Kamis, 19 April 2012

Woman Hurt During Sex on Work Trip Wins Worker's Comp... -

Woman Hurt During Sex on Work Trip Wins Worker's Comp... - 




A WOMAN who was injured while having sex in her hotel room during a work trip is entitled to compensation.
In the Federal Court today Justice John Nicholas ruled that the woman was injured during her “course of employment”.
The woman’s barrister argued that sex was an “ordinary incident of life” in a hotel room, much like showering and sleeping.
The Judge ruled that “if the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room she would be entitled to compensation” and the fact that the woman was engaged in sexual activity rather than some other lawful recreational activity while in her hotel room does not lead to any different result.
The woman, who cannot be named, challenged the rejection of her workers' compensation claim for facial and psychological injuries suffered when a glass light fitting came away from the wall above the bed as she was having sex in November 2007.
The woman in her late thirties was required to travel to a country town by her employer, the Human Relations Section of the Commonwealth Government agency.
She arranged to meet a male friend there who lived in the town. They went to a restaurant for dinner and at about 10pm or 11pm went back to the woman’s motel room where they had sex that resulted in her injury.


The male friend said in his statement at the time that they were "going hard” and he did not know if they bumped the light or it just fell off.


“I think she was on her back when it happened but I was not paying attention because we are rolling around.”




Read more: http://www.news.com.au/business/worker-injured-during-sex-gets-compo/story-e6frfm1i-1226333292525

Drifting fishermen die after luxury cruise liner sails past but doesn't stop -

Drifting fishermen die after luxury cruise liner sails past but doesn't stop - 




Dying men on a disabled fishing boat were left drifting, despite the close passage of a huge cruise ship that didn’t stop even after its crew was alerted by anxious passengers who saw frantic signalling from the tiny craft, according to the survivor and those who spotted him.


Birders aboard the Star Princess say they alerted the ship’s officers about the plight of the tiny vessel, but the huge, white-hulled liner never slowed.



Princess Cruises, owned by Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines, said it was “aware of the allegations that Star Princess supposedly passed by a boat in distress that was carrying three Panamanian fishermen on March 10,” in a statement to National Public Radio. “At this time we cannot verify the facts as reported, and we are currently conducting an internal investigation,” the statement added.


But Adrian Vasquez, sole survivor of the drifting boat, has no doubt.


He confirmed the big cruise ship sailed by and identified pictures of his own tiny craft taken by the birders on board the Star Princess.


He said one of his fellow fishermen died hours after the ship passed and the other five days later. He was eventually rescued by Ecuadorians near the Galapagos Islands on March 28 after a month adrift and two weeks after seeing the Star Princess.


The grim sea saga may be another blow to the reputation of Carnival Cruise Lines, the world’s biggest cruise company. One of Carnival’s biggest and newest ships – the Costa Concordia – sank off Italy on Jan. 13 after its captain misjudged a daringly close pass to ‘salute’ Isola del Giglio. More than 30 of the 4,000-plus on board died in the dark and chaos, amidst allegations Capt. Francesco Schettino had abandoned ship early to save himself long before the last passengers.


In February, a fire on board another Carnival ship with more than 1,000 on board, the Costa Allegra, left it powerless and drifting in the sweltering Indian Ocean. Filth and human waste piled up until the ship could be towed by French fishermen to the Seychelles.


Carnival owns multiple cruise lines including Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Holland America, Princess Cruises, Seabourn and P&O.


Last month, on the Star Princess in the Gulf of Panama, birders Jeff Gilligan from Portland, Ore., and Judy Meredeth from Bend, Ore., spotted the drifting fishing vessel with powerful binoculars.


Photos taken by Mr. Gilligan from the Star Princess of the drifting nine-metre fishing boat, named “Fifty Cent', can be seen on Panama-Guide.com, the online English-language news outlet that first reported the story.


“We all watched him for a bit and thought, ‘This guy’s in distress. He’s trying to get our attention,' ” said Ms. Meredith, who told a member of the Princess’s sales staff who, in turn, contacted the ship’s officers. The Princess representative ”called the bridge and I sort of talked through the story,” Ms. Meredith told NPR. “And I was trying to have a sense of urgency in my voice – and tell them that the boat was in distress.”


Mr. Gilligan, who took pictures of 'Fifty Cent,' said: “We expected the ship to turn back or stop or something.”


Instead, the Star Princess continued on its way.


“That’s us,” Mr. Vasquez, 18, said when shown the pictures of ‘Fifty Cent’ taken by the birders. He told Panama-Guide.com: “It was a really big, white ship. I was waving a red T-shirt, and Fernando was waving a bright orange life jacket over his head.” By then, the three had already been drifting for more than a week after the outboard motor failed and were more than 200 kilometres from shore.


The 16-year-old Fernando Osario didn’t survive the month-long ordeal at sea. Oropeces Betancourt, 24, died the night after the close encounter with the Star Princess, according to Mr. Vasquez.


Ms. Meredith said she contacted Princess Cruises for an explanation after the cruise ended.


She said she received the following information: the captain was in contact with a fishing fleet that had asked him to divert slightly to avoid some nets and that after altering course, the fishermen “were waving their shirts because they were thanking the ship.”
Read more -
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/drifting-fishermen-die-after-luxury-cruise-liner-sails-past-but-doesnt-stop/article2407401/


Girl born with no hands wins national penmanship award -

Girl born with no hands wins national penmanship award - 


A first-grader who was born without hands has won a national penmanship award, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.


Annie Clark, a 7-year-old at Wilson Christian Academy in West Mifflin, Pa., got a trophy and $1,000 as one of two national winners of the Nicholas Maxim Special Award for Excellent Penmanship from the Zaner-Bloser language arts and reading company.



Annie writes by wedging a pencil between her arms, the same way she feeds herself and even paints her toenails, the newspaper reports.


The national award is one of two given to students with disabilities --- the other went to an Ohio student with a visual impairment.


But no one even knew there was a special category for the disabled until after Annie had won top penmanship honors among all students at her school and the entry was forwarded to the state competition.


