Latest food to avoid: pistachios

My my my... what's next? I'm running out of foods to avoid.

I wonder now - every time I shop - is this lettuce safe? How about the spinach... is it safe to buy it again? Should I simply avoid all non-local vegetables and shop at the local farmers market?

Is it OK to buy peanuts again? How about pet food? So corn syrup contains... mercury? Can I actually find any cough syrup that doesn't contain corn syrup?

And how much of this stuff presented to us as 'food' is being shipped in with little to no oversight from China? (Shudder.)

Thanks guys. You -- yes, I'm looking at you, FDA. We once - once - had one of the safest food distribution systems in the world.

No more.

But obviously the GOP is right... quite obviously government oversight is bad. (For corporate greed.) Good thing they got rid of nearly all of it under the eight years of the Bush Administration. I'm sure we all needed a little more lead and mercury in our diets anyway -- it will create an even larger and more bloated market for all of those big Pharma drugs, as one by one we all get sick.

Do I sound cynical? Oh I'm not the only one.

Killing us softly, Pt. 2

Breaking news from PetConnection blogger, Christie Keith, out on Daily Kos. And here I thought I was actually on top of this FDA, melamine, poisoned food, deadly drug, Chinese tainted disaster. Not hardly. They're way, way ahead of me.

It would seem that the FDA today announced that Tembec, an Ohio-based company, has been adding melamine and related compounds to an ingredient used to make fish, shrimp, cattle, sheep, and goat feed.

Yes, this is an AMERICAN company adding melamine to animal feed. Seriously! Apparently this feed has have been sold internationally as well as domestically. So now other countries will be forced to recall American food.

Feeling proud? You betcha.

And we truly think our corporations are any less creepy than the Chinese? Hey - the Chinese actually sentenced the head of their FDA to death. We can't even impeach... oh never mind.

I'll let Christie Keith tell you about the strange media blackout that followed:

Wed May 30, 2007 at 06:46:33 PM EDT


On May 22, the FDA suspended its until-then twice-weekly media conferences on the melamine contamination investigation, saying there was nothing new to report and they’d let us know when there was.

The night before they suspended the media conferences because there was nothing new to report, UC Davis had found melamine in a previously unrecalled pet food. FDA did subsequently issue a recall notice for this food, although they had not at the time they canceled the media conferences.

On the very day they canceled the media conferences because there was nothing new to report, a news story broke that the FDA’s own labs found melamine in catfish submitted by the state of Arkansas for testing, which was meant for human consumption. That catfish had been imported from China.

This was the first time melamine was detected in food meant for human consumption, but there still has been almost zero coverage of this in the mainstream media. Would there have been if the media conferences hadn’t been canceled?

Still wonder who the media is really working for? Democracy? Oversight? Anyone?

Christie Keith continues:

Now we find out that four days before canceling the ongoing press conferences because there was nothing new to report, on May 18, FDA learned that a US company had been adding melamine to its binding agent, which is used to make commercial fish and shrimp feed as well as livestock feed for cattle, goats, and sheep — not only in the US, but we’ve been exporting this stuff.

Some of the reporters at the media conference sounded pretty aggravated -- I especially liked the guy from the Washington Times who kept pushing for "FDA food safety czar" David Acheson to share how he felt, really felt, about the food safety official in China who just got the death penalty, and ABC News' David Kerley was absolutely relentless with his questions -- but I still want to know, where the hell has the legacy media been since the press conferences got canceled?

Not only have we been reporting these things on PetConnection -- a freaking PET BLOG, albeit one run by nationally syndicated columnists who are actual reporters, but still -- but I posted about the catfish here on DKos last Tuesday. David Goldstein has been posting about this on horsesass.org, too. It's not like there isn't a story here. It's not like the media doesn't have this story. But literally overnight, the minute FDA stops holding press conferences, it all just stopped.

Of course it stopped. My God, imagine if this one got out. Americans might (gulp) stop trusting their Bushie government...

Beam me up Scottie. This is getting beyond belief.

Killing us softly

Wonder why people are suddenly starting to get sick from the food? I mean, isn't the FDA supposed to be protecting us?

Well it used to be that way... before Bush stuffed the agency full of necon cronies bent on undermining any 'oversight' of business interests. Better get used to it... this is the 'Reagan way.'

