1. Peaches Park 2. Meat! 3. Meat has been on my mind lately because of all the Korean BBQ’s in Seoul. Meat is so popular here! This e. coli outbreak was a tragic event for a whole community of families. One death and many other children were hospitalized because of a meat company’s carelessness and blatant disregard for sanitation measures. So many businesses and people want to cut corners, increase their profits, and the consumers are left with a whole lot of processed foods and Big Macs that never decompose. ___________________________________________
E.coli butcher jailed for a year William Tudor William Tudor admitted the charges at an earlier hearing A butcher has been jailed for a year for food safety offences which led to a fatal E.coli outbreak in 2005.
Cardiff Crown Court heard that a vacuum-packing machine, "wrongly used" for both raw and cooked meats, was the source of contaminated meat to schools.
William Tudor, 54, from Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, had admitted six charges, including supplying contaminated meat from his meat business in Bridgend.
One boy died and 157 others, mainly children, became ill in the outbreak.
The court heard Tudor's premises failed to guard against the risk of cross-contamination.
Judge Neil Bidder said that while Tudor was a pillar of society he had substantial culpability and a custodial sentence would send out a message to other food producers.
Mason Jones Five-year-old Mason Jones died in hospital after becoming ill
He told Tudor that he put the health of the public at risk for the sake of saving money.
Mason Jones, five, from Bargoed in the Rhymney Valley, died in hospital two weeks after eating the contaminated ham and turkey at his school canteen, the judge was told.
Prosecutor Graham Walters said Mason had hallucinations and kidney failure before his death in the early hours of 4 October 2005.
He said that Mason "fought for his life for the best part of a week" before dying.
Tudor's business, John Tudor and Son, had a contract to supply cooked meats for school dinners at primary schools across south Wales.
Some of these children still do not know whether they have made a full recovery and continue to have treatment Solicitor Stephen Webber
Within days of the contaminated cooked meat being delivered in September 2005, a number of pupils fell ill with symptoms of diarrhoea, said Mr Walters.
An outbreak of E.coli 0157 was confirmed, leading to 157 cases being investigated - 109 of which involved 44 schools.
He said it developed into the UK's second largest outbreak and Tudor's plant was closed down.
Blood on trays
Mr Walters said one vacuum-packing machine was "wrongly used" for both raw and cooked meats.
"It was not uncommon for juices from raw meat to get into the vacpacker.
"There was blood on the trays and workers were having to wipe it off while they were packing cooked meat.
"One employee said he was told by Tudor not to use the vacpacker for cooked meat whenever food inspectors were visiting."
He said health inspectors found "fundamental failures" in cleaning, including congealed debris and dirt on the vacpacker. John Tudor and Sons, Bridgend The premises were closed down because of the "grave" risk to health
"Tudor was asked how it was cleaned and he produced a dirty brush and bucket."
Despite Tudor taking his advanced food hygiene standards certificate in 2004, a log of the cleaning records for the machinery had not been completed.
Mr Walters said: "There was a simple failure to guard against the risk of cross contamination. Cleaning was inadequate."
Tudor admitted charges relating to six schools, including supplying contaminated meat to Deri Primary School in Bargoed, where Mason Jones was a pupil.
The other charges involve five more junior and primary south Wales primary schools.
He pleaded guilty to charges under the General Food Regulations of "placing unsafe food on the market".
A seventh charge of failing to protect food against the risk of contamination at his factory was also admitted.
After the sentence, Stephen Webber of Hugh James solicitors, said families were disappointed at the length of Tudor's sentence.
He said the outbreak had a "tragic outcome" for Mason Jones and his family and "further drastic effects upon a large number of families in south Wales".
"Some of these children still do not know whether they have made a full recovery and continue to have treatment."
He said the families hoped systems would be put in place after a public inquiry into the outbreak, chaired by food expert Professor Hugh Pennington.
It is expected to begin next February. _____________ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/6983113.stm
Crystal blue waters and vivid coral reefs around the palm-fringed islands of the South Pacific, which is one of the dream vacations many people wish to have. But these islands including Fiji and Samoa are disappearing by the effects of global warming.
The case of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu seemed serious already. I remember seeing the trees and houses on the water due to the risen sea-level and people suffered by lack of drinking water, which was shown at the climate-change conference early this year. They wanted to spread awareness in the world and ask for help and cooperation.
One ironical thing is, they welcome tourists from all over the world flock to Tuvalu, but that tourism using long-haul airline flights is a major source of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas held most responsible for climate change. ------------------------
From: Reuters Published September 13, 2007 08:45 AM
Tuvalu about to disappear into the ocean
SEOUL (Reuters) - The tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu on Thursday urged the rest of the world to do more to combat global warming before it sinks beneath the ocean.
The group of atolls and reefs, home to some 10,000 people, is barely two meters on average above sea-level and one study predicted at the current rate the ocean is rising could disappear in the next 30 to 50 years.
"We keep thinking that the time will never come. The alternative is to turn ourselves into fish and live under water," Tuvalu Deputy Prime Tavau Teii told Reuters in the South Korean capital where he was attending a conference on the environment.
"All countries must make an effort to reduce their emissions before it is too late for countries like Tuvalu," he said, calling the country one of the most vulnerable in the world to man-made climate change.
He reeled off a list of threats to the country, one of whose few export earnings comes from its Internet country suffix which it can sell to anyone wanting their Website site to end with .tv.
Coral reefs are being damaged by the warming ocean and so threatening fish stocks -- the main source of protein.
