Health & Fitness

In the video above, American cattle rancher Shad Sullivan from North Texas is interviewed by host Patrick Bet-David about the future of the cattle and meat industry. In April 2020, Sullivan posted a YouTube video¹ discussing how U.S. farmers are being forced to dump the food supply — plowing under vegetable crops, euthanizing millions of chickens, aborting sows and burying feeder pigs, and dumping milk by the hundreds of thousands of gallons.

Sullivan says officials from the U.S. Department of Agriculture are also preparing farmers to depopulate cattle that are ready to harvest due to a “bottleneck created by the effects of COVID and the logistics therein.” Yet, while preparing U.S. cattle ranchers to cull their herds, the U.S. is actively importing beef from other countries.

The first shipment of beef from Namibia, for instance, arrived in the U.S. in April 2020, prompting Sullivan to ask, “Am I the only one that sees a problem in this? … We are importing beef from other countries. Beef that is less regulated than our beef, less safe, not as high-quality of product, and yet, it’s happening. At the same time, they’re preparing for us to euthanize our harvests.”²

USDA Email Told Farmers It Would Assist in Depopulation

Sullivan received an email from the USDA in April 2020, stating that it would help farmers to find alternative markets for their harvests, and if that couldn’t be done, state veterinarians and government officials would assist with culls, or depopulation, of the animals.

In May 2020, the USDA announced that its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) had established a National Incident Coordination Center that would support producers who could not move their animals due to the closing of processing plants because of COVID-19.

“Going forward,” the announcement stated, “APHIS’ Coordination Center, State Veterinarians, and other state officials will be assisting to help identify potential alternative markets if a producer is unable to move animals, and if necessary, advise and assist on depopulation and disposal methods.”³

As processing plants shut down across the U.S. near the beginning of the pandemic, farmers were forced to euthanize hundreds of thousands of animals, a waste of meat during a time when many are struggling to find food, and a sentence that’s caused emotional and economic damage to farmers.

Because the processing is concentrated into a small number of large facilities, a U.S. government statement noted at the time, “[C]losure of any of these plants could disrupt our food supply and detrimentally impact our hardworking farmers and ranchers.”⁴

The government also cited statistics that closing one large beef processing plant could lead to a loss of more than 10 million servings of beef in a day, and noted that closing one processing plant can eliminate more than 80% of the supply of a given meat product, such as ground beef, to an entire grocery store chain.⁵ These highlight the glaring problems that come along with a highly concentrated and centralized food system.

Four Companies Control 85% of the Beef Cattle Supply Chain

Due to the allowance of acquisitions and mergers, four companies — Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef, which is owned by Marfrig Global Foods — control the majority of the U.S. beef supply. These companies are multinational corporations that act as processors and distributors of beef. Decades ago, according to Sullivan, there may have been 800 different processors of beef, where now there are only four.

By taking away all competition, they’ve taken control of the entire industry. In April 2019, Tyson, Cargill, JBS and National Beef were accused of violating federal antitrust law by colluding to drive down the price of cattle they bought from ranchers while boosting retail prices, in order to boost profits.⁶

According to the lawsuit, which was filed by the Ranchers Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF), the companies “engaged in tactics — including purchasing fewer cattle than a competitive market would otherwise demand and running their processing plants at less than available capacity” — that had the end result of creating surpluses in the cattle market but shortages in the wholesale beef market.⁷

“There’s an oligarchy of power and control at the top of the chain,” Sullivan said, “and that trickles down to you … They are able to eliminate competition in the United States while bringing in cheaper, lower quality meat from other countries.” In 2020, the U.S. imported beef from at least 19 countries, including Nicaragua, Japan, Croatia, Lithuania and Chile.

Product of the USA Doesn’t Mean It’s From the US

The original Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) rule, which was approved in 2002 and took effect in 2008, required the country of origin to be listed on meat labels. In 2013, the COOL rule was improved and meat packages were supposed to be required to label where the animal that provided your meat was born, raised and slaughtered.

At the time, industrial meat producers like Tyson, Cargill and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association were among those who spoke out against the rule, calling it unnecessarily costly and “short-sighted,” while fearing it would shrink demand for imported meat.

Unfortunately for U.S. consumers seeking greater transparency in their food sources, the meat giants needn’t have worried because global dictators stepped in and essentially told consumers they don’t have the right to know.

In 2015, the World Trade Organization ruled U.S. law requiring COOL labels on meat was illegal, as it discriminated against Canadian and Mexican meat companies and gave an advantage to U.S. meat producers.⁸ By removing COOL, multinational companies are allowed to pass off imported meat as U.S.-raised, while U.S. farmers suffer.

As long as it’s processed in a U.S. facility, it can be labeled “Product of USA”⁹ — even if that processing involves nothing more than unwrapping and rewrapping the package, or cutting a piece of meat into smaller pieces.

