Factory-Farmed Chickens Fed Prozac, Caffeine and Banned Antibiotics

It’s no surprise that conventionally factory farmed chickens aren't fed the best diet. We already knew that they were routinely fed arsenic.

In fact, a 2004 study from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy showed that more than half of store-bought and fast-food chickens contained elevated levels of arsenic. Roughly 2.2 million pounds of it are being used every year to produce 43 billion pounds of poultry. It's called roxarsone and it's used to fight parasites and increase growth in chickens.

New research not only confirms use of arsenic, but finds the addition of a frightening elixir of drugs that includes caffeine, banned antibiotics, and even Prozac. Researchers started off testing just for banned antibiotics but went ahead and looked for other substances because it didn’t add to the cost of the test. What they found even surprised them, according to a story in The New York Times. Their Feathers Tell the Tale

By doing a test on their feathers, which is similar to that of human fingernails in the way it accumulates chemicals, they found caffeine, antihistamines, acetaminophen, fluroquinolones (banned antibiotics), arsenic, and even Prozac (in chicken imported from China). Fluroquinolones are illegal because they have been proven to cause antibiotic resistant superbugs.

Prozac was added to feed because stressed out chickens produce tough meat and brutal conditions often mean a constantly nervous bird. Chickens are fed coffee pulp and green tea powder to keep them up longer so they eat more food, according to a story in The New York Times. Farmers Often Unaware

But even more surprising is that many farmers aren’t even aware that they are feeding their chickens this extreme elixir, rather, they use a certain food mix mandated by the food companies that buy their products.

Organic chicken feed prohibits the use of roxarsone as an additive, so while this is currently your best bet, it's no perfect remedy because one organic brand tested still showed traces of arsenic. So the next most rational step is to give up the bird completely.

Source: Tree hugger

Police Can Copy Your Cell Phone’s Contents In Under Two Minutes

It has emerged that Michigan State Police have been using a high-tech mobile forensics device that can extract information from over 3,000 models of mobile phone, potentially grabbing all media content from your iPhone in under two minutes.

The CelleBrite UFED is a handheld device that Michigan officers have been using since August 2008 to copy information from mobile phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The device can circumvent password restrictions and extract existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags.

Learning that the police had been using mobile forensic devices, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has issued freedom of information requests which demand that state officials open up the data collected, to better assess if penalised motorists warrant having their data copied.

Michigan State Police were more than happy to provide the information – as long as the ACLU paid $544,680. Obviously not pocket change.

Read more: the Next Tag

Middle America Is Experiencing a Massive Increase in 3.0+ Earthquakes

A new United States Geological Survey study has found that middle America between Alabama and Montana is experiencing an "unprecedented" and "almost certainly manmade" increase in earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater. In 2011, there were 134 events of that size. That's six times more than were normally seen during the 20th century.

While the changes in the area's seismicity began in 2001, the trend has really accelerated since 2009, the geologists note. That happens to coincide with increased oil and gas production using new extraction techniques in some parts of the area.

The new work is being presented at the Seismology Society of America's conference later this month. An abstract for the presentation is available online.

In some regions, the increase in earthquakes is even greater than six fold. For example, in Oklahoma over the past half-century, there were an average of 1.2 quakes of greater than 3.0 magnitude per year. Since 2009, there have been more than 25 per year.

"A naturally-occurring rate change of this magnitude is unprecedented outside of volcanic settings or in the absence of a main shock, of which there were neither in this region," the scientists write.

The conclusion that at least one environmental group has drawn from this data is that fracking, in one way or another, has caused these earthquakes. The Environmental Working Group notes that more than 400,000 wells were drilled between 2001 and 2010, a 65% increase over the previous ten-year period. They also note that the new extraction techniques require vast amounts of water to be injected into the ground: major producer Chesapeake estimates that it uses about 5 million gallons of water per well. Lots of wells plus lots of water injected underground could change the subterranean conditions and lead to more earthquakes.

That, at least, was the United States' Army's experience in doing deep well injection during the 1960s. "If you are doing deep well injection, you are altering the stress on the underlying rocks and at some point, the stress will be relieved by generating an earthquake," seismologist Dave Wolny explained back in 2007. "The events are generally small, but there is no way to predict how the injection process has altered stresses on the fault system in the area, and thus, no way to predict how large the events may get."

The USGS scientists aren't willing to draw the causal connection between fracking and earthquakes. "While the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production," they conclude.

But if it is not fracking, then ... What is it? At the moment, we don't have a whole lot of other hypotheses, just a lot of unexplained earthquakes in places where they don't normally strike.

Source: the Atlantic

How Dangerous is the Radioactive Wave Headed Toward the US?