Contest organizers, reading a letter accompanying the entry, noted her disability and suggested that she also enter the special category, the newspaper reports.


Read more - 
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/04/girl-born-with-no-hands-wins-national-penmanship-awards/1#.T5B3x7NEgxp


Children grow up addicted to online porn sites - 4 out of five 16-year-old boys and girls regularly access porn online -

Children grow up addicted to online porn sites - 4 out of five 16-year-old boys and girls regularly access porn online - 




A 'guinea pig’ generation of children is growing up addicted to hardcore internet pornography, MPs were warned last night.
Four out of five 16-year-old boys and girls regularly access porn online while one in three ten-year-olds has seen explicit material, a disturbing cross-party report reveals.
It also cites figures showing that more than a quarter of young patients being treated at a leading private clinic are receiving help for addiction to online pornography.



One appalled MP revealed that her son had told her that swapping hardcore images on memory sticks between pupils at his school is ‘absolutely rife’.
There are fears that the rise of internet pornography is leaving teenagers unable to maintain normal relationships and even increasing their susceptibility to grooming by sexual abusers.


Yesterday the backbench Tory behind the study, Claire Perry, demanded that internet providers offer parents a simple way of filtering out adult content.
Even very young children can accidentally stumble across pornography, the report for the Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection said.



Last night Miranda Suit, founder of campaign group Safermedia, told the inquiry: ‘This generation is going through an experiment. No one knows how they will survive this unprecedented assault on their sexual development. They are guinea pigs for the next generation.’
David Cameron told MPs yesterday that he had called technology firms together to offer a ‘choice of blocking all adult and age-restricted content on their home internet’. 
But the Prime Minister has been left frustrated by the unwillingness of the major internet service providers to force new customers to ‘opt in’ to adult content as opposed to the current system of ‘opting out’ by installing their own filters.




Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2131799/Children-grow-addicted-online-porn-sites-Third-10-year-olds-seen-explicit-images.html


"The chicken came first; not the egg." - 'Eggless' chick laid by hen in Sri Lanka -

"The chicken came first; not the egg." - 'Eggless' chick laid by hen in Sri Lanka - 


A Sri Lanka hen has given birth to a chick without an egg, in a new twist on the age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.


Instead of passing out of the hen's body and being incubated outside, the egg was incubated in the hen for 21 days and then hatched inside the hen.


The chick is fully formed and healthy, although the mother has died.


The government veterinary officer in the area said he had never seen anything like it before.


PR Yapa, the chief veterinary officer of Welimada, where it took place, examined the hen's carcass.


He found that the fertilised egg had developed within the hen's reproductive system, but stayed inside the hen's body until it hatched.


A post-mortem conducted on the hen's body concluded that it died of internal wounds.


The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says that the story has made headlines in Sri Lanka, with the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror's concluding: "The chicken came first; not the egg."


Read more - 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17769677

US Taxpayer cash spent to get rats coked up, see if they like music of Miles Davis... -

US Taxpayer cash spent to get rats coked up, see if they like music of Miles Davis... - 



Taxpayers may feel kind of blue when they discover their dollars went to fund a study to determine rats like to bop to the music of Miles Davis while hopped up on cocaine.



The study, which was performed at Albany Medical College, drew jeers from the animal rights group In Defense of Animals and landed it on its top ten list of Real Ridiculous Research.


The research found that sober rats don’t really like music that much. After the silence, the rats liked Beethoven’s “Fur Elise” more than Miles Davis’s iconic jazz tune “Four.”


But when the rats were given doses of cocaine, their tasted shifted and they gravitated toward the jazz.



The studies, which were funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, were aimed at analyzing the links between pharmacology and neurology in drug abuse.


“These experiments... show that your tax dollars and animals’ lives are frivolously wasted on research that adds nothing to medical progress and tells us nothing we care to know — or didn't know already,” In Defense of Animals wrote in its introduction to the list.


Albany Medical College protested its spot on the list of ridiculous research.


“The ultimate goal of this research is to find medications that can help diminish drug cravings in humans,” Jeffrey R. Gordon, spokesman for the medical school, told The Pulse.


The group, which only focused its ire on National Institutes of Health experiments that involved research on animals, had issues with a few other studies, including one about the sex habits of hamsters.


Lehigh and University of Minnesota researchers found that putting hamsters on a diet didn’t increase their appetite for the opposite sex.


The animal rights group dubbed the study another example of wasteful tax dollars spending and “white-coated welfare.”


A Lehigh University spokesperson begged to differ.


"This study is part of a line of research that seeks better understanding of behaviors essential to survival, including seeking food and reproduction,” university spokesman Jordan Reese told Lehighvalleylive.com. “How the brain regulates these behaviors is relevant, for example, to understanding the effects of commonly prescribed drugs, including those used to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder and related drugs used to control appetite.”


Other studies that made the group’s list included the effect of lemon scent on monkey erections, contagious yawning in chimpanzees and the role of single mothers in the prairie vole community.






Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/rats-cocaine-love-miles-davis-dumb-animal-research-paid-tax-dollars-article-1.1063528#ixzz1sQ6zpibr




US spent millions creating 'Sexpulse,' a Gay website which features sexually-explicit images and games -

US spent millions creating 'Sexpulse,' a Gay website which features sexually-explicit images and games - 


The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars over the past decade to fund the construction of an HIV-prevention website that, among other sexually explicit features, includes a graphic image of homosexual sex and a Space Invaders-style interactive game that uses a penis-shaped blaster to shoot down gay epithets. 
The grant money went to a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota that created a site called Sexpulse. The goal was to draw in what are termed MISM -- or "men who use the Internet to seek sex with men" -- in order to educate them and ultimately reduce their risk of contracting HIV. 
But the site used unorthodox methods to get subjects' attention and keep them interested. The site includes pornographic images of homosexual sex as well as naked and scantily clad men. It includes several risqué interactive features, like the Space Invaders-style arcade game. 
The conservative Traditional Values Coalition, which flagged the government-backed research and described it as "gay porn," complains the website and studies are a multimillion-dollar waste.
"We can't spend money on this. America is broke," coalition President Andrea Lafferty said. "People are losing their homes, they're losing their jobs ... and what we're doing is we're funding year after year these cockamamie grants by people at NIH." 
NIH records show the government started awarding grants to the Minnesota team beginning in 2001, renewing them almost every year since then. The 2012 grant was valued at more than $680,000; in total, NIH has awarded more than $5 million to the team. The researchers started developing the Sexpulse site in 2005 and continue to work on the project -- the project leader told FoxNews.com that total funding through 2015 is expected to top $7 million. 
The values coalition, which frequently complains about NIH spending, is drawing attention to the Sexpulse grants as Congress renews a heated debate over government waste in the wake of the General Services Administration scandal. In that case, an internal report found the agency spent more than $820,000 on a Las Vegas retreat. 
"This is a lot more money," Lafferty noted of the NIH funding. 




