E. Coli Conservatives Are Willing To Gamble With Our Children's Lives For The Sake Of Their Deranged Ideological Convictions

Long before the Republican Party adopted Ayn Rand as their newest ideological goddess, right wing sociopaths have been adamant that federal regulatory agencies were an outrageous interference with the "free market." (Remember, to a Republican "free market" goes beyond caveat emptor into the realm of the "freedom" of unscrupulous "businessmen" to rip off, even to the point of manslaughter, their customers .) They have always opposed all regulations on business. And they still do. In fact, they are busy trying to defund the agencies that regulate modern society, whether they be agencies that are supposed to protect us from predator banksters or agencies that make sure corporations aren't polluting the air and water or, ironically, the FDA, which is struggling to make sure the food we eat is safe. In Ayn Rand/Paul Ryan-world, a merchant whose products poisons a thousand people will sooner or later be driven out of business. Take that!

House Republicans are pushing back against a series of public health measures, including school lunch standards and tobacco regulation, teeing up a confrontation with Senate Democrats and the White House over the reach of government in daily life.

The Republicans have used an agriculture appropriations bill to send several messages: They don’t want the government to require school meals that are more nutritional but also more expensive, they don’t want the government to prod food companies to restrain marketing to children, and they don’t want the Food and Drug Administration to regulate any substance based on anything but “hard science.”

They took aim at measures that are part of the Obama administration’s efforts to combat obesity among children and adults as well as some initiatives enacted by the previous Congress.

On Tuesday, the GOP majority on the House Appropriations Committee approved a 2012 spending plan that directs the Agriculture Department to ditch the first new nutritional standards in 15 years proposed for school breakfasts and lunches. The lawmakers say meals containing more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy will cost an additional $7 billion over five years-- money they say the country can ill afford in difficult economic times.

The committee also directed the USDA to scale back participation in an effort to develop voluntary guidelines for companies that market food to children. And it directed the FDA to exempt grocery and convenience stores and other businesses from regulations set to take effect next year requiring that calorie information be displayed.

So on the very day Michelle Obama was working with the Department of Agriculture to unveil a plan to replace the long outmoded and virtually useless "food pyramid" with a more up-to-date way of helping parents and care-givers make healthy choices for their children, the GOP was up to their old anti-social tricks.

The first part of the campaign will encourage people to make half their plate fruit and vegetables. Later phases of the campaign will urge consumers to avoid oversize portions, enjoy their food but eat less of it and to drink water instead of sugary drinks.

Ayn Rand characters William Edward Hickman & Paul Ryan have different approaches to murder

Meanwhile, a deadly strain of E. coli is killing consumers in Europe and seems to have jumped over to the U.S. with two tourists who returned last month from Hamburg. Yesterday the first cases were reported in Britain and the Guardian provides us with this update:

The Health Protection Agency (HPA) has said that three of the seven people in Britain who have been infected by the strain of E coli sweeping Europe have developed haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS), a rare and severe kidney complication that destroys red blood cells and can affect the brain and spinal cord.

The HPA confirmed that all seven patients had recently visited Germany, where an 81-year-old woman became the 18th victim of the previously unknown E coli strain when she died on Wednesday at Hamburg-Eppendorf university hospital. More than 2,000 others have so far been infected in 10 countries from eating contaminated vegetables.

The HPA reminded Britons travelling to Germany to avoid eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and leafy salad including lettuce, especially in the north of the country, until further notice. Anyone returning from Germany with symptoms including bloody diarrhoea should seek urgent medical attention and ensure they mention their recent travel history.

Dilys Morgan, head of the agency's gastrointestinal department, said: "The HPA continues to actively monitor the situation very carefully and we are working with the authorities in Germany and with our counterparts across Europe as to the cause of the outbreak. We have alerted health professionals to the situation and advised them to urgently investigate and report suspected cases with a travel history to Germany. ... Though the EU continued to insist there was not enough evidence for any foodstuffs to be banned, Germany's disease control authority, the Robert Koch Institute, has advised German consumers against eating raw tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.

...Genetic sequencing of the bacteria behind the outbreak suggests that it is a previously-unknown strain. Dr Hilde Kruse, a food safety expert at the WHO said that "this is a unique strain that has never been isolated from patients before". She added that the new strain has "various characteristics that make it more virulent and toxin-producing."

Paul Wigley of the University of Liverpool's School of Veterinary Science, said that the E coli outbreak was caused by a type called O104, part of a group of bacteria that produces a chemical called verocytotoxin (Vtec).

