I love meat, but I’m not sure how many more stories like this I can stomache:
The U.S. government is not fully guarding against the contamination of meat by traces of antibiotics, pesticides or heavy metals, a new report warns.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general said federal agencies have failed to set limits on many potentially harmful chemical residues, which “has resulted in meat with these substances being distributed in commerce.”
When it comes to pesticide traces, only one type is tested for, according to the report. There are also no set limits for some heavy metals, like copper.
In 2008, Mexican authorities turned away an American shipment of beef, because it did not meet Mexico’s limits when tested for copper traces. But the very same rejected meat could be sold in the United States, since no limit has been set, the analysis says.
It’s foam finger time! USA! USA! We”ll eat ANYTHING!
It’s the same old story over and over and over again. The only thing that changes is what is being not being regulated. Dead miners, lead in toys, understrength drugs, poisonous food, rampant fraud in the financial markets, polluted drinking water, poison dumped in our streams and rivers, carcinogens in the air, and on and on and on. No wonder no one is actually going Galt. We’re already in a libertarian paradise.
Seriously- about the only thing we regulate with any effort in this country is drugs, and even then we do a shitty job.
Punchy
I picture scarfing down pieces of Dave Mustaine in my KC Strip…
Dork
This is great news for John McCain’s duodenum.
cleek
if people don’t want copper in their meat, they can buy meat from producers who can certify that it’s copper-free – until the USDA makes it illegal to test for copper, that is.
Chyron HR
They’re just making our meat healthier!
ruemara
May I recommend reading Oishinbo? It’s a great manga that deals with food and food safety in a way that’s easy to get. If we taught people more about their food in the manner this is written, we might have already solved this problem that’s been a part of America since Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle”.
Ryan S.
We’re trying to turn ourselves into China, Donchaknow.
peach flavored shampoo
Easily fixed by tax cuts and 3rd trimester abortion bans.
At least that way, we’ll likely keep fewer abortees out of our food supply.
scav
ko, remind myself to start smuggling meat from Mexico . . . talk about ‘sploding heads.
LuciaMia
I stopped eating beef years ago, but it’s probably the same story for pork, chicken etc.
maya
This is why you should always have your kid brother, Mikey, around.
Brandon
Is it just me or does this post read like a Marvin Gaye song?
jeffreyw
Keep the fuck away from my Cajun sausage.
The Moar You Know
Including foam fingers.
Can’t remember the guy, but we had a premium beef rancher here in California who wanted to test each and every one of his cattle for BSE.
The FDA forbade it. Seems that it might give his meat an unfair competitive advantage over other ranchers who test one cow in a thousand.
You’re probably safer eating the foam finger than US beef.
Kryptik
But how do you expect those poor meat workers and food companies to get by if they have to test for EVERYTHING? What are you, a commie?
cleek
13 -> 3
Cat Lady
I like meat too, but less and less. All of the European mad cow craziness of a few years ago twisted my viscera.
There’s a one word answer for wingnuts railing against government – thalidomide. And, by the way, you can thank this woman for that.
Montysano
We’ve found a local source for grass-fed organic beef (as well as chicken, eggs, and pork). It’s expensive by 2x, so we just eat 1/2 as much, except for the eggs. We eat a lot of those. It’s worth every penny. I’m completely addicted to the eggs. Grocery store sweatshop eggs pale in comparison.
Kennedy
The real problem here is government. We need more de-regulation and to just get out of the way of the free market’s advance.
Also, eating things that don’t kill you are for effete elitists.
El Cid
Reagan began the modern assault on inspections of food processing facilities.
Another victory of market efficiency, salmonella ridden chicken, giant hog farm shit lagoons, and “pink slime” ammonia-filled gristle-hair-fat protein in your industrially provided ground beef & chain hamburgers. This bowel pain brought to you by the Modern Conservative Movement.
zmulls
Little by little over the last couple of years we’ve been changing our shopping and eating habits. Hit farmers markets for vegetables pretty regularly in season.
A couple of months ago I found a farm 45 minutes from my house, near where I get my haircut, that quietly sells meat they raise right there with no steroids or antibiotics. The young farmer comes from New Zealand, where farming is really a way of life; he literally married the farmer’s daughter when she was backpacking.
