Friday, February 6, 2009

Protect our food supply

FDA: Ga. plant knowingly shipped tainted products
By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE and RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 1 min ago
AP WASHINGTON – Federal health officials say the Georgia peanut plant at the center of the salmonella outbreak knowingly shipped tainted products. Previously, the Food and Drug Administration had said Peanut Corp. of America retested products after getting an initial positive result for salmonella. The agency said the company shipped the goods after follow-up tests came back negative.
But Friday, the FDA said the company sent out peanut butter, chopped peanuts and peanut meal that had tested positive even before it got back any negative findings.
Peanut Corp. denies any wrongdoing. The government has opened a criminal investigation.


Criminal prosecution NOW! The gov't needs to take immediate and extreme action against anyone they find to be complicit in knowingly shipping tainted food products to anywhere but the dump. They should also do the same to anyone who had anything to do with the fact they their own internal findings were not immediately reported to the USDA and any other interested party like the CDC or state bureaus.
This type of bullshit can not stand. We have to protect our food supply with extreme prejudice.
This company needs to be broken, sold and then brought under completely different management. No one even remotely attached to these recreant acts of poisoning innocent citizens should be left standing.
What more important job does the gov't do than protect our food supply? This is as bad or worse than an act of terrorism. These are people we trust to deliver untainted, clean and healthy food. How fucking horrible is it when someone knowing poisons their own people?

6 comments:

j said...

segacious,
i agree - this is worse than terrorism. the motivation here is not religious or political. it isn't a fight against oppression. it's greed, reckless and unforgivable. i guess the value of a human life is hard to appreciate when you're floating so high above it all in your golden parachute.

rainywalker said...

Sagacious,
This is a sad state when your afraid to eat food off the shelf. But I'm sure your aware the FDA has few inspectors and some of them are on the take. We were likely safer eating stuffing out of a turkey than eating peanut butter. George Washington Carver is likely turning over in his grave.

SagaciousHillbilly said...

I should say a well cooked stuffed turkey is a hard culinary selection to top.
Having USDA inspectors at every processing point in the food chain is absolutely impossible. At some point we need to be able to rely on the humanity of the people involved in these operation to do the right thing. When their human decency is replaced with greed, they need to be immediately and forcefully removed from the process and prosecuted to the absolute fullest extent of the law.
The next thing we need to check is whether or not the law allows for such characters to be locked up until such time that they are unable to do harm to anyone.

crystal dawn said...

The ironic thing is that Bush kept touting the line (while Cheney still is) that we haven't been attacked, he's protecting us, blah blah blah.... when his entire political ideology and actions were to gut the FDA and provide zero oversight over our food, water, and air. Now we literally have crap in our food. Great!

TriState Saver said...

Oxygen thieves plain and simple.

It is too bad that we have such a soft government on such matters.

Mass distributing tainted life threatening food is right up there on a Hitler level in my book. This pisses me off as much as your post on the old man who froze to death. Truly pathetic.

What we need to do is be more aggressive with these kinds of actions.

You think your peanut butter is okay, then go ahead and have a few spoonsful. It's on the house.

You turn off an old mans electric in sub zero temperatures, have a few nights stay at his place. It's on the house.

These people will get a slap on the wrist and a fine. Where is the justice or lesson in that?

arrozconpollo said...

Truly, Bush did not keep us safe. As RFK Jr. said last week, in terms of shear numbers of deaths and injury, hog farms and the like are a much greater threat than Al Qaeda. But the right wing, dumb as they are, ridiculed him for it. Fucking dumbasses.

Bush endorsed a "fox guarding the henhouse" mentality to the whole of government. From FEMA to MSHA to OSHA to the FDA to the CDC to the EPA etc etc etc. To head these agencies, he either appointed a pure incompetent or an industry insider hostile to the existence of the agency. Moreover, he severely defunded the agencies and allowed companies to VOLUNTARILY comply with laws. Which is why this peanut company was allowed to test and retest salmenella-laced peanut butter 5-6 times before getting a negative result. This is clearly against the law and resulted in untold numbers of deaths and severe illnesses. Reports have come out that this tainted shit got sent to schools in 2005 for fucks sake!!

Whenever you hear "Bush kept us safe" from some Palinite, throw some facts down their throats. Be strong, don't wilt, and don't accept their mythology. Their ideology fucked this country and their current propaganda is designed to delay action (i.e. stimulus) and muddy the waters of blame so future electoral prospects for good-government types are less certain.