Dear Squizy, as you left no return address, I find it very difficult to reply directly to you. I have no problem with food allergies being taken seriously nor for parents to ensure that their own little ones are cared for appropriately. what I do have a problem with is that you feel it is ok for you to demonise me for stating a situation at primary schools which is ludicrous. Yes, I mentioned nuts because the children I was referring to are allergic to peanuts, NOT almonds, therefore an ignorant reaction on the part of the teachers is the issue.
Furthermore, most of the piece in the Punch was referring to an individual parent's right to feed their own child any food which they deem appropriate as long as those foods are not on the 'banned' list at school - be they deemed healthy or not.
What I do get from reading between your lines, is that you are not getting a great or forthcoming response from your own child's school. Could I therefore recommend you retain a solicitor and put your concerns in a letter to both the Principal and also the School Council or Governing body. This may be the only way for the issue to be taken seriously at the school your child attends. But don't confuse my satirical synopsis and observations as a solid 'news' article meant to be taken as scientific fact. So no loaded gun analogies thank you - I am anti-weapons of all kinds having triaged gunshot wounds in war zones - a abdominal hole in a child's body caused by discharged weapon at close range is not a great illustrative metaphor to use.
PS: Congratulations on your mathematical ability!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
FOOD NAZIS - CAN THEY BE DANGEROUS TO A WRITER'S HEALTH?
Something extraordinary is happening in our suburbs, apparently debate on school lunchbox contents is no longer allowed - no jokes, no satire, no irony to open up discussion or investigation. Peanuts are killers and people seem unable to be unable to read the full context of an article - once the words Peanut Butter pop up, all other words on the page fade into black.
Bewilderingly, I have so far been accused of being a bad mother, a lazy mother, a waste of space, a murdering bitch, a selfish parent, a revolting person and those are just the nicer comments that have made their way to me via my column in The Punch online, via my email and other means of modern communication.
My husband is seriously concerned that our fence will soon be grafitied or we'll be spat upon in the street. I feel like I've been lobbed in with the whores who collaborated with the enemy in the World War II and am waiting to be pounced upon so the the head shaving can begin!
Give me a break for goodness sake, I hand roll sushi at least once a week, make my own pesto for their lunches and grill chicken wings as well to go into the lunchbox, but on certain days, I just slap some Vegemite on two pieces of wholegrain bread and throw an apple in the box and hope for the best. It's about the intrusion into my choices as a parent to which I object, not the fact that I have been asked not to send peanut butter sandwiches to school because, in fact, I haven't had that request since kindergarten.
But I have had twenty five years of making school lunchboxes and I suspect this is a bloody longer time than those who have penned such horrendous comments to me ( the obscene and violent I have removed from my blog - but have left the mildly rude as a gesture of democratic free speech)
I have offended some, and frankly, in this case, I don't give a damn! No, you heard it, I have checked with a number of allergy specialists in the medical field and I am not overstating it to point out that there is a lots of mass hysteria over allergies - a lot of misguided fear and misinformation that some more sensitive parents cling to and then label their children fragile and hyperallergic on the basis of urban myth.
I have had very up close and personal experience with allergies in my immediate family - I have a very thorough grasp of the subject - my nephew was deaf till the age of three courtesy of an allergy list that included milk, eggs and peanuts. I have friends for whom their children's excema was so bad that my husband developed arm splints for the kids to alleviate night-time scratching; I, myself, have to very cautious around products containing fruit as mango can stop me breathing and I so I do get it. I invented a birthday cake using apples instead of eggs to feed to kids attending my children's parties - so I accommodate allergies on a daily basis.
So please, kindly stop telling me that I have no idea about allergies, because I do!
But come on, let's be honest, making school lunches is tedious and repetitious and soul destroying on those days when imagination and creativity are snoozing. I am a kick arse cook, it's my hobby and a great love, but putting together a plastic lunch box is just blah - there is no leeway and on days that are rushed, I feel guilty about the boring nature of what I put in. It can also be quite demoralising when the lunches into which we put so much careful thought and preparation come home barely touched.
In the past two days, I have also been accused of being severely lacking in the sphere of empathy, that I am a useless career woman and I deserved to have my eldest children kidnapped for fourteen years. Oh, and also of being a 'faux' humanitarian. Nice coming from those whom champion their own rights but think it's fine to attack another person indiscriminately - apparently, I am not worthy to enjoy the same rights as them because I like almonds - I didn't even say the dreaded 'P' word!
It's as if the one-upmanship of allergies gives the attackers rights outside the boundaries of common courtesy and manners!