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/04/19/nih-under-fire-for-grants-toward-creation-homoerotic-website/

‘Tidal wave of butterflies’ hits Toronto - the biggest springtime butterfly migration in history -

‘Tidal wave of butterflies’ hits Toronto - the biggest springtime butterfly migration in history - 




Butterflies may not grow on trees, but it’s starting to look like they do.


Eastern Canada is in the midst of what’s believed to be the biggest springtime butterfly migration in history. Hundreds of thousands of butterflies have made their way north — many more than usual and much earlier than expected.


While butterfly observers are in a frenzy, others are wondering where they all came from. And with Thursday’s forecasted high of 22 C in Toronto, the new arrivals will be out and about and hard to miss.


“There’s never been anything like this. This is like a tidal wave of butterflies making their way north,” said Jeremy Kerr, a biologist at the University of Ottawa.


Glenn Richardson, president of the Toronto Entomologists’ Association who’s been observing butterflies since the late 1960s, called it “the largest migration that I’ve ever seen.” He estimates the population is 20 times higher than usual.


About 90 per cent of the butterflies are red admirals, easily identified by their dark brown, red and black wing patterns. They are common in Ontario summers, but spend winters in the southeastern U.S.


Abnormally warm weather down south — the U.S. had its hottest March ever — created ideal conditions for the insects to grow and populate. That heat also cued the northern migration.


“Normally what would happen is … they’d hit some really cold zone and they would lose the ability to disperse in that area — they would stop,” said Kerr, who leads the Canadian Facility for Ecoinformatics Research. “But they were hitting temperatures they would expect to find at the end of June, so they just kept going.”


And with strong southern winds earlier this week, the record number of butterflies invaded much sooner than usual. By Tuesday morning they were spread across Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Maxim Larrivée, a postdoctoral fellow working with Kerr, said they have travelled 300 to 400 kilometres per day.


Although it’s difficult to pin down exact numbers, Kerr said there could be millions of butterflies across Eastern Canada. Larrivée said one man found an estimated 20,000 butterflies in the backyard of his London, Ont. home and there are other reports of butterfly-covered trees.


Read more - 
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1163931--tidal-wave-of-butterflies-hits-eastern-canada

Newt Gingrich’s Secret Service detail likely costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a day -

Newt Gingrich’s Secret Service detail likely costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a day - 




Even though by his own estimation he has very little prospect of winning the Republican nomination, Newt Gingrich is still likely costing the taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars a day with his Secret Service detail on the campaign trail.


Gingrich reportedly requested Secret Service protection in February and was granted a detail in early March. In April 2008, Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan told the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee that it was then costing the agency roughly $38,000 a day to service each candidate receiving protection, which was then just Sens. Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton.


A source with knowledge of the inner workings of the Gingrich campaign told The Daily Caller that Gingrich recently had three people on his personal security detail, though sometimes there are “many more.”


“Others on the campaign told me that some of the Secret Service members were even saying it was a waste of time and that he shouldn’t have it,” the source told TheDC. “Staff members thought it was ridiculous too, and just another example of Newt’s arrogance and self-importance.”


In 2008, Arizona Sen. John McCain didn’t request Secret Service protection until late April — months after the point he was considered the presumptive GOP nominee.


The leader of a government waste watchdog group told TheDC that Gingrich should give up his protection because it amounts to a wasteful use of taxpayer money.


“As a former speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich should understand better than most how important it is to spend taxpayer dollars wisely,” said David Williams of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. “Speaker Gingrich needs to give up his taxpayer-funded Secret Service protection to show people that he understands that every tax dollar saved is important.”






Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/19/gingrichs-secret-service-detail-likely-costing-taxpayers-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-a-day/

Rabu, 18 April 2012

Remembering Dick Clark: Seven Things You Didn't Know About The Veteran TV Host -

Remembering Dick Clark: Seven Things You Didn't Know About The Veteran TV Host - 


He was one of the most celebrated TV personalities of all time, now RadarOnline.com is taking a look back at Dick Clark's memorable life to reveal seven things which might surprise you about the American star who passed away Wednesday at the age of 82.


7. From Mailroom to Newsroom: While he went on to achieve great things, Clark's career started in the mailroom of WRUN, a New York radio station owned by his uncle and managed by his father. He worked his way up the ranks from weatherman to announcer.
6. His Nickname Became His Stage Name: He wasn't always known as simply, Dick Clark, he was actually born Richard Wagstaff Clark. Like many celebrities he shortened his name to make it more catchy. First he changed it to Dick Clay but soon picked up the name he became famous for.


5. All Shook Up By Elvis: When Bob Horn was dismissed from Bob Horn's Bandstand for a drunken driving arrest, Clark - who was already a regular substitute - assumed the full-time job as presenter. The show was bought by ABC and renamed American Bandstand. Clark's first interview on the new show was none other than Elvis Presley.


4. He Was Down With The Fresh Prince: In between hosting television and radio shows and running Dick Clark Productions, Clark made time for some TV cameos. One of which might surprise you. Clark appeared not once, but twice on The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air. In one episode he played himself at a Philadelphia diner and in the other he helped Will Smith's character host bloopers from past episodes of the comedy.


