FDA all but forcing irradiation? Check it out

I have no idea why.
And yes really now we are after all talking about 300+ million now not 100 of a 100 years ago. That way just won't feed as many as there are being fed to today with todays practices of farming. Like it not this feeding the USA and so many things being exported just would not stand up 100 years ago. We are now in and for many years into the future a Global Market place. No longer with city after city having populations of 6 million 8 million 10 million and so on, they not only want foods that they can fix fast but as lowest price possible.
And doing all this relabeling and sorting out off what is and what is not in any certain foods just is not going to wash with todays ever price shopping public. Ands people from many different parts of the globe at that, with way less in getting their own systems back in order, much less can support such things as uncontrolled raw milk and cheeses etc.
Want to crow your own nobody is stopping anybody form doing such a thing, but start selling that product into the masses and then rules and regulations have to be effect to protect the masses. Sure you may know some that eat things all the time, but those same folks may give away something to those that do not have a immune system up to what folks did years ago, and that is when regulations on how it can be labeled and how it must be sold, and how it is prepared at home. And do this cross State lines and another set of rules and regulations must also be taken into consideration as well.
Rules and Regs differ from Intrastate vs Interstate.

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The typical consumer has no control over his meat and other foodstuffs until they are purchased. If I wish to buy a pound of sliced sandwich meat, I expect to remove a slice and put it between 2 slices of bread and be assured that I will not get sick. The same applies for eating raw hamburger. It wasn't too many years ago that it was offered at baffet-style meals around here, especially in the Milwaukee area. Are you trying to tell me that something that has been normal for thousands of years is my responsibilty if I get sick? I don't think so. I want to be assured that I can enjoy life as it has been handed me and know that someone else cares about it.

As for the so-called "near food", what does irradiation of meat have anything to do with it? And how did Monsanto end up on this thread when there is a thread explicitly forbidding it?

Martin

When somebody gets sick and sues--that will change a few peoples minds. Have you ever considered where we are getting a good share of the food that are on our shelves at the supermarket? China, Mexico, Chile, Thailand, Brazil. Who in the devil that buys at the groc wants to let all those countries with all their different rules or lack thereof sell their food here and we have to eat it without any safeguards. How does anybody know if the neighbors cow has been bangs tested or has other diseases. Milk is tested for all kinds of things that the raw milk from the neighbor doesn't have to be free from. If they find antibiotics in it or the cell count is up they can refuse the whole batch--the neighbor can sell it just as dirty as they choose. The only food I trust without safeguards is the food I produce MYSELF. If I have to buy something I want to know that there are safeguards! People in hospitals can't grow their food, students in college, our troops, residents of nursing homes just to name a few. Should they all be out milking a cow and mucking the barn! Of course not! And for that reason the food supply has to be monitored!

There is plenty of good food at the supermarket. Milk, eggs, fresh fruits and vegetables ... you don't have to buy Pop-Tarts and Kraft Mac & Cheese.

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Goodness Martin, I was not disagreeing with what you said at all. I agree that times have changed and with those changes we most certainly do need safety intervention.

I was just meaning that if we were to produce as much food for ourselves as possible, all issues we've been talking about in most of these "the sky is falling" threads would be irrelevant. In other words we put the ball into our own park instead of having someone else toss it at us instead.

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Monitoring and mandating have very different definitions

It's okay to mention it in passing. No said not to ever say the "M" word any more...LOL. Just no debating or starting specific threads about it.

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"Challenges are what make life interesting -- overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."

This thread was about the one main food item that the majority of consumers can not produce, meat. It was hijacked by those who have personal agendas rather than caring what the majority need and expect. Producing our own meat has nothing to do with it unless you are those fortunate enough to have the chance, many by birthright. My garden last year was over 10,000 square feet. Nobody is going to tell me that I must become a vegetarian and reject the FDAs attempt to make meat safer than it is or become a hunter-gatherer like our ancestors. Nor would it have been practical to use the 10,000 square feet just to raise a few animals for meat.