Well, I do know what it is to send a kid to school everyday worrying about their medical condition. My 8 year old daughter has SVT (a heart condition) -
http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Supraventricular-Tachycardia-(SVT).htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supraventricular_tachycardia
along with a couple of other issues like periously low blood pressure. Her diet must include huge amounts of water and quite a high salt intake to stabilise this condition on any given day, so I need to fuss about what she is eating and also, how much she is drinking - usually at least two litres of water daily does the trick. She also seems to lack the normal thirst triggers and so often needs prompting to remember to drink, although this is getting better with age. The number of times an ambulance has needed to be called, or she passes out are too numerous to be counted. I have had to train and remind the staff at her school multiple times about her need to drink etc. That is my responsiblity as a parent, and I know, that we run a risk everyday that a collapse off play equipment might kill her, but she needs to live a normal life and I need to let go of my own fears to give her that permission to experience the joy of childhood without my neurosis overshadowing her pleasure in her peers and her activities.
We make choices everyday as parents, we love our children and we do all to protect them and so we should, but we also need to learn to let go, to allow the real world to be a part of their lives - that is why we teach them life lessons and must guide them into the realms of personal responsibility, kindness, manners and social ettiquettes - it's how the world functions and survives the threat of chaos and dysfunction.
I am saddened by the upsurge of allergies and perplexed that this seems to be a nominally recent occurance as my older children who are now in their late 20's did not have have peers with such conditions around them to any such degree - so my question is, to what are we exposing this newer generation of offspring that would cause these allergies, what is the mutation that is triggering such a high incidence of anaphalaxysis?
The allergy is the enemy - I am not.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
Bewilderingly, I have so far been accused of being a bad mother, a lazy mother, a waste of space, a murdering bitch, a selfish parent, a revolting person and those are just the nicer comments that have made their way to me via my column in The Punch online, via my email and other means of modern communication.
My husband is seriously concerned that our fence will soon be grafitied or we'll be spat upon in the street. I feel like I've been lobbed in with the whores who collaborated with the enemy in the World War II and am waiting to be pounced upon so the the head shaving can begin!
Give me a break for goodness sake, I hand roll sushi at least once a week, make my own pesto for their lunches and grill chicken wings as well to go into the lunchbox, but on certain days, I just slap some Vegemite on two pieces of wholegrain bread and throw an apple in the box and hope for the best. It's about the intrusion into my choices as a parent to which I object, not the fact that I have been asked not to send peanut butter sandwiches to school because, in fact, I haven't had that request since kindergarten.
But I have had twenty five years of making school lunchboxes and I suspect this is a bloody longer time than those who have penned such horrendous comments to me ( the obscene and violent I have removed from my blog - but have left the mildly rude as a gesture of democratic free speech)
I have offended some, and frankly, in this case, I don't give a damn! No, you heard it, I have checked with a number of allergy specialists in the medical field and I am not overstating it to point out that there is a lots of mass hysteria over allergies - a lot of misguided fear and misinformation that some more sensitive parents cling to and then label their children fragile and hyperallergic on the basis of urban myth.
I have had very up close and personal experience with allergies in my immediate family - I have a very thorough grasp of the subject - my nephew was deaf till the age of three courtesy of an allergy list that included milk, eggs and peanuts. I have friends for whom their children's excema was so bad that my husband developed arm splints for the kids to alleviate night-time scratching; I, myself, have to very cautious around products containing fruit as mango can stop me breathing and I so I do get it. I invented a birthday cake using apples instead of eggs to feed to kids attending my children's parties - so I accommodate allergies on a daily basis.
So please, kindly stop telling me that I have no idea about allergies, because I do!
But come on, let's be honest, making school lunches is tedious and repetitious and soul destroying on those days when imagination and creativity are snoozing. I am a kick arse cook, it's my hobby and a great love, but putting together a plastic lunch box is just blah - there is no leeway and on days that are rushed, I feel guilty about the boring nature of what I put in. It can also be quite demoralising when the lunches into which we put so much careful thought and preparation come home barely touched.
In the past two days, I have also been accused of being severely lacking in the sphere of empathy, that I am a useless career woman and I deserved to have my eldest children kidnapped for fourteen years. Oh, and also of being a 'faux' humanitarian. Nice coming from those whom champion their own rights but think it's fine to attack another person indiscriminately - apparently, I am not worthy to enjoy the same rights as them because I like almonds - I didn't even say the dreaded 'P' word!
It's as if the one-upmanship of allergies gives the attackers rights outside the boundaries of common courtesy and manners!
Well, I do know what it is to send a kid to school everyday worrying about their medical condition. My 8 year old daughter has SVT (a heart condition) -
http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Supraventricular-Tachycardia-(SVT).htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supraventricular_tachycardia
along with a couple of other issues like periously low blood pressure. Her diet must include huge amounts of water and quite a high salt intake to stabilise this condition on any given day, so I need to fuss about what she is eating and also, how much she is drinking - usually at least two litres of water daily does the trick. She also seems to lack the normal thirst triggers and so often needs prompting to remember to drink, although this is getting better with age. The number of times an ambulance has needed to be called, or she passes out are too numerous to be counted. I have had to train and remind the staff at her school multiple times about her need to drink etc. That is my responsiblity as a parent, and I know, that we run a risk everyday that a collapse off play equipment might kill her, but she needs to live a normal life and I need to let go of my own fears to give her that permission to experience the joy of childhood without my neurosis overshadowing her pleasure in her peers and her activities.
