| LibertyBlitzkrieg | Jun 15, 2014 | Michael Krieger |
Some of the same chemicals found in the pigs’ semen storage bags are routinely used in packaging food for humans and are known to migrate into food.
Cyclic lactone, for instance, is a common by-product in adhesives used in potato chip bags and sliced meat packages. It was one of the chemicals found in high levels in the semen bags that had been used on the farms with the highest rates of reproductive failure.
Another chemical found in high levels on those farms: a compound called BADGE, a derivative of the notorious bisphenol A (BPA). It’s the building block of epoxy resins that form the basis for 95 percent of food and beverage can linings in the U.S.
- From the excellent and troubling article recently published by National Geographic, Infertility in Spanish Pigs Has Been Traced to Plastics. A Warning for Humans?
One of Liberty Blitzkrieg’s primary themes in 2013 was “food fraud.” When I use that term, what I am really referring to is the troubling fact that many of the things we consume are not what they seem to be based on what is represented by the package. From a study that showed food fraud in the U.S. was up 60% year-over-year, to pink slime in meat and the fact that the majority of “tuna” served isn’t actually tuna, the examples are seemingly endless.
If all of that wasn’t enough to convince you of how important it is to be aware of exactly what you put in your body, I don’t know what is. This is precisely why Monsanto (possibly the most evil corporation on earth) is so aggressively fighting GMO labeling bills such as the one recently passed by Vermont.
Unfortunately, it’s not just food we have to be aware of. Chemicals in everyday products also pose a serious threat to our health in a number of ways, from testicular development, to cancer and obesity. Naturally the completely corrupt and worthless FDA (which is too worried about raw milk and artisan cheese) isn’t doing a thing to stop it. It’s up to us, and knowledge is the first step to rectifying the situation. That is why I think this recent article from National Geographic is so important.
Not only does it highlight the fact that many of the chemicals suspected to have caused infertility in Spanish pigs are omnipresent through consumer goods in the U.S., it also highlights the extremely controversial endocrine disruptor chemical bisphenol A (BPA), which as mentioned in the quote at the top, “is the building block of epoxy resins that form the basis for 95 percent of food and beverage can linings in the U.S.”
Mother Jones has done an excellent job of covering the dangers of BPA over the years, and the FDA’s complete incompetence/corruption on the topic. In the 2012 article, BPA in Your Food? The FDA’s Still Okay With That, it noted:
Bisphenol A, a controversial chemical used in the lining of nearly all cans used by the food and beverage industry, got a reprieve from the government last week. Responding to a court order to decide on the Natural Resources Defense Council’s petition to ban the stuff on the grounds that it causes harm even in tiny doses, the Food and Drug Administration rejected the petition and upheld its approval of BPA.
That’s good news for some of the globe’s biggest chemical companies. According to Bloomberg News, the global BPA market is worth about $8 billion, with about a quarter of total production going into cans. (The rest goes into polycarbonate plastics, which end up in everything from water bottles to DVDs.) Bloomberg adds that the three biggest suppliers of BPA to the American market are the chemical/steel giant Saudi Basic Industries Corp.—which is 70-percent-owned by the Saudi government—the German chemical giant Bayer, and Dow, its US rival. Globally, according to the US Department of Agriculture, Bayer and Dow produce “the bulk” of BPA.
BPA is what is known as an endocrine disrupter, meaning that it has a range of effects on human development even at minute doses. Friday’s decision comes less than a month after the release of a major study of endocrine disruptors by a range of scientists, including some from the US Department of Health and Human Services, who found “strong evidence” that BPA negatively affects the prostate at low doses and “undisputed evidence” that it does so for mammary glands.
Mother Jones followed up that article with a new one earlier this year, which again demonstrated the total sleaziness inherent in the FDA in the piece: Scientists Condemn New FDA Study Saying BPA Is Safe: “It Borders on Scientific Misconduct.”
