying to demonstrate symbolic learning in nonhumans for 30 years. Chimps long ago learned to press artibrary symbols on a key pad to ask for various foods and tools. When I was in graduate school at the University of Oklahoma, I worked under the guidance of Dr. Roger Fouts, teaching American Sign Language to chimps and orangutans, which of course involves complex use of symbols.

me at 22, teaching ASL to Pancho the chimp, at University of Oklahoma's Institute for Primate Studies


me with Foots the orangutan, another ASL pupil at OU

The chimps taught ASL to their own youngsters, used it among themselves, and used signs to ask us for things they wanted, like a snack, a drink, a ball, or a "tickle." There's no question that apes can understand and teach others the use of symbols. African grey parrots have also been shown to use symbols. If capuchins can reason symbolically too, then many other animals - primates, birds, and others - may also be able to. As I've said before, we're not as unique as some of us like to think. The more we learn about our furred and feathered relatives, the more blurred the distinctions become. Which, for me, makes our monopoly over the world's resources even more untenable and distressing! When I read about research like this, I pine for solutions to the habitat loss and climate change that threaten wildlife everywhere.

By Sally Kneidel, PhD

Sources:
Bruce Bower. Monkeys learn to deal with arbitrary tokens as if they are different foods. Science News Vol. 174 #1.

Kate Wong. An interview with Alex, the African grey parrot. 60-Second Science Blog.

The Alex Foundation. www.alexfoundation.org/

Keywords:: capuchins use of symbols primate intelligence symbolic thinking

An alternative to Tyson: Natalie and Cassie of Grateful Growers Farm

Sadie Kneidel interviews Natalie Veres (center) and Cassie Parsons
(right) of Grateful Growers Farm. Photo by Sally Kneidel

"Tyson: that's what your family deserves." It's an odd slogan for a corporation that feeds its chickens slaughterhouse scraps, fecal matter, antibiotics, and feather meal. The company gets away with it because few people know what goes on in a Tyson broiler shed, or what the chickens eat. Even the farmers who raise the Tyson chickens under contract don't know what's in the feed that Tyson delivers. It's a "trade secret".

While Sadie and I were researching our latest two books, Going Green and Veggie Revolution, we toured Tyson factory farms and interviewed the farmers. We went inside crowded Tyson broiler sheds, where the broiler chickens are raised. And we found out what they eat. It wasn't so hard to find out. We called the National Chicken Council and asked; we called food scientists at land grant universities and asked them too. They told us.

Fortunately, a growing number of smaller farms are raising happier livestock on healthier diets. We toured lots of those farms as well. One of our favorites was Grateful Growers Farm, owned by Cassie Parsons and Natalie Veres in Lincoln County, North Carolina. Cassie and Natalie have dedicated themselves to raising healthy livestock and vegetables. "Visiting a corporate factory farm," Cassie says, “took my breath away. It reaffirmed what we’re doing completely.” What Cassie and Natalie are doing is surprisingly simple. They raise hogs, broiler chickens, and egg-laying hens, all in outdoor pastures under the Carolina sunshine. They also grow and sell organic vegetables.

At Grateful Growers Farm, the broiler hens reside in pastured chicken-wire enclosures. Each fenced enclosure is sturdy enough to protect 75 hens from predators. Because broilers grow bulkier than laying hens, they are less nimble and thus more vulnerable to foxes, weasels, birds of prey, and neighbors’ dogs. Yet the chicken-wire enclosures are light enough to be portable, and are moved to fresh ground on the field twice a day – with the chickens still enclosed. So their manure is distributed evenly around the pasture, and is easily broken down by soil organisms to fertilize the pasture. The feces of factory-farmed broilers, on the other hand, are cleaned out of their sheds only once every 18 months, causing “hock burns” and “breast blisters” on the crowded chickens. We saw their reddened and featherless rumps when we visited Tyson broiler sheds.

Grateful Growers Farm's laying hens have lives of true luxury, as livestock go. In contrast to the million caged and tightly packed hens at the Food Lion egg farm we toured, Natalie and Cassie’s layers have the run of the farm. As we talked to the owners, the hens moved in and out of the woods close to their spacious hen house, dust-bathing, preening, pecking, and snuggling in the leaves under the watchful eye of an attentive rooster. After an active day, Natalie says, the hens put themselves to bed in the roosts inside their shed. They’re all trained to lay their eggs inside, where Natalie and Cassie collect close to 50 eggs per day.

