Food Sickens Millions as Company-Paid Checks Find It Safe

[Ichingcarpenter]

Source: Bloomberg

The FDA, a federal agency nominally responsible for overseeing most food safety, had never inspected Jensen.
During the past two decades, the food industry has taken over much of the FDA’s role in ensuring that what Americans eat is safe. The agency can’t come close to vetting its jurisdiction of $1.2 trillion in annual food sales.

In 2011, the FDA inspected 6 percent of domestic food producers and just 0.4 percent of importers. The FDA has had no rules for how often food producers must be inspected.

The food industry hires for-profit inspection companies -- known as third-party auditors -- who aren’t required by law to meet any federal standards and have no government supervision. Some of these monitors choose to follow guidelines from trade groups that include ConAgra Foods Inc. (CAG), Kraft Foods Inc. and Wal-Mart.

The private inspectors that companies select often check only those areas their clients ask them to review. That means they can miss deadly pathogens lurking in places they never examined.
3,000 Killed


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/food-sickens-millions-as-industry-paid-inspectors-find-it-safe.html

[valerief]

1. As long as the 1%'s food supply is safe, that's all that matters, because they're the only ones

who matter in this world.

The way the world is run proves this.

[ellenfl]

4. i wonder if the 1% have food tasters? eom

[mountain grammy]

5. yeah, the rest of us!

[ellenfl]

10. good point! eom

[valerief]

9. Private nurseries. nt

[AndyTiedye]

14. You Don't Have to be a 1%er to Grow a Garden

Lose the lawn, grow what you can.

[valerief]

16. Gee, lucky you with all that time on your hands. nt

[shanti]

21. and a yard to grow it in. n/t

[Dustlawyer]

2. Once again, privatization rears it's ugly head! From now on, try not to villanize all trial lawyers

because they help to keep these companies honest and safe. The problem is the tort reform they get everyone to vote for is what is killing them! Caps on damages for "frivolous" lawsuits do not keep us safe! Why would you need a cap that applies to all suits of that type just to protect you from the so called "frivolous" ones? There has NEVER been an epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. Trial lawyers only get paid if they recover money for you. Do you think that they load up on frivolous lawsuits in this day and age. He'll, defendants don't want to settle legitimate suits because they know they have these brainwashed jurors they can rely on! Tort reform is a scam the U.S. Chamber of Commerce came up with in the early 90's that has worked beyond their wildest dreams. Try suing a doctor or hospital for medical malpractice in Texas, you won't be able to find an attorney to take the case! They have made it so you cannot win, or if you somehow do win, you lose b/c the cap is so low that the case expenses (expert fees etc.) and attys fees are all that can be recovered, if that! They still just smell our seafood to see if it is safe. LSU studied seafood that had passed the smell test in the wake of the BP oil spill and found 1,000 time the allowable limit of hydrocarbons! Remember this the next time you have jury duty!

[alp227]

18. ++++! THE TRUTH!

[wordpix]

3. let's loosen those regs some more, grow DOD & make the rest of gov. smaller! (sarcasm) Obama should

discuss this in his next debate.

The repuke meme doesn't hold up in light of these facts.

[LaPera]

6. So when WalMart & the rest of the big food corporations label "organic" Don't believe a fucking word

It's all bullshit - buy your organic locally, support local farms & farmers!

Fucking Bush really pushed corporations basically privatizing the FDA - and corporations always cut-corners, over charge, gouge, collude, bribes, pay-offs, kick-backs lie while still getting government money, subsidies (our tax dollars) with no regulations - they can do nothing and anything they want - no oversight - Fuck the peoples health - Corporations are making profits just as the republicans push more & more of this corporate bullshit!

This is just more of the republicans bullshit of corporate privatization of everything....including prisons, education, Social Security the Post Office, Amtrak, etc. etc....to cut corners, collude & over charge!

[bvar22]

8. Can't blame just Bush or the Republicans for this.

The "Centrist" Democratic Party has marched in the same Privatization Parade for the last 25 years. The current administration has essentially put Monsanto in charge of the FDA.

Google: "Micheal Taylor & Monsanto" for the grim news.

The only way to know for sure is to Grow Your Own.





You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their rhetoric, promises, or excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

[CanSocDem]

11. Indeed!

"The current administration has essentially put Monsanto in charge of the FDA."

Same program that put the pharmacuetical industry in charge of health care. The only culture in the USA is Corporate Culture.

.

[Marrah_G]

12. "buy your organic locally, support local farms & farmers!"

This

[Ikonoklast]

7. Ayn Rand business ethics at work.

If my company can get away with selling you poison to eat, it's really none of my concern. You should have done your own research into the food I sell first before eating it.

[Gormy Cuss]

13. This is nothing compared to what would happened with a small government administration.n/t

[Fla Dem]

15. 3000 people killed on 9/11. We've spent over $1 trillion to avenge those deaths.

And yet congress blocked an FDA request for $3 billion to take back control of food safety. Please explain to me why the threat of unsafe food, that kills thousands of US citizens every year, is any less an assault on the USA, than the attack on the WTC.


"The FDA is trying, so far without success, to wrest back control of food inspection from the industry. In 2008, the agency estimated that it would need another $3 billion -- quadrupling its $1 billion annual budget for food safety -- to conduct inspections on imported and domestic food, the FDA’s former food safety chief David Acheson says.

Instead, the food industry lobbied for, and won, enactment of a law in January 2011 that expanded the role of auditors -- and foreign governments -- in vetting producers and distributors of food bound for the U.S."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-11/food-sickens-millions-as-industry-paid-inspectors-find-it-safe.html

[FiveGoodMen]

19. We didn't really spend the money to avenge the deaths

That's just what Rush and Fox, et al, want people to think.

We actually spent the money making rich people richer (huge contracts to defense companies, access to oil fields, etc, etc).

Spending less on keeping a safe food supply also makes rich people richer.

There's no conflict here.

[Wilms]

17. ^

[progressoid]

20. Less regulations should fix that.