No to Factory Farming

It's a great pleasure to introduce you to a Compassionate World, where they explore how we can move together beyond factory farming to make all the difference to everything we care about: animals, people and the planet. Your thoughts are important. Please feel free to comment.

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Posted in: Compassionate World,factory farming

S 510 and YOU

Not bad for a list to ponder, but just where in this bill was there anything to really address the core issue of factory farming?

How the new food safety bill might affect you

Here's How You Can Contact Your Member of Congress to help stop the vote in the House of Representatives.

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Posted in: factory farming,S 510

EGG RECALL

UPDATE: August 2010 - 
Salmonella in Feed

Food and Drug Administration officials said Thursday their investigators had homed in on chicken feed as a likely major contributor to the salmonella contamination that triggered a nationwide egg recall and potentially caused nearly 1,500 cases of illness.

Feed found at Wright County Egg in Iowa tested positive for salmonella, FDA officials said at a joint news conference with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Salmonella also was found in walkways and manure at Wright County Egg, as well as in ingredients used in the feed. The samples of the salmonella were a genetic match to the salmonella that has made many people sick, officials said.

The feed also was given to young hens, called pullets, that were supplied to Hillandale Farms, also in Iowa. Complete article

Contaminated eggs sold to pasteurization companies for other uses
As the effort to control food moves along in Congress with S510, Rep DeLauro from Connecticut, whose husband is a Monsanto shill, decides we should pasteurize all eggs. Of course you did not hear her propose any effort to clean up factory farming and down size the mega corps rolling out over 5 million eggs a day. 


You might find this of interest, especially in light of the recent toxic dumping at Cataldo Mission (BP of the NW), the Gulf oil debacle, and this food safety concern. 

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) --Tainted eggs sold to pasteurization plants
Shell eggs subject to a huge recall are reaching U.S. consumers via facilities that pasteurize the eggs to get rid of any possible salmonella, officials said.

U.S. Agriculture Department officials said the eggs are sold to so-called "breaking plants" that crack the shells, pasteurize the eggs and transform them into another form used in a number of products, CNN reported Thursday.

A half-billion eggs were recalled by Iowa's Wright County Egg and Hillandale Farms during the salmonella scare. The pasteurization at the USDA-approved breaking plants kills the salmonella bacteria, officials said.

The roughly 50 breaking plants aren't new, but federal monitoring of the facilities has been "stepped up" since the outbreak tied to reports of hundreds of illnesses, Agriculture Department spokesman Caleb Weaver said.

Every batch of eggs suspected of being contaminated will be tested and won't be shipped out until negative test results are returned, Weaver said.

Small-scale egg producers may be benefiting from the massive recall as they try to distance themselves from the large-scale facilities that had to pull their shell eggs because of threat of contamination, Food Safety News reported.

Gary Balducci, owner of Wishing Well Acres and president of the Maine Poultry Growers Association, sells his eggs -- about 50 dozen a week -- at his farm stand and raises replacement hens for small-scale egg producers. 

"More people will decide to buy their eggs from local farmers," he said. "A lot of people will start going to farmers markets and local farm stands to get their eggs." 

The recall also is a wake-up call for consumers to realize that not everything in a grocery store is safe, he added.

"People need to take responsibility for knowing where their food comes from," he said. 

© 2010 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

UPDATE:  And now another food recall, this time meat, found mostly at Wal-Mart

Nationwide meat recall announced



By the CNN Wire Staff


NEW: Wal-Mart says products immediately were pulled from shelves
The recalled meat products were sold at Wal-Marts nationwide

The meat products were produced from mid-June through early July

Listeriosis is an uncommon, but potentially fatal disease


(CNN) -- Zemco Industries in Buffalo, New York, has recalled approximately 380,000 pounds of deli meat that may be contaminated with bacteria that can cause a potentially fatal disease, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday.

More symptoms of factory farming!

Only half of FDA scientists in survey had full confidence in egg safety



The study, conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists before the salmonella recall, asked FDA officials how confident they were in the agency's ability to protect consumers from food-borne illnesses.

"The number of illnesses, which can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems, is expected to increase. The most common symptoms are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever eight to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product."

Marion Nestle comments on egg contamination

Should you find you are experiencing these or related symptoms, contact your health care provider or ER immediately.  You may also take 500 mg vitamin C every 30 minutes until you can get proper care.  Stay hydrated, drink water and take a lick of salt.

