Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the table

Your tax dollars at work here, when industry has to take on the role it had expected of government.

You may not have heard me on the subject yet, but I am incensed that the cabal in the White House, thinking that denying consumers the protections our government was put there to provide, is going to benefit the industries this WH panders to.

Voluntary meat inspection does not provide safety for consumers. When Japan refuses to allow imports of American beef, voluntary inspection disserves our beef industry too.

Voluntary food producer inspection, substituted for federal inspection, has resulted in more outbreaks of salmonella since 2001 than in previous administrations, resulting not only in deaths of the unprotected consumer, but also damage to the industry that relies on government safety standards for its own protection.

Here's one problem:

In recent years problems related to Salmonella have increased significantly, both in terms of incidence and severity of cases of human salmonellosis."

They’re learning the hard way over at your supermarket where spinach, green leaf lettuce, and now salads in general are dying on the vine. Literally, dying.

So now the industry is taking steps to provide the safeguards its bought and paid for government has ditched.

The nation's largest supermarket chains have given produce growers six weeks to establish new safety rules to prevent deadly E. coli outbreaks. A consortium that includes the owners of the Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs grocery chains and Costco Wholesale Corp. says it is alarmed that another episode like the recent contamination of fresh spinach could hurt its members and their customers.

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"We can't maintain the status quo," said Kathy Means, vice president of government relations for Newark, Del.-based Produce Marketing Assn., a trade group of produce shippers, processors, distributors and other suppliers. "And we can't have any more mistakes."An October survey of consumer attitudes by the association found that 22% of the respondents lacked confidence in the safety of all fresh produce products, not just spinach, Means said.

For a really good look at the safety of your food, I recommend you look over the Organic Consumers’ newsletter.

From the San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 19, 2006;

"We don't see this disease in India, Africa, China. We only see it in highly technologically advanced countries, and the reason is because of this highly centralized food processing system," said Lee Riley, professor of infectious disease and epidemiology at UC Berkeley.The FDA and state health departments need to develop more stringent regulations to control the spread of bacteria, experts generally agree. And there are precautions that growers and food processors can and should be taking --- not allowing potentially contaminated surface water to run onto farmland, for example, and aerating land that might be tainted.

Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 18;
"No one is really in charge of food safety on the farm, and the FDA has come in with fairly weak guidelines there that they can only suggest but not enforce. They need direction from Congress to address standards on the farm."

Des Moines Register, September 19
Neil Harl, professor emeritus of economics at Iowa State University, said Justice Department lawyers probably won't stop the sale. For 25 years, deregulation of businesses has been the prevailing political sentiment in Washington, Harl said. Hog and grain producers appear to be the most affected by increasing concentration on the seller and buyer sides of their markets, Harl said.

Do you, like me, wonder only why it has taken this long for the supermarket chains to demand that the government start in providing the services that it is supposed to, and is highly paid to? The Agriculture Department under Secretary Mike Johanns now, and originally by former Secretary Ann M. Veneman, has determinedly shoved off its role as safety inspector under the illusion that that course is going to cut costs to the industry, and claimed those costs would be passed on to the consumer.

When the industry is demanding it do its job, anyone suspect that the idjuts in this administration might see a light at the end of the tunnel they’ve dug, and that it is the proverbial train coming at them?

There’s an election coming, and my absentee paper ballot has already been cast. For once, I voted straight Democratic ticket, we can’t afford these bozos in high office any longer.