http://www8.nationalacademies.org/…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dietary Supplements for Horses, Dogs, and Cats Need Better Regulations and

An Improved System to Report Adverse Health EffectsThe growing use of animal dietary supplements has raised several concerns, including the safety of specific supplements and the approaches taken to determine their safeness.  A new National Research Council report, requested by the Center for Veterinary Medicine of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, assesses whether the addition of three dietary supplements — lutein, evening primrose oil, and garlic — to the diets of horses, dogs, or cats may cause significant adverse health effects.

The report stresses that clear and precise regulations need to be established so “only safe animal dietary supplements are allowed on the market.”

Funny, man has been able to survive hundreds of thousands of years without the FDA telling them what was safe to eat and using the threat of force to keep people from selling or consuming unsafe food. Not that they do a great job. I suppose it makes sense then that they would attempt to regulate animals too since we’ve only been interacting with them for tens of thousands. If we can’t handle feeding ourselves how could we possibly handle feeding our pets?

http://www.cnn.com/…

This morning on CNN they asked some random girl on the street if she was afraid of the satellite falling and causing a problem. She replied, “No, I am afraid of the tainted meat though.”

I have two issues with the whole situation.

1. The spy sattelite was a huge waste of tax payers money in the first place given it never worked. Maybe upwards of a couple hundred million. Now they are trying to show off by claiming this little satellite could harm people because of the highly toxic fuel on board and therefore we need to spend upwards of $60 million to blow the thing up. I’m all for blowing shit up but the likelihood of this thing not burning up in reentry and landing anywhere near civilization and spewing out toxic gases which harm those nearby is pretty low. The fact CNN bothered to ask such a question when other things going on and related to that story are much more important annoys the shit out of me. Especially since I have no choice but to see CNN at work.
2. There is no tainted meat! The biggest beef recall in history is a big farce. The meat sold goes all the way back to February 2006 and is not tainted. No one has reported any problems with the meat from Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. The reason for the recall was that some asshats decided it’d be a good idea to abuse and process beef from downed cows and a video of it got online.

I’m not going to claim that eating downer cows is a great idea but the chance of sickness is very small. This recall was absolutely called to punish the Westland Meat Packing Co. for making the government and specifically the USDA look like asses. I wish someone in the MSM would point to this and say “Look, see? The government can’t protect you any better. Don’t be retarded and let the industry handle itself.” Especially when you get stories like that of Creekstone Farm Premium Beef getting sued by the USDA for wanting to test ALL their cattle for mad cow voluntarily instead of the 1% the USDA does randomly. Why do people continue to think the FDA and USDA and other such agencies can or do protect them? At best they are incredibly inefficient and at worse, with regard to the FDA, keep drugs and other treatments from sick individuals who would have voluntarily taken them if given the chance. Delaying them for upwards of 15 years and tacking on hundreds of millions of dollars to the products overhead.

Farmers wage war over milk hormone

There’s a milk war under way in Pennsylvania, with a hormone known as rbST at ground zero.

Farmers who use rbST say the hormone is naturally produced by cows, does not harm cows or humans and can increase milk production.

Farmers who don’t use rbST say the hormone is injurious to cows and might be damaging to humans.

What has sparked the war is a decision by some dairies to label their milk as rbST-free, thus implying that their milk is safer than milk from cows that are injected with rbST, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for commercial use in 1993.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff sides with farmers who use rbST.

Wolff said labels proclaiming milk to be free of artificial growth hormones are misleading and unfair to competitors, but the Agriculture Department and governor’s office are now reconsidering an earlier decision ordering dairies to stop labeling milk containers as hormone-free. That action was supposed to take effect on Jan. 1 but could be delayed a month or more as officials continue to consider arguments from both sides.

Ethics Is Real Issue Behind Milk-Labeling Controversy

the countries of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all 25 members of the European Union have already banned the use of rBST/rBHG in the production of milk.