So once a month (or so) I bring a cooler, get my haircut, stock up on meat and put it in the freezer.
Zuzu's Petals
Haven’t eaten chicken or fish for over 20 years, red meat and pork even longer. Can’t say I’ve missed it at all.
On the other hand, am pretty sure the water supply is full of antibiotics and other scary things.
sukabi
So just who’s the third world country?
slag
I hear the price of meat could be lowered tomorrow if we just got rid of all the meat inspectors. Of course, we may have already done that.
As a non-lover of meat, I would love to point and laugh at you. But let’s be honest, some of our veggie inspections fare almost as poorly.
Linda Featheringill
@El Cid:
Okay. You win this thread. :-)
jimBOB
For the past 30 years we’ve had a political culture that says deregulation is teh awesome, and which has done everything possible to encourage a wild-west mentality in everything from toys to drywall to beef to mortgages. Finally it might start sinking in that we regulated all that stuff for a reason.
SpotWeld
Also, soy products are getting contaiminated with hexane:
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/04/14/soyburgers-laced-wit.html
Face
Got a beef with beef, eh? Not willing to play chicken with chicken? Dont know who/what the pork’s porked before it’s sporked? Have no truck with trucks that truck the duck?
Comrade Dread
Holy s***. Mexi-“Don’t drink the f***ing water”-co has higher food standards than the United States?
The triumphs of the free market and its ability to regulate itself truly continues to astound me.
artem1s
@Montysano:
free range, hormone free eggs are the bomb. I just recently started eating eggs again because I found a source. I was raised on eggs collected that morning from free range hens. Factory farm eggs give me the willies. there just isn’t enough shell there to convince me they are salmonella free.
Bnut
I for one propose we switch our meat-metal of choice to the gold standard. Copper is so passe.
Alan
I try to buy local grass fed beef. I wish it was more freely available. Most groceries are stock with grain fed, factory grown cattle that’s going into organ failure by the time it’s slaughtered. It’s sad for the animals and who knows what its consumption does to our health.
WereBear
This is one of the many reasons I support organic and humane farming; yes, it’s more expensive, but we save money in the long run.
I’ve shut up wingers who tell me the free market will sort this stuff out; I usually say something like, “Yes, but is your family going to be the ones who die so others may live?”
Strangely, they aren’t into sacrifice on that scale.
Morbo
“Did you know that the average fish today contains more mercury than a rectal thermometer?”
“Uh, yeah, I think I read that someplace.”
“Would you eat a rectal thermometer? Answer me, damn you.”
“Uh, nope.”
“Well, I would. Ah, mercury, sweetest of the transition metals.”
Svensker
Which is why we shifted to organic meats and dairy a few years ago. The way factory farm animals is raised is unhealthy for the animal, for the ground water and environment, and for the consumer. The cheapo factory farm stuff is like WalMart in the kitchen — seems to be cheaper, but you’re not seeing the hidden costs. Plus, it is fucking immoral the way most U.S. livestock is treated — we don’t want to be a party to it.
So, we spend more and eat less.
bemused
We’ve been getting beef quarters from a local beef raiser for the last couple of years. So much tastier too esp the steaks. We rarely order steak when out for dinner anymore…they just don’t taste like they used to. This year I plan to order chicken from another local.
There is an Earthfest event in our area this weekend so I’m hoping to find out about more locally grown, safer food sources near us. Up here in the boonies, we don’t have the choices to buy organic food locally as in the southern part of MN but it is slowing changing as people learn more about our corporate food & want safer meat/produce that actually tastes like real food.
geg6
Alice Waters was on Bill Maher last week. She’s dippy old hippie, but she’s right.
Eat local and in season.
Fergus Wooster
If you can afford it, your best bet is to order pastured chicken, beef or pork in bulk. The cost isn’t really much worse than supermarket meat (except the utility grade “value” meat), it’s mainly just the inconvenience of storing and thawing.
And truly pastured chickens (not the meaningless “free range”) taste so much better than grocery store chicken, it’s ridiculous.
