In fact, the problem is nearly universal in most first world countries.  Across Western Europe, waste lines are growing.   Germany, Ireland, Finland, Greece, Spain and others have seen obesity skyrocket in recent years.   In both Australia and New Zealand, obesity rates are now described as “epidemic” and continue to rise.   The nations with the fastest growing obesity rates, however, are those which are still developing industrially.   Although the overall prevalence of obesity in Chile, Brazil and India are low, they are growing at the highest rates. In China, obesity was once extremely rare, but in the past decade has become common.   Even Japan and South Korea are seeing rising obesity, despite having had a reputation for generally lean populations.

The common yet false claims:

If you ever happen to watch a youtube video or visit a website claiming dangers associated with food irradiation, genetic modification or the use of vaccines, modern medicine etc etc, you will very often hear claims that it is the reason why the population is obese. Pictures of unhealthy, overweight kids are often shown alongside warnings of the evils of modern agriculture.

Others will say that we need to “detoxify” to become thinner. That seems to be an odd suggestion, since fat is not toxic but the result of your body absorbing and storing nutrients, which is what it’s supposed to do. Others insist that the answer is eating only organically-certified foods.

NOT reasons why people are fat:

• Vaccines
• Antibiotics
• Chemtrails
• Genetically modified foods
• High fructose corn syrup being used as a sweetener (as opposed to cane or beat sugar)
• Food irradiation
• Bisphenol A
• “Toxins”
• Insecticide residue
• Fluoridation of water
• A need to “detoxify” the body

Reasons why people are fat:

• Eating large amounts of high calorie food
• Sedentary lifestyles

Of these the first is by far the most important reason.   The second does have some impact and may be more true in children, since there has been a very strong shift toward less outdoor play and exertion than in decades past.   That said, there have long been large segments of the population who get minimal exercise and it is primarily the change in eating habits that is responsible for more obesity.

People in industrialized countries are eating more processed foods than ever before, more calorie-dense snacks and consuming more soft drinks than ever.   When one says “processed foods” it might seem to indicate that the problem is that they are a problem because there is something artificial or unnatural about them.  That’s not really the problem so much as it is that these foods tend to be very dense in calories and are easy to consume in bulk.  They also, by and large, are easy for the body to extract those calories from.   Fast foods and packaged snack foods are widely available and cheap.   It is very easy to eat a lot of them without even noticing.

Soft drinks are another big culprit.    It’s not uncommon for someone to drink sodas or sweetened juices with every meal of the day.   A single can of cola can easily contain 150 calories and it’s quite easy to put away 500+ calories of soda with a meal and hardly even notice it.   Sodas and soft drinks are so high in calories because they are loaded with sugar.   Often this is in the form of high fructose corn syrup, but that’s not what matters.  It could just as easily be cane sugar or beat sugar or any other kind of sugar.  It’s not the source of the sugar but the quantity and thus the caloric value.

The problem is not limited to sodas either.   Sweetened iced teas, sports drinks and other beverages can contain just as much sugar and calories.  Even “unsweetened” fruit juices can be very high in naturally occurring sugars from the fruits they are made from.

It’s become very common for people in industrial societies to drink large quantities of sodas and soft drinks every day.   It’s become very common for people in industrial societies to eat large quantities of processed, calorie-dense snack foods like cookies, candy bars and other sweets.   More and more people are also eating food from restaurants, fast food or otherwise on a daily basis.   These foods too tend to be high in calories, often being fried.

It’s important to remember that none of these foods are “bad” in and of themselves, should they be eaten in relative moderation.   Coca-Cola and Pepsi have both been around for more than one hundred years and were popular and ubiquitous around the world throughout the 20th century.   If the average person had a Coke or Pepsi every time they went to a ball game or barbecue, then there wouldn’t really be any problem.  If donuts were consumed a couple of times a week, they would not be much concern either.

The problem is that these foods have become staples.   It’s not uncommon for a person to eat a couple donuts for breakfast, chased with a coffee with lots of sugar then eat a burger and fries, with a large soft drink for lunch, snack on candy bars and soda in the afternoon and then have a large high-calorie dinner.

Why this has happened:

The reason that so many have excessive calorie intake is that they can.  It’s not the fault of restaurants or food producers, they are just filling a demand.   As a general rule, humans prefer foods that we would generally consider “unhealthy” by modern standards.

For most of human history, food has been scarce, so it was beneficial to eat the foods with the highest calories in high quantities, when they were available.  Calories are the most important consideration when it comes to nutrition and having a constant surplus is something that has only happened recently.   Foods with a lot of fat and sugar taste good and are satisfying.   Other options are there, but given the choice between a salad and a burger, most people will choose the burger.   Choosing the salad usually means making a conscious decision to do what is healthy, not what is more enjoyable.

Innovations in agriculture, automation and the general rise of more food services has made it easier and cheaper than ever to get these foods.   Soda machines are common and convenience stores and gas stations are stocked with every kind of sweet confection imaginable, primarily because that’s what people want.  Fast food restaurants can provide a quick breakfast, lunch or dinner with drive-through convince and do it for only a few dollars.   They often do have healthy options on the menu, but that’s not usually what customers buy.

Given the choice, consumers will also tend to prefer larger portions.  To some extent it is an issue of more value for one’s money, and simple economics come into play here.  The value to a consumer can be increased by either lowering the cost of a product or increasing the quantity.  For a restaurant, it’s more attractive to increase the quantity, since they are then taking in more revenue and have fixed preparation costs.  Additionally, consumers simply tend to gravitate toward greater portions.   French fries and other high calorie sides are cheap, so it makes business sense to pile them on, since consumers prefer to get more anyway.

There are also some cultural reasons for this happening.  People are more mobile than ever, and being on the go means more opertunity to grab a quick packaged snack.  Eating at home is less common than in decades past, and prepared foods and restaurants are part of the growing service-oriented economy.   With more women in the workplace and fewer traditional families, the old norm of having a woman spend her afternoon making a pot roast or meatloaf for the family to eat together at the dinner tables is no longer common.

The solution:

There are no easy solutions here.   Encouraging people to eat more healthy foods and reduce intake can help.  Providing more low calorie options can help too.   Encouraging more exercise is also helpful.

On an individual basis, we can all decide to eat healthier and do so through willpower, but making the whole population do so is much harder.  To some extent, one is up against human nature, which is generally a losing proposition.   Making food more expensive or less available is not a good option, because doing so would result in greater burdens on the lower classes and more income going toward food purchases.  Trying to place restrictions on foods won’t generally work either.  Such restrictions are unlikely to be well received and would need to be draconian to have any chance of working at all.

