Cage-free sounds good, but does it mean a better life for chickens?

Massachusetts is the latest state to vote on a ballot initiative to increase the amount of space that animals are allowed in industrial food production systems. It prohibits keeping pigs, cows and egg-laying hens in tight confinement that“prevents the animal from lying down, standing up, fully extending its limbs, or turning around freely.”

Republished from The Conversation

You might think its passage is a major moral victory, at least for chickens, but is it? As a philosophy professor who’s worked on food issues for my entire career, I’ve come to believe that questions of animal welfare are more complicated than they seem at first glance. It’s not a clear choice which of the possible living conditions for egg-laying hens – enriched cages, cage-free systems, free-range setups – serve them the best.

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What does humanity owe chickens, anyway?

The philosophical question of whether animals deserve any kind of moral consideration has been debated at least since the ancient Greeks.

At one far end of the spectrum are those who say nonhumans cannot be regarded as proper subjects of moral concern. Some hold this on the basis of divine revelation – the other animals were put here for humankind to use as they see fit – while others deny that animals have the kind of subjectivity or experience that could give rise to a moral duty or obligation on our part. The 16th-century philosopher Rene Descartes likened animals to machines.

All the way at the other end of the spectrum are those who argue that what we owe to animals is not unlike what we owe to each other. We should not kill them, nor should we cause them pain or suffering save under highly unusual circumstances. We certainly should not eat them.

Eggs occupy a theoretically ambiguous place on this spectrum, as it is possible to produce them without killing any chickens. Nevertheless modern egg production does involve killing chickens. First, virtually all male chicks are destroyed within a few moments of hatching (though the egg industry has pledged to end this practice by 2020, using technology to determine the sex of fertilized eggs rather than waiting for chicks to hatch).

And egg producers will not bear the expense of continuing to feed hens after they have gotten too old to lay eggs. When the rate of lay declines, henhouses are “depopulated,” meaning birds are removed, killed and their carcasses are composted. As such, those who occupy the ethical vegetarian end of the animal ethics spectrum are no more supportive of the egg industry than they are of beef or pork production.

Chickens without cages don’t live in Eden.

What’s best for the hens?

Egg production has been a key target of animal welfare initiatives because at one time layers were so crowded that they literally had to stand on top of one another in the wire cages used by the modern egg industry. We can’t be sure these stocking densities have been entirely eliminated, but the vast majority of table eggs today come from chickens that have at least enough space to stand on the floor of their cage.

More important than these increased space allotments is the introduction of amenities that clearly matter to chickens: nest boxes, scratch pads and perches. These enhancements allow the birds to engage in the perching, dust-bathing, nesting and foraging behaviors they are highly motivated to perform.

By 2010, a consensus emerged among producers and some activists for moving to much larger cages that provided opportunities for most of chickens’ natural behaviors – the so-called enriched or colony cage. From the producer perspective, enriched cages represented the best compromise between slightly higher costs and improved welfare for hens. But recent pledges to source eggs from cage-free facilities have virtually taken the opportunity for enriched cages off the table. And that is where the moral uncertainty begins to turn wicked.

Out of the cage, into the fire

Cage-free and free-range systems clearly do a better job of allowing hens to express behaviors that are similar to those of wild jungle fowl. They can move around, and they have better opportunities for scratching, dust bathing and foraging. However, in comparison to enriched cages, hens in cage-free and free-range facilities suffer injuries simply because they move around more. Access to the outdoors often means that predators also have access to hens, and some are inevitably taken by hawks, foxes or the like.

A curious ethical point is that people seem to be roughly split on whether being chased and eaten by a hawk or a dog is a bad thing from a chicken’s perspective. In research done at Oklahoma State University, 40 percent of respondents saw the suffering of animals as the root issue for ethics, while 46 percent judged that pain, suffering or discomfort would not be significant if it was consonant with what an animal would experience in nature. Getting eaten by predators is certainly what chickens and their close relatives experience in the wild. (The remaining 14 percent of people surveyed didn’t care much about animal welfare beyond being sure that animals’ basic needs are met.)