If you’re in Texas or Oklahoma, I recommend Slanker Farms (texasgrassfedbeef.com) for chicken. If you’re into pork, find a local organic hog farmer. It’s more trouble, but it will taste better, be contaminant free, and you’ll get warm-fuzzies from establishing a relationship with actual family farms.
For those who can’t afford to do this, let’s hope the Obama USDA grows a pair.
Kennedy
OT – but did anyone else see that Glenn Beck’s next book is going to be titled ‘The Overton Window’? I’m sure that will be enlightening.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/13/the-overton-window-glenn_n_536114.html
djork
My girlfriend’s brother raises free range chickens and cage free eggs, so I’m covered there. I’m trying to find a decent source for good pork, because the groceries around here never seem to have it and the farmer’s market is a bit of a drive for me. I’ve cut down on my beef consumption considerably the past few years (from multiple times a week to once or twice a month) and pretty much only eat organic beef when I’m cooking at home or out on the town.
However, I still break down and eat Wendy’s once every few months. I have a weakness for redheads who serve burgers, what can I say. I tell myself it’s fine in moderation.
Alan
Scroll down here and look at the difference in between the U.S.’s factory created school lunches to what kids eat in France. Go USA!
JGabriel
OT, but holy fuck:
These are people for whom the Texas GOP just isn’t conservative enough.
Holy fuck.
.
stuckinred
I quit eating red meat years ago. Now I find out boca burgers are bad for you!!!!
Calouste
@Cat Lady:
That was Britain, not Europe. And fairly unsurprisingly, mad cow disease started under that championess of deregulation, Margaret Thatcher.
Although nowadays, thanks to the continent knocking some sense into the British via the EU, food standards in the UK are way higher than they are in the US.
Rosalita
can’t let a silly thing like inspections and poisioning get in the way of profit can we?
Fergus Wooster
If you’re in the Houston area, I recommend Harrison Hog Farms. They raise heritage pork organically and outdoors, and sell hogs at $2.50/lb whole, plus roasting and suckling pigs. They started as a family smallholding rearing hogs for themselves and went commercial recently.
You think you’ve had pork until you eat some properly-raised Berkshire. Then the heavens open up.
http://www.harrisonhogfarms.com
Alan
Search your area for grass fed beef at Eat Wild.com.
SixStringSlingr
@JGabriel: SPLITTERS!!
Rosalita
@JGabriel:
the live vasectomy is rather alarming too. WTF?
El Cid
I do encourage people seeking out better, cleaner alternatives, but I’d rather your average god-damned American not have to go out of their way to boutique locations just to get food not coated with or filled up with shit.
When I’m in line at the low income neighborhood grocery store I often go to, the chances of those people having the ability or money to go to some better store with healthier products is not the highest, nor is their likely awareness of the topic.
Why do we have to make every aspect of life some challenging god-damned game where you have to battle and battle and battle to avoid the shit puddles, instead of going back to the legacy of, you know, cleaning up the shit puddles themselves instead of just celebrating the ability or wise judgment of some of us to avoid the shit puddles?
sukabi
@geg6: She was very hard to watch…. she’s gives the appearance of floating somewhere between a weather balloon and mars….
but yes, once you get past her whole affect thing, she was surprisingly cogent on the need to reconnect with growing locally.
Pete
Read The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank for an excellent discussion of why we live in the “libertarian paradise” that we do, and who’s to blame.
Sentient Puddle
Not entirely germane, but it reminds me of this…
Did you know that they used to make glass tableware out of uranium? You can still get some off of Ebay if you so desire.
Lee
As mentioned before, the government will STOP those that want to implement extra tests on their beef.
They did with with a plant during the mad cow problem.
sukabi
Seriously- about the only thing we regulate with any effort in this country is drugs, and even then we do a shitty job.
Not true, women’s uteri and other lady bits are closely watched for any legal actions that may displease our conservative “family values” overlord males.
Also, teh gheii in non republicans is highly watched.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Everything that was old is new again.
