Meet the NI female welder making waves in the industry as she eyes top award

“People are always surprised when they hear what my job is."

By Shaun Keenan

Derry reporter

 5 MAY 2022

Chloe Rankin, 19, who is studying for the Level 3 Apprenticeship at NWRC’s Springtown has been shortlisted as a finalist in the ‘Insider - Made in Northern Ireland’ Apprentice of the Year Award 2022.

Chloe Rankin found her passion as a teenager. Unlike other girls in her class, she took an interest in welding and hasn't looked back.

When the Derry girl enrolled in a college apprenticeship, she was one of the only female in her class an now is the only female employee at a local company.

After following her goals, the 19-year-old has now been shortlisted as a finalist for a major award.

She has been nominated for the ‘Insider - Made in Northern Ireland’ Apprentice of the Year Award 2022.

Chloe, who is studying for the Level 3 Apprenticeship at NWRC’s Springtown Campus, has worked with her college and employers to promote careers in welding to women and young people across the North West.

Her employer, Fleming Agri, has also made the top three in the Manufacturing Apprenticeship/Training Scheme Award category.

Speaking about her nomination, Chloe said she was delighted to have made the final three in the apprentice category.

“People are always surprised when they hear what my job is," Chloe said.

"Seeing the shock on their faces never gets old, but everyone thinks it’s class that I’m a woman welder.

“I like being hands-on when I’m learning and working. My experience has been good working as an apprentice, I couldn’t see myself doing anything else.

"I don’t think things would have gone as well for me if I’d gone down the strictly academic route as I wouldn’t be the biggest fan of sitting in a classroom all day, every day, and I like having a bit of freedom when working.

“An apprenticeship is a great route for your career as you are learning a new skill but also getting the experience while getting paid.

“My employment with Fleming has been great, they’ve always supported me. They happily gave me a chance and took me on knowing that I was going to be the only girl working out in the factory.”

Lecturer at NWRC, Justin Sterritt, who nominated Chloe for the award described her as an “outstanding example to young women everywhere”.

He added: “Chloe is fully committed to her role and is driven to become an exceptional welder. She is not afraid to get stuck in at work, is confident in her abilities, and has shown she is as capable, if not more capable in some areas, to do the job.

" Her skills at welding have bloomed over her time at Fleming Agri and she is now capable of the toughest of jobs, working on her own initiative wherever possible and needing the minimum of supervision.

“Chloe has proved to be an excellent welder whilst at the same time excelling in her college studies.”

Jonathan Lecky, Managing Director at Fleming Agri added: “As a major employer of welder/fabricators, Flemings Agri has supported apprenticeships for many years, and we currently employ fifteen NWRC apprentices.”

“Chloe is a committed welder who works with great enthusiasm to become the best that she can be in her chosen field.

"She’s always eager to learn new skills and works on her own initiative and when faced with problems, calmly works towards satisfactory solutions. She is an inspiration to other young women considering a career in Welding or Engineering.”

UK

Translink strike action 'back on' after members reject pay offer

Union claims bus workers have "once again shown their anger and frustration" with the company.

By Orlaith Clinton

9 MAY 2022

The Glider (Image: Translink)

Translink's strike action will recommence this month after workers rejected a revised pay offer on Monday.

The GMB Union claims that bus workers have today "once again shown their anger and frustration" with the company.

Drivers, cleaners and shunters across the company will carry out a seven day-long strike from May 17 to May 23 2022, causing the "entire bus network to grind to a halt".

Read more: Northern Ireland councils facing energy bill increases of hundreds of percent, official says

Peter Macklin, GMB Regional Organiser, said: "Translink bus workers have today once again shown their anger and frustration with the company.

"They were proud to carry out their duty during the pandemic - despite potentially putting themselves and their families lives at risk.

"Now they need some help to tackle the crushing cost of living crisis they face – but bosses aren’t listening.

"The dispute, which affects bus drivers, cleaners and shunters will close the entire bus network within Northern Ireland. It will be a complete shutdown."

