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Man allegedly endangered 200,000 chickens at Madison County farm as an act of retribution
Wayne Ford, Athens Banner-Herald
Thu, August 31, 2023 at 1:06 AM PDT·2 min read
https://news.yahoo.com/man-allegedly-endangered-200-000-080630435.html
A man hired to tend to thousand of chickens at a Madison County farm was arrested recently after authorities alleged he turned off the water supply to the chicken houses in an act that could have killed the birds.
More than 200,000 chickens’ lives were at stake when the disgruntled worker turned off the power, according to Madison County sheriff’s Capt. Jimmy Patton.
“The birds didn’t die because they caught it on time. The service provider got an alert on it, but the birds were in distress,” Patton said about the incident that occurred in early August.
The suspect, Huy Dang Nguyen, 32, was arrested Aug. 21 on charges of felony aggravated cruelty to animals and cruelty to animals. Nguyen had been living on the farm of six large poultry houses off Georgia Highway 191 a few miles north of Comer, but he was arrested at his mother’s home in Dallas in Paulding County, according to the sheriff’s report.
Sheriff’s investigator Chris Guest began looking into the matter after Pilgrim’s Pride and the owners of the farm reported problems with Nguyen.
The owners fired Nguyen and ordered him off the property. Nguyen became upset, but he did leave the property, according to Guest.
However, later a Pilgrim’s Pride supervisor reported he received a signal on his computer that the temperature in the poultry houses was rising significantly, the report notes.
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Pilgrims Pride did not want to send anyone to the farm due to safety issues and the owners as well reported they were fearful of Nguyen.
The owners did check on the houses and found the water supply to all six houses was turned off. The officer reported the water provided not only drinking water, but water for the cooling system to protect the birds from the summer heat.
The owner reported to Guest that if the situation had not been noticed “then the chickens could have easily died due the increasing heat and not being able to consume water.”
The owner reported that the suspect “was mad at him and wanted to kill the chickens.”
Sheriff’s deputies in Paulding County arrested Nguyen on warrants and upon transfer to Madison County, the suspect spoke to Guest telling the investigator that he had a drug problem, but he denied turning the water off.
Pilgrims Pride transferred the chickens to another farm and have suspended the broiler contract with the owners pending an investigation, according to the report.
The owners understood the company’s stance and are being cooperative, according to Guest.
This article originally appeared on Athens Banner-Herald: Farm worker charged with felony cruelty at Madison County poultry farm
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Nuclear Weapons Tests Are Unappreciated Source Of Radioactivity In Wild Boars
August 30, 2023 American Chemical Society
Shaggy-haired, tusked pigs roam free in the woods of Germany and Austria. Although these game animals look fine, some contain radioactive cesium at levels that render their meat unsafe to eat. Previously, scientists hypothesized that the contamination stemmed from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. But now, researchers in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology report that nuclear weapon fallout from 60 to 80 years ago also contributes significantly to the wild boars’ persistent radioactivity.
Radioactive cesium, a byproduct of nuclear weapons explosions and nuclear energy production, poses risks to public health when it enters the environment. And the environment across Europe got a large pulse of radioactive cesium contamination following the Chernobyl power plant accident 37 years ago. Most of that radioactivity originated from cesium-137, but a much longer-lived form, called cesium-135, can also be produced during nuclear fission. Over time, cesium-137 has declined in most game animals, but wild boars’ radioactivity levels haven’t changed substantially. Their meat continues to exceed regulatory limits for consumption, in some places leading to less hunting and consequently contributing to the overpopulation of the animals in Europe. Because the radioactive cesium levels haven’t changed as expected, Georg Steinhauser, Bin Feng and colleagues wanted to investigate the amount and origin of that contamination in wild boars from Germany.
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The researchers worked with hunters to collect wild boar meat from across Southern Germany and then measured the samples’ cesium-137 levels with a gamma-ray detector. To determine the origin of the radioactivity, the team compared the amount of cesium-135 to cesium-137 with a sophisticated mass spectrometer. Previous studies showed that this ratio clearly indicates sources: A high ratio points to nuclear weapons explosions, whereas a low ratio implicates nuclear reactors.
