Prescription Drugs and Industrial Chemicals Threaten the Great Lakes

By Brian Kemp
The Great Lakes have faced various threats for years, from industrial pollution to invasive species, but another challenge worries many researchers these days - the emerging chemical threat.

It's not just pesticides, as scientists are finding worrying levels of pharmaceutically active compounds such as anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, anti-epileptics, and beta blockers in lake water. As well, hormones, pesticides and alkylphenols have been identified as threats.

These products and medicines flushed down toilets and dumped into sinks are not stopped at water treatment plants, which are not geared to deal with them.

A new report prepared for the International Joint Commission by two Windsor, Ont., researchers has outlined the threats the chemicals pose. The International Joint Commission was formed by the U.S. and Canadian governments to find solutions to problems in the Great Lakes Basin.

The compounds "are receiving attention due to their potential adverse effects on animals and humans at low levels of exposure," said the report, co-authored by Merih Otker Uslu and Nihar Biswas of the University of Windsor. They sound a warning later in the report, which is a review of data collected from 2007-11.

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Oceans on Brink of Catastrophe: Why We Must Stop Global Warming & Industrial Pollution

The world's oceans are faced with an unprecedented loss of species comparable to the great mass extinctions of prehistory, a major report suggests today. The seas are degenerating far faster than anyone has predicted, the report says, because of the cumulative impact of a number of severe individual stresses, ranging from climate warming and sea-water acidification, to widespread chemical pollution and gross overfishing.

The coming together of these factors is now threatening the marine environment with a catastrophe "unprecedented in human history", according to the report, from a panel of leading marine scientists brought together in Oxford earlier this year by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).  

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What Would the World Look Like If We Relied on Industrial Agriculture to Feed Everyone?

By Ari LeVaux
The world's population will probably hit 9 billion by 2050. That's about the only thing agreed upon by partisans in a long-waged debate over how best to feed all those bellies. 

On March 8, Dr. Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, released a report arguing that the use of small-scale, diverse farming methods, which he calls "agroecology," can double agricultural production in poverty-stricken areas, increase the economic prospects of the inhabitants, and improve their local environment. 

This argument refutes a common dismissal of sustainable agriculture: that it could never feed the world. That's the contention of those who believe in agriculture methods that involve the intensive use of energy, water, machinery, and chemicals to grow cash crop monocultures. I recently discussed these competing paradigms with De Schutter, in the context of what it might look like if industrial agriculture were, in fact, to feed the world. 

"I'm surprised at the simplistic diagnosis that appears to be dominant in public discourse," De Schutter said. "The official mantra is we need a 70 percent increase in agricultural production to feed the world. But this completely oversimplifies the debate. It only pays attention at the supply side of the equation, when we must also work on demand -- for instance the overconsumption of meat in industrialized countries. By 2050, if the current curves continue, 50 percent of global cereal production will go either to feeding cattle or to the irresponsible push towards biofuels production and consumption through fiscal stimuli and subsidies." 

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Who Dares Question the Industrial Food System Over GM Salmon?

By Dan Kennedy
Guardian - UK, September 7, 2010
Straight to the Source

Click here to take action on this issue! For related articles and more information, please visit OCA's Resource Center on Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology or our Millions Against Monsanto Campaign page.

With fish stocks around the world depleted by overfishing and disrupted by climate change, farm-raised salmon stands as a viable if not entirely appetizing alternative.

Last Friday, though, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a potentially dangerous step. The agency ruled that salmon whose genes have been altered so that they grow more rapidly than their wild counterparts are safe for human consumption. In so doing, the FDA opened the door for salmon to become just another unhealthful cog in the industrial-food machine. And it may have foisted upon the public yet another cancer risk.

According to a report in the New York Times, FDA scientists found that the altered fish, developed by AquaBounty Technologies, based in the Boston area, were unlikely to escape into the environment and cross-breed with native schools of Atlantic salmon. The agency also found that even though the genetically altered salmon carry elevated levels of insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1), a suspected carcinogen, those levels are so minute that they pose no health risk.

Precautions aside, it requires considerably more than the customary level of naivety to believe wild salmon wouldn't be contaminated by their laboratory-designed cousins. If AquaBounty's progeny ever come to market, it would only be a matter of time before some unforeseen accident undid everyone's best intentions.

But it is the IGF-1 about which we truly ought to be concerned, because the FDA's finding is evidence of an unacceptably narrow focus. The substance occurs naturally in salmon and other animal products, and the agency tells us that the genetically altered fish contains only a tiny amount more. Yet, by considering such matters one at a time, the FDA may well be introducing us to many tiny risks that start adding up to a very real risk. 


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