3. Three Decades Of Success: He hosted his seminal show American Bandstand for three decades. He was only 26 years old when he started.


2. Third Time Lucky: Not only was Clark married to his career, he was married three times to women too. The TV host first married Barbara Mallery in 1952 and had one son. They divorced in 1961. Just one year later he married Loretta Martin and had two children with her. Their marriage lasted nine years. His third marriage in 1977 to Kari Wigton was to be his last. He stayed married to her until his death on April 18 2012.


1. Re-Learning To Walk And Talk: After suffering a debilitating stroke in December 2004 at the age of 75 Clark had to learn to walk and talk again. One year later he retuned to TV to countdown the new year - something he was famous for - on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve.  "Last year I had a stroke," he said on air. "It left me in bad shape. I had to teach myself how to walk and talk again. It's been a long, hard fight. My speech is not perfect but I'm getting there."


Read more -
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/04/dick-clark-dead-tv-bandstand-new-years-eve

Eyeless shrimp, mutant fish in Gulf years after spill -

Eyeless shrimp, mutant fish in Gulf years after spill - 




Eyeless shrimp, fish with oozing sores and other mutant creatures found in the Gulf of Mexico are raising concerns over lingering effects of the BP oil spill.
On April 20, 2010, an explosion aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 people and spewed an estimated 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf, in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Two years later, scientists and commercial fishers alike are finding shrimp, crab and fish that they believe have been deformed by the chemicals unleashed in the spill, according to an extensive report by Al Jazeera English.
"At the height of the last white shrimp season, in September, one of our friends caught 400 pounds of these," Tracy Kuhns, a commercial fisher from Barataria, La., told Al Jazeera, showing a sample of the eyeless shrimp.
'Eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills....'
- Darla Rooks, Louisiana fisher
Darla Rooks, another lifelong fisher from Port Sulfur, La., told the broadcaster she was seeing "eyeless fish, and fish lacking even eye sockets, and fish with lesions, fish without covers over their gills and others with large pink masses hanging off their eyes and gills."
Rooks added that she had never seen such deformities in Gulf waters in her life -- a refrain common to most fishers featured in the report -- and said her seafood catch last year was "ten percent what it normally is."
A survey led by the University of South Florida after the spill found that between two and five percent of fish in the Gulf now have skin lesions or sores, compared to data from before the spill, when just one-tenth of one percent of fish had any growths or sores.
Scientists blamed the mutations on the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) released from the spill's submerged oil as well as the two million gallons of the dispersant Corexit that BP used in an attempt to clean up the spill.




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/04/18/eyeless-shrimp-and-mutant-fish-raise-concerns-over-bp-spill-effects/?test=latestnews

Mandatory ‘Big Brother’ Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015 -

Mandatory ‘Big Brother’ Black Boxes In All New Cars From 2015 - 




The same Senate bill, 1813, known as MAP-21, that calls for the Secretary of State to revoke or deny a passport to any US citizen that the IRS Commissioner deems as having 'seriously delinquent tax debt', also calls for, in section 31406 of the bill. the mandatory installation of 'black box' event recorders to be installed in every new passenger vehicle starting with model year 2015:


SEC. 31406. VEHICLE EVENT DATA RECORDERS.
(a) Mandatory Event Data Recorders-


(1) IN GENERAL- Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations, to require, beginning with model year 2015, that new passenger motor vehicles sold in the United States be equipped with an event data recorder that meets the requirements under that part...


(d) Revised Requirements for Event Data Recorders- Based on the findings of the study under subsection (c), the Secretary shall initiate a rulemaking proceeding to revise part 563 of title 49, Code of Federal Regulations. The rule-- 
(1) shall require event data recorders to capture and store data related to motor vehicle safety covering a reasonable time period before, during, and after a motor vehicle crash or airbag deployment, including a rollover;


(2) shall require that data stored on such event data recorders be accessible, regardless of vehicle manufacturer or model, with commercially available equipment in a specified data format;


(3) shall establish requirements for preventing unauthorized access to the data stored on an event data recorder in order to protect the security, integrity, and authenticity of the data; and


(4) may require an interoperable data access port to facilitate universal accessibility and analysis.


(e) Disclosure of Existence and Purpose of Event Data Recorder- The rule issued under subsection (d) shall require that any owner’s manual or similar documentation provided to the first purchaser of a passenger motor vehicle for purposes other than resale--


(1) disclose that the vehicle is equipped with such a data recorder...


(f) Access to Event Data Recorders in Agency Investigations- Section 30166(c)(3)(C) of title 49, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘, including any electronic data contained within the vehicle’s diagnostic system or event data recorder’ after ‘equipment.’


Read more -
http://www.blacklistednews.com/Mandatory_%E2%80%98Big_Brother%E2%80%99_Black_Boxes_In_All_New_Cars_From_2015/19037/0/38/38/Y/M.html

4 Things Grosser Than Pink Slime -

4 Things Grosser Than Pink Slime - 






The specter of "pink slime"—pureed, defatted, and ammonia-laced slaughterhouse scraps—has caused quite the uproar over the past six weeks. (The latest: Propublica has a great explainer on pink slime and other filler products.) The current fixation on pink slime may well lead to the demise of the product; already, supermarket and fast-food chains and school cafeterias are opting to stop adding the stuff into their burger mixes. The company's maker, Beef Products International, has had to temporarily shut down three of its four plants in response to collapsing demand, which doesn't augur well for the company's long-term health.


But I'm wondering if focusing on the ew-gross aspects of "lean, finely textured beef" (as the industry calls it) doesn't miss the bigger picture, which is that the meat industry's very business model is deeply gross. Even if pink slime is purged from the face of the earth, the system that produces our meat and related products (eggs, milk) won't be fundamentally changed. A while back, I identified something about meat production that's "even grosser than pink slime"—proposed new rules that would privatize inspection at poultry slaughterhouses while dramatically speeding up kill lines. Here are four more.