Further complicating the “freedom” of cage-free and free-range enclosures, hens will peck one another in an effort to establish a dominance order. In small groups (the 40 to 60 birds that would be found in the enriched-cage system), this behavior generally recedes. But in flocks of 100,000 or more chickens, the least dominant birds can be subjected to so much pecking from other hens that their welfare is clearly worse than it would be in an enriched cage. Welfare scientists tend to favor aviaries (cage-free) over floor systems (free-range) because they allow better perching and thus give less dominant birds better places to hide.

Egg producers limit the damage that birds can do to each other by trimming off the sharp tip of their beak (which is also controversial). Even still, higher mortality from pecking gets treated as a cost of business in cage-free production facilities.

It is possible to house chickens in groups of 40 to 60 birds where pecking orders become stable quickly, but the roughly 6’ by 12’ enclosures for these groups look suspiciously like a cage to most people. This option may no longer be an option, however. Not only do ballot initiatives like the one in Massachusetts pass with overwhelming support, grocery stores and many chain restaurants are now pledging to abandon suppliers who utilize cages over the next five to 10 years.

Consumers don’t want to feel their eggs come with a side of cruelty. AP Photo/Toby Talbot

With the best of intentions

Egg production seems to be especially susceptible to actions where the public is highly confident that they’re in the right – even while many who’ve look closely at the alternatives are far less sure about how it feels to be a chicken in these operations.

Massachusetts voters thought chickens – as well as the pigs and cows that become pork and veal – would be better off in less tight quarters. Since the ban applies to the sale of any products from animals raised in restrictive cages, the ballot measure could have repercussions for food suppliers based far beyond Massachusetts. Opponents of the initiative predict the price of a dozen eggs will spike.

So do chickens benefit from more space, and should we turn them out of their cages? If we are trying to help them live a more natural kind of existence, then maybe we should. If we are interested in limiting the injuries they suffer from being pecked by other birds, as well as from getting hunted and killed by hawks, dogs and other predators, maybe not.

‘Alarming’ Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causing Insect Apocalypse in United States: Study

“Insect abundance has declined 45 percent. This is a global crisis—we must ban neonics to save the bees!”

(Common Dreams) The rapid and dangerous decline of the insect population in the United States—often called an “insect apocalypse” by scientists—has largely been driven by an increase in the toxicity of U.S. agriculture caused by the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One.

We need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.”

—Kendra Klein, Friends of the Earth

The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids, which were banned by the European Union last year due to the threat they pose to bees and other pollinators.

Kendra Klein, Ph.D., study co-author and senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth, said the United States must follow Europe’s lead and ban the toxic pesticides before it is too late.

“It is alarming that U.S. agriculture has become so much more toxic to insect life in the past two decades,” Klein said in a statement. “We need to phase out neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other insects that are critical to biodiversity and the farms that feed us.”

“Congress must pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to ban neonicotinoids,” Klein added. “In addition, we need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.”

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

According to National Geographic, neonics “are used on over 140 different agricultural crops in more than 120 countries. They attack the central nervous system of insects, causing overstimulation of their nerve cells, paralysis, and death.”

With insect populations declining due to neonic use, “the numbers of insect-eating birds have plummeted in recent decades,” National Geographic reported. “There’s also been a widespread decline in nearly all bird species.”

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As Common Dreams reported in February, scientists warned in a global analysis that by decimating insect populations, widespread use of pesticides poses a serious threat to the planet’s ecosystems and ultimately to the survival of humankind.

Klein said the “good news” is that neonics are not at all necessary for food production.

“We have four decades of research and evidence that agroecological farming methods can grow our food without decimating pollinators,” said Klein.

White House Has “Monsanto’s Back on Pesticides,” Newly Revealed Document Says

(URSTK by Carey Gillam) Internal Monsanto records just filed in court show that a corporate intelligence group hired to “to take the temperature on current regulatory attitudes for glyphosate” reported that the White House could be counted on to defend the company’s Roundup herbicides.

In a report attached to a July 2018 email to Monsanto global strategy official Todd Rands, the strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt  reported to Monsanto the following:

“A domestic policy adviser at the White House said, for instance: ‘We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation. We are prepared to go toe-to-toe on any disputes they may have with, for example, the EU. Monsanto need not fear any additional regulation from this administration.”

