CABI Blogs: hand picked... and carefully sorted

Will it be Mimi, Cherie, Annabel or Orla?

No, I'm not talking about the celebrities in this week's OK! magazine, I'm talking about potatoes. Featured in the March issue of The Garden, these horticultural lovelies have all been awarded the RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM). Each cultivar was judged on tuber quality, eye depth, skin colour and flesh colour, yield and taste.

Rethink urged on biofuel targets

From next month, UK government policy demands inclusion of biofuels into fuel at the pumps. The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from April 2008. But those calling for a halt on targets, including the EU targets for inclusion of 5.75% biofuels in road fuel by 2010 and 10% by 2020, now include not just environmental and development pressure groups such as Greenpeace and Oxfam, but the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, and the UK's chief environmental scientist Professor Robert Watson. So what are the reasons behind all the criticism of biofuel targets?

Nutrigenomics On The Menu In Paris

Ahhh, Paris! City of food and fashion…But the latest trend to hit the food industry is certainly no fad. Personalised nutrition is the 'new black' in the world of food. No longer do we need to embarrass ourselves by appearing at the supermarket with a trolley full of identical shopping to our neighbour. Whether or not you're wearing the same shoes, you almost definitely won't be eating the same food.

Ug99: One Year On

An opportunity here, for me to recap on a post I wrote back in January '07. Puccinia graminis strain Ug99 has once again hit the headlines and it isn't good news. The situation in outline is that the Ug99 strain of black rust fungus readily attacks wheat plants, as it resists the most popular rust-resistance genes that are used in modern wheat. It has been steadily spreading northwards from its point of origin in Uganda since 1999 (Uganda and the year 1999 provided the name). Experts were predicting that unless measures were taken, the fungus would find its way into the fertile bread-basket regions of South Asia, via the Arabian peninsula. Potential damage to agriculture in the region was estimated at some 3 billion US dollars per year. In his article  for CAB Reviews, Ravi Singh of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) highlights the threats of Ug99 migration. Follow this link to download the PDF.

This is still the case but as New Scientist reports, Cyclone Gonu which hit the Arabian peninsula last June could have pushed up the predicted arrival of Ug99 spores in Iran and Pakistan by up to two years. Strong storm winds blew north, not north-west as expected and could have carried airborne rust spores with them. Monitoring of the fungus in Pakistan is reportedly poor, so any such movement might not be apparent straight away.

Mines a pint…

In the UK, alcohol abuse is a prime cause of morbidity & mortality, a burden on Accident & Emergency hospital admissions, and a major cause of antisocial behaviour. Last Friday (March 14) at the British Medical Association (BMA) Public Health Medicine annual conference in London, the Minister of State for Public Health, Dawn Primorolo, announced that the government intends to build upon its recent hike in alcohol tax. Their aim: to minimise alcohol- related harm and antisocial behaviour whilst enabling the enjoyment of social drinking.…

Antisocial behaviour is not the only concern: the serious health impacts now hitting both the 18-24 year and 35-40 year old groups in the population include liver disease, increased risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Ethically and fiscally the UK government is worried, and so is the public health community.

Though the increased price of alcohol is reckoned to affect most of the 7% of the population that drinks 1/3 of all the alcohol consumed in the UK, more needs to be done if we are to change public attitudes to make it unacceptable to drink to excess.

With this in mind, the Minister announced four new initiatives, all warmly welcomed by the meeting's delegates:

• Commissioning of a study to be conducted by Sheffield University into price, promotion and the harm due to alcohol
• Introduction of a new health indicator by the end of 2008 which will measure hospital admissions due to alcohol misuse and related harms. This indicator will incentivise Primary Care Trusts to intervene earlier (she noted that many were already making alcohol a priority)
• Alcohol & drug abuse courses to be introduced over the next 3 years into the undergraduate medical curriculum
• For 2008/2009, immediate support for qualified doctors to receive evidence based e-learning training for identifying alcohol risk behaviour

Other measures are a £10 million national campaign to raise public awareness of what actually constitutes a unit of alcohol and a £3.2 million trailblazer study which will produce a toolkit to help and advise both GPs and the criminal system in handling clients with alcohol related problems.

Government policy on alcohol has been influenced by the WHO Report 2002 which rates alcohol as the 3rd highest risk factor for the top 10 diseases and injuries in developed countries, the recent BMA report Alcohol Misuse: Tackling the UK epidemic, as well as the health impact now seen in A& E admissions.

The BMA meeting itself was not dominated totally by the alcohol issue but considering the main topic of her address, all but one of the questions put to Dawn Primorolo concerned new ideas linked to reducing alcohol consumption. These included the removal of tax deductibility as a business expense for alcohol and sweets; the reduction in tax on smoothies and fruit drinks; licensing of pubs to serve food and drink, combined with equal promotion of non-alcoholic drinks; and to tax alcoholic drinks on the basis of actual alcohol content rather than by group, thereby making it cheaper to drink low alcohol drinks. The Minister's treasury experience showed in her answers & was particularly appreciated by her audience.