With all that in mind, read the following excerpts from the National Geographic article:
A strange catastrophe struck Spain’s pig farmers in the spring of 2010. On 41 farms across the country—each home to between 800 and 3,000 pigs—many sows suddenly ceased bearing young.
On some farms, all the sows stopped reproducing. On others, those that did become pregnant produced smaller litters.
When investigators examined the sows and the semen that had been used to artificially inseminate them—it had been collected from different boar studs and refrigerated—they couldn’t find anything wrong. The sperm cells weren’t misshapen. None of the sows were diseased. No microbes or fungal toxins were detected in their feed or water.
Only one factor was common to all the farms and studs: The plastic bags used for semen storage all came from the same place.
Investigating those bags has led Cristina Nerín, an analytical chemist at the University of Zaragoza who studies packaging materials, to publish new research that traces the pigs’ infertility to chemical compounds in the plastics.
This is “the first time that the correlation between reproductive failures and compounds migrating from plastic materials [has been] studied and demonstrated,” says Nerín, whose team published last month in the journal Scientific Reports.
The implications could extend far beyond the farm.
Some of the same chemicals found in the pigs’ semen storage bags are routinely used in packaging food for humans and are known to migrate into food. The strange case of the Spanish pigs, Nerín says, “shows the real risks we face.” (Explore an interactive showing toxic chemicals that may be lurking in your home.)
Cyclic lactone, for instance, is a common by-product in adhesives used in potato chip bags and sliced meat packages. It was one of the chemicals found in high levels in the semen bags that had been used on the farms with the highest rates of reproductive failure.
Another chemical found in high levels on those farms: a compound called BADGE, a derivative of the notorious bisphenol A (BPA). It’s the building block of epoxy resins that form the basis for 95 percent of food and beverage can linings in the U.S. (Also see “Chemical BPA Linked to Heart Disease, Study Confirms.”)
In one recent study led by analytical chemist Kurunthachalam Kannanof the New York State Department of Health in Albany, BADGE, which is also found in household dust, was detected in 100 percent of 127 urine samples collected from people in the U.S. and China.
A lot of research—epidemiological, lab-animal, and clinical studies—has linked endocrine disruptors to adverse health effects, including abnormal testicular development, early puberty, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and even obesity.
Magapor had purchased the semen storage bags from a Chinese manufacturer. When the company switched to a different bag producer, the Spanish pigs’ fertility returned to normal.
Meanwhile another paper published last month revealed a specific mechanism by which endocrine disruptors might indeed interfere with fertilization in humans.
One of the authors, physician Niels Skakkebaek of the Rigshospitalet, a university hospital in Copenhagen, has been studying testicular disorders and endocrine disruptors for decades. In a 1992 paper in the British Medical Journal, he reported evidence indicating that sperm quality had deteriorated among men in the United States and elsewhere over the previous 50 years.
In the new study, Skakkebaek; Timo Strünker of the Center of Advanced European Studies and Research in Bonn, Germany; and their colleagues exposed human sperm in lab tests to 96 common endocrine disruptors—chemicals, they write, that are “omnipresent in food, household, and personal care products.”
For example, some caused the sperm’s tail to curl up rather than flick from side to side. The chemicals that had the strongest effects included ultraviolet light-filtering agents in sunscreens; plastic-softening phthalates used in food and drink containers; and fungicides and antibacterial compounds such as triclosan, which are commonly found in soaps, toothpaste, and toys.
As for Nerín’s study of the Spanish pigs, “they really found a clear association” between chemical exposure and infertility, Skakkebaek says. “I believe it should be taken as a warning.”
This dilemma is just another battle in the war of our era: Decentralization vs. Centralization. The centralized crony corporate government wants to make as much money off our consumption, sickness and death as possible while we inhabit this planet. That’s all there is to it. The consumer good market is as centralized as you get, which I pointed out in the post, The Comcast/Time Warner Merger and the War Between Centralization and Decentralization, where I highlighted the following chart that shows how 10 corporations control almost everything you buy:
We are better than this.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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