Aftermath News

ETC Group Welcomes World’s First ‘Nano-free’ Standard

organicconsumers.org | Jan 15, 2008

Now that you can drive your ‘nano’ car, listening to your iPod ‘nano’ while wearing ‘nano’ sunscreen and ‘nano’ clothing, the UK’s largest organic certifier has just introduced the perfect nano-antidote ­ a ‘nano-free’ standard for consumer products. The Soil Association ­ one of the world’s pioneers of organic agriculture ­ announced today that it is has banned human-made nanomaterials from the organic cosmetics, foods and textiles that it certifies.

According to the U.S.-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, there are over 500 manufacturer-identified consumer products on the market that contain nanomaterials. However, since manufacturers are not required to disclose the presence of nano-scale materials, it’s virtually impossible for people to make fully informed choices. In its newly published standard, the Soil Association bans the use of human-made nanomaterials whose basic particle size is less than 125nm and whose mean particle size is less than 200nm. While the Soil Association’s ban only affects organic production for goods certified in the UK, other organic certifiers worldwide are expected to follow suit.

“We welcome this sensible move by the Soil Association and encourage other certifiers, companies and governments to follow their lead,” said Jim Thomas of ETC Group. “A decade ago the Soil Association led the way in creating a safe alternative to GM crops when they declared organic production to be GM-free and now they are trailblazing again ­ acting to protect the public from potential risks of engineered nanoparticles.” In 2003 ETC Group first called for a moratorium on nanotechnology research until governments adopt agreed-upon safety standards and regulatory oversight.

Despite a flood of commercial nanotech products and a paucity of studies on the health, safety and environmental impacts of nano-scale materials, the regulatory vacuum persists today. A 2007 survey by 15 governments estimates there are at least 70 nanotech food-related applications already on the market. According to Helmut Kaiser Consultancy, the nanotechnology market for food and food processing could reach $20.4 billion by 2010, and most major food and beverage corporations are investing in nanotech R&D.

Trailblazers

The Soil Association has a long history of safeguarding food and agricultural products from potential threats. In 1967 they published the world’s first organic standard explicitly banning pesticides, antibiotics and other chemicals from organic farming. In 1983 they banned animal protein from animal feed 3 years before the first case of BSE (mad cow disease) was discovered in Britain. In March 1997 they were the first organic certifier to ban GM crops from food and farming ­ a move subsequently adopted by all other organic certifiers worldwide. In the wake of the Soil Association’s ‘no-nano’ decision other organic agriculture groups in North America and Europe are now examining whether to ban nanomaterials from their organic standards as well.

A Nano-Free Symbol

A year ago ETC Group announced the result of its graphic design competition for a universal warning symbol for nanotech that could be used in workplaces and on products. (3) The Soil Association have gone one better. Their certification mark is now effectively the world’s first nano-free symbol. It is already found on over 80% of organic products that are sold in the UK (4)

Growing Concerns

The Soil Association ban comes in the same month that the UK’s largest consumer association, Which? (http://www.which.co.uk/) will launch its campaign to protect the public from risky nanomaterials in consumer products, following the lead of the US Consumers Union which has called for mandatory labeling, regulatory oversight and increased funding for risk-related research.(5) It also follows growing annoyance in civil society that repeated warnings over nanotech safety risks are being ignored by nano-boosting governments. In mid-2007 over 40 civil society groups endorsed a statement of principles calling for precautionary action, manufacturer liability and new nano-specific regulations for nano-products. (6) To date no government has enacted legislation to assess the safety or societal impacts of nanomaterials.

NPR | Jan 15, 2008

The Food and Drug Administration is saying meat and milk from cloned cows are as safe as they are traditional. But how do they taste and will they turn us into mutated creatures?

FDA Finds Meat, Milk from Clones Safe to Eat

by Dan Charles

A January 2008 report by FDA scientists concludes that meat and milk from cow, pig and goat clones and their offspring are as safe to consume as food from noncloned animals.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday that meat and milk from cloned animals are safe to eat.

Critics immediately denounced the FDA’s conclusions, saying the agency ignored the ethical problems with cloning.

Cloning creates a genetic copy of an animal, so making clones of a cow that produces an amazing amount of milk, for example, could be quite lucrative. Several companies are trying to make a business out of cloning; those animals could then be used for breeding.

FDA scientists studied the chemical composition of meat and milk from clones and decided that it’s identical to what’s on the market already. The European Food Safety Authority, in a draft report last week, came to a similar conclusion.

But opponents of cloning pointed to other data in the report, showing that the cloning process creates many animals that cannot survive.

Also, many clones are unnaturally large when they’re born, which can harm their surrogate mothers.

But FDA officials say their job is just to look at food safety, not ethics.

Global Research | Jan 2, 2008

Reviewing F. William Engdahl’s “Seeds of Destruction” - by Stephen Lendman (Part I)

by Stephen Lendman

Today, we’re all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

Bill Engdahl is a leading researcher, economist and analyst of the New World Order who’s written on issues of energy, politics and economics for over 30 years. He contributes regularly to publications like Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine, Grant’s Investor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International. He’s also a frequent speaker at geopolitical, economic and energy related international conferences and is a distinguished Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization where he’s a regular contributor.