We make choices everyday as parents, we love our children and we do all to protect them and so we should, but we also need to learn to let go, to allow the real world to be a part of their lives - that is why we teach them life lessons and must guide them into the realms of personal responsibility, kindness, manners and social ettiquettes - it's how the world functions and survives the threat of chaos and dysfunction.
I am saddened by the upsurge of allergies and perplexed that this seems to be a nominally recent occurance as my older children who are now in their late 20's did not have have peers with such conditions around them to any such degree - so my question is, to what are we exposing this newer generation of offspring that would cause these allergies, what is the mutation that is triggering such a high incidence of anaphalaxysis?
The allergy is the enemy - I am not.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
Monday, March 8, 2010
Food Nazis
Be afraid, be very afraid. The food Nazis are on the hunt through suburban school lunch boxes. Food is no longer a private matter in our educational institutions; parents are quaking in their shoes, terrified that they will be judged on the efficacy of their social responsibility and parenting skills by the contents of the humble pail.
Forget guns and knives, this is the deadliest schoolyard weapon.
The fallout of which means becoming social pariahs based on white bread, or the inclusion of a Tim Tam.
Teachers peer beneath the lids of the not so humble receptacles (very seldom now a simple plastic box – they’re now themed, decorated, iced, chilled, heated, layered, compartmentalised and sheathed) and “tut tut”, or shake their heads at a child’s humble peanut butter sandwich or limp carrot.
Quite often, a ‘parent helper’ is on duty in the classroom and will also investigate what a harried, working mum has flung together and encased in cling wrap, subsequently broadcasting to all and sundry (other competitive mothers) that ‘Little Susie’ came to school with the dregs of the pantry, or an anaphylaxis just waiting to happen.
Do you remember the simple days as a kid, when everyone sat around at lunchtime in the yard, poking despondently at the sad vegemite sandwich and sipping on tepid cordial? Those were the days, when food was simple and only vaguely nutritious, before the prevalence of food allergies and the litigious nature of society.
You were responsible for teaching your own children not to steal other’s lunches and to refrain from picking their noses without a hanky. Now it’s all about fear, the school live in fear of being sued by parents angry that ‘Little Angus’ in the class next door consumed a peanut butter sandwich fifty metres from their ‘Little Johnnie”, the poor mums live in fear of being judged a failure if they don’t whip up a three course meal and box it up everyday.
The poor kids live in fear that they will be made consume their midday repast whilst sitting on the special chair at the front of the class reserved for children who have dared to come to school with natural roasted almonds as a snack, quarantined in case a sliver of a ‘tree nut’ sprays on ‘Little Angus” who has a peanut allergy. If “Little Angus” at the age of 10, doesn’t know enough not to stuff a stray almond in his mouth which he found on the floor, then “Little Angus’s” parents have got a problem on their hands!
What is happening, where did personal responsibility go and privacy for that matter, is food the new frontier of the Nanny State? I don’t advocate my children sharing food, and they are well aware of the dangers of food allergies – they live with a mother who could expire on a mouthful of mango, but this is ludicrous. The guilt, the oversight, the intrusion.
Today I will send my offspring to school with wholegrain wraps, filled with home baked Mediterranean chicken, mayonnaise, chives, home grown cherry tomatoes with a chaser of yoghurt dip and home made berry coulis. Tomorrow, I’m bloody well sending grated chocolate sandwiches on white bread and a chocolate Hershey bar. Take that Food Nazis – I will choose what I feed my kids and I’ll thank you to keep your noses out of my Tupperware – my kids’ impending malnutrition and/or constipation is our own business.
PS: I am not that pro-peanut butter, I keep a separate, nut free shelf of snacks for visiting kids with allergies and am very concerned with the issues of allergies in general, but gee, I have packed lunchboxes for four of my own kids, also two stepchildren, two foster children, sundry nieces and nephews who have lived with us and frankly, I am exhausted - I've been making cut lunches for twenty five years already and my youngest child is still only 6! So cut me some slack and enough with the personal attacks on my mothering capabilities and my children please!
www.twitter.com/pascarl
Forget guns and knives, this is the deadliest schoolyard weapon.
The fallout of which means becoming social pariahs based on white bread, or the inclusion of a Tim Tam.
Teachers peer beneath the lids of the not so humble receptacles (very seldom now a simple plastic box – they’re now themed, decorated, iced, chilled, heated, layered, compartmentalised and sheathed) and “tut tut”, or shake their heads at a child’s humble peanut butter sandwich or limp carrot.