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1. "Rodents on egg conveyor belts." Want to see for yourself what it is like inside a teeming livestock confinements—or at least read an account from a journalist who's been inside one? Good luck. The meat industry strictly protects its facilities from public view. That's why animal-welfare groups have taken to sneaking camera-toting undercover agents into facilities posing as employees. Over and over again, what they record is horrific. The latest: An undercover Humane Society of the United States investigation found stomach-turning conditions at a facility run by Pennsylvania egg giant Kreider Farms. Here are some highlights:


• Rodents on egg conveyor belts
• Rotting corpses in cages with hens laying eggs for human consumption
• Hens stuck by their heads, legs and wings in cage wires
• Mummified hen carcasses in cages
• Overcrowding of hens in cages that only provide 54-58 square inches [less than 8 inches by eight inches] of living space per hen (well below the national average for egg-laying hens)
• Flies in barns so thick that the investigator had to scrape off his boots after walking down each aisle
• Piles of dead hens on floors of barns
• Dead flies in hens’ feeding troughs
• Barns so dark that workers needed head lamps and flashlights
• Ammonia levels so high that workers often had to wear masks
• Manure and eggs from some barns tested positive for salmonella
• Each worker is tasked with overseeing more than 100,000 animals.


There is nothing unusual about what the Humane Society found at Kreider. Last year, an enormous Iowa-based egg producer caused a salmonella outbreak by releasing more than half a billion tainted eggs. It was only after the fact that the FDA, which is supposed to oversee the egg industry, took a hard look at the company's operations. The resulting report reads an awful lot like the Humane Society's recent one. A picture emerges of the company's egg-laying facilities as salmonella-ridden, dilapidated hovels characterized by rodent infestations, flies, and, everywhere, feces—both from the laying hens themselves and from wild birds scrounging for free feed.


Other investigations by animal-welfare groups have shown similar conditions at hog and cow confinements.


2. Chickens on sex hormones. What sort of additives is the livestock industry feeding the billions of creatures in its cages? Hard to say, because feed rations are a tightly guarded trade secret. So researchers at Johns Hopkins recently took a backdoor route to getting information on feeding practices: they analyzed the ground-up feathers of post-slaughter factory-farmed chickens (a product known as "feather meal"), on the principle that what birds eat gets taken up by their feathers. (Abstract here.)


The researchers analyzed 12 samples—10 from the US, two from China. First, the headline finding: Two of the US samples contained something called norgestimate, which the study disturbingly calls a "sex hormone." The researchers found a range of other pharmaceuticals in the feathers as well. Ten of 12 samples contained caffeine, and the same number showed acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol. Four US samples contained diphenhydramin, active ingredient of Benadryl. Both Chinese samples contained the antidepressant fluoxetine, aka, Prozac. Prozac? What can all of this mean? It's not hard to conjecture that factory-farm operators dose birds with caffeine to keep them awake and eating as long as possible—the better to fatten them up for slaughter—and then hitting them with painkillers and antihistamines to calm them down for needed rest. (The sex hormone norgestimate, the authors report, is used to reduce anxiety in birds.)


Then there's the antibiotics. It's not surprising that all 12 samples contained traces of at least two and as many as 10 different antibiotics. We know that the livestock industry gobbles up 80 percent of the antibiotics consumed in the US, which is a pretty gross fact in and of itself. The weird part is that 6 of the ten US samples contained a class of antibiotics that have been banned in poultry production since 2005—suggesting that some poultry producers may be feeding their birds products that have been prohibited by the FDA. If producers really are flouting the FDA's mandatory rules, that's sobering news, given that the agency is crossing its fingers that the industry will comply with its new "voluntary" set of antibiotics guidelines.


The authors say that the industry generates 4 billion pounds of ground-up feathers each year. What happens to it all, and all of the weird pharmaceuticals it contains? According to the authors, a significant portion of it gets put into livestock feed—for pigs, cows, fish, and even, yes, chickens. It also ends up on cropland as fertilizer.


3. Flies and cockroaches carrying antibiotic-resistant pathogens from factory farms to surrounding towns. I've written a lot about how the meat available at supermarkets routinely carries bacteria resistant to a range of antibiotics—and how that uncomfortable fact occasionally leads to deadly outbreaks, like one last year involving a Cargill plant in Arkansas that sent out 36 million pounds of turkey tainted with antibiotic-resistant salmonella. Well, there's another way bacteria strains make their way from factory farms to what public-health officials call "the community" (i.e., potentially, you): through the cockroaches and flies drawn to the vast amounts of manure produced on factory farms. For a paper published last year in the journal Microbiology, researchers from North Carolina State and Kansas State universities took one for the team — i.e., the public. They did something few of us would want to do: rounded up common flies and roaches hanging around factory hog farms, and tested them to see what kinds of bacteria they were harboring.


Their finding? More than 90 percent of the insects sampled carried forms of the bacteria Enterococci that are resistant to at least one common antibiotic, and often more than one. In a press release, study coauthor Coby Schal, entomology professor at NC State, put the situation like this:


The big concern is not that humans will acquire drug-resistant bacteria from their properly cooked bacon or sausage, but rather that the bacteria will be transferred to humans from the common pests that live with pigs and then move in with us.


4. Slaughterhouse workers sometimes get weird brain disorders along with their crap wages. In a long and devastating Mother Jones article last summer, Ted Genoways described the plight of workers at the "head table" of a factory-scale pig-processing plant. Not only did they come down with a strange brain condition, apparently as a consequence of breathing in pulverized pig brains, but they also had to endure the evasions of their employer, Hormel, in its effort to escape liability.


The story's brain angle is spectacular, but the broader narrative Genoways lays out is all too routine. In a single long piece, Genoways lays out the crude history of US meat over the past 80 years. We get the unionization of the kill floor in the wake of Sinclair's The Jungle, the post-war emergence of meat packing as a proper middle-class job, the fierce anti-union backlash of the '70s, followed by corporatization, scaling up, plunging wages, and then, well, all manner of hell breaking loose, graphically documented by Genoways.


