Author: Miss Vivi

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Bring home the bacon: Australian Bacon Week

Thank you for shopping here butchers bag
This is the bag I brought home the bacon in - I can still smell the smokey goodness

 

Happy Australian Bacon Week to you!  This week here at the Chop Shop it’s going to be all about the bacon.

Australian Bacon Week is an initiative of Australian Pork to promote home grown, home-smoked bacon and raise awareness about the importing of frozen pork products.

The statistics on the Australian Pork website are pretty staggering:

  • over 70% of smallgoods in Australia are made from imported pork
  • 65% of bacon sold in Australia is made from imported pork
  • $8.5 million worth of pork is imported into Australia every week

Imported pork products come from countries with heavily subsidised agricultural industries so you would think that they would be winning the price war, but the pork and smallgoods that we buy from our local Gympie butchers is the same price or cheaper than the imported product from the supermarket.

The winners of the awards for Australia’s best bacon have been announced – check out the website and see if there is a winning butcher near you.

So, be a Porkstar this week and bring home the bacon from a local supplier or, if you can’t get to the butcher, look for the pink Australian Pork logo on the package and wake up smelling the bacon that came from a pig that grew up near you.

Miss Vivi

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Miss Vivi Section on Pinterest

Follow Me on Pinterest

I’ve joined Pinterest and I’m having a fabulous time! At first I was a bit sceptical about how it is used, but I signed up anyway just to give it a try.

I’ve decided to use it as a place to gather really good anatomy images, experiment ideas and other science images for you to refer to.

You know how frustrating it is when someone takes your work and presents it without giving you any credit, so please be courteous and credit the artists and websites if you use the images in the classroom. I have tried to link all the images back to their original websites so you can check out any copyright information they have and use the images appropriately.

I hope it’s useful to you and you find some fun there too. Feel free to point me in the direction of good stuff to share with other labbies. I’ll count it as an entry in the t-shirt competition if you do it before Easter.

Happy Australian Bacon Week
It's Australian Bacon Week

By the way, Happy Australian Bacon Week to you! It’s going to be all about bacon on this blog and the Facebook page this week.
Miss Vivi

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Stillborn piglet dissection

Stillborn piglet external view
Stillborn piglets make an excellent alternative to rats for dissection

This little piggy is the latest and greatest in whole animal dissection specimens.   They are either stillborn from large litters or smothered by the sow in the stall and come from a farm breeding pigs for meat.  They are usually disposed of as farm waste but we are collecting them and diverting them from the waste stream for dissection.  They are less smelly, cheaper, closer to human anatomy than a rat and aren’t being bred just to be euthanased for science, so each piglet used in the classroom represents a rat that hasn’t had to be put down.

Each piglet typically weighs 600-800g. The piglets are collected and frozen without any chemical preservatives which reduces your chemical exposure in the lab as well as eliminating a source of exposure to the kids in the classroom. It also makes the piglets safe to dispose of in landfill with other normal waste.

piglet dissection internal view
The organs of the stillborn piglet are clean and clearly identifiable

As they generally have not yet fed or only briefly suckled, the intestinal tract is pretty clean and there is little smell to the specimen.  Each organ can easily be identified and removed for further exploration.

piglet dissection internal closeup
Closeup view of the piglet urogenital system

The detail in the circulatory system of the piglets is particularly amazing. You can see in the photo above the veins and arteries of the urogenital system clearly visible.  Once the overlying organs were taken out, the spine was visible and a section could be removed to allow the spinal cord to be seen.

There is a lot more that can be explored with these specimens and we will be spending a lot of time working on them so we can develop some really good resources to allow you to get more bang for your buck.  In the meantime keep an eye out for workshop announcements that will give you the chance to get your hands on one.  We are expecting to be able to bring them to you at ConQEST 2012, if not before.

See you there,

Miss Vivi

 

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Oh what a feeling: the Toyota ad with the glass organs

I loved this Toyota ad showing glass artists making an entire person out of glass immediately. It combines two of my favourite things in the world – glass and science. The ad isn’t being played on TV anymore, which is a shame. Compared to most car company advertisements it is quiet and classy and beautiful instead of being loud and brash and blokey. The delicacy of the glass organs evokes all the frailty and beauty of the human body. A masterpiece.

Miss Vivi
ps. don’t forget there’s only a couple of weeks left to enter the t-shirt competition, so get writing and send in your top tip for a labbie.