Lion and Tiger Meat, Oh, My
I was shocked to hear that lion burgers are being served at a restaurant in Arizona. I was even more upset to hear that this isn’t something new or out of the ordinary. That this meat is considered game meat and is so easily obtainable is hard to believe since lions in Africa are a threatened species with only about 20,000 left. If we do nothing, they may be extinct by 2020!
Czimer Game and Sea Foods, the butcher who supplies this meat, was previously convicted in a landmark case of illegal underground animal trading. He was fined and served time in a federal prison, yet is back to business as usual. Since he purchased the carcasses of 16 federally protected tigers, four lions, two mountain lions and a liger [a tiger-lion hybrid] and sold them off as uninspected “lion” meat in the past, should we expect that he has changed?
With unregulated displays of lion and tiger cubs all over the United States, it’s easy to understand why previous investigations have shown that lion meat was being produced right here in our country. Accredited sanctuaries are full and there is nowhere for all of these big cats to go once they are too large and dangerous for exhibitors to house. The fear is that many, if not most, end up as exotic game meats.
Inspectors are stretched thin. They can’t control whether or not lion meat is really from a lion. It may be tiger meat instead, which is illegally traded since tigers are an endangered species.
Banning the breeding of big cats in the private sector would make it impossible for U.S. dealers to acquire and sell this meat. Neither the USDA nor the FDA has the manpower to inspect, regulate, and ensure the quality or origin of this food source. Please call for legislation that would ban the breeding, buying and selling of big cats in the U.S. other than in AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) zoos.
Elizabeth Neville
Belchertown
BPA: “No Evidence” of Risk
Your article (“Beware the Bottle,” July 1, 2010) regarding a publicity stunt during a serious public hearing on the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) misses much larger and more important points. Scientists and public health officials in Massachusetts have raised concerns about how a ban on BPA might actually harm public health. The concern is that no alternative to BPA has been as exhaustively tested for safety, so a replacement to BPA could, at least theoretically, put the public’s safety at risk. Further, there is no evidence that BPA has ever caused any harm—or even risk—to expectant mothers, fetuses, children or adults.
The article stated that “a growing body of research links the chemical to a range of potential health problems” but neglected to mention the much larger body of research that shows no harm or risk to humans. Many claims of harm involve laboratory animals subjected to doses of BPA that are so high no human could ever be exposed to that much BPA. Furthermore, none of these studies has ever produced results that independent researchers are able to replicate.
Banning the use of BPA in food containers, as the public health activists in Massachusetts want, could do more harm than good. The chemical is currently used to help keep food safe; without it, there would be serious consequences, such as outbreaks of botulism and other food-borne illnesses from canned food.
I agree with Albert Sherman, vice chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, who said, “There are a lot of nuances in this issue. If we can wait, we should wait as long as possible for federal standards.” Potential health risks don’t merit the kind of overreaction that has occurred in Northampton.
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan
President, American Council on Science and Health
Co-author, The l00% Natural, Purely Organic, Cholesterol-Free, Megavitamin, Low-Carbohydrate Nutrition Hoax
Backyard Chickens for Holyoke?
Thank you for this well-written article [“Egg on Their Faces,” June 17, 2010]. I have one quibble. It does perpetuate the idea that Holyoke politics is, by necessity, a struggle between “newer” residents living in the Highlands and “older” residents who have no good ideas.
I am a “newer” resident, being a Holyoke homeowner for six years. I don’t live in the Highlands and I belong to one of the most traditional organizations in Holyoke, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee. I wholeheartedly agree that Holyoke needs to consider new ideas and perspectives from outside our borders. But I am also uninterested in dismissing those who have lived here for generations. After all, they have made the city what it is, for good and bad, and I really love this city.
Pat Duffy
via online comments
I just have to say this: the idea of having chicken coops in back yards is not uniquely Puerto Rican. I grew up in Somers, Conn., back in the ’70s and some of my friends in both Somers and East Longmeadow had chicken coops. They used the chickens for eggs and also on occasion slaughtered them. It was a normal scene for me growing up. I also dated a girl back in the 1990s whose sister kept chickens (only for eggs, though—she named the birds like pets).
Keeping chickens is not just a Puerto Rican cultural tradition. It’s an American one.
Bill Dusty
Springfield
On Greenfield Biomass Vote
Thank you, Greenfield voters, for getting out and voicing your opposition to biomass. As one who lives in Turners Falls, less than a mile away from the proposed biomass plant site, I was angry that your ZBA permitted this fiasco without even a thought for those of us who live directly downwind from the emission stack. Despite the fact that they received letters from the Boards of Health of many neighboring towns, they still allowed this fiasco to move forward. Just goes to show once again that we can’t trust our public officials to think about anything other than money.
As for the Manomet report, any idiot who burns wood knows that you burn it far faster than it grows. Governor Patrick should have known this without spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to state the obvious—but, hey, maybe he was brought up in the city without a wood stove. The biomass technology has no place in the renewable energy portfolios that are financed by our tax dollars. Biomass incineration is old technology at its worst.
Burning scrap wood to heat your home in the winter is one thing. Burning and clear-cutting forests to make a fast buck financed by tax dollar investment funding and tax credits is quite another matter. This is not about money, it’s about the health of our citizens and the health of our forest ecosystems. We can no longer rely on corrupt politicians to look out for either.
Rachel Roy
via online comments
The Forest: Unkindest Cuts
Whenever materials are removed from the forest system, especially in large quantities, this robs the forest of energy that is critical to healthy functioning. The easiest analogy would be if you were to give blood and they only wanted to take 65 percent of your blood at a time. How would your energy levels be after that? Would you even survive? Logging that removes such large amounts of energy from the system cause a huge depression in the overall energy cycles of the forest, leading to loss of vitality. Or how would you function if your calories were abruptly restricted to 35 percent of what you need to survive? Or if a room full of people were given 35 percent of the food that they need as a group to survive? It would be like a concentration camp. The strongest might survive by getting more food or by eating each other, but it would be a highly competitive and unfavorable condition.
[The Manomet study of the effect of biomass harvest on forests] should be reviewed in light of this ecosystem approach. Any carbon removed has an impact. What levels of impact can be considered sustainable? What are the forest health impacts from concentration camp conditions? How do the mycorrhizal fungi and all the other complex symbiotic relationships function without the removed energy? Why are the forests in general in decline, with whole species dying out? We are losing dominant tree species, associated plant species, insect communities, fungal communities, nutrient cycles and other essential components of the systems. How can the forest be managed to promote these critical systems and associations?
Glenn Ayers
via online comments
