Monday, May 07, 2007

20 Million Chickens Coming Home to Roast (Not counting the ones in the USDA)

USDA clears 20 mln chickens that ate pet food
Mon May 7, 2007 5:22PM BST


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Farmers will be allowed to sell 20 million chickens that were being held on farms that may have received feed contaminated with the chemical melamine, suspected in a rash of pet deaths, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Monday.

(link)

That list of tough questions below to ask the USDA and FDA? Never mind. I guess we can all go back to sleep.

And I'm really sure that the number one concern of the USDA was the health of the public. I'm looking forward to the questions from the press "Could you please tell us what role the poultry industry had in your decision making process?"

h/t to Radioactive Man for the headline.

5 Comments:

Granny Miller said...

What chickens have been fed is the least of the American consumer's worries.
It’s the beef that should be sounding the alarms.
The USDA refuses to allow BSE testing on American cattle, and Canada has just last week confirmed the 12th case of BSE in a native cow. That would be the 3rd or 4th generation AFTER the feed ban..
But not to worry.
What you don’t know can’t hurt you.....right?

4:28 PM  
Mr. said...

Granny Miller. I hear you. I remember when the first announcement was made and we found out that they "misstated the age of the cow in questions"
aka lied.

Then I saw how the processing plant in Nebraska that was producing for Japan was told that they COULD NOT test their own food for BSE! They had to go with what the rules were for the rest of the country (didn't want to make the rest of the country look bad don't cha know).
That just really pissed me off. Not only did they decided that more testing was not a good thing, they punished the company that was going to do it!

How many millions of dollars did that cost us in lost sales to Japan? Why? Because they didn't want to pay more for a simple test that would point out that all the other cows WEREN'T getting tested!

7:03 PM  
Rich said...

I think the point isn't just chicken or cow, but how these issues show the weakness in the entire system of industrial agriculture.

9:40 PM  
Rich said...

I missed this one about cough syrup:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/world/americas/06poison.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

'Last week, the United States FDA warned drug makers and suppliers in the United States “to be especially vigilant” in watching for diethylene glycol. The warning did not specifically mention China, and it said there was “no reason to believe” that glycerin in this country was tainted. Even so, the agency asked that all glycerin shipments be tested for diethylene glycol, and said it was “exploring how supplies of glycerin become contaminated.”

China is already being accused by United States authorities of exporting wheat gluten containing an industrial chemical, melamine, that ended up in pet food and livestock feed. The F.D.A. recently banned imports of Chinese-made wheat gluten after it was linked to pet deaths in the United States.

Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India...In Chinese, tidai means substitute. A clue that might have revealed the poison, the counterfeit product, was hiding in plain sight.'

6:13 PM  
Rich said...

And yes this whole pet food thing proves that we (the Senate on Friday's vote on FDA rules) can't allow cheap drugs into the US from Canada:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/washington/08drug.html?_r=1&ref=washington&oref=slogin

6:21 PM  

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