Robert Paterson's Weblog

Anti Biotics and Farming

The way we raise meat animals today - in confinement - makes it essential to use anti biotics. But the more we use them, the more trouble we find ourselves in. It's an arms race we have to lose. This is why more and more people are choosing with their wallets to create an alternate market for meat raised without drugs.

In the end the only way to do this is to raise animals in smaller herds and flocks and to feed them what they are designed to eat. 

Where do you stand on this? The change will come if you join the trend:

"Data on sales of antibiotic-free meat is hard to come by, but the sales are a tiny fraction of the overall meat market. Sales in the United States of organic meat, poultry and fish, which by law must be raised without antibiotics, totaled $538 million in 2011, according to the Organic Trade Association. By comparison, sales of all beef that year were $79 billion.

Retailers like Costco, Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, as well as some restaurant chains, complain that they cannot get enough antibiotic-free meat.

Noodles & Company, a fast-growing chain of more than 300 restaurants, recently added antibiotic-free pork to the choices of ingredients that customers can add to their made-to-order pastas. It ensured its supply by ordering cuts of meat that were not in relatively high demand and by committing in advance to buy a year’s worth, said Dan Fogarty, its executive vice president for marketing.

“We’re deliberately voting with our pocketbooks,” he said.

In a nationwide telephone survey of 1,000 adults in March, more than 60 percent told the Consumer Reports National Research Center that they would be willing to pay at least 5 cents a pound more for meat raised without antibiotics.

“Before, it was kind of a nice little business, and while it’s still microscopic in the grand scheme of things, we’re seeing acceptance from retailers across the country, not just in California and on the East Coast,” said Stephen McDonnell, founder and chief executive of Applegate, an organic and natural meats company.

Mr. McDonnell said a confluence of trends, from heightened interest in whole and natural foods to growing concerns about medical problems like diabetes, obesity and glutenallergies, were contributing to the demand for antibiotic-free meat.

There is growing concern among health care experts and policy makers about antibiotic resistance and the rise of “superbugs,” bacteria that are impervious to one or more antibiotics. Those bacteria can be passed on to consumers, who eat meat infected with them and then cannot be treated."

NYT

 

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An introduction to the Science for taking charge of your own health

Toys, Play, Life and Kids

What is play for young animals? For most it is learning things that will be important in adult life.

Lion Cubs hunt each other.  

Many girls love dolls.

Many boys like weapons.

You may not agree that this is good, but most young children gender gravitate to nurture or defence. It is how they are.

Both Alfie AND Sophia love this! Both sexes seem to love the idea of cooking. They see how important food is in their home and want to be like Mummy and Daddy.

Fortunately I have a very handy son in law to out it together - the kids are mad for it

 

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Owls Hollow or Toys r Us - What will be your choice this Christmas on PEI?

Post Xmas Exercise - Good but don't do too much

In medicine, the dose is important. Too much, and the cure will kill you. 

We are designed to be active. We may even have been designed to run. Here is more on this

But how much exercise is the right dose? 

What does the Dr prescribe? So, after the Holiday Blowout, when we all know we have to do something here is where the science is. 

 

And in Denmark a major study has confirmed that 30 minutes a day is the sweet spot - I can do that!

You’re wasting your time if you exercise for more than 30 minutes a day in an effort to become healthy. At least if you’re a moderately overweight man aged between 20 and 40.

This is revealed in a new study, which has examined how 30 and 60-minute daily exercise sessions over 11 weeks affect young men’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

“We have studied a group of overweight young men, who do not lead very active lives – the couch potatoes. They actually make up about 40 percent of all Danish men in the 20-40 age bracket,” says Michala Holm Reichkendler, MD, who is currently putting the finishing touches on her PhD thesis.

“They often have a little trouble getting started with their exercise. But the good news from our study is that they get the same health benefits regardless of whether they exercise for 30 or 60 minutes a day.”

 

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Innocence Embodied

My Favourite Prayer - For a Great Return

As a boy I was a chorister and was brought with with the beautiful prayers of the Anglican Communion. The Cranmer Prayer Book being on a par with Shakespeare as the epitome of English writing.

What was to fill the gap? This has become my prayer. It is the end of a remarkable book called the Sun and the Serpent. It is an exploration of the ancient worship in Britain of the Natural World. Here it is.

There will come a time when humanity will choose to go against Nature, to exploit her bounteous gifts, causing a sickness across the planet. People will forget the ecstasies of communion and life will become drab and colourless. In those coming dark ages, though, a deep sense of loss will cause the beginnings of a Great Return. They will look at the landscape and the old temples, built to withstand the cataclysms of millennia, and understand once again the sacred laws of Existence. When this day comes, humanity will have come of age. It will consciously acknowledge its role in the creative impulse that comes from the sun, fertilizes the Earth and calls forth the flame in the hearts of men and women to worship Life and the miraculous forces behind Creation.

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Why my religion needs no faith

Why my religion needs no faith

The wonderful thing about being human is that we are conscious. Well some of us are anyway. The awful thing about being human is that being conscious, we, alone among all animals, know that our death is inevitable. This knowledge is maybe the Apple in the Garden and it is the basis of most religions. 