Engdahl also wrote two important books - “A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order” in 2004. It’s an essential history of geopolitics and the importance of oil. Engdahl explains that America’s post-WW II dominance rests on two pillars and one commodity - unchallengeable military power and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency combined with the quest to control global oil and other energy resources.

Engdahl’s newest book is just out from Global Research: “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” and subject of this review. It’s the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book’s compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: “Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl’s book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible.

Part I of “Seeds of Destruction”

In 2003, Jeffrey Smith’s “Seeds of Deception” was published. It exposed the dangers of untested and unregulated genetically engineered foods most people eat every day with no knowledge of the potential health risks. Efforts to inform the public have been quashed, reliable science has been buried, and consider what happened to two distinguished scientists.

One was Ignatio Chapela, a microbial ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In September, 2001, he was invited to a carefully staged meeting with Fernando Ortiz Monasterio, Mexico’s Director of the Commission of Biosafety in Mexico City. The experience left Chapela shaken and angry as he explained. Monasterio attacked him for over an hour. “First he trashed me. He let me know how damaging to the country and how problematic my information was to be.”

Chapela referred to what he and a UC Berkeley graduate student, David Quist, discovered in 2000 about genetically engineered contamination of Mexican corn in violation of a government ban on these crops in 1998. Corn is sacred in Mexico, the country is home to hundreds of indigenous varieties that crossbreed naturally, and GM contamination is permanent and unthinkable - but it happened by design.

Chapela and Quist tested corn varieties in more than a dozen state of Oaxaca communities and discovered 6% of the plants contaminated with GM corn. Oaxaca is in the country’s far South so Chapela knew if contamination spread there, it was widespread throughout Mexico. It’s unavoidable because NAFTA allows imported US corn with 30% of it at the time genetically modified. Now it’s heading for nearly double that amount, and if not contained, it soon could be all of it.

The prestigious journal Nature agreed to publish Chapela’s findings, Monasterio wanted them quashed, but Chapela refused to comply. As a result, he was intimidated not to do it and threatened with being held responsible for all damages to Mexican agriculture and its economy.

He went ahead, nonetheless, and when his article appeared in the publication on November 29, 2001 the smear campaign against him began and intensified. It was later learned that Monsanto was behind it, and the Washington-based Bivings Group PR firm was hired to discredit his findings and get them retracted.

It worked because the campaign didn’t focus on Chapela’s contamination discovery, but on a second research conclusion even more serious. He learned the contaminated GM corn had as many as eight fragments of the CaMV promoter that creates an unstable “hotspot.” It can cause plant genes to fragment, scatter throughout the plant’s genome, and, if proved conclusively, would wreck efforts to introduce GM crops in the country. Without further evidence, there was still room for doubt if the second finding was valid, however, and the anti-Chapela campaign hammered him on it.

Because of the pressure, Nature took an unprecedented action in its 133 year history. It upheld Chapela’s central finding but retracted the other one. That was all it took, and the major media pounced on it. They denounced Chapela’s incompetence and tried to discredit everything he learned including his verified findings. They weren’t reported, his vilification was highlighted, and Monsanto and the Mexican government scored a big victory.

Ironically, on April 18, 2002, two weeks after Nature’s partial retraction, the Mexican government announced there was massive genetic contamination of traditional corn varieties in Oaxaca and the neighboring state of Puebla. It was horrifying as up to 95% of tested crops were genetically polluted and “at a speed never before predicted.” The news made headlines in Europe and Mexico. It was ignored in the US and Canada.

The fallout for Chapela was UC Berkeley denied him tenure in 2003 because of his article and for criticizing university ties to the biotech industry. He then filed suit in April, 2004 asking remuneration for lost wages, earnings and benefits, compensatory damages for humiliation, mental anguish, emotional distress and coverage of attorney fees and costs for his action. He won in May, 2005 but not in court when the university reversed its decision, granted him tenure and agreed to include retroactive pay back to 2003. The damage, however, was done and is an example of what’s at stake when anyone dares challenge a powerful company like Monsanto.

The other man attacked was the world’s leading lectins and plant genetic modification expert, UK-based Arpad Pusztai. He was vilified and fired from his research position at Scotland’s Rowett Research Institute for publishing industry-unfriendly data he was commissioned to produce on the safety of GMO foods.

His Rowett Research study was the first ever independent one conducted on them anywhere. He undertook it believing in their promise but became alarmed by his findings. The Clinton and Blair governments were determined to suppress them because Washington was spending billions promoting GMO crops and a future biotech revolution. It wasn’t about to let even the world’s foremost expert in the field derail the effort. His results were startling and consider the implications for humans eating genetically engineered foods.