A Translink spokesperson said: “We are disappointed to learn that Unite and GMB Bus Driver Trade Unions, by a relatively slim margin, have voted to take unprecedented industrial action from Tuesday 17th May to 23rd May.

“Following extensive negotiations, we made a further substantial offer for 2021, including an enhanced package of conditions, that we believe is fair and reasonable.

“At this stage, having exhausted all options, we will start to take the difficult decisions in preparing for the impact of the strike action. However, we remain committed to working with the unions to avert this action.

“We would welcome the opportunity to engage with unions to cover school duties, so that the wellbeing of schoolchildren can remain a priority, particularly as many enter the exam period.

“All train services will continue to operate as normal.

“We will communicate relevant passenger information through the media, on our website www.translink.co.uk, through social media, in stations, and on buses and trains.

“Translink apologises for any inconvenience this may cause”.

UK

RMT union calls major ballot for national rail strike over maintenance jobs cuts by Network Rail

The RMT has called for a ballot over Network Rail’s intention to cut at least 2,500 “safety critical maintenance jobs”

By Ethan Shone
Wednesday, 20th April 2022


A trade union boss has warned of a national rail strike which would “bring the country to a standstill” if cuts to maintenance jobs aren’t reversed.

The National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport workers (RMT) has called for a ballot on strike action which could take place in the summer.

Why are the RMT calling a strike ballot?

Over 40,000 railway workers on Network Rail and 15 train operating companies (TOCs) will be balloted for strike action in what the RMT has called “potentially the biggest rail strike in modern history”.

The RMT has hit out at Network Rail’s intention to cut at least 2,500 “safety critical maintenance jobs” as part of a £2bn reduction in spending on the network.

They say railway staff have been subject to pay freezes, threats to jobs and attacks on their terms and conditions.

The government, which ultimately runs Network Rail, has said it is “overhauling the sector and moving it off taxpayer life support”.

The ballot opens April 26 and closes May 24, meaning industrial action could begin “as early as June” if enough members turnout and vote ‘yes’ to strike action.

The 15 train operating companies RMT are balloting is as follows: Chiltern Railways, Cross Country Trains, Greater Anglia, LNER, East Midlands Railway, c2c, Great Western Railway, Northern Trains, South Eastern Railway, South Western Railway, Island Line, GTR (including Gatwick Express), Transpennine Express, Avanti West Coast, West Midlands Train.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "Railway workers have had to contend with pay freezes, the prospect of losing their jobs and repeated attacks on their terms and conditions.

"Removing 2,500 safety critical jobs from Network Rail will spell disaster for the public, make accidents more likely and will increase the possibility of trains flying off the tracks.

"Train Operating Companies have praised our members for being key workers during the pandemic but have refused to keep staff pay in line with inflation and soaring living costs.

"As a result, thousands of railway workers have seen their living standards plummet and have run out of patience.”

Rea

Trade unions have been warning for some time that widespread industrial action could take place over proposed job cuts.

In January, the Transport Salaried Staffs Association raised concerns that workers in the rail industry will be forced out of jobs as a result of the cost of living crisis.

The TSSA called for an extension to a no compulsory redundancy agreement, which would protect employees who wish to stay in the industry from forced redundancies.

The industry is already set to see a significant number of jobs lost to voluntary severance schemes, but unions say they’ve been told this won’t be enough to cover central government-enforced cuts worth £2bn.

TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes said: “Our union has been crystal clear that any threat to use compulsory redundancies will be met with industrial action ballots.

“We will of course seek to coordinate any industrial action with our sister rail unions and any other workers fighting the Tories’ cost of living standards crisis.

“A national rail strike in 2022 is very much on the cards.”

Why do trade unions call strikes?

The rate of industrial action across the country is at a five-year high, as many workers are struggling to maintain their standard of living as costs rise.

Most people will not see their pay increase in line with inflation this year, meaning they will suffer a real-terms loss in their income.

But some workers who are in trade unions which are fighting for better conditions have been able to secure above-inflation pay rises.