In the email accompanying the report, Hakluyt’s Nick Banner told Rands the information related to issues both for the United States and for China. The report notes that “professional” staff has “sharp” disagreement with “political” staff on some areas, but that the concerns of some of the professional staffers would not get in the way.

Related: Foods Most Likely to Contain Glyphosate

“We heard a unanimous view from senior levels of the EPA (and USDA) that glyphosate is not seen as carcinogenic, and that this is highly unlikely to change under this administration – whatever the level of disconnect between political and professional staffers.”

The report said that a former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lawyer and a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) official confirmed that both agencies see the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classification of glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen as “flawed” and incomplete.

“There is little doubt that the EPA supports the use of glyphosate,” the report says. It quotes a current EPA lawyer as saying: “We have made a determination regarding glyphosate and feel very confident of the facts around it. Other international bodies… have reached different conclusions, but in our view the data is just not clear and their decision is mistaken.”

Related: How to Avoid GMOs – And Everything Else You Should Know About Genetic Engineering

The report also suggests similarities between the Trump Administration’s support for glyphosate and its actions around a pesticide called chlorpyrifos that is the active ingredient in an insecticide made by Dow Chemical, now DowDupont. There is a large body of science showing that chlorpyrifos is very damaging to children’s brain development and that children are most often exposed through the food and water they consume. Chlorpyrifos was due to be banned from agricultural use in 2017 because of its dangers but the Trump administration postponed the ban at the request of Dow and continues to allow its use in food production.  The Hakluyt reports says:

“The way the EPA under the Trump administration has handled Chlorpyrifos might be instructive in how it would handle new science or new developments related to glyphosate.”

At the time the report was delivered to Monsanto last July, Monsanto had just been acquired by the German company Bayer AG and was in the midst of defending itself in the first Roundup cancer trial. That San Francisco case, brought by cancer victim Dewayne “Lee” Johnson, resulted in a unanimous jury verdict handed down in August ordering Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to Johnson. The judge in the case later lowered the amount to $78 million. A second trial, also held in San Francisco in a separate case, resulted in an $80.2 million verdict for plaintiff Edwin Hardeman.

A third trial is underway now in Oakland, California. Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow in that case, brought by a husband and wife who both have non-Hodgkin lymphoma they allege is due to their decades of using Roundup.

The documents that include the Hakluyt report were filed in Alameda County Superior Court by lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the current case – Alva and Alberta Pilliod.

The filing is in response to Monsanto’s effort to tell jurors about a recently released EPA glyphosate assessment in which the agency reaffirmed its finding that glyphosate does not cause cancer. The Pilliod lawyers say the Hakluyt communications with Monsanto speak “directly to the credibility of the 2019 EPA glyphosate evaluation, issued by an administration which holds itself out as favoring Monsanto’s business interests.”

Widening rift reported between political and professional staffers in regulatory agencies

The Hakluyt report to Monsanto also notes that increasingly professional staffers inside “most” federal agencies are feeling at odds with political staffers on issues such as pesticide regulation, climate science and other matters.

“While this appears to be true of various agencies – Health and Human Services, Commerce, Education, Interior, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on- the EPA may be the leading example of this phenomenon.”

The report quotes a prominent Washington DC law firm partner who has “extensive contacts at the EPA as saying:

“In essence, the political leadership favors deregulation and dismisses the expert risk analysis. It is especially averse to theoretical risk analysis, for example, on the risks of glyphosate, about which a scientific consensus is yet to form… With regard to glyphosate, in particular, the differences between political and professional staff are sharp.” 

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The professional staffers, those scientists and others who typically have been within an agency for many years through multiple administrations.

Within the EPA, professional staffers are said to have “doubts about glyphosate,” but those doubts “are not shared by the EPA’s leadership.”

The report also provides feedback on Monsanto’s reputation and provides a cautionary note to Bayer, which had just closed the purchase of Monsanto a few weeks before the July 2018 communications:

“Developments in California on glyphosate are striking a chord with the public… The company regularly goes to ‘DEFCON 1’ on the slightest challenge from the environmental, academic or scientific community.”

