First cancer gene therapy gets US go-ahead

Yahoo – AFP, Kerry SHERIDAN, August 30, 2017

Six years ago Emily Whitehead -- pictured here in 2013 -- became the first child
ever to receive the anti-cancer gene therapy treatment. Today at age 12 she is
cancer free (AFP Photo/KARI WHITEHEAD)

Miami (AFP) - US regulators on Wednesday approved the first gene therapy against cancer -- a treatment that uses a patient's own immune cells to fight leukemia -- opening a new era in the fight against one of the world's top killers.

The treatment is made by Novartis and is called Kymriah (tisagenlecleucel).

This type of anti-cancer immunotherapy, known as a CAR-T cell therapy, was known by CTL019 until now.

"This marks the first-ever CAR-T cell therapy to be approved anywhere in the world," Novartis CEO Joseph Jimenez told reporters on a conference call.

"It uses a new approach that is wholly personalized by using a patient's own T-cells."

Kymriah was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for children and young adult patients up to age 25 with a form of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

To qualify for treatment, patients must have B-cell precursor ALL that is refractory, or the patient has relapsed at least twice.

The FDA described the approval as "a historic action" and a "new approach to the treatment of cancer and other serious and life-threatening diseases," said a statement.

How it works

The treatment is not a pill or a form of chemotherapy, which can weaken the body's natural defenses.

Instead, it harnesses a patient's own immune cells, called T-cells and white blood cells, and trains them to recognize and fight cancer.

The patient's immune cells are removed with a special blood filtration process, sent to a lab, and genetically encoded to be able to hunt down cancer cells.

These re-engineered T-cells are then transfused back into the patient, where they can begin attacking leukemia.

Studies have shown that 83 percent of patients responded to the treatment, achieving remission within three months, Novartis said.

An application with the European Medicines Agency is expected to be filed by the end of the year.

$475,000 a dose

The price of Kymriah -- which is delivered to a patient just once -- is $475,000, said Bruno Strigini, CEO of Oncology at Novartis.

Patients who do not respond to the treatment within the first month would not be expected to pay, he told reporters.

The more common treatment for leukemia -- bone marrow transplants -- can cost between $540,000 and $800,000 the first year in the United States, Strigini said.

Meanwhile, outside analyses have set a cost-effective price for Kymriah between $600,000 and $750,000, he added.

"Recognizing our responsibility we set the price below that level," said Strigini.

Most patients who fit the criteria for treatment would likely be covered by insurance, since they are under 25 and would either be on their parents' insurance or covered by government-sponsored Medicaid, a Novartis spokesman said.

The price tag is high -- as are costs throughout the cancer industry -- a trend that is "unsustainable," said Craig Devoe, acting chief of medical oncology and hematology at Northwell Health Cancer Institute in New York.

Asked if he thought Novartis's pricing was reasonable, he told AFP: "It's not."

Devoe also said that while the positive results are exciting, many questions remain about how long these novel cancer treatments -- developed mainly in the past decade or so -- will last.

"Not just responding but staying in response long term is what patients want," he said.

"We really don't know how long these cells are going to stay active."

Breakthrough therapy

The treatment was pioneered by Carl June at the University of Pennsylvania.

Its most high-profile patient is Emily Whitehead, now 12.

Six years ago, she was the first child to receive what was widely considered a risky treatment.

She has been cancer-free ever since.

In 2014, US regulators designated CTL019 as a "breakthrough therapy" and put the experimental immunotherapy agent on the fast track to market approval.

It was the first cancer immunotherapy to receive the breakthrough designation. More are expected to follow in the coming years as the field of immunotherapy grows.

Last month, an advisory panel to the FDA unanimously urged approval of the cutting-edge cancer therapy.

About two dozen centers in the United States are expected to be able to treat patients seeking Kymriah, with as many as 35 up and running by the end of the year.

ALL is the most common form of childhood leukemia, with about 3,000 cases diagnosed in the US each year.

Of those, 600 US patients would likely meet the criteria of being under 25 and having relapsed or refractory ALL, according to Novartis.