Even if restrictions put in place, there will always be ways to skirt them.   Creating a “black market” for high calorie foods might seem like an absurd idea, but it has actually happened.  In Los Angeles, school districts instituted a policies for school lunch programs, replacing most of the high calorie foods with things like salads, whole wheat breads, grilled chicken and other foods generally considered healthy.   Unfortunately, a large portion of  students don’t like the new menu and prefer sodas, chips and candy enough to create a thriving black market.  More and more students now bring their own lunches, and now are selling to their peers. Food trucks and vendors set up shop around schools to fill the demand.  Now California is mulling banning such vendors, while some districts consider either inspecting bagged lunches or banning them altogether.

Trying to apply such rules and restrictions to greater segments of society would result in similar backlash, although it would likely be even worse.

Disclaimers:

[1]  I know already someone is going to point out that I personally could stand to lose a few pounds.  I don’t dispute this.  That’s not the point.  I’ll be the first to admit that the reason I am overweight is that I my eating habits are sub-optimal.

[2]  A lot of the readers of this blog seem to like hypertechicalities, so to clarify the “Not reasons why people are fat” should probably say “Not MAJOR reasons why people are fat.”  It is true that there are circumstances where antibiotics can result in some weight gain.  It’s also possible that one could make the logical connection between vaccines and more obesity by pointing out that vaccination has economic benefits and that these could, in turn, result in a population that could buy more food.

[3] Of course the subject is more complicated and there may well be other factors that come into play, but go beyond the scope of this blog post.

[4] Someone is almost certainly going to bring this up – it’s true that HFCS and sucrose (cane sugar) are not identical and that there’s some difference in the dietary effects.   In general, HFCS is lower in calories than sucrose of an equivalent sweetness which would suggest that it’s actually less problematic.   Claims have been made that HFCS is more readily converted to fat than glucose, although data to confirm this is, at best weak.   Regardless of these possibilities, it does not change the fact that the major problem is quantity, not type of sugar and HFCS does not appear to be significantly more prone to contributing to weight gain than other forms of sugar.

I was disappointed by how apologetic the article was, but it still made an important point about where our food actually comes from.   Indeed, the “ideals” that the Times refers to never really were embodied by the organic farming movement in any meaningful way.   The entire idea really comes down to a philosophy that certain things are bad simply because they are man-made, while others are acceptable.   There’s no science to it at all and there never was.

Via the New York Times:

Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

Lets stop and consider the greater context here: there are eight billion people in the world. That’s a lot of people to feed. Thankfully, we can feed them all. The fact that not everyone gets enough food is not due to a lack of capacity to produce it but more because of localized socioeconomic and political issues in getting it to those who need it. We grow enough food in the modern world to feed everyone. Not only that, we do it at a very reasonable cost, which results in people generally not having to spend the majority of their income just to get their daily nutritional needs filled.

For example, if you’re in the United States, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. If you work one hour a day at the minimum, you can make enough money to keep yourself reasonably well fed. And not only that, but in first world countries, the average citizen can afford to buy things that are imported out of season. Better yet, our food rarely carries serious pathogens and when it does, it gets recalled rapidly. We don’t suffer from periodic famines. The worst thing most of us will ever suffer through is a regional drought or frost driving the cost of a particular type of produce up for a few weeks.

Sure, we take all this for granted, but considering what it has been like for most of human history, the fact that you can reliably go buy a meal for a few dollars, that it will be free of pathogens and that it’s always available and not subject to periodic shortages is pretty damn impressive.

We did not get to this point by forcing all foods to be grown in small mom and pop farms.   Such local food is great when you want something that’s as fresh as you can get and happens to be in season, but make no mistake, it’s a luxury.   We could never feed all of society by such small operations and doing so would not have any real ecological advantages.   All human activity will have some impact on the local ecology, and agriculture is no different.   That does not mean the impact has to be unacceptably large.   However, the best way to keep that impact to a minimum is by efficiently farming the land, using the most modern practices and technology available.

“Organic food” is not about small, local mom and pop farms.   Most people seem to think that if food is “organic” it means that a friendly old man in overalls grew it while chewing on a blade of grass and whistling a tune about how he loves the land.   It’s not.   Farming is a business like any other business and farmers will use the tools they have at their disposal to produce as much as they can with as few resources as possible.  The farms are located in the most favorable areas.  That means that fruit and vegetable farms are often located in tropical areas where they can provide fresh product to market all year long.

On large farms, efficiency is very important and great efforts are taken to get as much product from the given area as possible.  They’re run and managed like the industrial-scale operations they are.   Many, but not all, of these large farms are owned by families.  Thanks to modern management and farming methods, these farms are productive enough to make their owners very comfortable financially.

It is much harder for anyone to support themselves on a small farm.  Many of the smallest local farms are not full time operations.  The owners may have other jobs and keep the farm as a “hobby farm.“  Those which do work small farms full time may have to concentrate on a specialized sector in order to remain commercially viable.  Some manage to make small farms economically viable by operating them as a specialty product provider, such as a winery a nursery for ornamental plants.  Others make money by having a store that provides other products.  A few may capitalize on Halloween hayrides or pick-your-own events.

There’s nothing wrong with these small farms that cater directly to consumers looking for the novelty or nostalgia of such products, and many do provide excellent fresh products and make great pies.  Yet they may give some the wrong impression of what farming really is.  They are not the food producers that provide the staples which keep the world fed.

Those who do work small, low-production, low-income farms as their primary means of getting by are subsistence farmers.   Thankfully this practice has largely vanished from industrialized nations, yet it remains common in many parts of the world.

When a farm decides to go “organic,” they are simply giving up some of the tools at their disposal to grow foods.   Many types of fertilizer suddenly become forbidden.  Tractors, tilling and irrigation are generally not affected, but the types of crops, fertilizer and insect control uses are.  In some cases, the organic farmer will be required to buy materials that are chemically identical to forbidden compounds simply because they come from a certified source that is regarded as “natural.”

Since some of the tools are now taken away it becomes harder to grow food reliably and at high capacities.  Some other commodities become more important.   If fertilizer is less concentrated, more water may be needed to get the nutrients to the roots.   If more of a crop is lost to pests, larger areas must be planted for the same yield.  If crops yield fewer fruit per plant, more plants are needed.  Not using one tool means all the others will tend to be more taxed.  It may require more labor, more energy, more land and more water.   It costs more too.   Farmers don’t do this because they’re stupid, of course.  They do it because they know that consumers are stupid and will pay a premium for this stuff.

Before buying some of that overpriced organic food, stop and think about the bigger picture.  Do you really think Old McDonald is the one who feeds the world?   Farming is an industry and if you want everyone to be fed, you wouldn’t want it any other way.   Modern society requires that most people work in fields other than agriculture.  We need farmers, but we also need doctors and dentists and mechanics and engineers.   Trying to force society back to the days when a farm fed only a few local families is not going to help the environment or our food supply.

