#How The World Wastes Food Infographic Every year the planet loses nearly a third of its food staggering 1. 4 billion tons.
The strain normally infected pigs and was seen rarely in humans. Then in 2012 healthcare workers across the U s. reported 309 human cases of influenza A (H3n2) variant also known as H3n2v.
Epidemiological studies indicated nearly all of the people who became sick with H3n2v in 2012 caught it from prize piggies shown at county fairs.
Now a new in depth study of the genetics of H3n2v in swine and humans in Ohio shows the epidemiological studies were right.
Samples of flu viruses taken from pigs and from people in Ohio during the 2012 outbreak were genetically close to one another according to the study
which involved swabbing the insides of 834 pigs's noses. We've decided pig boogers=poogers.
That means the outbreak really did come straight from infected pigs. In addition all of the cases recorded across the state were more than 99.5 percent similar to one another genetically indicating that it was just one flu strain that took residence in humans and swine alike.
It's a little funny to think of getting a flu from a pig at the county fair.
That's not exactly the kind of scene you imagine for the beginning of a sci-fi movie about the next big pandemic.
Yet pigs are a crucial petri dish in which influenza viruses evolve. Swine are susceptible to avian human
and swine flus and these virus can circulate inside pigs for varying lengths of time with no signs of illness.
This makes them great meet-markets for flu viruses to exchange genetic material. The H1n1 flu that reached pandemic proportions in 2009 first spent some time circulating among pigs in Asia Europe and North america.
Luckily H3n2v doesn't readily move between people which limits its ability to spread. People mostly catch it directly from swine.
The U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that people who are susceptible to complications from the flu--such as young kids older adults
and pregnant women--avoid pig barns at fairs. Keeping away from sick-looking pigs is important but not adequate.
Many of the pigs found to be carrying H3n2v looked healthy. The CDC also has a bunch of recommendations about hand-washing and not eating in pig barns
which doesn't sound appetizing anyway but I can imagine if you just nabbed yourself some funnel cake you might be tempted.
Don't do it! Nobody recommends avoiding agricultural fairs altogether. You can't get H3n2v from eating pork.
The study did find the virus was pretty widespread. Out of 40 unnamed fairs where researchers swabbed piggy noses 10 had more than one animal that carried H3n2v.
And even more scary six of those seven fairs didn't have any sick-looking pigs.
Public health departments should monitor pigs closely for Influenza a viruses the study authors wrote in their paper
California s drought means less alfalfa for dairy cows forcing farmers to import feed from other states.
Turkey which produces 70 percent of the world s hazelnut crop was hit hard by an unseasonable frost and hailstorms wiped out a huge portion of their supply;
but in July their parent company Ferrero announced that they d purchased one of Turkey s largest hazelnut producers effectively buying out the middleman.
A nasty virus that causes severe diarrhea in pigs has killed off an estimated 5-10 percent of pigs in the United states causing prices to rise dramatically.
but the disease is deadly to piglets. Breakfast prognosis: Pricier pork products are definitely here
My family have been cattle ranchers for generations. Abley is one of at least 1500 people in the United states who suffer allergic reactions after eating meat
non-primate mammals such as pigs sheep and cows. Humans don t make the sugar and we all have some form of immune response to it.
Yet most people have no biological reaction to eating livestock which makes the tickborne meat allergy so surprising.
She thinks wild turkeys may be to blame; they were reintroduced to Long island a couple of years ago for hunting enthusiasts
Finally this vegan milk can be turned into Real Vegan Cheese in the same way that normal cheese is produced from cow milk.
and could also curb dairy farming's impacts on the environment such as emissions of methane a greenhouse gas from cow farts and decomposing manure.
It may be possible for example to help livestock feed on toxic plants like juniper which is spreading throughout the Southwest
or help raise cattle in places where noxious weeds often hurt rancher's productivity. You could presumably give the cattle microbes from others that have become accustomed to eating these plants
or perhaps even use bacteria found in the droppings of other animals (here's looking at you packrats).
