I suppose it’s a toss up between “do you want fries with that?” and all the food content danger it implies, or the chance that you’ll get moldy or infected food. Our society has made great advances in food safety in the last century, I don’t expect a few tenths of a degree temperature rise in the last century to change that much. In fact, a sweeping change to food safety laws has just been passed.
Climate change affecting food safety
Unless action taken, the world’s food supply could be endangered by climate change
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies and unless action is taken it’s only going to get worse, a Michigan State University professor told a symposium at this year’s meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, organized a session titled “How Climate Change Affects the Safety of the World’s Food Supply” at which several nationally known experts warned that food safety is already an issue and will worsen unless climate change is confronted.
“Accelerating climate change is inevitable with implications for animal products and crops,” said Todd, who also is an AAAS Fellow. “At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety are poorly understood.”
However, Todd said there are already a number of examples of climate change taking its toll on the world’s food supply. One is Vibrio, a pathogen typically found in warm ocean water which is now becoming more common in the north as water temperatures rise.
“It’s been moving further up the coast these past few years,” he said. “There was an outbreak of it near Alaska in 2005 when water temperature reached 15 degrees Celsius.”
Todd also said that extreme weather – droughts and heavy rains – is having an impact on the world’s food supply. In some areas crops are being wiped out, resulting in higher prices and other issues.
“Mycotoxins are molds that can sometimes cause illness in humans, and where you have drought and starvation there can be a mycotoxin problem,” he said. “That’s because people will store their meager resources of crops for longer than they should.”
Speakers at the symposium included Raymond Knighton of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture; Sandra Hoffman of the USDA’s Economic Research Service; and Cristina Tirado from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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“Unless action taken, the world’s food supply could be endangered by climate change”
Could be affected by (Assuming AGW driven climage change) climate change? What about IS being affected by bad Govn’t policy?
Oddly, we have a pamphlet from 1947 that tells us to plant potatoes on Feb 15th at the earliest to avoid dieback from frost here in southern Louisiana. Current publications say that we need to wait until tomorrow (Feb 23). You’d think global warming would cause that to be the other way around, wouldn’t you?
Regardless, everyone plant potatoes! They’re easy to grow, fairly pretty, and extremely bountiful. Fun for the kids too.
Somebody please send me an urgent message the day when we discover something negative, anything at all, that isn’t down to “climate change”.
Unless action taken, the world’s food supply could be endangered by faked climate change hysteria. Bio fuels to double food prices.
This is such appaling garbage. Even after staing the implicatins are unknown, the piece still implies we are all in peril.
The simpe fact is that crops do very well with increased CO2. Even supporting drier conditions, should they arise, which so far has not ben bourne out in the real world.
It’s difficult to remain calm when real people die in Christchurch from a natural disaster (although there are quite a few seismologists who claim that “earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings toppled by earthquakes kill people”) when yet another study shows that things could get worse if the global temperature increases by a fraction of a degree.
Some people really need to get out more.
I suppose using one who is a Professor of Advertising, Public Relations and Retailing to spread bogus information about climate change is appropriate. After all, isn’t advertising, public relations and retailing all about getting people to buy something without regard to its value or need?
It’s difficult to equate the conclusions when temperatures can fluctuate between 100 degree C in the summer and -20 in the winter in many populated areas of the world. This seems to be another case of ‘we’ve been given money for research so we have to come up with a negative conclusion at all costs otherwise we won’t get any more research money’.
“At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety are poorly understood”
“poorly understood” ???? Sorry, but a vague claim like that doesn’t give me any any reason to start panicking. Tell me again, why I am supposed to believe so called “experts” when this is the best they can do?
“Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies.”
Yep. Absolutely true.
Firstly, increased warmth since the L.I.A. (to say nothing of increased C02, which is an entirely separate matter) has increased productivity of agricultural thereby improving the safety of world’s food supplies.
Unfortunately, at the same time alarmism about the future effects of climate change has prompted the conversion of much of the worlds grain production from food to fossil fuel replacement thereby reducing basic food availability, increasing its price drastically with a consequent negative effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies.
Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, organized a session titled “How Climate Change Affects the Safety of the World’s Food Supply”
——————————————–
A professor of advertising, public relations and retailing? Would you buy a used car from this man? But, it gets better:
“several nationally known experts warned that food safety is already an issue and will worsen unless climate change is confronted.”
——————————————–
It’s hard to know where to begin. But thanks, Anthony, for a glorious piece of satire, even though it is inadvertent.
I would pay money to see these guys ‘confronting’ climate change, mano a mano. I know how my bets would be laid.