The National Cattleman’s Beef Association, a cattle industry lobbying group, continues to push back against mandatory COOL, as processors don’t want the added expense of having to differentiate and label meats from different origins. R-CALF USA, which represents independent cattle producers, is fighting for mandatory COOL, calling it an individual right and liberty issue.

But “it’s a pay to play system,” Sullivan says. “The packers pay to sit on the board of directors and then they’re required to play how the packers want.” When asked how much similarity there is with pharmaceutical lobbyists and lobbyists in the meat industry, Sullivan says, “Very similar … it’s all about money, power and control. Lobbying is power.”

It’s Nearly Impossible for Next Generation to Raise Cattle

There are now 727,906 beef farms and ranches in the U.S. In 1979, Sullivan says, there were 1.2 million to 1.3 million. The dramatic decline is the result of a gradual disappearance because of the lack of competition throughout the industry. As more acquisitions and mergers occur, small farms disappear. Meanwhile, expenses are on the rise, and, without competition in the marketplace, profits fall.

Bet-David asked Sullivan if he would be able to “sell” someone on getting into the industry today, and Sullivan said, “It’s financially impossible.” An individual looking to get into the cattle industry would be faced with the high cost of land, startup costs and overhead, for slight profits, if any, making it a losing proposition for most, especially without a lot of extra cash to pull from.

Currently, Sullivan says he spends $1,200 per animal for a $900 return. “And therefore, across America, we have seen hundreds of thousands of youth not return to the family operation after high school or college.” Sullivan believes that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, one-third of the remaining beef farms and ranches in the U.S. may disappear after 2020 — maybe more.

As more farms and ranches shut down, the industry becomes even more concentrated. One thing that can help U.S. farmers is to support mandatory COOL. According to the American Grassfed Association (AGA), “U.S. cattle producers received higher prices for their cattle when the origins of foreign beef was distinguished in the marketplace.”¹⁰

As it stands, Americans may be eating imported meat that came from a country with lower standards for their meat, but they have no way of knowing it. This is even true for grass fed beef, about 80% of which is imported into the U.S. from other countries that can produce it at a lower cost.¹¹ It’s a food safety issue, according to Sullivan:

“The consumer doesn’t know where that food safety issue lies. They need to have the choice to do that. And if I’m gone as an individual producer, who fills my shoes now, in this time and age? Nobody.

Only multinational corporations, the conglomerates, the control … We have the highest quality beef supply … we’ve spent the last 150 years improving our herds. We want that to be differentiated from those people who have not worked so hard to be in the U.S. market.”

Regenerative Farming Has Saved Farmers

One way cattle farmers have differentiated themselves in these difficult times is by converting to grass fed, regenerative farming. Allen Williams, Ph.D., a sixth-generation family farmer, has consulted with more than 4,200 farmers and ranchers in the U.S. on soil health, cover-cropping, livestock integration, grazing management and other regenerative agriculture practices.

Many of the farmers and ranchers Allen has worked with over the past 20 years were in deep distress, trying to farm and ranch conventionally, and failing. Many of them were on the brink of losing their farms, which had been in the family for generations. By teaching them regenerative land management techniques, many of them were able to rebuild and prosper financially.

“The average age of farmers and ranchers across the U.S. are people in their 60s and early 70s,” Williams said. “So, we desperately need the younger generation to return to the land, and these regenerative practices allow them to have that opportunity to return and to do it in profitable and viable manner where they can support their young and growing families."¹²

Regenerative farming pioneer Will Harris, who runs White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, Georgia, is another example of how you can accomplish the conversion from conventional to regenerative agriculture and thrive financially. He produces high-quality grass fed products, including beef and other animal products.

The Grassfed Exchange is one resource for ranchers, who can learn how to produce the highest quality beef using 100% grass-based production models.¹³ Supporting the Processing Revival and Intrastate Meat Exemption (PRIME) Act, introduced by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., is also beneficial, as it would allow farmers to sell meat processed at smaller slaughtering facilities and allow states to set their own meat processing standards.

Because small slaughterhouses do not have an inspector on staff, a requirement that only large facilities can easily fulfill, they’re banned from selling their meat. The PRIME Act would lift this regulation without sacrificing safety, as random USDA inspections could still occur.¹⁴

On an individual level, the best way to support U.S. farmers is to seek out locally produced food as much as possible, including grass fed beef, and buy it directly from the farm or a farmers market whenever you can.

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There are several COVID-19 vaccines in development, and some have reached human trials. One of the recently revealed challenges of some forms of the vaccine is a connection to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) — either triggering a false positive test for it or potentially increasing the risk of an HIV infection.