I'm like every other person I know in that I like a varied diet. I had ground venison and homemade spaghetti sauce for supper tonight. Last night I ate out and had medium-rare filet mignon and shrimp with baked potato and salad bar. Night before was pork steaks, boiled potatoes, and a fruit salad. The filet was in a steakhouse and I expected that and everything else to be safe to eat. The pork steaks came from HyVee and I expected them to be perfectly safe. The venison, touted as better and natural, was observed as a live animal for not much more than a minute and had lots of corn in its stomach. Anyone want to tell me which of those 3 meats were the safest to eat?

Martin

"The proposed rule would provide a qualified exemption and modified requirements for farms that meet two requirements:

(1) the farm must have food sales averaging less than $500,000 per year during the last three years; and"

Seeing that the proposed rule only applies to large commercial operations, I'm in full support of it. It does not affect any of the farmer's markets, home gardens or other small operations where people are selling excess produce and meat to neighbors. Those large operations are the ones that need something of this sort to ensure the safety of the consumers that are unable or unwilling to produce their own food.

If anyone has actual questions about radiation and potential effects it can have, go ahead and ask. I've spent the past 13 years working in nuclear power plants, both military and civilian.

Of course you don't have to buy Pop-Tarts. But when is the last time you saw a nearly free bag of apples because of a coupon in a Sunday paper insert?

And the truth is - vegetables no longer have the amount of nutrients in them they used to. Pasturized milk at the store is from sick animals. Buy it without fat and it's also loaded with junk to make it palatable. Eggs from conventional hens are also inferior - the chickens are treated awful, they are sick and they are not fed a proper chicken diet. So the food that is produced is not good enough to nourish us properly.

Yet the majority just don't seem to care.

WOW Not even going to post on what lies are being perpetrated by some. Just WOW.

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Now, I have absolutely no idea what gives you the right to say that milk is from sick cows! My family has had dairy herds for years and there are no sick animals and all raw milk is tested for antibiotics and somatic cell count. If there are sick cows being milked they are being milked by unqualified people that probably don't know a cow from a goat and are selling raw milk that has NOT been tested. Who is testing the milk that is being sold by hobby farmers around the USA? That is the milk that is dangerous. I don't care squat what you feed those cows. Is that milk tested? Every single drop that is sold like the commercial dairy milk?

This is an exaggeration, to say the least.
Feel free to grow your own food however you want, but please dont spread lies.

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Cows may not be smarter than People, but some cows are smarter than some people.

PP, I think everyone here supports your right to eat whatever you want, but no one likes a zealot who condemns everyone who disagrees with them.

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Libertarindependent

Any simple google search will support the fact that conventional dairy cows are not healthy animals. If they are not being grass fed on plenty of healthy pasture they are not living as healthy as they should. Flip through a diary catalog-check out cow pharma aisle at any feed store. There's something very wrong with how the animals that produce our food are mistreated in this country as well as others.

To quote Charlie Brown, "GOOD GRIEF!"

PP, I don't know what your diet is to have so much hate and poison in it but I sure am thankful that mine doesn't.

Martin

As someone who has worked right deep in the dairy industry my entire life, I can honestly say that I have not had that experience at all.

Farmers do not just treat their cows bad and then pump them full of drugs to counter it.
That wouldn't be profitable and it is not how they do it.

Any cow can get sick, yes. Even the most organically fed and closely coddled ones.
Recognising illness and treating it promptly makes all the difference: whether you are large or small scale.


People are living longer than ever before in history.
A big part of that is the fact that sanitation measures have improved so much.
Couple that with an increase in 'pharma' treatments for animals and people both.

I for one, do not think that is entirely a bad thing.

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Do WHAT!?!

How on Earth could the government DISALLOW mass production and this still be a free country? We've had mass production since good, old Henry Ford invented the assembly line? Do you HONESTLY believe that the government could and should outlaw mass production? Really?

And first you say that the government oversees mass production, and goodness knows we have ALL heard people complaining about Federal Safety Regulations and how they should be just done away with, and THEN you say that the government doesn't care about sanitation? What the heck do you think all of those regulations are about?

Listen, I completely understand wanting and promoting a natural and organic diet. I *GET* that. But we, as a nation, cannot produce enough natural and organic food to feed our population of 300,000,000. At our current level of technology it cannot be done. What is more, 75% of our population, that is 225,000,000, live in urban areas where they CANNOT produce the bulk of their own food. Even if they had the space, they do not have the skills. Not everyone has a green thumb.

