I swing my heavy cleaver down onto the sticky surface of the stump, slicing through the thin bone of the chicken's neck with a swift sureness that I have gained only through practice. The chicken's eyes grow murky as life withdraws from them and blood spurts from the main artery that supplies the brain.

There is always a rush of sadness and adrenaline in me as I take the life of a chicken, though I have taken hundreds of chickens lives. I am filthy, my white apron covered in blood and a sheen of poultry guts. A droplet of salty sweat drips into my eyes but I can't wipe it away with hands covered in blood and gore.

I've often noted that electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are a pernicious, hidden health risk. But exactly how does this kind of microwave radiation damage your health? Martin Pall, Ph.D., has identified and published research describing the likely molecular mechanisms of how EMFs from cellphones and wireless technologies damage plants, animals and humans.^{1,2 ,3,4}

Pall has a bachelor's in physics from Johns Hopkins and a Ph.D. in biochemistry and genetics from Caltech, and is uniquely qualified for this type of research. For the past 18 years, he's been scouring the medical literature, integrating and drawing parallels between work done by others to answer this pressing question. Pall explains:

"There is a huge amount of information out here that nobody has the time to integrate, digest and make connections [between]. That's what I've been doing ... I was interested in EMFs before I could understand how they worked. Then I stumbled onto two papers that told me, 'Well, this looks like the way they work,' and then I dug out more and more papers ...

What the [initial two] studies showed was that you could block or greatly lower the effects [of EMF] by using calcium channel blockers ... That was the key observation ...

Now [I have found] 26 [papers] ... They all show that EMFs work by activating what are called voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). These are channels in the outer membrane of the cell, the plasma membrane that surrounds all our cells. When they're activated, they open up and allow calcium to flow into the cell. It's the excess calcium in the cell which is responsible for most if not all of the [biological effects]."

Metals including toxic lead contaminate virtually all aluminum adjuvants, a widely-used ingredient of human and animal vaccines, according to a recent study published in the leading journal of the vaccine industry.

Contaminants including iron, copper, nickel and chromium were found in varying levels in each vaccine adjuvant sampled from different lots. Other impurities including lead were present in measurable amounts. Lead is a neurotoxic metal which the World Health Organization and other agencies have said there is no acceptable safe level in children.

"To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study to characterize the specific content of elemental impurities in commercially available aluminum hydroxide adjuvant product with specific, sensitive, state-of-the-art methods," the researchers from Valneva SE, a European vaccine research and manufacturing company, and Brenntag Biosector, a Denmark-based global supplier of the most widely used vaccine adjuvant, Alhydrogel, said.

An exhaustive new study is sounding the alarm over industrial pesticide use and its effect on human health. Pregnant women in California's San Joaquin Valley have a significantly greater chance of premature birth or birth abnormalities if they live near agricultural fields with high pesticide use.

"[F]or individuals in the top 5 per cent of exposure, pesticide exposure led to 5 to 9 per cent increases in adverse outcomes.

The magnitude of effects was further enlarged for the top 1 per cent, where these extreme exposures (more than 11,000kg over gestation) led to an 11 per cent increased probability of preterm birth, 20 per cent increased probability of low birth weight, and about a 30g decrease in birth weight."

The good news is that most do not experience birth problems, but the study tells us that pesticides do have an association with serious health problems. Focusing mitigation efforts on areas with high pesticide use could have a dramatic beneficial impact.

Hailed as a major advancement in scientific understanding, the study compared 500,000 birth records in the San Joaquin Valley between 1997 and 2011 with levels of pesticides used in the area. Researchers note that their study design "has far stronger statistical power to identify effects than previous studies," and it allows us "to evaluate many details of the nature of pesticide exposure."

I've got a real doozy to share with you today. Do you remember the recent Evanger's dog food recall, the one due to pentobarbital contamination?1 As a refresher, in January, four Pugs in one household in Washington State became ill and one died after eating Evanger's Hunk of Beef au Jus canned dog food.

The FDA opened an investigation, and lab tests revealed a large quantity of pentobarbital (an animal euthanasia drug) in the food. The agency also found the drug in other Evanger's products, including Evanger's Braised Beef Chunks and Against the Grain Grain-Free Pulled Beef with Gravy.

Evanger's issued a voluntary recall of those products, and then apparently got the bright idea to donate the stuff to animal shelters. I kid you not. Fortunately, the FDA rejected the company's donation request. According to a pet food industry journal article, Nicholas F. Lyons, FDA director of compliance, stated the following in a letter to Evanger's:

"In your firm's correspondence dated 4/4/17, it was requested to donate the recalled product to an animal shelter. FDA does not agree that analyzing individual units from recalled lots and finding those units negative for pentobarbital contamination provides sufficient assurance that the remaining units are not adulterated.

As can be observed in the samples collected by FDA, the pentobarbital contamination is not homogeneous throughout all units in a lot."2

Apparently, Evanger's also told the FDA they could grind up the dog food to "reduce pentobarbital to negligible levels," but the FDA informed them there's NO tolerable level of pentobarbital in pet food. Fortunately, the FDA was watching out for pets in this instance, which sadly isn't always the case.

Think about where you traverse each day. City streets, playgrounds, through the lawn or garden, to and from the grocery store, public restrooms and the gym. In some cultures, it's a common courtesy to remove one's shoes when entering the home.

If my hands are full, I admit that I often keep my shoes on until I set down whatever I'm carrying. However, some studies suggest that removing shoes should be more of a common occurrence.

Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a federal lawsuit Sunday against the Trump administration for its failure to comply with the 2016 federal law on the labeling of genetically engineered (GE) food.

Sec. of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are charged with implementing the new labeling rules, and part of that process is a study on "electronic and digital disclosures" (like QR codes) for GE foods, as opposed to on-package text. That study was required to be finished by July 2017, with an opportunity for public participation, but USDA never completed the study or published it for public comment.

Making the case for a cup of tea...an amino acid in tea may be just what you need to feel less anxious.

Whether taken as a supplement or in cups of tea, l-theanine is safe and helps many people reduce stress and anxiety. Research shows that l-theanine induces alert/relaxed thinking states, reduces your fight-or flight response to stressful events and helps protect the mind from stress-linked thinking and memory deficits.

Turning their backs on the human rights principle of voluntary informed consent memorialized in the Nuremberg Code after World War II, health authorities in France and Italy are fast-tracking involuntary vaccine mandates for school-age children.

In Italy, millions of Italians have been demonstrating since June, protesting the infringements to parental rights. On July 28, industry-beholden Italian legislators voted 296-92 to pass a one-size-fits-all law that mandates multiple doses of ten vaccines for preschoolers through teenagers, imposing steep fines for parents who do not comply. Mainstream media outlets in both Italy and the US ignored the record protests against medical coercion.

Approximately 80% of all antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals raised on factory farms for human consumption. This means that the majority of the population consuming meat and animal products are also consuming large amounts of antibiotics, most of the time without even knowing it.

Most of the antibiotics used are given to healthy animals to either promote growth or prevent disease, which is caused by the unsanitary living conditions that come with factory farming. This means animals that don't even need antibiotics are still being fed them - a problem worsened by pharmaceutical reps, who convince farmers that using antibiotics will help them increase sales.

When in doubt, follow the money.