A spacious hen house for every 25 hens at Grateful Growers Farm.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

While walking around Grateful Growers Farm, I asked myself a question I learned from Diane Halverson of the Animal Welfare Institute, an organization that has developed a protocol for humane husbandry of farm animals. She asks, "Do the animals live a life worth living?" At Grateful Growers, the answer is yes. At a Tyson contract farm, that would be no - from what I saw.

We need to support the kind of agriculture we want to see in our own communities. They need our support to stay in business. Visiting your local farmers market can help you track down responsible providers of animal products, as well as organic vegetables. While you're mulling over the mustard greens, ask around about local farmers who are raising animals, including dairy cows, humanely and sustainably. It's not that hard to find them. In North Carolina, you can contact Carolina Farm Stewardship Association for their listing of small-scale farmers, or the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. In Georgia, contact Georgia Organics. I imagine just about every state has such an organization now.

I'm a vegetarian, but I recognize that most people are going to continue eating animal products for the foreseeable future. Given that, I want my community to support the farmers who are trying to do it right. Responsible, humane, and ecofriendly providers - that's what my community deserves.

Keywords:: Grateful Growers Farm Natalie Veres Cassie Parsons poultry Tyson chickens broilers layers North Carolina Carolina Farm Stewardship Association

Our new book , Going Green, reviewed in the Charlotte Observer

Sadie (left) and Sally Kneidel

Books that help readers get leaner and greener

Pam Kelley column in The Charlotte Observer

Feb 27, 2009 (The Charlotte Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX)

Looking to live healthier and greener? Two new books by N.C. authors offer advice and inspiration.

Start with "Going Green: A Wise Consumer's Guide to a Shrinking Planet" ($19.95; Fulcrum Publishing). Charlotte biologist Sally Kneidel and daughter Sadie Kneidel, a community activist in Greensboro, show how to make smart green choices in food, transportation, housing and clothing.

Some are simple. (Buy locally grown food. Use compact fluorescent bulbs.)

Others, such as building a house out of hay bales, require a larger commitment.

The book is loaded with great facts. Nonorganic cotton, I learned, is one of the most pesticide-intensive crops. And the United Nations has concluded that livestock creates more greenhouse gases than transportation. This means you can reduce your carbon footprint more by going vegan than by switching from an SUV to a Prius.

Mother and daughter both practice what they preach. Among other things, they eat mostly vegan and shop at thrift stores. Find out more: veggierevolution.blogspot.com.

After you get greener, check out "Stuffed: An Insider's Look at Who's (Really) Making America Fat" (HarperCollins; $25.99), by Chapel Hill's Hank Cardello with Doug Garr.

Cardello, a former food industry executive, shows industry's role in our obesity epidemic.

Not all insights are new, but he offers insider details about why consumers are always pushed to supersize their food.

Restaurants and food companies can make their products healthier without sacrificing profit, he argues. And consumers can cut fat and calories while still enjoying favorite foods. The growing popularity of 100-calorie pack cookies and crackers is one good example, he says.

Ultimately, Cardello says, it's the food industry's own interest to produce healthier products.

Bottom line: Dead customers don't buy soda.

Click here to see article on Observer's website.

Keywords:: Charlotte Observer Going Green book about going green sustainable living consumer choices

Locally Grown Clothing Line Brings the Local vs. Organic Debate into the Closet

While we consider the fate of our country’s faltering economy, the national conversation has been rich with voices extolling the virtues of buying local. Farmer’s Markets have been lauded with relish over national airwaves and recent reports have shown that while Starbucks is suffering, local cafes are actually doing more business.

As a result, we can safely say that among foodies, eco-minded individuals and the budget conscious (to name just a few) the buy local movement and with it, the local-versus-organic debate, is alive and thriving. This time though, it doesn’t stop at the kitchen. In fact, the local vs. organic face-off may soon be appearing in a closet near you.

