While many of us are enjoying our summer vacations and sitting by the pool or camping and hiking in the woods, there is a fox in the hen house, so to speak, as Congress has been busy passing legislation this summer removing many of the protections that we as consumers of food products now enjoy.
On June 11, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 300-131 to repeal the country-of-origin labeling law regarding where meat products are born, raised, and slaughtered to avert a trade war between Canada, the United States and Mexico. The Senate has yet to vote on this legislation. Under current law, we have a choice in determining the country of origin for the beef, poultry, and chicken products that we eat. We enjoy a certain amount of protection under U.S. law that prohibits the inclusion of older cows and downer cows into the U.S. food supply. This is important to consumers because older cows are more likely to develop mad cow disease and downer cows may be incapacitated by neurological disorders stemming from mad cow disease. If the removal of the country-of-origin labels is upheld by the senate, U.S. consumers will be at risk from unknown antibiotics, growth hormones, and other prescription drugs fed to cattle in other counties, not to mention the possible inclusion of cows older than 30 months and downer cows at risk for mad cow disease into our food supply.
Under U.S. law, pork is inspected for the presence of the dreaded tapeworm, Trichinella spiralis, in porcine muscle meat, which causes trichinosis in humans. The best way to prevent trichinosis, is to cook meat, including wild game, such as black bear, to safe temperatures. USDA guidelines require that pigs be kept in clean pens with concrete floors that can be washed; hogs are not allowed to eat the carcasses of other animals, including rats, which may be infected with Trichinella spiralis; meat grinders are thoroughly cleaned when preparing ground meats; and pork thought to contain tapeworm larvae upon inspection are destroyed and not allowed to enter the food supply.
Which brings us to the subject of chickens. In one of the stranger moves in recent memory, the USDA has approved a plan to transport American-raised chickens to China for processing and then back to the United States. Nobody is really sure when this is supposed to begin, some think it already has, but it reportedly was approved by the USDA in August of 2013. One has to wonder what sort of backroom deals led to this peculiar arrangement in which frozen chicken is reportedly shipped to China, thawed out, cooked, and then shipped back, unlabeled, to the United States for possible inclusion in chicken nuggets and school lunch programs despite long-standing health and food safety concerns over pet products and prescription medications, such as heparin, from China. There will be, of course, no U.S. oversight as to what actually gets shipped back to the United States from China, a country, which reportedly has a history of, among other things, substituting rats and other rodents for lamb to its own citizens.
Apparently, this is the USDA’s idea of a trade exchange whereby we ship frozen chicken to China for processing and China lifts its ban on imported U.S. beef dating back to 2003, when a cow originally from Canada was found in Yakima, Washington to have mad cow disease. There is, of course, reportedly more profit to be made in selling beef as opposed to chicken for the United States and therein lies the motivation. Supporters of this unholy alliance like to point out that seafood is already shipped from the west coast of the United States to China for deboning to save on labor costs with Chinese workers reportedly earning cents on the U.S. dollar as compared to their American counterparts. This is a lagging sluggish U.S. economy where big business and the USDA apparently get to dictate what jobs stay in the United States and what jobs get exported to other countries with lower labor costs.
To add insult to injury, Congress is getting ready to cave into pressure from the big food industry giants and pass the “Deny Americans the Right to Know” or DARK Act, which would remove GMO identification from genetically-modified foods, including those containing systemic pesticides in their stems and leaves toxic to bees.
On July 24, the House of Representatives passed the misleading H.R.1599 ”“ Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015 by a margin of 275-150. Also known as the Monsanto Dream Act, it will prohibit any state efforts to require the labeling of genetically engineered foods (GMOs). Some of the provisions of this bill as reported at www.congress.gov require that the FDA must allow, but not require, GMO food to be labeled as GMO. This bill preempts state and local restrictions on GMOs or GMO food and labeling requirements for GMOs, GMO food, non-GMO food, or “natural” food. Wait a minute, didn’t the State of Maine stand up to Monsanto a few years back by successfully passing a state law requiring GMO labels on genetically-modified food? According to Food and Water Watch, which is circulating an online petition to stop this bill, “The Grocery Manufacturers Association, an industry group that represents Monsanto, Nestlé, Dow and Pepsi, is pushing this bill because it would let them continue to keep quiet about their production and use of GMO foods.”
Be sure to let Senators Angus King and Susan Collins know how you feel about this and other bills promoted by the food industry lobbyists. It’s our right to know what is in our food and big corporations, such as Monsanto, should not keep us in the dark.
— Val Philbrick works in the production department of the Journal Tribune as a pre-press person. She is a member of PETA and the Humane Society of the United States.
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