Vegan option. Meat alternative. Fake meat. From labels to a wide array of dishes conceivable, a slew of faux-meat products are not new to the market. Yet the innovators at Beyond Meat have created a faux-chicken alternative that is described to look, feel and more importantly, taste like chicken.
Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown and his team have high ambitions for their product—hoping to market the faux-chicken in the meat aisle section of the grocery stores as opposed to being placed alongside tofu and other vegan options.
Whole Foods, a distributor of Beyond Meat, currently sells the meat alternative product although not necessarily in the meat aisle section. Currently, Beyond Meat’s beef alternative is in the process of wide release.
Located in Columbia, Missouri, Beyond Meat has in its employ, Fu-hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, University of Missouri professors who have spent a decade developing their pea protein and soybean based product into imitating a chicken-y likeness.
A study found the likeness of a food is just as important as the actual ingredients within regarding drawing consumers to meat options.
The process requires cooking the protein mixture in varying degrees of temperatures, which is then lengthened into strip to be grilled at the end of the process. In total, the method requires 90 minutes of cooking time in comparison to the energy and time it takes to produce factory farm chicken.
As a result, the chicken-like muscle fibers have drawn the attention of individuals such as Twitter Founder and long time vegan Biz Stone, former president Bill Clinton and even former professional boxer Mike Tyson.
A United Nations Environment Programme study reports that agricultural livestock is the source of 25 percent of green house gasses (GHG.) With the rising increase of meat consumption towering over production, satisfying meat consumers proves to largely be unsustainable. Meat consumption from 2009 to the next 40 years is predicted to increase by 65 percent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Furthermore, about 50 percent of the water used in the United States alone goes towards raising livestock. A pound of chicken can use up to 468 gallons of water.
At $5.29 per package, Beyond Meat’s faux-chicken product hopes to draw a wide appeal given the chemicals infused in the market variety meat products as well as the environmental impact of our meat-eating tendencies.
Beyond the environment, Oxfam America’s GROW Campaign aims to diminish global hunger by reducing meat consumption. The land usage and water consumption that essentially drives meat production which results in a competition for the world’s resources. For this reason, individuals living in dire poverty levels face the brunt of meat consumption. Reducing a meal to meatless staves off pressure to the Earth’s resources and saves what would otherwise have been an equivalent of 12 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Pretty soon, the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, will prove irrelevant. Beyond Meat hopes to revolutionize our diet beyond meeting our carnivorous choices.
– Miles Abadilla
Sources: Al-Jazeera, Care2, Farm Progress, Huffington Post Taste, Huffington Post, Slate, CNN, Oxfam America
Photo: Joe-Yonan
The Valentine Project: Mining in Uruguay
Protests against mining Uruguay’s large reserves of ore mount, as civil society groups like Uruguay Libre Campaign propose a referendum that will create an amendment banning large scale open-pit mining in the Latin American country. Headed by the mining company Minera Aratiri of the British Zamin Ferrous company, the Valentine Project (named for its location in the Valentine region) will create a mining site 155 miles south of Montevideo, Uruguay’s capital.
A 130 mile-long underground pipeline will be created to transfer the slurry from the mines to a mining port off the Uruguayan coast, Rio de la Plata.The project promises 18 million tons of ore per year from the 2,500 million tons of ore the country houses. Iron ore is used in construction as steel and for developing infrastructure. Presently, Uruguay exports beef and grains but hopes to add iron ore to the list.
The Valentines Project is an investment that can total up to $3 billion.
Previous protests against mining in Uruguay were in 2008 when global mining company Rio Tinto aimed to develop a mining port in Nueva Palmira and Colonia Agraciada.
The project was set to cost around $205 million but was eventually terminated due to the financial crisis in 2009.
Apart from imposing upon localities, the mining in Uruguay project would have destroyed the environment as well as polluting the waters and air of the region.
Similar ecological consequences threaten the environment with the Valentine Project, including land erosion, pollution and poison gas emissions.
Currently, the referendum for a constitutional amendment is pending, an act that is meant to overturn a law that legalizes large-scale mining in Uruguay, which was passed in September 2013.
