Editorial calls for compulsory flu shots for all Canadian health care workers

From “Health workers should be required to get flu shots” in the Toronto Star:

“Every year, as many as 8,000 Canadians die from the flu. Another 20,000 are hospitalized. They are often old or sick and are already in the care of doctors and nurses. So there is more than a little irony in the fact that many of these medical professionals are reluctant to get their annual flu shot.

While most of us take the routine jab-in-the-arm like good citizens, too many health care workers don’t get vaccinated, exposing patients in their care to days of fever and chills — or worse.

Canada and European countries ban flu vaccine; what about the United States?

From the Canadian Press, via Huffington Post Canada:

TORONTO – Canada is following the lead of several European countries and suspending distribution of flu vaccine made by the pharmaceutical firm Novartis.

The decision relates to the discovery by the company of tiny clumps of virus particles in some batches of flu vaccines made at the Novartis production facility in Italy.

Health Canada, which announced the move, said Novartis has agreed to suspend distribution of its vaccines — sold in Canada as Fluad and Agriflu — while the department investigates the situation. All the Novartis vaccine Canada purchases is made at the Italian plant.

GMO kids right to know walk, Toronto

From GMO News.com

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13 Year old Rachel will lead a GMOs – Kids Right to Know Walk! 10 am on Saturday, Nov 3, Dundas Square (33 Dundas St. E.) to St. Lawrence Market (95 Front St.). Please join TV Host Julie Daniluk and Rachel, Kids, Families, Friends, and YES Pets too are Welcome! Did you know that scientists and Doctors have warned that genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) in your food and farms, pose irreversible long term risks to your health and the environment?

Resurrecting raw milk Stilton in Britain

From Simone Gie on Slow Foods:

“1989 was a bleak year for Stilton. The illustrious English blue-veined cheese was accused as the culprit of a food poisoning scare that sickened several people whose Christmas tables it had graced. Fears that pathogens lurking in the raw-milk cheese were to blame triggered a knee-jerk decision that from then on, all Stilton would be made with pasteurized milk. The creamy blue was never proven to be cause of the outbreak, but it was too late. Production guidelines were rewritten, new equipment bought and methods changed. The centuries-old cheese as it has always been made ceased to exist.

Christmas, 15 years later: talented cheesemaker Joe Schneider and affineur and British cheese advocate Randolph Hodgson meet for a pint at London’s Borough Market one chilly evening. Hodgson propositions Schneider with an audacious plan: to bring back raw-milk Stilton from the grave.

Could GMO alfalfa take down the Canadian organic farming industry

From What Really Happened.com:

As we reported on previously, natural alfalfa already grows quite well without the need for herbicides or pesticides, which makes Monsanto’s chemical-resistant GM variety completely pointless. Alfalfa is also a highly volatile plant because it is a perennial, which makes the likelihood of widespread contamination with GM traits from the GM variety much more than just a possibility — it is an absolute given in the long term.

Raw milk in the U.K. (United Kingdom)

What’s behind the FDA’s censorship of raw milk related academic studies?

From David E. Gumpert on the Complete Patient blog:

“Why would the U.S. Food and Drug Administration feel so threatened by a scientific assessment of research on raw milk out of Europe that it would bully a dairy group into forcing the article’s removal from a major university’s web site?

After all, the assessment wasn’t revealing anything that lots of people didn’t already know. The most recent of the findings, the GABRIELA study, has been out for more than a year now, postulating that it could well be a protein in milk–damaged or destroyed by pasteurization–that confers protective effects on children from allergies and asthma.  

Italy, Switzerland, ban flu vaccines

From Eva von Schaper and Phil Serafino on Bloomberg.com:

“Italy and Switzerland halted sales of Novartis AG’s (NOVN) flu vaccines after the company informed Italian authorities of a buildup of particles in the shots. Novartis said the products are safe.

Novartis didn’t provide enough information for officials to know the exact makeup of the proteins found in the Agrippal and Fluad shots, or their impact on the quality and safety of the vaccine, Italy’s Health Ministry said in a statement today. There have been no reports of illness because of the particles, officials said.

The vaccines present “quality defects that are potentially dangerous for public health,” the ministry said. Italy’s medicines agency AIFA “has established the need for further tests regarding the quality and security” of the vaccines, according to an earlier statement from the ministry.

Upcoming webinar on mobile abbatoirs

From Hillary Barter, on Sustain Ontario.

“The topic is “Mobile Abattoirs” – litterally, slaugherhouses on wheels! – which some say could bring more meat processing capacity to rural Ontario, and thus improve access to local meat around the province.  What do you think?  Join in on the conversation onTuesday, October 30, from 12 noon – 2 p.m.

Registration is now open!

In many parts of Ontario, livestock farmers and butchers alike are struggling to keep their businesses going.  Some farmers can’t find nearby abattoirs to take their animals to for processing, while some butchers and abattoir operators struggle to bring in enough income to stay ahead of the high costs of increasingly strict regulations.  In fact, as a result of these constraints and others, the number of small processors operating in Ontario has dropped by 40% since 1991.

Industrial farming interests setting us up for mass starvation in the long run?

From the Alliance for Natural Health:

“Allowing only one color of pig (or cow, corn, wheat, tomato, etc.) is a very bad idea. You can help. Action alert!

As we reported in April, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) issued an Invasive Species Order, or ISO, that was supposed to “help stop the spread of feral swine and the disease risk they pose,” not to mention their “potential for extensive agricultural and ecosystem damage.”

Quite intentionally, we believe, the ISO’s unnecessarily broad definition includes heritage or “old world” breeds and open-range pigs raised on small family farms. These are included because they do not have the uniform color and appearance of factory-raised pigs.