Sucker Punched

Today's Los Angeles Times has a superb article about the rush to fire Shirley Sherrod, the Agriculture Department employee accused of racism for a speech she gave at an NAACP gathering earlier in the year. The article is based on emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the White House and the Ag Dept regarding the issue and provides a timeline for the entire episode.

The ugliness started with a video posted on the internet by Andrew Breitbart, someone the Los Angeles Times in an excess of politeness refers to as a "conservative media entrepreneur." The video has Ms. Sherrod stating she hesitated in giving a white farmer any help. The video, as we now know was devilishly edited and took that statement out of context. The full video, which was available at the time the events began to unfold, shows that Ms. Sherrod's point was that she quickly realized that the difficulties facing individual farmers were not caused by race, but lack of economic opportunity: the haves/havenots dichotomy.

When confronted with the contents of the Breitbart video, Ms. Sherrod made it clear that it was bogus and mentioned the existence of the full version. Unfortunately for her, nobody bothered to pick up the phone to call the NAACP for a rush copy. Complicating matters further, NAACP officials, caught off-guard by the claims in the Breitbart video were themselves distancing themselves from the whole matter.

Within a matter of days, Ms. Sherrod was gone. And then the full video appeared, making all those White House and Ag Dept employees running around with their hair on fire look as foolish and as inept as they feared they would look if they didn't squelch the story by immediately firing Shirley Sherrod.

As it turned out, Sherrod had been falsely accused, and the actions taken by Agriculture Secretary Thomas J. Vilsack and his senior staff became a major embarrassment for the Obama administration, raising questions about its basic competence and its preoccupation with public perceptions.

Mr. Breitbart's mission was accomplished.

Since then, of course, Andy Breitbart's habit of "editing" out what he considers irrelevant has come out and he himself has been discredited. Even mildly responsible conservatives are pedaling furiously away from him. The damage, however, has been done. Ms. Sherrod's career is over, and the administration has shown that it is more concerned with image than substance or justice.

Heckuva job, Andy.

A Different Kind Of Tea Party

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is still one of my favorite pieces of literature. These days I find myself going back to the Mad Hatter's tea party time and again as the perfect metaphor for so much of what is going on in this country. Take, for example, this bit of news on the division of tasks between the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture when it comes to managing the safety of the nation's food supply.

As lawmakers prepare for hearings into the largest egg recall in U.S. history, food safety advocates say the congressional probe could give momentum to a long-delayed measure that would enhance the power of the Food and Drug Administration.

If passed, say policymakers, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act could be the first major step toward streamlining the often unwieldy food safety system.

For example, in the U.S. cheese pizza is regulated by one federal agency, but a pepperoni pizza is overseen by another. An open-faced turkey sandwich, likewise, falls under the purview of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but one with two slices of bread is under the jurisdiction of the FDA. Liquid beef broth and dehydrated chicken broth? USDA. Liquid chicken broth and dehydrated beef broth? FDA. ...

The USDA regulates the quality of eggs still in their shells; it also inspects liquid, dried and frozen egg products. The FDA is responsible for the safety of eggs still in their shells, but until recently it could intervene only after problems became evident. So neither agency was proactive about examining the production facilities operated by Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms of Iowa, where federal inspectors recently found giant manure piles, rodents and maggots.

In other words, there is no coherence in the way food producers are regulated. Nor, at least at this point, is there any way to force recalls when dangerous conditions lead to polluted food. When bad food hits the markets and people are sickened, all the FDA can do is recommend a recall to the producer of that bad food. Generally, the industry complies, primarily to avoid litigation, but they can delay the recall while they lawyer up.

The bill currently pending in the Senate would at least grant the FDA the power to force recalls. It doesn't, however, address the problems of the insanely crafted overlap of jurisdiction between the two agencies. Consumer advocates still think the bill would get things started in that direction, and most food producers seem to be behind the bill unless too many costly amendments are added. At least one Republican (Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma) has threatened to hold the bill up because it expands the authority of the FDA too much. No surprise there.

The real problem is going to be to get the Senate to act on the bill at all this term. November elections are looming, and there's an enormous backlog of business still to be considered. Harry Reid may not feel that such a bill has any priority at this point. And that's a shame.

Clean cups! Clean cups!

