For years, I have worked in Congress to make food safety a national priority. And while I never forget that families and lives are at stake, it is always good to be reminded what I am fighting for.
Wednesday, at a press conference introducing new food safety legislation, I met Gabrielle Meunier, a Connecticut native who now lives in Vermont. Her 7 year old son Christopher contracted salmonella from peanut butter crackers. She spent 6 helpless, fearful days and nights at the children's hospital while her son endured excruciating pain and life-saving treatment. No parent should ever have to go through that.
And I met Jeff Almer who told me about his late mother, Shirley Mae Almer. Sometimes they called her "Shirl the Pearl" and in the language of her Finnish ancestors everyone said she was blessed with 'sisu' or fortitude. Shirley beat lung cancer in 2007 and despite the odds, she was winning her battle against a brain tumor last year.
Shirley was planning to return home from a rehab facility before Christmas, when she became violently ill. Her condition worsened and in a matter of days she passed away. It was all so sudden and unexpected. Jeff and his family were devastated and bewildered.
Only in the new year did they learn the cause of Shirley's death: salmonella from contaminated peanut butter. Shirley's was one of a handful of deaths tied to the Peanut Corporation of America and its Blakely, Georgia plant. The ongoing Salmonella outbreak sickened more than 500 people across the country, and a criminal investigation is underway to determine whether the producer knowingly sold a dangerous, contaminated product.
Jeff's story is heart-breaking. The grief that comes with losing a loved one is always unimaginable -- but Shirley Mae Almer's death did not have to happen. This salmonella outbreak is just the latest -- and it represents the full-scale breakdown of a patchwork food safety system -- a dysfunctional federal agency in the FDA unable to perform its mission and protect the American public.
We have a responsibility to people like Shirley to truly fix systemic problems in our food safety system, starting with a fundamental restructuring of the food safety bureaucracy at the FDA. Today, food safety is divided among many disparate separately-managed units with no one single individual to be held accountable. So this week I introduced legislation to separate food safety regulation from drug and device approvals at FDA and to restore the balance that has long been missing at the Department of Health and Human Services.
It is all about supporting an agency that is ready to actively prevent foodborne illness, not just react to it. We are not just editing the bureaucratic flow chart here. This is the first step in transforming the FDA, bringing our current food safety system out of the past, and recognizing that every statistic has a human face and a powerful personal story. Jeff said: "Our family feels cheated. Our mom should be with us today." It is a fight to make sure no one else has to go through what Christopher Meunier or Shirley Mae Almer did.
there is no dispute that too much fluoride discolors children's teeth and damages bones. The American Dental Association tells parents to tally their children's daily fluoride intake and avoid excessive exposure. But how?
Sulfuryl fluoride has been approved as a post-harvest fumigant on produce, nuts and grains. The FDA is allowing very high fluoride residues to remain on the the food.
Water fluoridation also allows an unregulated amount of fluoride to flow into our bodies eitiher directly or from foods made in fluoridated cities.
more info www.FluorideAction.Net/health
(1) No one absolutely no one from the industry should be allowed to hold any regulatory position. And no one who has worked as a regulator should be allowed to ever work in the industry he or she has regulated. Never.
(2) The charade and delusion of "self regulation" needs to be ended once and for all. Self regulation makes as much sense as giving an alcoholic the keys to the liquor cabinet.
(3) Agencies should be funded properly.
(4) And finally the most radically dangerous idea of all: enforce the regulations. I know that's a hard concept but that's what it's all about.
(4)
7,000 EPA scientists did a study and came to the conclusion that this practice needs to stop NOW, requested a moratorium on water fluoridation until more studies could be done to determine the extent of toxicity, but "management" within the EPA decided to ignore their own scientists and side with industry. In the 60+ years we've been putting this toxic chemical in our water, ZERO safety studies have been done because if they do, fluoride would be finally classed as not fit for human consumption. EPA classifies it as toxic waste, FDA calls it an unapproved drug (for 50 years - no approval!!!), yet we dump it in water supplies without informed consent. Maybe under Obama we can finally do the right thing regarding fluoride.
If the bad actors that continue to do these things in the US and, at the same time trash other nations, are simply validating how even more ignorant and truly sub-human some in our country are when compared to other countries to whom we feel superior.
Perhaps we should stop believing our marketing and dopey rationalizations and start behaving like the great country we are suppose to be.
In Iraq, it is against the law for the farmers to save seeds now..like they have probably been doing forever. They have to buy Monsanto every year.
In Maine , we are fortunate to have a large milk producer, Oakhurst, which doesn't allow steroids and antibiotics fed to their cows. They were sued for advertising as such. Because people preferred Oakhurst dairy products. Funny the same ones that are all free market love Monsanto.
You can help our food system by letting those who actually monitor it's happening MAKE the regulations rather than let some other entity do so based on data. Let those who are in the field fighting the food safey "war" have some say about what goes on.
Give the entities who fight for food safety their backbone back and you'll see a difference. There are too many people running around worried about what PeTA thinks and not caring about the food safety system itself.
Go see for yourself ma'am. There are hard working people out there that are willing to go that extra mile if they are just given the chance. Their hands are tied or they deal with complacent management.
BTW I wish they had nominated you for the Department of Labor Secretary, you are the most capable of the bunch and your insights are always spot-on!! Hope there is still a chance for you!!
Thanks for this post