The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. – Benjamin Franklin
PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.
With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.
Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
By Joshua Zaffos, Colorado Springs Independent
Posted on June 26, 2008
I am half the man my father is.
This disturbing fortune came to me about five years ago, but not from an odd relative or a sadistic girlfriend. Instead, this dinner-table diagnosis came from Theo (short for Theodora) Colborn, an internationally known scientist who has helped develop the field of research exploring how chemical compounds interfere with the hormones that guide human development.
Known as endocrine disruption, chemicals found in computer screens and car seats, shower curtains and shampoo, plastic water bottles and prophylactics are skewing our odds against cancers and causing developmental delays and reproductive roadblocks, including declining sperm counts.
So, when Colborn informed me of my inferior manhood, I took consolation in the fact that she was indicting my entire generation — and her own — for loading our natural environment, our workplaces and our homes with tens of thousands of chemical compounds without really having a clue about what we’re doing. Our Stolen Future, the book Colborn co-authored in 1996, first delivered this bad news to the general public.
More than a decade later, scientists are still conducting experiments and measuring results, from cramped basement labs at universities to expansive high-country lakes in the wilderness. The hypotheses generally aren’t questions of whether chemicals are pervading and persisting in the environment, but rather how severely they are stunting our development and health. The federal government has investigated these questions with timidity, if not contempt, operating a regulatory system practically beholden to the chemical industry.
With half of my manhood at stake and hopes for a better assessment in the future, I’m wondering how we can heed the warning signs and reverse our chemical course.
A day in my half-life
For years, I started off each day drinking coffee out of a metallic cup, likely coated with bisphenol-A, a chemical commonly used to line plastic bottles and other food and beverage cans and containers. Anyone who has lugged around a Nalgene bottle made of polycarbonate plastic, trying to save the Earth one paper cup at a time, has gotten his or her share of bisphenol-A, which leaches from containers into liquids to enter our bodies. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control study detected bisphenol-A in 93 percent of all Americans.
Inside us, bisphenol-A mimics estrogen, plugging into hormone receptors; this is endocrine disruption. In pregnant or breastfeeding mothers and young and prepubescent children, it can have critical impacts, rewiring our developmental profiles and opening up our risks for cancers and physical and behavioral abnormalities. Lab tests suggest that chronic, low-dose exposure to bisphenol-A — like drinking out of a coated cup or polycarbonate bottle daily — may cause women to have greater chances of breast cancer and polycystic ovary syndrome, a leading cause of infertility, and men to have increased odds of prostate cancer and reduced sperm counts.
That’s a lot to think about during the day’s first cup of coffee or sip of water. Now I try to stick to ceramic mugs and glasses.
As my body starts to properly caffeinate in the mornings, I usually sit in front of a laptop and do whatever it is writers do to put off writing — checking e-mails and boxscores — until I’m warmed up. As a computer warms up, particles inside start to fly and some catch a ride on dust. For years, I breathed in polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) from my laptop.
These compounds are flame-retardants, nearly universally used in couch cushions, televisions, cars and carpets. PBDEs have similar chemical structures to thyroid hormones, and, according to lab tests, they can lower our bodies’ production of the real thing.
Over time, thyroid-hormone deficiencies can hurt metabolism. Hypothyroidism causes fatigue, depression, anxiety, hair loss and a waning libido. Women with low thyroid-hormone counts are five times more likely to have children with IQs that qualify them as mildly retarded, according to one study. A 2005 experiment found that a single low dose of a common PDBE given to rats in utero resulted in a class of hyperactive rodents with persistent low sperm counts.
(NaturalNews) A recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Texas at Austin has uncovered evidence that the damage done by pesticides may last for four generations or more.
Reproductive neuroendocrinologist Andrea Gore and evolutionary biologist David Crews compared the sexual behavior of two different groups of rats. One group of rats was a standard laboratory rat stock, while the other group was descended from rats that had been subjected to the hormone-disrupting effects of chemicals. Reproductive biologist had injected the great-grandmothers of these rats with vinclozolin, a common fungicide that is particularly popular among grape-growers.
Skinner’s research had previously shown that the male descendents of the rats who had been injected with vinclozolin developed various reproductive and other difficulties later in life, including sperm deficiencies, infertility, breast tumors and kidney disease.
Read morePesticide Dangers to Human Health Carry Through Multiple Generations
(NaturalNews) The following is an account of an interesting three-part experiment comparing the effects of raw foods versus cooked foods in rats. This account is taken from a book titled Goldot, by Lewis E. Cook, Jr. and Junko Yasui:
“It has been found that a group of rats who were fed diets of raw vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains from birth grew into completely healthy specimens and never suffered from any disease. They were never ill. They grew rapidly, but never became fat, mated with enthusiasm, and had healthy offspring. They were always gently affectionate and playful and lived in perfect harmony with each other. Upon reaching an old age, equivalent to 80 years in humans, these rats were put to death and autopsied. At that advanced age, their organs, glands, tissues and all body processes appeared to be in perfect condition without any sign of aging or deterioration.
A companion group of rats were fed a diet comparable to that of the average American and included white bread, cooked foods, meats, milk, salt, soft drinks, candies, cakes, vitamins and other supplements, medicines for their ailments, etc. During their lifetime, these rats became fat and from the earliest age, contracted most of the diseases of modern American society including colds, fever, pneumonia, poor vision, cataracts, heart disease, arthritis, cancer, and many more.
Most of this group died prematurely at early ages, but during their lifetime, most of them were vicious, snarling beasts, fighting with one another, stealing one another’s food and attempting to kill each other. They had to be kept apart to prevent total destruction of the entire group. Their offspring were all sick and exhibited the same general characteristics as the parents.
As this group of rats died one by one or in epidemics of various diseases, autopsies were performed revealing extensive degenerative conditions in every part of their bodies. All organs, glands, and tissues were affected, as were the skin, hair, blood, and nervous system. They were all truly total physical and nervous wrecks. The same conditions existed in the few which survived the full duration of the experiment.
Read moreRaw Foods vs. Cooked Foods – The Great American Rat Experiment
Dhaka – The UN’s World Food Programme began distributing emergency food aid on Sunday to 120 000 people facing famine in south eastern Bangladesh, where an invasion of rats led to widespread crop destruction.
People from the affected areas in the Chittagong hill tracks were struggling to feed themselves and had been eating wild roots from the jungle ever since the area was overrun by millions of rats, the WFP said.
It said its food aid would meet the immediate needs of over 25 680 households from May to August this year and would help “maintain adequate food consumption and protect livelihood”.
“Thousands of poor tribal families would have remained destitute due to the loss of their crops, and livelihoods,” said the acting WFP representative in Bangladesh Edward Kallon.
“The donor assistance has enabled WFP to respond quickly to feed these vulnerable poor families who are in need of food,” he said.