Rats fed GMO potatoes had smaller livers, hearts, testicles and brains, damaged immune systems, and showed structural changes in their white blood cells making them more vulnerable to infection and disease compared to other rats fed non-GMO potatoes. It got worse. Thymus and spleen damage showed up; enlarged tissues, including the pancreas and intestines; and there were cases of liver atrophy as well as significant proliferation of stomach and intestines cells that could be a sign of greater future risk of cancer. Equally alarming - this all happened after 10 days of testing, and the changes persisted after 110 days that’s the human equivalent of 10 years.

GM foods today saturate our diet. Over 80% of all supermarket processed foods contain them. Others include grains like rice, corn and wheat; legumes like soybeans and soy products; vegetable oils; soft drinks; salad dressings; vegetables and fruits; dairy products including eggs; meat and other animal products; and even infant formula plus a vast array of hidden additives and ingredients in processed foods (like in tomato sauce, ice cream and peanut butter). They’re unrevealed to consumers because labeling is prohibited yet the more of them we eat, the greater the potential threat to our health.

Today, we’re all lab rats in an uncontrolled, unregulated mass human experiment the results of which are unknown. The risks from it are beyond measure, it will take many years to learn them, and when they’re finally revealed it will be too late to reverse the damage if it’s proved GM products harm human health as independent experts strongly believe. Once GM seeds are introduced to an area, the genie is out of the bottle for keeps.

Full Story

Daily Mail | Jan 5, 2008

By SEAN POULTER

A breed of Frankenfood is being introduced into human diet and cosmetics with potentially disastrous consequences, experts said last night.

Academics, consumer groups and Government officials are warning that the arrival of nanotechnology threatens dangerous changes to the body and the environment.

The particles it uses are so small - 80,000 times thinner than a human hair - that they can pass through membranes protecting the brain or babies in the womb.

Nano health supplements, such as antioxidants, are already on the market while the first of hundreds of new foods are expected to arrive in the next 12 months.

However, the products are being introdeduced without any regulation or independent assessment to ensure they are safe - mirroring the controversy over the launch of GM foods ten years ago.

Some critics have talked of the threat of the creation of a “grey goo” of tiny particles with hidden harmful properties.

Prince Charles has said it would be “surprising” if the technology did not “offer similar upsets” to thalidomide - the morning sickness drug that caused children to be born with deformed limbs.

Professor Vicki Stone, Professor of Toxicology at Napier University in Edinburgh, is concerned about unforeseen side effects.

“We know very little about the ability of nanoparticles to move around the body, to accumulate or to be excreted, or their potential to cause toxic effects in organs,” she said.

However, nanotech advocates have remarkable claims for the technology. For example, foods are in development that are said to stave off the aging process.

On a more trivial level, they suggest it would be possible to create a fizzy drink that changes flavour according to the number of times the can is shaken.

The consumer group Which? is about to launch a nanotech campaign arguing that consumers need to be consulted on the risks and benefits before it is too late.

The food and farming department Defra has published an independent report which admits there are serious gaps in safety data.

It warns: “There could be very significant implications for business and the wider community if potential risks are not identified and managed before any harm to the environment or human health may be done.”

The report - Characterising the Risks Posed by Engineered Nanoparticles - states there is a shortage of research money.

It says the resulting absence of basic information about the particles means “it will be difficult or impossible to develop any general understanding of nanoparticle toxicology”.

The report adds: “Transfer across biological barriers - e.g. to the brain or foetus - should be studied. Research into how long these tiny particles persist in the body is urgently needed.”

It warns that work assessing human toxicology is being hamstrung by “profound difficulties in accessing relevant funding for these longer term projects”.

Research by Which? found six out of ten people (61 per cent) have never heard of nanotechnology.

Sue Davies of Which? said: “The benefits that nanotechnologies can offer consumers are really exciting.

‘But before the market is flooded with products, it’s crucial the Government addresses the lack of scientific understanding about how some nanoparticles behave.”

The European Food Safety Authority last year held a conference on the future of food.

Dr Donald Bruce, an expert on food and ethics, told delegates that the arrival of nanotech foods has many similarities with GM products.

US corporations attempted to introduce GM before an effective safety regime could be established.

“One of the things to ask is do we need the benefits claimed by the producers?’ he said. ‘Also there is the underlying notion that we are tampering with nature.”

Environment minister Phil Woolas admitted there were gaps in knowledge, but denied the Government was failing to provide enough research cash.

Tiny particles that have generated great hopes and growing concerns

Nanotechnology involves using a substance in particles that are so small that the substance takes on new properties.

The name of the technology comes from the size of the particles - one nanometre in diameter - a millionth of a millimetre. Reduced to this size, materials can suddenly show very different and unexpected properties.

For example, an opaque substance such as copper becomes transparent, or an inert metal such as platinum becomes a catalyst and triggers chemical reactions.

Advocates argue that such particles can be organised to work together to deliver specific effects in a piece of equipment or in the human body.

They can be used to build miniature hard drives that have an immense memory, so allowing further miniaturisation and sophistication of products such as computers and mobile phones.

