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Deadly fire at Chinese poultry plant highlights industrial-ag safety concerns

by Dave Max Posted on June 3, 2013

Deadly fire at Chinese poultry plant highlights industrial-ag safety concerns

By Claire Thompson

Brian Yap

We don’t know yet how much fire-safety equipment the factory had.

We’re still reeling from April’s garment-factory collapse in Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, making the 112 fatalities of a clothing-factory fire in the same country five months earlier seem tragically routine in comparison. Today’s news, then, of at least 119 deaths in a fire at a poultry plant in northeast China, not only adds another unwanted entry to this history of horror, but also shows that mortally unsafe working conditions are not limited to the apparel industry.

According to Chinese news reports cited by The New York Times, when a fire broke out inside the Baoyuanfeng Poultry Plant, “a major domestic poultry supplier,” workers rushed to the factory’s few exits only to find some of them blocked — the same safety hazard that made November’s fire in a Bangladesh factory so lethal, and that killed workers in the U.S.’s notorious Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire a century ago (which spurred important safety reforms in this country).

Industrial-scale ag is taking off in China thanks to a growing middle class with an appetite for meat. The Baoyuanfeng plant began operations just four years ago in Jilin Province, whose administrative city, Dehui, “has promoted itself as a base for commercial agriculture,” and claims it can produce 250 million broiler chickens a year. Last week’s announcement that Chinese meat company Shuanghui hopes to buy U.S. pork behemoth Smithfield demonstrated the global implications of a rapidly expanding Chinese meat market. This week’s tragedy shows the human consequences.

The New York Times reports:

China’s food-processing industry has grown rapidly to feed an increasingly prosperous population in the nation’s cities, and the poultry plant appeared to be one beneficiary of that growth. …

Chinese factories and mines have been troubled by work hazards during the country’s rapid economic expansion. The frequent industrial accidents have drawn criticism that officials are putting economic growth before safety.

Ironically, one of the goals — or at least one of the hoped-for side effects — of the Shuanghui-Smithfield deal is better food safety on both sides of the Pacific. Bloomberg News notes that buying Smithfield “would give Shuanghui access to more advanced production technology,” while Tom Philpott at Mother Jones points out that China’s ban on the growth additive ractopamine could be behind Smithfield’s recent decision to phase out its use of the drug.

Could the deal also lead to higher safety standards in meat-processing plants? We sure hope so.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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Illegal Monsanto GMO wheat found in Oregon

by Emil8up51 Posted on May 30, 2013

Illegal Monsanto GMO wheat found in Oregon

By John Upton

Shutterstock

A farmer in Oregon found a patch of wheat growing like a weed where it wasn’t expected, so the farmer sprayed it with the herbicide Roundup. Surprisingly, some of the wheat survived.

The startled farmer sent samples of the renegade wheat to a laboratory, which confirmed something that should have been impossible: The wheat was a genetically engineered variety that had never been approved to be grown in the U.S., nor anywhere else in the world.

From The New York Times:

The Agriculture Department said the wheat was of the type developed by Monsanto to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, also known as glyphosate. Such wheat was field-tested in 16 states, including Oregon, from 1998 through 2005, but Monsanto dropped the project before the wheat was ever approved for commercial planting.

The department said it was not known yet whether any of the wheat got into the food supply or into grain shipments. Even if it did, officials said, it would pose no threat to health. The Food and Drug Administration reviewed the wheat and found no safety problems with it in 2004.

Still, the mere presence of the genetically modified plant could cause some countries to turn away exports of American wheat, especially if any traces of the unapproved grain were found in shipments. About $8.1 billion in American wheat was exported in 2012, representing nearly half the total $17.9 billion crop, according to U.S. Wheat Associates, which promotes American wheat abroad. About 90 percent of Oregon’s wheat crop is exported.

It’s not clear when the discovery was made. In a statement on its website, Monsanto said it was contacted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture regarding its investigation “earlier this month.” The USDA announced the discovery on Wednesday and said nine investigators are trying to figure out how the freak wheat wound up growing on the unnamed farmer’s land. Reuters reports that there were eight field trials of Monsanto’s GMO wheat in Oregon from 1999 to 2001.

