I knew little about Foreign Animal Disease (FAD) when I walked into a Wisconsin Department of Agriculture (DATCP) talk on the subject Nov. 3 at the Microbial Sciences Center on the UW-Madison campus.  Here is a description of foot-and-mouth disease, an example of FAD, from www.cattletoday:

Foot-and-Mouth Disease is a severe, highly communicable disease of cattle, pigs, sheep, goats and deer.  It is caused by one of the smallest disease producing viruses known.   Humans do not catch the virus.  The disease is characterized by blister-like lesions on the tongue, nose and lips, in the mouth, on the teats and between the toes which then burst, leaving painful ulcers.   The blisters cause a heavy flow of sticky, foamy saliva that hangs from the mouth.  Infected animals sway from one foot to the other due to the tenderness of the feet.  Although older cattle usually do not die from the infection, they suffer a severe illness which leaves them in a weakened state.  They have high fevers, stop eating, give less milk and become lame. 

The virus is extremely contagious and spreads rapidly unless it is contained. This usually requires quarantining infected farms, followed by slaughtering and burning all susceptible animals. Anyone having contact with animals in infected countries should not go near susceptible animals for at least five days.  Because the virus is spread so easily, countries with the disease are banned from exporting animals and their products, creating further economic hardship.  Foot-and-Mouth Disease was last seen in the United States in 1929. The U.S. Government places an extremely high priority on keeping the disease out of the country. 

The FAD Threat

The first speaker i heard reviewed the horror stories of millions of hogs killed in Europe between 1997 and 2001 from either foot and moth disease or classic swine fever, including a 2001 outbreak in the United Kingdom that killed 10 million animals at a total cost of $13 billion.

The numbers are staggering but foreign animal disease hasn’t caused nearly as much carnage in the U.S. or the state of Wisconsin — yet.  The major concern is that foreign animal disease can enter the country and disrupt the Wisconsin farm economy without warning. Two main causes are live animals that can come from elsewhere and spread the disease, or people coming or returning from abroad and smuggling diseased meat products into this country.

Preparing a Plan

The USDA, DATCP and local governments continue to develop a response plan acceptable to all sectors of Wisconsin agriculture that will effectively deal with an incident or outbreak. The big challenge is to get the word out about foreign animal disease so that a plan can be put in place that will work quickly and efficiently. That’s because the onset of foreign animal disease requires precautions so that the incident or outbreak is addressed qicklu without disrupting the transportation, distribution, and production of agricultural products, particularly raw milk that drives Wisconsin’s dairy industry.  According to DATCP, Wisconsin produces 25.1 billion pounds of milk each year from 1.25 million cows from nearly 13,000 dairy farms.  An outbreak severely disrupts the process.  A response plan reduces the disruption significantly.

A response would include setting up what amounts to safety zones around the affected farm and those closest to the occurrence and moving milk within specified zones to identified milk processing plants to get the product moving as quickly as possible. This is critical for raw milk, which can spoil after 48 hours. Though destroying affected herds has been done elsewhere, officials say it’s not a practical solution in Wisconsin. 

The Job Ahead

The main task for agricultural officials and milk marketers is to educate all players involved about foreign animal disease and develop an efficient response system.

the Wisconsin Agro-Security Resource Network (WARN) has a Web site intended to mobilize the entire food industry — dairy, beef, pork, egg, and poultry — to build relationships prior to an occurrence. Officials want to build on existing research and response plans from other areas to complete a plan that has total support.

“We are better prepared but we still have a long way to go,” USDA’s Ty Vannieuwenhoven told the audience.  That’s where citizen journalism plays a role. We can get the word out through GO Media and other outlets and participate in the public education needed to prepare for FAD, which is not a fad, but a potentially serious economic, logistic, and public health problem.

(Map courtesy Epoch Times Web images).

Trail mix is a favorite fall time snack of mine. Fun to take on hikes and picnics, it always hits the spot. Try mixing some seasonal seeds in your favorite nut mix to stay healthy this season. Here is a simple recipe with remarkable immune boosting powers.

Sunflower Seeds: Rich in vitamin E, magnesium and selenium, sunflower seeds are high in phytosterols which are known cholesterol reducers.

