speaking of free trade, Child Labor Persists in India Despite New Laws

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At the bottom of the heap are boys like a rag-picker, who earns money by rummaging through garbage heaps. There are no laws keeping children from picking trash. He claims to earn an average of $15 a week by picking through trash 12 hours a day. He has seven siblings, three of them in school. His father works in a park and his mother at a flour mill.

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US Department of Agriculture monitors meat safety under a system that allows meat processors to design their own food safety plans

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The current system lacks coordination, uniformity and authority. It is understaffed and focused too much on fixing problems instead of preventing them.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture monitors meat safety under a system that allows meat processors to design their own food safety plans. Many in the meat industry have strict guidelines and test meat for pathogens at various stages in the butchering process, but there is no federal requirement for such tests, according to the American Meat Institute.

USDA inspectors are monitoring compliance with these company-written plans, but the USDA cannot mandate changes in the plans, says Patty Lovera, assistant director of the Washington-based food-safety group, Food and Water Watch.

USDA inspectors are thinly spread. One inspector was assigned to the Topps Meat Co., which claimed to produce more hamburger patties than any other U.S. plant until it went out of business earlier this month. As you probably remember, Topps folded after the recall of about 22 million pounds of its meat.

The recall was not ordered by the USDA. The federal regulatory agency doesn't have the authority to order a recall. The company announced the recall 18 days after initial tests showed contamination with the potentially deadly E.coli bacteria.

The federal inspector assigned to Topps didn't find the E.coli contamination. That discovery was made after dozens of people became ill and the pathogen was traced to Topps.

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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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Bush's EPA Is Pursuing Fewer Polluters

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The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.
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current financial implosion is result of serial bouts of financial deregulation

FDA aware of dangers to food or KIller Corporations Own YOUR Government

"This administration does not like regulation, this administration does not like spending money, and it has a hostility toward government. The poisonous result is that a program like the FDA is going to suffer at every turn of the road," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the full House committee. Dingell is considering introducing legislation to boost the agency's accountability, regulatory authority and budget.

In the peanut butter case, an agency report shows that FDA inspectors checked into complaints about salmonella contamination in a ConAgra Foods factory in Georgia in 2005. But when company managers refused to provide documents the inspectors requested, the inspectors left and did not follow up.

A salmonella outbreak that began last August and was traced to the plant's Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter brands sickened more than 400 people in 44 states. The likely cause, ConAgra said, was moisture from a roof leak and a malfunctioning sprinkler system that activated dormant salmonella. The plant has since been closed.