Mr Lynch added: "The way for trade unions to effectively take on the cost-of-living crisis is to stand up for their members at work and take industrial action when employers are not moved by the force of reasoned argument.

"A national rail strike will bring the country to a standstill, but our members livelihoods and passenger safety are our priorities."

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport said: “We want a fair deal for staff, passengers and taxpayers so the railway doesn’t take money away from other essential public services like the NHS and this kind of irresponsible disruption only makes things worse, damaging our economy just as it is recovering.

“The Government committed £15 billion to keep trains running throughout the pandemic but passenger levels are still less than three quarters what they were in 2019, so, to avoid a similar decline seen in the 1950s-60s where car usage saw many leave the railways, we are overhauling the sector and moving it off taxpayer life support.”

UK

“A complete insult to workers”: 

Union hits out at P&O Ferries boss 

Peter Hebblethwaite’s ‘promotion’


The RMT has said “gangster capitalists should not be rewarded for their appalling employment practices”

By Ethan Shone
Monday, 9th May 2022


The disgraced director of P&O Ferries has taken on further directorships within the company, despite calls for his resignation over the sacking of 800 seafarers earlier this year.

Peter Hebblethwaite, who told MPs at a select committee hearing that he would have taken the decision to sack staff without consultation again, earns £325,000 per year as CEO of P&O Ferries.

Who is Peter Hebblethwaite and what did P&O do?

The decision by P&O Ferries to sack around 800 staff without consultation via a pre-recorded Zoom message was roundly criticised earlier this year.

By failing to consult with trade unions over the mass redundancies the company breached employment law, in a move which was designed to cut staffing costs for the operator, as UK-based staff were replaced with agency workers paid as little as £4 per hour.

Boris Johnson was among those to call for the ferry company’s CEO, Peter Hebblethwaite, to resign.

Since then the company has been found to have committed a number of safety breaches across its fleet.

The Pride of Kent has failed safety inspections on three occasions and two other P&O Ferries have also failed Maritime and Coastguard Agency inspections in the last month or or so.

The safety failures detected aboard P&O ships include fire safety equipment not being installed, poorly maintained lifeboats and inadequate certification of the agency crew employed by International Fleet Management.

However, according to Companies House Mr Hebblethwaite has taken on new directorships within the P&O group, in what the RMT union has described as a “complete insult to workers everywhere”.

RMT general secretary Mick Lynch said: "Gangster capitalists should not be rewarded for their appalling employment practices; they should be punished with the full force of law.

"Promoting Peter Hebblethwaite is a complete insult to workers everywhere, especially our members in Dover, Hull, Larne, Cairnryan and Liverpool who continue to deal with the consequences of P&O Ferries appalling assault on their jobs and livelihoods.

The firm is currently subject to both criminal and civil investigations by the Insolvency Service into the mass sacking.

Mr Lynch added: “Hebblethwaite is paid a basic £325,000 per year whilst Indian Able Seafarers on the Pride of Canterbury are paid a basic of £3.97 per hour. This naked corporate greed on our key ferry routes cannot be allowed to continue.

"P&O and Hebblethwaite are specialists in failure and the Government has to take further action to reinstate sacked seafarers and to prevent further carnage in the UK ferries sector."

P&O denies Hebblethwaite promotion

Speaking at an industry conference last month, Mr Hebblethwaite claimed he and the company had been victims of misinformation and said he hoped he would be able to “survive the next few months”.

Addressing the Shippax conference, he said: “We have not conducted ourselves on the day, or since, in anything like the way that has been suggested of me and us.”

Addressing MPs at a select committee inquiry hearing regarding the mass sacking, Mr Hebblethwaite admitted knowingly breaching employment law, and failed to comment on whether he would accept a bonus this year.

A spokesperson for P&O Ferries said: “As a matter of public record, Peter Hebblethwaite has been a Director of P&O Ferries Division Holdings since August 2019.

“As is normal, since being confirmed as permanent Chief Executive Officer on 22 February 2022 he has now been appointed to the boards of all P&O Ferries Division Holdings subsidiary companies.”

