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A few highlights of what happens when contaminated foods aren't pulled from the market in a timely manner.
2010:
More than 500 million eggs were recalled after dangerous levels of Salmonella were detected in the eggs of two Iowa producers, Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farm, that distribute eggs in fourteen U.S. states. Nearly 2,000 illnesses were reported between May and July, approximately 1,300 more than usual for this strain of the bacteria.[2]
I'm going to stop you right here ... this is as good a place as any to illustrate the MY POINT ... using your example.
Jack DeCoster, owner of Wright County Eggs is a PERFECT EXAMPLE of the total disregard your "government saviors" have made routine .... he and his company are habitual violators of the law, and have been for decades. Here's a little list of "Jack's" rap sheet:
1) In 1996, DeCoster was fined $3.6 million for health and safety violations at the family's Turner egg farm, which then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich termed "as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop we have seen." Regulators found that workers had been forced to handle manure and dead chickens with their bare hands and to live in filthy trailers.
2) In 1999, the company paid $5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving unpaid overtime for 3,000 workers.
3) In 2001, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that DeCoster was a "repeat violator" of state environmental laws, citing violations involving the family's hog-farming operations. The family was forbidden to expand its hog-farming interests in the state.
4) Also in 2001, DeCoster Farms of Iowa settled, for $1.5 million, a complaint brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the company had subjected 11 undocumented female workers from Mexico to a "sexually hostile work environment," including sexual assault and rape by supervisors.
5) In 2002, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the family's Maine Contract Farming branch $345,810 for an array of violations. The same year, DeCoster Egg Farms of Maine paid $3.2 million to settle a lawsuit filed in 1998 by Mexican workers alleging discrimination in housing and working conditions.
6) In 2003, Jack DeCoster paid the federal government $2.1 million as part of a plea agreement after federal agents found more than 100 undocumented workers at his Iowa egg farms. It was the largest penalty ever against an Iowa employer.
7) Three years later, agents found 30 workers suspected of being illegal immigrants at sa DeCoster farm in Iowa.
8)And in 2007, raids at other DeCoster Iowa farms uncovered 51 more suspected undocumented workers.
9) In 2006, Ohio's Agriculture Department revoked the permits of Ohio Fresh Eggs because its new co-owners, including Hillandale founder Orland Bethel, had failed to disclose that DeCoster had put up $126 million for the purchase, far more than their $10,000, and was heavily involved in managing the company. By playing down DeCoster's role, the owners had avoided a background check into DeCoster's "habitual violator" status in Iowa. An appeals panel overturned the revocation, saying the disclosure was adequate.
10) In 2008, OSHA cited DeCoster's Maine Contract Farming for violations that included forcing workers to retrieve eggs the previous winter from inside a building that had collapsed under ice and snow.
Now, this creep operates year after year, decade after decade ... thumbing his nose at his workers, his customers, local authorities, etc., and what happens to him? Nothing. A few fines that were obviously not significant enough to cause him to change his business practices, and that's it. Chalked up as a "cost of doing business" ... while continuing to violate the law.
This is where the rubber meets the road .... giant operations like DeCoster's pay a fine now and then ... slip in a bribe here and there ... and then they proceed to continue doing the same things.
BUT ... if some small family farm with 100 Chickens (instead of 5 Million Chickens) were to have ANY ONE OF THOSE VIOLATIONS ... they'd be out of business. And that is before this latest legislation, that will contain VERY BROAD language, allowing the FDA great discretionary powers to selectively enforce a set of regulations they themselves create (read: lobbyists from Big Agra create) that will shut down the small guys ... the healthy, clean farms ... the small organic producers ..... while guys like Jack will continue on their merry way .. doing as they please, as they have always done.
Do you think Jack is the only one out there that behaves like this? Look, it's these giant farming operations (whether chickens, pigs, dairy, or whatever) that are posing the dangers to the public health, with unsanitary facilities and illegal workers ... horrible conditions for which the animals are housed, contaminated with diseases that proliferate due to the heavy concentrations of animals in confined spaces ... fed the cheapest of the cheap feed which is also handled improperly and often contaminated .... and the overuse of antibiotics that are required to keep these animals from dying, due to those horrific conditions.
But, like always, they are protected. I don't care what regulations are in place ... they aren't enforced on the REAL VIOLATORS ... why? Because, as you've already admitted ... the system is corrupt.