On June 6, 2007, Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will haul in Andrew von Eschenbach to testify on why the FDA failed to warn Americans of the extreme cardiovascular danger and increased risk of death from taking Avandia, a $3 billion-a-year blockbuster diabetes drug made by GlaxoSmithKline. Statistics that were primarily obtained from GlaxoSmithKline's own research data predict that 35,000 people needlessly died taking Avandia last year and the FDA was fully aware of the risks and chose to ignore them.

Who is Andrew von Eschenbach?

Andrew von Eschenbach has never hidden his agenda; it is more an issue that people simply aren't paying attention. The top priority of the FDA is now the von Eschenbach dream, which is to bring new biotech drugs to the market with far less safety or effectiveness testing and then conduct experiments on individuals as the drugs are used in clinical practice. This effort is called the Critical Path Initiative and it will take a giant step forward should the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA come into existence as proposed in Senate bill S.1082. Von Eschenbach has stated that this is the very top priority of the FDA for many years to come (not food or drug safety).

Here is a really freaky story. Hamburger, anyone?

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

Nice, huh? There's more...

A contact-lens solution made by Santa Ana-based Advanced Medical Optics Inc. has been linked to a serious eye infection that can lead to blindness, the Wall Street Journal reported on its website Friday.

And how about this one:

Toxic fish bought at North Side shop:
Chicago Tribune

The frozen fish consumed by a Chicago couple containing a potent toxin found in puffer fish was purchased at a North Side Asian grocery, officials said Friday.

Officials declined to name the store that sold the fish. The California-based distributor announced a recall Thursday of thousands of pounds of fish.

The fish, imported from China, was labeled monkfish, but the Food and Drug Administration found life-threatening levels of tetrodotoxin, a substance found in puffer fish that can cause paralysis or death.

Who loves ya baby?

The Bush Administration and their 'new and improved' FDA, that's who. All business, all profits, all the time.

Go go capitalism! God bless America!

(Just don't eat the food...)

Happens every day

We may have won the Cold War, but we're sure as hell losing the trade war.

It appears that tainted food imports from China are actually quite common. As in, it happens all the time.

Who knew? Heh - you can bet the FDA knew, they just didn't bother to tell the sucker American consumers.

Feel safe?

Seriously -- we're supposed to be afraid of isolated terrorist attacks, while every day, American businesses are importing poisoned ingredients from Chinese food suppliers and lacing them indiscriminately throughout our food chain?

I think its high time we picked a new definition of 'terrorism.'

It would seem that our economy is now so dependent on these Chinese imports that we can't do anything about this problem. According to Carol Tucker Foreman, a former assistant secretary of agriculture:

"Our farmers and food processors have drooled for years to be able to sell their food to that massive market," Foreman said. "The Chinese counterfeit. They have a serious piracy problem. But we put up with it because we want to sell to them."

At first glance, it seems rather odd that our government has forgotten that they are dealing with a communist nation governed by brutal dictators: guys that have basically wanted us dead, for generations. How shocking -- they're cheating us! (You should see what they did to Tibet.)

I have nothing at all against Chinese people. I do have some issues with their government.

Once upon a time, we actually disliked communism. Remember all of those foreign wars (via other countries -- Korea, Vietnam?) Most living Americans over the age of 30 were raised to believe that communists can't be trusted to have the same ethics that we do. That communism was bad. Evil, even.

Then someone figured out that we could make a whole lot of money by trading with them. Voila! Suddenly the Cold War was over, and communism was OK! (Well, except for Cuba of course.)

Turns out that our government was right in one respect: the Chinese really aren't any less ethical than our own corporations. Either side will happily sell us out for a yen.

Too bad our government didn't think of this 'trade thing' before all of those people died in the Vietnam war. I guess we were 'fighting them over there, so we wouldn't have to fight them over here.'

Now we're fighting them here - and they're poisoning us, apparently without remorse. This may not be as dramatic as flying airplanes into the World Trade Towers, but nevertheless quite effective. Ask any pet owner if they feel 'terrorized' right now. And we're even paying them to do it to us.

Tainted Chinese Imports Common
In Four Months, FDA Refused 298 Shipments

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007; A01

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 that 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.

Nice of our FDA to tell us about all of this, don't you think? And now we find out that this has been going on for years.

Should we be wondering if there is asbestos in our styrofoam pots, and cyanide in baby teething rings? My God - nearly everything we buy now is made in China. Just how poisoned are we?