Source

Religion, a formal and institutional concept, appeared along with our adoption of agriculture. That great moment when mankind withdrew from participation and membership with the natural world and looked to a Sky God to place them above nature. For, if you farm, nature is your enemy and you need a God to help you establish a place of dominance over all your enemies.

But the challenge for all who obey the Sky Gods is that there is no evidence that the Sky God will look after you when you are dead. So you have to have faith. Faith is hard. Many devout members of religions die in fear of their faith being misplaced. Most people live their lives denying death or acting out against the unfairness of death. Eternal life based on faith is a slender hope.

But on this day of the Winter Solstice, I am reminded again of why, for millions of years, humans needed no faith to live with the knowledge of death. For when we live with Nature. When we live as a member of her family, and not as a presumptuous ruler, we see everyday the cycle of life and death play out.

We need no faith, we just need to use our eyes.

We see that all things are born, grow, mature and die and then are born again. From an ant to a mountain, from a sun to a galaxy. We see how all things are connected. We see that our brain has the same structure as the universe. We see the energetic connection between all things. We observe that as science expands how science and this observation of connection come together and note with sadness that science and religion drift ever further apart.

We need no literalism to see that all things are stardust connected eternally in the universe. 

So on this great day, when the sun returns to give us all life, blessings to you all. 

Nature waits for you. The planet needs you to come home soon too. You know why don't you?

Why networks will crush machines - which system will you choose?

This is a Climax Forest. It supplies all that its members need from within.

As networks scale, they need less resources from outside the system. As they approach their ideal size, they need none. A big climax forest can go on for centuries with no new inputs and provides millions of members with all they need. Every part of the network cycles. Waste becomes food. Water gets held. Each species sets up a food chain for others. 

A small business in a good network also moves into a sustainable world where all of what it needs - credit, customers, markets and support - exist. Eventually all that each member needs is found inside the system. This is true sustainability. 

Our traditional organizations demand more and more resources from a finite source, our planet. More and more of us can see that there is a better way. And as the planet strikes back, we also can see how to organize to live with this too. 

For true Networks can also cope with crisis. They are naturally resilient.

Networks create system redundancy and support that also enables a member to cope with crisis. We can see this when we look at the web itself. The web can cope with large disruptions because it will reroute itself. The human brain can cope with significant damage for it too will reroute itself. A large forest can have a big fire and regenerate itself. A mixed crop organic farmer working on a small scale has better resiliency and also has a relationship with their customers that can cut them slack too. 

Comparatively, a machine organization will always apply the rules of efficiency to its processes and will break when faced with a crisis. Look at New York. A farmer with a mono crop will fail in a drought or a pest attack. If the food trucks that supply our supermarkets cannot get gas, we will starve in a month. If the power lines go down for a month in a big city, there will be chaos. Machine organizations are very brittle and vulnerable. The more they have been optimized for efficiency, the weaker they are and the more vulnerable we are. 

Is it not clear to us that the real choice before us today is not being liberal or conservative. It is not being socialist or capitalist. It is adopting the network as the normal design or not.

Here is the link to my book on Amazon. It will give you more context on this great choice. 

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Revolution in documentary making - True "Embedding"

The ideal journalist stands aside from the story. He takes the picture of the man being run over by the train. He hides behind his gear and a crew. 

Chris Terill is different. I have been watching his two series about the Royal Marines in training and in deployment in Afghanistan. They represent for me the new standard.

Terill does not stand back. Aged 55, he trains with the teen agers and 22 year olds and passes the same test as they and earns the Green Beret. With this training, he deploys with the Marines in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan and goes out on all the most dangerous missions. And he films himself and his unit. He carries his onw camera into action.

He makes real friends as only people in action can make friends. He suffers as they do. We get to care as he does. No soppy sentiment. No voyeurism. He brings us with him. There is no separation. 

We also see the story unfold. No one could imagine from the outset of hours of episodes how things woudl work out. But as with all life, stories emerge as time moves on. In the end, it all makes sense. The sense has emerged and is not imposed. 

Here is a taste.

 

If you like this: Season 1 is here

And the Season 2 is  here

Question of the Day - To be or to be banal in Business?

From Gary Hamel in the WSJ today!

Why is business so boring!

"..Why is the language of business so sterile, so uninspiring and so relentlessly banal? Is it because business is the province of engineers and economists rather than artists and theologians? Is it because the emphasis on rationality and pragmatism squashes idealism? I’m not sure. But I know this—customers, investors, taxpayers and policymakers believe there’s a hole in the soul of business. The only way for managers to change this fact, and regain the moral high ground, is to embrace what Socrates called the good, the just and the beautiful.

So, dear reader, a couple of questions for you: Why do you believe the language of beauty, love, justice and service is so notably absent in the corporate realm? And what would you do to remedy that fact?"

My answer is that when a business is only about the numbers it is by definition banal, base and so boring. Without a higher purpose there is no purpose that others can become attached too.

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