Sunday, March 30, 2014


News Clips For The Day



Limits to Development: When Should You Avoid Building at All Costs? – NBC
By Erik Ortiz
First published March 30 2014


Even before the massive mudslide mangled homes, residents and officials knew the risks of living in the shadow of an unstable hillside in rural Washington state. Yet they built, and continued to live in an area that 15 years ago was flagged for having a “potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

But avoiding building or uprooting people in Oso would have been a virtually impossible task, said J. David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

In a country where personal property rights are coveted, government can be hesitant to force people out or stop construction without an immediate, justifiable reason, he told NBC News.
“You don’t know when that mountain’s going to come down,” Rogers said. “So if you’re in the government, it’s politically dicey to start telling people they can’t be somewhere, especially if they already live there.


“It’s like you’re putting a gun to their head — people don’t react well to that,” he added.

As a geological engineering consultant in California, Rogers said he noticed that residents were quick to seek lawyers in landslide cases.

“You don’t know when that mountain’s going to come down."

In Oso, with no government officials seeking to condemn the land along the Stillaguamish River where the slide hit, residents could stay.

However, local zoning laws ensured there could be no housing boom. Such low-density rural areas in the county don’t typically allow for more than 1 unit every 5, 10 or even 20 acres, said Mike Pattison, of the Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties.

“The zoning is highly restrictive, and you would never have seen subdivisions or cul-de-sacs and neighborhoods built out,” Pattison said.

“While Seattle has a very dense, urbanized core, it’s not that far of a drive to get to the middle of nowhere,” Pattison added. “That’s how people like it.”

A pioneering spirit has survived in these rural communities, Pattison said, precisely because there are limits to development, ensuring that farmland and open space are preserved.

It’s an idea that other places across the United States that are prone to natural disasters must consider when there’s an outcry to rebuild.

Historically, the government has bought out communities in low-lying areas prone to floods, and they’ve stopped people from trying to build in designated flood zones.
But some people will put up a fight when it comes to losing their homes — their investments, said Dan Dolan, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Washington State University.

Local and state governments also try to help their residents. On the heavily populated East Coast, New Jersey and New York officials fought to secure federal funds so that people ravaged by Superstorm Sandy in 2012 could rebuild.

In a country where personal property rights are coveted, governments can be hesitant to force people out or stop construction without an immediate, justifiable reason.
To ensure building didn’t get out of hand, Washington state passed the Growth Management Act in 1990 that identifies natural resource lands, while setting other places aside for urban growth.

“You can’t take a farm and split it up and build houses,” Dolan said.
Still, he added, there remains a fierce attitude in rural areas that “it’s my land, and I ought to be able to do what I want.”

Dolan said that Americans will need to decide whether building — and having government footing the bill — is worth the greater expense to society.
But in Oso, observers say, that won’t be an issue anymore after the monster landslide destroyed about 49 homes and killed at least 17 people.

“You could give away the land, and you won’t get anyone to take it,” Rogers said. “They’re all pretty spooked.”




Residents and officials knew the risks, says this article. Fifteen years before, the hillside was deemed as having “a potential for a large catastrophic failure.” Catastrophic is a big word, but it is not overstating the case. Mt. Vesuvius eruption covering Pompeii and Herculaneum was catastrophic, and like that event, today teams are searching through the mud with dogs to find the dead. Luckily they did find some people alive at the beginning of the search, but the last voices crying out were heard just a few days after the slide, and now of course there are none.

According to this article, the land was known to be in danger of a slide when many of the houses were built there. Why did anybody purchase such property and risk their death by building there? “A pioneering spirit has survived in these rural communities, Pattison said, precisely because there are limits to development, ensuring that farmland and open space are preserved.” The Growth Management Act of 1990 prohibited large subdivisions being built, according to this article, but still 49 homes were there to be destroyed last week. Speaking of the current land value J. David Rogers said that you can't give the land away now. So much for the value of investments.

This article mentions that the many of the New Jersey residents who were wiped out by Hurricane Sandy are trying to rebuild. Maybe that was a one time thing, but I doubt it, and the trouble with a hurricane in that area is that there are so many people living there to be ruined financially and possibly killed. It's one of those sad things. New Orleans has yet to recover from Katrina. I'm glad I got to visit New Orleans in the 80s when it was still exotically beautiful. Those are good memories – the music, the food and being part of the vast crowd of onlookers for the Mardi Gras parades. It was very exciting.




