I was scanning the FDA website for information regarding the ever expanding pet food recall and food safety crisis, when I noticed a press release advising manufacturers “to be especially vigilant in assuring that glycerin, a sweetener commonly used worldwide in liquid over-the-counter and prescription drug products, is not contaminated with diethylene glycol.” The press release states no reason why they would issue such a warning at this time.
Hmm. Glycerin is an ingredient sometimes used in pet food. Diethylene glycol is a poison used in antifreeze, that is known to cause renal failure. Thousands of dogs and cats have died from renal failure, supposedly due to melamine, an industrial chemical not previously known to be highly toxic.
Can’t help but wonder.
UPDATE:
I asked FDA what prompted this press release, and they responded: “This is another action being taken under our unapproved drug initiative.”
I knew I’d read about a similar case, and used the search at Daily Kos and found it. This is a chilling example:
[QUOTE] “The suspicion of international contamination is eerily similar to past incidents in China,” Barton said. “A dozen years ago, 89 children in Haiti died after taking cough medicine made with, believe it or not, poisonous antifreeze that was traced back to China. The world never got an answer from the Chinese on how this crime occurred.
“In an investigation started in 1998 when I was the chairman of this subcommittee, we found that 155 Americans were sickened by impure gentamicin sulfate made by a Chinese firm,” Barton continued. “We never got a definitive answer on how this unapproved, impure drug ingredient got into that particular product.” [/QUOTE]
FULL LINK TO STORY:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com.....afety.html
This was posted yesterday at Daily Kos by Nonie3234 — The Young Turks, the first nationwide liberal talk show and first live, daily internet TV show
http://www.theyoungturks.com/
Pudd the magic Negro was born in Philly
And was teased by the other kids because he had no harmony
Little “turd blossom” loved that rascal Pudd,
And brought him stick and stones and taught him how to sling mud.
OH PUDD, the Magic Negro grew up in Philly
The City of Brotherly Love is a land without any racial harmony
Pudd, the Magic Negro grew up in Philly
The City of Brotherly Love is a land without any racial harmony
Together they would travel around and around the block
Pudd kept a lookout perched upon Turd Blossom’s Lily White c_ck
Old ladies and girls would run whenever those two came,
Because Pudd & Turd blossom farted out their name
OH PUDD, the Magic Negro grew up in Philly
The City of Brotherly Love is a land without any racial harmony
Pudd, the Magic Negro grew up in Philly
The City of Brotherly Love is a land without any racial harmony
Turd Blossom the liar lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and tiny cock rings make way for other sex toys
One gray night it happened, when Pudd knocked on the door
Turd Blossom and Jeff Gannon were sexually embraced on the floor
Pudd the Magic Negro then left Philly
With heavy heart and vengeance he set out to prove all Liberals are silly
Illogical as it sounded he didn’t understand the rejection
Which explain why he votes Republican in every election.
Remember, Goldy
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you“.
“Glycerin is….” hmmmmmm. Glycerin. Glycerin? NITROglycerin? Isn’t that like, something in dynamite?
The WMD’s have been found!
http://www.preemptivekarma.com......html#more
“We didn’t come this far because we’re made of sugar candy. Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and across this continent by giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans. That was biological warfare. And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever.
And we grew prosperous. And yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves. So it goes with most great nation-states, which–feeling guilty about their savage pasts–eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry up-and-coming who are not made of sugar candy.”
Paul Harvey, Medal of Freedom recipient — 2005
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060717/howl
“According to the Economist magazine’s “World in Figures,” life expectancy in the United States is a little less than 78 years, equal to that of Portugal and shorter than every nation in Europe except Denmark, not to mention Japan and, if you can believe it, Castro’s Cuba. You can expect to live more than a year and a half longer in Cuba than in the United States.”
@5: Well harry, who wants to live longer when to you have to wait, why, months and months in Canada for that boob job, botox treatments, or that vital operation for restless foot syndrome?
Time is money. But dying early? Why, that’s just the breaks.
