I'm ready!
Posted on 05/20/2007 4:55:44 AM PDT by Flavius
WASHINGTON - Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.
These were among the 107 food imports from China the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.
For years, U.S. inspection records show, China has flooded the United States with foods unfit for human consumption. And for years, FDA inspectors have simply returned to Chinese importers the small portion of those products they caught - many of which turned up at U.S. borders again, making a second or third attempt at entry.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
I didn’t see socialism in toomuchcoffee’s post about having the government play a role in inspecting and labeling food. My point was that just as police, the military, and fire depts. are legitimate functions of govt., so too is lawfully setting basic hygiene and safety standards, and the ability to enforce these.
We’ren’t you calling such things socialism, agreeing w/tompaine? Apologies if I misunderstood.
>>>>We’ren’t you calling such things socialism, agreeing w/tompaine? Apologies if I misunderstood.
I’ve no idea what that said.
>>>My point was that just as police, the military, and fire depts. are legitimate functions of govt., so too is lawfully setting basic hygiene and safety standards, and the ability to enforce these.
The government isn’t lawfully doing the basics. Therefore they are creating an environment to expand. That environment is becoming jackboots to protect the commercial producers and squeezing out the homesteaders and small farms from producing with the NAIS and USDA restrictions. That is socialism.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1767314/posts
USDA’s Snooping Machine
> If you don’t want to grow it, make friends with someone at your farmer’s market. Too lazy for that? Make a contact at your local grocer? Too lazy for that? Petition your government to extort money from my paycheck to hire inspectors that neither you nor I know to put a label on certain foodstuffs because of spot/periodic/sampled inspections based on standards neither you nor I have agreed upon.......AH YES! Now you’ve got your ‘right.’
Yeah, you know what, why does that pesky govt. rob my wallet to pay for those damn socialist police? They sure don’t catch everybody, so they’re useless. Let’s all get off our lazy butts and hire mercenaries to keep the streets safe.
BTW, I do shop local and pay a premium to do so much of the time, avoid prepared foods when I can, and talk often with the grocers, who in turn talk to suppliers. At some point these folks don’t know where a lot of the food comes from ultimately, and there’s a level of frustration about the inability to find out due to the enormity of these supply systems and the coy caginess of food companies covering their butts. To attack this takes a large scale organization with the resources to move and act internationally. I wonder what kind of entity could fill that bill? Gee, I wonder.
It is not. How much taxpayer money should be wasted detecting grapefruit juice in juice labeled orange juice? How much taxpayer money should be spent regulating trans fats? Should they measure whether food was cooked in sunflower oil or sesame which is healthier uncooked but can burn when used for cooking? The bureaucrats you want to empower are excellent at splitting meaningless hairs while rubber stamping complete crap like the pet food.
The seller at a local farmers market is going to be shut down by the government gestapo long before any meaningful regulations of large food producers. I'll buy my canned goods from a guy I trust who did it himself, and I don't want to pay for your nanny govt to tell me that I can't. I suggest you subscribe to a private service that checks your food, or do some research yourself before you shop rather than force me to pay for your government bureaucrats
> The government isn’t lawfully doing the basics.
Agree with that. But they should be. This crisis should never have happened.
> Therefore they are creating an environment to expand. That environment is becoming jackboots to protect the commercial producers and squeezing out the homesteaders and small farms from producing with the NAIS and USDA restrictions. That is socialism.
Agree with this. The govt. agencies have been perverted to serve our enemies. Nevertheless, just as a corrupt police dept. does not invalidate the proper mission of a police force in upholding the law, so too a corrupt FDA does not invalidate its true mission of upholding standards of safe food.
>> It *is* a legitimate function of the government to set basic First World hygiene standards and mandate labeling for food and water so that we can know the truth about what we purchase, that it is represented accurately by the seller.
>It is not. How much taxpayer money should be wasted detecting grapefruit juice in juice labeled orange juice?
None. How about detecting pesticides in the OJ? That OK with you to enter the market without your knowledge? I guess if the govt. can’t do anything about food, nobody will detect it, because the OJ company with the unsafe factories in Mexico won’t tell you.
>How much taxpayer money should be spent regulating trans fats?
None. Gee, this is easy!
>Should they measure whether food was cooked in sunflower oil or sesame which is healthier uncooked but can burn when used for cooking?
None. Yawn.
>The bureaucrats you want to empower are excellent at splitting meaningless hairs while rubber stamping complete crap like the pet food.
Then the problem is not the mission, but with the crooks helming the agency.
Step one of socialism. Make people dependent on the government. Hence, forgetting how to do things yourself.
Step two, make it illegal to do things yourself.
Now that they got you, they can control you with it. Food.