Traditionally cheesemakers use rennet from the lining of cow stomachs to get their chymosin ut an estimated 80 to 90 percent of hard cheeses in the U s. are made with bacteria modified with the rennet-producing cow gene.
livestock feedcottontrait: Tolerates herbicides; resists insects Total U s. crop by acreage: 82%herbicide-tolerant; 75%insect-resistant Found in:
livestock feedpapayatrait: Resists ringspot virus Total U s. crop by acreage: More than 50%Found in: Whole fruit and other productsrapeseedtrait:
livestock feedsquashtrait: Resists various viruses Total U s. crop by acreage: 12%Found in: Whole vegetables and other productssugar beets*Trait:
This allows the other species to steer clear and avoid putting up all the energy that would be required for stealing away said flower.
#Breeding Bald Poultry To Withstand Global Warmingrising global temperatures pose a major risk to world food supplies.
because the adaptation allows the south-of-the-equator poultry to throw off additional body heat
and South american poultry they hope American producers will crossbreed them to North american birds. It could take around 10 generations of chickens carefully bred to arrive at new heat-resistant breeds that can successfully reproduce on their own.
Poultry production is booming worldwide as Rothman reports with global food experts projecting that it will top 100 million tons in 2015 and 143 million tons by 2030 An interruption in this supply could cause a humanitarian disaster.
Research projects underway include goats whose milk is designed to prevent deadly diarrhea in children and chickens in
So instead of giving pigs mouse genes scientists could make domestic pigs with genes normally found in wild pigs.
The end result would be engineered pigs that farmers could have made through generations of careful breeding geneticists argue.
I don't think those who don't wish to eat GM foods will find GM pigs-with-pig-genes any better than pigs with mouse genes.
You will notice items like pasteurized nonfat milk a variety of nonfat milk that comes not from the pasteurization process but from the Pasteur Cows of the Lower Himalayan Range.
when the Mayo Clinic injected human stem cells into fetal pigs creating swine with human blood
It s one thing to flip a single protein as he did to create transgenic goats that produce spider-silk protein in their milk.
and 20000 lab-grown cow muscle cells the world's first lab-grown burger made its debut last year.
Raising cattle takes up a lot of arable land and water and creates greenhouse gas emissions. Engineers working on in vitro meat hope their creations will be less harmful on the environment.
That's still not competitive with cow-grown ground beef. Plus it doesn't take into account other costs of running a bioreactor such as hiring three or four well-trained people.
It's not clear yet that cultured meat is r will be ore environmentally friendly than meat cut from cows.
#Pig Heart Transplants For Humans Are On The Wayshe's got the heart of a pig nd that's a good thing.
Researchers are reporting that a baboon is still alive after receiving a heart transplanted from a pig The Telegraph reports.
Previously when researchers tried to transplant pig hearts into primates the primates'bodies would reject the transplants within six months The Telegraph reports.
Ultimately researchers want to make pig hearts transplantable into humans. Pigs could provide a larger supply of the organ than human donors can closing the tragic gap between supply and demand.
In the U s. about 3000 people are on the waiting list for a heart transplant but only about 2000 hearts become available each year according to the U s. National Heart Lung and Blood Institute
Pig hearts are promising because they're close enough to human hearts in anatomy. Doctors also already use heart valves taken from pigs and cows in human surgeries.
It seems pig hearts are just a little too foreign for primate bodies to accept easily however.
In previous studies the hearts would trigger a massive immune response in the primates they were transplanted into.
and they've been a major barrier to developing pig heart transplants The Telegraph reports. It will be years before pig hearts are ready for human patients
if they ever are. To make hearts that baboons nd in the future humans on't reject the National Heart Lung
and Blood Institute team specially engineered its pigs to have some human genes and to lack some pig genes.
The researchers also gave their baboons drugs to suppress their immune systems. Human patients take immunosuppressant drugs
Baboons who received hearts from un-genetically modified pigs rejected the hearts within a day.
Now that the team has shown pig hearts are able to hang around inside primates safely the next step will be to actually replace baboons'hearts with pig hearts The Telegraph reports.
The baboon in this study has a pig heart in its body alongside its own heart
Its name derives from the layers of fat on oilbird chicks which have historically been rendered for use as torches.
Cows. Cattle emit methane a greenhouse gas that's less abundant than carbon dioxide but pound for pound has contributed more to global warming than CO2 over the last 100 years.