By 2005, things had gotten so dire for meat-packing workers that Human Rights Watch—typically on the lookout for atrocities in war zones—saw fit to issue a scathing report  on their plight. The report's title says it all: "Blood, Sweat, and Fear." Here's a taste:


Constant fear and risk is another feature of meat and poultry labor. Meatpacking work has  extraordinarily high rates of injury. Workers injured on the job may then face dismissal.  Workers risk losing their jobs when they exercise their rights to organize and bargain  collectively in an attempt to improve working conditions. And immigrant workers—an increasing percentage of the workforce in the industry—are particularly at risk. Language  difficulties often prevent them from being aware of their rights under the law and of specific  hazards in their work. Immigrant workers who are undocumented, as many are, risk  deportation if they seek to organize and to improve conditions.   


For their trouble, meatpacking workers earn median annual income of $24,190, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics—barely above the poverty line for a family of four.


So, yes, pink slime is gross stuff. Call me crazy, but I prefer my burgers without added ammonia. But it's not even close to the grossest thing about our meat-production system—far from it.

Read more -
http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/04/things-are-grosser-pink-slime



Man Arrested after Posting Photo of Himself Siphoning Gas from Cop Car On FACEBOOK... -

Man Arrested after Posting Photo of Himself Siphoning Gas from Cop Car On FACEBOOK... - 
Copy of the picture Michael Baker posted on Facebook of him siphoning gas, an action that ultimately led to his arrest. (Credit: Jenkins Police Department)

A local man was arrested Monday for siphoning gas from a police cruiser. He may have gotten away with the crime — if he hadn’t posted a picture of himself in the act on his Facebook page.


Jenkins Police Chief Allen Bormes told CBS Cleveland that 20-year-old Michael Baker had posted the picture last Friday.


“It was then forwarded to one of our officers … and it went from there,” he added.


According to CBS affiliate WYMT, Baker’s girlfriend, Joann Sandelin, snapped the photo. The couple had intended for it to be a joke.



“We was just standing there and thought it would be funny to take a picture and then post it on Facebook,” Baker told the station.


The couple was initially apologetic for their actions.


“Yeah, we’re sorry, but it was just a joke,” Sandelin said. “I mean, if we was [sic] going to steal gas, we wouldn’t put it nationwide on Facebook. We don’t steal anyway, but we’re sorry.”


However, Baker later told WYMT that he did take some of the fuel, and was not truly sorry for his crime.


Baker was charged with theft by unlawful taking. He was held overnight in jail, but his bond was subsequently posted.


According to AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report, the price for a regular gallon of gas in Kentucky is presently $3.90.


Read more - 
http://cleveland.cbslocal.com/2012/04/18/man-arrested-after-facebook-picture-shows-him-siphoning-gas-from-cop-car/


Al Sharpton still owes nearly $1 million as a result of his failed bid for 2004 Democratic presidential nomination -

Al Sharpton still owes nearly $1 million as a result of his failed bid for 2004 Democratic presidential nomination - 


MSNBC’s Al Sharpton is reeling in debt and back taxes.


The liberal provocateur owes nearly $1 million to creditors and the federal government as a result of his failed bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.


His campaign’s unpaid bills exceed $888,000, according to federal filings.


It is unclear why Sharpton has not paid his creditors. He does not lack for income.


Sharpton has his own primetime talk show on liberal network MSNBC, a platform he used to drive the Trayvon Martin shooting story that rocked the nation and led to the arrest of Democratic neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.


In August 2011, Sharpton took over the 6 p.m. slot from Keith Olbermann, who earned more than $4 million per year working in the same slot at the network. Sharpton also drew a $240,000 salary from his nonprofit group, National Action Network, in 2011 even as the group racked up nearly $1 million in unpaid federal payroll taxes, interest, and penalties.


NAN has dealt with major finance issues in the last few years. The nonprofit raised $3 million in 2010, and paid off its state back taxes in 2011, but still owed $883,000 in unpaid federal payroll taxes in December. The group also owed more than $200,000 in loans to one of Sharpton’s for-profit enterprises.


Sharpton, who has endorsed President Barack Obama’s calls for taxing the rich, has his own tax issues. He owed the IRS $2.6 million in income taxes in December 2011, as well as almost $900,000 in New York state taxes.


Sharpton financed his presidential run, in part, by borrowing large sums of money from his struggling nonprofit.


Sharpton borrowed more than $181,000 from NAN—money that is now supposed to be refunded. Sharpton also loaned $145,000 to the campaign to finance a fundraising push.


His largest creditor is the federal government; the campaign owes the Federal Elections Commission and the U.S. Treasury Department more than $225,000.


Sharpton could not capitalize on his national reputation as a rabble-rouser in the 2004 Democratic primary, losing out to Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.). But he did make waves in the race, slamming then-frontrunner Howard Dean for not having enough minorities on his campaign—a charge that has also dogged the Obama campaign—during an Iowa debate.


Sharpton skipped out on debts big and small. In addition to the six figure sums he borrowed from his nonprofit and leveraged from campaign consultants, he has not paid a $0.33 charge to a group called Xpedite, as well as a $2.50 ATM fee to Amalgamated Bank.


Sharpton’s presidential committee owed more than $900,000 to creditors late in 2011, according to Politico, after paying down the $208,000 in civil penalties the campaign owed the FEC for “failing to report accurately all receipts and expenditures, receiving excessive and prohibited in-kind contributions and accepting impermissible corporate contributions,” according to the FEC. The campaign has established a payment schedule to address the fines for campaign violations and other federal charges, according to the FEC.


“Now that the civil penalties have been satisfied, the campaign is contacting vendors to construct a debt resolution plan that must be submitted to the FEC for approval,” spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger told Politico in November. “While Rev. Sharpton, as candidate, helped to raise the money to resolve the civil penalties, the additional debt will be reviewed by the campaign and remedied in accordance to FEC’s rules and regulations.”


Read more - 
http://freebeacon.com/more-money-more-problems/

Dog Strangled by Phone Cord Saves His Own Life by Dialing Emergency Number -

Dog Strangled by Phone Cord Saves His Own Life by Dialing Emergency Number - 


George, a 2-year-old Basset Hound from South Heindley, West Yorkshire, U.K., was strangled by a phone cord — and miraculously saved his own life by calling 999, the British equivalent of 911, reports The Sun.


