space shuttle, space: 2004_01_01_spewingforth

PERMALINK Posted 7:27 AM by Jordan

The Biggest Threat: Mad Government Disease

And speaking of threats to the public resulting from anti-regulatory

philosphies, Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, has a

frightening column in the NY Times today discussing the roots of the

Mad Cow problem.

The first problem is that the Department of Agriculture is filled with

former industry executives, including its spokesperson, Alisa Harrison

who comes from the National Cattlemen's Beef Assocation. In fact,

Right now you'd have a hard time finding a federal agency more

completely dominated by the industry it was created to regulate.

Dale Moore, [ Agriculture Secretary Anne] Veneman's chief of staff,

was previously the chief lobbyist for the cattlemen's association.

Other veterans of that group have high-ranking jobs at the

department, as do former meat-packing executives and a former

president of the National Pork Producers Council.

The Agriculture Department has a dual, often contradictory mandate:

to promote the sale of meat on behalf of American producers and to

guarantee that American meat is safe on behalf of consumers. For

too long the emphasis has been on commerce, at the expense of

safety. The safeguards against mad cow that Ms. Veneman announced

on Tuesday -- including the elimination of "downer cattle" (cows

that cannot walk) from the food chain, the removal of high-risk

material like spinal cords from meat processing, the promise to

introduce a system to trace cattle back to the ranch -- have long

been demanded by consumer groups. Their belated introduction seems

to have been largely motivated by the desire to have foreign

countries lift restrictions on American beef imports.

Worse, on Wednesday Ms. Veneman ruled out the the most important

step to protect Americans from mad cow disease: a large-scale

encephalopathy.

Despite these measures, there are still other serious problems that

have not been dealt with. The U.S. still allows the "really stupid"

practice of feeding of cattle blood to young calves,

More important, the ban on feed has hardly been enforced. A 2001

study by the Government Accounting Office found that one-fifth of

American feed and rendering companies that handle prohibited

material had no systems in place to prevent the contamination of

cattle feed. According to the report, more than a quarter of feed

manufacturers in Colorado, one of the top beef-producing states,

were not even aware of the F.D.A. measures to prevent mad cow

disease, four years after their introduction.

A follow-up study by the accounting office in 2002 said that the

F.D.A.'s "inspection database is so severely flawed" that "it

should not be used to assess compliance" with the feed ban. Indeed,

14 years after Britain announced its ban on feeding cattle proteins

to cattle, the Food and Drug Administration still did not have a

complete listing of the American companies rendering cattle and

manufacturing cattle feed.

Right now, the federal government is relying on "reassuring" studies

by the notoriously anti-regulatory Harvard Center for Risk Analysis,

based on models that can't be validated because we don't test enough

cattle to know whether these studies are accurate.

So what needs to be done? According to Schlosser,

begin widespread testing of American cattle for mad cow disease --

with particular focus on dairy cattle, the animals at highest risk

for the disease and whose meat provides most of the nation's fast

food hamburgers.

In addition, we need to give the federal government mandatory

recall powers, so that any contaminated or suspect meat can be

swiftly removed from the market. As of now all meat recalls are

voluntary and remarkably ineffective at getting bad meat off

supermarket shelves. And most of all, we need to create an

independent food safety agency whose sole responsibility is to

protect the public health. Let the Agriculture Department continue

to promote American meat worldwide -- but empower a new agency to

ensure that meat is safe to eat.

Yes, the threat to human health posed by mad cow remains uncertain.

But testing American cattle for dangerous pathogens will increase

the cost of beef by just pennies per pound. Failing to do so could

impose a far higher price, both in dollars and in human suffering.

What we're addressing here, in the previous article on the failure of

the Bush Administration's voluntary global warming strategies and with

the virtual closing of OSHA's regulatory shop that we've written about

so many times before, is the fundamental question of the role of

government in protecting people from the enemies that may threaten our

welfare, security and safety. These enemies don't just hijack

airplanes and fly into skyscrapers. They don't just use mythical

weapons of mass destruction. They undermine and disarm us from within,

eliminating any penalties or safeguards against those who would make a

profit at the expense of the health and safety of the American public.

Workplace accidents kill more than twice as many people every year

terrorist killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Where's the

outrage? Where's the response?

PERMALINK Posted 12:45 AM by Jordan

Corporate America: Volunteer To Save The Environment? Who Me?

When it comes to cleaning up the environment or making workplaces

safer, the philosphy of the current administration is that cooperative

agreements and voluntarism work far better than the heavy hand of

laws, regulations, mandatory controls, enforcement and penalties. Just

sell people on the benefits of a voluntary program and they'll happily

come running to jump on the bandwagon. Because everyone wants a clean

environment and safety workplaces. Don't they?

That's what they would have had us believe.

Bush promoted his voluntary initiatives after he abandoned a

campaign pledge to impose mandatory controls on carbon dioxide

emissions and then formally disavowed the 1997 accord negotiated by

the United States and 158 other countries in Kyoto, Japan, which

would impose mandatory caps on greenhouse emissions in developed

countries. The Bush administration argued that mandatory controls

would hinder economic growth.

Well things don't seem to be working out so well for the Bush

administration in the area of global warming, according to the

Washington Post.

Two years after President Bush declared he could combat global

warming without mandatory controls, the administration has launched

a broad array of initiatives and research, yet it has had little

success in recruiting companies to voluntarily curb their

greenhouse gas emissions, according to official documents, reports

and interviews.

At the heart of the president's strategy is "Climate Leaders," a

program that recruits the nation's industrial polluters to

voluntarily devise ways to curb their emissions by 10 percent or

more in the coming decade. Scientists believe these greenhouse gas

emissions, which include carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide,

are contributing to a troubling rise in the earth's temperature

that could disrupt weather patterns and cause flooding.

Only a tiny fraction of the thousands of U.S. companies with

pollution problems -- 50 in all -- have joined Climate Leaders, and

of the companies that have signed up, only 14 have set goals. Many

of the companies that are volunteering say they did so either

because reducing emissions makes good economic sense or because

they were being nudged by state and federal regulators.

Industry groups, meanwhile, have crafted their own programs under a

Bush administration initiative called "Climate VISION," but none of

the programs requires individual companies to either enlist in the

program or set goals for emission reductions.

Many of the companies with the worst pollution records have shunned

the voluntary programs because even a voluntary commitment would

necessitate costly cleanups or possibly could set the stage for

future government regulation, according to industry insiders.

Many of the companies signing up for the Bush voluntary initiative are

are the "perennial 'good citizens' who were participating in "green"

programs years before Bush called for volunteers. "

But the administration has made no headway signing up big utility

companies with the worst emissions records. Many of those companies

vigorously opposed mandatory controls. Now they are refusing to

take part in voluntary measures that set targets, largely for fear

that those programs eventually will lead to government regulation.

"Some just see it as a slippery slope," said a lobbyist for several

major utilities.

Well, anyway, it works great for generating campaign contributions.

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