Pumpkin Seeds: Carve that cute Halloween pumpkin and, save those seeds to roast for snacks! Pumpkin seeds are abundant in proteins and vitamins. They contain L-tryptophan, a compound that prevents and treats depression. Nutrient rich pumpkin seeds contain zinc, magnesium, boron phytosterols, carotenoids, omega-3 fats, manganese, phosphorus, iron, and copper. They are also proven to be anti-inflammatory.

Raisins: Raisins are amazingly good for you, especially if they’re organic raisins. Raisins are rich in calcium, vitamin C, iron, b-vitamins, oleanolic acid, and catechin, a phenolic antioxidant effective for prevention of tumors and colon cancer. Raisins are also a known high fiber snack. The healthiest raisins are sulphite-free and organic.

When you need to urgently need to blow your nose in Germany and don’t have a tissue on hand, you might ask a friend “Hast du ein Tempo?” (Do you have a Tempo?)

Tempo, it turns out, is a brand of tissue, not the German word for tissue.

Substituting a brand name for a general product description is relatively common across a number of languages. How many times have you heard someone say “Just Google that” or “Can I have a COKE please”? Over the years, powerful brands have impacted our culture and slipped into our language. For a brand, this is the ultimate compliment and a big awareness driver. In fact, Coke and Google (the 2 examples above) are now the #1 and #2 brands respectively on Interbrands latest list of powerful brands. Tempo continues to be a very powerful brand in Germany.

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I love eating locally produced foods when I have the chance.  I enjoyed having access to fully tree-ripe stone fruit when I lived in Davis, CA. Today I get to enjoy the ultra-local herbs, vegetables and fruit from my garden part of the year, and I make 10-20 gallons of wine from my little vineyard.  I feel that I am fortunate, not noble.  In January our county (San Diego) is one of the few places producing strawberries and I certainly enjoy those, but it doesn’t mean I don’t buy them later in the year when they come from further North.  Local food can definitely be a treat, but to think that it is a noble thing to be a “locovore” is a bit silly and often quite pretentious.  There are plenty of non-local foods that you should eat with no sense of guilt. In this and my next blog I’ll talk about why.

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After a  White House announcement last April regarding the provision of $777 million to fund 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRC’s) advancing innovation in clean energy technology, the Department of Energy (DOE) recognized the completion of the funding process last Thursday. The investment represents a much-needed show of governmental support for the research and development of the numerous energy breakthroughs necessary to transition the U.S from dirty to clean energy.

Among the list of 46, 31 centers are affiliated with universities, twelve are DOE national laboratories, two are non-profit organizations, and one is a corporate research laboratory. In total, the DOE has awarded $377 million in funding this year, with $277 million coming from the economic stimulus package (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -ARRA) and the additional $100 million provided by the DOE’s FY2009 budget.

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The judge gave her 18 months in jail but suspended all but 6 months of the sentence.

Judge Sonja Clapp said she could reduce her sentence by getting substance abuse treatment. I wonder, is her allegedly woman-beating boyfriend going to get anger management treatment? Or are we only going to punish the mother, who has apparently been separated from her daughter all this time.

Said Avarinia at her sentencing:

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I don’t do this ‘green diva’ thing for the financial rewards (slim pickins these days), but there are times when a special event or product review opportunity comes along and I experience a sense of purpose and well, it is just flat out fun!

This week is one of those times when I love being a green diva. The smart PR folks for Lexus found me and decided I should test drive this beautiful not-available-till-2010 HS 250h hybrid sedan. Unfortunately, I’m on lock-down at my office most days and couldn’t get to the event in NY back in June. I whined a little by email with this sweet PR rep about how my man, Wayne drives a Lexus 400h and he rarely shares it.

She indicated that the cars would be back on the East Coast in July and she could hook me up with a ONE WEEK test drive! I asked her to repeat that message and she confirmed that they were offering to drop off a car anywhere I needed them to and let me play with it for a week and then pick it up at my convenience at the end of a week. Hmmmmmm? I played along, but expected a catch, like a huge deposit or ransom to include one of my children or something.

Apparently there are no catches and it’s all real and I aim to give you a daily account of my experience in fostering this car that I will want to adopt at the end of this week . . .

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Could a regular light bulb end up being an energy efficient competitor to a compact fluorescent bulb? Researchers at the University of Rochester say yes.