Where have you gone,
Joe DiMaggioUpton Sinclair. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (woo, woo, woo)bemused
@djork:
It’s been at least 3 years since I had a fast food burger. Even before that it was rare but once in awhile I would get an urge for a McDonald’s burger w/fries forgetting what my stomach feels like after I’ve eaten one of those gut bombs. After reading a blog where a woman kept a Happy Meal for a year on her shelf as an experiment. Her husband was worried about bugs but not a one showed up. When she opened the bag in March, the Happy Meal looked pretty much the same after a year. She posted photos before & after It had not decomposed.
I just remembered the woman’s name, Joann Bruso.
Tsulagi
Damn, that’s pretty bad if Mexico is turning away our beef. No knock on that country, but given some of the really questionable meat products I’ve ate from street vendors in Mexico while looking at dressed pigs and chickens hanging out in the sun with flies buzzing around…
Best beef is in Argentina from the Pampas. Free range grass fed. I’ve tried expensive Kobe, but nothing beats the flavor of Argentine asado.
Tom Hilton
Turning the supertanker.
One of the less heralded initiatives of the Obama administration has been making the regulatory agencies…what is the term?…regulatory agencies again. Specifically including beefed-up (as it were) food safety enforcement.
I think the USDA inspector general’s report should be seen as part of that effort–not as evidence that the effort isn’t being made.
Joshua
… and this is why I cut back on my meat eating. It’s also made me healthier and less fat. Not as much as I would like, but my girlfriend refuses to go along for the ride.
But seriously, Mexico turned down our meat because it was substandard? That sounds like a Jay Leno punchline. We’re a joke.
Tom, it’s great that Obama is strengthening our regulatory agencies, but the real problem is that President Palin or somesuch will just gut them all over again. The only solution to this is to just not elect wingnuts, but come on. This is America.
Graeme
I was raised as a meat & potatoes sort, but I eat so much less red meat (and way less hamburger) than I ever have. We do make the effort to get grass fed stuff. Yes, it’s more expensive. I offset that by bringing my lunch to work instead of going out.
Bringing my lunch entails eating less meat, too.
I am not getting sick as often, and I’m leaner. Coincidence? Maybe.
I have a pork shoulder in the crock pot now & I’m perfectly happy. Hooray for Nieman Ranch!
slag
OT, but speaking of Mexico, our FLOTUS is pretty much made of awesome.
I’m pretty cynical about political theatrics, in general, but I have to say that watching Michelle Obama spring down the stairs of her airplane in her wafting blue dress is so refreshing. I think back to a lot of the stuffy, mechanical first ladies who have made similar trips, and breathe a sigh of relief at the vast improvement. Although generally, I don’t think optimism should come from observing the FLOTUS, at this point, we should probably take it wherever we can get it.
JGabriel
Hey, BOSTONIANS! There’s a Tea Party Protest Prostest:
Anyway, if you’re in the Boston area and want to hang out with people mocking Sarah Palin on Boston Commons, that sounds like the place to be.
.
cleek
@Graeme:
i luvs me some Nieman Ranch
JGabriel
@Rosalita:
Yeah, and it was on radio, not TV, so what was the point?
.
bemused
@WereBear:
Once a very conservative, Reagan loving friend & I were talking in a non political way about a big food contamination outbreak or something similar. Then I said there are those who say that the market will correct the problem because outraged americans won’t buy the product but that is small consolation to those who have lost a child or loved one.
Crickets.
Funny how the silence descends.
daverave
I got a “stomache” just from reading this..
Mnemosyne
@JGabriel:
@Rosalita:
Eh, one of the morning show guys here in Los Angeles did that, like, 10 years ago.
And then 5 years later, he and his wife decided they wanted kids after all, but that’s a whole other story …
JGabriel
Mnemosyne:
Well, at least the live vasectomy brings it back on topic to the whole sausage-making theme of the thread.
.
LT
Don’t quit eating meat, just get it from small, local farmers who aren’t affected by this mega-farm crap.
We actually have friends on a farm up the road, and they give us lamb they kill and butcher themselves. We’ve been invited to participate, and I probably will. Some day.
bemused
@El Cid:
From that article, a fast food exec told Schlosser (about food safety) that if you don’t know about a problem, you don’t have to deal with it.
