Confidential FDA Report - Crisis In Food and Drug Safety

They ought to make you mad as hell. The American public should be up in arms, we should be on the steps of the Capitol demanding service from out leadership. The media should be helping to fuel the anger not reporting the he said, she said of Obama and Hillary aides in the Presidential campaign.

Why aren't they all in Washington tending to any of the the crisis we have here and about every other agency?? How many deadly effects of failed policy will it take before the people revolt against the criminal Congress?

I must be way too tired vicaxp, you gave us the link for the email contacts and it is a fabulous way to provide feedback, but whenever someone adds contacts my reflex reaction is to add the Capitol Switchboard as well. Can't believe I snoozed on the switchboard number, one of the few I actually know by heart in this era of speed dial and programmed phones. It is never a bad idea to pick up the phone and call these jokers we pay to work for us.

Capitol is 202-224-3121 call as often as you need to so they can hear us but try to be calm and polite; the people who answer the phones don't set policy just relay messages and if you rant like a crazy person the effect isn't quite as good.

Come back to the Newsvine columns and rant, where we love getting mad as hell about the Congress.

Thanks Dr. Know, it is a Congressional problem. Nearly ever ailment we suffer can be tracked back to Congress and we pay them to spend our money. What's wrong with that pictture? Can't we find people to steal and waste and maybe still try for the job functions to be done?

No they don't have full blame but the Bush crowd has gone far beyond anything earlier in abuses, they have been among the most aggressive in appointing the worst industry to oversight, very often as recess to skip Senate approvals and at a point where a long history of undermining functions has weakened the system to a delicate point.

From the time agencies were created there have been powerful forces trying to offset controls. Since the days of FDR we have had great challenges and from Reagan Bush and including Clinton the giveaways of public protections to industry have escalated.

George W. Bush just managed to slam some final gigantic nails in the coffin that's been building for decades, And he's arrogant and flaunts his indifference in our faces and Congress has done not one thing to function as a balance or check on the abuses, compounding the problems with abuses of their own.

The Gingrich revolution and the revolving door to K Street lobbying has made everything worse by degrees each year until now we are supporting a crime ring, lawbreakers whose greed ignores even a hint of pretending to deliver performance.

Thank you hamid, we do need to go one by one. They have done a wonderful service in making an official report part of the public information. It takes away any wiggle room on the part of industry supporters to claim it is a disgruntled employee, an isolated case or not really a problem.

If we could get enough attention on the truth of the crisis, maybe we can have some change. It is so tiring to hear talk of promises when the biggest problems are buried. The daily update on the candidates talking about what Mitt's religion is or how the Hillary team responded to the Rudy remarks, give me a break, we're dying out here. We need media to focus on the toxic policies and do what needs to be don't to stop killing our families here at home with illness manufactured into our consumer goods.

I hadn't seen that Salon article before, thanks for that. It points out another key element in all this and that is beyond the dangers to human health and the environment and increased use of chemicals, it is a terrible economic loss for the farmers. In 200 when Salon did the report here's what was known then about the cost of using this technological weapon against the small farmers.

Japanese consumers, for instance, don't like genetically modified products: They will pay up to 10 times as much for unmodified tofu, even though their government has passed labeling requirements far more stringent than the new U.S. rules. As a result, farmers in Minnesota are now turning away from genetically engineered corn and soybeans in a desperate effort to salvage their $3 billion per year in sales to Japan.

America has lost its export markets in so many crops. In Hawai'i the papaya exports, once a major source of income has been destroyed, the corn markets have lost hundreds of millions of dollars yearly as well as the soy and other crops and the solution has been to use the WTO to try to override all sorts of health and safety laws and file suit against countries refusing to eat the stuff. I'd love to lock Congress in the Capitol and make all the supporters eat a pure gmo diet for 90 days.

That's long enough to work better than a filibusters, they'll be covered with eczezma and plagued by acid reflux in less time than that. Maybe then they could see their way clear to changing policy. As it stands, money returned one hundred fold to campaign supporters is the only measure Congress uses to implement policy.

It's nice to be quoted. It's even nicer to be credited, I SPY.

