Our World and Everything in It

After all the problems we’ve had with tainted imports from China, the FDA planned to outsource some 322 jobs and shut down 7 of 13 field labs. What is wrong with this picture? This administration’s rush to privatize just about everything in the country is becoming more blatant.

If it weren’t for the National Treasury Employee’s Union that covers the FDA employees, the labs would be shut down right now, at a time when we should have more field labs to ensure imports are safe. That’s what Reps. Dingell and Stupak think also. They sent a letter to the FDA Friday questioning the outsourcing of so many jobs. Both Dingell and Stupak are quoted as saying, ” “It is truly incomprehensible why the agency would again consider reducing the expertise and institutional knowledge of the FDA at a time when FDA’s credibility with the American people is at an all-time low.” Evidently, the FDA doesn’t care what we think.

There is an Import Safety Working Group in place as of last month. Dingell and Stupak called the FDA’s move to outsource the FDA jobs without recommendations from the Import Safety Group, “hasty and injudicious.” That’s being kind. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of connection left between the American public and many of our Federal bureaus. They simply do not care what we think in lieu of privatization everywhere. Privatization is a nice word for the wealthy taking over. Somewhere in my earlier blogs, I said the wealthy have already done that. They just aren’t wearing their gold crowns yet. I plan to blog on the state of this move to privatize everything in the country soon. There is a huge article in Rolling Stone about it, I haven’t read yet and will certainly pass along.

Meanwhile, it is good that union forces that are supposedly breaking America, saw to it that the labs didn’t close. And Reps. Dingell and Stupak are a good pair for being quick with the questions and investigations. This is just another in a string of federal agencies that appear to be inept and out of touch with middle class America. The EPA is a joke with over 400 environmental laws loosened or lost altogether during the past 7 years.  FEMA is questionable, and now the FDA tried to pull a fast one in light of all the bad imports. It looks to me like we need a whole lot more whistleblowers among government workers. We think China is awful and untrustworthy, but it looks like we can no longer have faith in the U.S. agencies that exist for our well-being.

A brand new ethanol plant opened today in Adrian that will produce 100 million gallons annually. Sounds good, right? Not really. Although ethanol may be a quick fix for a percentage of our oil use, it is a program that falls pitifully short and is even dangerous. Think about this. Right now we only produce ethanol equal to 3.5 percent of what we consume in gasoline. This little bit of ethanol production is using up 20 percent of our entire corn crop in the states already. We will never be able to produce enough ethanol! The price of corn has already doubled. On top of that Third World countries are going to face starvation for sure if corn becomes our new oil. If we proceed with this massive corn production, where is the land needed for other crops? We’ve had massive fires across 11 states, devastating more than just forested areas. Our urban sprawl went unchecked for almost a decade. Now we have thousands of homes across the country in those newly sprouted subdivisions standing empty in foreclosure. Many of those subdivisions were once farmland.   And now no one wants to eat Chinese imported food and are paying attention to what they eat and where it comes from. I see a big mess over our food in the near future. I’m already buying new canning utensils and our garden will probably get bigger next year. It may get down to feed yourself if you want safe food, because the U.S. simply does not have the landmass to produce food staples and all this bio-fuel. Even if we could produce our own food, if the heat waves continue to get worse, our fields will simply fry. Then what?  Who is in charge of this fiasco? Congress, specifically the Senate, who just recently mandated we produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. This is frightening. Someone do the math. This does not solve the energy crisis by any means. The government is paying out $51 billion in subsidies for corn, which amounts to $1.38 per gallon, almost half of ethanol’s wholesale market price. This is very bad business sense. Ethanol is nothing but 180 proof pure grain alcohol that is denatured so we can’t get drunk on it. Other things than corn, like sugar cane and switch grass, can make pure grain alcohol also. Cars can’t run on the stuff in its pure form so what we get at the pumps is E85, 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. An article in Rolling Stone further said that the density of ethanol is 1/3 less than gasoline, so there is less bang for a tank full of ethanol. Cars will certainly burn more ethanol than gas to go as fast. We will never be able to produce enough ethanol. The article went on to say that ethanol is not all equal. Brazil is already ahead of the U.S. on ethanol production because they use sugar cane which puts out higher energy levels than the amount of fossil fuel used to grow, irrigate, fertilize, transport and refine it. Brazil’s sugar cane ethanol is 8 to 1, energy output versus energy used. It is better than gasoline at 5 to 1. Know what corn’s output to input is–1.3 to 1 or even 1 to 1. that renders it useless because we are using as much energy or fossil fuels (gas, oil, coal) to produce the stuff! So we have ethanol barons rising out of a foreign country to outperform us as the rich Arabs do with their oil. We’re not winning this race for ethanol already. There is a major company, every bit as greedy as big oil, pushing this stupid, stupid, costly move—Archer Daniels Midland, the agribusiness giant. Read more about this misleading mess at: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethanol_scam_ethanol_hurts_the_environment_and_is_one_of_americas_biggest_political_boondoggles. It seems every time we turn around, there is a huge conglomerate pushing their weight around to the demise of the middle class citizens of the U.S. Lately we’ve been duped about the food we eat, and the goods we buy. It doesn’t seem that anyone is really looking out for us anymore.  And no one seems to be looking out for the number one thing we need first and foremost, our environment, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat. Without any of those things, the economy is of no consequence. We’ll be busy scrounging for food and water instead of a job.