The team observed that 88% of the 48 meat samples exceeded German regulatory limits for radioactive cesium in food. For the samples with elevated levels, the researchers calculated the ratios of cesium-135 to cesium-137, and found that nuclear weapons testing supplied between 10 and 68% of the contamination. And in some samples, the amount of cesium from weapons alone exceeded regulatory limits. The researchers propose that the mid-20th century weapons tests were an underappreciated source of radioactive cesium to German soil, which was also unevenly impacted by the Chernobyl accident. Contamination from both sources have been taken up by the wild boars’ food, such as underground truffles, contributing to their persistent radioactivity. The researchers say that future nuclear accidents or explosions could worsen these animals’ contamination, potentially impacting food safety for decades, as this study shows.
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The authors acknowledge funding from the Bavarian Academy for Hunting and Nature and an Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.
The radioactive wild boar origin story is featured in a YouTube Shorts by Reactions, a video series produced by the American Chemical Society and PBS Digital Studios. Watch the video here.
The paper’s abstract will be available on Aug. 30 at 8 a.m. Eastern time here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.3c03565
The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
How a mere 12% of Americans eat half the nation’s beef, creating significant health and environmental impacts
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-mere-americans-nation-beef-significant.html
A new study has found that 12% of Americans are responsible for eating half of all beef consumed on a given day, a finding that may help consumer groups and government agencies craft educational messaging around the negative health and environmental impacts of beef consumption.
Those 12%—most likely to be men or people between the ages of 50 and 65—eat what researchers called a disproportionate amount of beef on a given day, a distinction based on the latest Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggest four ounces per day of meat, poultry, and eggs combined for those consuming 2,200 calories per day.
The study, published in the journal Nutrients, analyzed data from the CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, which tracked the meals of more than 10,000 adults over a 24-hour period. The global food system emits 17 billion tons of greenhouse gases a year, equivalent to a third of all planet-warming gases produced by human activity. The beef industry contributes heavily to that, producing eight to 10 times more emissions than chicken, and over 50 times more than beans.
“We focused on beef because of its impact on the environment, and because it’s high in saturated fat, which is not good for your health,” said the study’s corresponding and senior author Diego Rose, professor and nutrition program director at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
Rose said the study’s purpose was to assist in targeting educational programs or awareness campaigns to those eating disproportionate amounts of beef. Honing messaging around the environmental impact of beef production is crucial at a time when climate change awareness is higher than ever.
Rose said he and fellow researchers were “surprised” that a small percentage of people are responsible for such an out-sized consumption of beef, but it’s yet to be determined if the findings are encouraging for sustainability advocates.
“On one hand, if it’s only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption, you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board,” Rose said. “On the other hand, those 12% may be most resistant to change.”
The study also found that those who were not disproportionate beef consumers were more likely to have looked up USDA’s MyPlate food guidance system.
“This might indicate that exposure to dietary guidelines can be an effective tool in changing eating behaviors, but it could also be true that those who were aware of healthy or sustainable eating practices were also more likely to be aware of dietary guideline tools,” said Amelia Willits-Smith, lead author on the paper and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Of the beef consumed on a given day, almost a third came from cuts of beef such as steak or brisket. But six of the top 10 sources were mixed dishes such as burgers, burritos, tacos, meatloaf or spaghetti with meat sauce. Some of these foods may offer an easy opportunity for disproportionate beef eaters to alter their dietary habits.
“If you’re getting a burrito, you could just as easily ask for chicken instead of beef,” Willits-Smith said.
Those below the age of 29 and above the age of 66 were least likely to eat large amounts of beef. Rose said this indicated that the younger generation might be more interested in mitigating the effects of climate change.
“There’s hope in the younger generation, because it’s their planet they’re going to inherit,” Rose said. “I’ve seen in my classes that they’re interested in diet, how it impacts the environment, and what can they do about it.”
In addition to Rose and Willits-Smith, the study’s authors include Tulane clinical assistant professor Dr. Keelia O’Malley and Tulane Masters of Public Health graduate Harmonii Odinga.
Exposing the Big Game 