"[These bacteria] normally infect people directly through animal faeces, or more usually through poorly cooked meat contaminated with the bacteria. Whilst most strains of E coli do not cause disease, Vtec are able to attach to the wall of the intestines very tightly and produce toxins.

"It is these toxins that cause damage to the gut, leading to bloody diarrhoea and may cause damage throughout the body including the kidneys."

He added: "Animals, and in particular cattle, may carry Vtec in their intestines without disease, which may lead to the bacterium being shed in their faeces. It is most likely that the use of manure as a fertilizer in organic salad vegetable production has lead to contamination of cucumbers and other vegetables.

"Although E coli infection is most commonly associated with meat, there have been previous reports of the disease being contracted from raw vegetables."

It's a complicated world, not quite as simpleminded as the way Ayn Rand and Paul Ryan have painted it. Without well-funded regulatory agencies to protect consumers, we'd be stuck on our own battling these kinds of things constantly-- whether or not someone was eventually run out of business.

Bipartisan Agriculture-- Both Parties Endangering Consumers On Behalf Of Agri-Business

Congress, particularly the graft-oriented House Agriculture Committee, has steered U.S. food policies in the interests of fat-cat donors from Agri-Business and in ways diametrically against the well-being of consumers. For decades both parties have been working furiously against their own constituents. This might be expected of Republicans-- it's part of their religion-- but conservative Blue Dogs have been ceded food policies within the Democratic Party and they're not better than Republicans. But even Democratic presidents, Obama being no exception, have turned agriculture policy over to the worst conservative elements within the party. The current Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, for example was head of the corrupt, corporately-financed DLC. So it was probably no surprise to anyone early this year when he refused to take the side of consumers over his old pals at Monsanto, one of the most dangerous companies on the face of the earth.

Last we checked in with Vilsack selling us down the road to Monsanto, we came to the conclusion that he was no different from his 3 Republican predecessors, Ann Veneman, Mike Johanns and Ed Schafer, and that biotech was in all ways triumphant in the march towards turning the human race into mutants for the sake of short term corporate profits. Now Dr. Don Huber, whose research is considered golden in this field, is imploring Americans to sign a petition to save ourselves from Monsanto's-- and their political shills'-- unrestrained greed. Here's the letter to Obama and Vilsack:

Dear President Obama and Secretary Vilsack,

I urge that you halt the sale and planting of Monsanto’s recently approved Roundup Ready® GMO alfalfa and sugar beets until independent, peer-reviewed studies can be conducted to determine whether or not these products pose a threat to plant, animal and human health.

On January 17 of this year, Dr. Don Huber, an internationally recognized plant pathologist, wrote Secretary Vilsack an urgent letter warning of a credible threat to animal and human health and our food supply. The letter warned of a link between Roundup Ready GMO crops, the use of the herbicide Glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) and serious plant diseases and animal infertility and abortions.

Dr. Huber’s letter detailed the discovery of an organism previously unknown to science by a team of U.S. scientists that had been linked to alarming levels of infertility and spontaneous abortions in livestock. The organism has been found in high concentrations in Roundup Ready corn and soybean meal and distillers grain fed to these animals, resulting in infertility rates as high as 20% and spontaneous abortion rates as high as 45% in cattle herds.

Unfortunately, the administration and USDA have failed to heed this warning and properly respond, despite serious and credible concerns laid out in his letter.  Rather than proceed with caution after receiving such alarming information, the Obama administration chose to bow to pressure from vested interests in the agriculture industry and fully deregulate Monsanto’s Roundup Ready® alfalfa and sugar beets less than 3 weeks after receiving Dr. Huber’s letter.

As a result of this failure to conduct due diligence, the decision to deregulate these crops should be reversed, and the White House and the USDA should impose a moratorium on the sale and planting of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa and sugar beet seeds until independent studies have been conducted documenting their safety.

Furthermore, the practice of allowing Monsanto and other companies to provide internal, corporate-funded studies, while interfering with and intimidating independent scientists and researchers, must end.

It is vital to the future of our democracy and the safety of American citizens that scientists and governmental agencies conduct and review independent scientific studies on the environmental, animal and human health implications of genetically modified crops and foods.

You can sign on here



UPDATE: Are Genetically Modified Foods Safe To Eat?

Tom Philpott at Grist points out that "upwards of 70 percent of corn and 90 percent of soy are genetically modified, and these two crops form the basis of the conventional U.S. diet. Nor are they GM technology's only pathway onto our plates." He points out that genetically engineered food could well cause long-term health problems. We just don't know. "[T]hey won't kill us suddenly. Whether they're killing us slowly-- contributing to long-term, chronic maladies-- remains anyone's guess."