Washing machines have been developed that release silver nanoparticles that will kill bacteria in dirty washing.

Sun creams have been created so they become transparent rather than chalky white.

In medicine, it is claimed that nanotechnology will allow the creation of drugs that reach and treat a problem quickly.

Manufacturers are working on nanotech foods and supplements that are also designed to deliver specific health benefits.

Similarly, firms are working on developing anti-ageing foods, where nanotech particles associated with renewing the skin from the inside could be included in everyday products such as yoghurt, spreads or breakfast cereals.

The technology promises huge riches for firms which develop winning applications.

One of the first group of nanoparticles being utilised are fullerenes - tiny hollow carbon balls and tubes. They are very heat resistant, strong and conduct electricity.

The football-shaped C60 fullerene is being used in some anti-ageing products. The creams are said to reduce fine lines and firm the skin.

C60 has some antioxidant properties in that it kills the rogue chemicals which damage cells. However, a high dose can itself damage cells.

Some nano particles are known to mimic the harmful effects of asbestos on the lungs. Consequently, they have the potential to trigger lung cancer if inhaled.

The Merial lab has just has its licence for using live viruses for vaccine production renewed

The Times | Nov 23, 2007

by Valerie Elliott

New questions about the competence of the Government were being raised by opposition parties today after another leak of live foot-and-mouth virus from the source of the summer outbreak.

There is particular irritation that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs took two days to disclose the discovery of a new leak and then for Hilary Benn, the Rural Affairs Secretary, to slip out the information by written answer.

Peter Ainsworth, the Conservative rural affairs spokesman, has written an urgent letter to Mr Benn asking a series of questions about the incident.

He is angry that Mr Benn failed to come to the Commons to face questions about the matter and that instead he chose to release a written statement to Parliament after the deadline passed for Opposition parties to request an emergency oral statement from ministers.

The virus itself has not leaked into the environment and so a new foot-and-mouth disease outbreak is unlikely. But farmers and MPs are concerned about the inspection regime at Pirbright and some are questioning whether the facility is fit to handle live virus.

Derrick Pride, from Elstead, Surrey, who lost his 64 cattle in the August outbreak, was extremely concerned by the news. He is attempting to rebuild his business and restock his farm, and his farm shop is already open.

He said: “If it has got out, it’s very worrying. They said that they had carried out adequate bio-security checks. Obviously if the virus is still getting out they haven’t.”

The leak happened only two weeks after the Government renewed the licence of Merial Animal Health, the pharmaceutical company at Pirbright, to use live viruses for vaccine production, on November 6.

The National Farmers’ Union said in a statement today: “It is extremely concerning that part of the system at Merial has failed. However, we have been reassured by Defra that the secondary decontamination systems have worked effectively and that no live virus escaped into the environment.”

The union is pressing ahead with a claim for compensation against the Government for the losses suffered by farmers in the August outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey and papers have been served.

Urgent maintenance work on faulty effluent pipes and manhole covers at Pirbright had been completed and a new facility was also in place to heat treat waste from virus production. The ground above the drains is also now a controlled area and anyone entering it has to follow strict cleansing and disinfecting regimes.

Effluent from the plant also now enters a chemical treatment facility that deactivates any virus, and this equipment is monitored and tested daily.

Full Story

…

Related

UK lab may be source of Legionnaires and foot and mouth

Deliberate release of Foot and Mouth most likely scenario

Report: Lab release of Foot and Mouth virus was either accidental or deliberate - NOT due to flood

Foot & mouth labs like ’sieves’

Shocked British farmers vent anger at disease labs

U.K. Probes Laboratory as Source for Foot-and-Mouth

Reuters | Nov 7, 2007

by Lisa Shumaker

CHICAGO - Trace amounts of genetically modified varieties of rice that were found commingled in the U.S. rice supply in 2006 caused more than $1.2 billion in damages and additional costs, the environmental group Greenpeace International said on Monday.

U.S. rice exports fell sharply after Bayer CropScience, a division of Bayer, reported in 2006 that trace amounts of its biotech LibertyLink rice variety LLRICE601 were found in a widely grown variety of U.S. rice called Cheniere. Later, a second variety called Clearfield 131 was found to be contaminated with LLRICE604.

“Until we’ve seen the report, we really can’t comment,” said Bayer spokesman Greg Coffey.

The discovery of GMO-tainted rice triggered the largest financial and marketing disaster in the history of the U.S. rice industry, according to Greenpeace. At least 30 countries were affected by the contamination and many closed their markets to U.S. rice, including major importers such as the European Union and the Philippines.

The overall cost to the industry, estimated at $1.2 billion, included losses of up to $253 million from food-product recalls in Europe, U.S. export losses of $254 million in the 2006/07 crop year and future export losses of $445 million, Greenpeace said.

“It’s impossible to know what the cost is,” said David Coia of trade group USA Rice Federation. “It’s certainly the most significant event in the history of the U.S. rice industry. The current rice crop is in pretty good shape. We’ve been able to eliminate most of the genetically engineered material.”