“Even within the EPA there is unease about your ‘scientific intransigence.’” 

According to the Hakluyt report, an official with the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs said: “There is growing unease in this office at what seems like scientific intransigence by Monsanto to give credibility to any evidence that doesn’t fit their view. We would agree with them that such evidence is non-conclusive, but that does not mean that it is without basis.”

For more information and updates follow @careygillam on Twitter.

You Don’t Want To Know What They Do To Oranges (And It’s About To Get Even Worse)

(Natural Blaze by Meadow Clark) Something is happening to oranges. The solution may be worse than the problem and there’s about to be a lot more solution.

Oranges are cast as the pinnacle of American wholesomeness. Orange juice is a marketing empire in its own right. The “OJ” industry has successfully made its product synonymous with life-giving vitamin C and a complete breakfast. But is that really the case?

The truth is, you don’t know what they do to oranges.

You probably think I’m talking about swaths of pesticides being sprayed on orange groves, but no, no, no. That’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Did you know that oranges are routinely sprayed with antibiotics?

Yeah, how odd, right?

The same antibiotics that are used to treat humans and animals for bacterial infections. We already ingest many antibiotics through our food if we are not careful, because of the antibiotics given to livestock, meat especially, but also eggs, farmed fish, milk, and cheese.

Now we ingest antibiotics from oranges?

Doesn’t that make the problem of antibiotic resistance much, much worse?

Yes, it does. And the problem isn’t just what we eat, it’s also the runoff of antibiotics into our waterways.

But how did that happen?

America’s orange groves have been facing a major problem with a widespread disease called citrus greening that has reportedly ripped through the citrus industry.

If you think that sounds bad, the Trump administration reportedly gave approval for an unprecedented amount of antibiotic use. Agricultural operations are allowed to spray two kinds of antibiotics on nearly a half-million acres of Florida citrus fruits.

Florida Phoenix Journal reports:

Federal officials are allowing greatly expanded use of streptomycin and oxytetracycline –  antibiotics often used on people — as a pesticide on commercially grown citrus. Agricultural operations plan to use the antibiotic sprays to combat the widespread disease called citrus greening, which has devastated the citrus industry. The antibiotics won’t cure the disease, and will have to be sprayed repeatedly over years just to keep the trees alive and producing fruit until they succumb to citrus greening.

Allowing so much antibiotic residue in Florida soils, runoff, and air is unprecedented. It’s unclear how much of the antibiotics – sprayed on leaves and taken up into the plant’s vascular system – will end up in fruit; it’s never been sprayed on this scale before. Test results the citrus industry provided to federal officials reported low antibiotic residues. (source)

The EPA expressed concerns for potential harm to the environment, people, and wildlife, but ultimately decided the economic benefits “outweighed” the risks.

The USDA reasons that the amount of antibiotics people will ingest from citrus will be far less than those ingested during prescription use.

Despite the outcry from various environmental and antibiotics interest groups, Florida’s Department of Agriculture and many citrus growers made the request to use more antibiotics.

Antibiotic resistance affects more than just humans.

The Journal continues:

…One EPA analysis notes that “uncertainty exists regarding the potential for development of resistance, or cross-resistance with other antibiotics, that could result from pesticide applications.”

Both the European Union and Brazil have banned the use of oxytetracycline and streptomycin for use as a pesticide on agricultural plants.

—

…The concern is that the antibiotics which now work on human problems like pneumonia, tuberculosis and other deadly infections will become ineffective. Another concern is that the antibiotics will affect bees, which pollinate citrus flowers, as well as small mammals like rabbits. In the environment, antibiotics can change the chemistry of soil and water, knocking ecosystems out of balance.

—

For citrus growers, the last 10 years have been a nightmare as citrus greening spread from South Florida north, affecting groves in dozens of counties. They spray pesticides to kill the imported insect that carries the disease, but it hasn’t stopped citrus greening’s forward march up the peninsula. They are also working to develop new strains of citrus that resist the disease. The antibiotics, they argued in numerous comment letters to federal officials, are the only known way to stay in business. The press office of the Florida Department of Agriculture did not respond to requests for comment. (source)

So, as you can see, farmers are in a hard place and they argue that a proposed solution of “cycling” between the two antibiotics may not work. But the short term fix may lead to either antibiotic resistance or… the development of even more genetically engineered crops.