Quite often, a ‘parent helper’ is on duty in the classroom and will also investigate what a harried, working mum has flung together and encased in cling wrap, subsequently broadcasting to all and sundry (other competitive mothers) that ‘Little Susie’ came to school with the dregs of the pantry, or an anaphylaxis just waiting to happen.
Do you remember the simple days as a kid, when everyone sat around at lunchtime in the yard, poking despondently at the sad vegemite sandwich and sipping on tepid cordial? Those were the days, when food was simple and only vaguely nutritious, before the prevalence of food allergies and the litigious nature of society.
You were responsible for teaching your own children not to steal other’s lunches and to refrain from picking their noses without a hanky. Now it’s all about fear, the school live in fear of being sued by parents angry that ‘Little Angus’ in the class next door consumed a peanut butter sandwich fifty metres from their ‘Little Johnnie”, the poor mums live in fear of being judged a failure if they don’t whip up a three course meal and box it up everyday.
The poor kids live in fear that they will be made consume their midday repast whilst sitting on the special chair at the front of the class reserved for children who have dared to come to school with natural roasted almonds as a snack, quarantined in case a sliver of a ‘tree nut’ sprays on ‘Little Angus” who has a peanut allergy. If “Little Angus” at the age of 10, doesn’t know enough not to stuff a stray almond in his mouth which he found on the floor, then “Little Angus’s” parents have got a problem on their hands!
What is happening, where did personal responsibility go and privacy for that matter, is food the new frontier of the Nanny State? I don’t advocate my children sharing food, and they are well aware of the dangers of food allergies – they live with a mother who could expire on a mouthful of mango, but this is ludicrous. The guilt, the oversight, the intrusion.
Today I will send my offspring to school with wholegrain wraps, filled with home baked Mediterranean chicken, mayonnaise, chives, home grown cherry tomatoes with a chaser of yoghurt dip and home made berry coulis. Tomorrow, I’m bloody well sending grated chocolate sandwiches on white bread and a chocolate Hershey bar. Take that Food Nazis – I will choose what I feed my kids and I’ll thank you to keep your noses out of my Tupperware – my kids’ impending malnutrition and/or constipation is our own business.
PS: I am not that pro-peanut butter, I keep a separate, nut free shelf of snacks for visiting kids with allergies and am very concerned with the issues of allergies in general, but gee, I have packed lunchboxes for four of my own kids, also two stepchildren, two foster children, sundry nieces and nephews who have lived with us and frankly, I am exhausted - I've been making cut lunches for twenty five years already and my youngest child is still only 6! So cut me some slack and enough with the personal attacks on my mothering capabilities and my children please!
www.twitter.com/pascarl
Monday, March 1, 2010
Vaguely vague and other lost grey cells
Here I sit liberated from the daily real time existence of my desk. Thanks to a good friend who came to my rescue, I am now able to access my own blog - yes, that's right - I couldn't remember my own password or gmail user name to retrieve same. So I apologise for my vagueness, my loss of memory and my um errr oh, never mind it will come to me shortly. So in any case, it's either my post surgery reaction, the long summer holiday, or my body adjusting to all the changes of having so much medication that I simply forgot. So is this the way of the future when all of us are slaves to our PIN numbers, passwords, and usernames? with one misplaced digit we risk effectively being locked out of our own lives. Makes one truly lament the simplicity of the old days and a primitive key, bank book or handwritten letter. Ah technology, when my 6year old pointed out a new fingerprint recognition front door lock in the hardware store, I recoiled in horror as I imagined the consequences of an injured finger, one large bandage and a winter's night spent in a car be because a hightech door latch didn't recognize my damaged thumb! So if you visit me, avoid the digital doorbell and just yell out over the fence - I'll use my super-duper low tech ears and come let you in.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
My OVARIAN CANCER ISSUES
Been off the air for a while …….. just a few small things …………….. almost ‘carked it ’ (died) a couple of times - had a Pulmonary Embolism, ambulances, flashing lights, the impressive works (of course). Then ‘they’ discovered five tumours on my ovaries and I had to have three surgeries. Wasn’t simply tired after the bushfire relief efforts, and for those of you who thought my chocolate addiction was the cause of my weight gain… HA, HA!!! The utter exhaustion and the expanding body was caused by the tumours, so chocolate can again be consumed by me with gay abandon as nine kilograms has so far fallen away post surgery and hormonal balance restored.
Anyway, when doctors told me initially that I probably had less than a few months if I was lucky, even with Chemotherapy, I decided to allow television cameras to document the surgery and the diagnosis so that other women would heed the niggling warning signs and seek medical advice EARLY.
Ovarian cancer kills one woman every ten hours!
There is no screening test, and late diagnosis leads to an always fatal outcome. With chemo, most women only extend their lives by another five years maximum.