Holes in cigarette filters more dangerous than thought: Dutch health body

DutchNews, August 25, 2017

The small holes in cigarette filters are doing more harm than good, the government institute for health and the environment RIVM said on Friday. 

Although the holes should in theory lessen the amount of damaging chemicals a smoker inhales, they actually compensate for the lack of nicotine by sucking harder on their cigarettes or smoking more, the RIVM says. 

This adds to the amount of chemicals which the smoker inhales, the RIVM says in its report, a summary of various research papers into the effects of the filter. 

The RIVM’s warning comes at a time when lawyer Bénédicte Ficq and a group of smokers are preparing to take big tobacco producers to court on the ground of ‘aggravated assault resulting in death’. 

They say tobacco firms have lied to smokers about the damaging side effects of their addiction, particularly by using cigarettes that give false readings in test results through the use of the tiny ventilation holes in filters.

‘Now even the government is saying how dangerous cigarettes are. As far as I’m concerned that means they should be banned,’ Ficq told the the AD. 

Junior health minister Martin van Rijn will use the data to see if more needs to be done to discourage smoking, a health ministry spokesperson told the AD. 

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Light cigarettes linked to specific form of lung cancer

"The Recalibration of Awareness – Apr 20/21, 2012 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Old Energy, Recalibration Lectures, God / Creator, Religions/Spiritual systems (Catholic Church, Priests/Nun’s, Worship, John Paul Pope, Women in the Church otherwise church will go, Current Pope won’t do it), Middle East, Jews, Governments will change (Internet, Media, Democracies, Dictators, North Korea, Nations voted at once),Integrity (Businesses, Tobacco Companies, Bankers/ Financial Institutes, Pharmaceutical company to collapse), Illuminati (Started in Greece, with Shipping, Financial markets, Stock markets, Pharmaceutical money (fund to build Africa, to develop)), Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Women, Masters to/already come back, Global Unity.... etc.) - (Text version)

“… The Shift in Human Nature

You're starting to see integrity change. Awareness recalibrates integrity, and the Human Being who would sit there and take advantage of another Human Being in an old energy would never do it in a new energy. The reason? It will become intuitive, so this is a shift in Human Nature as well, for in the past you have assumed that people take advantage of people first and integrity comes later. That's just ordinary Human nature.

In the past, Human nature expressed within governments worked like this: If you were stronger than the other one, you simply conquered them. If you were strong, it was an invitation to conquer. If you were weak, it was an invitation to be conquered. No one even thought about it. It was the way of things. The bigger you could have your armies, the better they would do when you sent them out to conquer. That's not how you think today. Did you notice?

Any country that thinks this way today will not survive, for humanity has discovered that the world goes far better by putting things together instead of tearing them apart. The new energy puts the weak and strong together in ways that make sense and that have integrity. Take a look at what happened to some of the businesses in this great land (USA). Up to 30 years ago, when you started realizing some of them didn't have integrity, you eliminated them. What happened to the tobacco companies when you realized they were knowingly addicting your children? Today, they still sell their products to less-aware countries, but that will also change.

What did you do a few years ago when you realized that your bankers were actually selling you homes that they knew you couldn't pay for later? They were walking away, smiling greedily, not thinking about the heartbreak that was to follow when a life's dream would be lost. Dear American, you are in a recession. However, this is like when you prune a tree and cut back the branches. When the tree grows back, you've got control and the branches will grow bigger and stronger than they were before, without the greed factor. Then, if you don't like the way it grows back, you'll prune it again! I tell you this because awareness is now in control of big money. It's right before your eyes, what you're doing. But fear often rules. …”

McDonalds to limit use of antibiotics in chicken supply

Yahoo – AFP, August 24, 2017

Scientists have for decades argued there is a link between antibiotic use in animals and
the loss of effectiveness of these drugs in human medicine (AFP Photo/MIRA OBERMAN)

New York (AFP) - McDonalds says it will start globally rolling back use of antibiotics in its chicken products from 2018 as part of efforts to curb microbial resistance to drugs and the rise of superbugs.