McFaul: Focus of U.S.-Russia Tension Shifts to Moldova, Donetsk – NBC
By Tom Curry
First published March 30 2014

Former U.S. ambassador to Moscow Mike McFaul said Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to make the future of eastern Ukraine and Moldova points of contention in the wake of Russian forces’ seizure of Crimea.

Putin and President Barack Obama spoke by phone Friday. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are going to meet Sunday in Paris to discuss the Crimea crisis and the rift in American-Russian relations.

McFaul, an NBC News analyst who served as Obama’s ambassador to Moscow until last month, said the Russians are now in effect saying, “OK, Crimea’s done. We’ve taken that. Now let’s start negotiating about the Ukrainian constitution. Let’s start negotiating about the autonomy of places like Donetsk (in eastern Ukraine).’ As President Kennedy said very famously during the Berlin crisis, he was not going to negotiate about the freedom of Berlin under the guise of ‘what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is negotiable.’ This feels a little but like that: they (the Russians) are changing the subject to talk about what they want, not what we want to talk about.”

Another question is the future of the separatist Transdniestria region of Moldova, populated largely by Russian speakers. Putin is going to make Moldova “an issue that we’re going to have to now negotiate. And we’re going to negotiate in, I think, a weak position given where he is right now.”

McFaul added “there’s no doubt in my mind that if Russia goes into eastern Ukraine some Ukrainians will fight in a guerrilla struggle.” But he said he did not foresee a Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine “any time soon.”




Mike McFaul was until the last month and a half Obama's ambassador to Russia. Why was he replaced? According to http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-us-mcfaul-reaction/25253305.html, McFaul failed to keep Russian and US relations from deteriorating. From that article, “His presence in the capacity [of U.S. ambassador to Russia] coincided with the period in which the Russian government, true to its ideological considerations, adopted a radically anti-American stance. On top of that, of course, this entire unbridled [Russian] propaganda campaign [against U.S. policies] was given a major push by the fact that Michael McFaul is the author of a number of books on transition from authoritarian rule to democracy, which the Russian government has taken personally.”

This article blames the present and recent past of Russia's attitude to the US, and I assume the West in general, on “its ideological considerations,” in other words Russia is again seeking totalitarian control over a large chunk of Europe. Putin is not cooperating with the West, as Russia appeared to be after Glasnost, and that has been going on for a time before this land grab in Crimea. It's like the old story “A snake, after all, is a snake.”





Nonsurgical Fix Could Replace Open-Heart Surgery, Study Suggests – NBC
The Associated Press
First published March 30 2014

WASHINGTON — A new study gives a big boost to fixing a bad aortic valve, the heart's main gate, without open-heart surgery. Survival rates were better one year later for people who had a new valve placed through a tube into an artery instead.
The results were reported Saturday at an American College of Cardiology conference in Washington and prompted some doctors to predict that in the near future, far fewer people will be having the traditional operation.

"It's going to be very hard to tell a patient that if they need an aortic valve, surgery is going to be their best option," said one of the conference leaders, Dr. Prediman K. Shah of Cedars Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles.

Several hundred thousand Americans have a bad aortic valve, which can stiffen and narrow with age, keeping blood from passing through as it should. Until a few years ago, the only solution was a major operation to open the chest, cut out the bad valve and sew in a new one.

That changed in 2011, when Edwards Lifesciences Inc. won federal approval for an expandable valve that could fit in a catheter into a leg artery, guided to the heart and placed inside the old valve. Studies showed survival was comparable to or a little better with it than with surgery, but strokes were more common after the catheter approach, making some leery of it.

Earlier this year, a rival device — Medtronic Inc.'s CoreValve — was approved for treating people at too high risk to have surgery. The new study tested it in nearly 800 people less sick — eligible for the operation but still with elevated risks.
One year after treatment, 19 percent of the surgery patients but only 14 percent of those given a CoreValve had died.

"It's a great leap forward" for fixing valves through blood vessels, said Dr. David Kandzari of Piedmont Heart Institute in Atlanta.
The study was paid for by Medtronic, and many study leaders consult for Medtronic, Edwards or other heart device makers. Results also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.