More and more companies, like North Carolina-based TS Designs, are looking local—to benefit regional economies, decrease their carbon footprint, and steer clear of potential human rights abuses. This month, the company which usually retails organic cotton apparel, launched a new line of T-shirts grown, made, and sold in the Carolinas.

President of TS Designs, Eric Henry, is excited about the opportunity to provide consumers with locally grown cotton clothes. And in North Carolina, whose textile industry has been in steady decline for decades- losing business primarily to overseas manufacturers- it’s a hopeful sign.

Speaking with Henry, you’ll realize in seconds—he knows what he’s talking about and he’s ready to share it with you. He casually hops from talk about NAFTA to the Slow Food Movement, to his hopes for the new brand. One such hope is bringing the farm, factory and consumer closer together.

The shirts will travel about 700 miles (compared with up to 17,000 miles for a conventional garment) and that means a lot to him. “I know all the people involved,” he explains, “I can get in my car, or you can get in your car and within one day you can touch everybody that’s involved in the process.” That’s a lot more than I can claim for the clothes I’m wearing today. After a quick review of tags, I’ve got on clothes from Turkey, Cambodia, China, and Egypt—and I’m starting to feel pretty guilty.

But before you torch the contents of your closet in favor of exclusively local attire, it’s important to remember it’s not all a bed of locally cultivated, organic, heirloom roses. Actually, it’s not organic at all.

Owing to North Carolina’s climate, the farm supplying TS designs has elected to use conventionally-grown, Roundup Ready GMO cotton. For the uninitiated, that spells ‘Monsanto,’ the multinational agricultural biotech firm accused by groups like the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign of “Global Corporate Terrorism.”

So, much like the conversations many of us have had about locally grown versus organic foods, when the debate enters the closet it’s just that—a debate. We live in a time where almost anything we buy has participated in a supply chain that reaches farther geographically than the average American has ever traveled. It’s up to the consumer to pick.

Whether you opt for organic socks that hail from Burundi or locally produced ones that grow from genetically modified seed, participating in the conversation does make a difference. Indeed, TS Designs plans to research the feasibility of organic and local cotton for future years. It’s just further proof that adding more voices to the conversation can yield positive results.

by Juliana Sloane

Keywords:: sustainable clothing local clothing organic cotton organic clothing

Wild monkeys use tools - and choose the right one for the job

The first monkeys I ever saw in the wild were white-faced capuchins in Costa Rica. Or maybe black howlers were first. But the capuchins were much more charming than the howlers. I fell in love with them. We were on the beach at Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional the first time, and my son Alan had a banana in his pocket. The capuchins were interested in us because of the banana, and they had no fear. The howlers and spider monkeys and squirrel monkeys will stay up in the trees, far away from you, no matter what you have or do. But the capuchins come right down. They even ran out on the beach and snatched things from people's picnic baskets. The capuchins, with their human-like faces and hands, sat in the trees eating bags of crackers and throwing the cellophane wrappers down.

A white-faced capuchin at Manuel Antonio Parque Nacional in Costa Rica, smelling the banana in Alan's pocket
Photo by Sally Kneidel

As a biologist, I know that's not a good thing at all. But yet, I could see myself in the capuchins. I also do what I'm not supposed to do, eat things I know aren't good for me, make choices that endanger my well-being. We were tempted to give the capuchins the banana, but we didn't. We didn't give them anything to eat, we knew better than that. Monkeys that eat human food get sick eventually from malnutrition.

But the next day, we asked the ranger what time the troop of capuchins usually moved through the trees over the beach, on their daily foraging rounds. Our Spanish communication wasn't precise, but he told us and we got the idea. We waited for the monkeys. They came. And they were mad that Alan and I were standing under the trees while they were cavorting from branch to branch, just overhead. The head honcho, a male capuchin, came down and bared his teeth at us and shook the branches to frighten us. We trembled with delight instead.... the pleasure of recalling it even now makes my heart beat fast. We took his photo while he railed at us, infuriated. I was sorry to distress him, but I couldn't help it. Monkeys are territorial, they get angry just like anyone whose space is invaded. It wouldn't hurt him to bare his teeth and shake a few branches. His social stature with his troop may have benefitted from the display.

