HuckleB
HuckleB's JournalChipotle in Seattle closed for repeated violations
Source: Seattle Times
Seattle health officials closed a South Lake Union Chipotle restaurant Thursday for repeated food-safety violations.
The move to shutter the Mexican-style restaurant, at 212 Westlake Ave., comes more than a month after the fast-food chain closed 43 sites in Washington and Oregon amid an E. coli outbreak that eventually sickened 52 people in nine states and sent 20 people to hospitals.
It also comes in a week when more than 120 students at Boston College were sickened by norovirus after eating at a single Chipotle restaurant, health officials reported.
In the most recent Seattle case, the restaurant received red violations on three consecutive visits from health inspectors, according to a blog by officials at Public Health — Seattle & King County.
Read more: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/seattle-chipotle-closed-for-repeated-violations/
Every month, since at least August, this company has faced new concerns about the health of its food. WTF?
Scientists discover chemical that breaks down Alzheimer's plaques in mice
http://www.sciencealert.com/korean-scientists-discover-chemical-that-breaks-down-alzheimer-s-plaques-in-mice"One of the hypothesised causes of the mental deterioration associated with Alzheimer's disease is amyloid beta – a sticky protein that congregates on surfaces in the brain, forming hardened plaques and impeding neural communication.
But there's new hope that these plaques can be removed after they've formed, with a study by researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology discovering a chemical that can break amyloid plaques down in the brains of mice, improving the animals' learning and memory functions.
The chemical, called EPPS, is similar to taurine, which is used in energy drinks like Red Bull. When it was added to the drinking water of mice that showed symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (after having had their brains injected with amyloid plaques), the animals demonstrated better performance in maze and behavioural tests in contrast to untreated mice in a control group.
After seeing how the mice performed in tests, the researchers sectioned and stained their brains to help visualise the presence of amyloid beta plaques. They found that adding EPPS to the mice's daily drinking water had significantly reduced the levels of amyloid beta plaques in the mouse brains and substantially eliminated the formations at high doses.
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The Ethics of Prescribing Worthless Treatments
https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-ethics-of-prescribing-worthless-treatments/#more-39917Good piece at SBM today.
What Are You Afraid Of?
http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/what-are-you-afraid-of/#more-8657"...
Despite the obvious adaptive function of fear, many people fear the wrong things, meaning that their fear and anxiety is not proportional to actual threat. This mismatch is maladaptive, so why is it the case?
For example, people generally fear flying more than driving. Meanwhile, in the entire history of aviation about 13,000 people have lost their lives, the same amount as die on US roads every 4 months. Another way to look at the probability, which is perhaps a bit more intuitive, is that you would have to fly every day for about 14,000 years before having a greater than 50% chance of crashing. That’s pretty reassuring.
...
Our availability heuristic kicks in, however, and we are given the false sense that the events we see on the news are common or likely. Therefore, the news has a tendency to give us a distorted view of reality. They also tend to focus on fears, because that is what sells. “Should you be afraid of X? Find out at 11.”
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Social media has made the problem worse, if anything. There is an entire cottage industry that exists to sell fears about food and toxins. People worry about trace amounts of “chemicals” in their food rather than whether or not they are getting enough exercise.
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A good piece that covers a lot of important in a small space.
No, Monsanto Is Not Going On Trial For Crimes Against Humanity
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kavinsenapathy/2015/12/07/no-monsanto-is-not-going-on-trial-for-crimes-against-humanity/“Monsanto on trial for crimes against nature and humanity,” a headline for The Ecologist declared on Sunday. Other fringe websites reported similar news of the so-called International Monsanto Tribune set to take place in the Hague, the seat of Dutch government, in October of next year. Thus far, no mainstream media has reported on the plan, because it’s not a real tril.
Nevertheless, the group organizing the tribunal is doing its best to paint the event as a legitimate trial. The tribunal, the group’s website explains, will rely on “the ‘Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights’ adopted at the UN in 2011,” and “assess potential criminal liability on the basis of the Rome Statue (sic) that created the International Criminal Court in The Hague in 2002.”
While the verbiage sounds official, this tribunal is not governed by the United Nations nor the International Criminal Court, an international treaty-based court not affiliated with the UN. Instead, the group is using the guidelines of both for their trial, in a seeming attempt to lend authenticity to a glorified meeting of the who’s who of anti-biotech science deniers, during which they will undoubtedly find their absent defendant guilty.