When we think of the Olympics, we think about human beings exerting their best performance humanly possible in a given sport. In order for the athletes to perform to their best ability, their bodies must be at their strongest, and therefore, healthiest. The two things just go together. So is China a healthy example to be holding the Olympics in Beijing? China likes to put on a facade. They like to present themselves as strong, modern, but it’s the same old communist regime. The change in China’s behavior toward the environment has shown no significant improvement despite the environmentalists that were displayed in a documentary I watched. 

The documentary was 90 minutes of eye-opener. China’s lakes, streams, and rivers are all polluted. The air quality is so poor, some Chinese wear facemasks on the streets. The Chinese have stripped the land bare of trees in many places, so the ground is scorching at a faster rate. The Gobi desert is 100 miles outside the city of Beijing and encroaching.  Beijing is the 16^th most polluted city on earth, city not country. To rank 16^th among that many cities is bad. I’m curious. Who is number one?

CNN reported last night that China is having a heck of a time cleaning up for the Olympics. The outdoor arena where some of the events take place has very poor air quality. Some of the worst air in the city is nearby. According to the World Bank 400,000 people die each year because of the air. The bad air near where the athletes will compete may cause some of the events to be canceled because of poor air quality. There is fear that so many steroids in the food may trigger poor responses for athletes and drug testing. Everyone going to China is warned not to drink the tap water.

China is hardly the model of health and purity, which is a significant part of any athlete’s regime. It is a communist regime that has also decimated a peaceful Tibet, advanced on Taiwan again, exported food and merchandise that is harmful to human beings, and warned us more than a few times “Do not interfere.” The latest warning over not accepting their exported goods is to ruin us economically. They hold $407 billion in U.S. bonds and threaten to dump them if we stop importing their stuff. Isn’t that extortion? We should never have become indebted to a communist regime country. There are over a billion Chinese people. They are dying from their environment. How long will they stay in place? Think about it. If you’re forced to move somewhere, and someone owes you big time, of course you’re  moving near that someone, or in on that someone.  

The Bush Administration wants to allow even more food imports from China, specifically chicken. They are working on a proposal to allow chickens raised, slaughtered, and cooked in China to be sold in the United States. There is a loophole in regulations and store labels do not have to indicate where the poultry is produced. Nice huh?

It seems like every time we turn around our illustrious president enacts the opposite of good judgment. After all the pet food scares, and tainted fish from China, one would expect our leadership to enact regulations to protect the citizens of our country. But the opposite happens more than not. Why is it we do business with the tyrannical communist Chinese, but embargo communist Cuba? Is there a distinction? I would like to know what it is. Both are purported to be the enemies of freedom. Isn’t this a slap in the face to all the thousands of soldiers that did battle against the spread of communism in years past? Now we court them.

