News – Page 11 – Nicole Peyrafitte

Superweed Explosion

FRANCE 24 report:
French scientist Eric Seralini says research shows Roundup herbicide is highly toxic to human beings.

‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands

Sunday 19 April 2009
By Clea CAULCUTT
link

“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms

The gospel of high-tech genetically modified (GM) crops is not sounding quite so sweet in the land of the converted. A new pest, the evil pigweed, is hitting headlines and chomping its way across Sun Belt states, threatening to transform cotton and soybean plots into weed battlefields.

In late 2004, “superweeds” that resisted Monsanto’s iconic “Roundup” herbicide, popped up in GM crops in the county of Macon, Georgia. Monsanto, the US multinational biotech corporation, is the world’s leading producer of Roundup, as well as genetically engineered seeds. Company figures show that nine out of 10 US farmers produce Roundup Ready seeds for their soybean crops.

Superweeds have since alarmingly appeared in other parts of Georgia, as well as South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to media reports. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which is the most used herbicide in the USA. (read more here)

Turmeric Synchronicity: The Case of the Antioxidant Curcumin

Two of my most recent posts were about turmeric (curcuma) and today this piece was posted on the ASFS List server (Association for the Study of Food and Society) by Cara de Silva via Dana Jacobi. A very scientific article on the source of turmeric’s healing power finally uncovered in U Mich lab (American Chemical Society).

Determining the Effects of Lipophilic Drugs on Membrane Structure by Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy: The Case of the Antioxidant Curcumin
Jeffrey Barry, Michelle Fritz, Jeffrey R. Brender, Pieter E. S. Smith, Dong-Kuk Lee^† and Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy*
Biophysics and Department of Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1055
Click here full article

Abstract

Curcumin is the active ingredient of turmeric powder, a natural spice used for generations in traditional medicines. Curcumin’s broad spectrum of antioxidant, anticarcinogenic, antimutagenic, and anti-inflammatory properties makes it particularly interesting for the development of pharmaceutical compounds. Because of curcumin’s various effects on the function of numerous unrelated membrane proteins, it has been suggested that it affects the properties of the bilayer itself. However, a detailed atomic-level study of the interaction of curcumin with membranes has not been attempted. A combination of solid-state NMR and differential scanning calorimetry experiments shows curcumin has a strong effect on membrane structure at low concentrations. Curcumin inserts deep into the membrane in a transbilayer orientation, anchored by hydrogen bonding to the phosphate group of lipids in a manner analogous to cholesterol. Like cholesterol, curcumin induces segmental ordering in the membrane. Analysis of the concentration dependence of the order parameter profile derived from NMR results suggests curcumin forms higher order oligomeric structures in the membrane that span and likely thin the bilayer. Curcumin promotes the formation of the highly curved inverted hexagonal phase, which may influence exocytotic and membrane fusion processes within the cell. The experiments outlined here show promise for understanding the action of other drugs such as capsaicin in which drug-induced alterations of membrane structure have strong pharmacological effects.

J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2009, 131 (12), pp 4490–4498

DOI: 10.1021/ja809217u

Publication Date (Web): March 3, 2009

Copyright © 2009 American Chemical Society

The Food Film Fest Short Report

Yesterday I attended the first day of Food Film Fest 2009. What started as a dreary, wet, miserable trip to the Action Center at Battery Park ended up as a full, enlightening, insightful and tasty one.

I will not have time to get into too much details but just a few notes about the event. First, this event will repeat next Saturday April 18, 2009 at Columbia University Medical Center Office of Government and Community Affairs. It is a fantastic -and free- opportunity to see these movies which are not so easy to catch. Go and let know your friends about it.

I highly recommend :
Asparagus: Stalking the American Life; Flow; Hotbread Kitchen & the trailer for Fresh.
-The trailer for Flow is above. Follow this link for Asparagus: Stalking the American Life trailer.
You will sure think twice before buying bottled water or a bunch of asparagus after viewing these films.
-The documentary about Hot Bread Kitchen, the New York Social bakery that mixes tradition with social activism. What a great idea!
-And the trailer for Fresh, a promising documentary partially based on Michael Polland The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

The day ended with a tasty reception. Unforgettable was “Jean-Louis” a New Jersey raw milk cow cheese named in memory of my Gascon fellow chef Jean-Louis Palladin. I am not kidding this cheese is the best I have tasted in the USA so far. You can experience “Jean-Louis” too, the Bobolink dairy & Bakeyard is at Union Square Farmers Market on Fridays, Lincoln Center Greenmarket (66th & Bwy) every Thurs & Sat. If you are not in New York City do not feel excluded shop on their online store (bread not available online). About their breads, the rye is outstanding and though I don’t like flavored bread, their garlic and duck fat loaf is a must with a bbq’d duck breast!

Another great product at the reception was the raw chocolate from Fine & Raw. I can’t wait to make my “Lapin au Chocolat” with it – I don’t mean chocolate Easter bunny, no! I mean rabbit stew in chocolate sauce (a kind of mole), but that will be another post.

Joyeuses Pâques!

Pork superbug

Sadly this article doesn’t come as a surprise. How can animals living in CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) be healthy? CAFO meat might be *cheap* but on it’s real cost is very high.

Pork superbug documented
As evidence mounts of deadly bacteria from CAFO pigs, will the FDA and the USDA act?
Posted by Tom Philpott at 9:33 PM on 27 Jan 2009

Last June, Iowa State researcher Tara Smith delivered preliminary results of a study linking the deadly, antibiotic-resistant pathogen MRSA to pigs in concentrated animal feedlot operations. Despite mounting evidence of the link from Canada and Europe, U.S. public-health officials had never formally studied the issue, even though MRSA kills something close to 20,000 Americans every year — more than AIDS.

In a must-read blog post at the time, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s ace health reporter Andrew Schneider documents the craven inaction of the FDA and the USDA as this public-health menace gained force. (I weighed in here.) As Schneider wrote:

An effective way to say there isn’t a problem is never to look. That seems to be precisely what most U.S. government food-safety agencies are doing when it comes to determining whether the livestock in our food supply is contaminated with MRSA and if so, whether the often-fatal bacterium is being passed on to consumers who buy and consume that meat

Now Smith’s research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. Examining CAFOs scattered in Iowa and Illinois, Smith and her team found the MRSA strain in 49 percent of pigs and 45 percent of the workers who tend them. The sample size is small; more study must be done. Will the government undertake it?

A real reckoning with the MRSA-CAFO link could deliver a devastating blow to the meat industry. To keep animals alive while stuffed together by the thousands, standing in their own collected waste, it’s evidently necessary to dose them with lots of antibiotics. CAFO conditions destroy animal’s immune systems; antibiotics pick up the slack. Take them away, and the CAFO model might crumble.

That, presumably, is why the Bush agencies so studiously ignored the problem. Let’s hope the Obama FDA and USDA do better.

Update [2009-1-28 8:40:10 by Tom Philpott]:The Seattle PI’s indispensable Schneider reacts to the publication of Smith’s findings:

So I called some disease detectives and food safety specialists in agencies responsible for ensuring that our food supply is safe. You could almost hear them cringe over the phone. And, no, to the best of their knowledge, neither the FDA, USDA nor CDC had launched systematic testing of the U.S. meat supply for MRSA. One physician said that a study was being done on the MRSA strain (ST398) that Smith had found on the pigs but added, “I don’t think it has anything to do with meat.”