Showing posts with label eggs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eggs. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
The Terror Threat of Raising Your Own Poultry to Lay Fresh Eggs
Which came first? The chicken conspiracy? Or the egg conspiracy?
Sunday, August 29, 2010
What Rotten Eggs Reveal About the State of Our Democracy
The massive recall of salmonella-infected eggs opens a window on the power of large corporations over not only our health, but over our government.
By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate
Posted on August 27, 2010
What do a half-billion eggs have to do with democracy? The massive recall of salmonella-infected eggs, the largest egg recall in U.S. history, opens a window on the power of large corporations over not only our health, but over our government.
While scores of brands have been recalled, they all can be traced back to just two egg farms. Our food supply is increasingly in the hands of larger and larger companies, which wield enormous power in our political process. As with the food industry, so, too, is it with oil and with banks: Giant corporations, some with budgets larger than most nations, are controlling our health, our environment, our economy and increasingly, our elections.
The salmonella outbreak is just the most recent episode of many that point to a food industry run amok. Patty Lovera is the assistant director of the food-safety group Food & Water Watch. She told me: “Historically, there’s always been industry resistance to any food-safety regulation, whether it’s in Congress or through the agencies. There are large trade associations for every sector of our food supply, starting from the large agribusiness-type producers all the way through to the grocery stores.”
The salmonella-tainted eggs came from just two factory farms, Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, both in Iowa. Behind this outbreak is the egg empire of Austin “Jack” DeCoster. DeCoster owns Wright County Egg and also owns Quality Egg, which provides chicks and feed to both of the Iowa farms. Lovera describes DeCoster as “a poster child for what happens when we see this type of consolidation and this scale of production.”
The Associated Press offered a summary of DeCoster’s multistate egg and hog operation’s health, safety and employment violations. In 1997, DeCoster Egg Farms agreed to pay a $2 million fine after then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich described his farm “as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop.” In 2002, DeCoster’s company paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Mexican women who reported they were subjected to sexual harassment, including rape, abuse and retaliation by supervisors. Earlier this summer, another company linked to DeCoster paid out $125,000 to the state of Maine over animal-cruelty allegations.
Despite all this, DeCoster has thrived in the egg and hog business, which puts him in league with other large corporations, like BP and the major banks. The BP oil spill, the largest in the history of this country, was preceded by a criminally long list of serious violations going back years, most notably the massive Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 that killed 15 people. If BP were a person, he would have been imprisoned long ago.
The banking industry is another chronic offender. In the wake of the largest global financial disaster since the Great Depression, banks like Goldman Sachs, flush with cash after a massive public bailout, subverted the legislative process aimed at reining them in.
The result: a largely toothless new consumer-protection agency, and relentless opposition to the appointment of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren to head it. She would give the banks as much oversight as the new agency would allow, which is why the bankers, including President Barack Obama’s appointees like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers, are believed to be opposing her.
The fox, you could say, is watching the henhouse (and the rotten eggs within). Multinational corporations are allowed to operate with virtually no oversight or regulation. Corporate cash is allowed to influence elections, and thus, the behavior of our elected representatives. After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which will allow unlimited corporate donations to campaigns, the problem is only going to get worse. To get elected, and to stay in power, politicians will have to cater more and more to their corporate donors.
There is hope. There is a growing movement to amend the U.S. Constitution, to strip corporations of the legal status of “personhood,” the concept that corporations have the same rights as regular people.
This would subject corporations to the same oversight that existed for the first 100 years of U.S. history. To restrict political participation just to people will take a genuine, grass-roots movement, though, since Congress and the Obama administration can’t seem to get even the most basic changes implemented. As the saying goes, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
By Amy Goodman, King Features Syndicate
Posted on August 27, 2010
What do a half-billion eggs have to do with democracy? The massive recall of salmonella-infected eggs, the largest egg recall in U.S. history, opens a window on the power of large corporations over not only our health, but over our government.
While scores of brands have been recalled, they all can be traced back to just two egg farms. Our food supply is increasingly in the hands of larger and larger companies, which wield enormous power in our political process. As with the food industry, so, too, is it with oil and with banks: Giant corporations, some with budgets larger than most nations, are controlling our health, our environment, our economy and increasingly, our elections.
The salmonella outbreak is just the most recent episode of many that point to a food industry run amok. Patty Lovera is the assistant director of the food-safety group Food & Water Watch. She told me: “Historically, there’s always been industry resistance to any food-safety regulation, whether it’s in Congress or through the agencies. There are large trade associations for every sector of our food supply, starting from the large agribusiness-type producers all the way through to the grocery stores.”
The salmonella-tainted eggs came from just two factory farms, Hillandale Farms and Wright County Egg, both in Iowa. Behind this outbreak is the egg empire of Austin “Jack” DeCoster. DeCoster owns Wright County Egg and also owns Quality Egg, which provides chicks and feed to both of the Iowa farms. Lovera describes DeCoster as “a poster child for what happens when we see this type of consolidation and this scale of production.”
The Associated Press offered a summary of DeCoster’s multistate egg and hog operation’s health, safety and employment violations. In 1997, DeCoster Egg Farms agreed to pay a $2 million fine after then-Labor Secretary Robert Reich described his farm “as dangerous and oppressive as any sweatshop.” In 2002, DeCoster’s company paid $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Mexican women who reported they were subjected to sexual harassment, including rape, abuse and retaliation by supervisors. Earlier this summer, another company linked to DeCoster paid out $125,000 to the state of Maine over animal-cruelty allegations.
Despite all this, DeCoster has thrived in the egg and hog business, which puts him in league with other large corporations, like BP and the major banks. The BP oil spill, the largest in the history of this country, was preceded by a criminally long list of serious violations going back years, most notably the massive Texas City refinery explosion in 2005 that killed 15 people. If BP were a person, he would have been imprisoned long ago.