HIV triggers acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV is a retrovirus, which some experts believe is at the heart of several chronic diseases, including myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and autism. While some retroviruses can infect your germ cells, and therefore pass to your offspring, it’s not believed that HIV has that capacity.

The first HIV case was reported in 1981.¹ Over the next 35 years, the infection created panic in some communities, raised the risk of death and triggered multiple public health programs. As scientists grew to have a better understanding of the infection, they developed better treatment methods for those who are infected.

By 2019 surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medical Center had performed the first living donor kidney transplant in the U.S. from an HIV patient to an HIV recipient. It was time, effort and science that brought treatment modalities to the point where HIV is now thought of as a chronic disease and not a death sentence.²

Australia Abandons Vaccine After False Positive HIV Tests

In the race to produce a viable vaccine for COVID-19, one developed at the University of Queensland, Australia, was scrapped when scientists found participants developed a false positive test for HIV after vaccination. This affected a $750 million planned order for the vaccine.

The vaccine was developed in a collaboration between the university and biotech company CSL and was one of several using a protein that prompted a response from the human immune system. These types of vaccines have been in use for years and have a known track record, as compared to the newer mRNA vaccines in development.

Examples of protein-based vaccinations include those given for pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type B and hepatitis B. Scientists have also used genetically engineered viruses to prompt the immune system to create antibodies against a pathogen. The technique of modifying the adenovirus has been in development for nearly three decades across several vaccines.⁴

The problem with the COVID vaccine was with two HIV protein fragments that scientists used to produce a molecular “clamp” on the coronavirus spikes. The clamp was meant to stabilize the virus, allowing an individual's immune system to effectively develop antibodies after exposure to the vaccine.

While researchers thought there was no risk from the vaccine of directly infecting the volunteer with HIV, the clamp caused trial participants’ bodies to produce antibodies that HIV tests recognized as a positive response.

Even though they felt the vaccine appeared to be safe and effective, they thought the false positive testing for HIV would undermine public trust. In order to continue the development and use of this vaccine, it would have required the current HIV test to be re-engineered to differentiate between those testing positive from the vaccine and those who had the virus. Prime Minister Scott Morrison spoke with reporters, saying:⁵

“We can’t have any issues with confidence and we are as a nation now, with a good portfolio of vaccines, able to make these decisions to best protect the Australian people.”

The New York Times calls this a “misstep”⁶ “that can inevitably occur when scientists, during a pandemic … rush to condense the usual years-long process to develop vaccines into a matter of months.”

Warning: Modified Virus Vaccine May Increase the Risk of HIV

Currently, the idea is to modify the adenovirus, which normally causes a common cold, with genes from SARS-CoV-2. This tricks the immune system into thinking it has been infected and then producing antibodies against the infection.

Researchers believe the adenoviruses are excellent vectors with several advantages over other viruses for this type of research, including the ease of genetic manipulation and the ability to induce robust T cell and antibody responses.⁷ However, there have been major drawbacks using adenoviruses in gene therapy and vaccines.

Researchers who had used recombinant adenovirus type 5 (Ad5) vector 10 years ago for an HIV-1 vaccine warned against using the same process for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine. Published in The Lancet, they outlined the challenges they had faced in two human trials with Ad5 vectored HIV-1 vaccine.

Data from both studies suggested the vaccination could increase the risk of acquiring HIV from the environment more easily than before. The mechanism for this increased susceptibility was not determined, but further exploratory studies suggested the Ad5 vaccine promoted HIV replication in CD4 T-cells, which could potentially make you more susceptible to an HIV infection.⁸

The results from the Step trial demonstrated the risk of acquiring HIV was higher in uncircumcised men having unprotected anal sex with an HIV-seropositive partner. The data from the Phambili study suggested that vaccinated heterosexual men also had a consistently higher increased risk of infection.

The results were compelling enough that in 2014 the National Institutes of Health acknowledged recombinant Ad5 vaccines may have a major problem as they could “increase susceptibility to HIV infection. This also raised the question of whether the problem extends to some or all of the other recombinant adenovirus vectors currently in development or to other vector-based vaccines.”⁹

The lead author of this paper was Dr. Anthony Fauci, who went on to recommend “against further use of Ad5 as a vector in HIV vaccines,” as reported by Forbes Magazine.¹⁰ These concerns were also reiterated by the researchers of the original HIV-1 vaccine studies, who wrote in The Lancet:¹¹

“On the basis of these findings, we are concerned that use of an Ad5 vector for immunisation against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) could similarly increase the risk of HIV-1 acquisition among men who receive the vaccine.

Both the HIV and COVID-19 pandemics disproportionately affect vulnerable populations globally. Roll-out of an effective SARS-CoV-2 vaccine globally could be given to populations at risk of HIV infection, which could potentially increase their risk of HIV-1 acquisition.”

