Once again, the FDA downplays the ever expanding food safety crisis:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2007Joint Update: FDA/USDA Update on Tainted Soylent Green
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue their investigation of Soylent Green, which has been found to contain people and people-related compounds. Based on information currently available, FDA and USDA believe the likelihood of illness after eating Soylent Green would be very low. The agencies are taking certain actions out of an abundance of caution. As announced on April 26, Soylent Green known to have been adulterated (ie, contaminated with adults) will not be approved to enter the food supply.
As reported on April 22 by FDA, the Agency determined that plankton protein concentrate imported from China was contaminated with people and people-related compounds. As part of the ongoing investigation, FDA has determined the plankton protein was used in the production of Soylent Green.
At this time, we have no evidence of harm to humans associated with the Soylent Green, and therefore no recall of the product is being issued. Testing and the joint investigation continue. If any evidence surfaces to indicate there is harm to humans, the appropriate action will be taken.
The assessment that, if there were to be harm to human health, it would be very low, is based on a number of factors, including the dilution of the contaminating people and people-related compounds from the original plankton protein concentrate as it moves through the food system. First, people are only a partial ingredient in plankton protein concentrate; second, plankton protein concentrate is only a partial ingredient in Soylent Green; third, even if people are present in Soylent Green, Soylent Green is only a small part of the average American diet, which typically also includes Soylent Yellow and Soylent Red. In addition to the dilutional factor, neither FDA nor USDA are aware of any human illness that has occurred from exposure to people or its by-products. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention systems have limited ability to detect subtle problems due to ingestion of people and people-related compounds, the public should rest assured that no problems have been detected to date. To further evaluate any potential harm to humans, the FDA is developing and implementing further tests and risk assessments based on the toxicity of people, and how much people people could be expected to actually consume.
USDA and FDA continue to conduct a full, comprehensive examination to protect the nation’s food supply and will provide updates as new information is confirmed.
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And if you think that’s absurd, just read this.
Christie Keith spews:
I have no words. That doesn’t usually happen to me.
Spineless spews:
The risk is “very low”, not because we know for sure, but rather because we have no idea what it will do to humans so therefore we are sticking our heads in the sand and making this definitive proclamation. Just ignore the fact that the ingredients in question aren’t supposed to be there in the first place.
Nothing to see here… just move along
Heck of a job!
natasha spews:
It wouldn’t be so funny if it didn’t seem more every day like it might happen. It would be perverse vengeance for raising herds of cannibal cows.
Roger Rabbit spews:
If the Christo-fascists get their way, and abortion and birth control are outlawed, we can always fall back on cannibalism after the Earth’s population reaches 100 billion people and the planet has been totally denuded of trees, soils, and resources. It doesn’t appear we will run out of edible humans any time soon.
Roger Rabbit spews:
My friends in the wild wolf pack tell me they expect to do just fine no matter what happens to human civilization. As they see it, their food supply is increasing every day! And they won’t have to eat those crummy stale green crackers, either. They plan to catch their protein of the hoof while it’s still fresh.
Roger Rabbit spews:
In a perverse way, the Bush administration has been a good thing, in the sense that it gives people a good look at what kind of society we’d live in if corporations and Republicans are allowed to run amok.
This should be sufficient to discourage voters from ever electing Republicans to anything ever again.
rapier spews:
We know the put the melamine in to cheat, to make it look like there was more protein in the material than there was. This is understandable What I don’t get is how our food manufactures missed it? Even more important it seems the FDA had an inkling this was going on and allowed it.
What exactly is the competitive advantge of allowing lower protein in our food. The Chinese cheating has an obvious advantage but for the buyers, who are the end manufactures. I just don’t get it. How did they miss it, if they did? Why let it go. I mean if you want to add some small percent of filler in your product couldn’t they find something even chearper and better?
Puddybud Who Left The Reservation spews:
I think we should start eating bunnies. We should round up the devil spawn of PelletHead and make some great stew.
INGREDIENTS:
* 1 rabbit, about 3 pounds, cut up
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 3 tablespoons butter
* 1 cup chopped celery
* 2 medium onions, thinly sliced
* 1 teaspoon seasoned salt
* 1 teaspoon salt
* dash pepper
* 1 bay leaf
* 4 cups water
* 4 cups dry red wine
* 2 cups diced carrots
* 4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
* 4 ounces sliced mushrooms, sauteed
* 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/3 cup water
PREPARATION:
Directions for rabbit stew.
