FDA (Food & Drug Administration) Fiasco

The FDA has outlived its usefulness as follows:
"The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about the contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people, sickened hundreds, and forced one of the biggest product recalls in U.S. history, documents and interviews show." The Washington Post, A-1, April 23, 2007
Salmonella contamination at ConAgraFoods Factory in Georgia alone sickened more than 400 people in 44 states!

The FDA has evolved into a government work project, and nobody is doing their job.
"We have 60,000 to 80,000 facilities any given year," Robert E. Brackett said, "Explosive growth in the number of processors and the amount of imported foods means that manufacturers "have to build safety into their products rather than us chasing after them. We have to get out of the 1950's paradigm". The Washington Post, A-7, April 23, 2007
Ya mean like the the fox in the hen house, Mr. Brackett?

If the FDA is too busy to check out a factory leaky roof and/or fire sprinkler tainting the peanut butter, I wonder if they are too busy to do real studies on medications? That Big Pharma is already (like a fox), in the hen house -as it provides lots of money for all of those drug trials to the FDA! That's objective(?) Mandatory and newly created HPV vaccine for 6th grade girls?

Next came the FDA recall on Menu Foods pet foods that contained wheat gluten tained with melamine, an industrial chemical responsible for the death of many pets in the U.S., but how many, we do not know because the FDA has no data base to track their accountability. How convenient. We do know that the FDA knew on Feburary 16, 2007 but notification of the recall did not occur until March 15, 2007.
Yes, I did call Menu Foods and they said that the FDA has provided a certificate of safety for every one of their shipments.

I go to the U.S. Senators' website http://www.senate.gov/ and begin calling each Senator on the list with in-depth complaint about the slowness of the FDA recall, the lack of accountability for pet death (database), the import of foreign foodstuffs and lack of on-site checking (at a time of war and terrorism), the lack of a system to protect American Taxpayers (and their pets) to include a front end inspection for the purpose of prevention. I ended with a final comment about the FDA being yet another costly bureaucracy with a failed mission.

In elementary school, we read about food adulturation which was responsible for the creation of the Food and Drug Administration as a protection for consumers. The example used was brick dust being added to cocoa to augment profits.

Now in 2007, in the midst of war on terror, the American People find out that unbeknownst to us, our global markets have entered our food chain. Concurrently, the FDA quietly and unilaterally gave up protecting imports because they are "overwhelmed".

"A Senate panel too the Food and Drug Administration to task yesterday for its "inexcusable" response to pet food contamination and a months' worth of expanding recalls that have left American's fearful about what to feed their cats and dogs". "This is inexcusable", Sen Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill)said after a two hour hearing in which the FDA official couldn't be sure that all the adultuated pet food has been recalled and is off store shelves".
The Washington Post, A-8, April 13, 2007

This time, I called the Senators List backwards, complaining that the FDA obviously does not know what is adulterated,( and given that gluten is used in many recipes)- how do we know that the melamine gluten didn't end up in a soup factory?

Two federal agencies said yesterday that a continuing investigation affirms that a risk to humans from hogs that may have eaten contaminated pet food is very low and that no recall is warranted". The government said last week that 345 of 6,000 hogs that may have eaten the food are believed to have been placed on the path to slaughter...." "At this time, we have no evidence of harm to humans..."The Washington Post, A-9, April 29, 2007
Do we think that melamine may kill animals, but not people?

Now the Agriculture Department has joined the investigation and is making joint statements with the FDA as follows:
"Testing and the joint investigation continue. If any evidence surfaces to indicate there is harm to humans, the appropriate action will be taken, the agencies said."
The Washington Post, A-9, April 29, 2007

Eat fresh, (86 the CA Spinach) and let the buyer beware.
Coming soon to your neighborhood store...FDA wants to broaden the definition of chocolate!
What ever happened to the "truth in labeling" promise?
Time for a new generation of activists?!

Why Crime Is On The Rise

April 27, 2007

Today, I read an article in The Washington Post (4/27/07, B-3) about a case in Maryland of another sexual pervert (who exposed himself, and "engaged in a personal sexual activity") -to a bus full of girls from a private school. It turns out that the "exposer" was a middle school math teacher, who was charged in 2005 for the same indecent exposure in- Anne Arundel County, MD.

"Bouma had been charged with indecent exposure in Anne Arundel County in 2005. According to court records, prosecutors put the case on the stet docket-an inactive docket from which cases are often dismissed if the defendant completes one-year probationary period."
The Washington Post, April 27, 2007, B-3

The Washington Post Article continues with the principal sending a letter home to students in the school where this guy worked and was "shocked and sad" noting that "Argyle students were not involved and that Bouma's background was checked before he was hired."

I did a further search on Google about "stet docket" and pulled up a source by The Maryland Legal Assistance Network (MLAN) who sponsors a site @ http://www.peoples-law.org
"for legal information, not legal advice". Once there, the site reiterated that "stet docket" is a "group of cases which generally are not reopened". This site also offers other information for the non-legal mind, like Nolle Prosequi (commonly known to lawyers as "noll pros") results "when the prosecutor decides to drop the case either before or during the trial". The site also explains how to get legal help with "a record expungement". Under Maryland Law, you can clean your crime record if your were found not guilty, or the charges are dismissed. The State's Attorney has only 30 days to file an objection to a person's request for expungement. Wow!

Why do we even have laws -if the judge and prosecutors have all the power to pull cases that they deem unimportant or less of a threat? In this example, as the non-legals, we can see that the math teacher has again exposed himself to minors (less than a year from the same first incident) and this time added "a personal sexual activity".

Doesn't "stet docket" and "noll pros" obstruct the rule of law and further muddy the waters of employment background checks? If the math teacher was registered as a sexual predator, then at least he would not be working in a school with children. This is why it is so important that Marylanders push for a zero tolerance for "stet docket" and "noll pros" regarding sexual crimes against children. If not, then we are forgiving sexual predators until they rape a child and get a minimum of twenty five (25) years with the recently passed Jessica's Law. Is that what "we the people" want?