The September law passed legislature with a 52-30 vote, effectively imposing taxes and setting environmental regulations. Company profits from mining will be taxed 25 percent while all mining projects will be taxed 38 percent.
Whether the referendum will pass or not, large scale mining in Uruguay is here to stay.
– Miles Abadilla
Sources: Earth is Land Journal, Mining.com, Upside Down World, Mines and Communities, Mining.com
Photo: Lemur Project
Covert Drone War Has Killed More Than 2,400
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has released a comprehensive look at the United States’ drone program from 2009 to the present. Sketching its missteps and apparent successes, the United Kingdom-based nonprofit relates the story of the Barack Obama administration’s relationship with drones and brings clarity to an otherwise opaque issue.
Drone strikes began after 9/11, after the passage of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF.) This law enables the president to “take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the (U.S.).”
Since the act’s passage, both the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations have launched hundreds of attacks on foreign soil.
By their count, over 390 covert drone strikes have killed more than 2,400 people thus far since Obama took office. Targeting Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. Both civilians and militants have been killed.
Barack Obama first made use of drones just three days after the start of his presidency. While initial reports deemed it a success, information gathered later indicated that at least nine civilians were killed in the strike while the one 14-year-old survivor was blinded.
Instead of hitting a Taliban hideout, as intended, the drone struck a family household, killing a tribal elder and members of his family.
Although Obama was reportedly dismayed by the news, he has continued using drone strikes in much greater excess than his predecessor, although with greater rates of accuracy.
Under Obama, drone strikes have killed “six times as many people” than under Bush, but the casualties per strike has dropped from eight to six. Similarly, the civilian deaths have decreased as well, from three casualties per strike for Bush and only 1.43 casualties for Obama.
Some argue that drones help more than hinder anti-terrorism campaigns. As one Air Force officer expressed in the New York Times, “using them to go after terrorists not only was ethically permissible but also might be ethically obligatory, because of their advantages in identifying targets and striking with precision.”
Beyond their perceived benefits, mistaken drone strikes still rattle those who consider them immoral. In 2006, CIA drones killed at least 68 children located in a madrassa, or religious school.
Last month, drones attacked a convoy escorting a bride to her wedding. The U.S. has yet to comment on an attack that killed more than 15 civilians.
In September 2013, a law professor’s study found strikes harm global security and encourage other states and terrorist organizations to likewise arm themselves with unmanned weapons. As interest and concern over drones grow and the debate over their moral and unethical merits rage, the U.S. will carefully need to consider the cost of its continued employment.
– Emily Bajet
Sources: The New York Times, Justice, The Bureau Investigates, GPO, The Guardian
Photo: RT
Global Health Problem We Can’t Ignore: Malnutrition
Global Health Fact: 7 million children under 5 years of age die every year
One of the main culprits is malnutrition. When a child’s body becomes malnourished it causes the immune system to become weak. A weak immune system is not a good thing. Especially for children born in developing countries faced with poverty. The immune system cannot fend off the numerous diseases these children face, Pneumonia, Malaria, diarrhea, are just a few of the disease to combat.
Malnutrition occurs when children are deprived of their very basic nutritional needs. Calories, protein, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats are all essential to a growing body. Food scarcity and poverty is the vital reason these children die every year. Depravation of these basic needs equals malnourishment.
Children who are born premature are at more risk of dying because they were malnourished in the womb. This means they will be born with a weak immune system and possibly become exposed to a deadly disease they cannot fight.
Carolyn Miles, President of Save the Children, stated, “Malnutrition is a largely hidden crisis, but it afflicts one in four children around the world. It wreaks lifelong damage and it is a major killer of children. Every hour of everyday, 300 children die because of malnutrition.”
Here’s a story of a baby girl from Kenya named Umi
This little girl was found at three months old extremely malnourished and on the brink of death. Umi was quickly taken to the closest hospital for medical treatment and eventually recovered.
Months had passed and Umi continued to be nursed back to health. She was recovering from her brush with death and was a happy, healthy, baby for once. She turned two years old and was thriving as best she could.
