Daily Review 03/02/2017

Written By: - Date published: 5:30 pm, February 3rd, 2017 - 39 comments
Categories: Daily review - Tags:

Daily review is also your post.

This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.

The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).

Don’t forget to be kind to each other …

(Graphic credit of the incredibly talented @Megapope and @Coleytangerina)

39 comments on “Daily Review 03/02/2017 ”

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  1. Paul 1
    3 February 2017 at 6:56 pm

    Do you need another reason to stop eating beef?
    Ractopamine

    Ractopamine is a feed additive to promote leanness in animals raised for their meat. Pharmacologically, it is a TAAR1 agonist and β adrenoreceptor agonist that stimulates β1 and β2 adrenergic receptors. It is the active ingredient in products known as Paylean for swine and Optaflexx for cattle, developed by Elanco Animal Health, a division of Eli Lilly and Company, for use in food animals for growth promotion.

    Ractopamine use has been banned in most countries, including the European Union, mainland China and Russia while 27 other countries, such as Japan, the United States, Canada, and South Korea, have deemed meat from livestock fed ractopamine safe for human consumption.

    The Russians understand its dangers

    Russia plans to temporarily ban imports of beef and beef products from New Zealand from February 6 after finding the feed additive ractopamine in some samples, Russia’s agriculture safety watchdog said in a statement on Thursday.

    The watchdog, known as Rosselkhoznadzor in Russian, said it was also considering banning fish imports from New Zealand due to traces of mercury in some supplies.

    Ractopamine, which is used to promote muscle growth, is prohibited for use in beef cattle in New Zealand, which promotes its reputation as a safe, natural producer in marketing its food products – particularly dairy – overseas.

    “New Zealand did not receive prior notification and officials are seeking further clarification about the announcement,” a spokesman for the Pacific nation’s Ministry for Primary Industries said in an email.

    If this has not persuaded you already….

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKeE_SPSbio

    [link fixed – weka]

    • weka 1.1
      3 February 2017 at 7:20 pm

      How to eat meat ethically

      Before she was a butcher, Meredith Leigh was a vegetarian. She was fascinated by plants and loved vegetables—how they grew, the way they tasted right out of the field, how they changed color and texture as they cooked.

      But during a trip to Vietnam in 2004—after Leigh had been a vegetarian for nine years and a vegan for two—a woman named Loi served her water buffalo. Aware that Loi had raised and slaughtered the animal herself, the act of eating it became an act of connecting, and Leigh began to consider the idea of ethical meat.

      “Eating gained new meaning,” she writes of that experience in The Ethical Meat Handbook: Complete Home Butchery, Charcuterie, and Cooking for the Conscious Omnivore. It was then, she says, “I began my journey into the meaningful consumption of animals.”

      Concerned that her previous choice to forego meat had had little effect on the systems by which animals are raised—and virtually no impact on the lives or deaths of those animals—Leigh started to identify with the concept of ethical meat.

      Leigh considers meat “ethical” if certain factors hold true: if the animal enjoys a good life and experiences a humane death, if the butcher uses each part of the body, and if the cook prepares or preserves the food to maximize its nutrition and taste. In talking about ethical meat, Leigh describes a system of relationships that involve exchanges of purpose and skill between animal, farmer, butcher, and cook.

      My emphasis.

      http://civileats.com/2016/05/27/how-a-former-vegetarian-became-a-butcher-and-ethical-meat-advocate/

      • Paul 1.1.1
        3 February 2017 at 7:32 pm

        Many see no such thing as ethical meat…..

        The Organic and ‘Free-Range’ Myths

        Morrissey – Meat is Murder
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FC1GRpYA-Q

        [link fixed – weka]

        • weka 1.1.1.1
          3 February 2017 at 7:55 pm

          The website I linked to, while it encompasses organic and free-range is in fact a different thing. Organic and free-range are not necessarily ethical, although they generally are more ethical than conventional and many are very ethical depending on who the farmer is. This is why it’s good to know who grows your meat, because that’s where you have the most influence over the wellbeing of animals.

          People who think meat is murder are obviously not going to think it’s possible to eat meat ethically, but as pointed out, they’ve left the fate of animals to the corporates who will treat them very badly.