UK

Zero hours contracts and low paid work cost the government billions each year, TUC warns

The TUC estimates that low-paid self employment costs the Treasury more than £9 billion per year

By Ethan Shone
Monday, 9th May 2022,


Low-paid and precarious work costs the government billions every year, which should be used for “cash-strapped hospitals, care homes and schools,” according to the Trade Union Congress (TUC).

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady has called on the government to introduce the “long overdue” Employment Bill in the upcoming Queen’ Speech to tackle various forms of precarious work.

What is the cost to Government of low paid and precarious work?

Low paid self-employment costs the Treasury £9.7 billion each year, according to the TUC, while zero-hours contracts cost an additional £614 million.

The organisation said that precarious employment practices effectively “starve” the public purse, forcing the government to spend more on social security programs to make up for shortfalls in workers’ income.

As workers on zero hours contracts and other forms of precarious employment earn significantly less than regular employees, their employers are effectively being subsidised by the taxpayer.

The TUC also points to reduced tax and National Insurance contributions as a cause of the major Treasury shortfall.

General secretary Frances O’Grady said: “Britain’s insecure work epidemic isn’t just punishing workers, it’s starving the public finances too

“The Government’s failure to clamp down on shady employment practices is costing the Treasury a fortune every year.

“That means less funding for our cash-strapped hospitals, care homes and schools.”

Will the Employment Bill feature in the Queen’s Speech?

The TUC reiterated calls for an Employment

“Leaving insecure work to flourish unchecked would be an act of betrayal.

A Government spokesperson said: “We are committed to building a high skilled, high productivity, high wage economy that delivers on our ambition to make the UK the best place in the world to work.

“This includes ensuring workers’ rights are robustly protected while also fostering a dynamic and flexible labour market.”

New Study Predicts When Ocean Life Will Die Off In Mass Extinction

BY : JESS HARDIMAN ON : 30 APR 2022 

Scientists have predicted when ocean life will die off in a ‘mass extinction’ if we don’t do enough to curb harmful greenhouse gas emissions, warning that there may be losses of ‘unknown severity’.

A new study titled ‘Avoiding ocean mass extinction from climate warning’, published in the journal Science, researchers outline how marine species face ‘particular risks’ from climate change, as seas steadily rise in temperature due to the extra heat created by burning fossil fuels.

According to authors Justin Penn and Curtis Deutsch, the accelerating greenhouse gas emissions contributing to the increasingly warming waters and oxygen depletion will mean that fewer species are likely to survive.

 

Scientists have predicted when a 'mass extinction' will happen in the ocean if we don’t do enough to curb harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Alamy

They predict that the planet could face a ‘mass extinction rivaling those in Earth’s past’ by the year 2300, drawing parallels with the end of the Permian period 252 million years ago – which was known as the ‘Great Dying’, and led to the demise of up to 96 percent of the world’s marine animals.

Curtis Deutsch, professor of geosciences at Princeton University, said: "If we don’t act to curb emissions, that extinction is quite high. It registers on the geological scale among the major biotic collapses of diversity in the Earth’s history.”

A press release from Princeton University explained how the researchers combined existing physiological data on marine species with models of climate change to 'predict how changes in habitat conditions will affect the survival of sea animals around the globe over the next few centuries'.

They compared their model to 'pass mass extinctions captured in the fossil record', building on their own earlier work that 'linked the geographic pattern of Earth’s deadliest extinction event — the end-Permian extinction about 250 million years ago — to its underlying drivers: climate warming and oxygen loss from the oceans'.

However, the duo believe that the fate is not necessarily sealed, asserting that by reversing greenhouse emission trends, we can ‘diminish extinction risks by more than 70 percent’.
Related video:

The fate of the ocean is not necessarily sealed, thankfully, and it's up to us to change things. 

Credit: Alamy

Penn, a postdoctoral research associate in geosciences at Princeton University, said: “The silver lining is that the future isn’t written in stone. The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon dioxide [CO2] we emit moving forward.