However, because of her struggling times with malnutrition as an infant, Umi’s immune system never fully recovered and was not prepared to tackle what was waiting for her. The two year old caught pneumonia and diarrhea, the most common killers among children in developing countries. Tragically Umi died.
Umi died — to put it simply — because of poverty. If it wasn’t for her exposure to malnourishment as an infant she might be with the world today. Her fragile immune system might have been able to fight those horrible illnesses. In addition to these factors Umi did not live close enough to medical help. Her family lived in rural Africa without the ability to travel far. This all stems from poverty.
All of these things together stacked the odds against this child to ever survive.
Many children die every year in developing countries because of these reasons. Mothers and babies need to remain top priority for organizations fighting to end these preventable deaths. If solutions to these problems can be made quickly then another child like Umi may be able to survive.
– Amy Robinson
Sources: World Hunger, The Guardian, YouTube, Save the Children
Photo: OMI USA
U.N. Geneva II Communique In, Bashar al- Assad Out
Syria has been in a horrific war for the past three years, but maybe just maybe it will all come to end through what is being called the Geneva II Communique.
The UN, U.S. and Russia, have been trying to convince parities of the Syrian conflict to attend The Geneva II Communique for months. Last week both sides to the Syrian conflict finally agreed to sit down and figure out a solution to end the bloodshed in Syria. The conflicting parties are meeting with United Nations officials and speaking only through a mediator.
“After nearly three painful years of conflict and suffering in Syria, today is a day of fragile but real hope.” These are the words of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki- moon, hoping resolution is in sight.
So far, agreement to release women and children from the war torn town of Homs has been reached. The UN is also requesting the release of the remainder of the citizens, including men. Humanitarian aid will also be sent in to the starving citizens once an agreement is made to do so. There are also talks about the release of the detainees and prisoners being held on each opposing side.
The UN is trying to implement the Geneva I communique aka as (transitional government) which was written in June of the 2013. According to BBC, the communique translates to the following:
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry believes a government transition is the only thing left to do or else Syria “heads closer to an abyss.”
“Bashar al-Assad will not be part of that transition government,” states Kerry. There is no way, no way possible in the imagination, that the man, who has led the brutal response to his own people, could regain the legitimacy to govern.”
The Syrian war started three long years ago when rebel groups began protesting against the inhumane leadership of the Syrian government and shouted for Al -Assad to be overthrown. The protesting then turned to bloodshed between these groups and war broke out. Thus far, over 100,000 people have been killed and over 9 million people have fled their homes for shelter in neighboring countries.
Millions of people are still residing in the city; being held in turmoil. The citizens are literally starving to death with no access to food. Some have even gotten to the point of eating grass and weeds because no food is available. Medical supplies and medicine are also running out for the citizens. All people can do is wait to either die or be saved. By whom, no one knows.
An agreement between these opposing parties must come to an end quickly with imminent improvement of the lives of the Syrian people the first and only priority.<
– Amy Robinson
Sources: United Nations, United Nations, BBC, BBC, BBC, BBC
Photo: The Guardian
Research Ideas for the Humanitarian Student
Developing a research topic can prove quite daunting to a young adult. Once a student is able to narrow down at least a general topic, however, the options become both focused and limitless. School reports do not have to feel like a burden, and instead should be thought of as an opportunity to go beyond the surface and dig deeper into a topic of interest to learn more about its nuances and shades of grey.
The world we live in is rife with a plethora of issues that would make an interesting and thoughtful read. Below is a list of research ideas that will dazzle your teacher and prove a worthwhile and beneficial experience for you:
1. Compare/contrast poverty reduction strategies of U.S. government foreign-aid programs to those of other donor countries, focusing on the end goals of such programs. For example, do the programs aim to increase income? Or, instead, do they focus on improving quality of life? At the end of your school report, analyze the pros and cons of such strategies and develop your own strategy for how you think poverty should be addressed.
2. Explore the structure and strategies of U.S. based non-profit organizations working to reduce global poverty. What do their programs focus on? Who are their top donors? How do they raise funds? Where are their funds allocated? What are their milestones/achievements?