The decision follows a similar move undertaken in the US market in 2016.

It applies to drugs that are also used in human medicine, called Highest Priority Critically Important Antimicrobials (HPCIA) by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"Starting in 2018, we will begin implementing a new broiler chicken antibiotics policy in markets around the world," the company said in a statement issued Wednesday.

By 2018, HPCIAs will be eliminated in broiler chicken for the Brazil, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the US, and Europe. An exception will be made for the antibiotic colistin for Europe only.

The policy will be extended for Australia and Russia by the end of 2019, when the colistin exception for Europe will be made phased out.

It will be fully implemented globally by January 2027, although the firm said: "Our goal is to have this policy implemented before this date."

Scientists have for decades argued there is a link between antibiotic use in animals and the dwindling effectiveness of these drugs in human medicine.

Industrial-scale poultry farmers often use antibiotics not to treat outbreaks of disease in their flocks but to prevent it from occurring.

Some also use the drugs to help birds gain weight more quickly. Certain antibiotics destroy bacteria in the gut, which means that the chicken can convert feed to muscle faster.

Among humans, causes of resistance include the overprescription of antibiotics and patients failing to take the correct dosage, which allows a residual population of germs to survive and rebound.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), at least two million people in the US become infected with bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics every year, leading to 23,000 deaths.

According to some estimates, drug-resistant bacteria may within decades be causing more deaths than cancer.

The US Consumers Union, a non-profit advocacy group, hailed the decision.

"The widespread use of antibiotics on livestock that aren't sick is contributing to a global public health crisis with potentially dire consequences," said Jean Halloran, director of the organization's food policy initiatives.

She added: "We commend McDonald's for setting these goals and urge all fast food chains to use their market clout to protect public health before it's too late."

The WHO's list of HCIAs falls into five categories: quinolones; third-generation cephalosporins; macrolides and ketolides; glycopeptides; and polymyxins.

These drugs are notably frontline medications in the fight against salmonella, enterobacter and E. coli infections.

Indian woman wins divorce over lack of toilet

Yahoo – AFP, August 20, 2017

An Indian urinates on a wall in front of a poster in Hyderabad for the Hindi film
"Toilet", about one man's battle to build toilets in his village (AFP Photo/NOAH SEELAM)

Jaipur (India) (AFP) - An Indian court has given a woman permission to divorce her husband because their home did not have a toilet, forcing her to seek relief outdoors.

The family court in the northwestern state of Rajasthan ruled on Friday in favour of the woman, who argued that her husband's failure to provide an indoor toilet during their five years of marriage amounted to cruelty.

Justice Rajendra Kumar Sharma said women in villages often endured physical pain waiting until darkness to relieve themselves outdoors.

The judge labelled open defecation -- a major health problem in India -- disgraceful and deemed it torture to deny women a safe environment for relief, the woman's lawyer Rajesh Sharma told AFP.

Divorce is only granted in India if proof such as cruelty, violence or undue financial demands are shown in court.

It is not the first time a marriage has been called off over a toilet.

Last year a woman refused to tie the knot in Uttar Pradesh state after her fiancé refused to build a toilet for the couple.

In June another woman refused to return to the home of her in-laws until they constructed a toilet.

Nearly half of India's population -- almost 600 million people -- defecate in the open, according to UNICEF.

Some 70 percent of Indian households do not have toilets, although 90 percent have access to mobile phones.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has promised to build a toilet in every home by 2019 in a bid to stamp out open defecation.

The government says 20 million toilets have been constructed since the start of the scheme in 2014.

But experts say open defecation not only stems from poverty but a belief that toilets inside the home are unclean.

Australian researchers in peanut allergy breakthrough

Yahoo – AFP, August 17, 2017

Australian researchers have reported a major breakthrough in the relief of deadly
peanut allergy with the discovery of a long-lasting treatment (AFP Photo/A Majeed)

Sydney (AFP) - Australian researchers have reported a major breakthrough in the relief of deadly peanut allergy with the discovery of a long-lasting treatment they say offers hope that a cure will soon be possible.