A team of optics researchers at the school say they’ve developed a process that makes a 100-watt incandescent bulb use less electricity than a 60-watt bulb. The process, they say, would keep the cost of a traditional light bulb well under that of its fluorescent counterpart while maintaining the more pleasant light an incandescent bulb gives off.

Professor Chunlei Guo  (pictured above) and his team developed a laser process that treats the tungsten filament in a traditional bulb. The process creates nano- and micro- level structures on the filament that dramatically improve its efficiency.

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Atlantic wind farms alone could meet 25% of US electricity needs

According to a new report released by the Interior Department, shallow-water offshore wind farms could supply as much as 20% of the electricity in most coastal states. The report, released last week by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, said that the greatest offshore wind energy potential in the U.S. lies off the Atlantic Coast which holds 1,000 gigawatts of electricity, or one quarter of national demand.

“More than three-fourths of the nation’s electricity demand comes from coastal states and the wind potential off the coasts of the lower 48 states actually exceeds our entire U.S. electricity demand,” Salazar told a summit meeting of 25X’25 America’s Energy Future, a group working to lower America’s carbon emissions.

From Maine to Florida, state and local officials have been drafting plans and regulatory structures for offshore wind farm siting and permitting.

States have regulatory jurisdiction within three miles of their coast, beyond that boundary, the federal government has jurisdiction. And the federal waters between North Carolina and Delaware hold 71 percent of the nation’s shallow-water wind resources, the Interior report says.

In North Carolina, where the shallow waters and high winds in and around the Outer Banks are legendary, state legislators and some coastal counties are already preparing standards for where to allow wind farms. The state’s sounds, inside the Outer Banks, could be likely targets.

“We don’t have a proposal yet, but in all the presentations I’ve seen, the (potential) facilities seem to be in shallow water,” Mike Lopazanski of the N.C. Division of Coastal Management told the Charlotte Observer.

The report also notes large potential in the Pacific—approximately 900 gigawatts along the coast of California, Oregon and Washington—but that deeper waters off the Pacific coast make developing that wind energy resource far more difficult with current available technologies.

There are more than 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind projects proposed in the United States, yet the country is still waiting for its first offshore turbine. Though it has yet to receive final approval from all relevant regulatory bodies, the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts is the closest to fruition.

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Images: Sister72 via flickr; © Wmi_photography

The world suppliers can do better for us. The latest technology, smart grids or “SmartGrids”, provides a far more attractive 60% efficiency. How it works? “A smart grid delivers electricity from suppliers to consumers using digital technology to save energy, reduce cost and increase reliability,” explains Wikipedia.

My state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is theoretically on board. MA electricity providers responded to Governer Deval Patrick’s request for smart grid proposals. The Boston Globe’s interview with Stephen Connors, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative, explains the attraction. Environmentalists and others have been pushing for smart-grid technology for over a decade because it will enable consumers to use less electricity and benefit the environment. “Eventually, smart grids will also incorporate renewable energy - such as wind and solar power, and even electric cars - and feature software applications that reduce consumption during peak-demand times, as well as help power companies identify outages.” For example, the technology will note when you are not home and shut down nonessential components.

The two specific Massachusetts electricity service providers serving the highly populated eastern MA region have proposed the following pilot programs:

1. National Grid’s two-year pilot proposal installs approximately 15,000 meters that read energy consumption almost in real-time. “Customers could access the information via the Internet, by a thermostat readout, or through text messaging, and use the data to change their consumption patterns,” reports the Boston Globe. The cost of the program for the 1.3 million customers would be approximately $ 57 million dollars, which represents less than a dollar per month cost to customers, but an approximate savings of $70 dollars per year.

2. “NStar’s plan, meanwhile, calls for partnering with Tendril Networks Inc., a Colorado energy-efficiency company, to provide nearly 3,000 customers in Newton and Hopkinton [Boston area cities] with energy-consumption information - accessible on the Web - gathered from electricity meters every 15 seconds. Two-way communication between NStar and consumers will also allow the company to eventually ask customers to help reduce electricity consumption during peak-demand periods.”

Obviously, the application of smart grid technology is sustainable on several levels, so we can hope that it is adopted in MA and worldwide pronto. For faster progress, call or email your local legislator to encourage this positive corporate behavior.