You don’t want to know what they do to oranges

Did you know that orange juice is fake news?

In my article, “3 TOTALLY FAKE Foods in Just About Everybody’s Kitchen,” I reported on how orange juice is really made.

As Gizmodo explained a while back, OJ is anything but natural:

Once the juice is squeezed and stored in gigantic vats, they start removing oxygen. Why? Because removing oxygen from the juice allows the liquid to keep for up to a year without spoiling. But! Removing that oxygen also removes the natural flavors of oranges. Yeah, it’s all backwards. So in order to have OJ actually taste like oranges, drink companies hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that make perfumes for Dior, to create these “flavor packs” to make juice taste like, well, juice again. (source)

This is why nearly all orange juice tastes exactly the same, no matter which carton you open. Some companies add pulp-dissolving enzymes to the mix.

Here’s an article with a photo of an orange juice factory that shows whole oranges sitting right in the juice.

If that’s a typical occurrence, then it stands to reason there are pesticides and antibiotics floating around in that glass of juice.

Don’t want the yuck that comes from conventional oranges?

Here are some ways you can mitigate some of these problems:

  • Choose organic oranges when possible
  • Reduce how often you handle citrus with your hands
  • Wash hands immediately after handling
  • If you have time, gently scrub oranges with baking soda and veggie wash before putting them in the fruit bowl
  • Only buy organic orange juice or brands from this list
  • Make your own fresh-squeezed juice.
  • Simply eat oranges instead of drinking orange juice.

Are citrus antibiotics going to cause more (genetically engineered) mosquitoes?

One more weird aspect to this news: genetically engineered mosquitoes have been released in testing trials in parts of Florida, the state that’s known for having the best oranges.

At first, the company pushing the mosquitoes argued that it would reduce scary diseases like Dengue fever and Chikungunya. But those haven’t occurred in Florida for years… Oh, look! here comes Zika, what a coincidence.

Anyway, these mosquitoes were developed by private biotech companies to mate with Florida mosquitoes so that the offspring will all die off.

But wait? Couldn’t that eventually kill off the entire mosquito population and cause a negative domino effect in the animal kingdom?

Here is something most people don’t know about these modified mosquitoes.

They can only be rescued from their genetically engineered die-off by being fed tetracycline…

Yes, the same family of antibiotics that oxytetracycline belongs!

Is this not a crazy situation, or what?

We now face a future where we must either keep feeding antibiotics to citrus groves to eat and face antibiotic resistance or use a similar antibiotic if something goes terribly wrong by the release of engineered pests into the wild…

Peachy.

You can read more from Meadow Clark at The Organic Prepper.

Study: Microplastics Were in the Gut of Every Sea Turtle Tested

(Dr. Mercola) Every year, anywhere from 5 million to 12 million tons of plastic debris enter waterways worldwide, which equates to an estimated 5 trillion pieces of plastic.1 While some of this plastic is in the form of large debris like plastic bottles, six-pack rings and bags, much of it is in the form of tiny particles known as microplastics, which are less than 5 millimeters (mm) in size.

Featured Image Source

Microplastics can come from direct or “primary” sources, such as microbeads used in cosmetics or fibers used in clothing. They can also be secondary microplastics, meaning they’re the result of larger plastic items that have disintegrated due to exposure to waves, salt water, ultraviolet radiation and physical abrasion against shorelines.

Microplastics do not, unfortunately, simply disappear into the water. Their prevalence and abundance has made them one of the worst polluters in the oceans, with a variety of marine life ingesting the particles, either by intention or happenstance.

Related: Holistic Guide to Healing the Endocrine System and Balancing Our Hormones

Sea Turtles Are Ingesting Microplastics

Research published in Global Change Biology revealed that microplastics are ubiquitous in sea turtles.2 Every turtle tested, which included 102 turtles from all seven marine turtle species from three ocean basins (Atlantic, Mediterranean and Pacific), contained the plastics, at varying levels.