Later discussion amongst the delegates raised the point that in mediterranean Europe and elsewhere, there is no concept of "buying rounds" and that a ban on doing this could make a substantial difference to consumption.

It's ironic that over the North Sea in a country called Sweden, a culture of drinking to excess was successfully brought under control through a state-run brewery monopoly and strict alcohol control! Indeed the Nordic experience of random roadside breath testing of motorists whereby they reduced drink-driving by 30%, was used to support a conference motion that this be introduced into the UK! Sweden is now under pressure from the EU to relax its existing controls as the monopoly was "against the EU principle of free movement of goods, and that it was therefore not compatible with EU law". No wonder their public health community is worried…if their own experience hadn't taught them already, they only have to look at the UK which expanded to 24 hour opening to create a " Mediterranean café attitude to drinking", with cheaper alcohol than 40 years ago thanks to supermarkets, and now is forced to deal with the consequences.

The BMA Public Health Medicine annual meeting is a way for members to set practice for their specialty and to influence health policy of the BMA, which in turn influences the government. Motions setting goals or providing specific interventions to improve public health are debated and carried forward to committee before passing to the BMA or are given more thought & researched over the next year. Most motions have their opponents so one can be assured that all aspects including "the nanny state" and increased government surveillance are considered. Areas debated this year were childhood obesity/poverty, advertising, health inequalities, transport, sexual health, primary care, health at work, health infrastructure, alcohol, health protection & policy & research, fluoridation.

Death by CAP

How EU economists are 'killing Europeans through CHD'

Surprisingly, it's not the acronyms that are at the root of the World Health Organization's damning accusation, it's our old friends, saturated fats.

The common agricultural policy (CAP) was put in place by the powers that be in Europe, not just to confuse any non-economist who has tried to understand it, but, according to the World Health Organisation, it is 'a system designed to kill Europeans through CHD' (or, for the acronym-intolerant, coronary heart disease).

The Common Agricultural Policy was dreamed up in the days when Europe was emerging from war, rationing and widespread starvation. Many deficiency diseases that we no longer see today were rife. But agriculture had just caught the wave of plenty - industrialisation was leading to what was essentially a farming revolution. The future was bright. Applying subsidies to farmers to grow food and grow it in abundance and create a common market for all this produce was going to solve all of Europe's problems, prevent another war and buffer the continent from the pressures of world free market capitalism. No-one said anything about heart disease.

Slum tourism: Pro-poor, or simple voyeurism?

A New York Times article published on 9 March on the questions of slum tourism has been generating hundreds of comments on the paper's website, and has been picked up by many bloggers and news sites. While slum tourism is now offered in an increasing number of places around the world, from Rio de Janeiro to Johannesburg to Mumbai, the concept arouses strong opinions among both tourism and development experts, and the general public. Some see it as voyeurism of the worst kind, as rich Westerners view people living in poverty, as if they were animals in a zoo, before returning to their air-conditioned hotels. Others see it as generating valuable insight into how others live, and encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship among the residents of the township and favelas.

Algae for biofuels: solving the land-use problem

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that there isn't enough suitable land space to grow crops for food and feed as well as for biofuel, and to retain the forests and other land uses that sequester carbon in huge quantities. As the Nature blog ‘The Great Beyond’ points out, two articles published in Science in February argue that biofuels, especially those derived from agricultural crops (first generation biofuels), actually aren’t that great for the environment because of the required clearance of forests, grasslands, peatlands and savannas to make extra space for biofuel crops. Timothy Searchinger and colleagues argue that a wholesale switch to corn-based ethanol "nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years", whilst Joseph Fargione and colleagues say that converting land to produce food-based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a "biofuel carbon debt".

So what’s the solution? We need a source of biofuel that doesn’t require a lot of land to produce it. How about that slimy green stuff we see floating on ponds? For several decades algae have been seen as having great potential as a source of fuel because of their high oil content which can amount to as much as 50% and their ability to grow quickly in sunlight. Now, due to increasing petrol prices government funds are again being channelled into new research on the use of algae as a biofuel and we’re starting to see developments that are making the production of biofuels from algae a commercially feasible proposition.

Coping with extinction: can plants cope with the loss of their dispersers?

In an era of widespread deforestation and habitat loss, we hear much about the problems that this causes for wildlife. The plights of orangutans, gorillas, lemurs and other charismatic species as they lose the forests on which they depend, and of apes and other wild animals as they are hunted in Africa for bushmeat, are often featured on wildlife programmes, and the protection of these animals, and the forests in which they live, is a concern of many.