Methane is often an underappreciated greenhouse gas but it's been back in the news lately.
Worldwide however domestic livestock are actually the top source of human-related methane emissions. So researchers have come up with some interesting ideas for making cows less methane-ey.
Financial times recently reported on a few of these efforts as has Popular Science. First things first. Apparently most cow methane doesn't come from cow farts.
Ninety-seven per cent of all the methane gas is released by the front end through burps not from the back end Juan Tricarico of the Innovation Center for U s. Dairy a nonprofit research organization told Financial times. Tricarico
directs a project at his center called Cow of the Future. So what goes into the cow of the future?
Academic researchers are trying to better understand the microbes that live in the cow digestive system whence cow methane comes.
Such research could reveal the best least methane-ey diet for cows. Or maybe the cow of the future could take probiotic supplements to boost her gut population of non-methane-producing microbes?
One U s. company already puts research like that to work. C-Lock of South dakota sells feeding stations containing supplements such as basil that reduce the methane cows produce Financial times reports.
C-Lock also sells a machine that vacuums up cows'breath and measures its methane content.
In one quirky solution researchers in Argentina have developed backpacks for cows that collect the cows'gaseous emissions.
Theoretically such gas could be a power source. But collecting cow methane on a large scale is totally improbable Jorge Antonio Hilbert a researcher with Argentina's National Institute of Agricultural Technology told Financial times. The backpacks are mainly for measuring cow emissions as Popular
Science reported in 2008. Financial times i
#Missiles And Rockets Might Soon Smell Like Pine Treesin an effort to launch things skyward in a more sustainable way researchers have coaxed bacteria to produce a highly combustible compound called pinene.
Conifers naturally excrete the stuff in their resin lending the plants part of their distinctive scent.
Pinene*also happens to rival the properties of JP-10--a liquid rocket fuel that's widely used for commercial and military launches.
#Goats Found To Be Much Smarter Than Previously Believednew research found that most goats tested could quickly figure out how to solve a mechanical puzzle that yielded a delicious piece of fruit.
Of the 12 goats tested nine of them got it within fewer than a dozen trials on average.
which actually might have been a smart idea (and it's not like the goats knew they'd be DQ'ed)
The scientists retested the goats 10 months later and this time they solved the puzzle much more quickly within two minutes.
The speed at which the goats completed the task at 10 months compared to how long it took them to learn indicates excellent long-term memory co-author Dr Elodie Briefer at ETH Zurich said in a statement.
The study published this week in Frontiers in Zoology shows that goats can learn rather quickly
Researchers had suspected that goats are intelligent based on their ability to colonize new and harsh environments to find
and remember the location of hard-to-reach foods (for example Moroccan goats are known to climb trees to reach sprigs)
and also because they ate the domestic livestock we liked a lot more. But then interest in environmental conservation took hold.
#8 Steps To Sustainable Meat And Milkglobally deforestation driven by clearing land for cattle alone accounts for close to one-fifth of global greenhouse gas pollution.
or thousands of cows in CAFOS (concentrated animal feedlot operations) often leads to water pollution and air pollution the latter largely methane a powerful heat-trapping gas that contributes to destabilizing the climate.
Livestock account for 14.5%of human-induced greenhouse-gas emissions exceeding that from transportation notes the report.
In response an international research team suggests eight ways to make ruminant agriculture aising cows goats sheep buffalo camels llamas reindeer and yaks for meat and dairy nvironmentally sustainable.
Far from being incompatible the researchers emphasize that C rop and livestock farming complement each other.
which supply postharvest residues to livestock. Instead of feeding livestock grains like wheat corn and soybeans stress the researchers cows goats sheep
and other ruminants should get as much food as possible from sources humans cannot consume. These include grazing fodders like hay
95 percent of milk in the European union comes from grass-fed livestock the article notes
while in New zealand milk cows get just 10 percent of their diet from grains and 90 percent from grazing.
Among the report's other strategies for sustainable livestock: It's about developing the correct system for the correct environment says Lee in the podcast.
Click here to read about all eight steps to sustainable livestock u
#The Garbage Manin December 2001 American environmental activist Jim Puckett traveled to the town of Guiyu in southeast China to look for old computers.