In clinical trials conducted by scientists at Melbourne's Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, children with peanut allergies were given a probiotic along with small doses of a peanut protein over an 18-month period.

Related Searches

Peanut Butter FudgePeanut FactorySpread Peanut Butter

When the experiment ended in 2013 some 80 percent of the kids were able to tolerate peanuts.

The research, published Wednesday in medical journal The Lancet, found that four years on, about 70 percent could still eat peanuts without an adverse reaction.

"The importance of this finding is that these children were able to eat peanuts like children who don't have peanut allergy and still maintain their tolerant state, protected against reactions to peanut," lead researcher Mimi Tang said.

"These findings suggest our treatment is effective at inducing long-term tolerance, up to four years after completing treatment, and is safe.

"It also suggests the exciting possibility that tolerance is a realistic target for treating the food allergy."

Food allergy affects one in 20 children and about two in 100 adults, with seafood, cow's milk, eggs and peanuts among the most typical triggers.

Peanuts are one of the most common foods to cause anaphylaxis, a potentially fatal allergic reaction.

The researchers said the Murdoch study provides the "strongest evidence yet that a cure may be possible for peanut allergy".

"This is a major step forward in identifying an effective treatment to address the food allergy problem in Western societies," Tang said.

Ten-year-old Olivia May suffered a reaction when she tried to eat a peanut butter sandwich seven years ago.

"We visited the allergist the first time [and] he said 'sorry, you're going to have to go home and empty your pantry out, clear it of all nuts, anything with nuts in it'," Oliver's mother Tanya told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

But after taking part in the trial, Oliva no longer suffers from her allergy.

"I think perhaps one of the best things has been to be able to just go to parties and I can drop her off or at a sleep over," Tanya May said.

"I used to hand over a EpiPen (epinephrine injector) to a parent I'd hardly knew and give them a thirty-second explanation how to use it.

"[But] to not have to worry about putting that responsibility in someone else's hands is a great relief."

Fifty-six children completed the study, with half receiving a placebo and half receiving the treatment, which encourages the immune system to develop a tolerance to the allergy.

Researchers are now aiming to confirm the results with a larger study of the treatment they say "holds important implications for attacking the modern food allergy epidemic".

Australian researchers announce peanut allergy breakthrough #peanutallergy pic.twitter.com/u0fADkxshF

— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 18, 2017

Bugs on the menu at Swiss supermarket

Yahoo – AFP, August 14, 2017

Protein-rich mealworms make up the bulk of the "insect balls" due to go on
sale at Switzerland's Coop supermarket (AFP Photo/Dieter Nagl)

Geneva (AFP) - Switzerland's first insect-based food aimed at humans will go on sale next week following a revision of the country's food safety laws, a supermarket chain said Monday.

Switzerland's second-largest supermarket chain, Coop, announced it would begin selling an insect burger, and insect balls, based on protein-rich mealworm.

The products, made by a Swiss start-up called Essento, will be available in a handful of Coop branches, including in Geneva, Bern and Zurich, as of August 21, according to a statement.

Switzerland is the first European country to authorise the sale of insect-based food items for human consumption, a spokeswoman for the country's food safety authority told AFP.

Swiss food safety laws were changed last May to allow for the sale of food items containing three types of insects: crickets, grasshoppers and mealworms, which are the larval form of the mealworm beetle.

These insects, long used in animal feed, must be bred under strict supervision for four generations before they are considered appropriate for human consumption, according to Swiss law.

Local production will thus take a few months to get started.

In the meantime, imports are possible under strict conditions -- the insects must be raised in accordance with the Swiss requirements at a company submitted to inspections by national food safety authorities.

Related Article:

Insect burgers and balls: Swiss supermarket to sell bug-based food

World's oldest man dead in Israel at 113: media

Yahoo – AFP, August 11, 2017

A file picture released by Guinness World Records on March 11, 2016 shows
Marco Frigatti (R), head of Records for Guinness World Records, presenting Yisrael
 Kristal with his certificate of achievement for oldest living man, in the presence of
Kristal's daughter, son and two grandchildren (AFP Photo/Dvir Rosen)

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal, certified last year by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest man, died on Friday aged 113, Israeli media reported.