Dredge rabbit pieces with 1/2 cup flour. Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium heat; brown rabbit pieces on all sides. Add celery, onion, salt, pepper, bay leaf, 4 cups water, and wine; bring to the boil.
– PelletHead would make a double recipe. Claimed to be 10.75 pounds, but once you remove the head full of bullshit and the entrails, you have approximately 6 pounds left.
Clueless, you need the wine because it improves the taste of rabbit leather and it evaporates away! Kind of like the crap you write!
Puddybud Who Left The Reservation spews:
Voice of Chalk Scratching:
Where is Hilary?
Where is John Effin Kerry?
Where is Chucky Schumer?
Where is Barack Obama?
Where is Maria Moonbat?
Where is Patty the Brain?
You know leftist libtards there must be a reason this is not exploding as a “Republican” problem as you minuscule brained talking puppets are saying here.
Unlike the Katrina disaster, where your libtard friends in congress immediately jumped up and down on Mike Brown’s incompetence, where is their voice?
Puddybud's Who Left the Reservation spews:
Here is why I wrote #9.
http://www.washingtontimes.com.....-8365r.htm
“SAN DIEGO — Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said yesterday raising taxes for higher-income families back to their levels under the Clinton administration is a floor, not a ceiling, and he would consider even higher tax increases.
“What I believe is the starting place is to go back to the Clinton levels,” Mr. Edwards told reporters after addressing the 2,000 delegates to California’s state Democratic Party convention. ”
Ain’t this Mr Two Americas? One who lives in 2000 sq ft like many of us, and the other who lives in 28,000 sq ft homes like him and other rich Donks?
Puddybud's Who Left the Reservation spews:
Hey Moonbat!s: I see Nancy Pelosi did another wonderful job on her war on oil companies. Since Puddy started his “crusade” on oil futures, gas has gone up $.90 cents. War for Oil. War for Oil.
It’s so good the Moonbat!s are in charge!
ABBA spews:
PuddyBud says “PelletHead would make a double recipe. Claimed to be 10.75 pounds, but once you remove the head full of bullshit and the entrails, you have approximately 6 pounds left.”
That was very clever! I might add it is very important to tenderize old Rabbit…like 5 minutes with a sledgehammer.
A lot of grisle.
However Roger Rabbit is clearly inedible because he’s 99% a$$hole!
vegan spews:
while reading the first paragraph:
First reaction
– ” good I never got into seaweed” –
Second :
– ‘was about to happen! sooner not later” –
Finlay the gears shifted into place.
Thank you for heartfelt laughter.
For today, at first reading, it sure seemed credible.
YOS LIB BRO spews:
PUD E. BUD! WHAT A LOSER..
STILL BELIEVIN’ IN LIES MANUFACTURED BY SCAIFE, MURDOCH, ROVE, ETC AND PARROTED OVER DOZENS OF WINGNUT BLOGS LIKE BREAKING WIND OF CHANGE.NET.
PUDDY BELIEVES HIS BULLSHIT IS OF THE HIGHEST INTELLECTUAL CALIBER. OH DO TELL PUDDYWHACKJOB.
PFFFTT.. LOSER.
YOS LIB BRO spews:
OH I FORGOT ADD THE REVEREND MOON TO THE LIST OF RICH RIGHT-WING SHITHEADS PUDDY WORSHIPS.
HE LOVES THAT FRAUD.
YOS LIB BRO spews:
OOOH NOO.. WINGNUTS LIKE PUDDYLOSER AND ABBA ARE SO SCEEEERED OF THE TERRAISTS THAT THEY ELECT RIGHT-WING NUTS LIKE SHRUBYA AND RUMMY AND WOLFIE TO PROTECT THEM.
ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT THESE GUYS ARE LOOTING AND BANKRUPTING THE COUNTRY AND LAUGHING TO THE BANK ESPECIALLY WOLFIE AND HIS OVERPAID MISTRESS.
WHAT A JOKE YOU GUYS ARE.
John Barelli spews:
Rapier asked:
Well, a ton of low-protein wheat gluten with melamine added looks very much like a ton of high-protein wheat gluten, and passes the normal tests for protein.
That was the whole reason that the suppliers added the melamine. To trick the manufacturers.
There was no advantage to the buyers, except a lower price for what they actually believed was an equivalent product. The folks that bought the gluten did regular testing for various problems normally associated with gluten (pesticides, low protein, etc…) but did not even think to test for deliberately added mining waste products.
It’s impractical to test for every possible additive, and melamine was chosen by the suppliers because it was not normally tested for.