I cannot even grapple with the idea even with races of dogs cattle pigeons or fowls;
several varieties of sheep have been turned out together on the Cumberland mountains and one particular breed is found to succeed so much better than all the others that it fairly starves the others to death.
Now we are going beyond that to understand how flies steer and maneuver. Learning how nature creates superior sensors could lead to lighter smarter drones.
and a team of surgeons and engineers to develop a glue that they recently tested in hearts of living rats and pigs.
The tests Karp and del Nido performed included closing heart defects in laboratory rats and closing cuts in the arteries of pigs.
They also used the glue to attach a patch made from another biodegradable material Karp invented onto the thick inner wall of the still-beating hearts of four pigs.
They followed the pigs for up to 24 hours. They found the patches stayed in place the entire time even after they gave two of the pigs an injection that raised their heart rates to about 190 beats per minute a heart rate a person might achieve
when exercising vigorously and their blood pressures to about 200 mmhg which is a bit higher than even unhealthy human blood pressures usually reach.
#Breeding For High Milk Production Created Less-Fertile Cowsafter generations of careful breeding dairy cows around the world produce more milk than ever.
*Now a team of European biologists has uncovered one reason behind the decline at least for several types of Danish cattle.
The same genes that make cows produce more milk also kill off cow embryos they found.
The European researchers found that up to a third of Nordic Red Cattle are missing one copy of each of the same four genes.
Like humans cows are supposed to have two copies of all of their genes one from their moms and one from their dads.
but at the same time having one copy of each makes a cow produce more milk than normal cows that have two copies.
They simply chose high-producing cows to breed thus passing on their shortened genes. That's why the genetic flaw is so common in Nordic cows.
Inbreeding makes the situation worse but with artificial insemination it's common on farms. Farmers could improve things by checking
whether the bulls they use in breeding are missing copies of these four genes Goutam Sahana a Danish geneticist who worked on the study said in a statement.
Those that are shouldn't mate with high-milk-producing cows which may be missing those genes too.
What about cattle in the U s.?This study looked only at Nordic herds so it can't say
whether American cows have the same genetic flaws. But American researchers are also looking into genetics for an explanation of fertility declines in cows at home.
Last year Texas A&m announced it received a $3 million grant to study the genetics of dairy cattle fertility.
After all it's those cute baby calves that keep the farm going. Check out the entire study in the journal PLOS Genetics.*
*Some hard numbers for the curious: In 1960 the average American Holstein cow gave about 6300 kilograms (13900 pounds) of milk a year.
In 2000 the average cow gave 11800 kilograms. In 1970 the average cow needed 1. 8 rounds of artificial insemination to get pregnant.
In 2000 cows needed on average three rounds. Cows now also take longer to become fertile again after giving birth to a calf a
#With few hard frosts, tropical mangroves push northcold-sensitive mangrove forests have expanded dramatically along Florida's Atlantic Coast as the frequency of killing frosts has declined according to a new study based on 28 years
of satellite data from the University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Environmental Research center in Edgewater Md.
and fed to the likes of livestock poultry and salmon among other uses--has led bacteria to evolve Hollis writes.
so you can reduce the amount of grain you feed the cattle says Hollis. It's about giving antibiotics to baby chicks
#Efforts to curb climate change require greater emphasis on livestockwhile climate change negotiators struggle to agree on ways to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions they have paid inadequate attention to other greenhouse gases associated with livestock according to an analysis
Among the largest human-related sources of methane are ruminant animals (cattle sheep goats and buffalo) and fossil fuel extraction and combustion.
One of the most effective ways to cut methane the researchers wrote is to reduce global populations of ruminant livestock especially cattle.
or a#oefarm to fork#analysis the researchers observed that greenhouse gas emissions from cattle
and sheep production are 19 to 48 times higher (on the basis of pounds of food produced) than they are from producing protein-rich plant foods such as beans grains or soy products.
Unlike nonruminant animals such as pigs and poultry ruminants produce copious amounts of methane in their digestive systems.
