(boo–i love him and her!)

twolf1 @ 226

U.S. melamine probers find empty Chinese factories

U.S. investigators found shuttered factories when they arrived at the Chinese food processors blamed for putting the chemical melamine into vegetable proteins shipped to America, officials said on Thursday.

Any chance that stuff could be in protein supplements that atheletes drink? That’s protein powder from China. Hope I’m wrong.

There is every chance. The melamine poisonings were only detected because thousands of beloved pets suffered and died – our life companions were the FDA’s first line of testing for pet food safety.

We are the first line of testing for human food safety.

The FDA is limited to visual inspection of the stream of proceessed food ingredients flowing into our ports every day. Food commodity exports from third world economies are prepared with third world safety checks (from China, none at all).

Our human public health system would only detect acute symptoms of poisoning from food adulterants. Acute symptoms show up over weeks.

Chronic symptoms may present more subtly, slowly accumulating over weeks and months. Chronic injury resulting in end organ damage (kidney, liver, heart, etc) will not be detected until many Americans “progressed” onto chronic disease – by which time the damage will be irreversible.

The first line of defense for the safety of imported human food products is our broken network of ER’s – and our death certificates.

Bon appetit!

in teh mean time;

Petraeus condemns torture. In an open letter yesterday, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, “admonished his troops regarding the results of an Army survey that found that many U.S military personnel there are willing to tolerate some torture of suspects and unwilling to report abuse by comrades.” From the letter:

I was concerned by the results of a recently released survey conducted last fall in Irasq that revealed an apparent unwillingness on the part of some US personnel to report illegal actions taken by fellow members of their units. The study also indicated that a small percentage of those surveyed may have mistreated noncombatants. This survey should spur reflection on our conduct in combat. …

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.

newtonusr @ 127

TexBetsy @ 110
And in Texas news ….

TYC guard indicted

Ex-guard had earlier avoided criminal charges of attacks on incarcerated girls.

That’s great news. Any possibility that it will lead to further hard looks at *other* branches of Texas justice?

The TYC thing has been huge news in Texas for 2 months now. Don’t know if it will move outside the youth system at all.

Crockett State School superintendent suspended…Brownwood TYC guard indicted… on and on…

there’s plenty of dirt here in texas, but gov. goodhair has a big rug… i don’t see any real change coming from this…. as long as citizens of this state keep electing these same reptilian representatives texas will remain in the dark ages…

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Administration Withheld E-Mails About Rove

By Murray Waas, National Journal
National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, May 10, 2007

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protg of Rove’s, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

(I know this was revealed in previous threads, but don’t you agree it bears repeating?)

Link

I’m smelling endgame!

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Friday he still believed there was a one-third chance that the U.S. economy would slip into recession this year, reiterating a statement made in March.

Elliott—

Thanks for the info. Soybeans and whey in this house. Just trying to stay a step ahead.

Lord knows we can’t trust this FDA

Thanks for the info. Soybeans and whey in this house. Just trying to stay a step ahead.