Profits over safety..

This Washington Post article is filled with information and a must read for anyone who eats on a daily basis (i'm hoping that's all of you.. haha). Just about everything is affected, from cancer causing substances in shrimp and dried fruit to the downright filthy and completely unfit for consumption, with only 1% of this stuff ever getting inspected as it comes in.

Towards the end of the article there is the stunning news that the U.S. will allow poultry to be slaughtered here but processed in China and shipped back to us - only then will Beijing lift it's 4-year ban on U.S. beef! Yeah, read that last sentence again. Take it all in. China and it's avian flu epidemics (hey, a new outbreak hit the papers this morning!) and we're going to trust them with chicken?

Like I said in an earlier post - if I wasn't already a vegetarian I would be turning into one now. Read the article. I guarantee you'll be moving to a farm and growing all of your own food - as I see it now, there's really no alternative. Bush & Co. are making it even easier to get this crap onto our plate. Profits over safety.



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Pigs in China mysteriously bleeding to death (UPDATE: "blue ear disease" named as the cause

The Apple Daily newspaper said that up to 80 percent of the pigs had died in the area, that peasants were engaged in panic selling of ailing animals at deep discounts and that pig carcasses were floating down a river.

The lack of even basic details is reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications. The Chinese government — and particularly the government of Guangdong Province, which is next to Hong Kong — was criticized in 2003 for concealing information about SARS when it emerged in Foshan, 95 miles northwest of Hong Kong. After SARS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, spread to Hong Kong and around the world, top Chinese officials promised to improve disclosure.

But officials in Hong Kong, at the World Health Organization and at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said Monday that they had been told almost nothing about the latest pig deaths and that they had been given limited details about the apparently unrelated problem of wheat gluten contamination, which has led to a massive pet food recall in the United States.

UPDATE
China says the outbreak was a result of 'blue ear disease'. Read more here.

Chicken McMelamine

20 million chickens that were fed melamine tainted pet food are set free by USDA and will be released into the food chain. Enjoy that happy meal!