So, if you would like to see the inside of my guts in living colour, high definition broadcast, and learn more about this insidious disease, tune in this Sunday, 18th October on Channel Seven at 6.30pm. The interview and report will go to air on the new show called Sunday Night.
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/
I plan to work and assist the Women’s Cancer Foundation – Ovarian Cancer Institute, to raise awareness about the disease and also to fund raise to find an early detection test.
http://www.womenscancerfoundation.org/
So, those are the reasons my columns, tweets, Facebook, blogs and my personal correspondence has been non-existent. I’ve been on bed rest for ages, but have finally begun to get up and about although I am going at a snails pace compared to my usual speed.
It’s been a horrendous ride for our family and close friends, but I am extremely fortunate to now look up at the sky and plan a future. As well, all four of my kids were with me whilst I was ill, along with my husband, Bill, who has been holding down the fort and has even learned how to make school lunches and to braid Verity’s hair – all whilst maintaining his work commitments! As a family we are very blessed to come out the other side of this storm- and the one’s I love have been phenomenal. I can say that amazingly, I am cancer free, I am a statistical anomaly! So I am extremely grateful for that which I have.
Jacqueline.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
PS: Symptoms of Ovarian Tumours can be hard to pinpoint, but they include, a feeling of severe exhaustion, unexplained weight gain or loss, change in bowel habits, some back ache, abdominal bloating.
Anyway, when doctors told me initially that I probably had less than a few months if I was lucky, even with Chemotherapy, I decided to allow television cameras to document the surgery and the diagnosis so that other women would heed the niggling warning signs and seek medical advice EARLY.
Ovarian cancer kills one woman every ten hours!
There is no screening test, and late diagnosis leads to an always fatal outcome. With chemo, most women only extend their lives by another five years maximum.
So, if you would like to see the inside of my guts in living colour, high definition broadcast, and learn more about this insidious disease, tune in this Sunday, 18th October on Channel Seven at 6.30pm. The interview and report will go to air on the new show called Sunday Night.
http://au.tv.yahoo.com/sunday-night/
I plan to work and assist the Women’s Cancer Foundation – Ovarian Cancer Institute, to raise awareness about the disease and also to fund raise to find an early detection test.
http://www.womenscancerfoundation.org/
So, those are the reasons my columns, tweets, Facebook, blogs and my personal correspondence has been non-existent. I’ve been on bed rest for ages, but have finally begun to get up and about although I am going at a snails pace compared to my usual speed.
It’s been a horrendous ride for our family and close friends, but I am extremely fortunate to now look up at the sky and plan a future. As well, all four of my kids were with me whilst I was ill, along with my husband, Bill, who has been holding down the fort and has even learned how to make school lunches and to braid Verity’s hair – all whilst maintaining his work commitments! As a family we are very blessed to come out the other side of this storm- and the one’s I love have been phenomenal. I can say that amazingly, I am cancer free, I am a statistical anomaly! So I am extremely grateful for that which I have.
Jacqueline.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
PS: Symptoms of Ovarian Tumours can be hard to pinpoint, but they include, a feeling of severe exhaustion, unexplained weight gain or loss, change in bowel habits, some back ache, abdominal bloating.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
SWINES & COCKS
HOW A HAPPY ROOSTER CAN ROUT THE NASTY SWINE
Much has been said lately about the language and behaviour of erstwhile celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay http://www.gordonramsay.com/ and his cocksure posturing, but when all is said and done, Ramsay really has little to crow about in the grand scheme of things; he may be a dab hand in the kitchen, but does one of his creations have even the smallest chance of saving humankind from a potentially deadly virus?
I turn therefore to 15,000 real cocks in Victoria, Australia, who do have that weight of the world upon their… err.. wings.
An Australian egg producer, Kinross Farm, in Kinglake, 40 kilometres from metropolitan Melbourne, http://www.kinrossfarm.com.au/ is the primary supplier of the fertilised eggs needed in the laboratories of CSL Ltd (http://www.csl.com.au) to culture the antigen to H1N1, Swine Influenza. Under the steady guidance of owner and Managing Director, Philip Szepe, poultry and eggs are laid, fed and nurtured under specific conditions and audited by the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration -Australia) on a regular basis.
Mr Szepe and his staff care for over 163,000 of these pampered chickens and 15,000 roosters, to produce, in a normal year, 28 million eggs for CSL. That is an incredible 800,000 eggs per week. With the advent of the Swine Flu, and the fact that CSL needs to produce enormous amounts of vaccine, this will mean that rather than resting, or retiring these prime layers and their feathered Lotharios for a chunk of this breeding season, Kinross Farm will need to encourage their poultry to… errr…. go forth and multiply as never before, to produce at least 40,000 million eggs this year if demand is to be met globally for the H1N1 vaccine.