“Do my part”, I repeated. I chomped my gum a few more times, chewing on my orders. It seemed simple enough. I am not great with directions, but I felt that I could handle that. The picture made it look easy. I was just to throw away the ball of accumulated spent packaging, which was made up of trees that took years to grow, plastics derived from petroleum, and aluminum extracted with great effort all with the sole purpose of being wrapped around something destined to be unwrapped, thrown away, and reburied in a hole or better yet, burned to make room for more people to “do their part.”

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It’s not long before the birth of our baby makes his debut into the world. Preparing for a home birth can be overwhelming but for the most part it has really put things into perspective. For instance, having to get your home ready by doing all the cleaning and sorting and laundry seems to be the overwhelming aspect. Ordering the birth kit and receiving our water birth tub put things into perspective as I realize the birth our baby is not far off. After that, it’s mostly preparation in the home which seems to be a large task but if done at pace, isn’t so bad and well worth it. 

Having the labor and birth items 6 weeks before you deliver is usually key. The cleaning and sorting part can wait till the last few weeks. If you’re anything like me though- it can’t wait. I feel so much better working on things here and there as the weeks go along. Rather than trying to scramble and get it all done in one day or week seems more nerve-racking to me than spacing it out. At this point, I’ve been able to get to all the nooks and crannies that I feel should get cleaned prior to delivering a baby in our home. Focusing on the bathroom and birthing room is a must.

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Hong Kong tycoon Stanley Ho is most famous in business for his vast and infamous casino empire and unofficial title as one of Asia’s richest people (his estimated US$8 billion net worth earned him the 113th rank in Forbes’ 2007 list of “the World’s Billionaires”). Might news of his recent clean energy joint venture with Portugal’s top power company bring him a new title: “the Chinese T. Boone Pickens“?

According to Macauhub, a government-sponsored news publication-cum-commerce division that reports business-related news in the Pearl River region and in Portugese-speaking countries, Ho has created a renewable energy partner firm with Portugal’s Energias de Portugal (EDP), which will be known as EDP-Energy Solutions Asia.

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Mom meant that if you’re not busy doing something constructive, bad things were bound to follow.

That’s also the rationale behind NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s latest law aimed at making the city more eco friendly. The mayor has added yet another piece of legislation to a growing list of environmentally friendly measures.

The new law will reduce the time drivers can run their engines while going nowhere.

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The department is accepting bids for contracts to investigate sites in Pennsylvania as suitable holding cells for the captured CO2. The work would consist primarily of mapping out geologic formations below the earth’s surface to determine the most suitable spots for storing the gases. The bid deadline is Feb. 20.  

Pennsylvania is among the most polluting of US states, ranking third in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It is estimated the state produces 1 percent of the world’s total climate change pollutants. The carbon capture and storage plan is an effort to improve the state’s standing and combat climate change.  

The CO2 – a major cause of global warming - would be stored about a half mile underground and come mainly from coal fired and other fossil fueled electrical plants. A risk assessment and cost study are set to begin this spring.

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Fast Company cites that:

Massive investments in clean energy promise to keep farmers, urban planners, and green-tech entrepreneurs in business for the next decade.

And they bring us a list of the ten best green jobs for the next decade.

Farmer

Forester

Solar Power Installer

Energy efficiency builder

Wind Turbine Fabricator

Conservation Biologist

Green MBA and Entrepreneur

Recycler

Sustainability Systems Developer

Urban Planner

What I found interesting in this report, and a comment that fits well with traditional employment in tough times is the emphasis on consulting services.

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Formaldehyde is found in many conventional household building supplies.  Whether you use them to outfit a trailer or to fancy up your basement, you’re going to get the formaldehyde.

How can you guard your man cave against this scourge?  Hitch a ride below the fold with me and find out.

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So I read with great interest this article from the New York Times about dirt, worms and the immune system. I’d heard of the hygiene hypothesis, where studies are showing that interactions with bacteria and viruses actually support the development of a strong immune system, and lessen the likelihood of allergies and asthma. This hypothesis is gaining momentum. Apparently, exposures from birth on are helpful in development of the immune system (and perfectly natural– how many of you have seen your baby sucking on your shoe? Or mouthing your keys?).

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