Not surprisingly, the letter didn’t end up stopping the research nor did subsequent attempts to seed the press with fear-mongering reports of dangers of genetic engineering.

It should be noted that the project they were trying to stop was pure research and not actually aimed at producing products for human consumption, at least not in the near term.   The wheat had been grown experimentally for a few years and is currently undergoing study in laboratory animals.   This is expected to eventually lead to human trails, but that’s not something that CSIRO has immediate plans for.

The wheat was being grown in relatively small and isolated patches on test fields that are some distance away from other wheat crops and in fields that are partially enclosed by a plastic barrier.   Some anti-GMO activists have claimed that the very existence of such crops endangers the world food supply, since rogue genes could be carried away as pollen to fertilize other crops.    CSIRO does take precautions against this, despite the fact that it’s not a very realistic fear.  Most wheat is grown from new seed, not from seed produced by the previous seasons crop, so even if it had been fertilized by pollen from the test fields, it would not actually result in the genes being brought into new crops.    Also, considering the general distribution and distances, it’s just not a very likely thing to happen.  Nor would it really make much difference even if it did.

Most Australians seemed to understand that CSIRO was proceeding with an abundance of caution and that the wheat was being grown as part of a scientific study with the aim being to better understand the potential of genetic engineering of this type with the potential that it could be applied to future food crops – assuming it is safe, which all current research would indicate it is.    After all, who could possibly oppose scientific research on such an important area of study?

With the public and politicians unwilling to buy into Greenpeace’s fear-mongering, they went to plan B:  weedwacker the whole damn crop.

Yes, that’s exactly what they did.

And if that’s not bad enough, in complete defiance of what they apparently stand for, they used a two-stroke gasoline powered weedwacker.   They could have used one powered by electricity and charged by solar cells or a wind turbine.   They could have dispensed with the weed wacker and used a human-driven sickle.   But no, they used one that runs on gasoline and produces smog.   Who woulda thunk???

In broad daylight and with no attempt to hide their destruction, Greenpeace proclaimed they were standing up against the evil scientists and doing the right thing for humanity and mother nature.   They broke into the research compound, destroyed the entire crop and then had the audacity to post pictures of it on their blog.   Apparently they felt their crimes were so noble and justified that nobody would dare call them on it and actually prosecute the organization for these acts of vandalism.

They were wrong.

Via the Associated Press:

Aussie police shut Greenpeace HQ, seize evidence

SYDNEY (AP) — Australian police shut down the Sydney offices of environmental group Greenpeace on Thursday after its activists destroyed a genetically modified wheat crop at an experimental farm run by the government.

Police in Canberra, the Australian capital and the site of the experimental farm, said “an amount of property was seized as evidence” during the Sydney raid and it will undergo forensic analysis. No arrests were made.

Greenpeace activists, wearing mock hazard suits, scaled the fences of the experimental farm last Thursday and destroyed a crop of genetically modified wheat with brush cutters. The wheat has been altered to lower its glycemic index in an attempt to see if the grain could have health benefits such as improving blood glucose levels and lowering cholesterol.

Greenpeace says it took the drastic action because of concerns over health, cross-contamination and the secrecy surrounding experiments at the farm, which were to include the first human trials of the crop.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia’s national science agency, says the experimental crop did not introduce any new genes to the plants and was safe for humans. It says it had already fed the genetically modified wheat to rats and pigs.

Greenpeace’s head of campaigns, Steve Campbell, said the organization is “assisting the police with their inquires.” However, Greenpeace will continue its campaign to put the spotlight on genetically modified wheat in Australia, he said.

“It’s a really important issue for Australia, for our environment, for our future,” Campbell said.

The press coverage of this incident has been almost universally bad for Greenpeace. They seem to have really underestimated Australia’s patience of this kind of criminal stunt and are having a lot of trouble convincing people that this is some kind of legitimate protest or that they are being unfairly persecuted for their actions.

The vandalism destroyed many months of research and is estimated to have cost about 300,000 AUD. That, however, is only the actual cost of the crop lost. In reality this will likely cost far more to the Australian taxpayers and the research institutions involved. In this scale study, they would have already hired laboratory staff and secured facilities in anticipation of the crop being harvested for research. Now they will have to wait another season and all the money spent in anticipation of the crop will be lost. Research papers will need to be delayed, sabbaticals extended and further phases of research postponed.

It’s quite sad, really. But what might be the saddest thing about this is the realization that henceforth, research involving genetic engineering will also have to pay for full time security guards and other precautions to protect the experiments from the bumbling fools of organizations like Greenpeace.

CSIRO has also been involved in agricultural experiments including those which involve genetically modified crops. As might be imagined, this has some people very very angry. A story has recently been making the rounds about how a group of “prominent scientists” are urging CSIRO to end what they call dangerous experiments with genetically modified food crops.

Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

Scientists reject human trials of GM wheat
A group of prominent scientists and researchers from around the world has urged Australia not to go ahead with human trials of genetically modified (GM) wheat.

The CSIRO is carrying out a study of feeding GM wheat grown in the ACT to rats and pigs and could extend the trial to humans.

The modified wheat has been altered to lower its glycaemic index in an attempt to see if the grain could have health benefits such as improving blood glucose control and lowering cholesterol levels.

But eight scientists and academics from Britain, the US, India, Argentina and Australia believe not enough studies have been done on the effects of GM wheat on animals to warrant human trials.
…
In a letter to the CSIRO’s chief executive Megan Clark, the scientists expressed their “unequivocal denunciation” of the experiments.

“The use of human subjects for these GM feeding experiments is completely unacceptable,” the letter said.

“The experiments may be used to dispense with concerns about the health impacts of consuming GM plants, but will not in fact address the health risks GM plants raise.

“The feeding trials should not be conducted until long-term impact assessments have been undertaken and appropriate information released to enable the scientific community to determine the value of such research, as against the risks.”

…

Greenpeace food campaigner Laura Kelly said GM experts recommended that long-term animal feeding studies of two years should be carried out before human testing to evaluate any carcinogenic, developmental, hormonal, neural and reproductive dysfunctions.

“This is the first generation of Australian children that will be exposed to GM in food for a lifetime,” she said.

“If Julia Gillard doesn’t stand up to foreign biotech companies, soon they’ll be eating it in their sandwiches and pasta, even though it has never been proven safe to eat.”

Sounds scary, doesn’t it? In fact, truth about what is being done at CSIRO is not quite as terrifying as all that.