The banking industry is another chronic offender. In the wake of the largest global financial disaster since the Great Depression, banks like Goldman Sachs, flush with cash after a massive public bailout, subverted the legislative process aimed at reining them in.
The result: a largely toothless new consumer-protection agency, and relentless opposition to the appointment of consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren to head it. She would give the banks as much oversight as the new agency would allow, which is why the bankers, including President Barack Obama’s appointees like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and economic adviser Larry Summers, are believed to be opposing her.
The fox, you could say, is watching the henhouse (and the rotten eggs within). Multinational corporations are allowed to operate with virtually no oversight or regulation. Corporate cash is allowed to influence elections, and thus, the behavior of our elected representatives. After the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which will allow unlimited corporate donations to campaigns, the problem is only going to get worse. To get elected, and to stay in power, politicians will have to cater more and more to their corporate donors.
There is hope. There is a growing movement to amend the U.S. Constitution, to strip corporations of the legal status of “personhood,” the concept that corporations have the same rights as regular people.
This would subject corporations to the same oversight that existed for the first 100 years of U.S. history. To restrict political participation just to people will take a genuine, grass-roots movement, though, since Congress and the Obama administration can’t seem to get even the most basic changes implemented. As the saying goes, if you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs.
Monday, August 23, 2010
US egg recall above half-a-billion and growing
By Agence France-Presse | Monday, August 23rd, 2010
A massive recall of eggs possibly tainted with salmonella bacteria is now at more than half-a-billion and could grow, the top US food safety official said Monday.
"It is the largest egg recall that we've had in recent history," Margaret Hamburg, head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told NBC television.
"We may see some additional recalls over the next couple days, even weeks, as we better understand the network of distribution of these eggs contaminated," she said.
Hamburg added that US officials were "continuing to investigate aggressively to determine the exact source of the contamination as we move forward with the recall."
There are no known salmonella deaths due to the eggs, but health officials said the outbreak has sickened hundreds of people across the United States.
The recalls affect two chicken egg processors -- Hillandale Farms and Wright County Eggs, both in the midwestern state of Iowa -- and cover at least 14 US states, from California to Arkansas.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the outbreak could actually be larger than reported, because most people who get sick from salmonella do not seek medical treatment.
The FDA said infected rodents many have spread the salmonella to the eggs.
Responding to complaints that the recalls were ordered just last week even though people began getting sick in May, Hamburg said it takes time for any food safety probe to get up and running.
"You have to start an investigation. First you see the rise in the number of cases of salmonella above the normal background. Then you start to identify the cases and do the investigation of where they might have been exposed," she said.
"This salmonella is the most common kind so it makes it a little bit harder to track down the source," Hamburg added.
"We've tried to move swiftly to identify the source and take the action necessary to protect the consumer."
Health experts say salmonella is spread most often by the consumption of food contaminated by animal fecal matter.
The microbe usually flourishes within the intestinal tracts of fowl and mammals.
An estimated 400,000 people are infected with food-borne salmonella each year in the United States, according to the CDC.
Recent years have seen various massive food recalls in the United States -- from salmonella-tainted peanut butter to pistachios to frozen spinach, and milk -- amid criticism that America's food regulation regime is under-staffed and overtaxed.
"We need additional resources. We need additional authority. We need greater ability to trace back products to their source so that we can identify how the contamination occurred and what products are at risk," Hamburg told NBC.
"We need better abilities and authorities to put in place these preventive controls and hold companies accountable, and we need to be able to more routinely review records and work with companies to make sure that the food supply is safe."
A massive recall of eggs possibly tainted with salmonella bacteria is now at more than half-a-billion and could grow, the top US food safety official said Monday.
"It is the largest egg recall that we've had in recent history," Margaret Hamburg, head of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), told NBC television.
"We may see some additional recalls over the next couple days, even weeks, as we better understand the network of distribution of these eggs contaminated," she said.
Hamburg added that US officials were "continuing to investigate aggressively to determine the exact source of the contamination as we move forward with the recall."
There are no known salmonella deaths due to the eggs, but health officials said the outbreak has sickened hundreds of people across the United States.
The recalls affect two chicken egg processors -- Hillandale Farms and Wright County Eggs, both in the midwestern state of Iowa -- and cover at least 14 US states, from California to Arkansas.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned that the outbreak could actually be larger than reported, because most people who get sick from salmonella do not seek medical treatment.
The FDA said infected rodents many have spread the salmonella to the eggs.
Responding to complaints that the recalls were ordered just last week even though people began getting sick in May, Hamburg said it takes time for any food safety probe to get up and running.
"You have to start an investigation. First you see the rise in the number of cases of salmonella above the normal background. Then you start to identify the cases and do the investigation of where they might have been exposed," she said.
"This salmonella is the most common kind so it makes it a little bit harder to track down the source," Hamburg added.
"We've tried to move swiftly to identify the source and take the action necessary to protect the consumer."
Health experts say salmonella is spread most often by the consumption of food contaminated by animal fecal matter.
The microbe usually flourishes within the intestinal tracts of fowl and mammals.
An estimated 400,000 people are infected with food-borne salmonella each year in the United States, according to the CDC.
Recent years have seen various massive food recalls in the United States -- from salmonella-tainted peanut butter to pistachios to frozen spinach, and milk -- amid criticism that America's food regulation regime is under-staffed and overtaxed.
"We need additional resources. We need additional authority. We need greater ability to trace back products to their source so that we can identify how the contamination occurred and what products are at risk," Hamburg told NBC.
"We need better abilities and authorities to put in place these preventive controls and hold companies accountable, and we need to be able to more routinely review records and work with companies to make sure that the food supply is safe."
Sunday, August 22, 2010
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