          As for using PETA as a source, let’s just pick one of their comments apart,

          Cows on organic farms often aren’t given antibiotics—even when they’re sick or when their udders become infected, something that happens often—because medicated animals lose their “organic” status.

          Here’s the NZ Biogro standard from the above link,

          f. BioGro’s requirement to treat
          Certified livestock producers must never allow diseased or severely infected stock to go untreated in order that it may be classed as certi ed. Any BioGro licensee, who is proven to be keeping, or selling, or have recently kept or sold, stock that would not comply with the Animal Welfare Act will face immediate loss of certi cation of the whole property.

          Not all ‘organic’ is the same. It pays to understand which certifications can be trusted and why. PETA could of course have pointed this out and helped meat eaters make better choices that ensure better welfare for animals, but it doesn’t because it’s a vegan propaganda machine and would rather promote dogma than effective animal welfare.

      • Gabby 1.1.2
        3 February 2017 at 8:18 pm

        The russkies may have got some beef confused with one of their athletes.

    • weka 1.2
      3 February 2017 at 7:45 pm

      NZ Biogro organic standards for animals,

      v. The following products must not be included in or added to feed, or in any other way be given to farm animals:
      • artificial colouring agents;
      • all types of excrements including droppings, dung or other manure are prohibited in the
      diet of all species;
      • farm animal by-products and abattoir waste products such as meat meal, bone meal,
      and blood products to ruminants;
      • feed, such as soy and rape seed meal, that has been subjected to solvent extraction,
      e.g. hexane, or the addition of other chemical agents;
      • genetically engineered organisms or products thereof;
      • preservatives, except when approved as a processing aid;
      • pure amino acids;
      • synthetic appetisers;
      • synthetic growth promoters or stimulants; or
      • urea and other synthetic nitrogen compounds.

      x. Hormones and growth promotants
      The use of substances to promote growth or production, (including antibiotics, coccidiostats and other arti cial aids for growth promotion purposes) and the use of hormones or similar substances to control reproduction, e.g. induction or synchronisation of oestrus, or for other purposes, is prohibited.

      y. Growth promotants
      Production stimulants, suppressants and growth promoters are prohibited.

      http://www.biogro.co.nz/s/Module_5_Livestock-y83j.pdf

  2. Stephanie Rodgers 2
    3 February 2017 at 7:22 pm

    I must note that credit for the excellent Waitangi Day bingo board above goes to @Megapope and @Coleytangerina, two excellent human beings.
    https://twitter.com/Megapope/status/827332716601319425

    [I am very embarrassed. Graphic now credited appropriately – MS]

  3. Paul 3
    3 February 2017 at 7:24 pm

    George Monbiot always writes thought provoking articles.

    Visible text

    How corporate dark money is taking power on both sides of the Atlantic.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/feb/02/corporate-dark-money-power-atlantic-lobbyists-brexit

    • weka 3.1
      3 February 2017 at 7:28 pm

      what’s that first link suppose to be?

      • Paul 3.1.1
        3 February 2017 at 7:37 pm

        The Guardian article.
        I was busy answering your point about meat and forgot to place text inside.

    • Carolyn_nth 3.2
      3 February 2017 at 7:40 pm

      It kind of is depressing to read. Dark money and power, like a hydra, spreading its tentacles since WWII.

      It’s like, no matter what the left attempts to do, these shadow networks throw up their representatives.

      I have long wondered how it’s possible in NZ that disgraced, cabinet ministers return to power a few years down the tracks. The story of Liam Fox explains. Dark money and power are behind the scenes, manipulating, pulling the strings.

      Monbiot has claimed there is group working on a plan for a way forward for the left. Still waiting….?

      Only more bad news of the shadow powers, the hydra behind the scenes, pushing, leading, directing.

    • Pat 3.3
      3 February 2017 at 9:25 pm

      “In April 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt sent the US Congress the following warning: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism.” It is a warning we would do well to remember.”

      sadly we are too late, FDR’s lesson was not heeded …..corporate power has been greater than the state itself for quite some time…..the kickback, when it comes will not be pleasant.