Hundreds of U.S. farmers and European businesses have filed lawsuits against Bayer in attempts to recoup their losses, said the environmental group.

Greenpeace is urging India not to go ahead with field trials of GMO varieties because it could risk suffering a similar contamination and loss of exports.

A lengthy U.S. investigation failed to pinpoint how the biotech rice entered the U.S. supply. However, all three varieties of rice were grown at a research station in Louisiana from 1999 to 2001.

The real agro-terrorists are the Military/Industrial Complex spreading bio-engineered pathogens and the Big Agribiz corporations introducing toxic chemicals, hormones, drugs, genetically modified animals and crops into the biosphere and the daily diets of Americans. Along with this is the globalization agenda that forces unsuspecting consumers to eat tainted foods from unbelievably corrupt countries like Communist China.

This is ongoing long-term terrorism and criminal activity on a massive scale, yet, we are supposed to be afraid of some mysterious boogymen somewhere just waiting to taint our milk or make our cows sick. And the fact of the matter is, if some biological weapon is released into the food supply, it will most likely come from one of hundreds of military and civilian biotech labs inside the US, as is indisputably the case in the UK where it is admitted that Foot and Mouth was recently released by labs there.

They think the people are stupid and in fact most Americans are so dumbed down and degenerate that they don’t give a damn either way. Let them eat pizza and drink beer! Let them watch sports, Fox News and “reality” TV! Let them worship celebrity icons, play violent video games and otherwise totally distract themselves from anything of importance. That will keep them pacified and ready to take their chips, get their innoculations, give up their liberties, ready to embrace Big Brother and global government with open arms, even to demand it, all for their “safety”.

PW

. . .

Members of the FBI’s Hazardous Materials Response Team move out from a “contaminated” area after collecting evidence in an agricultural-terrorism training exercise Thursday on a dairy farm in Monroe.

Seattle Times | Sep 28, 2007

When investigators suspect the illness could have been the work of terrorists, the FBI and National Guard are called in.

By Jennifer Sullivan

MONROE — The FBI visited a Monroe dairy farm Thursday to stage its first-ever training to prepare for an agricultural terrorism attack.

Federal law-enforcement officers and agricultural groups spent much of the day at Werkhoven Dairy acting out the possibility of an attack on the food supply.

The scenario was laid out quickly:

A farmer awakens to find a sick cow and calls his veterinarian. The vet suspects a rare disease, which prompts state and federal agriculture officials to investigate. When investigators suspect the illness could have been the work of terrorists, the FBI and National Guard are called in.

The aim of the exercise was to test the response of the various agencies called in to investigate, including how well they work together.

Farmer Jim Werkhoven, who with his brother, Andy, owns the 800-cow farm, said it is vital that farmers learn more about “agroterrorism.”

The Werkhoven brothers stood by Thursday as FBI agents, National Guardsmen, public-health employees and agricultural workers acted out the scenario — which included some dressing in biohazard suits and others analyzing blood samples taken from dairy cows.

Patty Brumbach, executive director of the Washington State Beef Commission, said the group was pretending that one of the Werkhoven brothers’ cows had been diagnosed with foot-and-mouth disease.

The fatal viral disease has swept Europe but hasn’t been diagnosed in the U.S. since 1929, said Mark Kinsel, epidemiologist for the state Department of Agriculture.

While members of the group investigated foot-and-mouth at the Werkhoven farm, about 140 others participated in two simultaneous terrorism training courses in Seattle, said FBI supervisory special agent Peter de la Cuesta.

One group was at Qwest Field participating in a mock bomb threat, and others were at a warehouse near the Port of Seattle for a staged bioterrorism laboratory, de la Cuesta said.

“We need to prepare and be ready,” he said.

The Times | Sep 6, 2007

by Valerie Elliott

Britain’s food watchdog is warning all parents today of a clear link between additives and hyperactive behaviour in children.

Research for the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and published in The Lancet has established the “deleterious effects” of taking a mixture of artifical extras that are added to drinks, sweets and processed foods. It has led the FSA to issue the advice to parents who believe their children to be hyperactive that they should cut out foods containing the E numbers analysed in the study.

Scientists from the University of Southampton, who carried out research on three-year-old and eight-year-old children, believe that their findings could have a “substantial” impact on the regulation of food additives in Britain. But the FSA has been accused of missing an opportunity to protect children and all consumers by failing to impose a deadline on manufacturers to remove additives such as Sunshine Yellow and Tartrazine from their products.

In the biggest study of its kind the researchers recorded the responses of 153 three-year-olds and 144 eight to nine-year-olds to different drinks. None suffered from a hyperactivity disorder.

The children drank a mix of additives that reflected the average daily additive intake of a British child. The mixture was not a product currently on sale.