If we learned anything from the Godfather trilogy it is to keep our enemies close, but for Pete’s sake don’t eat their food. The people are fine. It’s the government. They are oppressive, torturous, cold-blooded killers. We hear very little of what they’ve done to Tibet. The real and new Dalai Lama, who is a little boy, disappeared long ago. No one knows his whereabouts. The ruthless Chinese regime has replaced him with one of their own as a facade. They have replaced many of the Tibetan monks with their own and brandish them in public as if no one knows there lie.  If I related what they have done to the many monks and nuns of that peaceful religion you would think I was relating stories from the 1950’s, when communism was known for what it really is, a ruthless regime of murderous torturers without conscience.

Talk about crimes against humanity. We invade Iraq against the cold-blooded Hussein regime, and make buddies out of communist China. The paper recently had an article on the United States of China. We’ve borrowed way too much money from this enemy; something else Michael Corleone would not do.  

China has marched on Tibet, and has already begun to ruin what was once the most pristine part of the world, protected for centuries by a peaceful Buddhist community at the top of the world. China has polluted its own environment beyond quick repair and has realized the potential to tap the resources in the Himalayan Mountains. Our news media documented a new train, a real marvel of engineering that the Chinese have built to the top of Tibet. This area used to take so much trouble to get to; it remained a sacred, clean, untouched area for centuries. No more. Hoards of tourists are going up there now, polluting an ecosystem that is every bit as important to our world as the Amazon jungle.

China also tried to march on Taiwan again recently. Something that never made the news but our military knew about it and stationed ships in the China Sea. I’ve heard and remember the answer communist China has given to our government more than once regarding their interest in the oil fields in Iran, their move on Taiwan, and their destruction of Tibet: “Do not interfere.” Is this a warning of what’s to come in the future?

In the light of becoming more and more indebted to this merciless enemy, and doing more and more business with them, I urge anyone reading this to read the whole story of China’s persecution of Tibet called “The End of Tibet” at:

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/13247913/the_end_of_tibet.

Pass the story along to everybody and anybody. We have got to stop our increasingly disturbing close relationship with this brutal regime. And the only way our big business and government is going to do that is if we raise cane about it, above everything else. You think we have a problem with terrorism, wait until this sleeping giant really wakes up. Our relations with China have gotten way out of hand, way too fast.

All the ruckus over Chinese imports, especially food, may have caused many of our own food producers to rush to change their packaging to assure the American public that American food is fine. I got a kick out of the packaging on some popular American brands of chicken at the grocery store today. They assure 100% chicken with no antibiotics or additives in big bold letters on the packaging.

Does that mean there were antibiotics and additives in their before? Or is our food industry worried that now that we’re nosey and picky about imports we might be looking over everything with a discerning eye. Like I said, I’ve quit eating pigs and cows until they roam the farm or range as free spirits again, er um, if we have any ranges left. Eleven states are burning now. Up two more states since the last time I blogged about fires.

But chicken and turkey what about them? I’ll tell you, they live horribly in deplorable conditions until they are killed and brought to the store all packaged up with labels assuring us they are without antibiotics or additives. No antibiotics in the conditions I’m going to explain is a little frightening quite frankly. A good dose might go a long way to staving off what might be ailing the poultry we eat after they live their short lives in hell.

Here’s a little excerpt and the website where a lone writer ventured to see for himself what a typical industrial sized chicken farm is like. Brace yourself. It’s not all that much better than the Smithfield Foods expose another reporter from Rolling Stone researched that I blogged about as ” Pig Poo Who Knew?” Michael Specter of the New Yorker said:

‘I was almost knocked to the ground by the overpowering smell of feces and ammonia. My eyes burned and so did my lungs, and I could neither see nor breathe…. There must have been thirty thousand chickens sitting silently on the floor in front of me. They didn’t move, didn’t cluck. They were almost like statues of chickens, living in nearly total darkness, and they would spend every minute of their six-week lives that way.’

