With the continuing stories of contaminated or mislabeled food coming from China, many people have actively sought to avoid Chinese products. The United States Department of Agriculture (long the enemy of the consumer and friend of agribusiness) has come up with a solution: Chinese chicken imports will be sold without telling people that they are from China. In an apparent effort to bring our standards to Chinese levels, the Administration is also planning to hand over key inspection posts to industry.
The U.S. had been fighting with China for banning our beef in 2003. We banned chicken from China during an avian flu outbreak, but China got a favorable ruling from the World Trade Organization forcing us to open our borders.
We therefore have to allow Chinese chicken to be sold here. However, we seem to have gone even further in allowing China to hide its country-of-origin. Here is how it works. The Chinese chickens are raised in the U.S. and Canada and then “processed” in China. By using this loophole, soup companies, restaurants, and other companies can hide the fact that the chicken comes from one of the most notorious sources of food in the world.
On top of this wonderful news, consumer advocates are objecting to a plan by the Obama Administration to replace USDA inspectors with employees of poultry companies. This is meant, you guessed it, to save money at a time when the Administration wants to start yet another war. After all, why have government inspectors when we can use the money for a couple of cruise missiles fired at Syria?
Moreover, if you cannot trust poultry companies to report on themselves, who can you trust? The answer, it appears are those paragons of food quality, the Chinese.
nick,
And that isn’t a food safety issue. That’s a money in politics issue. I see nothing wrong with requiring cooperatives to pasteurize products either. It’s not an expensive process. That being said though, proper labeling is an acceptable alternative, especially since I’m pretty sure that raw milk products (other than maybe some specialty cheeses) have a fairly small market demand. Niche food is for foodies and foodies accept a certain amount of risk as a matter of due course. Sushi is the perfect example of this.
Food safety is food safety. Political corruption is political corruption. But like you, I find it particularly repugnant when political corruption leads to anti-competitive situations. It especially bothers me when the motivation is pure private profit instead of those very rare circumstances where sanctioned (preferably public owned) monopoly acts in the public’s best interest and are appropriate for valid economic reasons other than simply profit (such as prisons should (again) be a state monopoly).
Darren & Pete,
I wonder who else around this place has eaten rattlesnake? Alligator too. One tends not to get attached to alligators either, since anything that will eat your dog, cat or children doesn’t make a good house pet.
I am sure Gene has, but wonder who else.
OS: I’ve eaten rattlesnake, alligator, turtle, frog legs, and squirrel. I’ve been offered opossum, but declined.
Gene, I think we know my point about “scientist” often being whores to who pay them. That said, I know nasty bacteria can grow in dairy products. All I want is for farmers to be able to sell their product through a cooperative. I have no problems w/ warnings of the risks and the govt. has a role in ensuring those risks are displayed in a prominent fashion to the consumer. However, there is a dynamic that many people don’t understand. The large dairy corporations don’t want competition. In our youth, there were many small dairies that would supply a small geographic market. They have all been bought up. These large corporations hate the growth of the artisanal cheese business in the U.S. They are determined to not let any other competition grow. They see the raw milk as a threat to their control of the market. Dairy farmers are trapped in a system where they have to sell their milk to these large corporations. So, the lobbyists for the industry “donate” money to their lackey pols and make raw milk a crime.
http://www.rattlesnakerodeo.com/rr/
it is pretty good fried or in a gumbo.
Time to switch to rattlesnake; the other white meat.
It is very lean meat, free range, and nobody becomes attached to it as a pet because…, it’s a rattlesnake.
nick & bron
because sometimes we have to protect kids from their own parents. (jenny mccarthy). i’ve worked in milk processing and if you want to drink that sh!t raw, go right ahead, but feed it to unsuspecting minors and expect a neglect/abuse charge.
most milk processing plants have an observation deck for tours. go down and check it out sometime. better yet, go in the spring when the cows are calving and see if they will let you look into the separators and you can see what a mix of milk solids and blood looks like.
drink it raw. go for it. darwin is harsh.
Bron: quote regarding raising turkeys: This is a great movie and you can watch it free on PBS.
My Gram would raise a (basically free range) turkey every few years. It slept in the barn and had its food supplemented but had the run of the place. The problem with them is the males get enormous (hers were the kind that looked like the paintings of the pilgrims turkeys, colorful feathers etc., not the factory farm variety) they are very strong and become very territorial. They attack and they can peck you and cut you up very badly with their spurs. Dealing with them can be a real pain, literally. She was always happy to slaughter her turkeys just so she didn’t have to fight with them. More than once as a kid after she came from feeding it I heard her say she would be happy when she could kill the turkey. The kids weren’t allowed near the barn when the Turkey was around.
My Life As A Turkey
http://video.pbs.org/video/2168110328/
chinese plants processing only u s and canadian chickens. right, that will last for about the first two days. 500lbs of chicken goes in, 5000lbs of processed chicken comes out.
chinese chicken stretcher.
OS, a little follow-up to your concerns about China; it’s not just China, it’s the nature of the industry:
“Most recently, New Zealand had been given permission to export meat to the United States from plants using the inspection procedure. But government inspectors in New Zealand have already warned that the meat produced at those plants is contaminated at times.
“Tremendous amounts of fecal matter remain on the carcasses,” Ian Baldick, an inspectors union representative, told the Post. “Not small bits, but chunks.”