The capuchin was angry that we were standing under the trees in his foraging route. He bared his teeth aggressively.
Photo by Sally Kneidel

Anyway, I started this post to write about a news story that just came out about capuchins. Capuchins used to be "organ grinder" monkeys. These days they're sometimes trained as "helping hand" monkeys for people with paraplegia or quadriplegia. They're very smart monkeys. This recent piece of research shows that capuchins in Brazil are adept at tool use - an ability that used to be attributed only to humans but has now been demonstrated by numerous species from birds to apes. The capuchins use stones to crack open hard-shelled nuts. But the research goes far beyond just demonstrating tool use. The capuchins don't just grab the nearest rock at hand. They select the best tool for the job. Primatologist Elisabetta Visalberghi of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies in Rome has shown that these monkeys draw on knowledge of a variety of nuts and stones to select the most effective implement. She studied the monkeys in the wild and observed that they generally approached two or three stones that differed in hardness, size, or weight. In nearly every case, the monkeys chose the most appropriate stone.

"The present findings make capuchins a compelling model to track the evolutionary roots of stone-tool use," says Visalberghi. Because capuchins shared a common ancestor with humans 35 million years ago, Visalberghi feels that their behavior may demonstrate that the capacity for tool use evoloved earlier than thought.

But primatologist Frans de Waal of Emory University has a different interpretation. He says the work highlights the monkeys' capacity for trial-and-error learning, that planning may not have been a part of their tool preferences. The monkeys may be simply applying life lessons about the success of various stones at cracking nuts.

Capuchins in Brazil selecting stones for cracking nuts, from Wired Science

Whether their discriminatory skills are the result of planning or of learning, they're still a step beyond simple tool use. They demonstrate in a non-human animal the ability to select and apply an appropriate tool for a particular job. We humans are not so unique after all. Do we really deserve to claim the whole planet all for ourselves and crowd out every other species of animal, leaving only the pest species, the livestock, and the companion species? I hope not. I hope the capuchins will always be alive and well in Costa Rica and Brazil, not displaced by cattle pastures.

Source:
Bruce Bower. Monkeys pick the right rock. Science News. February 14, 2009.

Keywords:: capuchins tool use animal behavior monkeys Costa Rica

Less meat...smaller footprint

photo by Sally Kneidel

Sally often says, when speaking to others about the impact of eating less meat, that what you eat is more important than what you drive. The UN document "Livestock's Long Shadow" says that our diet choices impact climate change more than transportation. I shared that with my Biology class and sensed some disbelief, so I decided to use www.myfootprint.org, a website where you can caluclate your ecological footprint, as a way to convince them that this is true. Your footprint tells you how many worlds it would take to support the human population if everyone in the world lived just like you.

I worked through the footprint questions, choosing all of the default or "average" values as answers. The only answer that I intentially set away from the average, was my diet. First, I chose "top of the food chain - I eat meat, seafood, or dairy at almost every meal" as a description of what I eat. This trial resulted in a footprint of 7.04 worlds. I then repeated the questionnaire, changing only one thing - my diet from "top of the food chain" to "vegan". The footprint dropped to 5.24, a 26% reduction. Impressive!

I then repeated the footprint two times. Both times I let my diet description stay at "omnivore", the default setting, so food choice didn't vary. What I did change was the car I drive. Both times I chose 20,000 miles as the amount that I drive each year, but in one run I chose a "truck or SUV" as my car (this resulted in 7.34 worlds), and the other I swtiched to a hybrid (resulting in 5.99 worlds). The reduction this time was 18%.

Looks like the UN report is right! (Or, more likely, the footprint modelers used the report in writing their computer model.) I know I could have had my students read the report (it's on-line), but this was a much simpler way to get the point across. They had already calculated their footprint, so it was a result they could easily grasp. Most of the students had calculated their footprints to be in the 5-7 range. They were distressed and felt trapped a bit. As teenagers they couldn't easily change the house they live in or the cars their family drives. But they do have control over what they eat. Eating less meat offers an easy way to lower one's environmental impact.

By Ken Kneidel, PhD

Keywords:: ecological footprint effect of meat on environment environmental effect of meat livestock's long shadow impact of animal products