Lifeboat Foundation

Countries must join forces to avert a global food crisis from COVID-19.

This is the truth of the looming “hunger pandemic,” which has the potential to engulf over a quarter of a billion people whose lives and livelihoods will be plunged into immediate danger, unless urgent and effective action is taken to keep commercial and humanitarian goods flowing, support communities with humanitarian assistance and provide governments with the additional health interventions required to control the spread of the virus.

If we can’t reach these people — if we can’t give them the lifesaving assistance they need because our funding has been cut or borders where we move our food have been closed — WFP’s analysis shows that 300,000 could starve to death every single day for the next three months.

When you consider that already, despite our best efforts, 21,000 people die of hunger every single day, the scale of the potential death toll is heart-rending. We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries. In 10 countries, we have more than a million people who are on the verge of starvation as we speak.

Continue reading “Covid-19 could detonate a ‘hunger pandemic.’ With millions at risk, the world must act” »

Despite pushback from Hezbollah, the Lebanese parliament passed legislation Tuesday legalizing cannabis cultivation for medicinal and industrial purposes.

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The first EU permits for insects as a “novel food” should be issued in mid-2020. This will end the legal uncertainty about breeding insects for human consumption in Europe. Now is the time to draw lessons from Belgium, which has served as a sandbox for the fledgling industry, about its future prospects. Are we really ready to eat insects?

Romy is an adorable little blond girl who, like all children under the age of 2½ in Belgium, goes to the crèche most weekdays. Her parents spend 20 minutes every evening preparing her lunch, carefully weighing out some carbs, freshly cooked vegetables, a protein-rich ingredient, some high-quality fat and a sprinkling of chopped herbs. It’s the recommended diet for a child her age. But unlike most of Belgium’s children, Romy gets a meal that eventually includes a teaspoon of cricket powder. In fact, she even loves to snack on some whole locusts from time to time. All this thanks to Belgian’s progressive regulatory system, which allowed a whole new sector in the Western agrifood landscape to open up here a few years ago.

In theory, Romy is well on track to help fulfil the prediction, or rather prescription, of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) for insects to become “a high-value source of animal protein for the rapidly growing world population.” But the challenges ahead are huge and Belgium, as a test ground, has gained some valuable experience. Along with a few other countries in Europe, Belgium has taken a bite at insects. But sometimes it hurts.

Spotted on my feed.

“The new burger chef makes $3 an hour and never goes home.” — LA Times.

Flippy is the world’s first autonomous robotic kitchen assistant that can learn from its surroundings and acquire new skills over time. Specifically designed to operate in an existing commercial kitchen layout and to serve alongside kitchen staff to safely and efficiently fulfill a variety of cooking tasks. Miso is working with major QSR locations to integrate Flippy as an overhead rail system. The overhead rail system will reduce the cost to produce Flippy by 50% and requires ZERO real estate footprint.

Continue reading “Miso Robotics” »

This closure will impact the United States’ meat supply because “the plant is part of a larger supply chain,” Tyson Foods said in a statement.

In a study published in Nature, a UCLA-led team of researchers describe how the nanomachine recognizes and kills bacteria, and report that they have imaged it at atomic resolution. The scientists also engineered their own versions of the nanomachine, which enabled them to produce variations that behaved differently from the naturally occurring version.

Their efforts could eventually lead to the development of new types of antibiotics that are capable of homing in on specific species of microbes. Drugs tailored to kill only a certain species or strain of bacteria could offer numerous advantages over conventional antibiotics, including lowering the likelihood that bacteria will develop resistance. In addition, the tailored drugs could destroy harmful cells without wiping out beneficial bugs in the gut microbiome, and they could eventually offer the possibilities of being deployed to prevent bacterial infections, to kill pathogens in food and to engineer human microbiomes so that favorable bacteria thrive.

Continue reading “Bactericidal nanomachine: Researchers reveal the mechanisms behind a natural bacteria killer” »

👽 Stalin’s Crab is eating the Oceans biodiversity and tis gaining terrain as we are speaking now.

They’re multiplying in the Barents Sea. And they’re heading West. Meet the red king crabs. 🦀.

AMES, Iowa — Over the past month, false information about COVID-19 and food and food packaging has been reported in the media, websites and blogs, and shared through social media, note food safety and nutrition and wellness specialists with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. Angela Shaw, Anirudh Naig, and Shannon Coleman want Iowans to know there is no evidence that COVID-19 is transmitted through food and food packaging.

Shaw is a food safety state specialist and associate professor in the ISU Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition. Naig is a food safety state specialist and associate professor in the ISU Department of Apparel, Events, and Hospitality Management. Coleman is an assistant professor and nutrition and wellness state specialist in the ISU Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.