Harvard University Professor Dr. David Ludwig is under attack for his public call this week for some obese children to be taken from their parents to protect their health. Ludwig stated that “[i]n severe instances of childhood obesity, removal from the home may be justifiable, from a legal standpoint, because of imminent health risks and the parents’ chronic failure to address medical problems.” That legal standpoint may need a bit more work.
Ludwig is an obesity expert at Children’s Hospital Boston and associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. His comments came in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
First, in defense of Ludwig, he prefaced his statement by saying that such intervention would only be in severe cases. It is indeed possible for a child to be removed in a severe case where the child is in imminent risk of seriously injury or death due to either acts or omissions by the parents.
However, the statement rightfully raised concerns. There is growing evidence of genetic predispositions for obesity in some people. The parents may not be at fault in the continuing condition. Moreover, removing the child from the home will only increase stress for the child.
Parental rights are protected by the Constitution and, while child services are given a fair degree of discretion in the removal of children from homes to protect them, those decisions are subject to a full legal process. Most such removals are likely to fail under current legal standards absent a showing of imminent harm and a failure of the parents to follow medical advice. As a comparison, courts often express reluctance to order cancer treatments or medical interventions for a child when parents claim religious objections to treatment. The child is often at immediate risk when a court issues an order of removal or arrest.
The problem is that obesity is very common (unfortunately) among children today and they are all at some level of risk. An estimated 12.5 million children and teens (17% of that population) are obese.
Ludwig would need a case where the child is in immediate risk of heart failure of some of medical emergency. Such a status usually required hospitalization, not foster care. Moreover, experts in the article below question whether care would improve in foster care.
This was the case of 3-year-old Anamarie Regino who weighed 90 pounds and was removed from the home for two months. She did not show any improvement in foster care. She is now 14 years old and was raised by her parents.
Source: ABC News
http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/badmeat.asp
I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get me to take you any more seriously by calling me a moron when you’re the one who compared what school lunches serve to dog food.
The regulations for beef as set forth by the USDAMS are:
3. Ground Beef Requirements
a) Quality Control Program – The ground beef quality control program must be
documented within the contractor’s technical proposal and have received a
satisfactory onsite capability assessment by the ARC Branch.
b) Traceability – All ground beef must be traceable to the production lots and associated microbial test results for each lot of boneless beef and LFTB used in the production of that lot. [From: TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
SCHEDULE – GB – 2010 FOR USDA PURCHASES OF GROUND BEEF ITEMS,
FROZEN Effective: July 2010, emphasis added]
In other words, to be considered nutritional and suitable for the NSLP, beef must have gone through the grading process in a plant with approved sanitary practices. All of the beef must meet the specifications of USDA grading for human consumption, meaning the beef used must be classified as one of the quality grades (prime, choice, select, standard, commercial/standard, utility/canner). Yield grading really only applies to buying whole carcasses. If beef does not fit into one of these categories, then and only then is it graded “pet food only”. Because the nutritional guidelines call for using only inspected meats of suitable for human consumption, school lunches are not dog food quality meat unless someone is breaking the law.
@Shano
(source)
Shano, why do you hate the poor so much?
Moron, those are nutritional guidelines; not food safety regulations.
I also don’t take your assessments of effort seriously. The NSLP helps pay for school lunch programs. It sets rules stating that states who want to participate in the program must meet minimum standards for nutritional value. Nutritional standards have changed over the years and consequently, the USDA issued new nutritional standards to compensate for the new information.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ConsumerNews/usda-announce-school-lunch-guidelines/story?id=12603193
However, the menus are set at the local level and local level participation in funding varies.
That’s five, just so you don’t lose count.
@GeneH,
The standards are set by the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service for beef supplied to the National School Lunch Program.
Come on Gene,make an effort.
Roundup Ready wheat caused a 50% abortion rate in cattle at Purdue University.
The cause is a new pathogen seen on GMO crops, part virus-part fungus, that can only be seen under an electron microscope. A proffessor at Purdue has asked for an emergency funding to study this new pathogen.
We could be reducing fertility in the human population with our food system. They are testing and pulling out all GM crops in Hungary.
Wow! You can count!
There you go again making a false equivalence. School lunches are state run programs. I thought you want to talk food safety at the industrial level as regulated by the Federal government. You’re never going to get a ball in the end zone if you keep moving your goal posts.
Third time.
I’m thinking that I don’t take what you’re thinking seriously.
There goes that tell again.
They must have had some regulations to enforce or else they wouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I’m thinking they were like the regulations we have today which allows schools to sell meat normally fed to animals and that our fast food places refuse to sell to humans.
Lost? Oh no, not lost! You seem to think I take your assessment of winning and losing seriously too. I don’t though.
By the way, an inspector with no regulations to enforce is not really very effective. It was only after the regulations put in place by the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 that the BAI could put inspectors in the field with enforcement powers over said regulations (covering mandatory inspection of livestock before slaughter; mandatory postmortem inspection of every carcass; sanitary standards established for slaughterhouses and meat processing plants; and ongoing monitoring and inspection of slaughter and processing operations).
That’s GeneH’s tell.
Whenever he realizes he’s lost the debate, he states that “he doesn’t take anything we say seriously,” even though he was deadly serious just a minute before when he thought he had a full house and rushed to lay down his cards..
You two still seem to operate under the assumption that I take anything you say seriously.
interesting. Look beyond the story given by the liberal and you get to the actual truth.
I think Gene H is falling into the fallacy of Ignacious Loyola.
@GeneH, did you get past the first paragraph of my post? If you did, it is not evident in your comment.
Jstol,
If you have a problem with local inspections, that’s a local matter. Local restaurant inspections are a lot like local building inspections; better in some jurisdictions than others. In addition, your anecdotal evidence pales in comparison to the systemic abuses and bad practices the Neill-Reynolds report revealed.