While the federal government and agriculture industry scramble to investigate and manage fallout from the escaped wheat strain, there is one company that doesn’t seem too concerned. You can guess who that might be. From a statement posted on Monsanto’s website:

Over the past decade, an annual average of 58 million acres of wheat have been planted in the United States. This is the first report of the Roundup Ready trait being found out of place since Monsanto’s commercial wheat development program was discontinued nine years ago. …

Accordingly, while USDA’s results are unexpected, there is considerable reason to believe that the presence of the Roundup Ready trait in wheat, if determined to be valid, is very limited.

Well, if it’s “very limited,” then, I suppose there’s no need for concern. Try telling that to America’s wheat trading partners.

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Crappy solar panels threaten industry growth

by p555nf Posted on May 29, 2013

Crappy solar panels threaten industry growth

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Faulty solar panels threaten to darken the solar industry’s future.

As the solar sector explodes, some of the solar panels it produces are fizzling out.

The New York Times reports on the problem of faulty panels and says nobody knows how pervasive it is because nobody keeps track. Fingers are being pointed at corner cutting by manufacturing firms in China. From the Times article:

Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting [quality] problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption. …

The quality concerns have emerged just after a surge in solar construction. In the United States, the Solar Energy Industries Association said that solar panel generating capacity exploded from 83 megawatts in 2003 to 7,266 megawatts in 2012, enough to power more than 1.2 million homes. Nearly half that capacity was installed in 2012 alone, meaning any significant problems may not become apparent for years.

“We need to face up to the fact that corners are being cut,” said Conrad Burke, general manager for DuPont’s billion-dollar photovoltaic division, which supplies materials to solar manufacturers.

The solar developer Dissigno has had significant solar panel failures at several of its projects, according to Dave Williams, chief executive of the San Francisco-based company.

“I don’t want to be alarmist, but I think quality poses a long-term threat,” he said. “The quality across the board is harder to put your finger on now as materials in modules are changing every day and manufacturers are reluctant to share that information.”

Most of the concerns over quality center on China, home to the majority of the world’s solar panel manufacturing capacity.

Some industry leaders say it’s time to start shaming the companies that are producing bad products:

[Stuart] Wenham, [the chief technology officer of Suntech], said manufacturers needed to be held accountable and advocated creating testing labs not beholden to the industry that would assess quality.

“We need to start naming names,” he said.

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Connecticut Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

by 0df53x21 Posted on May 23, 2013

Connecticut Senate passes GMO-labeling bill

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Is this corn genetically modified? Connecticut lawmakers think you have the right to know.

Does your mouth water at the thought of corn that’s engineered to produce a poison that kills insects? If not, Connecticut might be the place for you.

The state’s Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation that would require food manufacturers to label products that contain genetically engineered ingredients such as GM corn. The bill sailed through on a 35-1 vote, and now moves to the state House.

From the Connecticut Post:

Speaker of the House J. Brendan Sharkey [D] wants to support legislation that would require the labeling of products that contain genetically modified organisms.

But he’s not sure whether the House will approve the version approved in the state Senate late Tuesday night that would depend on three nearby states to approve similar legislation by July of 2015.

Sharkey, in an interview near the House podium around the time the Senate was approving the bill, said his majority caucus met behind closed doors earlier in the day to discuss the controversial measure.

“The caucus confirmed my own sense that obviously we want to do something,” Sharkey said. “My concern all along has been the question of whether Connecticut should put itself out on its own, requiring this labeling and whether that puts us at an economic disadvantage being the first and only state to do this.”

Unlike 64 other countries, the U.S. lacks any labeling laws for GMO food (though Americans who want to avoid it could do so by buying certified organics). Some countries outright ban GMOs — officials in Hungary just burned 1,000 acres of Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn after new crop-testing regulations led to its discovery.