The sea is increasingly invading underground fresh water supplies, creating problems for farmers, while drought constantly threatened to limit drinking water.
Annual spring tides appear to be getting higher each year, eroding the coastline. As the coral reefs die, that protection goes and the risk only increases.
And the mounting ferocity of cyclones from a warmer ocean also brought greater risks, he said, noting another island state in the area had been buffeted by waves three years ago that crashed over its 30 meter cliffs.
"We'll try and maintain our own way of living on the island as long as we can. If the time comes we should leave the islands, there is no other choice but to leave."
Teii said his government had received indications from New Zealand it was prepared to take in people from the islands. About 2,000 of its population already live there.
But Australia, the other major economy in the region, had only given vague commitments.
"Australia was very reluctant to make a commitment even though they have been approached in a diplomatic way."
Last week, we read articles about the ocean contamination caused by plastic garbage. Related to ocean problem, this week I found an article about climate change.
According to this article, due to climate change the temperature of sea water increase fast. It gives bad effects not only on many of the sea's organisms, but also on human industry like fishing.
When reading this article, I wondered if rising sea water temperature also could give influcence on ocean contamination caused by plastic debris. I remember plastic manufactures are broke down by sunlight and through that process it becomes poisonous.
If I think correctly, the problem seems very seriously. ---------------------- ROME --Climate change is affecting Europe faster than the rest of the world and rising temperatures could transform the Mediterranean into a salty and stagnant sea, Italian experts said Wednesday.
Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.
"Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world," said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."
Scientists still don't know why the region is more sensitive to climate change, but Giorgi said that in the next decades, temperature increases hitting Europe during the summer months could be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than elsewhere.
Giorgi said the effects would be similar to those felt during the deadly summer of 2003, when the extraordinary heat was blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe and millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
"That was a one-in-a-million freak event, but in the future it will be the norm for the summer," said Giorgi, who is a top official in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists.
The change is also being felt at sea level, with a surface temperature increase of 1 degree every decade, said Vincenzo Ferrara, an Italian government adviser on climate.
"The Mediterranean is becoming warmer and saltier" due to increased evaporation, Ferrara told the conference, which was held at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ferrara said this could disrupt the flow at the Strait of Gibraltar, a key gateway to the Mediterranean. The higher salt concentration in the Mediterranean would cause water to flow out into the Atlantic Ocean, as opposed to Atlantic water coming into the Mediterranean, which serves as the sea's lifeline.
Even more worrying, a study conducted by ICRAM, Italy's marine research institute, indicates the temperature increases are creeping into the cold depths of the Mediterranean.
Measurements conducted last winter off Italy's western coast at a depth of up to 300 feet showed temperatures were about 3.6 degrees above average.
Temperature differences between the sea's layers create the currents that allow the Mediterranean's waters to mix and bring up fresh nutrients to feed the algae that form the basic diet of most fish species, according to the study.
These temperature rises could wipe out "up to 50 percent of the species," the study said. The decline in the algae population measured last winter also reduced by 30 percent the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the gases blamed by scientists for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse. ---
To Peaches, so you have seen that "timeless Big Mac" video as well, eh? So have I. hee hee
The World's First Bionic Burger (3:36 min) True story about a man who's been saving hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Big Macs from McDonalds for over 18 years... and they look EXACTLY the same! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic
1. Mark Whitaker 2. Constructing Chinese Pollution in the Chinese Media
3. Here's something I came across when a friend forwarded me this story. I thought it worth posting because it was about environmental issues in our next door neighbor, China.
We will read an article about Chinese environmental regulation when the packet becomes available for printing on Monday (says the copy shop.)
It's interesting because is a nice example of the 'cultural construction of environmental problems' Chinese-style. Media plurality in a one-party state is creating some interesting dynamics of feedback. Additionally, the attempts to shore up the legitimacy of Chinese manufactures and assure consumers is noted. Plus, China just hired some U.S. public relations firms!
China struggles to polish its image A culture of 'deny and evade' falters against the recent cascade of bad news. By Mark Magnier Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 14, 2007
BEIJING — -- Tainted pet food. Unsafe toys. Brown skies and orange lakes. Slave labor scandals. Collapsed bridges and coal mining disasters.
China has been hit with enough bad news in a short period to tax the crisis management skills of Lindsay Lohan's publicist, let alone a government whose first instinct is to "deny, deny, deny."
The Communist Party prefers its public relations in the form of carefully scripted reports handed down through controlled channels that praise the leadership and play up the positive. This is especially true in the lead-up to the Communist Party Congress, the biggest event on China's political calendar, which begins Oct. 15.
Unfortunately for Chinese censors, a more three-dimensional view of the news is increasingly just a click away.
A few terms entered into one of China's Internet search engines quickly reveal reports on food inspection shortfalls, official complicity in mining accidents, questionable nuclear standards, even comments on the party's penchant for nearly identical happy-talk front pages.
"Readers use these newspapers for toilet paper, anyway," online writer "Acepatrick" said on the Bullog.cn site after the People's Daily, the Guangming Daily and the Economic Daily published matching front pages Aug. 19. "They save work editing and printing, which helps the environment. How harmonious."
The onslaught of problems has overwhelmed Beijing's damage-control efforts, experts say. "The sheer tempo of scandals and scrutiny has picked up to the point that China's traditional media system is not up to the task," said David Wolf, president of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based strategic public relations firm. "Before, they had an issue once every six months. They're also grappling with communication problems within the government, a huge organization, which is not used to being transparent or responsive."
