Month: October 2002

First Direct Estimate of Extent of British vCJD Toll

Research published in the British Medical Journal offers the first direct estimate of the extent of vCJD in Great Britain.

Researchers examined 8,318 appendix and tonsil samples removed from patients between 1995 and 1999. Seventy percent of the samples came from individuals aged 20 to 29 — the group believed to be most vulnerable to vCJD.

The results? Only one person’s appendix showed signs of the vCJD prion. This would translate to an infection rate of 120 cases per one million people.

Peter Smith, chairman of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee, told Reuters,

It [the results] offers some limited reassurance, the findings could have been a lot worse than this.

. . .

This is the first time that anybody has been able to get any sort of handle on the level of exposure. But it is a small sample and what is needed now is larger-scale studies.

Efforts to create such larger-scale studies are in the works. This particular study will continue until a total of 15,000 tissue samples are checked. The British Department of Health plans to create a tonsil archive to collect tens of thousands of tonsil samples for analysis (tonsils are believed to be more likely to accumulate the deviant prions than is the appendix).

But certainly a rate in the 120 cases per million population rate fits with the relatively small number of vCJD cases documented so far.

Source:

First direct estimate of hidden vCJD cases. NewScientist.Com, September 19, 2002.

British ‘Mad Cow’ Toll May Be Lower than Feared. Richard Woodman, Reuters, September 19, 2002.

FARM USA Confirms It: Animal Rights Movement Having No Effect on Animal Agriculture

A couple weeks ago I noted (see this article) that Farm USA had announced the 20th annual edition of World Farm Animals Day. In announcing this event, Farm USA claimed that,

Growing awareness of the adverse health consequences of meat consumption, including the largest recall of ground beef contaminated with E. coli, is driving consumers to meat alternatives offered by mainstream producers in local supermarkets.

In turn I pointed out that this was nonsense — that the total number of animals killed as part of animal agriculture operations was, in fact, increasing rapidly as people continue to switch from red meat to other animal alternatives, especially poultry and fish.

And what do you know, now Farm USA has a press release confirming that Americans are a long way from abandoning meat.

In fact, as Farm USA’s press release points out, 2002 will likely be the first year in which the number of farm animals killed exceeds 10 billion. According to Farm USA, 8,995 million animals were slaughtered in 2001, whereas in 2002 an estimated 10,108 million will be slaughtered.

What Farm USA leaves out is that this means that the number of farm animals slaughtered annually is growing far faster than is the population.

According to Farm USA’s numbers, there will be an increase of 2.6 percent in the number of animals slaughtered. But according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population will only increase by 0.9 percent during the same period. So the number of farm animals slaughtered is growing almost three times as fast as the U.S. population.

Like I said before, I can’t wait to see Farm USA’s press release announcing activities for the 30th, 40th, 50th, etc. World Farm Animals Day.

Source:

Animal Agriculture Claims 10 Billion Victims! Farm USA, Press Release, September 20, 2002.

Annual Projections of the Total Resident Population as of July 1: Middle, Lowest, Highest, and Zero International Migration Series, 1999 to 2100. U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 [For calculating population growth for the 2001-2002 period, I used the Middle Series projections for those years].

PETA: Feeding Children Meat Is Child Abuse

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wasn’t winning any friends in Great Britain where it recently premiered a billboard that read: “Feeding kids meat is child abuse. Fight the fat. GoVeg.Co.UK.”

British newspaper The Herald quoted Dawn Carr defending the billboard saying,

There has been a lot of discussion in the Uk recently about the obesity crisis and the campaign points out feeding children cut-up animal parts can leader to cancer, heart disease, strokes, and diabetes later in life.

The Herald quoted two academics, however, who attacked the ad as malicious and extreme. Mike Lean, a nutrition expert at Glasgow University, told The Herald,

Living on a vegan diet is extremely difficult and there has been concern raised about growth blocking and vitamin deficiencies. Meat is a sound source of iron, which effects the way the brain works and the body grows.

Hugh Pennington of Aberdeen University told The Herald,

This kind of campaign might frighten people into taking extreme measures which are simply not justified. A vegan diet is not natural because it does not provide all of the ingredients vital for a normal life.

That last sentence of Pennington’s is too extreme, but taking dietary advice from a group as prone to errors and outright lies as PETA is probably not in the best interest of children.