The particular breed of wheat which is being researched was modified in a manner that alters the structure of starches, reducing the rate at which they are absorbed into the body. This has the effect of reducing the glycaemic index. It’s an important consideration because the glycaemic index of foods is directly related to the stability of blood sugar levels. Grains with a lower glycaemic index could therefore be an important part of managing diabetes and may have other dietary benefits. As with some other genetically modified organisms, the goal is not so much to improve crop yield or economics but rather to provide desirable nutritional characteristics.

Research on the breed of rice in question has been going on for more than six years. There have been no human trials and there are no immediate plans for human trials, but the grain has been fed to rats and more recently pigs. Most of the large scale feeding experiments have been fairly limited in duration, but have generally had positive results, showing that the modified starch does indeed reduce the glycaemic index of the foods.

Of course, the intention is that these crops will eventually be grown for human consumption and as such, there will be human trails at some point in the future. And that is what has a few all hot and bothered.

Despite the news being rather common, the actual names of the scientists involved and the content of the letter have not been as widely published. Thankfully, Karl Haro von Mogel of Biofortfied did some digging and discovered things to be a bit different than they were portrayed.

First, it turns out the letter was not written by a group of concerned scientists at all. It was written by Greenpeace. Greenpeace put together the letter and then went out looking for scientists to sign it. They must have searched nearly the entire world, because in the end they had to cast their net as far and wide as India, the United States, Argentina, Australia and the United Kingdom. And in this worldwide search for scientists to sign on they managed to find a whopping… eight. Yes, eight. Eight signatures is all they could manage to get, and they’re not even from what would generally be regarded as “prominent” scientists either. Not only that, but three are not really scientists at all.

So for those keeping score: In the entire world there were five real scientists and three resume-padders willing to sign Greenpeace’s letter. Most of whom, by the way, are already fixtures in the anti-GM movement.

Von Mogel also attempted to track down the contents of the letter, which did not seem to be published anywhere. Curious, it would seem, since it is supposed to be an “Open Letter.” He contacted one of the individuals listed in news items, who dismissed him as “pro-GM” and would not provide the text of the letter. He then contacted Greenpeace, who would also not provide the text of the open letter.

Finally, he contacted CSIRO, who were more than willing to provide a copy of the letter they received.

Here it is from Biofortified

Open letter from scientists and doctors around the world regarding human
feeding trials of genetically modified wheat in Australia

We are writing to express our unequivocal denunciation of the experiments being conducted by your colleagues that involve feeding genetically modified (GM) wheat to human subjects. We are all senior scientists/academics with a professional interest in the health and environmental effects of GMOs. We refer to the trials described on the website of the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator (OGTR):

• DIR 093 – Limited and controlled release of wheat and barley genetically modified for altered grain starch composition

The biological and biochemical characterisation of the GM wheat being used in these experiments is inadequately described in the publicly available literature. Much of the information required to conduct adequate pre-clinical evaluation is withheld on the basis that it is ‘confidential commercial information’.

Genetically modified products have not been shown to be distinctive, uniform and stable over time. There is a large body of evidence that shows that GM crop / food production is highly prone to inadvertent and unpredictable pleiotropic effects, which can result in health damaging effects when GM food products are fed to animals (Pusztai and Bardocz, 2006; Schubert, 2008; Dona and Arvanitoyannis, 2009).

The feeding trials, as described in the documents from the OGTR, are completely inadequate to assess these risks. Feeding trials on rats, pigs and humans are proposed for a period of 1 to 28 days. The intention of these trials is to assess the altered grain starch composition of the wheat, but not to test for any unintended results. We have seen in the independent research conducted on consumption of GM plants to date that unintended effects may appear in later generations (Velimirov et al, 2008).

The use of human subjects for these GM feeding experiments is completely unacceptable. The experiments may be used to dispense with concerns about the health impacts of consuming GM plants, but will not in fact, address the health risks GM plants raise.

The feeding trials should not be conducted until long-term impact assessments have been undertaken and appropriate information released to enable the scientific community to determine the value of such research, as against the risks.

Yours sincerely,
The undersigned signatories:

Dr Michael Antoniou
Gene expression and Therapy Group
King’s College London School of Medicine
Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics
8th Floor, Tower Wing
Guy’s Hospital
Great Maze Pond
London
SE1 9RT, UK

Dr Vandana Shiva Ph D
Navdanya
Research Foundation for Science Technology and Ecology
105 Rajpur Road
Dehra Dun, India

Dr George Crisp MBBS MRCGP
General Practitioner
Western Australia

Professor Andres Carrasco
Lab Molecular Embryology
School of Medicine UBA – CONICET
Argentina

Professor Carlo Leifert
Res Dev Prof of Ecological Agriculture
Newcastle University School of Agriculture,
Food and Rural Development (SAFRD)
Nafferton Farm
Stocksfield
Northumberland, NE43 7XD, UK

Professor David Schubert
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
10010 N. Torrey Pines Road,
La. Jolla, CA 92037
USA

Dr Benjamin Ticehurst BSc(Med) MBBS MPH FRACGP
General medical practitioner & senior lecturer
School of Medicine, Sydney
University of Notre Dame Australia

John B. Fagan, Ph.D.
Professor of Molecular Biology
Maharishi University of Management
(Maharishi International University 1971 to 1995)
1000 North Fourth Street
Fairfield, Iowa, 52557-10

There is some additional information available from Biofortified. On closer examination, it appears that the letter was actually mostly recycled text of a similar letter to Tufts University denouncing scientific research on genetically engineered Golden Rice. It also seems that this letter is part of a recent Greenpeace media campaign against genetic research in Australia, including a press release entitled “Australia’s wheat scandal: The biotech takeover of our daily bread,” which resulted in some media backlash when it was revealed that the group had targeted the report at certain media outlets and made a number of exaggerated claims.

In fact, there is no “scandal” involving a takeover of Australian grain crops by untested genetically modified organisms. The crops in question are not being grown for human consumption, they are only in the early phase of research and development. The research itself is not being done secretly or in any deceptive manner. It’s a legitimate, open part of CSIRO’s agricultural research operation.

In this case what has been eradicated is not a human disease but one that decimated livestock.   Rinderpest, or the “German Cattle Plague” was a virus related to measles but attacking bovines, such as cattle and some related species.   At times outbreaks had decimated both meat and dairy herds around the world.  It has destroyed herds since at least Roman times and even in the later half of the 20th century, it was causing billions of dollars in damage.   It ruined farmers and herders and epidemic levels in Africa contributed to famine in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

For centuries, the battle to control Rinderpest met with some success through quarantine and inspection for the disease.   Yet the threat continued to exist.  Various vaccines were developed, with early experiments going back as far as the 1700’s.   Sir Arnold Theiler is credited with producing the first fully effective general purpose vaccine for Rinderpest in the early 20th century.   More advanced vaccines would be developed throughout the century.   Organized international efforts toward eradication began in 1920 when the World Organization for Animal Health was formed with the specific goal of controlling Rinderpest.