The smarter they are, the nicer they are!! Truthfully, it was a fantastic article and its great to add it with kudos for the research and reporting. That actually made the rounds in my activist network picked up by someone else and passed along. I try not to add much of my own friends reporting there, it feels a bit too much like nepotism though I have always been a fan of playing favorites as all my kiddies will tell you. In their case its just disagreement over which one gets the special treatment, but I am always thrilled to see articles here found by someone outside the vine, helps to show we are impacting cyberspace.

I know where it came from; I seeded it at OpEd News where I'm allowed to put like three links for every original article. Because their system is so challenging for me to use it's rare to go over and add anything but one day I was on a roll with clicking my correct buttons and came to pull some favorite pieces from here. :~)

It was linked to Newsvine not a reprint so if someone reprinted from that it wasn't me. I'm well trained in not taking page views away from the original author. Not many rules that are committed to memory but the few that are relate to crediting the creators are both ingrained from the CoH and from caring about the friends here.

I'm writing a letter right now!!!!

Awesome, thank you. Every voice counts and the more we raise them the better chance the deaf ears will be open to the idea that consumers and taxpayers have had enough of this Congress supporting industry at the expense of our health and the future for our children. It doesn't get much more critical than toxic food & drugs.

For me it is more of a positive and a way for the people who are the nuts and bolts of the agency trying to do the job are crying for help and trying to let the truth of the dangers get to the public.

It's essential that we face the reality, since industry has used the FDA as an enhanced marketing tool for providing consumers some degree of security about unsafe products in everything from VIOXX to soy. For the gmo foods they falsely claim they are tested and approved by the FDA. A complete fabrication but even if the FDA were offering testing, the report shows that it isn't equipped to handle the load.

I'll have to come back and read the rest of your comment but I had to stop at Micahel Taylor for a special note about him. His is a top ten on my list of dirtbags and key architect of the loopholes that allowed Monsanto to sell untested, unregulated GMO foods in America. It fails to note in his credits he was a Monsanto Lobbyist and a Monsanto VP for policy alternating with his terms as a regulator.

Whatever he says is carefully worded to sound like it offers consumer protection but he's Monsanto's man and one of the slickest lobbying loophole writer to ever undermine our rights. I had to get that out of my system before giving full attention to the rest of your comment or it would keep my attention coming back to Taylor. It also bugs me they add doctor to all the Ph.D.s as if folks reading might think some have a valid point in medical terms as well. Oooh, he's a bad one.

When they talk about doing things in the States its what they did in Pennsylvania last month stripping dairies from adding the note milk from cows not treated with rBGH or rBST. These people aren't protecting us but profits.

Some of the problems I see with Levitt, like Taylor is what they say isn't what it means. It is a falsehood that the food safety is adequate. When he talk in terms of protecting against food borne illness, it isn't to limit factory food operations, it is to institute policies of fumigating and medicating and mandating more chemical options to treat the symptoms of cheap production.

The thing that makes it hardest is that all the great names hide the really terribly policies, like Blue Skies giving polluters more time to adhere to reducing pollutants. All of it undermines small farms and sustainable farming practices, small business, public health and it all sounds good when they write it up. What we need are real consumer advocates in policy positions.

Thanks so much for the well thought comments and wonderful links. It's a big problem with a lot of challenging issues and the hardest part may be getting people who really care to know that the ones like Taylor out advocating as if for the consumers are really industry operatives doing something else.

Oooh, he's a bad one.

That's the technical term!!

What an unbelievable bit of candor though. Really wonderful interview in the way of seeing an accident in slow motion. I'm not sure why what I already know shocks me when I read it again, but it does.

ROBERT REICH: Well, there's reason to be somewhat worried. When Bill Clinton left office, there was a $5 trillion, 10-year surplus. George Bush has turned it around to a $5 trillion deficit over 10 years. America is deep in debt. Mostly to the Chinese and the Japanese to the tune of $2 billion a day. And then on top of all of this, you have a lack of regulation, you have sub-prime loans that should never have been made. The banking and credit industry as a whole has and is suffering a huge blow-up, a kind of a bubble bursting that is being felt around the world. It's a world financial market, so when America is acting irresponsibly, the rest of the world feels it. So I think there is reason to be concern. I don't think we will have a depression....

Don't apologize the use of the Dr. tag is a biotech strategy and every Tom Dick and Harry gets a bump in credibility for that. In truth there are maybe a handful on the planet who have tracked the legislation, politics, science and spin as I have.