In recent weeks, however, some Chinese officials are starting to do a better job reassuring the public at home and abroad by following a few cardinal rules: Admit mistakes, accept responsibility, minimize cover-ups and outline a concrete response.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, has distributed handouts, made safety officials available, organized media trips to factories and inspection centers and nudged other agencies to follow suit.
"It has been repeatedly proved 'information blockage' is like walking into a dead end," Wang Guoqing, vice minister of the State Council Information Office, said in July. "We should enlist the media in any emergency plans."
The government has also tapped international image advisors, including public relations experts Edelman and Ogilvy, as well as Washington lobbying firm Patton Boggs.
"We're trying to help them understand how to be more responsible," said Scott Kronick, president of Ogilvy China. "Historically, China hasn't sought out advice, but that's changed quite dramatically in the 12 years I've been here."
The real test, experts say, will be whether China enacts basic, far-reaching reforms to shore up the "Made in China" label.
"Their crisis communication skills leave much to be desired," said Jonathan Bernstein, president of Sierra Madre-based Bernstein Crisis Management Inc., an advisor to several U.S. companies on quality-control issues in China. "But even if they're the best in the world, you can't spin this. Ultimately, the recall problems begin in China."
Chinese officials are products of a system in which the first line of defense is to deny that problems exist and attack the messenger. "Their instinct is to deny, deny until they're forced to admit," said Li Datong, former editor of Freezing Point, an influential weekly newspaper supplement, who was pushed out in early 2006 after a run-in with propaganda officials.
In 2003 after the SARS epidemic, Beijing enacted a formal crisis-management system with new laws, committees and a series of national, departmental and special-situation contingency plans.
In practice, however, coordination remains a problem, experts say. Although China has a history of reacting well to natural disasters, it is less adept at coping with more complex modern emergencies, including product-quality issues, said Peng Zongchao, a professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University and visiting fellow at Harvard.
"As a Chinese saying goes, eight departments can't even cooperate on raising a pig," said Gu Linsheng, researcher with Tsinghua's Emergency Management Research Center in Beijing. "There are too many agencies that don't coordinate."
Corruption, protectionism and an incentive system that judges local and many central government officials on how few problems occur in their area, rather than on how well they address root causes, have also undercut a rapid, effective response.
Although China hardly has a monopoly on government infighting, miscommunication is compounded by the dominance the Communist Party structure maintains over the government bureaucracy and the slow pace of political reform.
One long-standing Chinese response to crisis is to find a scapegoat, sometimes referred to as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."
This is aimed not only at intimidating other wrongdoers but convincing outsiders the problem is solved.
In May, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was convicted of taking bribes during a period when the agency approved several questionable medicines. In June, he was granted an appeal. And in early July, he was executed.
Another is to blame the media. Within days of a story on state-run Beijing TV that steamed buns were being stuffed with cardboard, the government ruled the broadcast a fake, slapped the reporter with a one-year prison sentence and launched a broad-based campaign against "fake news."
Blaming the media in such cases, even if their reports are false, is not a good strategy, experts say.
"China's response depends on how secure it feels," said Tom Doctoroff, greater China chief executive with J. Walter Thompson advertising.
"When it feels under attack, it lashes back."
Beijing has encouraged its media to play up quality problems elsewhere, and banned some foreign-made products. In August, 272 U.S.-made pacemakers were seized, reportedly because their labels inaccurately reflected voltage settings.
But China also is working to reverse a tradition of secrecy, said Steven Dong, a professor of political communication and public relations at Tsinghua University, driven in part by its rising global stature and the reality of the Internet.
In the past, when the Propaganda Ministry didn't like something posted on a website, it would call the hosting service and get it pulled. Now, a story running on a major Chinese website is likely to be picked up by as many as 437 Chinese websites within five minutes, Dong said.
"Now they would need to call 438 people," he said. "It would never happen."
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Gu Bo in The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
" Dirty energy threatens health of 2 billion: study"
This article is about paradox between using energy and getting polluttion. we are living in developed country and using up all clean energy resource. At the same time, we are contributing to global warming. However at the other side of us, people in poor countries are not only getting sick from using dirty energy but also having adverse effect from global warming.
Urich Beck said environmental pollution problems effect all of us equally in risk society. This effect has nothing to do with social class based on economic condition according to his book, called Risk Society.
But this article is showing that his opinion is not always right in explaining contemporary global warming issues including energy distribution and pollution.
-------------------------------------- - The health of about 2 billion of the world's poor is being damaged because they lack access to clean energy, like electricity, and face exposure to smoke from open fires, scientists said on Thursday.
Dangerous levels of indoor air pollutants from badly ventilated cooking fires are a common hazard, while lack of electricity deprives many of the benefits of refrigeration.
Paul Wilkinson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the world's richest populations use up to 20 times more energy per head than those from poor countries, posing a challenge to improve energy supply without pollution.
Writing in the Lancet medical journal, Wilkinson and colleagues estimated 2.4 billion people worldwide were exposed to pollution from inefficient burning of solid fuels like wood, coal and dried cow dung.
This causes around 1.6 million premature deaths each year -- roughly double the level of deaths from air pollution in cities -- and many more non-fatal cases of respiratory diseases.
At the same time, around 1.6 billion people worldwide have no electricity.
"Paradoxically, the poor are using much less energy but they are getting all the adverse effects," Wilkinson said in an interview.
"We in the more developed countries have access to clean energy and are using much more of it and are contributing to the global problem of climate change, where the main adverse effects are likely to fall, once again, on lower-income countries."