It seems difficult, to me, to run a device up through an artery and place it in the heart valve, but doctors apparently are having a great deal of success with it. Open heart surgery, on the other hand, is very traumatic to the body and apparently many people die afterward. This is like the operation on organs in the abdomen which is done now through the navel. Women who had hysterectomies by the old method had scars covering about a third of their tummy which were unsightly, and there was a long period of recuperation from the operation. Medicine and dentistry have both improved two or three hundred percent since I was young. It's amazing, really.




Horrific Taboo: Female Circumcision on the Rise in U.S. – NBC
By Annabel Roberts
First published March 30 2014

When Marie was two years old, a woman in her village in Africa cut off her clitoris and labia. Now 34 and living thousands of miles away in New York, she is still suffering.

“I have so many problems, with my husband, with sex, with childbirth,” she told NBC News, withholding her real name to protect her identity. “The consequences on my life are all negative, both physically and psychologically."

The practice of Female Genital Mutilation is common across much of Africa, where it is believed to ensure sexual purity before marriage. But Marie says FGM is also “very common” in some communities in America.

“The pressure to get daughters cut is great,” she said.
“We need to make it something that can be discussed.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 150,000 to 200,000 girls in the U.S. are at risk of being forced to undergo cutting. The CDC says “at risk” because there are no actual records of the practice, only estimates – and old estimates at that. Its latest data date to 1997, the year after it was banned in the U.S.

But experts who work with victims and their communities say FGM is on the rise.
"It is hard to believe this is the real number because of how much [FGM-practicing] communities are growing, especially in the last two or three years," said Mariama Diallo, African community specialist at Sanctuary for Families, a New York-based non-profit dedicated to helping domestic violence and trafficking victims. Her organization could only extrapolate using census data when it issued a report on the growing problem last year.

Immigration to the U.S. from countries in Africa quadrupled between 1990 and 2011 from 360,000 to 1.6 million according to a recent report released by New York City’s planning department.

“The numbers need to be updated – but this needs funding and no one is interested,” said Dr. Nawal Nour, founder of the African Women’s Health Practice at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Lack of Prosecutions
There are different degrees of FGM, the most severe form being the narrowing of the vaginal opening by repositioning the labia and stitching up the opening, sometimes leaving a hole the size of a matchstick for the passing of urine and menstrual flow.
The cutting is often carried out without anesthetic on girls between infancy and the age of eight. Victims can suffer numerous physical and mental health problems: severe abdominal pain, vaginal and pelvic infections, pain during sex, complications during childbirth.

In Phoenix, Arizona, a staggering 98 percent of Somali women being treated at the Refugee Women’s Health Clinic have been circumcised, founder Dr. Crista Johnson said. She estimates the Somali community is at least 12,000-strong.

Johnson has supported such victims all over the country – from Washington,D.C., to Michigan to California – and says the spike in immigration from such communities has been astonishing in recent years.

“The number has easily quadrupled because of migration patterns,” she added.
So with such numbers, why has there only been one successful prosecution in the U.S.?
“People won't report against their families,” Marie said. Since the mutilation is usually organized by the child’s mother or grandmother and supported by the father, many cases go unreported, case workers say.

“Even if there is protection from the government, it is difficult for a victim to disclose it through fear of retaliation from their family, and fear of losing their family,” she said.

Still, experts believe the law is a useful deterrent. Johnson says there is a sense of resignation among the families that they must abide by U.S. laws. Nour agreed, saying: “Parents are afraid to do anything that will get them deported.”

Taboo Topic
For Americans on the outside of communities where it is practiced, FGM is such an unknown that many medical workers, law enforcement and child protection officers are not informed on how to proceed when confronted with it.

“This has been such a taboo topic, we [haven’t been able to] take it out from under the table. We need to make it something that can be discussed,” said Shelby Quast, senior policy adviser of Equality Now, an international women’s rights NGO.
“There has to be a huge shift so that we identify this as a form of violence against girls – and not something that's protected as a cultural and religious tradition,” she said.

Some of the blunt and dirty tools used to carry out female circumcision in Tanzania, where 15 percent of women and girls are cut. The rate is far higher in other parts of Africa: In Burkina Faso, where Marie was cut, the rate is 73 percent. Somalia has the highest rate at 98 percent.