Most abundant were plastic microfibers (most often blue or black in color), but fragments and microbeads were also detected, albeit in lesser quantities. Microfibers come from many sources, including shedding from synthetic fabrics, wear from automotive tires and degradation of cigarette filters and fishing nets and ropes.

Once in the water, turtles may be exposed via contaminated sea water and sediments. In the latter case, many sea turtles are known to feed along the ocean bottom, stirring up and ingesting sediment along with their prey.

They may also be exposed directly via their dietary sources. Microplastics can bind to seaweed electrostatically, for instance, while sponges, another turtle delicacy, also ingest microplastics.

In all, more than 800 particles were found by the researchers,3 but because the featured study only tested a small sample of the turtles’ gut content residue, it’s believed that their findings represent only minimum exposure levels to plastics.

“The total number of synthetic particles within the whole gut is likely to be the order of 20 times higher,” the researchers explained. “This suggests that the total levels of ingestion per individual (whole gut) may be higher in marine turtles than large marine mammals.”4

While microplastics don’t pose a risk of internal blockage the way larger plastics do, it’s likely that they affect marine animals on a more subtle, put potentially equally harmful, level. Microplastics may act like sponges for contaminants including heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) or pathogens, for instance, or could cause harm on a cellular or subcellular level, the study noted.

Sea Turtle Hatchlings Threatened by Microplastics

While the Global Change Biology study authors did not believe microplastics would pose as grave a risk to sea turtles as ingestion of larger plastic debris, this may not be the case for post-hatchling sea turtles.

“They’re pretty nondiscriminatory with what they’re eating at this life stage. They eat whatever floats past them,” Samantha Clark, a veterinary technician at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center (LMC) in Juno Beach, Florida, said in a news release.5 Clark cowrote a study that involved 96 post-hatchling sea turtles collected from the Atlantic coastline in Florida.6

Forty-five of the turtles were able to be rehabilitated and released, but 52 of the turtles died, allowing the researchers to analyze their gastrointestinal tracts, most of which contained visible pieces of plastic. Microplastics, larger mesoparticle plastics and even smaller nanoparticles were found in the turtles, with polyethylene and polypropylene the most common types of plastic detected.

Related: How to Detox From Plastics and Other Endocrine Disruptors

“[I]ngestion of micronizing plastic by post-hatchling sea turtles is likely a substantial risk to survival of these endangered and threatened species,” the study concluded, with study coauthor Dr. Charles Manire, director of research and rehabilitation at LMC, adding, “It’s not a question of if they have it, it’s how much they have.”

He told global conservation news service Mongabay, “Twenty-five years ago we would occasionally see a little bit of plastic in some of the smallest turtles,” said Manire. “Now, essentially, 100 percent of them have it … Sea turtles tell us the health of the ocean. The ocean tells us the health of the planet.”7

Filter Feeders Also at Risk

Other marine life, including filter-feeding sharks, rays and baleen whales, are also being negatively affected by microplastics. Animals like these may swallow thousands of cubic meters of water daily in order to capture enough plankton to survive, and with it they’re exposed to whatever else may be lurking in the water.

Not only do filter feeders live in some of the most polluted waters on the planet, but their numbers are already threatened. Half of the species of mobulid rays, along with two-thirds of filter-feeding shark species and more than one-quarter of baleen whale species are listed as threatened species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).8

“Emerging research on these flagship species highlights potential exposure to microplastic contamination and plastic-associated toxins,” according to a study in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.9Study author Elitza Germanov, researcher at the Marine Megafauna Foundation, told Phys.org:10

“Despite the growing research on microplastics in the marine environment, there are only few studies that examine the effects on large filter feeders. We are still trying to understand the magnitude of the issue.

It has become clear though that microplastic contamination has the potential to further reduce the population numbers of these species, many of which are long-lived and have few offspring throughout their lives.”

Are You Eating ‘Plastic’ Fish?

