The Topsy-Turvy Logic of America’s Food Cops
September 17, 2013
Mass-produced CAFO food is becoming more dangerous than ever, yet US
authorities seem obsessed with destroying small farmers and distributors
of raw and organic foods.
The USDA has
ended a ban on Chinese chicken imports to the US by authorizing four
Chinese plants to process chickens that were slaughtered elsewhere.
There will be no USDA inspectors on hand at the plants to verify the
origin of the slaughtered chickens or to enforce US standards. There is
no labeling requirement, so consumers in the US will have no way to know
which chicken products were processed (that is, cooked) in China or what
their origins were.
China has a terrible track record for food safety. Bloomberg News
reports:
China has earned a reputation as one of the world’s worst food-safety
offenders. In just the last year, consumers have been confronted
with a
bird flu outbreak, news of sales of
46-year-old chicken feet, and reports of
poisonous fake mutton. These are not isolated incidents, but rather
the most spectacular instances of a
crisis that has become so severe that some consumers now
smuggle quantities of infant milk formula from foreign countries
into China.
Introducing unlabeled Chinese cooked chickens will just make a bad
situation in the US worse. We
reported in July that USDA has proposed new poultry regulations to
speed up line speeds and reduce the number of federal inspectors by 40%,
relying more on inspectors paid by the poultry producers, and in
particular allowing the use of more, stronger, and dangerous chemicals
to sanitize the filthy birds that have lived in overcrowded squalor.
The USDA now plans to roll out similar regulations for pork plants
nationwide, despite the fact that plants using the new system have
failed to stop the production of contaminated meat. Five US pork
plants have been using the new USDA program for a decade; three of the
five are among the worst offenders in the nation for health and safety
violations. Plants in Canada and Australia using the new program have
also been plagued with recalls and tainted meat.
Nor can you guarantee a safe meal by getting a steak instead of a pork
chop. Large numbers of cattle in the US are fed dangerous fattening
drugs that are banned in most other countries: beta-agonists, which can
put twenty to thirty-four pounds on cattle just prior to slaughter. Eli
Lilly sells Optaflexx and Merck sells Zilmax, which Merck claims is used
on 70% of the cattle slaughtered in the US.
Merck announced last month that it is suspending sales of
Zilmax while it conducts a new study of the effects on cattle. This
may be in response to the largest US meat processor, Tyson Foods,
announcing that it will no longer be buying any cattle fed Zilmax, due
to health problems. The most common problem is that cattle are rendered
unable to walk. As the Wall Street Journal reported, the drugs have
taken away one of the feed-lot operators’ key bargaining chips: the
ability to time when they send cattle to the packing plant to get the
best price. “Now, you only have so many days after an animal has been
fed [a beta-agonist] before it’s got to go to slaughter or it becomes so
lame it can’t move,” said a cattle producer in Colorado.
Ractopamine, the beta-agonist in Eli Lily’s Optaflexx, is banned in
Russia and China, so the US cannot export pork to either country, nor
beef to Russia. Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest hog farmer and
pork processor, has dedicated half of their slaughter capacity to
processing hogs that have never been fed ractopamine so they can meet
the demands of exporters.
Americans are eating meat that is increasingly contaminated and full of
drugs that have been banned in other countries. Meanwhile, US
authorities are more concerned about the so-called “dangers” posed by
raw milk and organic produce. A small organic farm in Texas was raided
last month by a SWAT team in search of marijuana plants, which they did
not find. In an armed raid that lasted ten hours and included aerial
surveillance by helicopters,
the police seized seventeen organic blackberry bushes, fifteen okra
plants, fourteen tomatillo plants, as well as native grasses and
sunflowers—after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a
half-hour! The only person arrested was someone on the property with
outstanding traffic violations.
We reported in August 2011 about the
armed raid of raw food co-op Rawesome Foods in Venice, California.
This was no small-town police action, but a joint raid by the Los
Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, the FDA, the Department of Agriculture,
and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Rawesome was charged
with selling unpasteurized dairy without a proper license, even though
Rawesome does not sell to the public but only acts as a distributor for
co-op owners, so no license is necessary. Despite there being no
evidence whatsoever of contamination, 800 gallons of raw organic milk
were poured down the drain, and $70,000 worth of raw organic food was
seized.
In Wisconsin, raw milk farmer Vernon Hershberger was raided and accused
of committing “dairy crimes”
for distributing raw organic milk to a small group of people who were
members of a private buying club (much like the Rawesome Foods co-op).
And you may recall our article last month about
the war on
small farmers. Small farms, and especially raw and organic farms,
produce the highest-quality food in America. Yet US authorities seem
intent on destroying them through regulation, paperwork, fees, and raids
while turning a blind eye on poor meat safety inspections and the
drugging of livestock with toxic pharmaceuticals.
http://www.anh-usa.org/topsy-turvy-logic-food-cops/
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