After consuming the drinks – a cocktail of controversial E numbers and the preservative sodium benzoate – the children were found to become boisterous and lose concentration. They were unable to play with one toy or complete one task, and they engaged in unusually impulsive behaviour. The older group were unable to complete a 15-minute computer exercise.

Results varied between different children but the study found that poor behaviour was observed in children who had no record of hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder.

The results are certain to cause concern and it is likely many parents will remove or cut down on food and drink products that might provoke such reactions in their children. The problem for many parents will be how to police children’s eating; although most foods are labelled, some sweets are sold loose in shops and school canteens.

Schools can now expect to be inundated with requests for the ingredients of food and drink on offer to their pupils to be made known.

Jim Stevenson, head of psychology at the University of Southampton, who led the research, said yesterday that he thought there could be swift action against artificial colourants but that it could take longer to phase out use of the preservative sodium benzoate.

At a briefing to publicise the results, however, he said that the FSA’s advice was the most sensible course of action at present. Hyperactive behaviour was also caused by genetic, developmental and emotional factors and a change of diet was not a panacea.

But Richard Watts, food campaigner for the pressure group Sustain, said that the advice would cause confusion. “The agency needs to toughen up the rules quickly. I don’t know why they did not give food companies a deadline to remove the additives. I think as an urgent next step any food with these additives should be classed as junk food and banned from TV advertising to children.” He was also concerned about soft drinks available in schools and wanted the School Foods Trust to review the use of sodium benzoate.

Ian Tokelove, spokesman for the Food Commission, said: “Manufacturers should clean up their act and remove these additives, which are neither needed or wanted in our food”.

The FSA defended its stance and said the matter had to be resolved by the European Commission. Dr Clare Baynton, of the FSA, made it clear that the additives were safe and approved for use in food, and that further assessment was required. She put the onus on parents to monitor their children’s diet. “It is for a parent to know what foods their children are susceptible to and whether their children react to to specific types of food.”

The study builds on tests conducted on the Isle of Wight in 2002 which were inconclusive about links between additives and hyperactivity.

Julian Hunt, of the Food and Drink Federation said: “It is important to reassure consumers that the Southampton study does not suggest there is a safety issue with the use of these additives. In addition, the way in which the additives were tested as a mixture is not how they are used in everyday products.

Forbes | Aug 17, 2007

Yeah, perfectly deadly. Aspartame plus acesulfame potassium = death. This crap is a new and improved depopulation poison for eliminating the “useless eaters” and as usual it will be in all the soda pop and a million other “foods” by next year. So watch it, unless you desire an early termination. Just read the related articles below.

Local DC Fox affiliate reports on Nutrasweet aka Aspartame

Local Washington DC Fox News affiliate reports on Aspartame. It will never be shown by the national networks because it is too truthful. My only complaint is that they leave out Donald Rumsfeld’s pivotal role in aspartame’s approval and marketing to the public.

PW

. . .

NutraSweet Co.’s headquarters in Chicago has a large test kitchen, which the company calls “The Sweet Spot.”

There, the sweetener company’s food scientists and researchers study low-calorie blends that hit just the right level of sweetness.

This month the company launches what it calls the “new” NutraSweet - a product it describes as a better tasting, no-calorie tabletop sweetener. And NutraSweet says it has more products in the pipeline, including a natural, low-calorie sweetener.

NutraSweet has plenty of company in its hunt for perfect sweeteners. Consumers - particularly aging baby boomers - are getting more fastidious and demanding products that are both healthy and tasty. That has companies like NutraSweet looking for fresh versions of tabletop sweeteners, and it is driving larger companies like Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo to push harder for low- or no-calorie natural sweeteners for their beverages. The hunt for better-tasting sweeteners - and particularly natural ones - will likely spawn a variety of blends in coming years.

“I don’t believe there is one Holy Grail, and I don’t believe there is one sweetener that we know of today that is going to come on the marketplace and take all this business,” said NutraSweet Chief Executive Craig Petray.

NutraSweet’s new tabletop sweetener is a blend of two compounds - aspartame and acesulfame potassium. It is a mix that is intended to have less aftertaste and an increased spike of sweetness at the start. Privately held NutraSweet’s latest venture comes soon after it got back a license for the NutraSweet brand name that had been with Merisant Co. NutraSweet recently entered into a new manufacturing and distribution deal with privately held American Sugar Refining Inc., maker of Domino sugar.

The new NutraSweet has been launched in Wal-Mart Super Centers on the East Coast and is scheduled for a national rollout in October. NutraSweet’s food scientists are testing blends of low-calorie sweeteners that are based on saccharin. Among the products NutraSweet’s scientists are testing is a low-calorie sweetener blend that uses saccharin. The scientists are also trying out various blends for a natural product that the company says could be ready to launch in 2008.

Others are jumping into the fray. Senomyx Inc., which develops flavors, says it is in the process of developing a sweet enhancer, called S2383, that in taste tests has been shown to reduce the required levels of the sweetener sucralose by 75 percent while maintaining the desired taste. The company says the sweet enhancer could potentially allow its food and beverage partners to improve the taste of products and reduce sweetener costs.