I think that’s why R’s prefer to get their info wrapped & bowtied from Faux & Rush. Every time an R hears an inconvenient fact from a non conservative they insist it’s a lie or there is absolute silence. If they don’t know about it, they don’t have to worry their pretty little heads about it.
daryljfontaine
@bemused:
Just last night, I was reminded of just how bad it had gotten and just how sick I had become.
D
slag
@LT:
I disagree. Feel free to quit eating meat, if you are so inclined.
But yes, locally grown, organic food is often much better.
LT
And it’s pretty funny that you spelled it “stomache.” (Could have said these food stories really get to the bOWels, too.)
PeakVT
Entirely OT: A new subglacial volcanic eruption is taking place in Iceland. Lots of good links here.
Liz
@El Cid:
I read so many things in Fast Food Nation about the de-regulation of the food and slaughter industries during the Reagan era-truly astounding and not to mention terrifying. It feels like I could write my own book. :\
I get organic chicken and eggs exclusively-not sure if the chicken is free-range but at least I know that it’s not poisoned with antibiotics. I belong to a local egg CSA so I know the eggs are 100% free range and organic.
Wormtown
Locally raised products are the best. For any bj readers in Mass, link to my family’s farm . Available at farm, farmer’s markets, and CSA drop-offs at several locations. John – if you ever make it to MA, I’ll be glad to give you some bones for Lily.
JGabriel
LT:
I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. John’s from West By God Virginia, where farm animals are fattened on the rusted out carcasses of cars on cinder blocks … assuming it’s anything like the neighboring Pennsylvania I grew up in.
.
Liz
@JGabriel:
I told my husband to go over on his lunch hour-I don’t know if he did. Will ask.
On topic-does anyone know of any organic pork or beef farmers/markets in the Boston area? I am very interested.
Liz
@Wormtown:
I posted before I read this. I will check out the Cambridge market…it’s the closest one to me. Are those the only locations?
LT
@slag: Well, yeah. I went 11 years without eating anything with eyes when I was younger. Eh. It was a pain in the ass sometimes, sometimes often. (I walked into the Himalayas north of Katmandu in ’87, at one point visiting a Buddhist monastery, where a very nice monk gave me a bowl of soup. Meat soup. Probably yak. I mean come on – it was a Buddhist fucking monastery. I threw the soup over the wall when he went away for a minute.) And there were traveling eras here in the states when I lived almost exclusively on peanut butter (and beer and cigarettes) because I was so broke and disconnected. Peanut butter is not a good diet. But yes, by all means, quit eating meat if you like.
Jesse
@The Moar You Know: ftw. Maybe the free market will come around and we’ll start seeing foam fingers in the deli.
JGabriel
Via PeakVT:
You know, if you say that three times fast, you can arrested in Alabama for performing a satanic ritual.
.
LT
There are good farms where good farmers raise animals right in every state. Even WVirginia. And there are places to get bulk via post, as has been mentioned here.
Francis
@Zuzu’s Petals: The USDA oversees our food supply. Thus the conflict between marketing food and regulating food.
But the good ole EPA regulates the water supply. And they don’t have a mission to market water. So, if you live in a medium-sized city or larger, your tap water is cleaner and healthier than the bottled stuff from the supermarket.
Seriously, bottled water is just about the biggest racket going. It’s tested less often and for fewer contaminants. Drink your tap water.
(a former water lawyer.)
slag
@LT: I hear that. Dietary restrictions can definitely be problematic. My only rule is pretty simple: If I can’t kill it, I can’t eat it.
Technically, I could probably kill a fish without it giving me nightmares, but they’re full of mercury anyway. Plus, I don’t really like fish all that much. Etc, etc.
All in all, I think people’s dietary habits are often arbitrarily adopted, so I generally don’t advocate for or against any particular lifestyle choice that doesn’t affect me directly. Although I will say that I do think we’d all be better off from an environmental standpoint if we all ate less meat.
