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July 2009

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Fuel From Factory Animal 'Waste' Parts & Factory Fishing 'By-Catch' Rising Threat
by Eric Brooks 29 Jul '09

29 Jul '09

Hello all, The shift to 'waste' animal parts based biodiesel is clearly becoming serious. You've seen my report about the Darling rendering plant in San Francisco. Last week there was a report about arctic shark and other 'by-catch' being used as biodiesel feedstock, and this week a NY Times report on chicken plucking remnants being turned into 'waste for fuel' biodiesel. See both reports below my signature. These are not isolated incidents. The 'biodiesel' industry, seeing that anti agrofuel organisers are successfully turning cities like Berkeley and Seattle away from its obviously unsustainable plant based biofuels, is desperately grasping for another feedstock that it can pawn off to the public as 'sustainable' 'waste' 'recycling'. It is clear they've decided that this feedstock is 'waste' animal parts and 'by-catch' from the incredibly environmentally destructive factory animal farming and factory fishing industries. This now makes our work to stop the local Darling animal biodiesel plant critically important to the entire planet; because San Francisco may well be the knock-out-the-keystone leverage point needed to flatly reject, as inherently un-sustainable, any fuels made from factory ag renderings and factory fishing by-catch. In the next few weeks, I am going to start an active coalition to oppose factory animal and fishing based biofuels and will need co-organizers. Please email me one-on-one at brookse32(a)aim.com if you are willing to attend a meeting once every two months or so to help organize against the alarming rise of these animal based franken-fuels. Keep in mind, right now it is shark, chickens, pigs and cows. How long will it be before Japan, or some other whaling country, decides to make biodiesel out of whale blubber? We are rapidly and truly reverting to the even more planet destroying nineteenth century energy paradigm if we don't put a stop to this now! Please RSVP. Eric Brooks - brookse32(a)aim.com Here are the reports: http://www.greendiary.com/entry/artek-plans-to-produce-biofuel-from-shark/ * ARTEK plans to produce biofuel from sharks* Aditi Justa <http://aditij.instablogs.com/> | Jul 20 2009 Researchers at the Arctic Technology Center in Sisimiut in Western Greenland are on their way to producing biofuel from sharks’ oily flesh. A lot of research and experiments are being undertaken for this purpose. The pilot project <http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jZYaPI6X7WN8mk_GAsM1-YGz…> funded by the EU in Uummannaq will use shark’s meat blended with wastewater and macro-algae to form a fish mince to be further used to produce biofuel. Thousands of Greenland sharks already lose their lives being trapped into the deadly nets of the anglers. Hence, it’s a sensible way to utilize the decaying bodies. In order to utilize these dead beasts in a better way, Joegensen will perform tests at the organic waste treatment plant. ARTEK’s innovative solution will produces biofuel <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofuel> from sharks and other sea products, which could provide 13 percent of energy consumption in the village of Uummannaq. Although it is claimed that the Greenland sharks are not in danger of extinction but the International Union for the Conservation of nature <http://www.iucn.org/> and the Danish branch of the Worldwide Fund for Nature do not quite agree to this. Therefore, using sharks to produce biofuels does not sound like a very good idea. It would rather be better to look for some other sustainable energy alternatives. *The New York Times* July 28, 2009 A Recipe for Biodiesel, Plucked From Poultry By HENRY FOUNTAIN <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/henry_fountain…> Those researchers in the department of chemical and materials engineering at the University of Nevada <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/univers…> in Reno are at it again. Last year they showed the world that it was possible to make biodiesel <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/b/biofuels/ind…> fuel from coffee grounds. This time, it’s chicken feathers. In a paper <http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf900140e> in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, Mano Misra, Susanta K. Mohapatra and colleagues describe how they extracted fat from chicken feather meal and converted it into good-quality biodiesel. Feather meal, which is commonly used as fertilizer or animal feed, is a byproduct of large-scale poultry production and often includes blood and offal. It can contain up to 11 percent fat. The researchers extracted the fat by boiling the meal in water and converting it to biodiesel by a process called transesterification. They say that there is enough feather meal produced in the United States alone to create about 150 million gallons of biodiesel a year. That’s just a drop in the bucket, really, but the researchers note that most current production of biodiesel uses vegetable oil, and as demand for the fuel grows there is likely to be competition for the oil between food uses and fuel uses. Thus it’s important, the researchers say, to seek alternative sources for biodiesel production — with the goal, as they put it, of “food for hunger, waste for fuel.” Copyright 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> The New York Times Company <http://www.nytco.com/> -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara

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Sustainability/Transpo Meeting Next Monday?
by Eric Brooks 13 Jul '09

13 Jul '09

Hi all, Next Monday is the third Monday of the month (the date we set for joint Sustainability/Transpo meetings). My schedule is open, so I'm ready to be there for a meeting. Attendance on Monday's has been pretty low though. Do y'all want to go for next Monday, or try a different day/time? peace Eric -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara

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