Beef and the rainforest

People like beef. To raise more cattle, companies need more land. Sometimes to get more land, companies turn to unethical methods. Terrence McCoy and Júlia Ledur for The Washington Post:

By reviewing thousands of shipment and purchase logs, and analyzing satellite imagery of Amazon cattle ranches, The Post found that JBS has yet to disentangle itself from ties to illegal deforestation. The destruction is hidden at the base of a long and multistep supply chain that directly connects illegally deforested ranches — and ranchers accused of environmental infractions — to factories authorized by the U.S. government to export beef to the United States.

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New Lab Matters: Biosurveillance and the opioid epidemic

Lab Matters Spring 2020, Issue 2

The opioid crisis remains a public health emergency in the United States, with more than 67,000 drug overdose deaths in 2018. Forensic and crime laboratories provide data on fatal opioid overdoses, but a sole focus on fatalities omits valuable data that could be used to protect communities. In this issue’s feature article, we discuss how public health laboratories can play a vital role in battling this crisis by contributing their analytical capabilities and knowledge of public health surveillance systems.

Here are a few of this issue’s highlights:

Read the full issue.

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The post New Lab Matters: Biosurveillance and the opioid epidemic appeared first on APHL Lab Blog.

Amount of fish to raise a big fish

Raising living things requires resources. In the case of fish, it requires more fish so that another can grow larger. Artists Chow and Lin calculated how much. The surrounding small fish are required to grow the three yellow carp in the middle. [via kottke]

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