19 Feb 2006
Organic diets lower children's exposure to two common pesticides

At last - another Study in Stupidity! I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, to learn that eating foods that aren't coated with pesticides reduces the pesticide concentration to non-detectable levels...

What's next for this study's authors? How about "not swimming in motor oil reduces motor oil exposure"? Or "not eating lead paint chips reduces lead levels"? I wonder how much this "study" cost us - it was funded by the EPA.

Organic diets lower children's dietary exposure to two common pesticides used in US agricultural production, according to a study by Emory University researcher Chensheng Alex Lu, PhD. The substitution of organic food items for children's normal diets substantially decreased the pesticide concentration to non-detectable levels.

(link) [EurekAlert! - Breaking News]

00:00 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Bird Flu Roundup

Here's the bird flu news my aggregator spewed forth this morning... India's culling, Europe's locking'em up. The downside to the former approach is that it's messy and expensive, the downside to the latter is that it creates overcrowding, which could lead to other, equally serious, problems.

European authorities are pushing ahead with measures to boost defenses against the deadly form of avian influenza and prevent a large outbreak when migratory birds begin traveling north next month.

(link) [CNN]

France and India say birds in their nations have caught the lethal H5N1 strain that is spreading around the world through birds and has occasionally infected people.

(link) [CNN]

Indian health officials begin the slaughter of half a million birds, after detecting the first cases of deadly bird flu.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

AFP - A poultry farmer has died of suspected bird flu while health workers have begun carrying out a mass culling of birds after India was hit by the deadly H5N1 strain of avian flu, officials say.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link