Feb/March 2001
It
Does Pay to Fight
by Jackie Alan Guiliano
Bipartisanship
at the Expense of the Citizenry
by Howard Zinn
The
Greens Great Opportunity
by Blair Bobier
DLC
Says Gore's Presidential Bid Ruined by Populist Message: Others Disagree
by Brian Hansen
Letter
from Porto Alegre
by Norman Solomon
Doing
the Right Things, Without Making Someone Wrong
by John Darling
Globalization
From Below
by Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello & Brendan Smith
Book
Review by Suzi Aufderheide
No Logo: Money, Marketing and the Growing Anti-Corporate Movement
by Naomi Klein
Book
Review by Gerry Cavanaugh
Hannibal
by Thomas Harris
Money
Talks
by Kayla Starr
America's
Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
by Ronnie Cummins
Coming
Home
by Jesse Wolf Hardin
The
Secret of the Valentines Angel
by Peter Melton
A
Prescription for Well-Being
by Peter Moore
Age-old
Concepts Benefit Modern Babies
by Pamela Jorrick
Cancer:
An Unexpected Way to the New Being
By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.
Book
Review by Kent Shew
Quantum Touch
by Richard Gordon
Cosmic
Calendar
By Salina Rain
(continued)
America's Food Safety Crisis Intensifies
By Ronnie Cummins
But the story gets scarier. In the Times on the front page of the Sunday Jan. 14 edition (tucked under a misleading headline "Stringent Steps Taken by US on Cow Illness") Blakeslee drops the bombshell. Not only has the US Mad Cow feed ban been a joke, but apparently US feed companies, pet food companies, pharmaceutical firms, and nutritional supplement manufacturers have been carrying on with business as usual by importing large quantities of possibly contaminated bovine parts and rendered animal protein. It appears that the US industry has greedily imported tons of likely contaminated rendered animal protein from Britain since 1989. After British authorities made it illegal to feed rendered animal protein to ruminant animals in their own country, the UK feed industry simply sold it overseas..
There is mounting evidence that US rendered animal protein and bovine, sheep, deer, and elk parts are themselves likely carriers of BSE and other Mad Cow-like diseases. As Blakeslee relates, scientists have generally agreed that BSE or BSE-like diseases "spontaneously" appear in "one out of every million humans, cows, sheep and many other mammals. "Since 36 million cattle are slaughtered annually in the United States, about 36 cows spontaneously infected with mad cow disease could be entering the nation's food chain each year." Thirty-six domestic US Mad Cows a year being ground up and fed back to other animals may not sound that alarming until you consider the fact that an average cow, pig, chicken, game farm deer, elk, fish farm fish, or household cat and dog—because of the commingling of many different animals' body parts at the rendering plant and the feed mill—will be consuming the body parts of literally thousands of different animals in their feed over their lifetime.
And the story gets worse. Scrapie (Mad Sheep Disease) has been endemic in US sheep herds since 1947, and the government has done little or nothing to eradicate it. Significant numbers of scrapie-infected sheep have undoubtedly been ground up every year and fed back to other animals. In addition the US currently has a raging epidemic of Mad Deer Disease and Mad Elk Disease (technically called Chronic Wasting Disease) in parts of Colorado and Wyoming. There are already several documented cases of young deer hunters in their 20s and 30s dying from CJD, the human equivalent of Mad Cow.
The Times reports that up to 18% of mule-tail deer in the Fort Collins area of Colorado are now carriers of Chronic Wasting Disease. Hunters that kill deer in Colorado are required to turn in the heads of these animals so that they can be tested for CWD or Mad Deer Disease. Officials tell hunters not to eat the meat of infected animals (lab tests can take as long as six weeks) but have refused to ban hunting or eating venison.
The FDA warned US drug companies, cosmetic companies, and nutritional supplements firms on Dec. 6 to stop using European bovine parts in most of their products as of Jan. 1. It may already be too late. As Blakeslee points out, even this ban—assuming it actually gets enforced—still has loopholes. As she writes, nutritional supplements "must have labels listing ingredients like bovine pituitaries and adrenals, but manufacturers are not required to list the country of origin. Other beef byproducts that are still allowed in the country include milk, blood, fat, gelatin, tallow, bone mineral extracts, collagen, semen, amniotic fluid, serum albumin and other parts of European cattle that are widely used in vaccines and medicines." Several million people in the US and overseas are taking "glandular supplements" or body-building hormones which contain concentrated brain and pituitary material from US, British, and European cows.
Mad Cow Disease and the growing global opposition to factory farming and genetic engineering may turn out to the harbingers of a new era of sustainable living and organic agriculture. One can only hope that we make the necessary transition to organic farming and ban the most dangerous practices of genetic engineering and industrial food production before it is too late. It is up to all of us to do our part in "voting" with our grocery dollars and communicating with our representatives, the FDA and other federal agencies whenever possible.
From BioDemocracy News #31 (Jan. 2001), a publication of the Organic Consumers Association, 6101 Cliff Estate Road Little Marais, MN 55614; www.purefood.org; www..organicconsumers.org.
Action Alert:
Your Letters Are Needed Once Again
The FDA has announced an official citizen comment period until April 3, 2001.
Write to FDA Commissioner Jane Henney and tell her that the new policy is
unacceptable. Tell her you are disappointed that the FDA continues to ignore
the safety concerns of consumers and chooses instead to help the companies
developing biotech products. Demand that she change the policy on genetically
engineered food to one that protects the rights of the consumer. A sample
letter follows.
Send Email to fdadockets@oc.fda.gov, subject re: Dockets 00N-1396 and 00D-1598 OR write to: FDA Dockets Management Branch (HFA 305) Food and Drug Administration 5630 Fisher's Lane, rm. 1061 Rockville MD 20852 (include docket #'s in letters as well).
Sample Letter
Dear Commissioner,
The proposed Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations fail to require labels or safety tests on genetically engineered (GE) food. The new rules continue to deny Americans the right to know what is in our food, while protecting the economic interests of biotech corporations. Labeling GE foods would protect the public from potential health effects that could only be traced if GE foods can be identified. By refusing to require both labeling and mandatory safety testing of foods, the FDA puts consumer's health at risk, and ignores the recommendations of the Biotechnology Consultative Forum, who in December urged the US to require mandatory labeling of GE foods.
I urge you to reconsider this proposal and insure that GE foods are subject to pre-market testing and labeling. Americans have a right to make informed decisions about the food we consume.
To tell the FDA how you feel about the need for Regulation on the Use of Antibiotics in Livestock send letters to: Dockets Management Branch, 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm. 1061, HFA-305, Rockville, MD 20852; or via e-mail to fdadockets@oc.fda.gov.