Harry Poon @ 5
The CIA World Fact Book says life expectancy in the United States is 78 years, and in Cuba is 77.08 years.
https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/us.html
The link you provided quoted from The Economist, as opposed to providing the original source. Apparently, The Economist charges money to look at its statistics, and of course, it is unclear where its statistics come from.
One thing that is clear — Canada has an average life expectancy of 80.34 years per the CIA, over 2 years better than U.S.
harry poon says:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/2 0060717/howl
“ if you can believe it, Castro’s Cuba. You can expect to live more than a year and a half longer in Cuba than in the United States.”
05/04/2007 at 6:50 pm
Including the ones who jump into the ocean to try to swim away. INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One thing that is clear — Canada has an average life expectancy of 80.34 years per the CIA, over 2 years better than U.S.
So…we have an endorsement from Richard Pope of socialized medicine!
wtf, I hope they are being vigilant. Any clue as to where this may have came in from?
re 7: I stand corrected. Our life expectancy is almost 1 and 1/2 mos. longer than in Cuba.
Where did the CIA get their figures — the same place they found out about the WMD’s in Iraq?
I have a song lampoon involving Rush Limbaugh. It’s called, “Rush the Limp-Wicked Blowhard”.
I am too lazy to check references, but if my memory is accurate, GLYCERIN is a food additive of the GRAS (generally recongnised as safe) catagory. There are defined limits in certain foods (bakery goods and ice cream are examples). It prevents the formation of ice crystals in ice cream. I think excessive doses can cause diarrhea. The problem listed above is adulteration or contamination by another chemical that can be used as antifreeze. This contaminate is toxic, but is said to have sweet taste. Approximately 15 years ago there was a scandal in Europe, some of the wines were sweetened with this stuff.
don’t forget the FDA thinks it fine and dandy to feed chickens arsenic to make ’em grow bigger. This is banned in Europe.
Arsenic in Chicken Feed May Pose Health Risk
http://blog.wired.com/wiredsci....._chic.html
In its original organic form, roxarsone is relatively benign. […] However, some of the 2.2 million lb of roxarsone mixed in the nation’s chicken feed each year converts into inorganic arsenic within the bird, and the rest is transformed into inorganic forms after the bird excretes it.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, long-term exposure to inorganic arsenic can cause bladder, lung, skin, kidney, and colon cancer, as well as deleterious immunological, neurological, and endocrine effects. Low-level exposures can lead to partial paralysis and diabetes. “None of this was known in the 1950s when arsenicals were first approved for use in poultry,” says Ellen K. Silbergeld, a toxicologist at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health. […]
Even though the drinking water standard for arsenic has been strengthened, the standards for arsenic residues in poultry-2,000 ppb for liver and 500 ppb for muscle-have remained unchanged for decades. Furthermore, neither the Food & Drug Administration nor the Department of Agriculture has actually measured the level of arsenic in the poultry meat that most people consume. USDA has measured it only in chicken livers.
Study Has Many Clucking about Elevated Levels of Arsenic Found in Chicken
http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/....._meat.html
.”10 The researchers, however, found not only elevated levels of organic arsenic in chicken meat, they found elevated levels of the highly toxic inorganic form typically used only in insecticides and weed killers.11 And cooking the muscles of these animals may create additional toxic arsenic by-products.12
Inorganic arsenic is considered one of the prominent environmental causes of cancer mortality in the world.13 Arsenic is a human carcinogen linked to liver, lung, skin, kidney, bladder, and prostate cancers. It can also cause neurological, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, and immune system abnormalities. Diabetes has also been linked to arsenic exposure.14
The feeding of arsenic to chickens in the United States releases hundreds of tons of arsenic into the environment every year in the form of poultry manure which is spread on fields as fertilizer.15 In fact, a coalition of families suffering serious health conditions is suing chicken producers like Tyson after research showed cancer rates as much as 50 times above the national average in communities neighboring poultry factory farm operations.16
“The CIA World Fact Book says ”
If you can’t trust the CIA, well, then you should bend, spin, slam dunk and out their NOC officers.
– Karl Rove
Karl Rove = Traitor to all American ideals
Plus, he is soon to be a prison bitch.