And now it’s gone!

VIA CNN:

Deadly animal disease that shaped history is eradicated
- It decimated herds and caused disaster, devastation and death associated with the fall of the Roman Empire, the French Revolution and the colonization of Africa.

But after years of global efforts, rinderpest — German for cattle plague — doesn’t exist anymore. It is the first animal disease to be eradicated and only the second disease ever, after smallpox in 1980.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared Tuesday that the world was rid of rinderpest.

“This is of tremendous benefit to people and is also a relief for a lot of animal suffering,” said Peter Cowen, an associate professor of epidemiology and public health at North Carolina State University.

“The eradication of rinderpest in the animal health world is every bit as courageous an effort and as creative an effort as was the eradication of smallpox,” he said.

Rinderpest is not exactly a household name. For starters, it did not exist in America. And it affected only cloven-hoofed beasts — cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, yaks.

Animals don’t have silly ideas about vaccines causing autism or being made by the evil corporations that spread chemtrails and try to use microwave weapons to make us buy transfat-containing irradiated GMO products from Haliburton and the Freemasons.   Most farmers know a thing or two about animal health and realize how important protecting their herds are.   So there are no issues with eradicating these diseases by vaccination as there are in humans.

But we *can* do this with human diseases.  We did it with Small Pox and we can do it with Polio, and Measles and Mumps and Rubella and others.

The EWG is good at one thing: Pandering to the press. They’ve turned it into a damn art. They know what to go for: topics like dangerous products and foods mixed with claims of corruption by the “big corporations.” Trendy buzzwords and hot topics like subsidies and the safety of the food supply and of course “the children!”

There are other things the press likes: They love things like lists, because lists are simple and to the point. They make good bullet points and they don’t take much thought to get the message across. So a list combining something like perceived dangerous foods is sure to get a lot of attention and coverage, which it has.

Thus the group has released their list of the “dirty dozen” most “pesticide-contaminated” foods. It has gotten a lot of attention and a lot of people are shocked to find out their favorite foods are on the list.

There is, however, a very dirty little secret here: The “dirty dozen” foods do not actually have to test high for pesticide residue, by any standard to make the list. In fact, in all cases, the actual levels found on these items are well bellow all regulatory guidelines.

In fact, they seem to have decided to come up with a list like this every year, showing the twelve “worst” and twelve “best” foods in terms of pesticide residue.   Since its a foregone conclusion before the analysis actually is done that there will be twelve selected as “worst” it does not matter how low the concentrations are – as long as they can find at least twelve foods that meet their criteria for pesticides, they will have no problem coming up with the “dirty dozen” regardless of how low the actual numbers are or how few of the samples tested have any detectible residue at all.

So the deck is stacked: as long as there is any pesticide residue anywhere they just have to rank the “most contaminated” and they have a list which can outrage everyone.

Also, their methodology is a big steaming pile of crap

The “Methodology” of the Environmental Working Group supposedly takes into account the following factors:

Percent of samples tested with detectable pesticides

Considering how good analytical chemistry has gotten at detecting even the most minute traces of compounds, it would be surprising to me if there were many foods that didn’t have detectable levels of pesticides. They would not even need to have them applied. Just brushing up against something that had come in contact with something that had come in contact with pesticide could leave microscopic, but detectable, levels.

Percent of samples with two or more pesticides

I don’t see why this would matter. Isn’t the total level more important than whether it contains more than one compound? In other words, is it worse for a food to contain one microgram of DDE and one microgram of DDT than it is to contain two micrograms of DDT?

It is also worth noting that many distinct pesticide compounds are related and usually present together. DDT breaks down to DDE, so when DDT is present DDE will be as well. A number of carbamate and organophosphate insecticides are synthesized in a manner that produces other related compounds, so it would be expected that other similar compounds would be found along with the primary product.

Also, when pesticides are applied, it is not uncommon for the end product to contain more than one pesticide compound. Therefore, finding more than one compound could simply indicate that the product applied contained multiple pesticide compounds, but not necessarily an especially high total concentration.

Average number of pesticides found on a single sample

Again, this does not matter.

Average amount (level in parts per million) of all pesticides found

This is the only measure that actually matters at all, because total concentration could, if it were high enough, present a health risk. However, it’s also a bit deceptive and simplistic, because concentration alone does not really give a good idea of what the hazard is absent some additional important information.

Maximum number of pesticides found on a single sample

This stands out as by far the worst metric of them all. Not only does the number of total pesticides detected not really matter, but this measure relies on whatever the highest number is of one single sample. One should never rely on the single most extreme example in a group, because it’s impossible to quantify the probability that the one individual was not just a fluke. This is the entire reason why scientific studies rely on averages of large groups. Furthermore, the larger the group, the greater the probability that one or more of the samples will be far outside the normal region.

In other words, if you test five hundred apples, and nearly all of them contain three or less pesticide compounds, but one contains twenty, the number would be twenty. If you test five hundred oranges and find that nearly all of them contain at least twelve pesticide compounds and that several of them contain sixteen presides, then you would conclude, by this measure, that apples had more pesticides than oranges.

This metric is tailor made for completely throwing off the final total. By any standard, it should be completely omitted.

Total number of pesticides found on the commodity

Again this does not matter. It simply means that one type of product may have a greater number of options for pesticide control than others.

One could even argue that the opposite is true: a greater number of total pesticide compounds detected on a number of samples indicates more responsible and careful use of pesticides. For example: if it were discovered that blueberries contained only one of two pesticides, but raspberries contain any one of ten pesticides, would this really mean that more pesticides were applied to raspberries? It could mean that raspberry farmers use different compounds depending on the time of year, local climate, problem pest, level of pest activity etc. It could be that they are using a large number of compounds to maximize the effect for a given circumstance and minimize excess application.

Or it could mean nothing at all, other than the product comes from a more diverse number of sources, with each source using a slightly different method of pest control.

For each metric, we ranked all of the foods based on their individual USDA test results, then normalized the scores on a 1-100 scale (with 100 being the highest). To get a commodity’s final score, we added up the six normalized scores from each metric. The full Shopper’s Guide list shows the fruits and vegetables in order of these final scores.

So in other words, they started off with the goal of finding the “twelve worst” examples, regardless of the actual concentration in any. It’s clever because it guarantees they’ll have a headline-grabbing list regardless of how minute the traces are. It’s like coming up with a list of the “twelve ugliest supermodels” or “the twelve youngest centenarians.”

