Of Pink Slime & Buckyballs; The World Outside Your Door

McDonald's has issued a statement that they will no longer use "pink slime" as an ingredient in their hamburgers. Image Credit: McDonald's Corporation

Of Pink Slime & Buckyballs; The World Outside Your Door

The scariest things happen when one opens the lid of their laptop and logs on to Twitter ... one doesn't even have to venture out into the world to be confronted by attacks to ones understanding of safety and healthy standards.

Fundamentally the properties of materials can be changed by nanotechnology. We humans can arrange molecules in a way that they do not normally occur in nature. The material strength, electronic and optical properties of materials can all be altered using nanotechnology.

First off, the tale of the use of a bonding food agent and filler known as "Pink Slime" went viral this week all over the internet. This "Tweet" seen from cultural and political radio talk show host, Tammy Bruce.

Tammy Bruce @HeyTammyBruce
Gah! 70% of U.S. ground beef contains ‘pink slime’ goo.gl/IoY2o

Pink Slime - J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute, defended the practice as a way to safely use what otherwise would be wasted. “BLBT (Boneless Lean Beef Trimmings) is a sustainable product because it recovers lean meat that would otherwise be wasted,” he said in a statement. Image Credit: BPI via ABC News

This excerpted and edited from The Raw Story -

Whistleblowers: 70 percent of U.S. ground beef contains ‘pink slime’
By Stephen C. Webster - Thursday, March 8, 2012 12:35 EST

Let’s hope you didn’t eat a hamburger before clicking on this story.

A former U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist has come forward with a startling tale of how a substance known as “pink slime” has been embedded in about 70 percent of ground beef sold in the U.S. — a topic ABC News investigated for a segment Wednesday night.

“Pink slime” is largely made up of connective tissue that used to be reserved only for dog foods. It was not classified as “meat” because it was largely seen as unfit for human consumption. It also contains ammonia, which is used to kill off bacteria so people who eat it do not get sick.

But in the early 90s, former undersecretary of agriculture Joann Smith decided that it was meat, allowing it to enter the human food chain. When she left her post in 1993, she immediately took a job with Beef Products, Inc. on their board of directors.

The meat industry now refers to it as “lean finely textured beef,” but in a government memo USDA scientist Gerald Zirnstein coined the term “pink slime,” which now appears to have stuck. Zirnstein and fellow former USDA scientist Carl Custer told ABC News that it has become so prolific, “pink slime” can now be found in approximately 70 percent of U.S. ground beef.

“Pink slime” was in the news last month after several major fast food chains announced they would no longer use it as filler in their hamburgers. Despite those restaurants’ plans, the U.S. government has continued to purchase “pink slime” for use in school lunches, according to a report out this week by the News Corp.-run iPad newspaper The Daily.
[Reference Here]

Danielle @danzerotti, a self-described "happily married mother of 4, tweeted "Another reason my 4 kids should be glad that I take the time to prepare their lunches at home every day. As much as I complain."

"Pink slime" is bits of meat and muscle salvaged from slaughterhouse floors that are treated with a pink chemical to kill any dangerous pathogens. According to an earlier report by msnbc.com, the unappetizing pink goo is widely used in the food industry as an anti-microbial agent in meats and as a leavening agent in bread and cake products. It's regulated by the U.S. Agriculture Department (and has been allowed for human consumption since a favorable ruling by the USDA during the Clinton Administration), which classifies it as "generally recognized as safe." Nevertheless, McDonald's, have said they are pulling the infamous "pink slime" from their hamburgers.

We do not know how many large hamburger serving food restaurant chains (McDonald's being the largest) are still using the lesser expensive slime" filler infavor of profit motive but we do know this truth tweeted in response to Tammy Bruce @HeyTammyBruce referenced earlier in this posting.

Edmund Jenks @TheEDJE
@HeyTammyBruce IN-N-OUT raises, processes, and grinds all of their own beef in a dedicated channel. This is a corporate hallmark.

Or as IN-N-OUT loves to say in its tagline ... "Freshness You Can Taste".

The other very disturbing item to flash across the twitter feed of communications on TweetDeck was this item having to do with radiation and "Buckyballs" used in medical procedures primarily to address the onslaught of Cancer.

Alexander Higgins‏ @kr3at
Highest Radiation Levels Since Fukushima Disaster Recorded in Los Angeles, CA bit.ly/zOySIW

This excerpted and edited from Alexander Higgins Blog -

Highest Radiation Levels Since Fukushima Disaster Recorded in Los Angeles, CA
Posted by Alexander Higgins - March 9, 2012 at 11:36 pm

A March 6th test of a HEPA filter recorded radiation levels 668% or 6.68 times the normal background radiation levels. This test took place 43 days after initial tests and shows a 130% increase since January 22nd.

“The California Highway Patrol considers anything over three times background, 300% of background above, a trigger level to a hazardous materials situation,” reported the EnviroReporter.