Support for victims is also comparatively poor in the U.S., health workers say. Nour in Boston and Johnson in Arizona run the only two clinics dedicated to supporting FGM victims in the U.S.

Comparatively the U.K. – with only a fifth of the population of the U.S. – has 15 specialist clinics. British midwife Comfort Momoh, who runs one such operation, recently visited the U.S. to research American facilities.

Coming from Europe, where campaigners are making strides in turning FGM into a mainstream issue, Momoh was shocked to see “no proper coordination and hardly anywhere for girls to go for support,” she said. “The situation is well, well behind the U.K.”

Campaigners say reaching out to practicing communities and educating them about the risks and consequences is critical to ending FGM.

"If the police are called and told a child is at risk, what will the policeman do if he does not know what FGM is? We need to tell them about it, tell them it's a violation,” Diallo said. "Every single professional needs to know they have an obligation: doctors, nurses, school teachers.... Everyone has to see it as their responsibility to protect children."

'Shame and a Prison Term'
In France, which is also home to significant communities which traditionally practice FGM, experts say enforcing the law and outreach to practicing communities must go together.

In stark comparison to the single American case, there have been over 100 successful prosecutions in France, with prison sentences for those found guilty of cutting or of allowing their daughters to be cut.

"I don't want my kids to undergo the same fate as me."
There, FGM is prosecuted using existing child protection laws – there is no specific anti-FGM legislation.

“There was no need for a special law that would amount to pointing the finger towards immigrants,” said French lawyer Linda Weil-Curiel, who has spent years bringing cases against suspected perpetrators to court.

“We had enough legal provisions in the penal code to prosecute and punish the 'mutilation of minors,' and the penal code is applicable to everyone on French soil, without discrimination.”

She believes these prosecutions helped reduce the practice. “The large publicity in the media of the trials sent a clear message to the families: This is what you are going to get – shame and a prison term – if you do not respect the law.”

There are no further prosecutions on the horizon in America – although there has been some progress.

Legislation was strengthened in January 2013 with a federal law making “vacation cutting” illegal – when girls are taken during their school vacations to countries where FGM is widely practiced to be cut there.

"They have passed the law. Now they need to enforce it," Diallo said.
But for Marie it's too late. "My organs were removed for my whole life, I can't change it; psychologically that is very difficult," she said. "But I don't want my kids to undergo the same fate as me."




This article is very informative about a subject that is not commonly known in this country. I had heard of it several times over the last five years or so, but I didn't realize it was occurring in the US, and especially in such numbers. The worst thing I had heard was about “honor killings,” which are still occurring in this country in some Islamic households. It has hit the news several times in the last five years or so.

This article makes plain that our police officers and the criminal justice system need to be educated and urged to be active in these cases. The laws have been updated by a January 2013 law making “vacation cutting” illegal. This article doesn't say what the penalty for it is, and it only takes care of a segment of the cases of FGM that are undoubtedly occurring at this time.

There is a strong feeling in the US against laws that limit or prohibit the free exercise of religion, but in this kind of case we should be standing up for the human rights of these women. I looked for articles on the Net about criminal prosecution of religious groups for denial of medical attention and was shocked to find none that defined the law in the case of children in need of care. Instead there were numerous articles about a religious defense if parents are prosecuted for it, and there are differing situations from state to state, so there apparently needs to be a federal law that requires that minors be given scientific medical care. If consenting adults wish to die without medical attention, that is their choice. This is the kind of ignorance-based situation that I particularly hate. Faith should not be a cover for evil, and I do think these types of actions are evil. There is no good in them.




Putin seeks diplomatic leverage with troop buildup, intel experts say – CBS
By Rebecca Kaplan Face The Nation March 30, 2014

Russian president Vladimir Putin has bolstered his troops on the eastern border of Ukraine not in the hopes of taking over more of the country, but to bolster his hand in diplomatic talks, former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell said on CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Putin called President Obama Friday to discuss the U.S. push for a diplomatic resolution to the crisis in Ukraine. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are scheduled to meet in Paris Sunday for further discussions.

In an interview with CBS News' Scott Pelley, Mr. Obama said that Putin has "been willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union," suggesting Russian nationalism and a desire to reverse the impression that the West has taken advantage of Russia are at play.