They have been in my sites for the last decade as the toxic genetically altered foods have been my primary focus and the front groups, their University funded nutrition programs their front groups. It is the greatest fraud ever put over on the public and the most corrupt failing of Congress I can find. You are one of the majority of Americans who trusts the regulatory system and the educational system to find the truth about what dangers exist to human health and the idea that it could be so corrupted is a very disturbing concept to begin to come to terms with.

I have a documentary film, Roundup Ready Nation, that will begin shipping on DVD in about ten days. It is so complex and important and it took years of writing and being shut out by media until I got to the point where I decided to do the film. My website has a lot of resource links to groups with trusted information sources and hopefully in 63 minutes the film will explain essentially what the problem is and what we need to do to make change.

A little muckraking tip as far as trusting who and what are selling spin; google the name with either sourcewatch or gm watch and between the two, most fronts and paid pundits will turn up.

For my part they are connected at a site called politicalfriendster. It has both a search tool for names that doesn't always work so well and a general google run search of the site that will turn up the connections. Anything created by fedup is mine the groups who have been tracking my film progress for a year just for fun it's good to know who's tracking me. One last note a kind of silly thing carried over from childhood, I don't really like to shorten my name. Nothing you could guess but appreciated if you remember.

Thanks for asking the questions and adding the discussion. That's how we learn and every question and link gives me a chance to learn too! If ever there's a point you don't know who to ask if I'm not sure where to find the answer I can find out. :~)

My writing must be even worse than I thought based on your impression of me, do I really sound that naive?

So sorry Stacy, it totally wasn't meant that way at all. It was more specific to citing the testimony of Taylor and the idea that the proposals do make legitimate points that seem to address the issues and it is reasonable to assume these people operate with the public interest at heart and FDA approval to most people seems right. It wasn't to suggest naivety but to differentiate from my jaded view of every word that comes in official report, apologies for not being clear. It's the limitation of being in a medium without eye contact and dynamic interaction a lot can land differently from how it is meant. I'm terribly bad at times for writing as it comes into my head thinking what it means as I type will be the way it is heard. Oops, sorry 'bout that.

This is why I joined newsvine. I really do not enjoy writing, but I have tried and tried to get national coverage of the issues, but I didn't have any takers. I just want people to know the inside story so they can make "informed decisions"

I can completely relate on that count. I began writing about the gmo foods as a result of media refusing to cover the problems. In the beginning the writing was kind of challenging and now as you see it's a little too casual on occasion. It is very frustrating to see so much that is wrong that doesn't need to be and try to find ways to make it right. I've got a deadline for another column of mine and I came back here just looking for the FDA pdf link and read your comment and wanted to make sure to apologize for the tone right away but will have to wait for some different time to investigate the links and your case. But I'll get there! :~)

FoE a very nice source and group of trusted friends. That was the Bayer LL601 rice contamination. When the US reports were all over the Ecoli spinach story here, ignoring it and retroactively allowing it on store shelves, the rest of the world was pulling American rice off the shelves.

It's safe to say that this is a bipartisan problem that is rooted in Congress but goes from there to everywhere else. Clinton's years in the White House saved Monsanto's hormone dairy business and Bush's on either side have done much as well. The Agency heads, appointees are almost all corrupt, the question is how much.

I have friends who work at a few of the regulatory agencies and it is a heart breaking, strain for them because the majority truly believe in protecting human health and the environment and it has been brutal for them especially the last six years. They all had gag orders placed on them so only the Press Office of the Agencies answer questions.

Media has been horribly guilty as well. That's why I finally made the film, I couldn't sleep and writing gets to just so many eyes and it is still a lot to understand. I track the front groups and players better than the CIA does terrorists and in turn they track me. Good news is I have the truth and all they have is a lot of cash.

Don't be tough on yourself for not knowing, we have "news for our health" on every Morning and Nightly News show. This stuff has been in our diets for a decade, someone could say something, maybe?

Not to worry I made a promise that I would not stop until this was blown wide open and every American knew what GMO was and who Monsanto is and we would have a global moratorium on field planting of the crops.

We'll get there; much damage has been done, like the PCB's and oil spills, cleanup is never as good as not happening in the first place but we'll get back to sustainable farming, clean water and pure foods.

Thank you but there are so many inside these agencies fighting to do the right thing it is hard for me to feel brave when there are no where near the risks. They lose careers with reprisals, I just get a little cyberflack.