Lovely huh? I have to thank China for bringing curiosity about the food we eat to millions of Americans—finally.  Pay attention. Boycott if you feel the need. It would go a long way as a wake up call to the meat packing business in this country. I’ve pretty much gone vegetarian and it doesn’t bother me a bit. My grocery bill is cheaper too. And whenever there is a recall on any meat, I don’t have to sweat. I don’t eat any of it.
 
The FDA only has the capacity to inspect 1% of all our imports. And their funding has been cut, the war you know. So where does that leave them with our food? Specter reported about 30,000 chickens in one spot. You honestly think we have enough FDA to inspect all our farms and do it well?
 
We need some big reforms in this country. Chinese tainted food imports are just the start. The last largest 3 recalls were all home produced meat folks, not imports. Get informed. Contact your reps. Some things gotta change. Myself, I’m having Morning Star Farms Prime Grillers for burgers these days. They’re tasty, and it didn’t require that a living thing suffer in hell before the slaughter. Until chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows are allowed a normal life on a farm again where they have a pen, a pasture, are allowed to bear young in livable conditions, and eat normal food, they won’t be on my plate. For more info on chicken farming: http://www.chickenindustry.com/. 

Canadian officials announced today that health risks for eating Great Lakes fish are increasing. I have two stories relative to this. First of all, walleye and perch are delicious, and a great natural resource for Michigan. The health risks are associated with what the fish eat, passed onto us when we eat the fish. It’s all a big chain you know. Ever wonder why vegetables are suddenly important enough to be included in dog and cat food? They are both known carnivores (meat eaters). Well when a wild dog or cat eats a bunny, it automatically gets the veggies the bunny ate. So even wild dogs and cats get their veggies one way or another. The fish are getting whatever is being discharged or accumulated in our Great Lakes that are supposed to be clean according to the fish flies. Baloney. I think those fish flies are adapting to pollution.

Anyway, way back in the 80’s, I worked with someone who was an avid fisherman who liked to fish Lake Michigan. His wife did not like to cook, so there was a lot of grilling going on. He grilled all kinds of Great Lakes fish and ate it about 4 times a week. I didn’t pay much attention when he started have digestion problems and had an upper GI looking for the culprit. Nothing turned up, but the stomach or intestinal problem continued. I saw an article about eating lake fish and how it should be limited because of mercury and other pollution. So I asked him how many times a week he was eating salmon he caught? When he lifted his head, I could see the lightbulb go on. Was it the fish? He cut out eating Lake Michigan fish for awhile and the symptoms subsided.

Next story, is about a family that lived along the shores of Lake Erie. The father enjoyed hunting, and fishing and the family ate all kinds of wild things, particularly a lot of walleye, and perch. The daughters grew up to have children that all suffer some form of autism an/or unusual chronic health problems. The daughters cannot find any other unifying factor outside of genetics, that may be the culprit, other than eating a lot of fish while growing up. Doctors doubt the genetic factor because the diseases are not the same except for autism.

This is not about the fish being delicious or the fishing industry taking a hit. It’s flat out about pollution. We surely don’t want a legacy of lakes full of fish that are unedible. The Great Lakes Legacy Act was established to help maintain the clean quality of our lakes but is it too late? Some people have eaten the fish for years with no problems, but then again how many times a week? Eating fish every Friday doesn’t seem to pose a problem. Eating it everyday may be another story. I live on the lake and don’t eat any of it. I’d like to have a pond and raise my own quite frankly.

Environmentalism is taking a bit hit in Congress in Michigan right now. I don’t think we can afford to do that do you? As good citizens we have a big responsibility keeping the freshwater “fresh” for many years to come.