Considering that it is now documented FACT that the NRC and other US agencies worked to cover up the dangers posed to the United States from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, these independent radiation tests are absolutely paramount to get out to the American people.
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The March 6 test of the combined dust came in at a sizzling 668% of background or 6.68 times normal. Since the last testing period, the radiation detected has risen another 130% indicating a continued upward trend.

That radiation is rising in Los Angeles comes as no surprise considering the enormous amount of radioactive ‘buckeyball’ filled with 60 uranium uranyls apiece that has been being produced at the stricken complex for almost a year. A just-released U.C. Davis report describing the phenomena is also examined in Beta Watch.

We now posits that this radiation ahead of the main swell through repeated aeration resultant of choppy Pacific water in storms, is picked up and moved on the winds as sea spray and mist moving ahead of the current. No other explanation is so compelling than this mechanism of increased mobility of this radiation most likely in the form of buckyballs that may, as the U.C. Davis report suggests, the same nanoparticle model that could cage in mobile spheres plutonium-239, strontium-90, cesium-137 and the deadly host of other radionuclides from Fukushima that have poisoned the Pacific for nearly a year.
[Reference Here]

Buckyballs - Visitors' shadows manipulate and reshape projected images of "Buckyballs." "Buckyball," or a buckminsterfullerene molecule, is a closed cage-structure molecule with a carbon network. "Buckyball" was named for R. Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller (1895-1983), a scientist, philosopher and inventor, best known for creating the geodesic dome. Image Credit: © 2003 Museum Associates/Los Angeles County Museum

Unless one has had the medical procedure used to combat Cancer, one may not be familiar with the definition of Buckyball as excerpted and edited from PopSci.com:

Chemotherapy is notorious for the toll it takes on the entire body. It kills cancer cells, sure, but it kills a lot of healthy cells, too. But soon a new advance in carbon chemistry may replace the shotgun blast of chemo with a radiation sniper shot.

Scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University have devised a technique for placing radioactive molecules inside the soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as buckyballs. Thanks to new advances in cancer targeting, the buckyballs might be able to deliver the radioactive particles to specific cancer cells. This method would provide a targeted chemotherapy that would avoid the painful and prolonged side effects caused by today's full-body radiation treatments.

To make the buckyballs, the scientists zapped carbon rods with plasma until the the rods were reduced to ash. The scientists then took the ash and passed it through a radioactive solution. After purification, the resultant mixture contains radioactive buckyballs, and will dissolve in a biofluid.
[Reference Here]

For we, at MAXINE, all of this leads to lessons learned early in life through experiences learned in building block organizations like the Boy Scouts of America - ie: Leave a campsite cleaner than as one found it ... or as the requirements for a Backpacking Merit Badge list - Describe the importance of using Leave No Trace principles while backpacking, and at least five ways you can lessen the crew's impact on the environment.



** Article first published as Of Pink Slime & Buckyballs; The World Outside Your Door on Technorati **

Knock, Knock - Orange You Glad We Now Have E85?

What do you get when you unravel the orange peel pictured above? A renewable fuel resource, that’s what! Image Credit: Worth 1000

Knock, Knock - Orange You Glad We Now Have E85?

Yes, this is a new take on that old “Knock, Knock” joke … but the outcome of this exchange holds great promise.

One of the biggest limitations found with the creation of Ethanol come from the type of matter the liquid is processed or converted from. When one uses food substances like corn or sugar cane, this puts additional stress on some segments of our economic society. The costs of everything associated with corn (for example) shoot up because the supply becomes restricted due to the increased demand, all the while, our landfills are burying perfectly good fodder for the Ethanol mill!

Take this item about Orange Peels … that’s right, the stuff that is being carted off to a landfill to take up additional space along with twigs, lawn clippings, and waste cardboard.

At MAXINE, we say convert it all!

This from the National Association of Convenience Stores -

Citrus-Powered Ethanol?
NACS News & Media Center - July 23, 2007

MIAMI – Florida oranges might not just fuel consumers anymore – the citrus fruit might help fuel cars, the Miami Herald reports. FPL Energy revealed plans to work with a citrus processor and a new energy firm to build one of the world’s first processing plants that would use citrus peels as the base for ethanol.

If built during the next two years, the plant could output approximately 4 million gallons of ethanol. On day, the technology could produce as much as 60 million citrus-to-ethanol gallons, a mere fraction of the 8.7 billion gallons of gasoline consumed in the Florida.

“The idea is we would have the land produce both our food and our fuel,” David Stewart, president of Citrus Energy, told the newspaper. Citrus Energy will assist FPL in constructing the plant with approximately $3 million in state financial aid. “We’re turning a liability for the citrus industry into an asset.”