Cue Barry White music and mood lighting please. In order to encourage the roosters and chickens to do what comes naturally, the birds range free in enormous climate controlled barns and are fed a specially heated and decontaminated organic food which gives them plenty of ‘get up and go, go, go’ - a sort of dietary Viagra for our feathered friends. Each rooster develops his own favourites – in effect, a sort of harem of a dozen or so mates, who in turn, lay six eggs a week. The eggs are then fumigated, incubated, tested for fertility/embryonic development and then trucked down the mountain daily to CSL in Parkville, Victoria, just outside Melbourne's Central Business district, in specially built, computer and temperature controlled semi-trailers.
However, in the words of Kinross Farm General Manager, David Eastwood, a genial man who hails from Britain’s North country, “the vaccine labs might be up the creek without a paddle, we might all be up the creek without a paddle if we couldn’t produce the eggs needed for the flu vaccines, if the fire had of got us”. The farm narrowly averted disaster in the Black Saturday bushfire blazes (7th February, 2009) http://media.heraldsun.com.au/multimedia/2009/02/bushfires/
with flames licking the rear doors of the barns and fires in the evaporative cooling towers. As the forest blazed on the four sides of the valley in which the facility nestles just minutes from the centre of Kinglake township, Philip Szepe, along with five of his staff, fought back the flames and ember attacks for over 10 hours in order to save the barns and business housing the scores of poultry -each worth approximately AUD$25 at the height of their reproductive strengths. (Kinross runs a further 80,000 chickens at Euroa and 30,000 at Pheasant Creek – but the Kinglake barns are the primary producers of the eggs needed by CSL). Philip says that he and the men were fighting for their lives as much as they were fighting for the livelihood of the mountain, as he employs sixty staff at the Kinglake farm and his business and the incomes earned by his employees have a significant ‘knock on’ effect within the devastated district. The day after the fire, 8th February, one determined group of staff insisted on clearing the exit road from Kinross Farm to the outside world and drove the company semi-trailer down the mountain to fulfil commitments to the CSL contract.
In the first few days following Black Saturday, Philip Szepe and David Eastwood were determined to keep the farm producing and ran on emergency generators, sleeping in shifts at the farm and waking to refuel and check the delicate computerised systems and climate controls necessary to produce the eggs from which the life saving vaccines are manufactured. They did this to give other staff members time to regroup emotionally and take stock of the incinerated devastation around them. Ten Kinross employees lost their homes during the blazes, and all lost friends in the fires. Dave Eastwood says, “the guys gave everything they had to fight the fires…there’s not a job here that people wouldn’t do, management included, we all muck in and it’s the best place to work because we all pull together”.
Some of Kinross’s employees have been with the organisation for 20 years, Philip Szepe went to school with some of his workers, they have shared lives, milestones and the growth of a business started in 1965 by Philip’s father, an Hungarian immigrant. It’s this bond with his community that made Szepe so determined to make his business a haven of normalcy amidst a charred landscape and a base from which he can support his employees and their families.
Suffice to say, the little egg farm that emerged from the Black Saturday fires unscathed, will have some very productive, cosseted hens and some very tired roosters for the foreseeable future. Perhaps then, Mr Ramsay should stick to his omelettes and let the real cocks do the crowing.
Are you worried about Swine Flu mutating, or do you think it's all way over the top in terms of media coverage? I'd be really interested to know your thoughts - just post a comment below.
(Since the first cases of H1N1 (Swine) Flu emerged in Mexico several weeks ago, CSL Ltd, has assiduously collected virus samples via WHO, to develop ‘seed’ viruses from which a vaccine can be developed in their laboratories in Parkville, Victoria. The development of a potential vaccine is dependent on the cultures being grown in fertile hen eggs in staggering quantities.
At the time of publishing, Dr Rachel David of CSL confirmed that the Australian Federal Government had ordered 10 million doses of the new vaccine when it rolls off production line, in August, and the US Health Department has signed an order for 48 million doses of the influenza antigen vaccine = AUD $230 million. According to (WHO) Dr Ian Barr of the Collaborating Centre for Influenza in Melbourne, CSL are further down the track than other facilities globally, and it has now been confirmed that clinical trials of CSL’s vaccine, Novel H1N1, will begin in mid-July (Said to be Wednesday, 22 July, 2009) at Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia.
http://www.csl.com.au/s1/cs/auhq/1182280826145/content/1182280826258/home.htm
In Australian dollar terms, one dose of normal flu vaccine with defence against three strains, leaves CSL during the flu season at a wholesale cost of AUD $10 per dose. Dr David maintains that she has not yet fully established the unit cost of the Novel H1N1 antigen for Australia although the USA’s order for AUD $230 million = 40 to 48 million doses.)
www.twitter.com/pascarl
Much has been said lately about the language and behaviour of erstwhile celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay http://www.gordonramsay.com/ and his cocksure posturing, but when all is said and done, Ramsay really has little to crow about in the grand scheme of things; he may be a dab hand in the kitchen, but does one of his creations have even the smallest chance of saving humankind from a potentially deadly virus?
