If Baby Boomers were worried aged care might be stuffed by the time they turned 75 - worry no more

Read and enjoy current aged care recommendations in the Caring For Older Australians: Draft report presented to the Gillard Government by the Productivity Commission and released on 21 January 2011.

Less direct accountability for government, less transparency if that is actually possible, a freer hand for aged care providers (including the ability to palm-off aged care bed categories with low profit margins) and the potential for all manner of agencies to increase costs on a whole range of services (including removing the cap on high care accommodation charges), ‘supported’ beds for low-income frail aged eventually assigned to the lowest tenders, a more market-driven provision of aged care services for special needs groups, and as an added bonus, the continuing option of being faced with no nursing home bed available in the area in which you live in your retirement – I give you A framework for assessing aged care: draft recommendations.

However, as has been the case down the centuries, if you enter old age with significant assets and investments you will still be able to afford the best on offer and probably do a little better out of those same proposed aged care provisions.

The entire report can be found here.

We have all been invited to examine this report and make written submissions to the Productivity Commission by Monday 21 March 2011.
Email agedcare@pc.gov.au for further information

One response to urban sinkholes caused by flood waters in the Clarence Valley

Jules Faber cartoon in The Daily Examiner 17 January 2011.
Jules professional résumé can be found at JulesFaber.com

Monsanto-Mahyco GM eggplant toxicity study receives a fail from researcher - wonder what the opinion will be on Monsanto's latest SDA soybean effort?

Slowly, study by study, faith in the safety of food on supermarket shelves is being eroded.

From those such as A comparison of the effects of three GM corn varieties on mammalian health (which in 2009 threw doubt on the reliability of Monsanto findings and whose authors apparently successfully defended against defamatory claims by the biotech lobby) to the BT BRINJAL Event EE1 The Scope and Adequacy of the GEAC Toxicological Risk Assessment: Review of Oral Toxicity Studies in Rats (November 14, 2010 by Dr Lou M Gallagher, PhD, Wellington, New Zealand) which found:

SUMMARY

This evaluation of Bt brinjal studies is based on requirements for a rigorous evaluation of food safety for the people of India and their health. Departures from Indian and international published standards for the 14‐day and 90‐day studies are a cause for concern 1.

The current food safety studies for Bt brinjal were not conducted in accordance with published standards, did not accurately summarize results, and ignored toxic endpoints for rats fed Bt brinjal: in particular, rats fed Bt brinjal for 78 out of 90 days (only one dose level) experienced:

• organ and system damage: ovaries at half their normal weight, enlarged spleens with white blood cell counts at 35 to 40 percent higher than normal with elevated eosinophils, indicating immune function changes.

• toxic effects to the liver as demonstrated by elevated bilirubin and elevated plasma acetylcholinesterase.

Major health problems among test animals were ignored in these reports. The single test dose used was lower than recommended by the Indian protocols. Release of Bt brinjal for human consumption cannot be recommended given the current evidence of toxicity to rats in just 90 days and the studies' serious departures from normal scientific standards.

So, if this is the true state of affairs concerning the humble eggplant once it was unconventionally altered, what hope is there that Monsanto's virtual minion in all things genetically modified Food Standards Australia New Zealand will actually have conducted the following stated process?

FSANZ has not previously assessed a GM food crop with a consumer focused nutritional modification.
FSANZ will need to undertake a safety assessment of high scientific complexity and include a nutritional assessment, which is not normally required for GM crops expressing agronomic traits.
This Application is anticipated to involve an assessment of the risk to public health and safety of above average complexity.

Well might you ask because this is what FSANZ found and signed off on:

On the basis of the data provided in the present Application, and other available information, food derived from soybean MON87769 is as safe for human consumption as other commercially available soybean varieties.

Basically telling Australian consumers that a genetically modified enriched soybean food will be safe to eat because the patent-owner Monsanto says that this is so and, this say so probably doesn't involve any in-depth animal studies because FSANZ does not normally require this level of safety assessment.

Will you be feeding any form of soybean product to your children after May 2011?

Given the lax GM food labelling laws in Australia - would you even know if you were?

Is there "Something Rotten in the State of Windsor?"

From A Clarence Valley Protest on 17 January 2011:

The Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Regional Australia's Inquiry into the impact of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan in Regional Australia is one strange entity.

Throwing process transparency to the wind, it is now selectively publishing copies of the 535 submissions received to date.

This is a snapshot example of what the list looked like on 17 January 2011 after the first 160 submissions:

So what is being hidden? Naive submissions of which there were already plenty in the first 160 received? A committee or secretariat in organizational disarray?
Or is it that the Chair just doesn't want the bulk of the over 300 unpublished submissions out in the public arena before the mainstream media reports on the public hearings and the Committee delivers its findings?

It goes without saying that such questions would not even come to mind if submissions had been published in the order in which these were received and not as this highly selective hotch potch.