The government created a problem. The government needs to expand to appear to fix the problem. The only thing they are fixing, from the 10,000 documents we have from the FOIA is making it illegal to grow and raise your own food.
>>>Then the problem is not the mission, but with the crooks helming the agency.
THAT is true.
The USDA use to be the farmer’s friend. Now, they are the enemy.
>>>How about detecting pesticides in the OJ?
Ironic isn’t. One of the biggest producers of those pesticides are the ones that have the USDA in their pocket.
http://www.flora.org/healthyottawa/HRSS-CHOsubmissionOct05.doc
Imidacloprid Facts – all about the grub-killer “Merit”
http://www.ocfp.on.ca/English/OCFP/Communications/CurrentIssues/Pesticides/default.asp
Ottawa College of Family Physicians.
Can we at least agree that technology like internet communication and cheap testers can at least take some of the power away from the government? Can we also agree that "crooks" or at least incompetents will helm every government agency eventually?
>>>Can we at least agree that technology like internet communication and cheap testers can at least take some of the power away from the government? Can we also agree that “crooks” or at least incompetents will helm every government agency eventually?
To prove that, my post 209, the Ottawa College of Family Physicians submitted their findings on the pesticide to the EPA. The EPA did a small test on rats to get inconclusive results. Enough to dismiss the findings of the Physicians reports.
There was a blatant statement made, that the flora.org link has about the EPA having concerns about lawsuits.
> The USDA use to be the farmer’s friend. Now, they are the enemy.
Agree. You’d think with our guys in place for 6 years we could have shaken up the agencies with the people interested in keeping out poisoned ChiCom and Mexican food. But it looks like they all were chasing the almighty buck and to hell with America and her people.
One big sellout, this whole immigration betrayal is part of it. Our only hope is to scream and fight like hell for what is ours.
The system is so big and has been broken for way too long. I think demolition and building anew is the only way to fix it.
> Can we at least agree that technology like internet communication and cheap testers can at least take some of the power away from the government? Can we also agree that “crooks” or at least incompetents will helm every government agency eventually?
Absolutely I agree. I don’t think our positions are too different.
> The system is so big and has been broken for way too long. I think demolition and building anew is the only way to fix it.
You may be right. Maybe this is the big silver lining from this horrible ChiCom poison food scandal. The FDA screwed up bigtime— what were they doing while all these poisons were flowing into our food supply? Shine the big glaring spotlight on them, and lets see the cockroaches try to run for cover.
I'm ready!
well ok, just realize the reality might be worse than you realize. For example the government did spend considerable amounts of money trying to detect grapefruit juice mixed into orange juice. I’m sure money was spent on detecting pesticides as well, but remember that once you allow yourself to eat foods grown or prepared overseas, then you have jumped off the proverbial cliff. There is no enforcement at the factory and government here, with all the testing in the world, can’t save you. But it will quickly shut down a local mom and pop if they don’t pay their inspection fee.
From Wellness Website:
~snip~
We do not purchase any of our ingredients from the supplier in China involved in the recalls. We source from three plants in ASIA, all of which our employees have personally visited in order to qualify them as Wellness vendors.
~snip~
We do not use wheat gluten in our products, and none of our products are made in the Menu Foods Emporia plant that is the main focus of the product recall.
~snip~
~Wellness responses to consumers:
WELLNESS states: :
“While we do have some of our products made at Menu Foods, we do not use the specific ingredient that has caused the recall to take place.”
~snip~
Cross contamination:
Menu Foods says it’s expanding the recall to include products that do not include ChemNutra wheat gluten, but were made at Menu Foods plants during the period the ingredient was used there.
Example of premium foods affected
(No china/asian swill here?):
Natural Balance
Blue Buffalo
Doctors Foster & Smith
Royal Canin
And on,
and on,
and on.
Be Safe Not Sorry.
I use that fancy food you are touting but am not going to be surprised when/if it is also “voluntarily” recalled.
> I’m sure money was spent on detecting pesticides as well, but remember that once you allow yourself to eat foods grown or prepared overseas, then you have jumped off the proverbial cliff.
Yes, and I would avoid foods from China and Mexico, if they are labelled. Many are not. Guess who has the power to make laws about labelling and make them stick?
To be safe I get the majority of my food from farmer’s markets (from farms I know are local and don’t supplement through Mexico), wild-caught fish, and locally raised poultry and meat (except for Bonn’s Buff’s (http://www.bonnsbuffs.com/) — great tasty lowfat buffalo meat ... Jeff’s a great guy and I love his product, especially with barbecue season coming up :)
Thanks for the ping sam_paine. Revisiting a very good thread...all 219 posts.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.