In 1997, the USDA allowed five pork plants to participate in the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-based Inspection Models Project (HIMP), which industry lobbyists claimed would accelerate processing times while cutting down on the number of government meat inspectors. After 15 years, a USDA inspector general report found last spring that three of the five plants in the program were some of the worst in the country.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/09/usda-privatizing-meat-inspections-with-program-that-allowed-chunks-of-feces/
“OS, a little follow-up to your concerns about China; it’s not just China, it’s the nature of the industry:”
It really does seem that the problem lies in the industrialization of food production.
Which is curious since one would suppose that the engineers and specialists could implement a system with what ever characteristics we desire.
Apparently we value profit over food safety.
I once listened to an economics professor explain to the class that government regulation was not necessary because the market and consumer demand would drive out bad actors.
In fairness I supposed he might have been referring to the long run when we are all dead.
Well… I am still waiting.
Actually, many of the science people know what kind of really dangerous organisms can grow in unpasteurized milk, too. It’s an almost perfect growth medium for bacteria. Good bacteria makes cheese and yogurt. Bad bacteria gives you lovely treats like listeria and salmonella. Should you be able to sell raw milk products? Perhaps. That’s a different debate that revolves around assumption of risk. But if so, they should be clearly labeled as such to protect those particularly susceptible to such infections.
When they start importing meats from China or anyplace else with a track record of contamination, I will vote with my feet. We always assume meats may have bacteria, but good cooking techniques and temperatures will kill any known bacteria. Heat and all the scrubbing in the world will not take care of heavy metals. Or dust particles from silica, asbestos or who knows what else.
As soon as I post this, I am going to discuss with my family the need to buy local.
Bron, It’s just the establishment mindset. Some folks never get it. There are risks IN EVERYTHING. We get that. We want to know the risks and then we want to make our own decisions. Many of the “science” people against raw milk are bought and paid for by big dairy. Nanny govt. making us safe from the products the lobbyists pay them to restrict.
how many people drink raw milk every year? How many people die? How many people get food poisoning from other sources every year? How many of them die?
How many angles can dance on the head of a pin and how many government busy bodies does it take to make a farmers life miserable?
People are smart enough to weigh the risks, they dont need some gomer in government telling them what to do.
A government b-crat regulator is the kid when you were young who walked around in a bow tie and wouldnt get dirty and was a know it all [or so he thought] telling you that the mud had parasites in it.
Now they think they are in charge of us. Holy shirt sleeves.
LTMG, In his latest book, Let’s Explore Diabetes w/ Owls, David Sedaris has a funny chapter about eating food during his travels through China.
Unpasteurized Milk Poses Health Risks Without Benefits, Study Shows
Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081216161100.htm
Dec. 18, 2008 — With disease outbreaks linked to unpasteurized milk rising in the United States, a review published in the January 1, 2009 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases examines the dangers of drinking raw milk.
Milk and dairy products are cornerstones of a healthy diet. However, if those products are consumed unpasteurized, they can present a serious health hazard because of possible contamination with pathogenic bacteria. An average of 5.2 outbreaks per year linked to raw milk have occurred in the United States between 1993 and 2006—more than double the rate in the previous 19 years, according to co-authors Jeffrey T. LeJeune and Päivi J. Rajala-Schultz of the College of Veterinary Medicine in Columbus, Ohio.
Contamination can occur at the time of collection, processing, distribution, or storage of milk, the authors write. Many pathogens can be found in the dairy farm environment, which can contaminate the teat skin of dairy cows and consequently the milk at the time when cows are milked. For example, Salmonella and E. coli have been reported in pooled milk collected from farms. Outbreaks of salmonellosis, campylobacteriosis, and E. coli related to raw milk consumption have been reported since 2005.
Although the sale of raw milk was illegal in 26 states as of 2006, the authors note that those who are opposed to pasteurization have found ways to circumvent the law and obtain raw milk. For example, participants in “cow-share” programs pay for the upkeep of the cow and receive raw milk in exchange, rather than buying raw milk outright.
Raw milk advocates claim that unpasteurized milk cures or prevents disease, but no scientific evidence supports this notion. Testing raw milk, which has been suggested as an alternative to pasteurization, cannot ensure a product that is 100 percent safe and free of pathogens. Pasteurization remains the best way to reduce the unavoidable risk of contamination, according to the authors.
As someone who recently lived in China for 7 years in a very large city, this relaxation of inspection is a huge mistake. My bet is major scandal within one year.
nick:
you got that right, those big corps are right in bed with government. Maybe the people are waking up.
If I had been on that jury I would have asked the judge if we could bring charges against the government. Or awarded the farmer some money if that would even be possible.
Raw milk makes the best cheese.
Mmmm…cheeeeeeese….
Bron, Big dairy states and big govt. in Wi. and Ca. They tried a farmer in Juneau County, Wi this past summer. The State sent in special prosecutors from the Wi. Justice Dept. to prosecute this small farmer who sold raw milk to folks in his cooperative. Well, the jury acquitted the farmer on all counts but a very minor one that was a small fine. And this is the best part, 4 jurors held a press conference announcing they were joining the cooperative. People are fed up w/ big govt. bought and paid for by lobbyists bought and paid for by soulless corporations.
NICK:
out in CA they are arresting people for selling whole milk right from cows.
I guess Archer Daniels and Cargill are worried they wont get their cut so they call their brown shirts at the local Dept of Ag to go round up those whole milk pushers and addicts.