He will have lots of Repug company.
Donnageddon @ 16
Regardless of what you think about the appointed CIA directors, the career staff of the CIA tends to be pretty professional. Especially the analyst staff, and most of the field operatives too. (What agency did Valerie Plame work for? One guess only …)
Richard you stumped me!
Do tell!
Extra points if you can let us know why her outing was justified.
Go for it!
correction: “know” should read “now”
My apologies.
Actually, “know” was correct.
I should never second guess my genius.
Richard… I await your response. Why was the Rove outing of Ms. Plame justified?
Why is it not treason?
You gotta love it when WHATADICK Pope pretends he knows ANY FUCKING THING about the CIA. Here’s a looooooser who has tried 14 times I know of to get elected to ANYTHING and lost everytime. He’s been criticized by his own BAR ASSN. He went to a nothing law school. He’s a nobody and yet he is going to tell US about the CIA. PLLLLEEEEEAAASE Dickie. I know you seem to think as a PUBLICAN you are God’s gift to mankind, but considering the fact that you’ve never been anywhere near the CIA except perhaps to be investigated, your opinion of their professionalism is like your career thus far, moot.
http://news.aol.com/elections/.....0000000001
Another right wing whack job locked up. Man we’re gonna need more jails for these Publican asswipes and soon.
Mr. Pope is unable to respond.
Why? Because there is no excuse for the treason of the Bush Administration, and the Republican Party that supports them.
What is it that Puddybud says?
Oh yeah… “‘Nuff said'”
@14 Maybe that’s why ice cream gives me diarrhea. I love the stuff; but I can’t eat it.
And here I’ve thought for years I had food allergies, when what I actually have is the-toxic-shit-they-put-in-food allergies.
Thanks for nothing, FDA. It turns out the Chinese communists still hate our guts and still want to kill us all.
Makes you wonder what they plan to do with the U.S. government debt Bush is selling to them.
3 Alaska Republicans Arrested For Bribery
“By Steve Quinn
“The Associated Press
“JUNEAU, Alaska — One current and two former Alaska legislators pleaded not guilty Friday to charges they accepted bribes — including cash and a job offer in Barbados for one man — to support legislation for an oil-services company.
“Rep. Victor Kohring of Wasilla, Pete Kott of Eagle River and Bruce Weyhrauch of Juneau, all Republicans, were arrested Friday.”
http://tinyurl.com/32xd37
RR @ 26/27 don’t JUMP to conclusions. Your problem maybe due to Lactose intolerance or may not involve ice cream at all.
I seem to recall learning back in sixth grade science that it’s customary for glycerine to be added to mass-produced bakery products to keep them from drying out. That’s why a loaf of Wonder Bread doesn’t become fossilized if left out overnight, and why Twinkies last…well, forever.
New NYTimes article on glycerin tampering
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05.....on.html?hp
Obviously this scary and long article*, to be in tomorrow’s NYTimes, is what prompted that new warning. The FDA knew it was coming and didn’t want to be caught without a perfunctory warning.
*the article is about how 1000s of people have died around the world because Chinese exporters sold Diethylene glycol as glycerin for cough syrup. A pharma company in the US had bought the syrup, caught it in time, but didn’t notify the FDA. That’s industry self regulation for you.
Geez, and the food-nazis freak out about plain old white sugar?
Thank God I can get Mexican-made Coke down here in Reno now. No corn syrup or fancy chemicals, just plain old sugar. But since I’ve found out that Costco carries it, you might be able to get it there as well.
The article Anna references @33:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05.....oison.html
geez, I am neither a conspiracy buff nor paranoid by nature, but this administration is starting to get to me. In 2004, I remember thinking, explicitly, that american voters had chosen a dismaying future for the weak, poor, powerless, and disposessed. But, I thought I’d be mostly immune (being as I am not poor or powerless). Apparently, though I was wrong. I can protect my children from a lot, but apparently do need a functioning government. This would all be an amusing plot for an apocolyptic novel of the future, if it weren’t true.
bj-too