Since he was an observant Jew, his family could not be reached on Friday evening, the onset of the Jewish sabbath.

"Yisrael Kristal... died on Friday a month before his 114th birthday," Haaretz daily reported in its online edition.

News site Ynet said he was survived by two children, 9 grandchildren and 32 great-grandchildren.

The World Jewish Congress noted his passing in a brief Twitter statement.

"Holocaust survivor Yisrael Kristal was the oldest man in the world. Yisrael passed away today. May his memory be a blessing."

Kristal, originally from Zarnow in what is now Poland, was born on September 15, 1903 -- three months before the Wright brothers' first successful powered airplane flight.

Guinness World Records recognised him as the world's oldest man in March 2016.

In September he celebrated his Bar Mitzvah after a century-long delay.

Usually marked at 13 for boys and 12 or 13 for girls -- a Bat Mitzvah in that case -- it marks the transition into someone responsible for his or her actions.

Yisrael Kristal pictured on January 22, 2016 at his home in the Israeli 

city of Haifa (AFP Photo/SHULA KOPERSHTOUK)

Kristal was unable to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah in 1916 because his mother had died three months earlier and his father was a soldier in the Russian army at the time of World War I.

"My father is religious and has prayed every morning for 100 years, but he has never had his Bar Mitzvah," his daughter Shula Koperstoch told AFP last year.

After World War I, Kristal moved to Lodz where he worked in the family confectionary factory, married and had two children.

But his life was disrupted when the Jewish quarter of the city became a ghetto under Nazi occupation during World War II and Kristal was sent to the infamous Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Around 1.1 million people, most of them European Jews, perished in the camp between 1940 and 1945 before it was liberated by Soviet forces.

His wife and two children died but Kristal survived, weighing just 37 kilos (81 pounds) at the end of the war.

He then moved to Israel, where he opened a sweet shop.

Guinness World Records' website said that on receiving his certificate at his home in the northern Israeli city of Haifa last year Kristal offered no explanation for his longevity.

"I don't know the secret for long life. I believe that everything is determined from above and we shall never know the reasons why," he said.

Doctors at heart of US opioid crisis

Yahoo – AFP, Nova SAFO, August 10, 2017

Doctors in the United States prescribe more opioids than in any other
country -- enough to medicate every American adult

When 55-year-old Sheila Bartels left her doctor's office in Oklahoma, she had a prescription for 510 painkillers.

She died the same day of an overdose.

Her doctor, Regan Nichols, is now facing five second-degree murder charges -- one for each patient who overdosed after she prescribed them opioid drugs, such as Oxycontin -- prescriptions that can lead to addiction.

"Doctors bear enormous responsibility for the opioid crisis," said David Clark, a professor of anesthesiology at Stanford University who worked on a government-sponsored panel that studied the crisis, and recommended new training and guidelines for health care providers and regulators.

"We didn't have (a crisis) until doctors became enamored with what they imagined to be the potential for opioids in controlling chronic pain," Clark told AFP.

An estimated two million Americans are addicted to opioid drugs -- many forced to buy pills illegally when prescriptions run out. Some, in desperation, resort to heroin and synthetic opioids smuggled into the US by Mexican drug cartels.

Ninety people die every day in the United States from opioid overdoses.

More than 180,000 have died since 1999, including pop icon Prince, who passed away in April 2016 at age 57 after an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a powerful opioid painkiller.

Doctors in the United States prescribe more opioids than in any other country -- enough to medicate every American adult.

While those physicians who are prosecuted for overprescribing make headlines, experts say they are not solely to blame, and that the US health care system as a whole must be held accountable for the country's spiralling opioid epidemic.

"Pharmaceutical companies targeted general practitioner doctors, the ones who see most of the people who have pain," Ohio attorney general Mike DeWine, whose state has been hard hit by the crisis, told AFP.

