Corporations have essentially won the war to reduce their taxes to zero.
Their next goal is to downgrade governmental regulations to the same endpoint.
The Dept of Agriculture has a mission to foster and the support production and distribution of food,
and so the U.S.D.A. puts that at a higher priority than regulating the quality of that food.
To wit:
NY Times
By RON NIXON
April 4, 2012
Plan to Let Poultry Plants Inspect Birds Is Criticized
Quote:
WASHINGTON — Federal food safety inspectors said a proposal by the Agriculture Department
o expand a pilot program that allows private companies to take over the inspections at poultry plants
could pose a health risk by allowing contaminated meat to reach customers.
<snip>
In affidavits given to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group
for government whistle-blowers, several inspectors who work at plants where the pilot program
is in place said the main problem is that they are removed from positions on the assembly line
and put at the end of the line, which makes it impossible for them to spot diseased birds.<snip>
The inspectors also said the Agriculture Department proposal allows poultry plants to speed up
their assembly lines to about 200 birds per minute from 140, hampering any effort to examine birds for defects.
“It’s tough enough when you are trying to examine 140 birds per minute with professional inspectors,”
said Stan Painter, a federal inspector in Crossville, Ala., a small town near Huntsville.
“This proposal makes it impossible.”
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And by coincidence, the following article appeared the same day...
NY Times
March 4, 2012
Arsenic in Our Chicken?
Quote:
Big Ag doesn’t advertise the chemicals it stuffs into animals,
so the scientists conducting these studies figured out a clever way to detect them.
Bird feathers, like human fingernails, accumulate chemicals and drugs
that an animal is exposed to.
So scientists from Johns Hopkins University and Arizona State University examined feather meal
— a poultry byproduct made of feathers.
One study, just published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, Environmental Science & Technology,
found that feather meal routinely contained a banned class of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones.
These antibiotics (such as Cipro), are illegal in poultry production because
they can breed antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” that harm humans.
Already, antibiotic-resistant infections kill more Americans annually than AIDS,
according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The same study also found that one-third of feather-meal samples contained
an antihistamine that is the active ingredient of Benadryl.
The great majority of feather meal contained acetaminophen,
the active ingredient in Tylenol.
And feather-meal samples from China contained an antidepressant that is the active ingredient in Prozac.
Poultry-growing literature has recommended Benadryl to reduce anxiety among chickens,
apparently because stressed chickens have tougher meat and grow more slowly.
Tylenol and Prozac presumably serve the same purpose.<snip>
The other peer-reviewed study, reported in a journal called Science of the Total Environment,
found arsenic in every sample of feather meal tested.
Almost 9 in 10 broiler chickens in the United States had been fed arsenic,
according to a 2011 industry estimate.
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