  4. Paul 4
    3 February 2017 at 7:45 pm

    Philip Wollen : Animals Should Be Off The Menu

    Animals must be off the menu because tonight they are screaming in terror in the slaughterhouse, in crates, and cages. Vile ignoble gulags of despair.
    I heard the screams of my dying father as his body was ravaged by the cancer that killed him. And I realised I had heard these screams before.
    In the slaughterhouse, eyes stabbed out and tendons slashed, on the cattle ships to the Middle East and the dying mother whale as a Japanese harpoon explodes in her brain as she calls out to her calf.
    Their cries were the cries of my father.
    I discovered when we suffer, we suffer as equals.
    And in their capacity to suffer, a dog is a pig is a bear. . . . . . is a boy.
    Meat is the new asbestos – more murderous than tobacco……….

    Animal Rights is now the greatest Social Justice issue since the abolition of slavery.
    There are over 600 million vegetarians in the world.
    That is bigger than the US, England, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Canada, Australia combined! If we were one nation we would be bigger than the 27 countries in the European Union!!
    Despite this massive footprint, we are still drowned out by the raucous huntin’, shootin’, killin’ cartels who believe that violence is the answer – when it shouldn’t even be a question.
    Meat is a killing industry – animals, us and our economies.
    Medicare has already bankrupted the US. They will need $8 trillion invested in Treasury bills just to pay the interest. It has precisely zero!!
    They could shut every school, army, navy, air force, and Marines, the FBI and CIA – and they still won’t be able to pay for it.
    Cornell and Harvard say’s that the optimum amount of meat for a healthy diet is precisely ZERO.

    Water is the new oil. Nations will soon be going to war for it.
    Underground aquifers that took millions of years to fill are running dry.
    It takes 50,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef.
    1 billion people today are hungry. 20 million people will die from malnutrition. Cutting meat by only 10% will feed 100 million people. Eliminating meat will end starvation forever.

    If everyone ate a Western diet, we would need 2 Planet Earths to feed them. We only have one. And she is dying.
    Greenhouse gas from livestock is 50% more than transport . . . . . planes, trains, trucks, cars, and ships.
    Poor countries sell their grain to the West while their own children starve in their arms. And we feed it to livestock. So we can eat a steak? Am I the only one who sees this as a crime? Every morsel of meat we eat is slapping the tear-stained face of a starving child. When I look into her eyes, should I be silent?
    The earth can produce enough for everyone’s need. But not enough for everyone’s greed.
    We are facing the perfect storm.
    If any nation had developed weapons that could wreak such havoc on the planet, we would launch a pre-emptive military strike and bomb it into the Bronze Age.
    But it is not a rogue state. It is an industry.
    The good news is we don’t have to bomb it. We can just stop buying it.
    George Bush was wrong. The Axis of Evil doesn’t run through Iraq, or Iran or North Korea. It runs through our dining tables. Weapons of Mass Destruction are our knives and forks.

    So tonight I have 2 Challenges for the opposition:
    1. Meat causes a wide range of cancers and heart disease. Will they name one disease caused by a vegetarian diet?
    2. I am funding the Earthlings trilogy. If the opposition is so sure of their ground, I challenge them to send the Earthlings DVD to all their colleagues and customers. Go on I DARE YOU.
    Animals are not just other species. They are other nations. And we murder them at our peril.

    Hear it all here…….

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQCe4qEexjc

    [link fixed – weka]

  5. Peter Swift 5
    3 February 2017 at 8:10 pm

    Looks like Paul has found a new vegetarian hobby horse.
    Lucky he’s not in France posting on le standarde or he’d soon be eating his words.

  6. Muttonbird 6
    3 February 2017 at 8:38 pm

    Russia to ban New Zealand beef

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11794354

    Perhaps Trump’ll buy it?

  7. Carolyn_nth 7
    3 February 2017 at 9:17 pm

    Enjoying some of the inventive #DressLikeAWoman tweets.

    I think it’s a response to Trump saying his female staff should dress like a woman.

    Always remember to #DressLikeAWoman when working on active volcanoes, everybody.

    Photo with above link and the ones below:

    #dresslikeawoman dragging a wookie, with a grenade. #badass #CarrieFisher

    I’m not ashamed to #dresslikeawoman because I don’t think it’s shameful to be a woman. – @IggyPop

    Shirley Ann Jackson. Nuclear Physicist, Engineer, College President, #DressLikeAWoman

    Loads more at the hash tag – Friday night fun, with a serious twist.