"I think they certainly were misled, and they were told things that were not true."

Pop icon Prince passed away in April 2016 at the age of 57 after an

accidental overdose of fentanyl, a powerful opioid painkiller

Years in the making

The problem is not a new one -- it began two decades ago, as doctors were being taught to better manage their patients' pain and drug companies were touting the efficacy of opioid painkillers.

The painkillers -- meant only for patients in the most dire need -- started getting into the hands of those with chronic conditions that had been treated with simple over-the-counter drugs like aspirin.

And they didn't know they were addictive.

"You had people with a simple toothache, or knee surgery, or back surgery, that were on these opioids for too long a period of time or prescribed a higher dosage than they needed," said Robert Ware, chief of police in the town of Portsmouth, Ohio, which became a sort of ground zero for the crisis.

As more and more people were getting addicted, "pill mills" began to pop up in Portsmouth and across the nation to meet demand. These clinics were run by doctors who would prescribe opioid drugs to anyone who could pay.

In Portsmouth, a struggling Ohio town bordering two other states where the steel industry was once king, Ware was seeing pill mills become part of the economy, as addicts from nearby states traveled there to get their fix.

Eventually, state regulators and local law enforcement shut down the pill mills by arresting doctors and requiring that clinics be associated with established, reputable medical programs.

The Justice Department has promised a further crackdown on unscrupulous doctors and pharmacists.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump -- hosting a meeting on the crisis during his summer vacation -- suggested more prosecutions as a whole may be necessary.

An estimated two million Americans are addicted to opioid drugs -- many forced 

to buy pills illegally when prescriptions run out and some, in desperation, resort to

heroin and synthetic opioids

Arrests not the only answer

But in Portsmouth, Ware said the community has learned a tough lesson.

"You cannot arrest your way out of this problem," the chief said.

The town's opioid addicts came from a cross-section of society, because most got hooked through legitimate prescriptions.

And addicts needed help to recover over the long run.

So Portsmouth beefed up its health care offerings and addiction treatment -- and went from being a haven for pill mills to a refuge for recovery.

Overdoses there are now trending downward, in contrast to the rest of the country, Ware said.

"We are kind of ahead of the curve in getting out of the problem," he said.

A new target

Across the country, overall drug overdose deaths are rising to new highs -- 60,000 estimated fatalities in 2016. Certain states, like Ohio and West Virginia, have been harder hit than others.

Dutch egg probe widens to chicken meat tests

Yahoo – AFP, Charlotte van Ouwerkerk and Jan Hennop, August 8, 2017

"Chickens have feelings too": Dutch animal activists wave banners and placards
as they stage a protest at a poultry farm in Witteveen (AFP Photo/Erik Brinkhorst)

The Hague (AFP) - In a new twist in Europe's tainted egg scandal, Dutch authorities announced Tuesday they had started testing chicken meat coming from affected poultry farms to determine whether it was also contaminated.

Scientists are looking for the presence of the insecticide fipronil, a substance potentially dangerous to humans, after supermarkets in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Switzerland pulled millions of eggs from the shelves.

"We are currently testing chicken meat in the poultry farms where eggs were infected to determine whether the meat is contaminated as well," Tjitte Mastenbroek, spokesman for food security agency NVWA, told AFP.

The probe focuses on "a few dozen" farms that produce both eggs and chicken meat, NVWA said.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Safety Board, the country's agency looking into civilian safety issues, announced it was opening its own probe into why fipronil was not detected earlier in eggs as well as "the role in this of the poultry sector and Dutch government."

"The way consumers have been informed about the risks of fipronil are also being investigated," the Hague-based OVV said in a statement.

Millions of chickens now face being culled in the Netherlands as the scandal widens across Europe.

Hard-hit Germany on Tuesday called on Belgian and Dutch authorities to quickly shed light on what it termed a "criminal network" involved in the contamination of eggs with fipronil.

"When one sees a criminal energy that's almost organised as a network it's unacceptable," said German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt.

He again criticised Belgian and Dutch authorities' tardy response to the crisis.