Normalizing the scores also assures that the top ranked foods automatically get a very high score, even if they don’t really deserve it. It also makes it difficult to put the top twelve in context. Did they test much higher than other foods or just slightly higher? On face value, it’s impossible to tell.

The goal is to include a range of different measures of pesticide contamination to account for uncertainties in the science. All categories were treated equally; for example, a pesticide linked to cancer is counted the same as a pesticide linked to brain and nervous system toxicity, and the likelihood of eating multiple pesticides on a single food is given the same weight as the amounts of the pesticide detected or the percent of the crop on which pesticides were found.

Now here is the big omission: They don’t actually take into account, even in the slightest manner, the actual toxicity or dangers of any of the compounds selected. Doing so makes even the total concentration detected a completely meaningless measure.

If you are going to test for potentially harmful compounds then you must take into consideration how potent they may be and weight the measurements accordingly. If a product is tested for toxins and it is found to contain “one milligram per serving” of toxins is that dangerous? There’s no way of telling. If the toxin in question is botulinum toxin then a single serving would be enough to kill dozens of people. If, on the other hand, the toxin is ethanol (which is toxic in large enough quantity) then one milligram is not even going to have any detectable physiological effects.

The same is true with pesticides: they’re not all the same in potency or effect and you can’t simply compare their concentrations and expect that to tell you anything meaningful. The pesticide parathion is highly toxic – so much so that it has been used as a chemical warfare agent. It breaks down quickly, but if it is not completely broken down or removed, even a relatively small amount of parathion in a final food product would be reason for great concern. It only takes a few milligrams of parathion per kilogram of body mass to cause lethal toxicity and even lower doses can cause other serious health effects.

Another pestacide, dicofol is also considered toxic in high enough doses, but much higher doses would be required to produce noticeable effects. Based on animal studies, the lethal dose for dicofol is estimated to be a few hundred miligrams per kilogram of body mass. Somewhat lower levels could cause acute symptoms and illness. Chronic exposure to several milligrams/kilogram per day for extended periods of time have been shown to have detrimental health effects. However, a single instance of exposure to such levels is unlikely to produce any noticeable effects.

Thus the quantity of codicil necessary to cause noticeable illness is greater than a lethal dose of parathion. You can’t compare the dangers of each by just looking at total amount present.

Other omissions:

The total methodology is flawed from the start, not only because of the above listed reasons but also because it fails to take into account other factors which are important when considering what the actual exposure to pesticides will be for a given food.   Some of these include the following:

• How the pesticide is distributed.   Is it mostly on the outside or has some been absorbed?
• Is it on part of the food that is not typically eaten, such as a banana peal or an orange skin?
• What quantity of the food is typically consumed?   After all, if it’s something like a spice or seasoning, then one would not expect anyone to eat it in the same manner they would a whole fruit or vegetable.

So what does the raw data say?

Their simplistic “dirty dozen” list is easy to find.  It’s linked right on their website.  Of course, it provides no actual information on whether dangerous levels of pestacides were found.

But what about the real data, the raw numbers that would actually tell us how much residue was detected and exactly what kind of chemicals were found?   That’s not as easy to find, because they don’t actually link to it and never provide any direct citations of the numbers.   They don’t actually provide their mathematical calculations either, only vague descriptions of them.

Why?   If they are so confident in their results, why not give more direct citations of the data?

What you actually have to do is read the fine print to discover that the actual data in question didn’t even come from their own tests.  It’s just their interpretation of data from the USDA’s own analysis of samples taken annually.

The website “Applied Mythology” has a pretty good article with a rundown of the raw data from the USDA’s annual pesticide report.   Not surprisingly, the actual amounts detected are quite miniscule.  I’d recommend reading it.   It also explains how meaningless the list is when you actually look at the toxicity of the chemicals found and their concentrations.   One of their “clean fifteen” list members, sweet corn, only has a safety margin of 9000 to one for pesticide toxicity.   I say “only” because many others have a margin of over one million to one.

Of course, you should not expect any of this to be reported to nearly the extent that the “Dirty dozen” list was.

The basic motives and goals of this group should be clear.   They are more than willing to make sensational claims and scare people by going after some of the most sensitive areas possible: the safety of the food supply, the health of children and the risk of diseases like cancer.   They’re trump up their claims and make headlines with their list of the “dirty dozen” foods, getting the attention of the media and relishing the spotlight and the chance to collect donations.   They present an image of being on the side of consumers, warping themselves in the makings of an honest, professional and science-based organization, collecting donations and providing “information for consumers.”

Yet for all their claims of being honest, scientifically accurate and impartial, they refuse to adhere to even the most basic tenants of honest research.  They won’t provide their data or back up their claims with verifiable scientific information.  They won’t come clean about the real numbers or what they mean.   They won’t even tell us how much residue they found on apples only that it’s “the worst” – whatever the hell that means.

Going onto property that does not belong to you and blatantly destroying it is not protest.   It’s vandalism, trespassing and theft.  Except in rare circumstances where a group is denied the right to express themselves otherwise and is actively oppressed, such measures are simply not justified and intolerable.

It is even more intolerable when the action comes as a result of the fact that the group is sore about the fact that they tried to stop something legitimate from happening and failed.

This is what happened in England, Belgium and elsewhere by groups which still thinks they are persecuted and can’t seem to wrap their mind around the fact that it’s the job of the police to stop them from doing this.   Perhaps I should show them how this works if the tables are turned.  Since I disagree with these people maybe I should assert my right to burn down their houses in “protest” of their view?

This is also a classic example of fear and ignorance driven action. These people can’t understand what these crops are even all about and only know that their leaders told them to be afraid of them and destroy them before it’s too late. The developers of these crops must be evil and the crops themselves are horrible entities which must be destroyed. It’s sad but even as religion fades in much of Europe, the exact same kind of demonic thinking seems to have been applied elsewhere.

The potatoes in question are a variety that is now being tested after years of research and development. They are modified to make them resistant to damage by fungus, commonly known as blight. This is the fungus that decimated potato crops in the 1800s and lead to the Great Irish Potato Famine. Today blight no longer threatens populations with starvation but is still a major problem for potatoes, especially in Europe. Selective breeding has given potatoes some resistance to the fungus and every year huge amounts of fungicide are used to keep it in check. Still many tens of millions of Euros are lost annually.