So lawmakers in Connecticut, Vermont, and elsewhere are trying to take matters into their own hands, pushing forward with state-level labeling legislation. Bills in both of those New England states are cautious, setting long timeframes for the start of a ban and including caveats based on whether other states adopt similar laws. That caution is a response to fears of lawsuits from the powerful food and ag industry, which opposes GMO labeling.

From the Hartford Courant:

“I’m concerned about our state going out on its own on this and the potential economic disadvantage that could cause,” House Speaker Brendan Sharkey said. “I would like to see us be part of a compact with some other states, which would hopefully include one of the bigger states such as New York.” …

Even if the bill passes the House and is signed into law by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy [D], it would not take effect until at least three other states pass similar legislation. GMO labeling legislation is pending in more than a dozen states.

The Center for Food Safety reports that legislation in Maine is also moving forward:

In addition to the Connecticut victory, [on Tuesday] Maine’s GE food labeling bill passed through the state’s Agriculture Committee — a major hurdle — which voted 8-5 in favor of their labeling bill. The bill passed the state Assembly earlier this month.

“Both of these victorious votes show the power of the voice of consumers, who through their vocal and powerful demand for GE food labeling, are finally getting their state lawmakers to listen and take action,” said Rebecca Spector, west coast director of Center for Food Safety.

All of this action has some Monsanto backers nervous. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) recently inserted an amendment into the Farm Bill that would forbid states from requiring labels on GMO foods.

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Gulf Coast refineries accidentally belch out a lot of chemical pollution

by sreg2 Posted on May 22, 2013

Gulf Coast refineries accidentally belch out a lot of chemical pollution

By John Upton

Mike Smail

ExxonMobil’s accident-prone complex in Baton Rouge.

“Oops.”

Gulf Coast oil refiners and chemical processors say that a lot, but regulators are doing precious little to rein in what the industry euphemistically calls “upset” emissions.

Upset emissions are inadvertent releases of chemicals by industrial operations when something goes awry. And things seem to go awry awfully frequently. An ExxonMobil refinery in Baton Rouge, La., was averaging two accidental releases every week during one grim stretch.

That’s according to an analysis by The Center for Public Integrity, which found that upset emissions are more prevalent than industry admits or government knows. Some highlights from the center’s investigative report:

[A 411-barrel chemical leak last year] has played out again and again at the sprawling, 2,400-acre ExxonMobil Baton Rouge complex, which encompasses an oil refinery and a chemical plant, and dwarfs the Standard Heights community. The leak marks the 1,068th upset emissions event at the compound in the last eight years, according to a database of incident reports compiled by the Bucket Brigade. Of these events, 172 involved benzene, a carcinogen that can trigger headaches, dizziness and rapid heart rate.

Exxon’s chemical plant had 265 of all incidents. At the refinery, the data show 803 accidental releases over these years; at its height, the facility averaged two a week. …

The steady hazards extend far beyond Baton Rouge. In the Gulf states of Texas and Louisiana, the vast number of plastics, power and gas plants provide an on-the-ground case study of a national problem.

“Non-routine” upset emissions have become regular occurrences at oil refineries, chemical plants and manufacturing facilities.

The upset emissions can pose serious health risks, but the oil and chemical companies say there’s nothing to worry about.

Dr. Mark D’Andrea, at the University of Texas Cancer Center, began tracking 4,000 residents exposed to the poster child of all upsets — the “40-day Release” at the BP refinery, in Texas City, which belched 514,795 pounds of benzene and 20 other pollutants throughout the spring of 2010. Earlier this year, D’Andrea unveiled preliminary data showing the residents have “significantly higher” white-blood cell and platelet counts than their Houston counterparts. The data suggests BP’s release may have increased their risk of developing such cancers as leukemia, the doctor says.

In a statement, BP says it does “not believe any negative health impacts resulted from” its 40-day release. “To our knowledge, the University Cancer Centers’ pilot study does not support a claim for any plaintiff alleging injury from that flaring and has no relevance to those claims,” the company wrote, referring to pending litigation filed by 47,830 residents and workers against BP alleging health ailments caused by the release. D’Andrea has not been hired as an expert witness for either side in the case, but has testified in pre-trial discovery.