"There’s still enough time to change the trajectory of CO2 emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction.”

Deutsch agreed: "Aggressive and rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are critical for avoiding a major mass extinction of ocean species."

Burp-catching mask for gassy cows, designed to reduce methane emissions and slow down climate change, wins prestigious Prince Charles prize

Joshua Zitser
30 April 2022

Prince Charles looks at a wearable device for cattle to neutralise their methane emissions in real time created by design group Zelp.Arthur Edwards/Pool via AP

Cows' burps produce a lot of methane which accelerates climate change.

A new face mask for cattle captures the burps and converts the methane into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

The design won the prestigious Terra Cart Design Lab competition and was praised by Prince Charles.

An innovative face mask for cows, designed to reduce methane emissions and slow down climate change, has won a prestigious design award.

The wearable device for cattle, created by UK-based design group Zelp, was one of the four winners of the inaugural Terra Cart Design Lab competition.

Prince Charles, who launched the competition as part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative, hailed the ground-breaking design as "fascinating" at an awards ceremony in London on Wednesday, The Telegraph reported.

Zelp's methane-reducing cow muzzle.ZELP

The design, a smart harness for cows, converts methane into carbon dioxide and water vapor.

Cows expel significant quantities of methane, an odorless greenhouse gas, which is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

Achieving significant reductions in methane emissions would have a rapid effect on slowing down climate change, per the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

A single dairy cow can produce up to 130 gallons of methane per day. And their burps account for 95% of a cow's methane emissions. There are approximately one billion cattle worldwide.

Cows and other farm animals produce about 14% of human-induced climate emissions.

In the past, solutions to the cattle industry's methane problem have involved changing cows' diets. Scientists proposed the mass production of a puffy, pink seaweed to combat climate change, Insider reported in 2019.

But Zelp's solution allows cows to digest typical food, with the mask working to detect, capture, and oxidize the methane in the cow's burps.

A sensor at the tip of the masks detects when a cow exhales and the percentage of methane expelled, WIRED reported. The mask sets the oxidation mechanism into action when methane levels are too high.

The mask also collects data on the animals to improve efficiency and animal welfare on farms, Zelp co-founder Francisco Norris told Insider.

"The Terra Carta will play a key role in helping us tackle the final design optimizations before we can produce our technology at scale, and we are confident that through the network that this initiative provides, we will be able to really advance our technology and to unlock its true potential," Norris said.

Zelp received £50,000 ($63,424) in funding as part of the prize to help further develop the idea.

Shanghai lockdown sends chill down meat trade


By Dominique Patton

BEIJING (Reuters) - The protracted lockdown in Shanghai, China's financial hub, is slowing the nation's normally booming meat trade, with stringent COVID-19 measures causing logistics logjams across the food industry in a sign of the broadening disruptions to business.

The challenge of moving food in and around Shanghai, whose residents are into a month-long stressful home isolation, highlights similar problems in many other Chinese cities as Beijing persists with its controversial zero-COVID strategy despite growing risks to its economy https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-struggles-options-covid-threatens-economic-goals-2022-04-28.

China is the world's biggest buyer of meat, bringing in more than 9 million tonnes last year, worth about $32 billion, and the financial hub with a thriving dining scene accounts for the largest chunk of imports.

Traders rely on Shanghai's ideal location for distributing product around the country, but since an outbreak of COVID-19 cases forced a lockdown in the city at the end of March, moving chilled or frozen products has become a costly headache.

"Unloading containers is actually ok. The real issue is logistics out of the harbour, getting trucks and drivers to pick up the product," said Soeren Tinggaard, Vice President at the Pinggu Retail & Foodservice business for pork processor Danish Crown.

Frequent COVID tests, lengthy quarantines and long clearance times to enter Shanghai have kept many drivers away, while fewer refrigerated trucks are available because of special licensing requirements.

IMPORTS PRESSURED

Other food products, including dairy and edible oils, have also been stuck in the Shanghai port, while beef imports into the city have dropped 23% year-on-year in March. Taken together with other cities under COVID-19 restrictions, the data suggests food exporters like Brazil, the United States and Australia are facing pressure on their trade with the world's second-biggest economy.