Citrus peel more easily converts into ethanol than corn and, since it uses a waste product, doesn’t use food for fuel, Stewart said.
Share your opinion on this story with NACS

Gov. Charlie Crist praised FPL for looking into alternative fuels. In 2006, Florida produced approximately 110 million 90-pound boxes of oranges.
Reference Here>>

H5N1 Caution, Not Fear, For Food Marketing Institute

The supermarket is an exciting place for small children, but sometimes it can all get too frustrating and they go into overload. There are ways to make shopping a less stressful time for children and parents. Image Credit: New Zealand Ministry of Social Development

H5N1 Caution, Not Fear, For Food Marketing Institute

An "ounce of caution is worth a pound of cure" was a famous phrase in decades past that may make its way back into favor if the Food Marketing Institute has its attitude adopted.

The distribution channel for supermarkets is run so effectively that people only carry enough fresh food for about three to four days. When and if the H5N1 avian flu pandemic hits the human population, people will be urged not to go out into public and eat in public places.

So what is a food distribution system to do to make sure people who are able to live through the pandemic do not die from starvation?

Excerpts from The Associated Press via Business Week -

Grocers prep for pandemic run on food
By TIMBERLY ROSS - The Associated Press February 18, 2007, 2:06PM EST

OMAHA, Neb. - Stocking up on food is as simple as a trip to the grocery store, a veritable land of plenty for Americans.

"It's so easy when you have three grocery stores in your vicinity," said Becky Jones of Omaha, who stocks up once a week for her family of three. "You think: how could you possibly not get what you needed?"

But will fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, bread, milk and other household staples still be available if the U.S. is hit with an anticipated bird flu pandemic? If state and federal officials urge people to stay away from public places, like restaurants and fast-food establishments, will they be able to get the groceries they need to prepare food in their homes?
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Unlike other critical infrastructure sectors like water, energy and health care, the food industry isn't getting much help from state and federal governments when it comes to disaster planning. That puts the burden on individual supermarket chains and wholesalers to deal with a potentially large number of sick workers that could affect store operations and disrupt the food supply.

"The industry is actively thinking through contingency plans, so if it should happen, our members would be well prepared to deal with it," said Tim Hammonds, president of the Food Marketing Institute, an advocate for grocery wholesalers and retail supermarkets nationwide.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates a third of the population could fall ill if the H5N1 strain of the bird flu mutates into a form that spreads easily from person to person.
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But if a pandemic emerges, the Department of Homeland Security projects worker absenteeism to reach 40 percent or more over a prolonged period. Hammonds said retail food stores would have to contend with worker shortages and disruptions in the supply chain.

The food and agriculture industry is listed among 13 critical-infrastructure sectors that the Department of Homeland Security says must remain functional during a pandemic.

"Having those critical facilities open -- like power, water, food -- becomes very important" during a national disaster such as a pandemic, said Keith Hanson, an outreach coordinator for Nebraska's Center for Biopreparedness Education.
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Hanson said continued operations of power and water utilities are of the utmost importance, but grocery stores rank highly too. That's because people today keep less food on hand, opting instead to make weekly trips to the grocery store.

Americans are also dining out more than they have in the past. Money spent on food prepared outside the home rose from 34 percent of total food costs in 1974 to about 50 percent in 2004, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Food Marketing Institute's Hammonds said a widespread pandemic will likely cause food consumption to shift away from restaurants and fast-food establishments and toward in-home eating, causing a greater demand for groceries.

"That means stores would need to be prepared for an increase in volume," he said.

Hy-Vee, a West Des Moines, Iowa-based supermarket chain that operates more than 200 stores in the Midwest, does not have a disaster plan developed in the event of avian flu. But company spokeswoman Chris Friesleben said the company keeps abreast of the illness through the Food Marketing Institute.

"The food supply is essential to the well-being of the community," said Hammonds. "We've been through a lot about what we need to do as a supermarket."

That includes urging wholesalers and retailers to talk with their suppliers about alternative sources for their products and to anticipate what products will be in high demand in a pandemic situation, such as medicines and food staples.

Stephanie Childs, a spokeswoman for Omaha-based ConAgra Foods Inc., said a company task force was formed more than a year ago to develop an operating plan in the event of a national disaster. The plan specifically addresses bird flu, examines areas that could be affected and how the company could respond, she said.
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The company employs about 27,000 people, but Homeland Security projections indicate that number could fall to 16,200 during a pandemic.

Childs said such worker shortages and difficulties with suppliers getting their products to ConAgra plants were among the potential problems the company identified. She did not disclose how the company would address those issues.

The federal government and public health agencies are urging people to stock up on nonperishable food, like canned goods and dried fruit, to ensure they have to food to eat during a pandemic.

Jones, the Omaha woman, said that's a proactive approach, but was worried that people with limited incomes may not be able to afford a large stockpile of food.

She stopped short of calling for the government to oversee the food industry's pandemic planning, but said, "If they see a crisis that is on the horizon, they do have to give us some type of warning."
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