WereBear
So true. It’s like when conservatives whine about how the poor should just work and study hard and they’ll get ahead, skipping right over the unpaid babysitting, lack of heat or food, and the havoc of missing parents that really kinda interferes with scholarship… while other kids get tutoring and computers, ya know?
Mnemosyne
@slag:
I think the point was more “don’t quit eating meat just because you don’t like factory farming since alternatives do exist.”
There are enough good arguments for switching to a vegetarian diet that it annoys me when I see bogus ones crop up.
keestadoll
@The Moar You Know: I bitterly defend our right to eat foam fingers!!!!
JGabriel
PeakVT: The BBC has video.
.
stuckinred
@LT: Monks visiting the US loves some Burger King!
gnomedad
As @cleek and @The Moar You Know point out, sometimes regulation (in the producers’ interest) is the problem. I wonder what spin the Galtards would come up with if we tried to get rid of those.
elmo
This is a big part of why my partner and I raise chickens. You want pasture-raised? They wander all over three or four acres of grass, kudzu, honeysuckle and blackberries, eating bugs and weeds and whatever else appeals to their little chicken brains. I supplement that — especially in the wintertime — with commercial chicken feed that has no antibiotics or other weird chemicals.
Oh, and they get leftovers. Chickens are omnivores, so they’ll eat anything I’ll eat and then some. They are so used to eating leftovers that have been too long in the fridge that they mob me in the morning when I’m taking my lunch (in a leftovers container) to work.
Could not BELIEVE the difference in the eggs. Also in the meat itself, but I wouldn’t think it’s for everybody — the meat is very dark and strongly flavored, not at all what you get from the supermarket.
We’re going to raise two hogs next.
PeakVT
@JGabriel: I saw that. An extended video of the jökulhlaup seen in the BBC report is here.
ETA: A good live webcam. Well, it was a minute ago.
Fergus Wooster
@Elmo: Awesome. The pastured hens we order are much darker than supermarket meat, but I prefer it that way – it actually tastes like chicken and not cardboard. And of course the eggs are beyond delicious. The wife and I hope to seize the empty lot next-door one day and raise some chickens at the back. It’s actually legal in the Houston city limits.
Good luck with the hogs!
IndyLib
@Alan:
Thank you for that link. I found some excellent places to check out.
liberty60
Jesus, we really have regressed to the Gilded Age, haven’t we?
Insane and yawning gaps between haves and have-nots, disappearance of the FDA, even the basic 8 hour day protections from the New Deal Era are being attacked.
We need a new Roosevelt, of the Rough Rider type, and an Upton Sinclair, and maybe a Fiorello La Guardia; we already have an Aimee Semple McPherson from Alaska.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
What’s brawndo?
zeppo
I actually happen to be a government regulator. Not going to say which one, of course…. But we are also “trending” in that direction. Let the fox guard the henhouse! That’s a GREAT idea! Nothing can certainly go wrong there.
LT
@stuckinred: I bet they do.
Wormtown
@Liz: Farmer’s markets in Cambridge, Amherst; CSA drop-offs at the Farmer’s Market and Dover, Northampton, and maybe coming to Worcester (Wormtown). Willing to do additional CSA drop-offs if enought interest…details on site. Thnx.
slag
@Mnemosyne: Concern about meat safety isn’t exactly a bogus argument. It is one of the things I’m glad vegetarians don’t have to worry about as much. I certainly put it on the negative side of the meat-eating pro-con ledger.
That said, I think we’ve cleared up the original point pretty well.
TooManyJens
@El Cid: Thank you for that. I feel bad that, for various reasons, we usually end up buying supermarket food instead of seeking out the local, organic, etc. alternatives. But god damn it, why should I have to feel bad about buying food from a fucking FOOD STORE? Why shouldn’t the supermarket food be decent?
Liz
@Wormtown:
yes saw that. Will take a closer look thanks!
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: I agree with this. I can drive to a co-op to get my healthier food (and I do), but some people can’t do that. We are indirectly reinforcing our caste society with what is available where. Don’t get me started on the fact that things in the city cost more than things in the suburbs (for the exact same thing).