I turn therefore to 15,000 real cocks in Victoria, Australia, who do have that weight of the world upon their… err.. wings.
An Australian egg producer, Kinross Farm, in Kinglake, 40 kilometres from metropolitan Melbourne, http://www.kinrossfarm.com.au/ is the primary supplier of the fertilised eggs needed in the laboratories of CSL Ltd (http://www.csl.com.au) to culture the antigen to H1N1, Swine Influenza. Under the steady guidance of owner and Managing Director, Philip Szepe, poultry and eggs are laid, fed and nurtured under specific conditions and audited by the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration -Australia) on a regular basis.
Mr Szepe and his staff care for over 163,000 of these pampered chickens and 15,000 roosters, to produce, in a normal year, 28 million eggs for CSL. That is an incredible 800,000 eggs per week. With the advent of the Swine Flu, and the fact that CSL needs to produce enormous amounts of vaccine, this will mean that rather than resting, or retiring these prime layers and their feathered Lotharios for a chunk of this breeding season, Kinross Farm will need to encourage their poultry to… errr…. go forth and multiply as never before, to produce at least 40,000 million eggs this year if demand is to be met globally for the H1N1 vaccine.
Cue Barry White music and mood lighting please. In order to encourage the roosters and chickens to do what comes naturally, the birds range free in enormous climate controlled barns and are fed a specially heated and decontaminated organic food which gives them plenty of ‘get up and go, go, go’ - a sort of dietary Viagra for our feathered friends. Each rooster develops his own favourites – in effect, a sort of harem of a dozen or so mates, who in turn, lay six eggs a week. The eggs are then fumigated, incubated, tested for fertility/embryonic development and then trucked down the mountain daily to CSL in Parkville, Victoria, just outside Melbourne's Central Business district, in specially built, computer and temperature controlled semi-trailers.
However, in the words of Kinross Farm General Manager, David Eastwood, a genial man who hails from Britain’s North country, “the vaccine labs might be up the creek without a paddle, we might all be up the creek without a paddle if we couldn’t produce the eggs needed for the flu vaccines, if the fire had of got us”. The farm narrowly averted disaster in the Black Saturday bushfire blazes (7th February, 2009) http://media.heraldsun.com.au/multimedia/2009/02/bushfires/
with flames licking the rear doors of the barns and fires in the evaporative cooling towers. As the forest blazed on the four sides of the valley in which the facility nestles just minutes from the centre of Kinglake township, Philip Szepe, along with five of his staff, fought back the flames and ember attacks for over 10 hours in order to save the barns and business housing the scores of poultry -each worth approximately AUD$25 at the height of their reproductive strengths. (Kinross runs a further 80,000 chickens at Euroa and 30,000 at Pheasant Creek – but the Kinglake barns are the primary producers of the eggs needed by CSL). Philip says that he and the men were fighting for their lives as much as they were fighting for the livelihood of the mountain, as he employs sixty staff at the Kinglake farm and his business and the incomes earned by his employees have a significant ‘knock on’ effect within the devastated district. The day after the fire, 8th February, one determined group of staff insisted on clearing the exit road from Kinross Farm to the outside world and drove the company semi-trailer down the mountain to fulfil commitments to the CSL contract.
In the first few days following Black Saturday, Philip Szepe and David Eastwood were determined to keep the farm producing and ran on emergency generators, sleeping in shifts at the farm and waking to refuel and check the delicate computerised systems and climate controls necessary to produce the eggs from which the life saving vaccines are manufactured. They did this to give other staff members time to regroup emotionally and take stock of the incinerated devastation around them. Ten Kinross employees lost their homes during the blazes, and all lost friends in the fires. Dave Eastwood says, “the guys gave everything they had to fight the fires…there’s not a job here that people wouldn’t do, management included, we all muck in and it’s the best place to work because we all pull together”.
Some of Kinross’s employees have been with the organisation for 20 years, Philip Szepe went to school with some of his workers, they have shared lives, milestones and the growth of a business started in 1965 by Philip’s father, an Hungarian immigrant. It’s this bond with his community that made Szepe so determined to make his business a haven of normalcy amidst a charred landscape and a base from which he can support his employees and their families.
Suffice to say, the little egg farm that emerged from the Black Saturday fires unscathed, will have some very productive, cosseted hens and some very tired roosters for the foreseeable future. Perhaps then, Mr Ramsay should stick to his omelettes and let the real cocks do the crowing.
Are you worried about Swine Flu mutating, or do you think it's all way over the top in terms of media coverage? I'd be really interested to know your thoughts - just post a comment below.
(Since the first cases of H1N1 (Swine) Flu emerged in Mexico several weeks ago, CSL Ltd, has assiduously collected virus samples via WHO, to develop ‘seed’ viruses from which a vaccine can be developed in their laboratories in Parkville, Victoria. The development of a potential vaccine is dependent on the cultures being grown in fertile hen eggs in staggering quantities.