“FOOD SAFETY: CLEANSING OPTIONS”

EGG RECALL EXPANDS

Salmonella leads to recall

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Writer – Tue Aug 17, 11:55 pm ET

WASHINGTON – An Iowa egg producer is recalling 228 million eggs after being linked to an outbreak of salmonella poisoning.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said eggs from Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa, were linked to several illnesses in Colorado, California and Minnesota. The CDC said about 200 cases of the strain of salmonella linked to the eggs were reported weekly during June and July, four times the normal number of such occurrences.

State health officials say tainted eggs have sickened at least 266 Californians and seven in Minnesota.

The eggs were distributed around the country and packaged under the names Lucerne, Albertson, Mountain Dairy, Ralph's, Boomsma's, Sunshine, Hillandale, Trafficanda, Farm Fresh, Shoreland, Lund, Dutch Farms and Kemp.

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating.

In a statement, company officials said the FDA is "on-site to review records and inspect our barns." The officials said they began the recall Aug. 13.

The most common symptoms of salmonella are diarrhea, abdominal cramps and fever within eight hours to 72 hours of eating a contaminated product. It can be life-threatening, especially to those with weakened immune systems.

http://naturalhealthnews.blogspot.com/2009/02/eggs-now-approved-food.html

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Posted in: egg recall,eggs,factory farming,listeria,meat recall,salmonella

Food Safety: More Progress Needed

Here's another reason to consider vitamins: Vitamin C helps effectively treat food poisoning.

But at the front end we do need less factory farming with methods that promote herbicides, pesticides and higher health risks from salmonella and E.coli.

While we do need to buy local to reduce health risks in the food chain, we are at a time when the government - one that hasn't been able to get past pressure from Big Pharma and Big Ag - wants to interfere with home gardening. ( Just an observation but it did not seem to me to be gardening when Mrs. Obama planted potted herbs and vegetables at the White House. These plants had to come from a nursery or retail store and seems to be little more than a photo op. What happened to organic seeds, the real way to grow a garden?)

One thing you can do is think about how you clean the food you buy. This might make you want to get a copy of our food cleansing Healthy Handout, yours with a donation.

U.S. making little progress on food safety
By Julie Steenhuysen Thu Apr 9, 2009

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Efforts to improve food safety in the United States have "plateaued," exposing the need for an overhaul of the nation's food safety system, government health officials said on Thursday.

Despite work to improve food safety in recent years, the number of foodborne infections remained steady, with little change in the past few years, suggesting fundamental problems are not being solved.

"Progress has plateaued. This indicates to us that further measures are needed to prevent more foodborne illness," Dr. Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters in a telephone briefing.

Overall, CDC identified 18,499 laboratory-confirmed cases of food poisoning in 2008 using FoodNet, a tracking system that looks at foodborne illness in 10 states, covering about 46 million people or 15 percent of the U.S. population.

"When we compared the year 2008 information with the three previous years -- 2005 to 2007 -- we see no significant change in the incidence of these infections," he said, noting that 2004 was the last year gains had been made at curbing infection rates.

Salmonella infections were the most commonly diagnosed and reported foodborne illnesses in 2008, and their numbers were essentially unchanged compared with data from 2005-2007.

The 2008 findings represent just a portion of the Salmonella Typhimurium infections caused by tainted peanuts and peanut products processed by the now bankrupt Peanut Corp of America, which has led to the biggest food recall in U.S. history.

The outbreak, which began in September, forced the recall of more than 3,200 products and sickened more than 680 people in 46 states, perhaps killing nine. A series of other incidents involving pistachios, lettuce, peppers and spinach have eroded public confidence in food safety and renewed calls for change.

NEW APPROACH

Dr. David Acheson, associate commissioner for foods at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the report "underscores the need for a change in approach."

"This change needs to address the safety problems around foods and really focus on how to prevent these problems in the first place," Acheson told reporters on the call.

He said the FDA was embarking on "an aggressive and proactive approach" aimed at protecting and enforcing the safety of the food supply.

"Clearly we are working very closely with the new administration and Congress on addressing these issues."

Acheson said FDA has expanded its presence overseas and now has offices in China, Latin America, Europe and India, and plans to add more scientists, investigators and inspectors to help ensure food safety in the United States.

And he said FDA has set up rapid response teams in six states to help the agency react more quickly when and outbreak occurs, with plans to add more.

"I think it has become clear preventive controls are critical," he said.

The CDC estimates that each year 76 million Americans get food poisoning, more than 300,000 are sick enough to be hospitalized and 5,000 die.

(Editing by Maggie Fox and Jackie Frank)Copyright © 2009 Reuters Limited.

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Posted in: 2009,factory farming,FDA,food cleaning,food safety,natural health news