“Fast Food Nation” may not be a Michael Moore documentary, but it is a movie about some timely topics like why more and more of our food is showing up tainted with E Coli. It covers quite a few subjects, many of which I’ve already written about. I witnessed a lot of true facts in this star studded movie about eminent domain, migrant workers, industrialized farms, and greed in exchange for our healthy food supply. Oh, and yes a lot of mention about the machine that’s at work in this current, less than ethical, administration of ours that is at the core of much that is wrong today.

 Watch it. It is poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes disgusting, but done well and worth seeing. For a public that’s always whining about not getting the truth, this is in your face with it. Just be prepared.

Our state congress has the subject of CAFO’s or Confined Animal Feeding Operations before them right now. If this means nothing to you, let me say “tainted food,” “tainted water,” “tainted property.” It has become apparent with all the beef recalls and tainted vegetable crops like spinach and lettuce last year that there is a breakdown in our food system from farm to table. Much of it has to do with handling possibly, but tainted food may begin right at the farm.

Confined Animal Feeding Operations should be confined to those things that are detrimental to our health. They exist as monopolies that have figured out how to mass-produce the largest amount of meat and dairy they possibly can, putting small farms out of business. Their environmental pollution is extreme. CAFO’s utilize “open air” lagoons the size of a lake filled with animal waste, afterbirth, slaughterhouse residue, and blood. I want to know who let them operate here in Michigan in the first place?

These farms number in the hundreds throughout central Michigan as if location is going to keep the overflow of this pollution out of all the tributaries running through our state. Heck a leaching ditch from one of these disgusting farms is enough to cause problems. CAFO lagoons in West Virginia breached into a subsidiary river and fish were dead and floating in minutes. That’s been documented with pictures. Stacks of dead pig carcasses were also showcased. Lovely.

Imagine living near these places? Which is another problem that hundreds of citizens in Michigan live with daily. Flies, smell, and polluted land are a small part of it. They’ve lost what most Americans consider their biggest investment, which is their home or small farm. Who is going to buy their house and inherit those lovely surroundings? This is just some of the protests from environmental groups standing up for you, for Michigan citizens, and Michigan’s freshwater right now in our state congress.

For once don’t toss this off like someone else will take care of it. There is an opportune moment here for you to make a real difference. The groups that are standing there in Lansing for you and me need e-mails, many, many e-mails to our local representatives that simply say we support what they are doing for Michigan. End CAFO’s here through force of numbers and bring back our small farms, the safety of our food and water, property values for Michigan citizens, and humane involvement with other living things.     

Aha, another beef recall and this one originated in Michigan. The Michigan Department of Community Health was doing a routine investigation and found the E. coli. Davis Meats and Seafood out of Kalamazoo shipped the meat to Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia. It’s not the largest recall, however, at 130,000 lbs. There were bigger recalls by other meat packers before this and quite often. I was a little amazed.
 
The USDA recalled 1.1 million pounds of ground beef in 2000 for E-coli contamination. Anyone wondering how some beef gets contaminated in the first place? In this instance, the USDA claimed cows were eating the feces of other cows and thus making them sick with E. Coli. That following year it happened again. In 2001, 280 pounds of fresh ground beef possibly contaminated with E. coli were recalled. In 2002, approximately 63,000 pounds of ground beef products may have been contaminated with E. Coli. Cows eating other cow’s feces must be happening in very close quarters. If cows were in a pasture grazing, it’s doubtful that this would occur. Lock thousands of food animals together (CAFO’s) in one huge barn and the poor animals have no choice. When they can’t move or turn around and food and excrement get mixed together what do suppose happens? Add the fact that most of these places are surrounded by open air lagoons filled with waste, blood, bacteria and who knows what, it’s no wonder contaminated meat products keep popping up.
 
Another problem is that we have many, many agencies that check on our food, but none that trace it all the way from the farm to our table. These agencies are not integrated. Plus, as quoted in a speech from a group called SafeTables, “Most Americans are shocked to learn that all food recalls are voluntary and that the agency charged with that food product’s oversight does not have authority to force a recall, even when scientific testing conclusively establishes the presence of deadly bacteria in food that is on its way to our kitchens. Our government can only ‘request’ a recall, while food producers retain the right ‘to refuse to comply.’” Read more of this speech and what they propose are the 4 cornerstones for food safety at:
http://www.safetables.org/Policy_&_Outreach/Speeches/speech_barb_kowalcyk_pc_9_2004.html.
 