At the time of publishing, Dr Rachel David of CSL confirmed that the Australian Federal Government had ordered 10 million doses of the new vaccine when it rolls off production line, in August, and the US Health Department has signed an order for 48 million doses of the influenza antigen vaccine = AUD $230 million. According to (WHO) Dr Ian Barr of the Collaborating Centre for Influenza in Melbourne, CSL are further down the track than other facilities globally, and it has now been confirmed that clinical trials of CSL’s vaccine, Novel H1N1, will begin in mid-July (Said to be Wednesday, 22 July, 2009) at Royal Adelaide Hospital in South Australia.
http://www.csl.com.au/s1/cs/auhq/1182280826145/content/1182280826258/home.htm
In Australian dollar terms, one dose of normal flu vaccine with defence against three strains, leaves CSL during the flu season at a wholesale cost of AUD $10 per dose. Dr David maintains that she has not yet fully established the unit cost of the Novel H1N1 antigen for Australia although the USA’s order for AUD $230 million = 40 to 48 million doses.)
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
ARE WE WORTH IT? Who will be at your funeral and why?
So, when you're on your death bed, who'll be hovering around?
This past week, the media has been utterly pre-occupied with two very famous people who shrugged off their mortal coils. The passing of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson has been water cooler fodder for days now - with a bizarre focus on the gloved one and a global hysteria and intrusion already well beyond the macabre.
http://www.etonline.com/news/2009/06/75905/index.html
For me and mine, death has been at the forefront in our household too, lost in the furore, but on the same day, a member of our extended family, aged 91, finally left us. She took her last breaths as her daughter held her hand, and her beloved daughter-in-law kept vigil. Her adult grandsons arriving quietly to lovingly say goodbye. What a contrast indeed to the circus surrounding MJ! Kit was known by no-one beyond her circle of friends and family, but she probably had much more of a meaningful and gentle impact on all those she gave to than she could ever have imagined - for she gave of herself, her talents and her skills without ever flinching and without remuneration or adulation. Not wealthy or a celebrity, she baked simple foods and delivered them where she felt they were needed - as a sign that someone was deserving of being cared for. She made thousands of sweaters and handmade toys and sent them out into the world to comfort, and she laughed and giggled with such contagion that all who loved her can still recall the sound.
She never counted on the cold comfort of a scrapbook of press clippings to re-affirm her worth on her deathbed and reassure her of her accomplishments, she lived her life fully, yet humbly, and her only applause was today, at her funeral, when all present clapped in agreement during the simple eulogy.
What do you think and how do you make your life worth it? Please let me know.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
This past week, the media has been utterly pre-occupied with two very famous people who shrugged off their mortal coils. The passing of Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson has been water cooler fodder for days now - with a bizarre focus on the gloved one and a global hysteria and intrusion already well beyond the macabre.
http://www.etonline.com/news/2009/06/75905/index.html
For me and mine, death has been at the forefront in our household too, lost in the furore, but on the same day, a member of our extended family, aged 91, finally left us. She took her last breaths as her daughter held her hand, and her beloved daughter-in-law kept vigil. Her adult grandsons arriving quietly to lovingly say goodbye. What a contrast indeed to the circus surrounding MJ! Kit was known by no-one beyond her circle of friends and family, but she probably had much more of a meaningful and gentle impact on all those she gave to than she could ever have imagined - for she gave of herself, her talents and her skills without ever flinching and without remuneration or adulation. Not wealthy or a celebrity, she baked simple foods and delivered them where she felt they were needed - as a sign that someone was deserving of being cared for. She made thousands of sweaters and handmade toys and sent them out into the world to comfort, and she laughed and giggled with such contagion that all who loved her can still recall the sound.
She never counted on the cold comfort of a scrapbook of press clippings to re-affirm her worth on her deathbed and reassure her of her accomplishments, she lived her life fully, yet humbly, and her only applause was today, at her funeral, when all present clapped in agreement during the simple eulogy.
http://www.examiner.com/x-9259-Miami-Celebrity-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m6d27-Farrah-Fawcetts-funeral-arrangements
So in the coming days, when the hoped for dignity of a private family funeral for a Charlie's Angel is over and intruded upon, and the hoopla of a showbiz circus is completed (or renourished), when they've buried Michael Jackson; I recommend you reflect on what you have witnessed in the media coverage of those two events. How many well known people and performing artists, paused sadly, in carefully thought out ensembles and skillfully applied makeup to be photographed or interviewed, who was devoid of sophistry and simply gathered inside to pay their respects at the ceremonies, and how many, caught up in the image and celebrity devotion, joined a form of mass hysteria for a person they didn't know at all.
What do you think and how do you make your life worth it? Please let me know.
www.twitter.com/pascarl
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