3. The UN General Assembly designation of February 20th as the “World Day of Social Justice.” First explore and analyze the concept of social justice. Then specifically delve into the World Day of Social Justice by answering the questions: What is the purpose of this day? How/why was it developed? What are its achievements?
4. With one more year left until the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target date, discuss what the MDGs are, as well as the various efforts made so far by UN member nations and global development institutions toward achieving the MDGs.
5. Research poverty reduction measures taken by your local elected representatives. How often do they focus on poverty related issues? How much poverty related legislation have they drafted or co-sponsored? Discuss what their primary focus is and why. How can a constituent make poverty a priority for them?
Students should view school reports as a challenge and an opportunity to dig deeper into topics that interest them. The issue of global poverty spans many fields that are ripe with information for critical analysis. The topics listed above are just one of many poverty-related school report ideas to help give you a head start!
– Rifk Ebeid
Sources: UN News Centre, Take Apart, United Nations Millennium Development Goals
Photo: ksvoboda
European Countries Open Doors for Syrian Refugees
The Syrian civil war has been the cause of daily consternation for those affected by the war and the humanitarian groups looking to administer to victims’ needs. This past week saw the opening of peace talks in Switzerland as representatives from both sides of the war and nations with interests in the region looked to find some way to bring the conflict to a close.
With chances of a settlement looking grim, a number of European nations including the United Kingdom and Sweden have announced plans to bring in some of the refugees of the war. The refugee crisis resulting from the civil war has stretched the beleaguered nation’s neighbors to their limits.
The United Nations Higher Council for Refugees recently announced that the number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon had exceeded 890,000, with over two million Syrians now living abroad in total. With these staggering figures have come questions over how best to administer to the refugees’ needs, and how well the host nations could sustain this influx.
With these concerns in mind, Sweden has opened its doors to the refugees, more so than any other Western nation according to the CBC. Since 2012, the Nordic nation has taken in 14,000 refugees, far exceeding Germany, which has taken in the second-most refugees of any EU nation.
The path from Syria to Sweden is rather perilous, as refugees flee their homes with little luggage and must rely on smugglers to take them into Western Europe. In a nation they presumably know fairly little about, Syrians have gotten a warm welcome in Sweden.
One Syrian interviewed by the CBC said, “They are providing almost everything,” when questioned about their living conditions.
Sweden and Germany had taken in 64% of the Syrian refugees entering Europe from the beginning of 2012 until May 2013, according to the European Asylum Support Office. None of the other European countries in the study come close to their totals, but it looks some nations are willing to share the burden of hosting these downtrodden people.
Despite this seeming lack of interest by European nations in housing the Syrian migrants, some governments are debating opening their doors to more Syrians. William Hague, the foreign secretary of the United Kingdom, has said that his government is planning on “helping people who are particularly vulnerable,” particularly these refugees.
This represents a significant change from a government that had not committed to any refugee plan, and had up till now declined to sign for a United Nations refugee sanctuary program.
The peace talks in Switzerland and the plans that the United Kingdom has announced are being worked on represent promises being made to the Syrian people. Yet these people have been dealing with the results of the conflict for three years now, with their homes and lives being torn apart.
The lack of support for refugees beyond that done by a select few nations represents a failure on the part of the Western world. The burgeoning crisis that is engaging Syria’s neighbors is a dangerous scenario, and show the need for foreign aid that developing nations still need.
– Eric Gustafsson
Sources: CBC News, DNA India, The Guardian
Photo: NPR
Beyond Meat: Faux-Meat Alternatives
Vegan option. Meat alternative. Fake meat. From labels to a wide array of dishes conceivable, a slew of faux-meat products are not new to the market. Yet the innovators at Beyond Meat have created a faux-chicken alternative that is described to look, feel and more importantly, taste like chicken.
Beyond Meat founder Ethan Brown and his team have high ambitions for their product—hoping to market the faux-chicken in the meat aisle section of the grocery stores as opposed to being placed alongside tofu and other vegan options.
