Microplastics Found In 99% Of Seafood Samples

Seals In The UK Have Died From Bird Flu.
Experts have raised fears for the seals at England’s largest colony after four were found to have died after having been infected with bird flu.
Government scientists are investigating to find out whether the seals died after scavenging from the corpses of infected birds.
Four seals on the north Norfolk coast were found dead on the shoreline and tested positive for bird flu.
Two of these were at Blakeney Point, home to the largest seal colony in England with about 4,000 pups born each year.

The UK’s grey seal population is globally significant as it is home to 38% of the world’s population.
Seals already face various pressures, from plastic pollution to a reduction in foraging and habitat areas caused by climate breakdown.
Bird flu can kill seals by causing pneumonia and encephalitis.
The highly infectious variant of H5N1 is estimated to have killed millions of wild birds since 2021, and has spread to mammals and caused mass die-offs in sea lions and elephant seal pups.
( Supertrooper, 25.02.2025 )  ..  focusingonwildlife.com

Microplastics Found In 99% Of Seafood Samples.
Microplastics contamination is widespread in seafood sampled in a recent study, adding to growing evidence of the dangerous substances’ ubiquity in the nation’s food system, and a growing threat to human health.
The peer-reviewed study detected microplastics in 99%, or 180 out of 182, samples of seafood either bought at the store or obtained from a fishing boat in Oregon.
The highest levels were found in shrimp.
Researchers also determined the most common type of microplastic were fibres from clothing or textiles, which represented over 80% of the substance they detected.

Microplastics have been detected in water samples around the world, and food is thought to be a main exposure route.
Recent studies found them in all meat and produce products tested.
Microplastic pollution can contain any number of 16,000 plastic chemicals, and often is attached to highly toxic compounds – like PFAS, bisphenol and phthalates – linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, hormone disruption or developmental toxicity.
The substance can cross the brain and placental barriers, and those who have it in their heart tissue are twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke during the next several years.
( Tom Perkins, 03.02.2025 )  ..  theguardian.com

A Race To Stop Or Slow Down A Chronic Wasting Disease In Deer.
It attacks the brain.  It has a 100% fatality rate.
And it has spread all across southern and central Alberta, Canada.
Fifteen years ago, chronic wasting disease was rare in the province’s deer populations, showing up in a small percentage of animals in a handful of locations, mostly along the Saskatchewan border.
In the most recent surveillance, some of those areas were seeing 50 to 85% of mule deer infected, while the disease has exploded westward and northward through the province.
Cases have shown up in the U.S. Rocky Mountains and, for the first time, were detected last year in British Columbia.
Researchers are now racing to come up with strategies to at least slow the spread of the disease in deer and reduce the chances of it spreading to more vulnerable caribou populations, or, worse, humans.
( Supertrooper, 21.02.2025 )  ..  focusingonwildlife.com

Despite Promising To Follow The Science, The UK Labour Government Has Allowed The Mass Slaughter Of Badgers To Continue.
The UK government has once again been caught manipulating science to justify the mass killing of badgers – this time, under the Labour Party.
Another review of the badger cull is, according to one group, little more than a device to ‘maintain the status quo’.
A secretive DEFRA review on bovine TB (bTB) control is being run by the very same people who have spent years defending badger culling, undermining any chance of an independent assessment.

In response to the scandalous revelation, Protect the Wild has launched a petition demanding the removal of conflicted panel members.
The review, launched in January 2025 under minister Daniel Zeichner, is supposed to examine the latest evidence on bTB policy.
But instead of selecting neutral experts, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has stacked the panel with long-time pro-cull academics, including Professor Charles Godfray of Oxford University—a figure who previously helped justify badger culling in 2018.

For years, the UK government has ignored independent research showing that badger culling has failed to control bTB in cattle.
Instead, DEFRA has relied on advice from the very academics and industry insiders who helped create and defend this disastrous policy in the first place.
Despite promising to follow the science, Labour has allowed badger culling to continue in so-called Low Risk Areas, bowing to pressure from the same DEFRA officials who expanded the cull under the Conservatives.
( The Canary, 18.02.2025 )  ..  the canary.co

The Bible Christian Church And The Creation Of The Vegetarian Society.
In 1809 the Reverend William Cowherd established the Bible Christian Church, in Salford, as a breakaway from the Swedenborgian New Church in King Street, his congregation had to take a vow not to eat meat.
Chapels were also established in Manchester at Ancoats and Hulme.
The central idea of vegetarianism – that there is a kinship of all nature – stretches back 2500 years to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras.
But Cowherd was in the right place at the right time to make it into a popular movement.