Senomyx at the moment has seven food and beverage company partners - Ajinomoto Co., Cadbury Schweppes PLC, Campbell Soup Co., Coca-Cola Co., Kraft Foods Inc., Nestle SA, and Solae LLC. Senomyx spokeswoman Gwen Rosenberg says more than one of these companies has rights to new ingredients her company develops under the sweet enhancer program, but won’t name them. She says the company believes that S2383 could be used in all products that sucralose is used in, including tabletop sweeteners, foods and beverages, and over-the-counter health-care products.

Particularly prominent is food and beverage companies’ push to develop natural, low-calorie sweeteners.

“There is a consensus that people prefer natural over artificial, whether it is backed by science or not,” said Nick Fereday, senior economist at consulting firm LMC International.

Sweet ‘N Low maker Cumberland Packing Corp., a privately held concern, also says it is working on several natural, low-calorie products. Privately held Merisant - which makes Equal - has created the Whole Earth Sweetener company, whose work is dedicated to developing natural sweeteners and sweetened foods.

Sweet Simplicity was the first sweetener to be developed by Whole Earth in 2006, and it is now sold as a natural, zero-calorie tabletop product. Sweet Simplicity contains erythritol, which is a polyol or sugar alcohol, and fructose. The product is sold in Whole Foods Market Inc. and Wild Oats Markets Inc. stores.

The herb stevia is receiving a great deal of attention in the food and beverage industry. Coke and Cargill recently made headlines on news of a deal to develop and market a natural, zero-calorie sweetener based on the stevia plant. PepsiCo is also researching natural, low-calorie sweeteners for its beverages, including those based on the herb. Stevia doesn’t have approval yet from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use as a sweetener.

Artificial sweeteners have regularly been dogged by health concerns. Any new sweeteners - even those touted to be natural - are likely to face a great deal of scrutiny from consumers.

“If stevia itself becomes approved for a food additive, the second big step is (winning) approval within the minds of the consumer,” said Michael Whitehead, Rabobank Food and Agribusiness research analyst.

Many of the products that are being developed could fail to catch on with consumers, or could be dogged by unexpected flaws. Procter & Gamble Co.’s olestra is a case in point. The faux fat received a great deal of attention in the 1990s. Despite the money and research that the company put into the product, it was dogged by health-related worries. Even when those subsided it never became the blockbuster it was once touted to be.

Related

NUTRASWEET HOPES FOR NEW FUTURE
These sweeteners are on the market illegally because FDA gives their loyalty to pharmaceutical and chemical companies instead of the public.

‘New’ NutraSweet hopes for sweet future
NutraSweet’s new tabletop sweetener is a blend of two compounds — aspartame and acesulfame potassium. It is a mix that is intended to have less aftertaste and an increased spike of sweetness at the start. The new NutraSweet has been launched in Wal-Mart Super Centers on the East Coast and is scheduled for a national rollout in October.

Sweet Poison

ASPARTAME KILLS

Several scenarios are under investigation but all seem so unlikely that scientists now admit the mystery may remain unsolved

Deliberate release is being considered as an option by the HSE, partly because all the other possibilities are so remote. In every other case, several events that are all unlikely would have had to have happened at once: a decontamination failure, followed by a drainage failure, then movement of a contaminated person on to a farm.

Professor Wilsmore said: “If you’ve got somebody who wants to spread it, that’s a different story.

“Until we got this report, I thought that airborne spread was the likeliest cause. But when you start to think that mechanical spread – by so-called fomites such as straw, manure, a car wheel or boots – is unlikely, then you start to think. . . I’m sure they will be looking very hard at anybody who has a motive to spread the disease.”

London Times | Aug 9, 2007

We may never discover how virus escaped into farmland

by Mark Henderson

It is almost certain that the Institute of Animal Health complex at Pirbright was the source of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, but the route by which the virus was released may never be conclusively determined, scientists said yesterday.

Several possible scenarios are being considered by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and other experts, but there is no “smoking gun” that identifies any as the most probable cause of the infection.

The chances of the virus escaping by each route is very low, and once it did get out, the chances that it would reach and infect susceptible livestock would be low.

Tony Wilsmore, the director of the Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics Research Unit at the University of Reading, said: “For both to happen you are multiplying two probabilities that are less than one, and when you do that, you get a lot less. If you multiply 0.1 by 0.1, you get 0.01.”

When the full genetic code of the virus is sequenced, it may pinpoint whether the source was the institute or the commerical Merial vaccine laboratory, but even that is uncertain.

The foot-and-mouth virus is composed of about 8,300 “letters” of RNA, a cousin of DNA. It is possible but not certain that the strain used in vaccine production has acquired a mutation in one of these, that would set it apart from the institute’s reference strains.

Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, who worked on the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic, said: “It is important that we do establish what happened here, or it will be very difficult to rebuild confidence in these laboratories. But it is not immmediately obvious what has happened. The truth is that we may never know.”