Whole Foods, a distributor of Beyond Meat, currently sells the meat alternative product although not necessarily in the meat aisle section. Currently, Beyond Meat’s beef alternative is in the process of wide release.
Located in Columbia, Missouri, Beyond Meat has in its employ, Fu-hung Hsieh and Harold Huff, University of Missouri professors who have spent a decade developing their pea protein and soybean based product into imitating a chicken-y likeness.
A study found the likeness of a food is just as important as the actual ingredients within regarding drawing consumers to meat options.
The process requires cooking the protein mixture in varying degrees of temperatures, which is then lengthened into strip to be grilled at the end of the process. In total, the method requires 90 minutes of cooking time in comparison to the energy and time it takes to produce factory farm chicken.
As a result, the chicken-like muscle fibers have drawn the attention of individuals such as Twitter Founder and long time vegan Biz Stone, former president Bill Clinton and even former professional boxer Mike Tyson.
A United Nations Environment Programme study reports that agricultural livestock is the source of 25 percent of green house gasses (GHG.) With the rising increase of meat consumption towering over production, satisfying meat consumers proves to largely be unsustainable. Meat consumption from 2009 to the next 40 years is predicted to increase by 65 percent, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Furthermore, about 50 percent of the water used in the United States alone goes towards raising livestock. A pound of chicken can use up to 468 gallons of water.
At $5.29 per package, Beyond Meat’s faux-chicken product hopes to draw a wide appeal given the chemicals infused in the market variety meat products as well as the environmental impact of our meat-eating tendencies.
Pretty soon, the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, will prove irrelevant. Beyond Meat hopes to revolutionize our diet beyond meeting our carnivorous choices.
– Miles Abadilla
Sources: Al-Jazeera, Care2, Farm Progress, Huffington Post Taste, Huffington Post, Slate, CNN, Oxfam America
Photo: Joe-Yonan
Poverty in the Dominican Republic
More than a third of the Dominican Republic lives on less than $1.25 a day and over 20 percent of the country lives in extreme poverty. Most of the poverty in the Dominican Republic is concentrated in the rural areas. The rural poverty rate is about three times as high as the urban poverty rate.
Causes of Poverty in the Dominican Republic
Though the economy has been growing since 1996, economic inequality remains a major problem. Since the government does not provide more than 4 percent of GDP spending on education, only 30 percent of children finish primary school. In a system where education is the road to the middle class, creating economic barriers to education perpetuates a system of institutional inequality.
Half of the country does not have access to clean water, and over half of the country does not have sanitary toilets. Healthcare is expensive and hard to find in rural areas.
Since the main industry of the Dominican Republic is tourism, rural areas are often overlooked when it comes to government investment. Though rural communities depend on the farming industry, the government has not done much to address the low agricultural productivity. Farmers often do not own enough land to manage subsistence farming, making income-generating agriculture impossible. Although there is technology available to increase crop production, rural farmers simply do not have access to these resources due to financial circumstances.
Natural disasters, including hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, and mudslides, constantly threaten rural areas. Much of the rural infrastructure has collapsed due to natural disasters
Though President Danilo Medina has promised to spend more on education, he has said little about his plans to increase agricultural production, increase access to healthcare, and provide aid to rural communities. With a strong focus on tourism, the majority of the nine million people who call the Dominican Republic home are stuck in poverty.
– Stephanie Lamm
Photo: Sleeping My Way To Bliss
Sources: Huffington Post, World Bank, OPHI, Rural Poverty Portal, World Bank
Dinant Corporation, World Bank Agribusiness Controversy
Palm oil, a key ingredient in biofuels and a product present in vast amounts of food, is at the center of a violent conflict between local farmers and agribusiness in Honduras.
The source of the conflict goes back 20 years when the World Bank instituted a land modernization program in Honduras. Farmers point to this program as the mechanism by which thousands of hectares of land were confiscated by large companies specializing in growing African palms.
President Zelaya started an investigation into the land grabs at one point, but he was deposed in a coup in 2009. The Guardian reports the coup had financial backing from the police, business, military, and political bodies of Honduras.