Nope, No Change Here

Remember how Barach Obama promised to end the intrusion of corporate and political interests on science? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, we haven't seen that come to pass when it comes to the role of scientists in government, especially when it comes to such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture, both key to the nation's monitoring of the food supply.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Scientists and inspectors at the federal agencies responsible for food safety say they face political and corporate interference with their work, according to a survey released Monday by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonpartisan advocate for unbiased science in government. ...

Almost half of those surveyed said that in the last year they had experienced "situations where corporate interests have forced the withdrawal or significant modification of [an agency] policy or action designed to protect consumers or public health."

And 45% said they had experienced similar interference by members of Congress.

Fifty-four percent said the agencies gave political interests too much weight in their decision-making.

"Typically, once a member of Congress gets involved, the agency does whatever it can to make the situation go away rather than address food safety issues," one USDA employee wrote in an anonymous essay that accompanied the survey questionnaire.

So, this is how outbreaks of salmonella in eggs happen; how tons of bad meats have to be recalled because people have been sickened and died; how peanut butter can be hazardous to our health even if we aren't allergic to peanuts.

It's bad enough that corporate interests can forestall a legitimate investigation into slaughterhouses or egg factories, but it's even worse that lobbyists can access their favorite congress critters and get them to stop agency actions which are necessary for the common welfare.

While I admit that President Obama inherited an executive branch polluted with this kind of problem, I find it hard, if not impossible, to believe that after nearly two years in office the picture hasn't changed, even minimally. How many people have to die before the president follows through on his promise? How many years/elections will it take? Four?

Nope, no change here.

It's business, as usual.

A Little Hunger Among Friends

While parts of the world are seeing riots over food scarcity, and huge increases in price for the food available, Western nations with U.S. leadership plumped for biofuels over people at the Food Summit in Rome. Investments in ethanol appear to have been Agriculture Secretary Schafer's guiding principal, as our position eschews principle.

Having found that effects of diverting land usage to growing biofuel ingredients pays well, our U.S. representatives are supporting the rich devastation of the poor.

Global Food Crisis Summit: The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Rome food security summit concluded on Thursday and not surprisingly differences on rich country subsidies/protections for agriculture, biofuels and the opposition of well-fed Europeans to GM foods, remained unresolved.

The FAO estimates that global food consumption will double over the next 30 years as the global population increases by 42 percent to over 9 billion.

At the opening ceremony on Tuesday, FAO Director-General Dr. Jacques Diouf appealed to world leaders for $30 billion a year to re-launch agriculture and avert future threats of conflicts over food. He said that OECD countries* spent $372 billion in 2006 alone, to support their agriculture - Global Food Crisis Summit: FAO says world only needs $30 billion a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger; OECD countries spent $372 billion in 2006 alone to support their agriculture

Also on Tuesday, the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon said that that there were nearly one billion people short of food and called upon countries gathered here to act with"a sense of purpose and mission."

"Only by acting together, in partnership, can we overcome this crisis,"he said.

But it was noted that the powerful politicians in attendance spoke mostly about economics and politics.

It has been obvious for some time that the worst administration ever has business as its object, and we here in the U.S. have learned over 7+ years that the right wing is opposed to the public interest it has sworn to protect. We have agency heads who work to defeat the legislation that created their agencies, and Agriculture joins with FDA in diminishing protections of our food. Abroad, now, we see Agriculture working against food for the whole world. Promoting hunger was never the purpose of this department, but it has chosen to take that as its role.

We have to overturn the inhumane aspect of this government by thieves, and that should happen sooner, not later. The world is not going to ignore the axis of evil that our government has become.

Your Daily Bread

It is always encouraging to see advancement of sound policies. While we wish this were something that out government were doing, it's worth noticing, and when we elect a rational executive we can look forward to such worthwhile actions, too.

Our Agriculture Department has been politicized to the point of making it a disservice to America. In Yurp, those decadent socialists are trying to keep abreast of current needs and make food available as broadly as possible.

The EU is renewing efforts to reform its Common Agricultural Policy, the rural payments system that costs more than 40bn euros (£32bn) a year.

It is due to announce proposals aimed at making farming more efficient and environmentally friendly.

The European Commission will suggest going further down a road it embarked on five years ago.

It aims to scrap milk quotas and give farmers incentives to look after the countryside rather than producing food.
(snip)
The commission wants to progressively cut subsidies to farms, and shift the money saved to protect and promote traditional family farms.

The environment is talking back to us, and amazingly enough, there are governments that are capable of listening.

