The Agriculture Department on Tuesday announced that about 56,000 pigs that were fed contaminated pet food scraps are safe to be eaten, and gave the OK for them to be slaughtered for human consumption.
How very reassuring. Oh, yes, the hogs ate some bad feed, but not enough to harm humans. There weren’t sufficient amounts of the chemical to hurt humans. That sure is setting the safety bar rather low, we must say. Picky us, we’d rather food to be free of the industrial chemical melamine, which provides absolutely no nutrition whatsoever. It’s a cheap chemical filler masquerading as protein. There were, however, sufficient amounts of the chemical in pet food to sicken and kill an untold number of pets.
About 80,000 poultry that were fed contaminated feed remain on hold on Indiana until officials develop a test that can detect melamine levels in their flesh. A similar test has been developed for pork. What about a test for other chemicals? The government is only now testing for melamine because it became of aware of it through the pet deaths. What else is lurking in imported foods that we don’t know about until another crisis … or we get serious about food safety.
The tainted feed was also given to fish at 120 hatcheries and farms, including two farms in Washington. At least seven Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife facilities use the feed as a starter diet for juvenile salmon and trout. The farm fish are being held until they and the feed can be tested. Again, even if it’s declared safe, who wants to eat fish raised on chemically-tainted feed?
As the food safety nightmare continues, the Senate, in the name of safety, if not irony, last week killed the latest proposal to allow prescription drug imports. The measure required the administration to certify the safety and effectiveness of imported drugs before they can be brought into this country, something officials said they cannot do. They certainly do not do it for imported food.
Overseas, brand-name prescription drugs can cost two-thirds less than they do in the United States. In many industrialized countries, prices are lower because they are either controlled or partially controlled by government regulation.
So we are talking about importing prescription drugs from highly regulated drug makers and pharmacies in other industrialized countries, the manufacture and sale of which are regulated by the government. We are not talking about scoring counterfeit Vicodin from some shadowy “pharmacist” in a developing country. Or buying “food” from highly unregulated factories in China, for that matter.
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