But what is perhaps less well known to the public is the other side of the coin: just as wildlife depends on the survival of habitats such as tropical forests, so the health of the forests is in turn dependent on the animals living in them. The trees and other forest flora often depend on particular animals for aspects of their life-cycles such as pollination and seed dispersal, and if those animals are lost through hunting, or because the forest becomes too fragmented for them to survive, this can have profound effects on the ecosystem of those forest areas which do remain.

‘Nano Inside’

Two words that are unlikely to appear in a supermarket near you any time soon. But not because nanotechnology has no application in food - far from it!

The reason that the food industry is unlikely to be advertising the widespread applications of nanotechnology, according to Dr. Frans Kampers, of Wageningen University in the Netherlands, is because both the scientists developing the technologies and the food industry that could reap the benefits, are exercising the cautionary principle and ensuring that effective risk management applied. Experience that has told them how reluctant consumers can be to accept new technologies on their plates.

Organic biofuels?

While discussing biofuels with a colleague the other week, I wondered whether there was any demand for organically grown biofuels, as people interested in protecting the environment are likely to be interested both in biofuels and in organic agriculture. Not long afterwards I came across a record in CAB Abstracts for an article¹ on the life cycle assessment of energy crops, which discussed the environmental impact of different ways of growing fuel crops. It concluded that organic farming was preferred to 'integrated' production for maize and soyabeans, that it had both advantages and disadvantages for cereals and oilseed rape, that  extensive grassland was the lowest-impact source of biogas and (together with sugarbeet)  bioethanol, and that there was no preferable crop for biodiesel.

The butterfly effect: diclofenac, vultures and rabies.

The idea that the flap of a butterfly wing in China could cause a tornado in Texas comes from the concept of  'sensitive dependence on initial conditions' as part of the chaos theory, and has inspired short stories, poems and films, and the term 'Butterfly Effect' has entered the language. Assigning cause and effect in science is notoriously difficult, but there is growing evidence that there is a link between an anti-inflammatory drug for cattle, the demise of the Asian vulture. and the death of children from rabies in India.

The depressing story of the collapse of vulture populations in India began in the 1990s when it was noticed that the numbers of vultures, a common site in rural India, were suddenly in decline. The loss of vultures had a devastating ecological effect, as well as a social impact on the Indian Zoroastrian Parsi community, who traditionally use vultures to dispose of human corpses in "sky burials", and had to find alternative ways to dispose of their dead. The cause of the decline was a puzzle for scientists. New or emerging diseases such as West Nile were considered as a possibility, as bird populations in other parts of the world had been devastated by spreading viral diseases. 

Vultures have performed a vital role in clearing up the rotting carcasses of animals. I can remember on my first trip to India in 1983, stopping on the road from Dehli to Agra to take photographs of 50 or more griffon vultures gathered around a stinking pit of bones and carcasses. The driver was surprised at the request to stop to see the vultures - a common sight to him, and didn't realise that then the time the largest raptor I was used to seeing in southern England was the sparrow hawk.

The culprit responsible for the vulture's problems seems to be a drug residue in the carcases on which they feed. Diclofenac (2-(2,6-dichloranilino) phenylacetic acid) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agent, which has analgesic as well as anti-inflammatory properties. Looking on the CAB Abstracts Database it can be seen that diclofenac has been used in cattle to treat a number of different conditions including arthritis, mastitis, repeat breeding, babesiosis, theileriosis, parotitis, downer cow, radial paralysis, mastitis, and emphysema. Often it is used in conjunction with other drugs for supportive therapy. Because of the ecological problems that the residues of the drug have caused the manufacture of diclofenac for veterinary purposes has been banned in Nepal, India and Pakistan. It is, however, still available as a human drug, and is still cheaper than a safer substitute meloxicam. 

The severe effects are due to a number of factors that have come together. Vultures are more susceptible to the toxic affects of diclofenac, in particular acute kidney failure, than are other species. In India, cattle do not usually go into the human food chain and the dead ones would be left for the scavengers. Another unfortunate factor is that diclofenac has a particularly long elimination half life in cattle (30.5 +/- 9.4 hrs compared with 1.1 hours in humans), and would therefore more likely to form residues in the carcase. Even with restrictions on the use of diclofenac, vulture populations will not recover quickly. Vulture populations have been reduced by more than 99% and several species of Gyps are now on the endangered species list. Gyps vultures take several years to reach sexual maturity, and a pair produces only one or two young every one or two years, so it could take decades before their populations recover. Concern for vultures has also spread to Africa where diclofenac is now being manufactured.

As nature abhors a vacuum, the gap left by the vultures has provided other scavengers with a feast. The opportunity has been exploited by stray and feral dogs, usually the pariah dogs, whose numbers have grown.  With the growth in the numbers of dogs the risk of rabies has also grown.. Dogs are the main vector of human rabies in India.  It is estimated that about 10,000 people die each year from rabies in India, and most of these are in the rural areas and a large proportion are children. The cost of post exposure treatment for the poor is also a contributing factor to the high death rate.