There is a demand for physically safe food. When it comes to methods of food preservation, irradiation is the most effective, provides the highest level of food safety, with the least amount of overall energy usage, and the least amount of nutritional damage than all other food preservation techniques that are currently commercially available.

And we have been using it for years without any side effects to people or animals consuming the food. My DH was in the Navy for 17 years, most of it spent on a ship. Their food was irradiated. He has had no effects from it. I was in the Army, and guess what? Those MREs are irradiated, and most of the stuff served at chow was irradiated. No side effects!

And, in actuality, if I could find a place that would irradiate small food lots for a reasonable price, that is how my *homegrown* food would be preserved. As there is far less nutritional damage to the food using irradiation than by using canning, freezing, or dehydrating. It takes less energy to irradiate foods than it does to can them or dehydrate them. Also, irradiated foods (and yes, they are packaged airtight BEFORE the irradiation procedure) are stored on shelves, at room temperature, so they are not using energy long term, making it so irradiated foods use less energy than freezing.

Hmmm, safer food, less nutritional damage than any other preservation method, and uses less energy than any other method to preserve that food? What is the actual "green" choice here?

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck

Some of this stuff is so over the top it reminds me of an extremely obese person ordering two Big Macs, a large fry and an apple pie but gets a diet coke because they are on a diet.

Its an incredibly naive and romantic notion that people can just grow their own food and subsist on that. All those balcony gardens in the cities and all. And if we are honest with ourselves, even us country bumpkins know that not everyone out here in the hinterlands properly handles, stores, or processes their "home grown" food. I grow organically and like the taste of my home grown veggies but I would be less than honest in trying to claim my stuff is any more nutritious than Joe farmer down the road who grows his conventionally.

Nothing in these rules require home growers or small time producers to irradiate their food and as much as I am tired of the government intruding on every aspect of my life people need to pick and choose their battles. I am a land owner and have the resources to raise my own meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs etc. and what I dont or cant raise myself I have the financial means to buy what I want and pay a premium for whatever products I think meets my personal agenda (organic, non irradiated, whatever). But its extreme and bordering on outrageous to claim that because a person believes a certain way and has become what they consider "educated through Google" that they care more about someone elses kids than their own parents. Not everyone has the opportunity or the financial/physical/desire to move to the country and raise their own food stuffs.

If you can grow your own the way you like it great, I do it myself, but just because we chose to do it doesnt give us the right to criticize those who dont. The same people who are constantly railing against the goverment, big Ag, big pharma, scientists, public schools, doctors etc. dont seem to be adverse to dictating their own beliefs on others. It just seems kind of bizarre.

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Purple Toad- Didn't the Navy do a rather extensive test on irradiating food to see if it would be safer for the soldiers and found it wasn't? That it added carcinogenics and changed the food structure?

I just came from a farm conference where we talked about this rule. I downloaded the full, almost 600 pages of this new rule and have been working my way through it. It doesn't just affect large farms. If you make $25,000 in a year or more, you will have so many years to comply with the rule. It outlines how you will be able to irrigate, fertilize and compost. Where I see it having the biggest negative effect is on agara-tourism. This new rule will make it so any visitor to a farm will have to be educated on food safety, how to wash their hands etc, and sign a waver stating they haven't been sick or had intestinal issues with in the last few days before they will be aloud on the farm. So any of you with a petting zoo, u-pick orchard or farm, CSA with on farm pick-up, might want to read this and see how it will affect you. Also it sounds like food safety wavers will be needed for farmers markets as well.

So far, I haven't seen anything on how they plan to enforce this rule. It sounds like if there is a recall that they will work backwards to trace the origin of the food, then pull that farms records, which the farm must keep for two years and be able to present with in a 24 hour notice, to see if they have done their water tests and such. If they haven't been following the rule, well they'll be up an excrement creek without a tool for which to traverse it.

IMO- this rule is the best way to kill the image of a farm. When you need to make families sign a waver to pick apples or go to a farmers market, what's to stop them from believing the stuff in the stores are safer then from the farm? You don't need a waver to shop at a store.