Global warming could trigger a range of health problems including more extreme heatwaves, increases in water-borne and insect-borne diseases, and threats to food supplies.
Lancet editor Richard Horton said the research showed that the current debate on climate change and new energy sources was unbalanced and too narrow.
"It neglects a far larger set of issues focused on energy and health," he said. ------------------------------- http://www.enn.com/energy/article/23018
3. Climate change dramastically affect the poor rather than the rich. Especially in Asia, Latin America and Africa, people are suffering great lose rather than developing countries. This article is about climated change in Latin America in which diverse ecosystem are working and this system is connected to climate change very closely. Because of global warming, increase of pollution, logging and so on, this ecosystem started to crack and maybe it is time to rethink about climate change which affects us.
------------------- Millions Face Hunger From Climate Change By JULIE WATSON
The Associated Press / Tuesday, April 10, 2007; 4:37 PM
MEXICO CITY -- Rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years, cause food shortages affecting 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and wipe out Africa's wheat crop, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
The report, written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists, outlined dramatic effects of climate change including rising sea levels, the disappearance of species and intensifying natural disasters. It said 30 percent of the world's coastlines could be lost by 2080.
Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined details of the report in news conferences around the world Tuesday, four days after they released a written summary of their findings. The report is the second of three being issued this year; the first dealt with the physical science of climate change and the third will deal with responses to it.
In Mexico City, scientists predicted that global warming could cost the Brazilian rain forest up to 30 percent of its species and turn large swaths into savannah. They said ocean levels are projected to rise 4.3 feet by 2080 and flood low-lying cities including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Polar ice caps will likely melt, opening a waterway at the North Pole and threatening to make the Panama Canal obsolete, IPCC member Edmundo de Alba said. Warmer waters will spawn bigger and more dangerous hurricanes that will threaten coastlines not traditionally affected by them.
Latin America's diverse ecosystems will struggle with intense droughts and flooding and as many as 70 million people in the region will be left without enough water, according to the report.
"What's clear is places suffering from drought are going to become drier, and places with a large amount of precipitation are going to see an increase in precipitation," de Alba said.
Many Latin American farmers will have to abandon traditional crops such as corn, rice, wheat and sugar as their soil becomes increasingly saline, and ranchers will have to find new ways to feed their livestock, scientists said.
They warned that governments are doing too little to prepare for the changes.
"We don't have medium- or long-term plans in Latin America. Governments look the other way," IPCC member Osvaldo Canziani said in Buenos Aires.
The report said Africa is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fallout from a swiftly warming planet _ extreme weather, flooding, outbreaks of disease _ will only exacerbate troubles in the world's poorest continent, said Anthony Nyong, one of the lead authors.
Wheat, a staple in Africa, may disappear from the continent by the 2080s, the report said.
1.YingQi Fan 2.Three gorges dam wall completed 3.The only influence the project of China’s Three Gorges Dam has on me is that I can travel to Chongqing by ship, not plane, which will cost me much less and meanwhile offer me the breath-taking scenery along three gorges, which cannot be seen on the plane. Regarding so many controversies aroused by it, it seems that I should not act like an outsider. China says power issues matter and flood issues matter; On the other hand, Critics say environmental pollution matter, plant extinction matter and people’s welfare matter. For me, I know little about them, cannot tell which side is right, and the only thing I can do is to leave it to time, for it will prove everything.
------------------------------
Three Gorges dam wall completed
China has completed construction of the main wall of the Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest hydro-electric project.
The controversial dam in central Hubei province will not be fully operational until 2009, once all its generators are installed. China says it will provide electricity for its booming economy and help control flooding on the Yangtze River. Critics say over a million people were moved from the area, and the reservoir behind the dam is already polluted. On Saturday, builders poured the last amount of concrete to complete the construction of the 185m (607ft) high, 2,309m (1.4 mile) long wall. A senior Chinese official said the event marked a "landmark progress" in the dam's construction, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. "However, tasks such as building of power houses of the dam, the ship lock and shiplift are still formidable," said Pu Haiqing, deputy director of the dam's construction committee. When its 26 turbines become operational in 2009, the dam will have a capacity of more than 18,000 megawatts. Already the world's second-largest consumer of oil, China says it needs alternative energy sources to combat widespread power shortages and keep its booming economy powering along. The authorities also hope the dam will help control flooding on the Yangtze River, which in the past has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Shanghai reports. But campaigners say the dam comes at too high a cost. Over a million people have been moved from their homes to make way for the project and more than 1,200 towns and villages will disappear under its rising waters. Environmentalists say the water behind the dam is already heavily polluted. China says the whole project will cost about $25bn (£13bn), but environmentalists estimate it to be several times higher.
the address is a graphic of The Three Gorges Dam http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41665000/gif/_41665118_3_gorges_dam_416.gif
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
8 comments:
1. Peaches Park
2. Meat!
3. Meat has been on my mind lately because of all the Korean BBQ’s in Seoul. Meat is so popular here! This e. coli outbreak was a tragic event for a whole community of families. One death and many other children were hospitalized because of a meat company’s carelessness and blatant disregard for sanitation measures. So many businesses and people want to cut corners, increase their profits, and the consumers are left with a whole lot of processed foods and Big Macs that never decompose.
___________________________________________
E.coli butcher jailed for a year
William Tudor
William Tudor admitted the charges at an earlier hearing
A butcher has been jailed for a year for food safety offences which led to a fatal E.coli outbreak in 2005.