Of course, the solution to most of this would have been for some oversight agency to occasionally go to the large suppliers and actually look at the facilities. This may not be practical for an individual pet food producer, that will often buy through third parties and may not even know which company supplied the gluten.
This is the biggest problem with the FDA as it is today. We have a false sense of security, thinking that someone is actually making sure that our food supply is safe, when in reality, almost none of the food products coming in from overseas are tested for even routine problems.
“During FY 1999, FDA conducted in 4 countries 38 inspections of foreign processors of fish and fishery products that export to the U.S. – Source: http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/seaguid3.html
Imagine that. Over 80 percent of the seafood that Americans eat is imported, yet only 38 inspections were performed in the only year for which I can find data.
The FDA has acknowledged that they have only enough inspectors to check only about 1 percent of the nearly nine million imported food shipments (FY 2006 numbers).
Even of that one percent, many of those inspections are likely to be cursory at best. I cannot find hard data about how many of those inspections are complete, thoughough laboratory inspections, and how many are field “spot checks”.
headless lucy spews:
PudWax: You have been wrong from the beginning — about everything. Reagan started that crack epidemic in black neighborhoods in the 1980’s so he could fund his secret war in Central America.
How many of your brothers and sisters lives were ruined so that Reagan could kill 200,000 Salvadoran peasants and Catholic clerics?
You are a traitor to your own people, PudWax.
You are a psychopath.
Who in the Kennedy or Johnson administrations was ever indicted and convicted of supporting secret terroristic wars with criminally acquired money? None.
Who in the Reagan administration?
Oliver North, for one.
And, Nixon illegally bombed Cambodia.
Republicans are bloodthirsty criminals — and you are a Republican.
Em spews:
Pointed here from litbrit over at Shakes’ place. Nice.
N in Seattle spews:
Can’t believe no one has yet noted that, as Detective Robert Thorn informs us,
Abby Kelleyite spews:
Thanks for the dark humor.
My fingers have been falling off trying to keep wikipedia up-to-date on just the science aspects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_pet_food_crisis
rapier spews:
RE John Barelli
I couldn’t t imagine that our friendly industrial food corporations never check for protein content in their gluten. I mean really checked, besides the simple indirect check by nitrogen content, which is the origin of the melamine fraud. The giants have the best chemical labs in the world.
So I , not knowing much about gluten checked Wiki and it seems the glutens main purpose is to impart a desired texture. OK, fine. Still I don’t understand if it is just texture they want why do they care about the protein content at all. We have to assume they do because otherwise the Chinese wouldn’t have bothered trying to spike the protein content numbers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten
On NPR today it was reported that the addition of melamine by Chinese processors was so well known that it could barely be called an open secret. It was presented as common knowledge. At any rate the info was there for anyone wanting to know. It’s impossible for me to believe that the great food industrial giants didn’t know about it. Know about it because of the rumor mill or by real testing.
Here is my guess. Somewhere somebody, at say Nestle, some knew about the little open secret. We know the food processors love putting protein on the little label. With a wink they put X grams per serving, based upon the simple gluten test. Nobody is the wiser. Cheap gluten with extra ‘protein’
I’ve been waiting for the dog food guys to sue the Chinese supplier. Let me guess. There will be no such suit. Why, because probably it can easily be shown they knew. If not by them then the by the really big boys, who they produce for. This Canadian pet food maker is simply a contractor to the big boys. I bet the big boys are telling them to shut up. Let bygones be bygones.
What I am proposing here is a class action suit of gigantic proportion by US consumers.
As for the FDA……
i
Puddybud's Who Left the Reservation spews:
Headlice/harry Poon/ Col Tucker/Col Biff – did I miss any?
Google Vietnam and Southeast Asia drugs. Moonbat! led congress was pissed at Reagan cuz Mondale won Minn only!
Oh yes, we know how the media covered up the affairs of JFK. Amazing isn’t it!
Mark spews:
Which way to the euthanasia center?
Eat me.
Puddybud's Who Left the Reservation spews:
Clueless@14-16: I already proved to you about the Media Morons funding and how their spokesperson “corrected” himself when shown the money trail.
Who did it? CNS! A URL you love to disparage because it displays truths about loony libtard Moonbat!s!
Nuff SAID Moron!
Puddybud's Who Left the Reservation spews:
Clueless you have to stop drinking the sticky salty white colored fluid from the KOS human tube fed to you every .8 seconds. I didn’t think you were that addicted.
Oops… I stand corrected!
Justsomeone spews:
Rush is that you?