Please remind yourselves the meat we eat was once an animal. Most households in America have more than one animal per house. How is that animal any different than any other, because you love it? Try to care about all living things. If you have no empathy for living creatures than at least do something about the food you and your children eat. Start e-mailing and calling our representatives first about overhauling our food checking system to one that is integrated, so that someone is responsible from farm to table for our food. This will probably cut a lot of needless expense and mistakes. Secondly, call about the new Farm Bill that’s in front of congress right now or conditions for the animals are not going to improve. The Farm Bill needs to support farmers for being good stewards of their land and to practice ethical and humane farming habits. The number one thing to state emphatically to our politicians is to end industrialized farming once and for all. It’s time to bring the small farmer back. It will take a huge effort to do so, but our lives are at stake, or um should I say steak.

So there is a beef and seafood recall in Michigan and everyone is up in arms about imported food from China. Their catfish is full of antibiotics. This is laughable because ours is full of PCB’s from its food source. That was on the news years ago. I know. I love farm raised catfish and remember well my options: farm raised equal PCB’s, ocean caught equals mercury. Now I have a third choice. With China’s catfish I get antibiotics. I guess our concern is what quantity of harmful substance is in our food. Is this not a pitiful situation? It never occurs to anyone that these things shouldn’t be there at all? I’m waiting for a national expose on our industrialized farms. I feel like a hypocrite so many times when I watch the media get in a dither over substandard imports while ignoring our own shortcomings. We’re throwing stones a lot lately.

As far as China’s use of antibiotics, our industrial farm raised meat is full of it along with hormones. You don’t honestly think a baby cow or pig ripped from their mother as soon as possible and confined for the rest of their life in a bin where they can’t turn around or scratch themselves, while standing above fumes from the cesspools below where all the droppings, afterbirth, babies that have fallen through the slats, and pesticides that have doused the animals are drawn upward by large exhaust fans, isn’t sick? Heck, they are traumatized and many are barely alive before they become our food. They have to be shot up with antibiotics in this environment. And we think Korean’s are barbaric for traumatizing dogs as meat before eating them. We do it all the time.

Our poor food animals chew on the metal of their bins out of frustration. This is a hell we allow animals to live in; the same lovely farmyard animals we like to introduce our kids to on petting farms. If those kids only knew the hell sweet little “Charlotte the Pig” endured before being slaughtered … This is not right. It’s very hypocritical especially when on the other end of the media it’s been reported that pigs are up on the intelligence scale with dolphins and elephants. They are beyond the intelligence of the Korean dog evidently but are next weeks sickly pork chops anyway. But then again we shouldn’t expect much, we don’t treat each other well either, another whole spectrum of hypocrisy.

If you think, I’ll just eat chicken and turkey; think again. Poultry doesn’t fare any better. Many birds are crammed into one little cage, where they can’t stand or spread their wings, and peck each other horribly out of sheer frustration. The cages above pollute the cages below. The visions we have of farms where animals are in a yard, a pen, or pasture to roam have all but disappeared. The petting farm is a facade of what America’s farms used to be. It will take a monumental movement by people to stop the way our food is raised or should I say tortured to death. Industrialized farming is so wide spread the idea of reversing it is daunting. We’ve used up quite a lot of farmland at a rapid rate with urban sprawl and congress of late has decided bio fuel should be the front-runner for alternatives to gasoline. So available land will go to corn and we will deal with imports.

Pay attention to the new Farm Bill. Call our congress people often. The movement for change must start somewhere. Congress is presently involved with this bill so it will be a timely e-mail or phone call if you do so now. Act out, for a change or nothing will improve. The farming conditions we have in this country are deplorable, immoral against living things, harmful to our environment and us, and shameful for this nation.