Source:

Vegan ‘child abuse’ campaign attacked as scaremongering. Billy Briggs, The Herald (UK), September 17, 2002.

Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Opposes New Anti-Cruelty Statute

The Associated Press reports that the Arkansas state Game and Fish Commission voted unanimously to oppose a ballot measure that would create a new animal-cruelty statute.

The ballot measure, which voters will decide on in the November election, would make the most violent acts of animal cruelty Class D felonies punishable by up to six years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

The Game and Fish Commission, however, argues that the law is worded vaguely and that groups supporting the anti-cruelty measure might try to use it to outlaw fishing and hunting in the state.

Game and Fish Commission chairman Jim Hinkle told the Associated Press,

Certain groups that are supporting this act are on record as wanting to eliminate hunting and fishing in Arkansas. Additionally, there are too many loopholes in the act, which may make judicial interpretation problematic.

Lyndon Poole, campaign coordinator for the Arkansas Animal Cruelty Act, responded by claiming that the very vagueness of the law would prevent hunting and fishing from being considered acts of animal cruelty.

So vague laws are good laws? Since when?

As a result of its vote, the Game and Fish Commission will join a coalition called Arkansans for Responsible Animal Laws that is opposing the measure.

Source:

Game and Fish votes to fight animal cruelty measure. Brian Skoloff, Associated Press, September 27, 2002.

FBI 'Actively Investigating' SHAC

The Edmond Sun reported last week that the FBI is ‘actively investigating’ Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty to determine whether or not SHAC has violated any federal laws in its campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences.

SHAC did not help its case when it posted on its web site the personal information — including Social Security numbers — of 19 adults who live in Edmond, Oklahoma. The posting of the personal information shows just how far SHAC is willing to press its campaign against HLS.

SHAC has been targeting Skip Boruchin, an Edmond, Oklahoma resident who is a market maker for HLS stock. Unlike a lot of other brokers dealing in HLS stock, Boruchin has a backbone and says he will not be phased by SHAC’s harassment. In fact, Boruchin told the Edmond Sun, “I chose to be a market maker for Huntingdon because someone (SHAC) is telling me I can’t.”

Failing in their efforts to harass Boruchin, SHAC-affiliated activists have turned to harassing his neighbors. The offense committed by the 19 adults whose Social Security numbers were posted on SHAC’s web site is that they are Boruchin’s neighbors. The information was posted with a note saying,

Skip Boruchin is a man who can not be moved by reason or sympathy . . . So we regretfully announced that since Skip can not be figuratively moved, he must be literally moved.

Below is a small ample of information currently available on his neighbors. We have other information for some of them — e-mail accounts . . . credit card information, birthdates, etc. This information will be periodically leaked to the public and to animal liberation groups to do with as they will.

The note on SHAC’s web site claimed that credit card information from one of Boruchin’s neighbors had been obtained by sending a computer virus via e-mail to the neighbor.

SHAC’s Kevin Jonas tried to distance himself from the information that appeared on SHAC’s web site. Jonas told the Edmond Sun,

We simply publish what’s given to us. . . . It’s our duty to show exactly what’s going on in the campaign.

That claim won’t fly at all in court and along with potential criminal charges against SHAC, Boruchin and his neighbors likely have strong civil cases against SHAC as an organization and Jonas personally.

Source:

FBI probes activist web site. David Hartman, Edmond Sun (Oklahoma), September 26, 2002.

Dataplay’s Problems

Oh here’s a big shock — Dataplay is on the verge of a major business failure.

For the last four years, were frequent stories in the computer press about Dataplay’s small 500 megabye optical disc format that was going to revolutionize data storage, MP3 players, etc. What Dataplay never came up with, until recently were actual shipping products.

And then when they did they completely screwed themselves by putting the interests of big corporations above users. The few Dataplay devices that are out there are hip deep in DRM schemes that render them pointless. As ZDNet’s Patric Houston noted in August 2001, “The antipiracy aspects subverted the fact that the sheer capacity and flexibility of the DataPlay rewritable disc could make way for a whole slew of ways to provide consumers with more content, not less. ”

Plus Dataplay was overtaken by CD-R and the continuing falling price of the various flash memory products (who would pay $10-$20 for a 500 mb optical disk today?).

Source:


DataPlay employees put on leave as company struggles to stay afloat. Janet Forgrieve, Rocky Mountain News, September 27, 2002.