Tons of tainted and toxic food has entered the US, and the FDA can’t or won’t do it’s job. This article is a must-read!
According to testimony Tuesday before a House subcommittee, they have been able to bring tainted products into this country because the F.D.A. has neither enough resources nor inspectors to stop them. And each year it has become easier: since 2003, the number of inspectors has decreased while imports of food alone have almost doubled.
Recently consumers have had a crash course in the hazards of imported products, especially those from China: pet food and pig and chicken feed contaminated with melamine; counterfeit toothpaste with diethylene glycol; fish contaminated with antibiotics and a suspected cancer-causing agent; the use of carbon monoxide to make decomposed fish look fresh.
Despite headlines about these imports, the F.D.A. intends to close 7 of its 13 laboratories that test for these problems. Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the subcommittee, said the closings “would likely expose Americans to even more danger from unsafe food, particularly imports.”
You read that correctly — the FDA is CLOSING 7 of 13 laboratories. How does one justify this move?
But Andrew C. von Eschenbach, the F.D.A. commissioner, told the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that closing the labs would make the agency more efficient.
von Eschenbach has lost his mind. This article brings up a lot of nasties that, I’d say, the majority of people do not know as they are doing their weekly shopping.
And take a look at this — at least one lab that was thorough, is slated to be closed.
Importers often go port shopping, the report said. Some fish, for example, are sent to Las Vegas to avoid the lab in San Francisco lab, where inspectors have earned a reputation for their analytical skills. The San Francisco lab is scheduled for closing.
Wow! I’m absolutely stunned that the health and well-being of the very people these agencies are supposed to be protecting mean nothing. Once again, greed outweighs the health of the people. When the hell is this going to stop?
[...] and Dept of Agriculture’s budget has been slashed during the Bush years. Or, how about all the labs that tested for toxins on our imported foods that have closed down, under the Bush [...]
[...] But, I am here to tell you that Andrew von Eschenbach does not give a rats ass about your health and well being. It was von Eschenbach that CLOSED, that’s right folks, closed, 7 of the 13 remaining labs that specifically tested foods. And worse yet, von Eschenbach’s twisted logic when he testified before a House subcommittee last year (during/after the wheat gluten debacle) was that closing these labs would make the FDA more efficient. [...]