Emergency COVID Vaccines May Trigger Massive Side Effects

In the past, efforts to vaccinate against other coronaviruses have revealed serious concerns. Vaccines developed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV), Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) tended to trigger antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).

This means that for some who received the vaccine, it has a paradoxical effect that increases your risk of severe infection if you are exposed to the virus. In other words, the vaccine enhances the virus’ ability to get inside your cells, which results in more severe disease.

This process may manifest in different ways, which include ADE and allergic inflammation caused by Th2 immunopathology. Given what is currently known about the virus and behavior in the body, some scientists have argued that ADE is only one immune enhancement pathology that may cause a dysregulated and potentially dangerous response to a COVID-19 vaccine.¹²

In May 2020 I interviewed Robert Kennedy Jr., during which he described the well-known hazards of coronavirus vaccines and summarized the history of coronavirus vaccine development. In 2002, following three consecutive SARS outbreaks, vaccine research had begun. Ten years later in 2012, Chinese, American and European scientists were working on a SARS vaccine and had about 30 promising candidates.

Of those, the four best vaccine candidates were then given to ferrets, which are the closest analog to human lung infections. While the ferrets displayed robust antibody response, which is the metric used for vaccine licensing, once they were challenged with the wild virus, they all became severely ill and died.

The same thing happened when they tried to develop an RSV vaccine in the 1960s. RSV is an upper respiratory illness that is very similar to that caused by coronaviruses. At that time, they had decided to skip animal trials and go directly to human trials. Kennedy recounts the experiment, saying:¹³

“They tested it on I think about 35 children, and the same thing happened. The children developed a champion antibody response — robust, durable. It looked perfect [but when] the children were exposed to the wild virus, they all became sick. Two of them died. They abandoned the vaccine. It was a big embarrassment to FDA and NIH.”

Even Pfizer acknowledges in their clinical protocol that COVID-19 disease enhancement is a real risk following certain vaccinations.¹⁴ Despite years of research and alternative development strategies, ADE concerns remain, and, as explained by Kennedy, coronavirus vaccines remain notorious for creating paradoxical immune enhancement.

Coronaviruses Produce Two Types of Antibodies

Coronaviruses produce more than neutralizing antibodies. Instead, they trigger two antibody responses in your body. This difference may be at the heart of why vaccines to prevent coronavirus infections have thus far been ineffective, and sometimes dangerous:

• Neutralizing antibodies bind to the virus in a way that blocks the ability of the pathogen to infect your cells.¹⁵
• Binding antibodies (also known as nonneutralizing antibodies) are produced during an infection but are unable to prevent a viral infection.¹⁶

Binding antibodies can also trigger an abnormal immune response.¹⁷ Another way to look at this is, instead of protecting you, the vaccine triggers an abnormal response, which causes your immune system to backfire so you develop a severe disease from the infection.

Many of the COVID-19 vaccines currently in development are using mRNA to trigger an immune response by instructing cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.¹⁸ The idea is to create the spike protein so your body produces antibodies, without making you sick in the process. The key question is: Which of the two types of antibodies are being produced through this process?

Weigh a Personal Risk-Benefit Ratio Before You Decide

Regardless of how effective or ineffective COVID-19 vaccines are, it is likely that several will be released to the public in relatively short order — all while racing through a process that normally takes years to ensure some measure of safety.¹⁹

Ironically, current data^20,21,22 no longer support a mass vaccination mandate, considering that the lethality of COVID-19 is lower than the flu for those under the age of 60.²³ If you’re under the age of 40, your risk of dying from COVID-19 is even lower, at just 0.01%, or a 99.99% chance of surviving the infection — and you could improve that further if you’re metabolically flexible and have optimal levels of vitamin D.

Unfortunately, participants in current COVID-19 vaccine trials are not being told that by getting the vaccine they may end up with more severe COVID-19 disease once they’re infected with the virus.²⁴ The speed at which the vaccines are being produced and released may create a second wave of severe disease and death from medical interventions.

In the meantime, as health officials pushed them to develop “warp speed” vaccines, the pharmaceutical companies were unwilling to move ahead unless they were shielded from liability if the vaccine were to produce injuries.²⁵ As one senior executive at AstraZeneca said:²⁶ “This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk …”

The industry is already protected by the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act that prohibits claims against companies that develop and release products for a public health emergency. Plus, the Supreme Court has also upheld rulings that protect vaccine makers,²⁷ without any seeming regard for the citizens who are injured.

Your decision to vaccinate or not for COVID-19 is currently a personal choice. Before making your decision, consider balancing your risks and benefits, evaluating the research and results of the vaccine and the danger of fatality in your personal circumstances. Also, consider taking significant steps to improve your metabolic flexibility and optimizing your vitamin D levels to lower your risk of severe disease.

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