George knocked over a heavy-duty, old-fashioned phone in owner Steve Brown’s home; he became tangled in the cord and wound up with it wrapped around his neck. Somehow, George — in the midst of choking — managed to dial 999 with his paw.


The emergency operator heard heavy breathing and gasping on the other end and alerted the authorities, who entered the house with the help of a neighbor, Paul Walker, who had a key.


Walker saw the dog choking and ripped the cord free from the phone to save him.


He told The Sun: "Incredibly you could see where his paw print was on the phone to ring 999 — he literally saved his own life."


Lydia Brown, the daughter of George's owner, expressed equal amazement at the Basset's lifesaving feat, telling The Sun, "He's really dopey and just likes to chew socks."


George isn't sounding quite so dopey now, though.


Read more - 
http://www.vetstreet.com/our-pet-experts/dog-strangled-by-phone-cord-saves-his-own-life-by-dialing-emergency-number?WT.mc_id=Outbrain_7418158

Obama as a Boy Ate Dog Meat - #ObamaDogRecipes -

Obama as a Boy Ate Dog Meat - #ObamaDogRecipes - 


Much has been made about Mitt Romney, in 1983, putting his family dog Seamus in a kennel on top of his roof and driving from Boston to Canada, with said canine Seamus making his displeasure known in a rather scatological way.
Democrats have signaled they have every intention of making sure the American people — especially dog-lovers — know the tale. In January, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted a photo of the president and Bo in a car, with the snide observation: “@davidaxelrod: How loving owners transport their dogs.”
The Romney campaign signaled tonight that they are not about to cede any ground when it comes to a candidate’s odd past with man’s best friend.
And the Obama campaign shot back, with a spokesman suggesting the Romney team was attacking a child, since the Obama act in question took place when he was a kid.
The Daily Caller noted that in President Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance,” the president recalls being fed dog meat as a young boy in Indonesia with his stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.
“With Lolo, I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy),” the president wrote. “Like many Indonesians, Lolo followed a brand of Islam that could make room for the remnants of more ancient animist and Hindu faiths. He explained that a man took on the powers of whatever he ate: One day soon, he promised, he would bring home a piece of tiger meat for us to share.”
After his mother married Soetoro, Obama lived in Indonesia from 1967 until 1971, from roughly the age of 6 through 10.
The discovery that the president had eaten dog meat prompted wise-cracks on twitter (hashtag — #ObamaDogRecipes) and this tweet from Romney strategist Eric Fehrstrom, who re-tweeted Axelrod’s original message with a different take on the picture of the president and Bo.
“@EricFehrn: In hindsight, a chilling photo,” he wrote.
Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt tweeted in response:  “@BenLaBolt  What’s the next attack @EricFerhn and the RNC will surface on a 6-10 year old?”
The Seamus story was discussed again Monday when Ann Romney told Diane Sawyer that “the dog loved” traveling that way. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation. It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel for two weeks.”
Certainly kinder than eating him.


Read more - 
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/04/obama-as-a-boy-ate-dog-meat/

Selasa, 17 April 2012

Georgia to require drug tests for welfare benefits -

Georgia to require drug tests for welfare benefits - 


Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal has signed legislation that would require thousands of people applying for welfare to pass a drug test before they could receive benefits.


The Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law over the opposition of Democrats.


Backers say it will ensure that welfare benefits are used for their intended purpose and not to subsidize drug use and criminal activity. Democrats said the measure places an unfair burden on the poor.


Gerry Weber of the Southern Poverty Law Center said the organization is prepared to file a lawsuit over the issue, but not until it is put into practice. It takes effect July 1.


A similar law in Florida took effect last July but was blocked by a federal judge in October.


At least two dozen states have proposed measures this year that would require drug tests for benefits.


Read more - 
http://www.kvoa.com/news/ga-to-require-drug-tests-for-welfare-benefits/

Senin, 16 April 2012

El Salvador marks first murder-free day in three years... -

El Salvador marks first murder-free day in three years... - 




No one was murdered in El Salvador on Saturday in what was the first homicide-free day in nearly three years for the Central American country plagued by violent drug gangs, according to officials.


"After years when the number of murders reached alarming levels of up to 18 per day, we saw not one homicide in the country," President Mauricio Funes said in a statement on Sunday.


The murder-free day was the first recorded since Funes, a leftwinger, took office in June 2009.


At the beginning of Funes's term, the country had an average of 12 murders a day, but that climbed closer to 18 a day in early 2012.


Rival gangs operating in El Salvador called a truce last month and bloodshed between the country's two most powerful gangs, Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18, has abated.


According to United Nations data, El Salvador has experienced a homicide rate of 66 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world.


Much of that violence is blamed on Mexican drug cartels that use the country as a transit point.


Read more -
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/16/el-salvador-murder-free-day

Jumat, 13 April 2012

OOps - “Good Morning America” viewers in Colorado got hardcore pornography showing on the channel -

OOps - “Good Morning America” viewers in Colorado got hardcore pornography showing on the channel - 


Just in case their coffee hadn’t kicked in yet, some “Good Morning America” viewers in Colorado got an eye-opening jolt early Thursday when hardcore pornography briefly appeared on their television screens.


According to the Colorado Springs Gazette, Comcast cable subscribers tuned into local ABC affiliate KRDO-TV saw the explicit material due to an error made while trying to fix a technical glitch that caused a series of channels to appear on the station.


The porn — shown only for a few seconds — was followed by two hours of religious programming and a cross-feed of the ION Television network, the newspaper reported.


Clay Clarkson told the Gazette he first saw static while trying to watch the show.


“I usually watch ‘Good Morning America,’ and the channel was flickering, so I flipped to another channel,” Clarkson said. “When I flipped back, hardcore pornography was showing on the channel.”


He said he called the cable company and was told they were aware of the situation.


“The issue was a result of human error which has been resolved,” a Comcast spokeswoman told the Gazette.