For more, read the full report in all its grotesque glory.

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Gulf Coast refineries accidentally belch out a lot of chemical pollution

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BP, Shell, Statoil accused of fixing oil prices

by sreg2 Posted on May 20, 2013

BP, Shell, Statoil accused of fixing oil prices

By John Upton

Shutterstock /

Rob Wilson

Have we been paying too much for gas?

The good folks at BP, Shell, and Statoil would never break the law and screw over their customers in a quest for inflated profits, surely.

Yet that is the very accusation coming out of Europe, where the industry giants are suspected of colluding to fix prices for crude, biofuel, and refined oil products at artificially high levels, allowing them to reap greater profits than the laws of supply and demand would dictate in a truly competitive economy.

Offices of the companies were raided last week by European Commission officials, and the Justice Department is being urged to investigate whether the alleged price fixing spilled over onto American shores.

From The Hill:

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman aired his concerns about the recent probe by EU officials into potential oil price manipulation in a Friday letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

[Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)] said price fixing in commodity markets “has been an area of abuse within the U.S. in the past,” noting the Enron power market scandal.

“It is critically important to determine whether or not similar efforts have been made to manipulate U.S. oil indices by these firms or others,” he added.

EU investigators raided the European offices of Statoil, BP and Shell earlier this week. The officials are looking into whether the firms submitted false information to Platts, a price-reporting organization owned by McGraw-Hill Financial.

The Economist puts the scale of the growing scandal in some perspective:

The volumes of oil and products linked to these benchmark prices [submitted to Platts] are vast. Futures and derivatives markets are also built on the price of the underlying physical commodity. At least 200 billion barrels a year, worth in the order of $20 trillion, are priced off the Brent benchmark, the world’s biggest, according to Liz Bossley, chief executive of Consilience, an energy-markets consultancy. The commission has said that even small price distortions could have a “huge impact” on energy prices. Statoil has said that the commission’s interest goes all the way back to 2002. If it is right, then the sums involved could be huge, too.

If true, the accusations wouldn’t just mean that motorists have been paying too much at the pump. Energy prices affect everything from food to consumer goods. From The Telegraph:

Ed Davey, the [U.K.] Energy Secretary, has promised companies will face the “full force of the law” if their behaviour is found to have “driven up” petrol prices.

However, his Department of Energy and Climate Change also acknowledged the impact of oil market rigging could be bigger than simply affecting petrol prices.

It said manipulation of the oil price could have driven inflation and pointed out that the market is an important benchmark for many financial transactions.

High oil prices also feeds through to bigger bills for food, clothes and other essentials because it pushes up the cost of transport and manufacturing.

A high oil price will also fuel inflation, which erodes the value of people’s savings, and can stifle economic growth, by pushing up businesses’ costs.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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BP wants U.S. government to reduce court-ordered oil-spill payouts

by xf0ks040u Posted on May 20, 2013

BP wants U.S. government to reduce court-ordered oil-spill payouts

By John Upton

There’s still a big black mark on BP.

BP has gone crying to mummy over the big payouts it’s having to make because of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster. It wants the U.K. government to ask the U.S. government to step in and give a hand.

BP says it’s being forced to make overly large payments to companies in the Gulf Coast region that claim to have lost business because of the spill, and it says those payments are jeopardizing BP’s own financial recovery and potentially putting the company at risk of a hostile takeover. The payments are being calculated by a court using a formula to which BP agreed.

But now BP has filed an appeal in court against that agreement, claiming that the compensation amounts are overinflated or, in some cases, entirely unnecessary. The company recently warned shareholders that the $8.2 billion it previously anticipated forking out in compensation was a significant underestimation.

From the BBC:

BP is so worried by the potential magnitude of alleged undeserved payments it is making to companies that it is planning to ask the British prime minister and chancellor for help in persuading the US government to intervene. It is hopeful that David Cameron will raise the issue at the G8 meeting of the governments of the world’s richest countries, which the UK is hosting next month.