‘Nationally known experts’ – snort/cough/chuckle. Tee hee.
“Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing…”
‘Nuff said.
The man said: “At this point, the effects of climate change on food safety are poorly understood.”
Then he starts speculating.
There is something wrong with this picture.
Does this vicious lashing out at everything reasonable about food, agriculture, floods, pathogens, claiming warmth when it is cold, begin to sound a little like the anarchistic disorder in the Middle East and North Africa. Are our academics like Ewen Todd from Michigan State, Cristina Tirado, UCLA and our public servants Raymond Knighton and Sandra Hoffman from the US Department of Agriculture flailing away hysterically because of a failing, non-scientific cause, or are they being funded and supported by a President who has had more than one-country loyalty from birth? Are these academics and public servants more like pirates and stealth terrorists whose mission is funded from abroad? We know that Science, the once-esteemed publication of the AAAS, has been taken over by these destructive, anti-science folks. If conferences like this were only funded from within, no doubt they will eventually fail; the science is overwhelming. But if their funding comes from bountiful sources from abroad…..
Ach, phooey! This is a PR exercise to cover their buts on the loss of food productive land to the growing of biofuels which feed neither man nor cattle. We used to buy straw at £1.50 a bale to feed the horses and yesterday I saw on TV straw being auctioned £36.00 a bale!!!!!!
The world food situation is already bad, not hit the people yet, but it will, and soon.
So, we have opinion stated as fact (“Accelerating climate change is inevitable”) and business-as-usual painted as something new (“extreme weather – droughts and heavy rains – is having an impact on the world’s food supply”).
Just another day at the MSU department of advertising and public relations…
I do not see why climate would have any effect on food because if cooked that is that. It is cooking temperature that is important. Food transportation is under refrigerated control. at least here in the UK, so that is safe from climate as well.
Warmer climates grow more food!!
Unless action taken, the world’s food supply could be endangered by climate change
Totally agree with this statement.
Unless action is taken to stop the increase in biofuel cultivation, that limits the available land for food crops, and the upward trend in green taxation, on forms of energy used in production and transportation, that is passed through to the consumer then stable items of food will be priced out of the market and shortages will occur.
People will starve as an outcome of green policy and it won’t be the developed countries that suffer deaths as the prices of wheat and meat spiral upwards. It will be the developing nations whose population will be priced out of the markets.
And what, pray tell, does turning perfectly good grain into ethanol to burn in “eco friendly” transport do for food security?
Cheers,
Speedy
the new food safety laws are skewed to BIG agri.mass production.
funny thing is less people get sick from small scale production.
cattle in feedlots under stress actually produce more toxins, now they are vaccinating them 2 weeks before slaughter to knock out the e-coli, never mind what the cows gut feels like to the cow. all to suit the insane mass production/processing to save a millicent a kilo.
suport LOCAL farmers buy direct.
mass production means mass illness when something goes wrong.
the new laws are slanted to stop people using natural manures, they want chem fertilisers to be the option, not good for man or beast or soils.
someone better tell em mould and other issues just wont happen cos the poor wont Have the food to store to begin with.
Ewen Todd, an MSU professor of advertising, public relations and retailing, organized ….
Is it April already?
Pardon me for being confused. I thought that all that “excess” CO2 in the atsmosphere actually increased the food supply through plant growth and, thereby, added to food safety. Other human interventions such as bio fuels do the opposite. It looks to me as if they cannot see the overall picture of plusses outweighing any minuses apart from the fact that human intervention in “climate change” is unlikely to have any effect anyway other than making most of us poorer. I would like to see a major article here discussing if in actual fact increased CO2 had a cooling rather than warming effect. I have seen that proposition aired by several individuals lately. I think a lot of “scientists” are worried that the Republican House of Representatives will set in train a snowball effect by cutting funding for GISS/NASA, EPA and IPCC for a start and other countries may feel encouraged to follow as their revenue runs out. Interesting times indeed. They are pumping out an ever increasing number of alarmist papers just now.
“Climate change is already having an effect on the safety of the world’s food supplies”
because temperature is not increasing anymore.
http://virakkraft.com/Food-Temp.png
Sounds like the usual bilge. A small percentage change in temperature of 1C is unlikely to change much is it really. Watermelons will scream you don’t know— but yes we do know without spending billions on research. Here in the UK we can see a temperature variation of say 36C ( Minus 6C winter low, and 30C peak summer)— do we all fall down and die — no.
Likewise with cooking food most ovens are imprecise to the level of 1C, and again we don’t all die.
The world now has more people afflicted by obesity than afflicted by starvation.
We have more food abundance and resources than ever. We also have a lot of tillable lands that have never been touched.