Hormone-treated beef: Should Britain accept it after Brexit?

This Briefing explains why the use of synthetic, industrially-manufactured hormones in beef production, and the threat of importing hormone-produced beef after Brexit, matter for UK consumers. There is robust scientific evidence showing that meat produced using one key hormone (17β-oestradiol) increases the cancer risk to consumers, while for the rest the available evidence is insufficient to show that their use is acceptably safe. The Briefing outlines the basis of the scientific and policy disputes over the use of supplementary hormones in beef cattle production. It shows that, although the USA is most associated with hormone-reared beef, other countries that want to export their beef to the UK, post Brexit, either allow hormones to be used, or are suspected of doing so. The EU has been reasonably vigilant on consumers’ behalf on this issue, and it has robust scientific grounds for its ban on their use. The risk from beef hormones is one of many issues on which UK consumers have benefited from the EU’s measures to protect public and environmental health. Chlorine-washed chicken is another example

Food, Brexit and Northern Ireland: Critical Issues

This report is the third in our Food Brexit Briefing series. It argues that the absence of serious consideration of food flows into, out of and through Northern Ireland is a significant policy omission in the ongoing Brexit negotiations. There has been much talk of the importance of Northern Ireland, but next to no detailed attention to the food implications of Brexit for Northern Ireland. The report makes the case that there is an urgent need to get down to detail over border arrangements, contingency planning and resource allocation. This is too important to leave to last-minute makeshift or muddle. Food is central to the economy of Northern Ireland, and the continuing supply of safe, high quality, healthy food is currently dependent on the absence of border controls between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Great Britain and the rest of the European Union. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food criss-cross these borders every year. They are currently free from inspection because of shared, underpinning EU Single Market regulation. An unplanned or mishandled food border imposition is likely to have powerful, destabilising consequences for the integrated nature of food supply, trade and access within Northern Ireland for many years to come. It would raise important challenges for food safety, put jobs at risk, potentially constrain Northern Ireland’s access to health-supporting foods such as fruit and vegetables, and create opportunities for food fraud and crime. The report, by Gary McFarlane and Tony Lewis, both senior environmental health professionals and officers of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, and Professor Tim Lang, of the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, is based on a thorough review of food flows into, from and through Northern Ireland, and the practical experience of its authors. The report dismisses talk of ‘technological fixes’ to help maintain the smooth flow of goods as vague, unavailable now and unrealistic. It calls for all the governments and bodies involved in food and Brexit – the European Union, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland itself – to set political differences aside in order to resolve the considerable practical challenges of cross-border food traffic. The authors make more than 30 recommendations to help that process

Operations analysis (study 2.1). Program SEPSIM (solar electric propulsion stage simulation)

Program SEPSIM is a FORTRAN program which performs deployment, servicing, and retrieval missions to synchronous equatorial orbit using a space tug with a continuous low thrust upper stage known as a solar electric propulsion stage (SEPS). The SEPS ferries payloads back and forth between an intermediate orbit and synchronous orbit, and performs the necessary servicing maneuvers in synchronous orbit. The tug carries payloads between the orbiter and the intermediate orbit, deploys fully fueled SEPS vehicles, and retrieves exhausted SEPS vehicles when, and if, required. The program is presently contained in subroutine form in the Logistical On-orbit VEhicle Servicing (LOVES) Program, but can also be run independently with the addition of a simple driver program

Labor Market Segmentation and the Union Wage Premium

Studies of the earnings of union workers have consistently shown that they earn considerably more than nonunion workers. This paper considers whether part of this observed union/nonunion differential is due to unions organizing high paying primary sector jobs. We extend our earlier work on the dual labor market in which we used an unknown regime switching regression to identify two labor market sectors --a high wage primary sector and a low wage secondary sector. Here we estimate a model where worker's wages are determined by one of three wage equations: a union wage equation, a nonunion primary equation or a nonunion secondary equation. If individuals are in the union sector their sector is treated as known. If they are not then their sector is treated as unknown. Parameter estimates for this model suggest that union/nonunion differences are very large for average workers even when comparing union and nonunion primary workers. We continue to find distinct primary and secondary sectors with wage equations similar to those that would be expected from the dual market perspective. Since it appears that union workers may be receiving large wage premiums it seems likely that there is non-price rationing of union jobs. If there is, our finding inprevious papers of non-price rationing of primary sector jobs may have been due only to the rationing of union jobs. We test for the existence of non-price rationing of nonunion primary sector employment in this three sector model and continue to find evidence that at least black workers find it difficult to secure primary sector employment.

Evidence for a Critical Behavior in 4D4D Pure Compact QED

We present evidence about a critical behavior of $4D$ compact QED (CQED) pure gauge theory. Regularizing the theory on lattices homotopic to a sphere, we present evidence for a critical, i.e. second order like behavior at the deconfinement phase transition for certain values of the coupling parameter $\gamma$.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, POSTSCRIPT file (127KB uuencoded