The court filing warns that BP will be “irreparably harmed” unless the compensation system is reformed fast. According to BP sources, the rate at which cash is leaking from the company could turn into a serious new financial crisis for the company, putting at risk its dividend and making it vulnerable to a takeover by another oil company. …

BP says that the way its settlement is being implemented by the Courts Administrator, with the support of the Louisiana district court, is “poised to become a black mark on the American justice system”

Meanwhile, BP is defending itself in a huge federal lawsuit in New Orleans against states and other victims of the oil spill. The judge overseeing the case must ultimately decide whether the accident was the result of BP’s negligence – or its “gross negligence.”

Too bad BP opted not to do anything about the “big risk” of explosion it identified back in 2009 …

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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BP wants U.S. government to reduce court-ordered oil-spill payouts

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Huge tar-sands waste pile grows alongside Detroit River

by Shicsshaw Posted on May 20, 2013

Huge tar-sands waste pile grows alongside Detroit River

By John Upton

Detroit’s Petroleum Coke PilesFacebook page

A gift to Detroit from Canada’s tar-sands operators.

A riverside refinery that has operated in Detroit since the 1930s began refining a new type of oil in November: tar-sands oil from Canada.

In the few short months since it began handling the Canadian oil, the refinery has already spewed out a three-story mountain of black waste covering an area the size a city block. That mountain is still growing, and it is not covered with anything to prevent tiny carbon particles from blowing over the city.

The waste can’t be legally used as fuel in the U.S. So the Koch brothers have bought up the pile and plan to sell it to be burned in poorer countries that enjoy freedom from all of America’s bothersome environmental regulations.

From The New York Times:

An initial refining process known as coking, which releases the oil from the tarlike bitumen in the oil sands, also leaves the petroleum coke, of which Canada has 79.8 million tons stockpiled. Some is dumped in open-pit oil sands mines and tailing ponds in Alberta. Much is just piled up there.

Detroit’s pile will not be the only one. Canada’s efforts to sell more products derived from oil sands to the United States, which include transporting it through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, have pulled more coking south to American refineries, creating more waste product here. …

“Here’s a little bit of Alberta,” said Brian Masse, one of Windsor’s Parliament members. “For those that thought they were immune from the oil sands and the consequences of them, we’re now seeing up front and center that we’re not.” …

Lorne Stockman, who recently published a study on petroleum coke for the environmental group Oil Change International, says, “It’s really the dirtiest residue from the dirtiest oil on earth.”

The Detroit pile is ugly as hell, but state officials insist that it poses no health threats, so they’re not planning to do anything about it. From The Detroit News:

New tests by Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality have found the massive piles of petroleum coke sitting along the Detroit River do not pose a threat to human health.

The findings aren’t likely to satisfy Detroit and Windsor residents who have complained about the growing piles of petroleum coke on the U.S. side of the river that the Environmental Protection Agency determined in March were not toxic. …

For about two months, residents in Windsor and Detroit have watched with worry as mounds of the material have grown into small mountains. Before they even knew what the material was, there were concerns about its toxicity as well as its proximity to the river.

With the EPA and DEQ findings, state officials said there is little action they can take.

So here’s something else that American can look forward to if their president approves the Keystone XL pipeline, in addition to a very small handful of jobs: mountains of filthy fuel waste.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who

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Coal plants could be linked to thousands of North Carolina suicides

by Guadalupe Williams Posted on May 14, 2013

Coal plants could be linked to thousands of North Carolina suicides

By John Upton

Duke Energy

A Duke Energy coal plant bleching pollution in Stokes County, N.C.

North Carolina’s numerous coal plants might be driving Tar Heel State residents to kill themselves.

Suicide is a leading killer in America, and links between air pollution and suicide rates have been known for years. Breathing in bad air might drive people to take their own lives by worsening their health problems, affecting their nervous systems, or generally lowering their life satisfaction.

So Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researcher John Spangler set about trying to understand how polluting coal-fired power plants might affect county-by-county suicide rates in North Carolina, where the statewide rate is higher than the national average [PDF]. What he discovered was an alarming correlation.

Spangler looked at census data, mortality rates, and air contamination levels in North Carolina counties. He found that for every coal plant operating in a county, the number of yearly suicides rose by 1.96 people for every 100,000 people living there. The results were published in the Journal of Mood Disorders [PDF].

From a press release about the study, published by the medical center:

As there were 20 coal-fired electricity plants in North Carolina when this study was carried out, that means there were about 40 suicides a year per 100,000 population related to the plants. When applied to the state’s year 2,000 population of 8,049,313, this equals about 3,220 suicides a year associated with coal-fired electricity plants.

There are many factors that drive people to take their lives, of course, and there was no way that Spangler’s study could account for all of them. That said, he thinks his findings could be useful. Again from the press release: 

“Still, it raises the interesting question of whether suicide in a given population is related to the presence or absence of coal-fired electricity plants and the air quality,” he said. “Further research is needed to understand what factors related to coal burning actually are at play and suggest that tighter regulation of coal-fired power plant emissions might cut down on county suicide rates in North Carolina.”

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Food-safety push in California hurts wildlife — and doesn’t make food safer

by bvds34dfsg Posted on May 14, 2013

Food-safety push in California hurts wildlife — and doesn’t make food safer

By Claire Thompson

Rigid rules for leafy greens are taking a toll on wildlife.

A deadly outbreak of E. coli in 2006, traced to a California spinach field, spurred an overhaul of food-safety regulations in the leafy-greens industry — and that’s got to be a good thing, right? Not so fast, says a study published last week in the journal Nature. Those regulations have contributed to a major loss of ecosystem diversity in California’s Salinas Valley, while at the same time doing little to alleviate the risk of food-borne illness.

In an effort to reduce the potential for contamination, the industry put in place standards that, while technically voluntary, quickly became widespread. Big produce buyers, fearing further disease outbreaks and the public-relations disasters they create, only want to do business with farmers conforming to the new guidelines. “Nationwide, U.S. fruit and vegetable farmers report being pressured by commercial produce buyers to engage in land-use practices that are not conducive to wildlife and habitat conservation, in a scientifically questionable attempt to reduce food-borne illness risk,” the study reports.

Scientific American describes what this ends up looking like:

Researchers discovered that the new farming practices have further de-incentivized growers from farming in ways that take into account the importance of natural systems of resource cycling and plant regeneration. Instead, many have cleared land of native vegetation, erected fences and laid poison to deter the presence of wildlife. As a result of growers’ attempts to control for all potential variables on crop sites, farmed areas have become not only uninhabitable for wildlife but also more vulnerable to climate change.

The Salinas Valley is not only an important agricultural area — California’s “salad bowl,” where 70 percent of the nation’s greens are produced — but also an ecological gem, The Guardian writes:

The floodplain habitat is a stopover and feeding ground for migrating birds like the Great Blue Heron, its plains and river harbour a number of endangered species like the steelhead salmon, and the waterway connects with one of the country’s largest marine sanctuaries.

The study found that between 2005 — before the E. coli spinach outbreak — and 2009, the Salinas Valley lost 13 percent of that precious riverside and wetland habitat. Clearing vegetation between crop fields and waterways not only disrupts ecosystems and displaces wildlife, it also gives pesticides and fertilizers an easier path to pollute water supplies, and eliminates natural plant buffers that slow erosion and diminish the impacts of flooding.

The worst part is that these new practices haven’t really done squat for food safety, SciAm writes:

Since the 2006 outbreak of E. coli was linked with spinach grown in California, at least 15 more domestic E. coli outbreaks have been reported. More than half included cases reported in California.

Obviously we want to do everything possible to prevent food — especially spinach, for goodness’ sake, which is supposed to the epitome of healthy — from killing people. But not with misguided, ineffective reforms that endanger the entire ecosystem and thus our ability to grow food in the first place.

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

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