Cardiff Crown Court heard that a vacuum-packing machine, "wrongly used" for both raw and cooked meats, was the source of contaminated meat to schools.
William Tudor, 54, from Cowbridge, Vale of Glamorgan, had admitted six charges, including supplying contaminated meat from his meat business in Bridgend.
One boy died and 157 others, mainly children, became ill in the outbreak.
The court heard Tudor's premises failed to guard against the risk of cross-contamination.
Judge Neil Bidder said that while Tudor was a pillar of society he had substantial culpability and a custodial sentence would send out a message to other food producers.
Mason Jones
Five-year-old Mason Jones died in hospital after becoming ill
He told Tudor that he put the health of the public at risk for the sake of saving money.
Mason Jones, five, from Bargoed in the Rhymney Valley, died in hospital two weeks after eating the contaminated ham and turkey at his school canteen, the judge was told.
Prosecutor Graham Walters said Mason had hallucinations and kidney failure before his death in the early hours of 4 October 2005.
He said that Mason "fought for his life for the best part of a week" before dying.
Tudor's business, John Tudor and Son, had a contract to supply cooked meats for school dinners at primary schools across south Wales.
Some of these children still do not know whether they have made a full recovery and continue to have treatment
Solicitor Stephen Webber
Within days of the contaminated cooked meat being delivered in September 2005, a number of pupils fell ill with symptoms of diarrhoea, said Mr Walters.
An outbreak of E.coli 0157 was confirmed, leading to 157 cases being investigated - 109 of which involved 44 schools.
He said it developed into the UK's second largest outbreak and Tudor's plant was closed down.
Blood on trays
Mr Walters said one vacuum-packing machine was "wrongly used" for both raw and cooked meats.
"It was not uncommon for juices from raw meat to get into the vacpacker.
"There was blood on the trays and workers were having to wipe it off while they were packing cooked meat.
"One employee said he was told by Tudor not to use the vacpacker for cooked meat whenever food inspectors were visiting."
He said health inspectors found "fundamental failures" in cleaning, including congealed debris and dirt on the vacpacker.
John Tudor and Sons, Bridgend
The premises were closed down because of the "grave" risk to health
"Tudor was asked how it was cleaned and he produced a dirty brush and bucket."
Despite Tudor taking his advanced food hygiene standards certificate in 2004, a log of the cleaning records for the machinery had not been completed.
Mr Walters said: "There was a simple failure to guard against the risk of cross contamination. Cleaning was inadequate."
Tudor admitted charges relating to six schools, including supplying contaminated meat to Deri Primary School in Bargoed, where Mason Jones was a pupil.
The other charges involve five more junior and primary south Wales primary schools.
He pleaded guilty to charges under the General Food Regulations of "placing unsafe food on the market".
A seventh charge of failing to protect food against the risk of contamination at his factory was also admitted.
After the sentence, Stephen Webber of Hugh James solicitors, said families were disappointed at the length of Tudor's sentence.
He said the outbreak had a "tragic outcome" for Mason Jones and his family and "further drastic effects upon a large number of families in south Wales".
"Some of these children still do not know whether they have made a full recovery and continue to have treatment."
He said the families hoped systems would be put in place after a public inquiry into the outbreak, chaired by food expert Professor Hugh Pennington.
It is expected to begin next February.
_____________
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/6983113.stm
Min Sook Kim (Choi)
Tuvalu about to disappear into the ocean
Crystal blue waters and vivid coral reefs around the palm-fringed islands of the South Pacific, which is one of the dream vacations many people wish to have. But these islands including Fiji and Samoa are disappearing by the effects of global warming.
The case of the tiny island nation of Tuvalu seemed serious already. I remember seeing the trees and houses on the water due to the risen sea-level and people suffered by lack of drinking water, which was shown at the climate-change conference early this year. They wanted to spread awareness in the world and ask for help and cooperation.
One ironical thing is, they welcome tourists from all over the world flock to Tuvalu, but that tourism using long-haul airline flights is a major source of carbon dioxide, the heat-trapping gas held most responsible for climate change.
------------------------
From: Reuters
Published September 13, 2007 08:45 AM
Tuvalu about to disappear into the ocean
SEOUL (Reuters) - The tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu on Thursday urged the rest of the world to do more to combat global warming before it sinks beneath the ocean.
The group of atolls and reefs, home to some 10,000 people, is barely two meters on average above sea-level and one study predicted at the current rate the ocean is rising could disappear in the next 30 to 50 years.
"We keep thinking that the time will never come. The alternative is to turn ourselves into fish and live under water," Tuvalu Deputy Prime Tavau Teii told Reuters in the South Korean capital where he was attending a conference on the environment.
"All countries must make an effort to reduce their emissions before it is too late for countries like Tuvalu," he said, calling the country one of the most vulnerable in the world to man-made climate change.
He reeled off a list of threats to the country, one of whose few export earnings comes from its Internet country suffix which it can sell to anyone wanting their Website site to end with .tv.
Coral reefs are being damaged by the warming ocean and so threatening fish stocks -- the main source of protein.
The sea is increasingly invading underground fresh water supplies, creating problems for farmers, while drought constantly threatened to limit drinking water.
Annual spring tides appear to be getting higher each year, eroding the coastline. As the coral reefs die, that protection goes and the risk only increases.
And the mounting ferocity of cyclones from a warmer ocean also brought greater risks, he said, noting another island state in the area had been buffeted by waves three years ago that crashed over its 30 meter cliffs.