Morell, who is a CBS news contributor, added that Putin is likely looking to ensure that Ukraine does not become part of NATO or the European Union.

"The capabilities of [Russian] troops would be to take perhaps a third of Ukraine if Putin wanted to, but it would be very difficult for him to hold," Morell said, adding it would be a very "nasty" situation. "What [Putin]'s trying to do is maximize what he gets out of this diplomatically. He thinks he's in a strong position, he wants us to come to the negotiating table," Morell said.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) Director Michael Hayden said that it was also likely Putin is looking for ways to ensure Russia is able to keep Crimea, even though several other world leaders have said that they do not accept the region's secession from Ukraine and subsequent annexation by Russia to be legal.

"We need to be concerned about this, but frankly I think [Putin] wants to pocket the Crimean victory, make that a fact beyond contradiction," Hayden said, predicting that the status of Crimea would not even be a part of talks between Lavrov and Kerry this weekend.

Putin's "tools" of power do not include the attraction of the Russian political system or economy, Hayden said, but merely "that threat, that danger, that presence of force along the Ukrainian border. I think we'll see them here for a long time which will be troubling and potentially destabilizing."

Hayden added that what "fundamentally matters" in any resolution is that the Ukrainian government and people have a say in the future of their state, and that negotiations are not just conducted between the U.S. and Russia.

The two intelligence officials also said that Mr. Obama's reforms to the way the NSA queries data will make Americans both safer and less concerned about government infringement on their privacy. The president announced Wednesday that the "workable" proposal from the intelligence community is to have phone companies rather than the government hold onto bulk data that is collected, and to reform judicial oversight of the way the agency queries the data. House lawmakers are crafting a bill that would follow the same basic principles to reform the system.

"We've arrived at a solution that actually makes us more safe and gets people higher comfort," Hayden said.

Morell, who served on the panel commissioned by the president to recommend reforms to the collection of telephone records, said he expected the final product would be a compromise between what the president and the House want. He said having the telephone companies hold the data - as the panel recommended - is the best path forward.

"There is a difference between the government holding the data, which creates a possibility for abuse by the government, and the government not holding the data, which obviously doesn't create that possibility," he said. "The phone companies have held this data for so long that there's no additional risk in them taking this on."




“Mr. Obama said that Putin has been willing to show a deeply held grievance about what he considers to be the loss of the Soviet Union," suggesting Russian nationalism and a desire to reverse the impression that the West has taken advantage of Russia are at play.” Morell said that if Putin were to take a greater part of Ukraine, “it would be very difficult for him to hold," Morell said, adding it would be a very "nasty" situation.” The Ukrainians were successful after all in driving Yanukovich out and temporarily took over from the Russian speaking people, before Russia sent in troops to Crimea. Director Michael Hayden gave the opinion that Russia's main goal is to hold Crimea, and predicted that Kerry and Lavrov probably won't discuss Crimea – that it is a fait accompli.

Morell stated that Russia also wants to prevent Ukraine from becoming a NATO country or EU member. I wonder if they would fight a war to prevent that, though. I has seemed to me that one of the first things that the Western powers should do is bring Ukraine into NATO. If we were playing the same kind of game that Russia is, we would send troops into Ukraine and some other nearby states to provide a presence just off Russia's border, and then have talks.




­ ­ No-Kill Caviar Aims To Keep The Treat And Save The Sturgeon – NPR
by Alastair Bland
March 30, 2014

­ Caviar was once the food of kings and czars — and for a sturgeon, it meant death.
But a new technique of massaging the ripe eggs from a female sturgeon — without killing or even cutting the fish open— could make caviar more abundant, more affordable, and more accessible to all.

Best of all, says Angela Köhler, the German scientist who has spent nine years developing the new production system, "no-kill caviar" — also being called "cruelty-free caviar" and "correct caviar" by the people marketing it — could help reduce demand for black market caviar and save endangered wild sturgeon from being hunted to extinction.

The idea is to turn the caviar farming industry into something more akin to the commercial production of poultry, eggs or milk. The new method, being practiced at a small farm in Loxstedt, Germany, called Vivace GmbH, involves first viewing a sturgeon's eggs by ultrasound. If they are deemed ready, a signaling protein is administered to the sturgeon several days before the egg harvest.