The authors also observed that on a global basis ruminant livestock production is having a growing impact on the environment:
In addition to reducing direct methane emissions from ruminants cutting ruminant numbers would deliver a significant reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of feed crops for livestock they added.#
#Among agricultural approaches to climate change reducing demand for meat from ruminants offers greater greenhouse gas reduction potential than do other steps such as increasing livestock feeding efficiency or crop yields per acre.
Cutting the number of ruminant livestock could have additional benefits for food security human health and environmental conservation involving water quality wildlife habitat
and easily infect farm animals such as cows sheep pigs and chickens. Humans can be infected by eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables.
#Controlling parasitic worms with genetic selectionhelminths are gastrointestinal parasitic worms that have become a major concern and source of economic loss for sheep producers around the world.
According to the paper the sheep industry has become dependent on drugs to control these parasites. Over time these drugs are less effective as helminths become resistant to the drugs.
Certain breeds of sheep are more immune to helminths than the conventional breeds used in Canada
This is key for the public as well as the sheep industry. With today's developments in genomic selection breeding sheep for helminth resistance can be achieved efficiently without adversely affecting other economically important traits explained Niel Karrow lead author of the paper a researcher at the Centre for Genetic Improvement of Livestock at the University of Guelph.
We believe that breeding for helminth resistance when combined with good biosecurity and pasture management practises will greatly help to control against production losses due to gastrointestinal parasites.
Hens pheasants partridges and turkeys are game-birds (Galliformes. Both orders are famous not just for their flesh but also for their striking and elaborate plumages
but the exquisite patterns of bird plumage such as the spots of the guinea fowl and the barred patterns of ducks and turkeys to just name a few have received much less attention.
or livestock manures to provide better natural fertilizer for next generation crop production. They hope to conduct field tests with a view to assisting the development of commercial products that will be used to improve the health and productivity of sugarcane crops whilst reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers.
It's a bit like bankers carving turkeys for the homeless on Christmas day. Despite this Professor Campbell argues that the motivations behind hiring a hermit reflect a lost appreciation of emotional depth or the'pleasing melancholy'.
#Contraception program effectively manages bison populationthe wild bison roaming Catalina Island are a major attraction for the nearly 1 million tourists who visit the Channel Island's most popular destination every year.
But managing the number of bison so that the herd remains healthy and doesn't endanger the health of the rest of the Island has been a major challenge for wildlife biologists.
Previously more than two-thirds of the cows delivered calves every year. After receiving the contraceptive the calving rate dropped to 10.4%in the first year and 3. 3%the following year.
The Conservancy's study demonstrated for the first time that this type of contraceptive will work in a wild herd a finding that can help improve bison management programs throughout the United states. The success of the Catalina Island Conservancy's bison contraception program demonstrates the innovative approaches
By proving the effectiveness of this humane approach to herd management this research will be a benefit to bison herds throughout the U s. It also lays the groundwork for further contraceptive studies in other wild species. The bison were brought first to the Island in 1924
The Catalina Island Conservancy which protects 88%of Catalina Island had conducted previously studies that found the Island could support only about 150 to 200 bison.
To control the herd's size the Conservancy had been periodically conducting roundups and shipping bison to the mainland.
Shipping the bison to the mainland was costly and it raised concerns about the stress on the animals during shipment and the expansion of the herd beyond ecologically sustainable numbers between shipments said Julie King director of conservation
Beginning in 2009 the Conservancy's scientists injected the female bison with porcine zona pellucida (PZP) a contraceptive that had been used for fertility control in zoos wild horses and white tail deer.
In addition to substantially reducing the number of new calves the PZP had no apparent effect on pregnant females or their offspring.
if the female bison can regain their fertility after a period of time without the contraceptive. The bison contraception program is a good example of trying to reach a balance with cultural aesthetic
or recreational needs and uses and cost-effective natural resource management to maintain the health of the ecosystem said John J. Mack chief conservation and education officer.
Mandondo as leader of a study published in Springer's journal Human ecology believes that concerted and coordinated efforts are needed to solve the related dilemmas faced by this African country.
The above story is provided based on materials by Springer. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length h
And Soay sheep can eat up to 30 percent moss in winter. Analysis of the pikas'caecal pellets showed they contained six times more protein than the moss they ate.
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