Showing posts with label food safety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food safety. Show all posts
Monday, May 28, 2007
Habeas Corpus survived a long time until Bush thought it was "quaint". There have been Revolutions, Two World Wars, a cold war with enough nuclear weapons to blow up the planet. 3,000 dead from guys with box-cutters was apparently more than our constitutional liberties, the Geneva conventions, and habeas corpus could handle.
What is mystifying is the people in towns like Alliance, Ohio convinced that Osama is targeting their personal destruction. He isn't. Now, the world record ball of aluminum foil there does make an inviting target, and a whimsical tourist locale, and is quite shiny, but they are likely safe.
We could bubble-wrap our kids after buckling them into our cars for an extra level of safety (remember breathing holes moms), but we don't. Our culture has become so risk adverse that we are suffering because of it. America was built on the backs of slaves, but it began growing because of entrepreneurial spirit. Those who risked everything in a gold rush, a new invention, a move out west could be left with nothing, but the rewards were also great. We are a culture that loves to gamble in Vegas on the week-ends, and on the lottery at home.
We have now taken a gamble that our civil liberties are less valuable to us, than the remote chances of the bogey-man pinpointing aluminum foil for destruction.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
U.S. officials asked their Chinese counterparts to increase oversight of food and drug exports Thursday as the list of potentially deadly products reaching U.S. shores kept growing.
The problems don’t stop at pet food. For April, China was No. 1 in countries whose imports were stopped at the border by the Food and Drug Administration. The list includes filthy mushrooms, drug-laced frozen eel and juice made with unsafe color additives.
“There is a harsh reality here: When it comes to food, ‘Made in China’ is now a warning label in the United States,” said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who earlier this month exacted a promise from FDA commissioner Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach and Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong that they would work toward a mutual agreement to improve inspections and the overall safety of food products and drugs traded between the two nations.
When asked Thursday if consumers could trust the safety of food imported from China, von Eschenbach told The AP: “This is one area where we have an ongoing opportunity for continuous improvement and that’s what we are going to pursue.”
In other words, no. Ongoing opportunity? This is our FDA commissioner spinning the fact that regulations are weak to be mild. Whatever isn't caught at the border, your family has an ongoing opportunity to be a guinea pig.
H/T Americablog.
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