"There are indications that the era of abundant supplies of agricultural commodities is changing and we are moving into a period of not only rapidly increasing food demand, but also much greater market volatility for agricultural commodities," it (Copa-Cogeca, the EU farmers’ professional organisation,)warned, adding that this means that "the CAP of the future may need to place more emphasis than in recent years on ensuring that Europe's agricultural production capacity is optimised so that its 500 million citizens are ensured stable and secure supplies of food, produced to the highest standards of safety and sustainability, and that the EU plays its role in meeting world demand."

This makes me yearn all the more for making the government work for this country, rather than against it - as this worst administration ever has done. We don't have to be behind the rest of the world in rational, functional government.

Look to what we could be doing, and it makes you really ashamed.

Disaster for Meat Eaters Has Arrived

That great new excuse for advance planning, the "Who Could Have Anticipated" phrase, is popping up in meal planning. The occupied White House that tore up food safety on assumption of office in 2001 by instituting 'voluntary' inspection is discovering that no, left to its own devices industries do not take extraordinary precautions to insure their products are safe. As I have pointed out in earlier posts, we are not being protected because the laws are not in industry's interests.

When it comes to your family's meals, you need to know that the inspection of their food you assumed laws had instituted is no longer on the table.

For beef lovers, 2007 will go down as another year of eating dangerously.

Since the spring, meat suppliers have recalled more than 30 million pounds of ground beef contaminated with the potentially lethal bacteria E. coli O157:H7, including the 21.7 million pounds recalled by New Jersey-based Topps Meat in September.

Topps Meat's 21.7 million-pound recall led some safety advocates to question the USDA inspection system, which relies heavily on industry reporting.

After three relatively quiet years, the 20 recalls this year have raised new doubts about whether the beef industry's attempts to keep the pathogen out of ground beef, and the government's oversight of those efforts, are working.

Agriculture Department officials, who oversee the safety of pork, beef and poultry, say they did not recognize that anything was seriously amiss with the beef supply until the Topps recall hit.

Microbiologists say the prevalence of E. coli O157:H7 in the environment is highly variable, and no one can say with certainty what caused the spike in outbreaks. In several instances this year, however, USDA officials missed red flags and were slow to correct longstanding deficiencies in the way they monitor beef processors' efforts to contain the pathogen.

USDA officials did not learn that Topps had begun testing its ground beef less frequently until the recall. Recurring sanitation problems at a United Food Group plant in Vernon, Calif., that later recalled 75,000 pounds of ground beef did not trigger further enforcement actions because the agency had not told inspectors what to do about repeat violations. The recall was eventually expanded to 5.7 million pounds. Critics said the agency missed an opportunity to strengthen its early-warning system by not keeping track of every instance when a plant found the dangerous strain of E. coli in raw ground beef.

The department has postponed plans to target inspections at plants that had a record of problems because officials do not know which plants pose the greatest risks.

Similar lapses have surfaced during the seven years since meat processors were required to come up with scientifically based plans to contain and control pathogens. In 2002, USDA officials did not know that the E. coli strain had been detected in ground beef at ConAgra's Greeley, Colo., plant 63 times in the weeks leading up to a massive recall. The agency had been testing for the bacteria in raw ground beef since 1994, but skipped ConAgra's plants under a policy that exempted the largest processors. USDA now tests ground beef at every plant at least once month, while self-testing at plants remains voluntary.

The present practices in regard to regulation recall the days that prompted safety inspections. We are not being protected, we are being sacrificed to the industries that the cretin in chief considers the proper object of government concern. Profits are everything, and the country is hostage to his greed. When any effort is made to put our resources as a nation into those of us who produce them, it is blocked and called anti-American.

There is a growing need to protect the public from those in the highest office. More every day it looks as if many of us won't make it to January 20, 2009 safely.

A government that can't be trusted should be removed.

The Cat Is Out of the Bag

Sorry 'bout that one. But the truth about the poisoned pet food seems to be coming out, and letting my Cleocatra (for one) out of the bag. The kind of bag they're escaping is the one that is used in drowning, as I see it. The motivation for putting poisonous substances into gluten which was being produced by Chinese factories to add to pet food here in the U.S. was money. The more protein their additives tested for, the higher quality it was considered to be, and the more it cost.

Chinese manufacturers may have intentionally added a chemical linked to pet deaths and illnesses into a protein-powder ingredient in pet foods, federal regulators said Thursday.

Stephen Sundlof, chief veterinarian for the Food and Drug Administration, said melamine, which has turned up in more than 100 brands of cat and dog food, may have been used to falsely boost the apparent nutritional content of rice protein.