"We'll try and maintain our own way of living on the island as long as we can. If the time comes we should leave the islands, there is no other choice but to leave."
Teii said his government had received indications from New Zealand it was prepared to take in people from the islands. About 2,000 of its population already live there.
But Australia, the other major economy in the region, had only given vague commitments.
"Australia was very reluctant to make a commitment even though they have been approached in a diplomatic way."
---
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/6658
Kim, SuJung
Experts: Climate change puts sea at risk
Last week, we read articles about the ocean contamination caused by plastic garbage. Related to ocean problem, this week I found an article about climate change.
According to this article, due to climate change the temperature of sea water increase fast. It gives bad effects not only on many of the sea's organisms, but also on human industry like fishing.
When reading this article, I wondered if rising sea water temperature also could give influcence on ocean contamination caused by plastic debris. I remember plastic manufactures are broke down by sunlight and through that process it becomes poisonous.
If I think correctly, the problem seems very seriously.
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ROME --Climate change is affecting Europe faster than the rest of the world and rising temperatures could transform the Mediterranean into a salty and stagnant sea, Italian experts said Wednesday.
Warmer waters and increased salinity could doom many of the sea's plant and animal species and ravage the fishing industry, warned participants at a two-day climate change conference that brought together some 2,000 scientists and officials in Rome.
"Europe and the Mediterranean are warming up faster than the rest of the world," said climatologist Filippo Giorgi. "It's a climate change hot spot, one of the areas where we actually see the change happening."
Scientists still don't know why the region is more sensitive to climate change, but Giorgi said that in the next decades, temperature increases hitting Europe during the summer months could be 40 percent to 50 percent higher than elsewhere.
Giorgi said the effects would be similar to those felt during the deadly summer of 2003, when the extraordinary heat was blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of people in Europe and millions of dollars in agricultural losses.
"That was a one-in-a-million freak event, but in the future it will be the norm for the summer," said Giorgi, who is a top official in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.N. network of 2,000 scientists.
The change is also being felt at sea level, with a surface temperature increase of 1 degree every decade, said Vincenzo Ferrara, an Italian government adviser on climate.
"The Mediterranean is becoming warmer and saltier" due to increased evaporation, Ferrara told the conference, which was held at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
Ferrara said this could disrupt the flow at the Strait of Gibraltar, a key gateway to the Mediterranean. The higher salt concentration in the Mediterranean would cause water to flow out into the Atlantic Ocean, as opposed to Atlantic water coming into the Mediterranean, which serves as the sea's lifeline.
Even more worrying, a study conducted by ICRAM, Italy's marine research institute, indicates the temperature increases are creeping into the cold depths of the Mediterranean.
Measurements conducted last winter off Italy's western coast at a depth of up to 300 feet showed temperatures were about 3.6 degrees above average.
Temperature differences between the sea's layers create the currents that allow the Mediterranean's waters to mix and bring up fresh nutrients to feed the algae that form the basic diet of most fish species, according to the study.
These temperature rises could wipe out "up to 50 percent of the species," the study said. The decline in the algae population measured last winter also reduced by 30 percent the sea's ability to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the gases blamed by scientists for heating the atmosphere like a greenhouse.
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http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/23016
To Peaches, so you have seen that "timeless Big Mac" video as well, eh? So have I. hee hee
The World's First Bionic Burger (3:36 min)
True story about a man who's been saving hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and Big Macs from McDonalds for over 18 years... and they look EXACTLY the same!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYyDXH1amic
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Constructing Chinese Pollution in the Chinese Media
3. Here's something I came across when a friend forwarded me this story. I thought it worth posting because it was about environmental issues in our next door neighbor, China.
We will read an article about Chinese environmental regulation when the packet becomes available for printing on Monday (says the copy shop.)
It's interesting because is a nice example of the 'cultural construction of environmental problems' Chinese-style. Media plurality in a one-party state is creating some interesting dynamics of feedback. Additionally, the attempts to shore up the legitimacy of Chinese manufactures and assure consumers is noted. Plus, China just hired some U.S. public relations firms!
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Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-crisis14sep14,0,2288375.story?coll=la-tot-world&track=ntothtml
China struggles to polish its image
A culture of 'deny and evade' falters against the recent cascade of bad news.
By Mark Magnier
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 14, 2007
BEIJING — -- Tainted pet food. Unsafe toys. Brown skies and orange lakes. Slave labor scandals. Collapsed bridges and coal mining disasters.
China has been hit with enough bad news in a short period to tax the crisis management skills of Lindsay Lohan's publicist, let alone a government whose first instinct is to "deny, deny, deny."
The Communist Party prefers its public relations in the form of carefully scripted reports handed down through controlled channels that praise the leadership and play up the positive. This is especially true in the lead-up to the Communist Party Congress, the
biggest event on China's political calendar, which begins Oct. 15.
Unfortunately for Chinese censors, a more three-dimensional view of the news is increasingly just a click away.
A few terms entered into one of China's Internet search engines quickly reveal reports on food inspection shortfalls, official complicity in mining accidents, questionable nuclear standards, even comments on the party's penchant for nearly identical happy-talk front pages.
"Readers use these newspapers for toilet paper, anyway," online writer "Acepatrick" said on the Bullog.cn site after the People's Daily, the Guangming Daily and the Economic Daily published matching front pages
Aug. 19. "They save work editing and printing, which helps the environment. How harmonious."