The Center for Biological Diversity noted that fish in the North Pacific are known to ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic every year, and, in a study of fish markets in California and Indonesia, one-quarter of the fish were found to have plastics in their guts.11

Related: How To Heal Your Gut

Plastics and other man-made debris was also found in 33 percent of shellfish sampled.12 What this means is that when you sit down to a seafood dinner, you’re probably eating plastic.

Writing in the journal Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management, researchers noted, “The potential for humans, as top predators, to consume microplastics as contaminants in seafood is very real, and its implications for health need to be considered.”13

The fact is, fish aren’t eating microplastic only by mistake. The particles develop a biological covering of algae and other organic materials while they’re floating in the ocean. And that film makes them smell like food to marine life.

Anchovies, for instance, use odors to forage, and the smell of microplastic entices the fish to eat. Study author Matthew Savoca, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Guardian:14

“When plastic floats at sea its surface gets colonized by algae within days or weeks, a process known as biofouling. Previous research has shown that this algae produces and emits DMS, an algal based compound that certain marine animals use to find food.

[The research shows] plastic may be more deceptive to fish than previously thought. If plastic both looks and smells like food, it is more difficult for animals like fish to distinguish it as not food.”

There’s Probably Plastic in Your Sea Salt and Bottled Water, Too

Microplastics, including microfibers, are seemingly everywhere. For instance, they were also found to be the predominant type of microplastic found in beer, tap water and sea salt samples.

“Based on consumer guidelines, our results indicate the average person ingests over 5,800 particles of synthetic debris from these three sources annually, with the largest contribution coming from tap water (88 percent),” according to researchers in PLOS One.15

Another study revealed the average person may swallow an estimated 68,415 plastic fibers every year just from contaminated dust landing on their plate during meals.16 This is a much larger source of exposure than plastics from seafood such as shellfish, those researchers noted, stating, “The risk of plastic ingestion via mussel consumption is minimal when compared to fiber exposure during a meal via dust fallout in a household.”17

Other sources of microplastics that you probably come across daily include sea salt, as 90 percent of sea salt sold worldwide contains plastic microparticles; it’s estimated that people consume nearly 2,000 such particles a year in their sea salt alone.18 More than 90 percent of popular bottled water brands sampled also contained microplastics, which in some cases may be coming from the packaging and bottling process itself.19

That being said, 94 percent of U.S. tap water samples were also found to contain plastic,20 with microfibers again representing a major part of the problem. Even sewage sludge, which is applied as a fertilizer in industrial agriculture, is loaded with microfibers,21 which were found to cause changes in the soil, including altering the bulk density, water-holding capacity and microbial activity.

Are You Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution?

The magnitude of plastic used worldwide daily is mind-boggling, but you can make a dent by becoming conscious of the plastic you’re using daily — and cut back where you can. Some steps are easy, like swapping plastic bags, bottles, straws, utensils and food containers for more durable, reusable options.

Other steps may take more thought, like reconsidering what types of clothes to buy. A synthetic jacket (such as a fleece) may release up to 2.7 grams (0.095 ounces) of microfibers with each washing (that’s up to 250,000 microfibers). On average, such a garment releases 1.7 grams of microfibers, although older jackets released fibers at twice the rate.22

So one thing you can do to curb plastics pollution is to wash your fleece and microfiber clothing less often, and when you do use a gentle cycle to reduce the number of fibers released. There are also products on the market that catch laundry fibers in your washing machine to help curb pollution.

Special coatings may also help to stop the loss of microfibers during washing, but the apparel industry has been slow to respond in taking steps to stop microfiber pollution.23 You can also consider what your clothing is made out of. In a comparison of acrylic, polyester and a polyester-cotton blend, acrylic was the worst, shedding microfibers up to four times faster than the polyester-cotton blend.24

Ultimately, however, plastic pollution needs to be curbed at its source. Rivers, being a major source of transport of plastic into oceans, should be a major focus of cleanup and prevention efforts. In fact, 95 percent of the riverborne plastic flowing into the ocean comes from just 10 rivers.25

Martin Wagner, an associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) department of biology, believes that focusing on removing plastic from the ocean is a shortsighted solution because in order to stop it in the long run, it has to be traced back to its source, which in most cases is land and the rivers that transport it.26