This is a major issues in some circles. The ‘documentary’ The Corporation talks about rbST/rbHG quite a bit… though they worry about and attack the wrong people in the film. Most people are not familiar with the controversy. Then again most people aren’t aware the federal government restricts “the transportation and sale in interstate commerce of unpasteurized milk and milk products.” The claim that people will be confused is without merit. They may not know what it is but you’d hope that either the rbST-free labels say what it is or the places which sell the milk could provide documentation if customers requested. Hell… they could just look it up on Google.com. If they don’t educate themselves so be it. If they regulate anything it aught to be requiring those who do use the hormone to label their products. This is corporatism masked as nanny statism. Both of which are bad for the public and the economy. As Joshua Katz says over at LewRockwell.com:

Now, the state of Pennsylvania has outlawed the labels. This is quite harmful to producers who built organic farms, which are much harder to build and maintain, on the expectation of being able to obtain a higher milk price. Now that the milk is not labeled, there will be no price differential, and soon enough there will be no untreated milk available for sale in the state, I’d wager.

I’d agree. Hopefully this falls through… and then lets work on getting rid of the milk cartel subsidies.

http://www.downsizedc.org/…

The latest (Sept 24) RSC Update is interesting. It provided us with today’s Quote of the Day that led off this message. It also includes this statement about H.R. 3580, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 introduced on Wednesday, September 19: “Final bill text released twenty minutes before floor consideration.” That’s bad. What makes it worse is, this bill is 422 pages long. Is it just me, or does 20 minutes seem like not quite enough time to read 422 pages?

Even worse than that, the bill was passed on a “suspend the rules and pass” motion - that is, they voted on the measure without debate. Such motions can only pass with two-thirds of the vote, but that was no problem, as this one passed with 405 in favor and only 7 opposed. The Senate passed the bill the next day by unanimous consent.

Admittedly, the bill wasn’t entirely new. Earlier in the year, the Senate passed an apparently similar bill, the 500-page S. 1082, and the House had passed the similar, 312-page H.R. 2900. The subject, then, wasn’t completely out-of-the-blue. But those two bills were different from each other by 188 pages. H.R. 3580 appears to split the difference, but what has been added from the previous bills? What has been subtracted? Has anything been secretly inserted? Aside from the legislative staffers who put it together, does anyone know? Were they “helped” by Administration bureaucrats? By lobbyists?

I think this speaks for itself. I’d imagine it’s not as bad as the other bill similarly passed… the PATRIOT Act… but it’s still absolutely disgusting that this happens.

This dispatch if you notice mentions blog of bile as a new RTBA coalition member.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/…

 I Got Hooked on the White Stuff Back in the ’70s
No, not that white stuff. And not the white stuff that Disco Stu bought from Garth Motherloving. The white stuff I got hooked on (growing up on the family dairy farm) is raw milk — milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. Today’s NYT has an article on the growing black and gray markets in raw milk, which the Food and Drug Administration and 15 state legislatures want to shut down.

Yes, that’s right — Uncle Sam and 15 state governments prohibit consumers from buying milk fresh from the cow. And in the nannies’ defense, milk was responsible for much food-borne illness in the era before universal pasteurization. Most consumers likely prefer protection from nasty bugs like E. coli and salmonella.

But others are willing to risk exposure to those illnesses. Some raw milk enthusiasts claim the white stuff is more healthful than processed milk. Others (I count myself among these) say simply that it tastes better that the milk you buy at the store — people who try raw milk for the first time often comment that it tastes more like melted ice cream than the stuff that comes in cartons.

So why should raw milk fans be prohibited from buying the product they want?

How much of this nanny statism can people handle. A black market for cow milk?! It’s absolutely appalling that a situation like this has arisen.  People are more than capable of taking care of themselves and their families. Instead of wasting time worrying about next weeks episode of Lost they could pay attention to the who, what, where and whens of their food supply. Personal responsibility will only make our country stronger.