Belgium's top agricultural official Monday ordered the country's food safety agency to report within a day why it failed to notify neighbouring countries until July 20 despite knowing about fipronil contamination since June.

"It's not in the spirit of the early warning system to be aware in June but only to inform us by the end of July," Schmidt said.

Mastenbroek told AFP that a criminal probe by the NVWA under Dutch prosecution authorities and assisted by Belgium is continuing, looking at the role of companies in contaminating Dutch poultry farms with fipronil.

Meanwhile, the French government said Monday "thirteen batches of contaminated eggs from The Netherlands" were delivered in July to food processing companies located in central-western France.

First egg, now chicken

Mastenbroek said so far her agency's "highest priority" has been the detection of contaminated eggs.

"But now we also have the time to look at meat as a precautionary measure," she said.

Most farms exclusively produce one or the other, said Eric Hubers at LTO, a Dutch farming organisation.

If the meat tests are negative for fipronil, producers will be cleared to resume sales, Mastenbroek said.

LTO said the probability of chicken meat found to be infected was small.

However, if fipronil was detected "farming will be completely suspended," Mastenbroek said.

'Cutting costs'

The contaminated egg scandal erupted last week when up to 180 Dutch farms were shuttered due to the presence of fipronil discovered in some of the eggs.

It is believed the toxic substance was introduced to poultry farms by a Dutch business named Chickfriend brought in to treat red lice, a parasite in chickens.

Dutch and Belgian media reports that the substance containing the insecticide was supplied to Chickfriend -- a small company operating out of the Dutch poultry heartland in the central town of Barneveld -- by a Belgian firm have not been confirmed.

Currently Dutch authorities have closed down 138 poultry farms -- about a fifth of those across the country -- and warned that eggs from another 59 farms contained enough levels of fipronil that they should not be eaten by children.

Belgium has blocked production from 51 farms -- a quarter of those nationwide -- with fipronil found at 21 farms, although levels were ten times below the maximum EU limit, the country's food and safety authority AFSCA said.

Other European countries including Austria, Bulgaria, Poland, Portugal and Romania said they were analysing imported eggs, but so far no contaminated eggs were found.

Enviromental group Greenpeace on Tuesday called for massive reforms in the food supply system to become safer, healthier and more transparent and to do away with so-called "factory farming".

"Factory farming has been at the centre of a number of scandals, from Mad cow (disease) to bird flu, from swine flu to horsemeat," said Davin Hutchins, Greenpeace senior food campaigner.

"These are symptoms of a system trying to cut costs at every corner to maximise profits at the expense of public health and the environment," he said.

Dutch tainted egg probe widens to chicken meat tests https://t.co/8KmjKk8eUs #fipronil pic.twitter.com/RaJ3gTXcFU

— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 8, 2017

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Two men arrested in egg scandal following raids in Belgium and NL

Two arrested in Europe as egg scandal spreads east https://t.co/nadjXS4JWM pic.twitter.com/YMTjnlWoy2

— AFP news agency (@AFP) August 10, 2017

Only in California: butcher agrees to display anti-meat sign

Yahoo – AFP, Veronique DUPONT, August 7, 2017

"The Local Butcher Shop" in Berkeley, California, shown in this handout photo from
Direct Action Everywhere, was besieged by anti-meat demonstrators for months (AFP
Photo/Matt JOHNSON)

Los Angeles (AFP) - It was perhaps only a matter of time in ultra-progressive California, but a luxury butcher's shop is surprising patrons with a sign warning about the cruelty of eating meat.

"Attention: Animals' lives are their right. Killing them is violent and unjust, no matter how it's done," reads the notice greeting patrons of The Local Butcher Shop in Berkeley.

The business stuck the sign in its window as part of a "peace treaty" with animal rights activists in the left-leaning university town who have been picketing the store for the last four months.

Every Sunday as it opened for butchery lessons, it was besieged by demonstrators from rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DXE) -- sometimes naked, dripping with fake blood and wrapped in cellophane.