The most recent revelation implicates the World Bank in giving millions of dollars in loans to Dinant Corporation, the company at the center of the conflict.
The World Bank recently conducted an internal review of actions taken by the staff of Dinant Corporation. The report concluded that the violence and forced relocations were not adequately assessed before the International Finance Corporation (IFC) granted Dinant Corporation a massive loan. The loan given to Dinant Corporation by the IFC amounts to a grand total of $30 million.
Human Rights Watch asserts that many IFC staff members knew of the conflict between Dinant and local farmers before giving the loan.
One of the major conclusions reached by the World Bank’s internal investigation, was that the culture within the IFC contributed to the decision to continue conducting business with Dinant. For example, results measured at the IFC are in purely financial terms. This has led some investigators to conclude that various staff members turned a blind eye to Dinant’s violence.
The report also states that much of the IFC staff involved with the loan misinterpreted the rules set out before them with regard to these massive loans. The IFC responded with a vague, five page statement contesting the conclusions reached by the World Bank’s investigation.
Most of the conflict is within the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras, where multiple killings have taken place at the hands of both private and public forces. It is believed that some of these forces operate at the behest of Dinant.
There seems to be a mix of private and public interests at work to oust local farmers from the Bajo Aguan region. The 15th battalion and private security forces have been implicated in the violence. Over the past four years, 100 people have been killed in this conflict.
Unfortunately, the conflict between small farmers and Honduran agribusiness does not seem to have an end in sight. What makes these farmers predicament truly tragic is the fact that the crimes perpetrated against them had financial backing from an international institution usually associated with helping the world’s poor.
– Zack Lindberg
Sources: The Guardian, New York Times, Human Rights Watch
Photo: CGIAR
The Myth of Countries Being Doomed to Poverty
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation released its 2014 annual letter, which, rather than focusing on the foundation’s accomplishments over the past year or discussing its plans for the future, addressed three widely held beliefs regarding poverty.
The Foundation focused on eliminating these three myths: “Poor Countries are Doomed to Stay Poor,” “Foreign Aid is a Big Waste,” and “Saving Lives Leads to Overpopulation.” The letter deconstructs these myths, showing they are not only incorrect, but also highly detrimental to the progression of the fight against global poverty.
The idea that poor countries are trapped in a cycle of poverty is one held by people worldwide, especially those in the United States and other Western countries. While this belief that poor countries can never improve is deeply ingrained, it can be disproved through simple statistics.
In 1960, the majority of the global economy was focused in the West, with many of the countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America counting as among the most impoverished in the world.
Today, many of the countries formerly considered irrevocably poor, such as Mexico, Turkey and Chile have rapidly growing and thriving economies and according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, “the percentage of very poor people has dropped by more than half since 1990.”
Many countries that were once viewed as “developing” such as China and India have come so far that it is difficult to continue viewing them as such, even for those who subscribe to the belief that poor countries are doomed to remain impoverished.
While people may find it easy to accept growth in countries in Asia as well as North and South America, they have a harder time believing that life in Africa will improve in the future.
The fallacy that the quality of life in African countries remains stagnant or decreases persists despite the fact that “7 of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.”
In addition to growing economies, health care quality and availability both increasing throughout Africa. Since 1960, in spite of the AIDS epidemic, the life span of women in sub-Saharan Africa has increased by 39 percent from 41 years old to 57 years old. Education is improving as well, with over 75 percent of sub-Saharan children in school since 1970.
While not every impoverished country is experiencing drastic improvement, it is irrational to view all poor countries as the same. So long as there are not inherent geographical difficulties, such as those the landlocked countries in Africa face, or a government that impedes their growth, as is seen in North Korea, impoverished countries have the ability to improve exponentially.
Poverty will inevitably continue across the globe, but it will decrease significantly in scope and severity as it has done over the past several decades.
In addition to dissolving the misguided belief that poor countries will never improve, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation examines why this myth must be reevaluated. This misinformation harms the fight against global poverty because no one will support a cause they believe to be pointless.
– Cameron Barney
Sources: Gates Foundation, Forbes