Rosalita
Heh, just came across this…
Calouste
@bemused:
You can twist that knife a bit further. If someone comes up with the argument “that the market will correct the problem”, just ask them to confirm that they are ok with it if their kid dies from contaminated peanut butter.
slag
@asiangrrlMN: Speaking of stuff costing more, it pisses me off that organic food is so much more expensive then food that’s been all pesticided up. Really? We pay less each time we buy food that pollutes the environment more?
And don’t even get me started on chemical-laden cleaning products. Our society is so f’ed up in so many ways.
Bubblegum Tate
@Comrade Dread:
LISA: Uh, according to the Mexican Council of Food, this plankton expired two years ago.
HOMER: Sure, by *their* standards, but we live in America.
El Cid
@TooManyJens: Again, we should admire people who help us or inspire us to leap various hurdles placed in our way, but why can’t we stop having hurdles placed in our way?
Wouldn’t it be nice to someday have the more saner options be the norm, and people have to go out of their way for riskier foods or unhealthier restaurant choices?
Isn’t it better if materials are produced with less waste rather than exploring for ways individuals can do more and more efficient shopping and recycling and composting and whatever else? Even though, yes, those are important things to do?
What we do is let ‘the market’ (i.e., the upper-class dominated regulatory system of supply & demand) pursue the lowest common denominator approach and shift the task of pursuing the fittest, healthiest, most efficient consumer options to the individual.
El Cid
@asiangrrlMN: If you watch Jamie Oliver’s food revolution from the point of view of someone thinking about the school food system from an economic point of view, this isn’t so much a failure of the school chefs and officials for failing to depart the norm for healthier food for the kids, but a systemic failure of rules and budgeting which pushes cheap, frozen, chemical additive fat and carbo and sugar and salt loaded crap into kids and then puts it on the kids and their families to buck the system and stay healthy with better choices.
Conservatives love place hurdles in the way of poor and struggling people, because then they’re allowed to stand back and make judgments upon those who fail to successfully clear all the hurdles, as either they have done or they imagine themselves to have done.
The notion that you would orient the system so as to produce more success and less hurdle-based failure to them is somehow unfair, uninteresting, soshullist, and un-Godly, not to mention it doesn’t allow them to sneer at as many people.
Lurker
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
“Brawndo” is a sports drink in the film, Idiocracy.
Kat
Our water is also being poisoned by the unregulated chemicals used in the drilling for natural gas:
World-Renowned Scientist Dr. Theo Colborn on the Health Effects of Water Contamination from Fracking
The Environmental Protection Agency has begun a review of how the drilling process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” can affect drinking water quality.
Today, Democracy Now interviewed Dr. Theo Colborn, the president of the Endocrine Disruption Exchange and one of the foremost experts on the health and environmental effects of the toxic chemicals used in fracking.
Citizen Alan
@Francis:
In the neighborhood I live in (just outside the city limits of Oxford, Mississippi), my tap water is put under a boil alert every time it rains. The private company who ran the water and sewage utility up until 10 years ago refused to spend any money on capital improvements for 17 years. Then, they went into receivership and a new, fly-by-night company out of Florida bought them out and, with approval from the Board of Supervisors and the Mississippi Public Service Commission, raised the cost of water and sewage to $65 a month. They presently have a request before the MPSC to raise water and sewage to around $80 a month, roughly a 300% increase since 2003. And I don’t feel safe drinking out of the fucking tap.
I pay $20 a month for bottled spring water in 5 gallon jugs, thank you very much.
bemused
@Calouste:
The R I said that to is intelligent even if possibly suffering from Reagan syndrome so I know she thought of her family. It’s the low IQ R’s that you have to spell it out to.
maus
No regulation = Ron Paul libertopia. Less regulation = better quality food, obviously.
jake the snake
How far away are we from “chicken Little”?
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002
jake the snake
How far away are we from “chicken Little”?
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=1002
Platonicspoof
It’s a mystery to me;
there’s no explaining what your imagination can make you see and feel.
I guess my mind has got me hypnotized.
AJ
The U.S. government is not fully guarding against the contamination of meat by traces of ……. heavy metals.
Sounds like… time for a TAX CUT!