Via Biofortified:

French anti-science vandals invade a Belgium farm and destroy crops

Phytophthora infestans causes ‘late blight’ in potatoes. In regions of potato cultivation with a temperate climate, like Belgium, this is the single most dangerous disease. The disease costs farmers in Belgium about 55 million euros annually, and controlling it causes significant environmental pressure. However, in the last few years a number of resistant varieties based on conventional plant breeding techniques were introduced to the market, and work is being done on developing genetically modified Phytophthora-resistant lines.
These GM plant are environmentally much more friendly than some existing methods of treating fungus attack on plants such as the commonly used toxic copper sulphate.
But the GM potatoes will not be used if the anti-GM fanatics have their way.
A research field trial of these blight-resistant potatoes has just been destroyed in Belgium.

Jo Bury, the director of the VIB science research institute that planted the potatoes, said around 100 scientists had tried to talk the actists out of vandalism.
“We are deeply shocked about the violent actions by the activists of the Field Liberation Movement. The field trial with blight resistant potatoes was almost entirely destroyed. Our hearts are with the scientists whose hard work was destroyed today.”
“Althought his is a dark day for science as a whole, we want to thank all 350 scientists and farmers who came out and supported Save Our Science. It was a strong message to the world that we believe that science has an important role to play in the development of environmental friendly agriculture” Geert Angenon, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Geert De Jaeger, UGent, Rony Swennen, K.U.Leuven, Jeroen Crappé.

Thought I doubt they will be, I hope these people are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. More importantly, I hope that eventually populations will wake up to the fact that these stunts are not honorable or admirable in any way. They’re criminal acts of ignorant, frightened fools and their greedy leaders.

Via CNN International:

Japan’s radioactive food found in major local producer
The disclosure Saturday by Japanese authorities that milk and spinach have shown higher-than-normal levels of radiation contamination has raised concerns about food safety and supplies in one of Japan’s most heavily populated regions.

Tainted milk was found 30 kilometers (18 1/2 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and spinach was collected as far as 100 kilometers (65 miles) to the south, almost halfway to Tokyo. The plant was badly damaged after a 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the coast on March 11.

But Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano stressed to reporters Saturday afternoon that the levels were not extremely high: A person who consumed these products continuously for a year, he said, would take in the same amount of radiation as that of a single CT scan.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said that equates to 7 millisieverts, more than double the 3 millisieverts that a person in an industrialized country is typically exposed to in a year.

Health effects would become more evident, he said, if such products were taken in daily for a lifetime. Edano said high radiation levels were not systemic for all spinach and milk tested, and that more data would be collected and analyzed under the Japanese health ministry’s watch to help determine what steps to take next.

The Fukushima prefecture, or province, is just to the northeast of Tokyo. According to the prefecture’s website, Fukushima plays an important role in supplying food, not only to Tokyo, but also to the nation. The prefecture is Japan’s fourth-largest farmland area and ranks among the top producer of fruits, vegetables, rice, tobacco and raw silk. The favorable climate lends itself to an active agricultural industry that includes livestock farming.

The website also states that the prefecture’s 159 kilometer-long coastline is home to a thriving fishing and seafood processing industry, and the area’s haul of fish is among Japan’s largest.

Neighboring Ibaraki prefecture supplies Tokyo with a significant amount of fruits and vegetables. Ibaraki is the largest producer of Andes melons in Japan, according to the prefecture’s website, as well as the country’s third-largest producer of pork.

Most information available is fairly vague about both the type of radioisotope found in foods and the total amount. That said, current measurements may not be entirely reliable, since levels tend to vary quite widely and a small number of samples may not provide a reliable reflection of the actual levels in the overall food supply.

Based on official statements that eating such foods for a year would result in the same level of radiation exposure as a single CT scan, it appears that the levels of radioactivity are extremely low. While this would indeed result in a greater dose than most people get in a year, this is only if you ate exclusively the spinach and milk every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner for 365 days. Of course this would never happen in the real world, where a person might drink a glass or two of milk a day (not all of which generally comes from one source) and, at most, may have a couple of servings of spinach per week. In that circumstance, the worst reasonable dose anyone could be expected to receive is extremely low.

Further press reports have indicated that the radioisotope which has been detected in many of the foods is iodine-131. This isotope is considered dangerous because of the potential to cause thyroid cancer, although it seems levels detected thus far are very low and thus such concerns are not warranted.

Via UPI

Cabinet secretary Yukio Edano said spinach and milk were the only products from nearby farms found with abnormally high radiation levels. But many farms have not yet been tested amid the overwhelming crisis.

Inspectors said milk had five times the safe level of iodine-131 and spinach was more than seven times higher.

This is in fact very good news when it comes to the long term safety of Japanese food supplies. It is known that low levels of iodine-131 were present in the steam vented from the Fukushima nuclear plant. Iodine can exist as a gas and tends to be fairly mobile in the enviornment. The fact that this is the only isotope mentioned means that the incident at Fukushima does not appear to have released significant quantities of less volatile but more persistent isotopes.

Because iodine-131 has a very short half-life, it is not normally found in the enviornment in any measurable concentration. The iodine-131 produced by nuclear tests in the 1950’s has long decayed away. Therefore, even the tiniest concentration of iodine-131 will stand out when tested for, and modern testing methods, such as liquid scintillation spectroscopy are extremely sensitive to even the tiniest traces of such isotopes.

Although the current concentrations may, in some cases, exceed the extremely conservative standards for iodine-131 in foods, this does not mean that the foods are dangerous at all. However, even if the levels are high enough to preclude their sale, they also do not need to be thrown away. Since iodine-131 has a half-life of about eight days, foods found to be containing it can simply be diverted to use in processed food products, such as canned spinach, ice cream, evaporated milk, frozen dinners and so on. Such products typically are kept in storage for some time before making it to consumers anyway, and canned foods may be stored for months. This provides ample time for all the iodine-131 to decay away. Furthermore, the short half-life of iodine-131 means that the levels present in Japanese foods will be down to approximately zero within a few weeks.

The greater concern is not the health effects but the panic and bad press that this has generated. Some countries are already stating that they will be inspecting Japanese food imports for radioactivity. Considering the toll that the earthquake and tsunami has taken on the Japanese economy, the country can’t afford to see another crisis develop over irrational fears. The livelihood of Japanese farmers and exporters may depend on a rational response to this non-issue.

The bigger issue when it comes to ethanol is the environmental and economic aspects of the use of ethanol as a fuel. Although government subsidies may make raw ethanol cheaper than gasoline, the full balance of cost has ethanol costing more to produce, resulting in poorer economics, regardless of whether its the tax payers or motorists who foot the bill. It also complicates the logistics of fuel delivery, as alcohols tend to absorb water and therefore cannot be transported by long distance pipelines. While ethanol may increase the cost of food by diverting important growing capacity to fuel, it has not resulted in any substantive reduction of dependence on foreign petroleum for the United States. Its environmental benefits are also questionable to non-existent.

