February, 21 2018, 11:15am EDT
New Documents Show Privatized Hog Inspection Scheme Rife With Food Safety Violations
WASHINGTON
Documents obtained by Food & Water Watch and reported by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Guardian today show that five hog slaughter plants piloting the New Swine Inspection System--which decreases the number of government safety inspectors and replaces them with the company's own employees--have significant violations including fecal contamination, sanitation issues and failure to remove diseased carcasses from the food chain.
"We weren't surprised that the pilot program failed to uphold food safety standards, but we were surprised at how it failed so miserably," said Tony Corbo, Senior Lobbyist with Food & Water Watch. "The USDA needs to withdraw the proposed rule that would expand the program to even more plants."
Food & Water requested food safety performance data from the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act for the five hog HIMP plants as well as five comparably-sized hog plants operating under traditional inspection, for the period from January 1, 2012 through November 30, 2016. It analyzed the regulatory violations filed over this nearly five-year period in these 10 plants and found that.
- HIMP plants received 84% of the non-compliance reports filed for problems with food safety plans; 73% of the reports filed for carcass contamination with feces, bile, hair or dirt; 65% of the reports filed for general carcass contamination; and 61% of the reports filed for equipment sanitation.
- Over the five-year period, there were 22 instances - all occurring in the HIMP plants - in which a USDA on-line inspector discovered that a plant employee failed to identify a carcass so infected that consumption of the meat could cause food poisoning.
- The 3,562 non-compliance reports filed in HIMP plants included 7,169 regulatory violations.
For more information, or to download sample reports from the five plants, visit https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/translating-new-swine-inspection-system.
To see the report by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and The Guardian, visit https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2018-02-21/dirty-us-meat-could-come-over-here-after-brexit.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Warning of 'Unprecedented Risks,' Scientists Say Mirror Bacteria 'Should Not Be Created'
"Our analysis suggests that mirror bacteria could broadly evade many immune defenses of humans, animals, and plants," according to a group of 38 scientists, including multiple Nobel Prize winners.
Dec 13, 2024
Dozens of scientists are calling in no uncertain terms for a halt on research to create "mirror life," particularly "mirror bacteria" that could "pose ecological risks" and possibly cause "pervasive lethal infections in a substantial fraction of the plant and animal species, including humans."
The group of 38 scientists, who include Nobel laureates and other experts, addressed research into "mirror life"—mirror-image biological molecules—in a piece of commentary published in the journal Science published Friday, which accompanied a technical report that was released earlier in December.
One of the scientists, synthetic biologist Kate Adamala at the University of Minnesota, was working on creating a mirror cell but "changed track last year" after studying the risks, according to the Guardian.
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To that end, the authors of the commentary plan to convene discussions on the risks of mirror life and related topics in 2025, with the hope that "society at large will take a responsible approach to managing a technology that might pose unprecedented risks."
The ability to create mirror life is likely over a decade away and would require sizable investment and technical progress, meaning the world has the opportunity to "preempt risks before they are realized," according to the scientists.
When broken down into simple terms, mirror life sounds like something out of science fiction. All the biomolecules that constitute life have a "handedness" to them—"right-handed" nucleotides make up DNA and RNA, and proteins are formed from "left-handed" amino acids.
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While publicly pledging to cooperate with reform efforts, Witty has defended his company's care denials in private and urged his employees not to engage with media outlets in the aftermath of Thompson's murder.
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In a column for The Nation on Friday, writer Natalie Shure argued that "the appalling amount of resources and energy we put into maintaining the existence of health insurance is wasted on an industry with no social value whatsoever."
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"In 2024, these billionaire families used their enormous wealth to make record-breaking political contributions to secure a GOP trifecta," reads a new report.
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The children of the richest families in the U.S. are well-known for spending their vast wealth on frivolous luxuries—constructing a replica of a medieval church on their acres of property, in the case of banking heir Timothy Mellon, or starting a brand of T-shirts described by one critic as "terrible beyond your wildest imagination," as Wyatt Koch, nephew of Republican megadonors Charles and David, did.
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At least 90 billionaires have passed away over the last decade, leaving their beneficiaries $455 billion in collective wealth.
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"Trump and his allies in Congress are doing their donors' bidding by rigging the system in their favor and pushing a $4 trillion giveaway to wealthy elites and giant corporations."
Without loopholes included the stepped up basis tax cut, the current estate tax on billionaires and centimillionaires would yield enough revenue to fund universal childcare, preschool, and paid family leave for U.S. workers, with hundreds of billions of dollars left over, according to ATF's report.
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