Australian beef exports to China fell 10% year-on-year in March, when the lockdown had just started, while overall pork imports fell 70%.

Pork imports could plunge as much as 30% this year because of the logistics woes, compared with a previous estimate of 10%, said Pan Chenjun, senior analyst at Rabobank.

U.S. meat processor Tyson Foods said this week it has diverted meat shipments to other markets until the situation eases. Brazilian exporters have cancelled shipments and stopped booking new cargo, a source told Reuters.

The Shanghai port congestion has also impacted customers elsewhere in China.

"Since April 1, I haven't got a single piece of meat," said a Beijing-based trader who normally receives about 3 million yuan ($453,995.16) worth of beef each month from Shanghai.

A two-tonne shipment of chilled U.S. beef worth about 400,000 yuan that arrived more than a month ago is becoming a concern, said the trader.

"If it's still there after 70 days, most of my customers won't want it anymore," he said, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of speaking out about COVID measures.

'NEW CHALLENGE' EVERYDAY

For now, the sharply weaker consumption due to COVID restrictions is keeping a lid on prices, though it could become a problem the longer the lockdowns persist.

"All these logistics issues are adding cost into the supply chain, which ultimately leads to food inflation," said Andrew Cox, Singapore-based general manager of international markets at trade body Meat and Livestock Australia.

Some traders are rerouting product to other ports in China, but deliveries are slow and even then, costs are mounting as cities roll out their own stepped-up COVID protocols.

For trucks arriving into Beijing, product goes to designated central warehouses where it is tested for COVID-19. Once released, some importers have been told they must hold it for up to 14 days and carry out more COVID tests.

Tianjin requires COVID tests on all chilled and frozen foods, including one test on the inside of the packaging, said another Beijing importer. For a bag of Wagyu beef worth about 2,000 yuan, that's a lot of money down the drain.

"Every day brings a new challenge for the F&B industry," he said.

($1 = 6.4408 Chinese yuan renminbi)

($1 = 6.6080 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting by Dominique Patton; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

Why do humans eat so much meat?
We know the current meat and dairy industry are harming our planet and that eating too much animal protein can even be bad for our health. So why do humans continue eating meat?

Archaelogical evidence of butchering animals may not indicate that meat was key to human evolution after all

Humans have been eating meat since the prehistoric age, consuming ever more of it as time has worn on. Over the past 50 years alone, we have quadrupled global production to roughly 350 million tons annually, according to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

And the trend shows no sign of abating. Current predictions suggest we will be producing up to 455 million tons a year by 2050.
Inefficient food source

Scientists have long raised concerns about the environmental impact of this love affair, particularly with regard toindustrially farmed animals, and have deemed it an "inefficient" food source, on the basis that it requires more energy, water and land to produce than other things we eat.

A study on the impact of farming for instance found beef production is responsible for six times more greenhouse gas emissions and requires 36 times more land compared to the production of plant protein, such as peas.

Avoiding meat and dairy products is the biggest way to reduce our environmental impact on the planet, the study concludes. Without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75%.

What's more, 60% of global biodiversity loss is caused by meat-based diets, according to World Wildlife Fund (WWF) sources.

The psychology behind eating meat

Yet, many of us continue to eat meat regardless. Benjamin Buttlar, a social psychologist from the University of Trier, Germany, attributes this to habit, culture and perceived needs.

"I think a lot of people just enjoy the taste. And the other thing is the identity part of eating. Many traditional cuisines revolve around certain meat dishes," he said, adding that the habitual nature of eating animals means we often don't even question what we are doing.

"And most of the time, these habits prevent us from thinking that meat consumption is actually bad because it's just something that we do all the time," he said.

We don't usually see how animals are slaughtered

Then there's the fact that because what we are eating doesn't remind us of an animal or the suffering it has gone through on the way to the plate, we are able to dissociate more easily. Yet when confronted with a different perspective, whether in talking to a vegetarian or a vegan or watching a documentary about animal welfare, Buttlar says we might feel a need to justify ourselves, for example, by saying humans have always eaten meat.