Given the disaster that the US ethanol program has been, one might think that other nations would look at the United States and see a prime example of exactly the kind of policy they do not want to emulate!

Well that’s not the case. It’s a bit ironic, but even as many US politicians want see the train wreck that is German electricity policy as a model for the US, German politicians apparently see the train wreck that is US motor fuel policy as a model for Germany. German motorists, however, are not so keen on the idea of having ethanol alcohol added to their fuel, resulting in the government scrambling to reassure the public that it’s the way to go.

Via DE World:

Germany calls emergency summit amid organic fuel chaos

The poorly prepared launch of a new fuel composed partly of organic petroleum has rocked the German petroleum industry, prompting the economics ministry to convene an emergency summit to resolve the situation.

Organic petroleum? Sorry, but what exactly other kind of petroleum exists?

I realize that this is just a mix-up of terminology, but it goes to show how confusing this issue can be made when politicians, reports and scientific terminology are involved, not to mention how silly the over-use of the word “organic” has gotten.

Economics Minister Rainer Brüderle said on Thursday that “clarity was desperately needed between the industry and the consumer.”

The petroleum industry has temporarily halted the delivery of new Super E10 fuel to gas stations not yet selling it, because, quite simply, almost no German drivers are willing to use it.

The head of the Association of the German Petroleum Industry (MWV), Klaus Picard, justified the delivery halt by saying that the system couldn’t deal with the drivers’ boycott.

Worried industry
An MWV survey revealed that over 70 percent of German drivers said they would never fill up with Super E10, due to fears that its makeup – 90 percent normal Super fuel, 10 percent organic fuel – would irreparably damage their cars’ engines.

Drivers said they would rather use Super and Super Plus – the highest grade fuel available to German drivers – despite their higher prices.

This has led to a dramatic rise in demand for the Super Plus and Super fuels. Many of the country’s 15,000 gas stations have already reported shortfalls – in some cases even a complete drying up – of the Super fuel.

On Wednesday, the MWV issued an appeal to German drivers to use the organic Super E10, assuring them that it was only harmful to a small group of cars.

According to the Association’s latest statement, some 93 percent of cars allowed to drive on German roads are able to use Super E10.

I can certainly understand how German drivers would be apprehensive about putting a new and unfamiliar additive in their fuel tanks. In reality, there’s nothing to be concerned about in this regard. Unless they are planning on filling up the tank of a lawnmower, outboard motor or antique vehicle, their engine should be perfectly capable of burning E10 fuel.

The engines of vehicles driven in Germany are mass produced for the international market and this includes regions where ethanol fuel additives are common. All modern fuel-injected vehicles are capable of adjusting to the minor change in oxygenation of fuels containing alcohol and gaskets and seals that would be damaged by 10% alcohol solutions have not been used in some time.

Still, while it may not hurt most car engines, the practice of adding ethanol to most gasoline  has turned out to be quite harmful both ecologically and economically.   It does not help improve the environmental footprint of automobiles and with the exception of countries which have the climate and land area to grow huge amounts of sugar cane, it does absolutely nothing to improve on energy self-sufficiency or fuel costs.

As an American I can only say to Germany, don’t make the same mistake we made here.   Ditch the ethanol mandate before it’s too late.

Well, it seems like this whole song and dance is now back as “top scientists” and “researchers” warn us of the bleak future we have in store.

Via Discovery News:

Earth Could be ‘Unrecognizable’ by 2050
A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.

The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia,” said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.

To feed all those mouths, “we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000,” said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

“By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable” if current trends continue, Clay said.

The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.

But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years — tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations — and add more strain to global food supplies.

People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said.

It takes around seven pounds (3.4 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of meat, and around three to four pounds of grain to produce a pound of cheese or eggs, experts told AFP.

“More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet,” Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.

Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.

The WWF. Why am I not surprised? This organization, which was once reasonably moderate and even sane in the environmental sector is now racing to catch up with others when it comes to anti-humanism and dire predictions of a world ruined by mankind and technology. More money? More consumption? The horror! That there would be more wealth and more people could be comfortable and even enjoy a luxury or two! What will we do?

That said, I can’t disagree completely on the need for better family planning in developing countries.   Being unable to control getting pregnant and giving birth has certainly lead to many lives being ruined and to more individuals being brought into poverty.    Birth control can help this, but in the long run, the best way to keep population levels stable and sustainable is with higher living standards.   Many places are getting there, others are still having problems and there’s no doubt it’s going to be a while before these problems are dealt with on a global scale.

We already grow more than enough food to feed everyone on earth with much to spare.  If we used it all, we could likely feed eight billion now.  Much of the food grown today is thrown out, some of it because it has spoiled, some of it because it’s not wanted and some is even destroyed as part of government programs to maintain crop prices.  Increasing amounts of food crops are being diverted to use as biofuels.  The only reason there is starvation is that there are political and economic roadblocks to getting food to everyone in the world.  It’s not because there is not enough food to go around.

Still, fears of overpopulation and food shortages or environmental impacts are often used to justify taking a step backward, toward less technically sophisticated forms of agriculture that are more labor and land intensive.  The refinements to current forms of agriculture have yielded vast improvements in crop density and reliability.  Genetic engineering and improvements in fertilizer and pesticide manufacture will continue to improve yields. 

Earth’s resources are finite, but they are also vast and, in most cases, infinitely reusable.   In the whole of human history we have barely even begun to tap this planet’s resources of iron, aluminum and copper.  Those which we have used can be reused, even mined from landfills. Elements like phosphorus and potassium are critical to growing food, but they are excreted or decompose with the plant matter they support, allowing for their recovery and reuse.  Even hydrocarbons, though limited in available supply, can be synthesized by fairly straightforward and well established methods.

In all these areas, there exists only one limiting factor, the same factor that has limited human endeavor for the entire history of mankind: energy.   Thankfully we have a source of energy that is so vast that it has the potential to break the chains of chemical-based energy and give humanity the breathing room it needs for at least many centuries to come and possibly more.   Uranium is a fairly common mineral, found in quantities greater tan tin or zinc in the earth’s crust.  It has an energy density more than one million times that of any chemical fuel.   Thorium offers similar energy density as well as other desirable qualities and is more than three times more common than uranium.

If we assume that human energy production and consumption will continue in a manner similar to the status quo, where most energy is derived from fossil fuels, then the needs of the future will indeed be impossible to accommodate.   Yet history has shown that technology and energy do not stand still.   The energy sources and technologies of the early 20th century could not accommodate current population levels.

Humans are rather adaptable, even ingenious creatures.  We’ve faced problems providing for our needs throughout our history and always managed to move forward and overcome them.

By the way, this is what the world is going to look like in eleven years, or at least, this is what it was predicted to be like in 1973