The onslaught of problems has overwhelmed Beijing's damage-control efforts, experts say. "The sheer tempo of scandals and scrutiny has picked up to the point that China's traditional media system is not up to the task," said David Wolf, president of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based strategic public relations firm. "Before, they had an issue once every six months. They're also grappling with communication problems within the government, a huge organization, which is not used to being transparent or responsive."
In recent weeks, however, some Chinese officials are starting to do a better job reassuring the public at home and abroad by following a few cardinal rules: Admit mistakes, accept responsibility, minimize cover-ups and outline a concrete response.
The State Council, China's Cabinet, has distributed handouts, made safety officials available, organized media trips to factories and inspection centers and nudged other agencies to follow suit.
"It has been repeatedly proved 'information blockage' is like walking into a dead end," Wang Guoqing, vice minister of the State Council Information Office, said in July. "We should enlist the media in any emergency plans."
The government has also tapped international image advisors, including public relations experts Edelman and Ogilvy, as well as Washington lobbying firm Patton Boggs.
"We're trying to help them understand how to be more responsible," said Scott Kronick, president of Ogilvy China. "Historically, China hasn't sought out advice, but that's changed quite dramatically in the 12 years I've been here."
The real test, experts say, will be whether China enacts basic, far-reaching reforms to shore up the "Made in China" label.
"Their crisis communication skills leave much to be desired," said Jonathan Bernstein, president of Sierra Madre-based Bernstein Crisis Management Inc., an advisor to several U.S. companies on quality-control issues in China. "But even if they're the best in the
world, you can't spin this. Ultimately, the recall problems begin in China."
Chinese officials are products of a system in which the first line of defense is to deny that problems exist and attack the messenger.
"Their instinct is to deny, deny until they're forced to admit," said Li Datong, former editor of Freezing Point, an influential weekly
newspaper supplement, who was pushed out in early 2006 after a run-in with propaganda officials.
In 2003 after the SARS epidemic, Beijing enacted a formal crisis-management system with new laws, committees and a series of
national, departmental and special-situation contingency plans.
In practice, however, coordination remains a problem, experts say. Although China has a history of reacting well to natural disasters, it is less adept at coping with more complex modern emergencies, including product-quality issues, said Peng Zongchao, a professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University and visiting fellow at Harvard.
"As a Chinese saying goes, eight departments can't even cooperate on raising a pig," said Gu Linsheng, researcher with Tsinghua's Emergency Management Research Center in Beijing. "There are too many agencies that don't coordinate."
Corruption, protectionism and an incentive system that judges local and many central government officials on how few problems occur in their area, rather than on how well they address root causes, have also undercut a rapid, effective response.
Although China hardly has a monopoly on government infighting, miscommunication is compounded by the dominance the Communist Party structure maintains over the government bureaucracy and the slow pace
of political reform.
One long-standing Chinese response to crisis is to find a scapegoat, sometimes referred to as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."
This is aimed not only at intimidating other wrongdoers but convincing outsiders the problem is solved.
In May, the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was convicted of taking bribes during a period when the agency approved several questionable medicines. In June, he was granted an appeal. And in early July, he was executed.
Another is to blame the media. Within days of a story on state-run Beijing TV that steamed buns were being stuffed with cardboard, the government ruled the broadcast a fake, slapped the reporter with a one-year prison sentence and launched a broad-based campaign against "fake news."
Blaming the media in such cases, even if their reports are false, is not a good strategy, experts say.
"China's response depends on how secure it feels," said Tom Doctoroff, greater China chief executive with J. Walter Thompson advertising.
"When it feels under attack, it lashes back."
Beijing has encouraged its media to play up quality problems elsewhere, and banned some foreign-made products. In August, 272 U.S.-made pacemakers were seized, reportedly because their labels inaccurately reflected voltage settings.
But China also is working to reverse a tradition of secrecy, said Steven Dong, a professor of political communication and public
relations at Tsinghua University, driven in part by its rising global stature and the reality of the Internet.
In the past, when the Propaganda Ministry didn't like something posted on a website, it would call the hosting service and get it pulled. Now, a story running on a major Chinese website is likely to be picked up by as many as 437 Chinese websites within five minutes, Dong said.
"Now they would need to call 438 people," he said. "It would never happen."
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Gu Bo in The Times' Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-crisis14sep14,0,2288375.story?coll=la-tot-world&track=ntothtml
se kyoung
" Dirty energy threatens health of 2 billion: study"
This article is about paradox between using energy and getting polluttion. we are living in developed country and using up all clean energy resource. At the same time, we are contributing to global warming. However at the other side of us, people in poor countries are not only getting sick from using dirty energy but also having adverse effect from global warming.
Urich Beck said environmental pollution problems effect all of us equally in risk society. This effect has nothing to do with social class based on economic condition according to his book, called Risk Society.
But this article is showing that his opinion is not always right in explaining contemporary global warming issues including energy distribution and pollution.
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- The health of about 2 billion of the world's poor is being damaged because they lack access to clean energy, like electricity, and face exposure to smoke from open fires, scientists said on Thursday.
Dangerous levels of indoor air pollutants from badly ventilated cooking fires are a common hazard, while lack of electricity deprives many of the benefits of refrigeration.
Paul Wilkinson of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said the world's richest populations use up to 20 times more energy per head than those from poor countries, posing a challenge to improve energy supply without pollution.
Writing in the Lancet medical journal, Wilkinson and colleagues estimated 2.4 billion people worldwide were exposed to pollution from inefficient burning of solid fuels like wood, coal and dried cow dung.
This causes around 1.6 million premature deaths each year -- roughly double the level of deaths from air pollution in cities -- and many more non-fatal cases of respiratory diseases.