Research shows that justifying eating meat as a natural, normal and necessary part of our diet is something that's more typical for males.

"You see this in the trends of food," Buttlar explained. "There are a lot more young females and fewer men who are becoming vegetarian because it's still a masculine stereotype that men eat meat. And this goes back to the idea of strong men hunting and evolutionary misconceptions around meat consumption."

The 'meat made us human' hypothesis

Scientists long believed that eating meat helped our ancestors develop more human-like body shapes and that eating meat and bone marrow gave the Homo erectus the energy it needed to form and feed a larger brain around 2 million years ago.

But a recent  study questioned the importance of meat consumption in our evolution.

The study authors argued that while the archaeological evidence for meat consumption increases in step with the appearance of H. erectus, this could also be explained by the greater attention given to the time period. Or, put another way, a sampling bias.

The study counted the number of fossils and the number of butchered bones found at major research areas in eastern Africa dating 2.6 million to 1.2 million years ago

The more paleontologists went looking for archaeological evidence of butchered bones, the more they found it. As a result, the increase in bones seen during this time is not necessarily evidence of an explosion in meat eating, the authors wrote.

"I was definitely very surprised by this finding," said Briana Pobiner, a paleoanthropologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in the US and study co-author. "I was one of those people for a long time that had this narrative that H. erectus evolved because meat eating increased, and so these findings are something that forced me to reexamine my perception of our evolutionary history."

What role did plant-based food play in our evolution?

Eating meat may not have been responsible for supersizing our brains either, according to Pobiner, who researches the evolution of human diet.

"We don't see a big increase in brain size around the time that meat eating started. The brain size got absolutely bigger with H. erectus, but it actually didn't get relatively bigger — so a much bigger brain compared to the body size — until about a million years ago."

Eating meat may not have been the reason why the brains of our ancestors grew

There is some evidence that early humans started cooking their food around the time their brains were getting bigger. Heating food unlocks extra nutrients and speeds up the process of digestion because food is softer and easier to chew.

Pobiner also believes human evolution is attributable to a healthy dietary mix.

"And interestingly, there are ideas that it's not so much one particular type of food that drove our evolutionary history, but it's really being able to eat a wide variety of foods that made us so successful and that kind of made us human," Pobiner said.

Currently, 75% of the world's food comes from only 12 plants and five animal species. But when humans consume too much of a single food source, it can cause health problems.

"Innumerable studies show that when human beings consume animal protein, it is linked to the development of a variety of cancers," Dr. Milton Mills, an internal medicine and critical care physician in the US, told DW.

Some people argue that vegetarians or vegans typically do not get enough protein and nutrients from their diets, but Mills, who is an advocate for plant-based diets and founded his own website to raise awareness of the issue, disagrees.

"Those theories originated 50, 60 years ago, when people were under the mistaken impression that meat was somehow more nutritious than plant foods. That was a grotesquely false misconception that people used to have, that there are only certain amino acids that you could get from animal tissue. That is flatly not true," said Mills.

What's next?

If the appetite for meat remains unchanged, the world population could be too big to feed itself by 2050, when we'll reach a global population of almost 10 billion.

But how can levels of global meat consumption be reduced? Psychologist Buttlar believes incremental change with "top-down intervention" is the way forward.

"For instance, by making meat products as expensive as they should be for securing animal welfare and in terms of costs for the climate. And by making alternatives cheaper," he said.

What's also important, according to Buttlar, is enabling people to have positive associations with plant-based alternatives.

"Instead of pushing them away by saying, 'you shouldn't eat meat,' we should probably say, 'have you tried this? This is really good.' And once they realize plant-based food tastes the same or even better, and it's even better for my health, for the climate, and animal welfare, then change will come automatically."

Changing attitudes are already becoming apparent, even in meat-loving Germany. According to the statistics for 2021, the market for meat alternatives is thriving with a 17% increase in the production of plant-based foods compared to 2020.