This, Köhler says, "induces labor" and releases the eggs from a membranous sack in the belly cavity. At that point, the eggs can be pumped from the belly with gentle massaging. Köhler says the process can be repeated every 15 months or so throughout a sturgeon's lifetime, which may last decades.

The method is considered by some an improvement over so-called "C-section caviar" production, which requires making a small incision in the female fish to access her eggs. The operation allows the producer to harvest the roe without using any chemicals to induce egg-laying. But C-sections subject a sturgeon to the risk of fatal infection and can damage the fish's ovaries, reducing future roe yields.
"[The Vivace method] will make caviar production more financially reasonable," Köhler says. "It doesn't make much sense to take a fish that needs seven or eight years to mature and then, when it has its first eggs, kill it."

The Vivace farm in Loxstedt produced only about 1,100 pounds of caviar last year, Köhler says. If demand grows, output could eventually rise to 10 tons per year.
That's still just a tiny fraction of current global output. But if enough other caviar farms adopt her method — which would involve paying money for proprietary information about the process — Köhler says caviar farming could become a relatively cheap endeavor. Supply could increase as prices dive. In the end, low-priced no-kill caviar could undercut the market for illegally produced wild sturgeon caviar.
But some skeptics doubt that no-kill caviar will catch on.

Geno Evans, owner of Anastasia Gold Caviar, in Pierson, Fla., has tried making caviar without killing his fish. He wasn't impressed. In order to massage the roe from the fish's body cavity, he explains, you have to wait until a sturgeon is nearly ready to lay her eggs. For Evans, this resulted in overly oily, soft caviar.

"[The eggs] were mushy," he tells The Salt. "It was gross. It wasn't caviar."
Köhler's method addresses this texture issue by rinsing the tender, overripe roe immediately in a calcium-water solution. This makes the oil-rich pearls durable enough to undergo salting and curing without breaking.

It also improves the texture, according to Deborah Keane, owner of the California Caviar Company, in Sausalito, Calif., currently the only American importer of Vivace no-kill caviar.

"You get what chefs call the 'Caspian pop' — a very firm snap in your mouth as you bite each egg," says Keane.

Wesley Holton, the executive chef of Rose. Rabbit. Lie. in Las Vegas, is among several American chefs using the product. He says Vivace caviar tastes about the same as traditional caviar, but withstands heat better. (The traditional stuff tends to wilt when cooked.)

The Salt sampled the Vivace caviar alongside more traditional styles at Keane's tasting room. The traditional caviar from Acipenser baerii, the Siberian sturgeon, was creamy and buttery, with a pronounced flavor of brine, sardines and smoked salmon.
A similar product made from the eggs of A. transmontanus, the white sturgeon of Western North America, was also buttery smooth, with a salty flavor and an interesting finish of pond water and river fish.

The Vivace A. baerii caviar was entirely different. The tiny black eggs did not melt in the mouth but, rather, popped. Flavor was faint and subdued, with quiet hints of salt marsh and catfish. It was not our favorite of the three.
And then there's the question of price.

For now, an ounce of Vivace will run you $125 to $135 in Keane's shop, compared to $105 an ounce for conventional caviar of the same species. A custom-packed jar of Vivace "golden caviar," taken from albino fish, will fetch up to $800 per ounce.
But Keane argues that if more farms adopt the Vivace method, no-kill caviar could eventually become "an everyday indulgence," bringing costs down to $20 or $30 per ounce.

Which brings us to the ultimate question, as raised by Sacramento, California-area sturgeon farmer Michael Passmore.

"Why would producers of caviar want prices to continue to drop?"




I have only tasted caviar a few times. It is not only expensive, it's an oddity to me, interesting every now and then but not something I would want very frequently. I have been opposed to it on the grounds that sturgeons were becoming endangered, and killing a whole fish just to get its eggs seems cruel. I did spot several recipes for sturgeon on the Net, so maybe they send the meat to the fish market after they get the eggs. Still, they're killing too many of them. This farm process and chemically inducing the eggs looks good to me. The article also says it will reduce the price. That's good. There are too many things that are being killed off today due to the fact that some part of their body is highly desired and expensive – elephants and rhinos in particular.