walls.corpus

In case you wanted to eat fast-food hamburger

Tuesday, 5 January, 2010 — technological-failure government unintended-consequences food-safety

I love red meat, and I’m getting tired of reading of how utterly disgusting the industrial process of raising cows, slaughtering them and processing meat is.

Michael Moss writing for the New York Times:

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

I am blown away that a company selling a food product with a well-established pathogen hazard gets a pass on inspection.

Back in October, Moss had another piece about E. coli in tainted hamburger that’s also well-worth reading.

A big part of the solution is knowing and insisting on knowing where your food comes from and how it got there. If you’re committed to eating red meat, find a local butcher, a supermarket like Whole Foods that grinds their hamburger in-store without byproduct or get a Kitchen Aid attachment and grind your own.

Earth-Friendly Elements Are Mined Destructively

Monday, 28 December, 2009 — environment unintended-consequences energy

Keith Bradsher, for the New York Times:

Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast.

Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.

Western capitals have suddenly grown worried over China’s near monopoly, which gives it a potential stranglehold on technologies of the future.

Weaning ourselves off of petroleum is still a worthwhile goal, but the political and diplomatic environments of having to abide repressive Middle East regimes or appearing to abide don’t improve if we substitute China. Not only does it increase our strategic dependence on China (as does the national debt), but China has stability issues of its own.

There’s also no way for an outside company to figure out if the rare earth elements it’s purchasing from China are mined responsibly.

Two geothermal projects shut down

Saturday, 12 December, 2009 — technological-failure environment unintended-consequences energy

The New York Times has two pieces, both by James Glanz, talking about geothermal projects in Switzerland and California being shutdown.

The Swiss project was shutdown over concerns that it would generate millions of dollars in earthquake damage annually.

The California project was getting Dept. of Energy funding. The company’s rationale isn’t known, but several issues are mentioned, including the earthquakes caused in Basel, Switzerland:

Geothermal enthusiasts asserted that drilling miles into hard rock, as required by the technique, could be done quickly and economically with small improvements in existing methods, Professor Schrag said. “What we’ve discovered is that it’s harder to make those improvements than some people believed,” he added.

In fact, AltaRock immediately ran into snags with its drilling, repeatedly snapping off bits in shallow formations called caprock. The project’s safety was also under review at the Energy Department after federal officials said the company had not been entirely forthcoming about the earthquakes produced in Basel in making the case for the Geysers project.

Other projects at the California site have also caused earthquakes. Back in June, Scientific American looked into why geothermal drilling causes earthquakes:

About a million years ago, there was a magmatic intrusion (protovolcano) that didn’t make it to the surface. Under the surface is a rock called felsite—you can think of it like granite; it’s the heat source for the sandstone.

The new project is going to exploit the felsite directly. But there’s no water in the felsite, so they drill, then they pipe water under strong pressure and flow rate, to fracture the rock. They’ll be using earthquake-monitoring equipment and will send cameras down the hole to see which direction the fractures were occurring. Then they drill a second hole to intersect the new fracture.

So the potential is to extract much more heat, but you have to create your own fractures and you have to introduce water.

That bit of creating fractures? That creates the earthquake.

Links for Dec. 6, 2009

Sunday, 6 December, 2009 — links money environment education unintended-consequences

Is Money Tainting the Plasma Supply?

NYT piece on plasma centers in Texas and the economic attraction of plasma donation, particularly to Mexican factory workers.

Interesting figure: The average $30 donation payment results in $300 worth of product. Also, a Michigan blood center is seeing some whole-blood volunteer donors shifting to being paid for plasma elsewhere.

What’s Going to Happen to Textbooks?

With some college texts running over $200, and tuition costs increasing, there’s a bit of curiosity about the future of textbooks and how they might live on ebook readers like the Kindle or Nook. The Atlantic Wire collects some links. (Disclosure: My daytime employer, WebAssign, does business with universities and college textbook publishers)

Cancer from the kitchen?

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof looks into whether what we cook with and store our food in impacts our health.