VEGGIE DISCS AND BLOODY BEETS: FUTURE OF MEAT

Big appetite

With climate concerns growing, many people are trying to reduce their environmental impact. Increasingly, they're turning to plant-based meats — and investors are taking notice. When Beyond Meat debuted on Wall Street in early May, share prices more than doubled the first day. "Investors recognize … a huge business opportunity," Bruce Friedrich, director of the Good Food Institute, told AFP.

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Edited by: Jennifer Collins and Tamsin Walker

In Mexico, some spend Mother's Day looking for missing children

Mexican mother Araceli Hernandez holds a missing persons poster for her daughter Vanessa and son Manuel 

(AFP/ULISES RUIZ)

Mireya Blanco
Mon, 9 May 2022, 

While most Mexicans celebrate Mother's Day on Tuesday, thousands of women will mark the occasion by continuing their desperate mission to find out what happened to their missing children.

Five of Maria Guadalupe Camarena's nine children are among the more than 95,000 people who have disappeared in the violence-plagued Latin American country.

"There are five empty chairs. There's nothing to celebrate here," said the 61-year-old domestic worker from the western state of Jalisco.


Asked about her plans for Mother's Day, she answered without hesitation: "Look for my children."

Jalisco is the Mexican state with the most missing people -- nearly 15,000.

Camarena's daughter Lucero vanished in 2016 after going to a job interview.

Four of her sons disappeared in 2019 when they were traveling by road to visit a relative and were detained by police.

Although two officers were accused of forced disappearance, they have not been tried and there has been no official search operation.

The United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances in April urged Mexico to tackle an "alarming trend" of rising enforced disappearances, facilitated by "almost absolute impunity."

- A mother's mission -

Araceli Hernandez, 50, has photos of her daughter Vanessa and son Manuel, in their 20s, on an altar in her home.

She has not heard from them since 2017 when first Vanessa disappeared and then her brother while he was looking for her.

"They had been missing for about four months when I grabbed a backpack, some bottles of water, a wooden stick and started walking in the hills," Hernandez said.

She joined the growing number of mothers who have formed associations that comb the countryside for clandestine graves that might hold their children's remains.

She also walks the streets of the city of Guadalajara putting up missing person posters, tearfully kissing the images of her son and daughter.

"It's my mission as a mother," she said.

'My life project'

When she wakes up each morning, Rosaura Magana, 61, lights a candle and prays next to a photo of her son Carlos Eduardo.

He disappeared five years ago when armed men who said they were from the prosecutor's office arrived at his workplace and took him away with three others, two of whom were released.

"I never thought this would be my life project," she said of the days she now spends looking for her son instead of enjoying her retirement.

She criticized the authorities for the lack of progress in the case.

The two people who were freed refused to say what happened and the case has gone through six prosecutors and eight investigative police officers, Magana said.

- 'We found nothing' -

Azulema Estrada, 49, has learned on her own about the laws and excavation techniques needed to look for Ivan Alfredo, who disappeared in 2020 aged 30.

Her son was taken by gunmen from his home in the northern state of Sonora along with his partner.

A search of a hillside where their remains are suspected to be buried was unable to cover all the ground, and when lookouts working for drug cartels spotted them it became too difficult to return.

"Unfortunately we found nothing," she said.

In Mexico, even searching for the missing can carry significant risks.

Disappearances began during the Mexican authorities' so-called dirty war against the revolutionary movements of the 1960s-1980s.

They soared after the government launched a military offensive against drug cartels in 2006, since when more than 340,000 people have been murdered in a spiral of violence.

According to the government, there are around 37,000 unidentified corpses lying unclaimed in forensic services, though activists believe the number is more than 50,000.

The authorities aim to use genetic testing to reunite more parents with their children's remains.

But in the meantime, with morgues overflowing, some corpses are buried before they can be identified.

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In Mexico, some spend Mother's Day looking for missing children. Ulises RUIZ #AFP

12:54 AM · May 10, 2022·TweetDeck