Airborne release

Until the HSE report was issued, this was the scenario that many experts had considered most likely. The virus can spread on the wind and a leak could have been carried for several miles given the right conditions. Laboratories with category four biosecurity status, such as the Pirbright complex, however, have safety mechanisms that should prevent pathogens from escaping in the air. The HSE found no evidence that any of these had failed.

Facilities must be isolated by an air lock, and air passing out is cleaned by two high-efficiency particulate arrestance filters. Category four labs are also maintained at negative pressure, so that if there is a leak of any sort, air will move into the lab from outside and not vice-versa.

The HSE confirmed that the pressure and filtration systems at the lab were adequate, and also noted that local wind conditions allowed only very small windows at which there could have been any risk. It ruled that there was only a “negligible combined likelihood” of airborne release.

Liquid waste

Experiments at the institute and vaccine manufacture by Merial would have used solvents and other liquid reagents. These would have been contaminated with virus and would have needed treating before disposal.

Merial, in particular, would have had to dispose of large amounts of fluid waste from the production of 10,000 litres of vaccine between July 14 and July 25. The institute conducted only small experiments over that period, each using less than 10 millilitres of virus, so presented less of a risk.

Decontamination can be done with heat or chemicals. The institute’s animal isolation unit relies on thermal decontamination of effluent, and a chemical system covers the rest of the site. If either failed, fluids contaminated with foot-and-mouth could have been flushed out of the laboratory through an effluent pipe.

This ought not to have posed much risk under normal circumstances. The effluent would have flowed into the sewage system, and would have come into contact with neither animals susceptible to foot-and-mouth nor with people, vehicles or wild animals that might have spread it to farms.

There are two concerns here. One is that the HSE reported “doubts about the integrity of the drainage system, including pipework that leads to the final effluent treatment plant” at the Merial site. A leak could have allowed contaminated fluids to accumulate on the ground, from which the virus could have been picked up on workers’ shoes or a passing vehicle.

A similar problem may have arisen because of flooding. The HSE considered that there was a negligible chance that the virus reached farms directly through floodwater: the distance is too great and the Normandy farm is uphill from the Pirbright plant.

It is possible, though, that standing water containing the virus contaminated shoes or tyres, which then carried it to the farms. Professor Woolhouse said: “It would have to have been a double failure: both the decontamination and drainage systems would have to have been compromised. Even so, out of all the scenarios, this has to be one of the most plausible. The others seem even more remote.”

Human transmission

The HSE report considered this to be a “real possibility”, despite extensive safety measures. Scientists, however, thought the risk low. Workers must enter the laboratory through an air lock and change into sterile gowns that fit tightly at the wrists and cover the shoes. They must also wrap over the chest, hair is covered and masks are worn.

All this protective clothing must be removed when leaving the laboratory. It is sterilised in a machine called an autoclave, which uses pressurised steam heated well above 100C to kill any germs. After changing out of their gowns, workers must then shower before leaving the secure area.

Even if one of these steps was not conducted properly, it is still unlikely that a worker could have carried the virus to the infected farms. “The normal procedure is that anyone who has been into these facilities shouldn’t go onto a livestock farm for five days,” Professor Woolhouse said. One possibility is that a contaminated worker walked somewhere near a farm. An allotment adjacent to the first infected farm, which is said to be used by some laboratory staff, was under investigation yesterday.

Professor Woolhouse said: “We need to think about whether the spirit as well as the letter is being observed.”

If the foot-and-mouth virus did contaminate a person’s clothing or body there are two ways in which it could have reached the infected animals.

“The most likely route is that someone walked on something that the animals ate,” Professor Woolhouse said. “That is the rationale for closing footpaths.”

Keith Plumb, a biosafety expert from the Institute of Chemical Engineers, said that the second possibility was that virus spread by contaminated boots could have been picked up by a fox or rodent and carried to the farm.

Sabotage

Deliberate release is being considered as an option by the HSE, partly because all the other possibilities are so remote. In every other case, several events that are all unlikely would have had to have happened at once: a decontamination failure, followed by a drainage failure, then movement of a contaminated person on to a farm.

Professor Wilsmore said: “If you’ve got somebody who wants to spread it, that’s a different story.

“Until we got this report, I thought that airborne spread was the likeliest cause. But when you start to think that mechanical spread – by so-called fomites such as straw, manure, a car wheel or boots – is unlikely, then you start to think. . . I’m sure they will be looking very hard at anybody who has a motive to spread the disease.”

The main case against sabotage is that there is no positive evidence that it has taken place.

Solid waste

Though solid waste is not explicitly discussed in the HSE report, it remains a possibility. Used pieces of equipment such as vials and disposable gloves must be treated before they leave the lab, again by thermal or chemical methods, and there is a chance that this was not done properly.

Dr Plumb said: “Most of this is decontaminated by autoclave, but autoclaves have failed in the past. It certainly can’t be ruled out, particularly as anyone handling this waste would have assumed it had been decontaminated and wasn’t a risk.”