In a statement, KRDO apologized for the programming interruption but said it did not come from their end.


“Of course, we are extremely upset that Comcast would air this material instead of our KRDO material,” KRDO general manager Tim Larson told the Gazette. “We are sure the offending material didn’t come from us.”


A statement on KRDO‘s Facebook page said simply that they were aware Comcast wasn’t airing their correct programming, though that did little to stop viewers from going online to vent their outrage, according to the Daily Mail.


“I’ve been on the phone already this morning after the porn that was broadcast while my daughter was eating breakfast! I’m outraged! Sick!” one parent wrote.


Read more - 
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/oops-cable-co-airs-hardcore-porn-during-abcs-good-morning-america/

The U.S. government spends $40 million mowing lawns of empty homes -

The U.S. government spends $40 million mowing lawns of empty homes - 


The U.S. government owns 200,000 foreclosed homes. And to keep those empty homes looking spiffy for would-be buyers, the government has to keep up appearances — including the appearance of the lawn. As a result, we taxpayers are forking over $40 million for lawn-mowing at these uninhabited houses.


Now, in the vast scheme of government spending, $40 million doesn’t mean that much. But $40 million just to cater to this weird national lawn obsession feels over the top. Besides, there are so many other options for maintaining lawns! The government might want to look into no-mow lawn mixes, which tend to need little upkeep or chemical assistance and to do better in droughts. Alternatively, we hear that sheep do a great job mowing lawns while saving money. Think about it, Uncle Sam.


Read more - 
http://grist.org/list/government-spends-40-million-mowing-lawns-of-empty-homes/

‘Pink slime’ is the tip of the iceberg: Look what else is in industrial meat -

‘Pink slime’ is the tip of the iceberg: Look what else is in industrial meat - 


You didn’t think I’d miss my chance to weigh in on the latest round of pink slime discussions, did you? Rather than recapitulate the horror that is your favorite form of “lean finely textured beef,” I will instead point you to my favorite statement in defense of pink slime. It was given by American Meat Institute Director of Scientific Affairs Betsy Booren to NPR:


“This is not the same ammonia you’d use in cleaning supplies,” explains Betsy Booren of the AMI Foundation. “It’s a gas, it’s a different compound, and it’s a well-established processing intervention that has a long history of success.”


First off, the AMI Foundation? AMI’s own website identifies the group as “a national trade association that represents companies that process 95 percent of red meat and 70 percent of turkey in the U.S. and their suppliers throughout America.” Foundation my arse.


And granted, I’m no chemist — but my understanding is that the form of ammonia used in cleaning products is typically ammonium hydroxide. And the form used in pink slime is … ammonium hydroxide! The only difference is the household cleaner is a liquid and pink slime is treated with a gas.


But that’s not really the issue. When you have to defend your food production practice by saying, “Hey, at least we don’t use household cleaners on it!” you know you’ve got a big problem.


What pink slime represents is an open admission by the food industry that it is hard-pressed to produce meat that won’t make you sick. Because, I hate to break it to you folks, but ammonium hydroxide is just one in a long list of unlabeled chemical treatments used on almost all industrial meat and poultry.


Helena Bottemiller of Food Safety News dug up this United Stated Department of Agriculture document [PDF], which lists dozens of chemicals that processors can apply to meat without any labeling requirement. Things like calcium hypochlorite (also used to bleach cotton and clean swimming pools), hypobromous acid (also used as a germicide in hot tubs), DBDMH (or 1,3-dibromo-5,5-dimethylhydantoin, which is also used in water treatment), and chlorine dioxide (also used to bleach wood pulp), to name just a few.


All these chemicals can go on meat. Not that you’d know it, because both the industry and the USDA keep it on the down-low. In fact, they work together on this. The USDA requires processors to label certain approved antimicrobials, such as salt, spices, and even lemon as ingredients, but not their hard-to-pronounce brethren. Why not? Perhaps because it might shock and disgust consumers to know how thoroughly their meat must be chemically disinfected before it can be sold. USDA’s head of food safety Elizabeth Hagen told Bottemiller recently that, “Just being honest, I don’t think your average consumer probably knows a lot about how food is produced.” She’s right. We don’t know the half of it — and the more we find out, the angrier many of us get.


Andy Bellatti recently wrote a piece he called “Beyond Pink Slime,” in which he enumerates all the problems with industrial meat production that led it to this point. And in many ways pink slime is the perfect embodiment of a food industry gone off the rails.


In short, they took meat that was too dangerous to feed to humans, disinfected it so thoroughly that a block of the stuff will make your eyes water, and then celebrated the fact that they’d created a two-fer (it’s a food! it’s a disinfectant!).  The industry embraced their creation so completely that around 70 percent of all supermarket ground beef now contains the stuff. But this goes way beyond hamburger. As Tom Philpott points out, pink slime is used in a huge variety of products including “hot dogs, lunch meats, chili, sausages, pepperoni, retail frozen entrees, roast beef, and canned foods.” By industry standards, it is nothing short of a food “intervention” success story.


The irony, of course, is that the 2010 debate over pink slime brought to light evidence that this treated meat product is not nearly as reliable a disinfecting agent as its maker asserted. It was likely those indications that led the fast food industry, in most ways farther ahead of the food safety curve than supermarkets or school food providers, to abandon the ingredient late last year. And now that the mainstream media has taken notice of pink slime, even the USDA has had to back off its wholehearted endorsement for it in school lunch.


But don’t let the appearance of a back-and-forth debate fool you. Pink slime is truly worse than other forms of disinfected treated meat since the trimmings used in pink slime are known to harbor pathogens at high levels before treatment. Should it disappear from store shelves, however, we can rest assured the meat that remains will continue to be treated with other industrial chemicals. Because that’s — pure and simple — the only way the industrial meat industry can prevent its products from making people sick.


I’d like to see more consumers and media outlets asking why exactly that is.


Read more - 
http://grist.org/factory-farms/pink-slime-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-look-what-else-is-in-industrial-meat/?fb_ref=fbrw