More E Coli

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Palm Harbor, Fla. (PRWEB) October 15, 2007 -- Anyone who has suffered recent severe fevers and diarrhea should be aware that one of the largest recalls of potentially contaminated beef in the past decade is currently under way nationally, Attorney Jeffrey Hensley warned today.

Anyone who believes they have become ill as a result of E. coli contamination should consult an attorney, he said.

Nearly 30 people from 27 states have become ill, some seriously, after eating ground beef that had been contaminated with the E.coli bacteria, according to the USDA. Federal food inspectors say the meat originated in a beef processing plant in Elizabeth, N.J.

Topps Meat, which owns the plant, has recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties from across the country. People became ill after eating the Topps Meat products in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Ohio, Maine and Indiana, the USDA said.

"Those who get sick from E. coli contamination can suffer permanent kidney failure and can even die," Hensley said. "The danger now is that even though a recall is under way, contaminated meat can still be sitting in peoples' freezers."

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Organic Certifcation is Meaningless. Here is Why

Anyone can get accredited and there is no national standard.

The Federal standard is much weaker than the Oregon, by the way, and the number of organizations that are able to bring an ORGANIC label to a product, regardless of whether it actually is organic or not, is huge and controlled by vested interests.

Of course this scam is part of the great Reagan-Bush -Gingrich-Delay and other right wing scum, such as Bill and Hillary Clinton, plan to weaken the federal government so that their corporate cronies can reap the benefit.

A single federal standard, strong inspections and enforcement would do a lot to stop this kind of CONSUMER FRAUD and also a lot to shut down the ongoing epidemic of food poisoning wrought by the centralized food supply dumped on top of the decentralized federal government.

Large dairy stripped of organic certification

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A large dairy in Tulare County recently became the first in California to have its organic certification suspended because it violated organic standards — a move consumer advocates claimed as a victory.

“People should be able to buy organic milk with confidence,” said Mark Kastel, co-director of the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based consumer watchdog group. “Our hope is that this is the first salvo in a crackdown against these industrial farms that are masquerading as being organic.”

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Officials at Vander Eyk, whose dairy cows produce both organic and conventional milk, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Horizon Organic — a brand of Texas-based Dean Foods Co. that sells about 45 percent of the nation’s organic milk — stopped buying milk from Vander Eyk in December because it wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the organic milk, spokeswoman Molly Keveney said.

On May 16, investigators working with a company that certifies organic dairies for the USDA found that Vander Eyk did not meet federal organic requirements. For dairies, that means proving that the herd eats organic feed, has not been dosed with hormones and has access to pasture, among other requirements.

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Monsanto: The Pus Filled Milk Company

Federal regulators have turned down a request from Monsanto Co. to take action against dairy companies that advertise milk as free of synthetic hormones.

The Federal Trade Commission said last week that the ads it reviewed did not make any misleading claims about the safety of recombinant bovine somatotropin, or rBST, a hormone that boosts milk production in cows.

St. Louis based-Monsanto, which markets the hormone under the brand name Posilac, had asked the FTC to investigate more than a half dozen companies that advertise milk products.

The company claims the ads mislead consumers into thinking that milk from cows not treated with rBST are healthier or safer than dairy products from cows treated with the hormone.

The hormone is banned in Canada and Europe, mainly due to concerns that it leaves cows more prone to illness. But the Food and Drug Administration and the company insist the hormone is safe and the FDA approved rBST to boost production in dairy cows in 1993.

Still, many dairy farmers concerned about possible safety risks refuse to use the product and a growing number of retailers, including grocery chains Safeway and Kroger Co., have switched to milk free of synthetic hormones.

The national milk brand Borden, for example, advertises that ``we work exclusively with farmers that supply 100 percent of our milk from cows that haven't been treated with artificial hormones. So, who do you trust when it comes to your family's milk?''

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Monsanto wants to patent pigs

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In what critics call a dangerous power grab, the Monsanto Company is seeking wide-ranging control over swine reproduction methods in the form of patents which, if granted, would give the corporation economic rights over any offspring produced using those techniques.Documents obtained by Christoph Then, a Germany-based researcher for Greenpeace, show Monsanto's attempts to secure broad intellectual property protection for swine herds.
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Monsanto paid lobbyist $120,000 in 2007

Agricultural products maker Monsanto Co. paid Ogilvy Government Relations $120,000 to lobby the federal government in the first half of 2007, according to a disclosure form.

The firm lobbied on legislation dealing with patent reform, the farm bill, endangered species and other matters, according to the form posted online Aug. 7 by the Senate's public records office.

Julie Dammann, former chief of staff for Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., is among those registered to lobby on behalf of Monsanto.

Under a federal law enacted in 1995, lobbyists are required to disclose activities that could influence members of the executive and legislative branches. They must register with Congress within 45 days of being hired or engaging in lobbying.

Monsanto is based in St. Louis.

Farm Subsidy Scam

The database includes about 358,000 beneficiaries who received $9.8 billion in crop subsidy benefits between 2003 and 2005.

That includes Texas oil billionaire Lee M. Bass, who qualified to receive $242,787 in subsidies from 2003-2005. Former NBA star Scottie Pippen received $78,945 over the same period in conservation subsidies for land he controls in Arkansas. And Washington uber-lobbyist Gerald Cassidy got $10,540 for maintaining a portion of his Dorchester County, Md., farm as wetlands.

The current farm bill, which expires Sept. 30, limits farmers to $360,000 in subsidies per year, but that ceiling is filled with loopholes that allow many farms to exceed it.

The Bush administration has proposed closing the loopholes and halting subsidies to anyone making more than $200,000 in adjusted gross income. Last month, Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, introduced legislation that would cap individual farm payments at $250,000.

Those changes would target people like Maurice Wilder, a Clearwater, Fla., developer listed on the new EWG database as the nation's top beneficiary of farm payments in 2005, the most recent year for which information is available.

Wilder received nearly $1.8 million in farm subsidy benefits that year, according to the database. He owns a corporation worth $400 million and controls about 180,000 acres of farm and ranch land in more than a half dozen states.

More Ecoli in the increasingly centralized and unregulated food supply.

The recalled products were shipped to stores in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. They were sold under the brand names Moran's All Natural, Miller Meat Company, Stater Bros., Trader Joe's Butcher Shop, Inter-American Products Inc. and Basha's.

The affected grocery stores included Albertson's, Basha's, Grocery Outlet, Fry's, "R" Ranch Markets, Save-A-Lot, Save-Mart, Scolari's Wholesale Markets, Smart and Final, Smith's, Stater Bros. and Superior Warehouse.