Nineteenth-century Salford was ripe for vegetarianism for a number of reasons.
The rapid growth of the Manchester-Salford conurbation threw like-minded people together.
A reaction to the industrial revolution was leading some to a more romantic view of animals and nature.
A series of coincidental personal ties among the local clergy led to a theology emphasising the kinship of nature taking root.
And the area was receptive to religious innovation because the established church never really had a firm hold on the hearts and minds of Lancastrians.

When Cowherd died in 1816, his ideals – which linked his belief in the kinship of nature with a general liberal, egalitarian and democratic position – were pursued by his followers, led by his successor as Pastor, Joseph Brotherton, who became Salford’s first MP in 1832.
In 1847 Brotherton presided over the meeting held to create the The Vegetarian Society.
It elected James Simpson, a deacon of the Bible Christian Church, as its first president.
When Simpson died in 1859, his father-in-law, William Harvey, then mayor of Salford, took over as president until his own death in 1870.
Harveys sister, Martha, was married to Brotherton and wrote the first vegetarian cookery book.

The Church continued to provide the Vegetarian Society with its Leadership, notably in the person of Reverend James Clark who was pastor for nearly fifty years following Brotherton’s death in 1857.
Clark not only served as secretary of the Society but also helped to found the International Vegetarian Union.
This mainly involved links with the American Vegetarian Society, established in 1850.
The founding father of the American movement was also a Bible Christian.

The Reverend William Metcalfe left Salford in l8l7 with a group of pilgrims from the Bible Christian Church and set up a branch in Philadelphia.
Among his converts to vegetarianism was Sylvester Graham, whose ‘Graham bread’ is still to be found in the United States and who influenced the development of the Kellogg range of foods.
The Salford Church later moved to new premises in Cross Lane, where it continued until 1930.
Unable by then to attract enough vegetarians, it merged with the Pendleton Unitarians.
( International Vegetarian Union )  ..  ivu.org

The Meat And Dairy Industries Consume Vast Amounts Of Water And Pollute Ecosystems.
Less than 1% of the Earth’s water is available for human use.
This limited supply, known as freshwater, can be sourced from rivers, lakes and groundwater.
This is also the water we rely on for drinking, recreation, industrial use and our food system.
The agricultural industry is the largest user of freshwater, making up nearly 70% of global withdrawals, according to the UN World Water Development Report.
At the heart of this issue are the meat and dairy industries, both of which consume vast amounts of water, and pollute ecosystems.

Factory farms use water for animals, to raise and feed them, and to slaughter them.
But a good share of water usage in agriculture comes from the irrigation needed to make feed for farm animals.
In the U.S., irrigation alone made up for 42% of all freshwater withdrawals in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Feed crops for animals include barley and wheat, but cattle feed crops also include alfalfa, corn and other hays and grasses, crops that require massive amounts of water to grow.
Alfalfa, for example, requires roughly five feet of water per acre to thrive.
The sheer scale of water use needed for these crops is a considerable part of the environmental toll of animal agriculture.

Meat and dairy production is also the leading source of methane pollution in the U.S.
And water being diverted for irrigation has serious consequences for vital water sources.
When too much water is taken for irrigation, it drains rivers and aquifers, leaving less water for people and wildlife.
This can hurt local ecosystems, drying up wetlands, and affecting fish and bird habitats.
The over-extraction of groundwater can also lead to the gradual sinking of land.

The agriculture industry in California is a powerhouse, producing a significant portion of the nation’s crops and employing workers across the state.
However, this agricultural success comes at a steep environmental cost.
The sector uses approximately 80% of the state’s developed water supply, and much of that water supports both the state’s food industry and the farm animal industry, dairy alone is one of the most valuable commodities in California.
A significant portion of the state’s water is directed toward cattle feed; feed crops make up a quarter of the state’s farmland and 27% of its water usage.
( Gabriella Sotelo, 30.01.2025 )  ..  sentientmedia.org