If any new legislation were to be effective, it would first focus on the REAL PROBLEM ... corruption at the FDA, USDA, CDC responsible for ensuring public safety ... not legislation that issues them a blank check of additional powers .... powers they have already demonstrated to abuse on one side (the little guy), while refusing to enforce the laws on the other (big guys).
Show me in this new bill any provisions for eliminating corruption? Any penalties outlined for regulators caught failing or neglecting to regulate? Of course there aren't any. Because, this bill isn't about public safety ... it's about catering to big corporations by driving out of business and eliminating the small guys, and has absolutely nothing to do with public health.
I've got some breaking news for you ...... the government doesn't give a rat's rear end about YOUR heath .... that you believe they do speaks VOLUMES about your ignorance.
And all of the idiot sheeple out there who support this transparent attack on the American health are fools. This legislation doe ONE THING ....it creates the foundation for an environment that virtually assures that the ONLY FOOD PRODUCED in this country will be produced by large corporations who are ABOVE THE LAW, and have been poisoning you for decades.
And, at this stage in the game, there is NO EXCUSE for you or anyone else to be so clueless. The misdeeds of the big food industry giants, and the FDA are legendary at this point ... they've been in bed together, just as the FDA has been with the Pharmaceutical Industry for decades, poisoning the American people ... not protecting them.
Trusting the FDA with public safety is like trusting a pedophile to babysit your children.
The approval for the cow hormone is another interesting story of revolving door politics with the FDA and Monsanto.
In summary..the person at Monsanto who worked on the hormone ended up with a job at the FDA and she ended up approving her own research and then went back to Monsanto. The FDA also changed their rules so that the hormone would pass.
How's that for cronyism ?
Margaret Miller and Michael Taylor if you want to do the googling.
Many of you on the right talk big about not wanting the government to intrude in your lives, and then you swallow whatever irradiated, genetically modified, bastardized, synthesized bilge they define as "food". This would be how they got you all to pitch out your butter in place of a completely unnatural and dangerous substance like margarine...and you all followed them off the cliff like lemmings. Decades later now, it turns out that oop! That stuff is actually really bad for you. The same thing will happen with the unnatural genetic modification they're now doing to your food.
Many of you on the right talk big about not wanting the government to intrude in your lives, and then you swallow whatever irradiated, genetically modified, bastardized, synthesized bilge they define as "food". This would be how they got you all to pitch out your butter in place of a completely unnatural and dangerous substance like margarine...and you all followed them off the cliff like lemmings. Decades later now, it turns out that oop! That stuff is actually really bad for you. The same thing will happen with the unnatural genetic modification they're now doing to your food.
What on earth are you blathering about here? "You on the right"? Better check your definitions .... it's the "left" so in love with big government ... and the big taxes to pay for it ... and the "right" opposing this "federalism".
I swear ... if you're going to politicize the issue .... at least get the left-right fundamentals correct
The entire point of this thread is to expose the lack of common sense in allowing this federal takeover of food production, pointing out how the FDA has abused their powers for decades and should be eliminated ... not expanded and granted more power.
"Even Navy Secretary Mark Mabus, a top official in "the oil spill recovery effort," recently urged the military to buy "as much Gulf seafood as possible for distribution to its armed forces commissaries worldwide" reports Kari Huus for MSNBC."
"Even Navy Secretary Mark Mabus, a top official in "the oil spill recovery effort," recently urged the military to buy "as much Gulf seafood as possible for distribution to its armed forces commissaries worldwide" reports Kari Huus for MSNBC."
Someone has to support the industry. Might as well be the government buying up all that tainted fish.
The BP spill was the equivalent of 10 Exxon Valdez spills.
10 years later Alaska still has fish problems.
We're supposed to just go back to eating Gulf fish like that ?
The Gulf miraculously recovered due to massive chemical use ?
Someone has to support the industry. Might as well be the government buying up all that tainted fish.
The BP spill was the equivalent of 10 Exxon Valdez spills.
10 years later Alaska still has fish problems.
We're supposed to just go back to eating Gulf fish like that ?
The Gulf miraculously recovered due to massive chemical use ?
No thanks.
Most federal bureaucrats have military backgrounds, and bureaucrats have great health benefits.
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