  8. JanM 8
    3 February 2017 at 10:03 pm

    Love the Waitangi Day Bingo 🙂

  9. Paul 9
    3 February 2017 at 10:08 pm

    Good news.

    South Pacific islands ban western junk food and go organic

    A group of south Pacific islands are banning foreign junk food imports in favour of an all-local, organic diet as a way to combat future health problems.

    Torba province, part of Vanuatu, aims to impose restrictions on the import of western foodstuffs and instead take advantage of its productive agricultural land and rich natural resources.

    Located in the northern part of Vanuatu, Toba is often described as the “forgotten province” and the majority of its 10,000 people are subsistence farmers.

    Father Luc Dini, a community leader and head of the local tourism council, said a ban on foreign food imports would improve the health and wellbeing of islanders.

    “At the moment we have an infiltration of junk food from overseas,” he said.

    “It is easy to boil noodles or rice, but they have almost no nutritional value and there is no need to eat imported food when we have so much local food grown organically on our islands.”

  11. dukeofurl 11
    3 February 2017 at 11:31 pm

    I see Trump has signed an executive order making the day of his inauguration
    National day of Patriotic Devotion

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/23/trump-names-his-inauguration-day-a-national-day-of-patriotic-devotion/
    I kid you not, its something that Kim Jong Un would dream up.

    This is going to be big next week as how truly mad Trump is, its far worse than we could ever have dreamed

    ” The novelist Robert Harris drew comparison to the Nazi “day of awakening” to celebrate Hitler’s election in 1933.
    http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/shortcuts/2017/jan/24/all-missed-trump-national-day-of-patriotic-devotion-sad-inauguration.

  12. Muttonbird 12
    4 February 2017 at 12:06 am

    National’s brighter future is here to stay. Shit-house infrastructure everywhere…

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/89091778/muddy-water-prompts-boil-water-notice-for-levin

  14. joe90 14
    4 February 2017 at 12:17 am

    So, Arkansas is hell.

    .

    Arkansas Act 45, signed by Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson last Thursday, bans dilation and evacuation abortions, the most common abortion procedure during the second trimester of pregnancy. Rushed from filing to law in less than two months, the legislation effectively blocks abortions after 14 weeks by making the safest procedure a felony. The earliest current abortion bans block the procedure after 20 weeks.

    With no exception for rape or incest, and a clause that allows a woman’s spouse or parent to sue an abortion provider, the law potentially allows the fetus’s father to sue even in cases of spousal rape or incest, abortion rights activists say. The law could go into effect as early as spring.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/02/new-law-lets-dads-veto-abortions.html

  15. Muttonbird 15
    4 February 2017 at 12:22 am

    PN’s going off with the brighter future. These guys went to the hospital and were told to go back to the GP which they couldn’t afford.

    I’m not entirely certain what a GP can do for a skin cancer patient that an actual hospital cannot do but then this is Bill English’s New Zealand.

    According to Bill it’s about growth. Any kind of growth will do.

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/88813708/future-snatched-away-from-manawatu-couple

    • weka 15.1
      4 February 2017 at 12:48 am

      That’s a very sad story, and angry-making. BE tweeted this the other day,

      Bill English ‏@pmbillenglish Feb 1

      We’ll back people who work hard to manage their health issues or disability so they can live independently.

      Bill English ‏@pmbillenglish Feb 1

      We’ll back people who bravely leave behind welfare dependency to move into work.

      Bill English ‏@pmbillenglish Feb 1

      We’ll back hard-working people who get up early to milk the cows or to catch the bus to work, so they can raise their families.

      Which is exactly why that man is dying in poverty and his partner is looking after him in poverty. Because everyone should work or be treated like a bludger and god help you if you are too ill to work.

      btw, GP would probably have a better idea of how to respond to a potential skin carcinoma than an A and E doctor, and can do mole removal in the clinic.

  16. greywarshark 16
    4 February 2017 at 10:07 pm

    They were both cleaners so probably didn’t have spare cash. Then you have to be accepted by a GP. Was there one they could get to nearby? Then it would be helpful
    if the government brought in a health referral that the A&E could give to the patient so that they could get their problem looked at by a GP free and that would make it less likely that the visit would be put off. The GP would of course claim the fee from the health authority.