Monica Rocchino, co-owner of The Local Butcher Shop with her husband Aaron, was at her wits' end and decided to meet with the activists.

"They said they wanted Berkeley to become a meat-free city and they were ready to shut down our business," said Monica.

"We asked for actions we could do. And they said they'd think about it, but they kept protesting for 10 weeks. They made our neighbors mad, our neighborhood businesses were losing customers."

Finally, DXE laid down its conditions for burying the hatchet.

Ideal meat

"Either we had to become a vegan butchery or we had to stop giving these classes, or put up a sign saying that animals have rights," Monica told AFP.

She says the sign hasn't impacted custom.

"We go to great lengths to make sure our meat is from local ranches, is raised as humanely as possible, free of antibiotics. We want... this to be the ideal meat. Our customers know this and support us."

She acknowledges, however that the sign will not placate DXE, for whom the issue is black-and-white.

"For them, you kill animals or you don't. I understand that belief but it's another thing to force your ideas on other people," says Monica.

Berkeley, the cradle of the US universities' free speech movement, has been the scene of regular demonstrations from the days of the anti-Vietnam War campaign to recent protests against visiting right-wing speakers.

Recently it has been criticized for chilling free speech after canceling an appearances by firebrand pundit Ann Coulter and right-wing provocateur and former Brietbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos.

Berkeley also happens to be the epicenter of America's organic food industry, its reputation for being green sent up in the TV series "Portlandia," in which restaurateurs provide photographic evidence that their meat is from ethically-raised animals.

DXE organizer Matt Johnson says one of the group's activists felt his blood chill as he saw "an advertisement for these courses where people are taught how to properly dismember the body of an animal."

In line with the better-known Peta animal welfare association, DXE directs its protests "everywhere where violence against animals is normalized -- rodeo, circuses, restaurants, the butchers."

"We dont have any ill will against any individual, no hate for butchers -- only love for animals," says Johnson.

"But we cannot accept small businesses misleading people, saying this is just fine, to be promoting a better brand of violence."

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Kryon Q&A

Question: Dear Kryon: I live in Spain. I am sorry if I will ask you a question you might have already answered, but the translations of your books are very slow and I might not have gathered all information you have already given. I am quite concerned about abandoned animals. It seems that many people buy animals for their children and as soon as they grow, they set them out somewhere. Recently I had the occasion to see a small kitten in the middle of the street. I did not immediately react, since I could have stopped and taken it, without getting out of the car. So, I went on and at the first occasion I could turn, I went back to see if I could take the kitten, but it was to late, somebody had already killed it. This happened some month ago, but I still feel very sorry for that kitten. I just would like to know, what kind of entity are these animals and how does this fit in our world. Are these entities which choose this kind of life, like we do choose our kind of Human life? I see so many abandoned animals and every time I see one, my heart aches... I would like to know more about them.

Answer: Dear one, indeed the answer has been given, but let us give it again so you all understand. Animals are here on earth for three (3) reasons.

(1) The balance of biological life. . . the circle of energy that is needed for you to exist in what you call "nature."

(2) To be harvested. Yes, it's true. Many exist for your sustenance, and this is appropriate. It is a harmony between Human and animal, and always has. Remember the buffalo that willingly came into the indigenous tribes to be sacrificed when called? These are stories that you should examine again. The inappropriateness of today's culture is how these precious creatures are treated. Did you know that if there was an honoring ceremony at their death, they would nourish you better? Did you know that there is ceremony that could benefit all of humanity in this way. Perhaps it's time you saw it.

(3) To be loved and to love. For many cultures, animals serve as surrogate children, loved and taken care of. It gives Humans a chance to show compassion when they need it, and to have unconditional love when they need it. This is extremely important to many, and provides balance and centering for many.

Do animals know all this? At a basic level, they do. Not in the way you "know," but in a cellular awareness they understand that they are here in service to planet earth. If you honor them in all three instances, then balance will be the result. Your feelings about their treatment is important. Temper your reactions with the spiritual logic of their appropriateness and their service to humanity. Honor them in all three cases.