At the same time, around 1.6 billion people worldwide have no electricity.
"Paradoxically, the poor are using much less energy but they are getting all the adverse effects," Wilkinson said in an interview.
"We in the more developed countries have access to clean energy and are using much more of it and are contributing to the global problem of climate change, where the main adverse effects are likely to fall, once again, on lower-income countries."
Global warming could trigger a range of health problems including more extreme heatwaves, increases in water-borne and insect-borne diseases, and threats to food supplies.
Lancet editor Richard Horton said the research showed that the current debate on climate change and new energy sources was unbalanced and too narrow.
"It neglects a far larger set of issues focused on energy and health," he said.
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http://www.enn.com/energy/article/23018
1. Choonhee Woo
2. Millions Face Hunger From Climate Change
3. Climate change dramastically affect the poor rather than the rich. Especially in Asia, Latin America and Africa, people are suffering great lose rather than developing countries.
This article is about climated change in Latin America in which diverse ecosystem are working and this system is connected to climate change very closely.
Because of global warming, increase of pollution, logging and so on, this ecosystem started to crack and maybe it is time to rethink about climate change which affects us.
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Millions Face Hunger From Climate Change By JULIE WATSON
The Associated Press / Tuesday, April 10, 2007; 4:37 PM
MEXICO CITY -- Rising global temperatures could melt Latin America's glaciers within 15 years, cause food shortages affecting 130 million people across Asia by 2050 and wipe out Africa's wheat crop, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
The report, written and reviewed by hundreds of scientists, outlined dramatic effects of climate change including rising sea levels, the disappearance of species and intensifying natural disasters. It said 30 percent of the world's coastlines could be lost by 2080.
Scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change outlined details of the report in news conferences around the world Tuesday, four days after they released a written summary of their findings. The report is the second of three being issued this year; the first dealt with the physical science of climate change and the third will deal with responses to it.
In Mexico City, scientists predicted that global warming could cost the Brazilian rain forest up to 30 percent of its species and turn large swaths into savannah. They said ocean levels are projected to rise 4.3 feet by 2080 and flood low-lying cities including Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Polar ice caps will likely melt, opening a waterway at the North Pole and threatening to make the Panama Canal obsolete, IPCC member Edmundo de Alba said. Warmer waters will spawn bigger and more dangerous hurricanes that will threaten coastlines not traditionally affected by them.
Latin America's diverse ecosystems will struggle with intense droughts and flooding and as many as 70 million people in the region will be left without enough water, according to the report.
"What's clear is places suffering from drought are going to become drier, and places with a large amount of precipitation are going to see an increase in precipitation," de Alba said.
Many Latin American farmers will have to abandon traditional crops such as corn, rice, wheat and sugar as their soil becomes increasingly saline, and ranchers will have to find new ways to feed their livestock, scientists said.
They warned that governments are doing too little to prepare for the changes.
"We don't have medium- or long-term plans in Latin America. Governments look the other way," IPCC member Osvaldo Canziani said in Buenos Aires.
The report said Africa is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fallout from a swiftly warming planet _ extreme weather, flooding, outbreaks of disease _ will only exacerbate troubles in the world's poorest continent, said Anthony Nyong, one of the lead authors.
Wheat, a staple in Africa, may disappear from the continent by the 2080s, the report said.
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http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/news/news_detail.cfm?id=319
1.YingQi Fan
2.Three gorges dam wall completed
3.The only influence the project of China’s Three Gorges Dam has on me is that I can travel to Chongqing by ship, not plane, which will cost me much less and meanwhile offer me the breath-taking scenery along three gorges, which cannot be seen on the plane. Regarding so many controversies aroused by it, it seems that I should not act like an outsider. China says power issues matter and flood issues matter; On the other hand, Critics say environmental pollution matter, plant extinction matter and people’s welfare matter. For me, I know little about them, cannot tell which side is right, and the only thing I can do is to leave it to time, for it will prove everything.
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Three Gorges dam wall completed
China has completed construction of the main wall of the Three Gorges Dam - the world's largest hydro-electric project.
The controversial dam in central Hubei province will not be fully operational until 2009, once all its generators are installed. China says it will provide electricity for its booming economy and help control flooding on the Yangtze River. Critics say over a million people were moved from the area, and the reservoir behind the dam is already polluted.
On Saturday, builders poured the last amount of concrete to complete the construction of the 185m (607ft) high, 2,309m (1.4 mile) long wall. A senior Chinese official said the event marked a "landmark progress" in the dam's construction, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported. "However, tasks such as building of power houses of the dam, the ship lock and shiplift are still formidable," said Pu Haiqing, deputy director of the dam's construction committee. When its 26 turbines become operational in 2009, the dam will have a capacity of more than 18,000 megawatts. Already the world's second-largest consumer of oil, China says it needs alternative energy sources to combat widespread power shortages and keep its booming economy powering along.
The authorities also hope the dam will help control flooding on the Yangtze River, which in the past has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the BBC's Quentin Somerville in Shanghai reports.
But campaigners say the dam comes at too high a cost.
Over a million people have been moved from their homes to make way for the project and more than 1,200 towns and villages will disappear under its rising waters.
Environmentalists say the water behind the dam is already heavily polluted.
China says the whole project will cost about $25bn (£13bn), but environmentalists estimate it to be several times higher.
the address is a graphic of The Three Gorges Dam
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41665000/gif/_41665118_3_gorges_dam_416.gif
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5000092.stm
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