Most of the tribunal leaders have one thing in common: they are part of organic movement special interests, and they all demonize creators of Genetically Modified Organisms. These crops created with modern molecular genetic engineering are better known as “GMOs”–a scientifically arbitrary term, because the vast majority of foods we consume, even organic foods, have had their genomes altered in the field or in a lab with techniques ranging from well-known selective breeding to lesser-known wide cross hybridization, which unnaturally “forces” organisms of different species or genera to produce offspring.
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No one has to like Monsanto, or even acknowledge the scientific consensus that GMOs are safe, to recognize a certain story that has earned almost 200 likes at DU is not accurate.
There is no legal trial. It has nothing to do with the UN, or the international legal organizations related to the Hague.
DU should be better than this, even if we disagree. We need to stand up against bad propaganda of all types.
Progressives don't fall for this stuff.
Period.
Chipotle sales battered by widening E. coli outbreak
"A widening U.S. E. coli outbreak has slammed sales at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, the company said on Friday, hours after federal authorities reported that people in nine states have now contracted food poisoning.Shares in the popular burrito chain tumbled nearly 8 percent to $518 in extended trading after Chipotle warned that sales at established restaurants could drop 8 to 11 percent for the fourth quarter from a year earlier. This would be the first such decline in company history.
Investigators said the outbreak could widen again as local agencies upload data. Chipotle said in a regulatory filing that its sales could take more hits from "further developments, including potential additional announcements from federal and state health authorities."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported related E. coli O26 illness in three new states. Forty-seven of the 52 people sickened say they ate at Chipotle before falling ill.
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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chipotle-mexican-ecoli-idUSKBN0TN21W20151205
Chipotle sales battered by widening E. coli outbreak
Source: Reuters
A widening U.S. E. coli outbreak has slammed sales at Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc, the company said on Friday, hours after federal authorities reported that people in nine states have now contracted food poisoning.
Shares in the popular burrito chain tumbled nearly 8 percent to $518 in extended trading after Chipotle warned that sales at established restaurants could drop 8 to 11 percent for the fourth quarter from a year earlier. This would be the first such decline in company history.
Investigators said the outbreak could widen again as local agencies upload data. Chipotle said in a regulatory filing that its sales could take more hits from "further developments, including potential additional announcements from federal and state health authorities."
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported related E. coli O26 illness in three new states. Forty-seven of the 52 people sickened say they ate at Chipotle before falling ill.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-chipotle-mexican-ecoli-idUSKBN0TN21W20151205
I've never said anyone can prove all future GMOs are safe.
That doesn't justify labeling them. In fact, that is just a distraction from the discussion, because...
You can't prove that all future plants developed using other methods are safe. No one can. Check out the Lenape potato, for example.
That's why they are studied, and GMOs are studied more than plants developed using other methods, which is, actually odd, when it comes down to it, because, as noted, they are also more predictable, as far fewer genes are changed, and we actually know which genes are changed, unlike the reality with all other seed development technologies.
At the end of the day, you have a preference. Well, then you can buy non-GMO labeled products. It's the same as someone who wants Halal or Kosher food. It's a preference. And, as you can see, it's actually much closer to a religious preference than anything for which I have ever advocated.
PS: http://fafdl.org/blog/2014/08/16/a-principled-case-against-mandatory-gmo-labels/
Oh, and you might want to realize that non-GMO may not be better for you or the environment. It might just be corporate BS.
See: http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2015/05/what-does-chipotles-switch-to-non-gmo-ingredients-mean-for-pesticide-use/
And that's not even getting to the reality of the lack of research, oversight and regulation when it comes to pesticide and herbicide use in organic production. Now, advocating that government change the reality in that area might actually be positive for the human race and the planet.
You need to realize that DUers who argue against the anti-GMO stuff are people who generally bought into the anti-GMO stuff originally, but then questioned themselves, and dug into the reality. It did not come easily for any of us, so making grand assertions about religious beliefs when talking to us or about us is truly inaccurate and disrespectful.
The advocacy for GMO labeling is also about money, not science.
Organic companies have made hay by unethically demonizing GMOs. Now they bankroll the "labeling movement," which is just a brilliant way of conning a bunch of people into becoming free marketers for organic and non-GMO food. The lack of ethics is astounding.
If you start advocating for all types of seed development technology to be labeled, then at least you would be consistent. Asking for one to be labeled when there is no viable justification for it, is just simply anti-science, anti-logic, and ludicrous.
So, you can't answer my question.
And you also make a baseless assertion that my decision to follow the science is based in "religion."
Your response explains a lot, as I think you know that there is nothing more dangerous about a GE bred plant than any other kind of plant, although GE plants are more predictable and tested far more, interestingly enough. You have no justification for a mandatory label. It is a preference for you, and that is not something that should be addressed via legal means.
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