"That's still a theory but it certainly seems to be a plausible one," he said.

Melamine, an ingredient in plastics and fertilizers that could lead to kidney failure in animals, has contaminated rice protein and wheat gluten in pet foods made in Canada and the U.S.

The chemical compound reportedly also has tainted corn gluten added to pet food sold in South Africa, the FDA said.

FDA officials said they were investigating whether the melamine might have been added intentionally as a way to charge more for an inferior product. The fact that three protein sources from China contained melamine adds credibility to that theory, Sundlof said.

But the FDA added that it would not be able to check its theory without approval from the Chinese government to inspect the factories where the rice protein and wheat gluten were produced. The FDA said it "fully expects" to get such cooperation.

The Chinese government has said that the contaminated wheat gluten was not meant for pet foods and therefore was not its regulatory responsibility.

The FDA said it had traced the contaminated wheat gluten to Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. in Jiangsu province, just north of Shanghai. The company's general manager, Mao Lijun, said this week that his firm was still investigating the matter. He declined to answer questions.

The FDA also said the North American manufacturers shared some responsibility for ensuring the safety of their pet foods.

"There is an industry responsibility to know who their suppliers are and to exercise some diligence," said Michael Rogers, head of the FDA's division of field investigations.

Pacoima-based Natural Balance Pet Foods, which this week voluntarily recalled four types of dog food containing rice protein, said it would be wary of using any Chinese-made ingredients.

"I can't imagine we'll be using Chinese ingredients again. If we do, clearly it will be with much scrutiny," said spokesman Daniel Bernstein.

Putting your pet at risk is not the only problem here. As Chicago Dyke pointed out this morning, With a little research, I’m pretty sure an enterprising investigator could turn this lede into the story of the century. How many sick American children are there, because of our utterly fucked up corporate system of distributing food resources? Moms, are you worried yet? Wheat, rice, corn…what’s next?

Your food isn't safe, as we already learned from the spinach and green onion episodes. If it's being nutritionally boosted with additives of mysterious origin and nature, we need to know about it. And as I have posted previously, the Department of Agriculture is cutting back its safety programs while boosting salaries for top executives.

Graft in Agriculture Beats Food Safety

Woefully, the scandals are rolling in like waves for the most corrupt administration ever to get into power. Now it's the Agriculture Department's use of public funds for totally nonagricultural purposes.

It's been the emphasis of the cretin in chief to make regulations obsolete, and in recent episodes lethal spinach, green onions and pet food have been allowed to get into the food chain without the kind of inspections that American consumers took for granted in previous administrations. In previous posts, I have pointed out that the industries themselves have called for increased safety measures. The food industries are paying for the new neglect of public interests.

Just for nostalgia's sake, let's do instant replay of the mad cow disaster;

Agriculture Department officials overruled field scientists' recommendation to retest an animal that was suspected of harboring mad cow disease last year because they feared a positive finding would undermine confidence in the agency's testing procedures, the department's inspector general said yesterday.

After protests from the inspector general, the specimen was sent to England for retesting and produced the nation's second confirmed case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.

The incident was described in an audit report assessing the department's surveillance program for the disease.

The report details why scientists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories concluded that a sample from a Texas animal should be tested with other techniques following initial inconclusive findings. It adds that top officials at the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) told them not to do the additional tests.

In a conversation at Eschaton this morning, poster Rudy set off several observations about the cretins' appointments for the purpose of disarming the public protections that have been set up over decades of responsible public servants. At Agriculture, the highest offices have taken over the trough at the expense not only of public safety, but of staff in general.

Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., asked Raymond why the Food Safety Inspection Service had paid nearly $500,000 in bonuses to Senior Executive Service employees last year when the agency ran short of money and cut some activities before asking Congress for additional money.

"It is incomprehensible to me how an agency that nearly went bankrupt in fiscal year 2006 and is cutting training for front-line inspectors gave out almost half a million dollars in bonuses to senior executives," DeLauro said. "This is money that could have been used for more training or for more inspectors, but however you look at it, it should have been spent for the public health."

Raymond said the bonus money was departmental and the agency could not reclaim it.

The corruption of America's government is mindnumbing, and played a large part in the 2006 voters' rejection of the Republics who have made this their major achievement. It is going to be crucial to keep them out of power. It is also going to take a long time to root out the corrupt officeholders in the various departments who have been brought in by the White House cabal.

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.

***********************************

"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.