Thread: (Part I) The FDA is a clearing house for the Food and Drug C

(Part I) The FDA is a clearing house for the Food and Drug Corruption
Saturday, November 20, 2010 by: Paul Fassa, citizen journalist
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(NaturalNews) The virtual clearing house of corruption for Big Pharma, the AMA, Agribusiness and Big Dairy in America, is the FDA. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has tentacles in all that`s wrong with medicine and food. It has the authority to incorporate other agencies for its tyrannical actions on organic food providers, non-AMA health practitioners, supplements, and natural cures that are not profitable to Big Pharma.

The FDA`s executive revolving door to and from key government positions also manages to seat industry executives among its internal committees or even use them as advisers. Since many of these executives govern multinational food and drug corporations, their conflicts of interest also negatively influence food and drug policies outside the USA.

The Milk Wars

The raids on small, organic dairy farms and farmers have greatly increased lately. Raw milk dairies and buying clubs are raided unannounced with overkill. These swat team raids are conducted on small families and peaceful individuals. Vicious drug lords are rarely approached as aggressively. It`s obviously easier to pick on non-violent farmers.

There are no reports of illness or complaints from those who use the raw milk and its products. And there are no dangerous levels of pathogenic bacteria ever found in the milk that is seized and destroyed. Yet the destructive raids that are financially catastrophic for small family farms continue.

Meanwhile, large egg agribusiness and meat producers and non-organic produce distributors wreak salmonella havoc throughout large population sectors with relative impunity. They are not shut down, and a recall of current products is the worst these corporate enterprises endure.

Ironically, the large corporate factory farms` poisoning thousands every now and then encourages Congress (heavily lobbied or contributed to by corporate agribusiness interests) to promote and pass legislation that hampers small organic farmers even more. Procedures such as food irradiation are also legislated, which negate organic food`s nutritional advantages. Commercial farm foods are already dead. So it`s no big deal to them.

The terrible and inhumane conditions of factory farming create diseased livestock. Hormones and antibiotics are injected into dairy and egg producing livestock. They are forcibly fed mostly GMO corn in crowded stalls instead of grazing in open fields to consume their natural foods. All of this unhealthy livestock management gets passed on and into the consumer with the blessing of the FDA.

But it`s the small organic farmers who respect nature more than the bottom line while producing healthy foods and who get raided and shut down. Obviously, food safety is not the FDA`s priority. Enforcing mafia like turf protection for factory farming and agribusiness is the FDA`s primary function.

What GMOs, MSG, and Aspartame Have in Common

Independent research has proven all of them to be toxic precursors for long term bad health and serious disease, yet they are all considered "generally safe for human consumption" by the FDA.

The corruption is also ubiquitous in the medical field. Big Pharma pays "user fees" to the FDA for the opportunity to fund their own research and clinical trials for faster approval. The result has been a codependency of the FDA with Big Pharma`s biased drug trial conclusions. Consequently, the lucrative market place becomes the true drug trial. Many thousands have died as a result.

According to former FDA scientist and whistle blower David Graham, "It [FDA] views industry [Big Pharma] as its client, and the client is someone whose interest you represent. Unfortunately, that`s the way the FDA is currently structured."

More details on how this clearing house for corruption operates coming in subsequent articles.

Sources for this article include:

The Medical Debasing of Humanity by Mark Sircus http://blog.imva.info/medicine/the-...

More Doubts About Food Safety Legislation http://www.grist.org/article/2010-1...

Scientific Consensus: MSG, GMOs, and Aspartame are Good for Your Health - by Wally Paul http://ppjg.wordpress.com/2010/10/1...

Exposing Conflict of Interests at the FDA http://articles.mercola.com/sites/a...



About the author
Paul Fassa has managed to survive the Standard American Diet (SAD) and his youthful folly by deprogramming gradually from mainstream health ideology and studying holistic health matters informally with his wife while incorporating them into his lifestyle as a vegetarian.
He also practices Chi-Lel Chi Gong, and he is trained as a polarity therapy practitioner. He is dedicated to warning others about the current corruption of food and medicine and guiding others toward a better direction for health. You can visit his blog at

http://healthmaven.blogspot.com


http://www.naturalnews.com/030456_FDA_corruption.html



And more to read to get more perspective on all this

Stop HACCPing us

Shutdown of two small cheesemakers raises more doubts about food-safety legislation 44
Default badge avatar for David Gumpert

by David Gumpert

1 Nov 2010 12:20 PM


More: Business, cheese, Congress, FDA, Food, food safety, Politics, raw dairy

Editor's note: Are you confused about whether to support the Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510)? You're not alone. We've decided to ask the major players to debate its pros and cons for an upcoming Food Fight roundtable -- watch for it late next week.

Crime scene tapeIn all the acrimony that has settled over Washington, one major legislative matter has continued to receive bipartisan support: food safety legislation intended to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration vastly expanded powers to reduce the amount of contaminated food getting into distribution.

Highly publicized outbreaks over the last few years involving everything from spinach to peanut butter to ground beef to eggs have only seemed to heighten the support from consumer groups and the media alike. Grist contributor Elanor Starmer last week argued that we have a serious food safety problem only this legislation can resolve. The proposed legislation, strongly encouraged by the Obama administration, sailed through the U.S. House last fall, and then through a Senate committee earlier this year.

And then the legislation stalled. First, there were concerns that the legislation, by requiring that all food producers put together complex production and hazard control plans (known as HACCP Plans), would have a draconian effect on small food producers, despite the fact that the most sensational of the tainted-food problems seemed to originate with mid-size and large producers. So Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) helped put together an amendment that would exempt small producers from some of the toughest provisions.

Then, in September, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), who's a big supporter of the legislation, prepared to bring it to the Senate floor, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) strenuously objected. One of his primary objections -- that the legislation hadn't been funded with the approximately $1.8 billion necessary to pay for all the new agents required to enforce it -- made it seem as if partisan politics had made it even to this seemingly sacrosanct legislative initiative.

In actuality, though, even as it has taken on an aura of inevitability, doubts about the legislation have been growing. A number of organizations representing family farmers and consumers -- such as the Cornucopia Institute and the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund -- have expressed concerns that the legislation gives too much power to the FDA. Not only would the agency have the power to require HACCP plans, but it would also be able to inspect and examine the financial records of any food producer at its whim, rather than having to obtain court permission, as it does now. Moreover, it would have the power to declare food emergencies and quarantine large parts of the U.S., at its discretion, as well as decide on so-called "good agricultural practices" for America's small farms covering irrigation, crop rotation, and other matters traditionally under farmer purview.

The FDA hasn't helped its cause among foodies and farmers in the last few weeks by involving itself in the shutdown of two premium-quality raw-milk cheesemakers -- Morningland Dairy in Missouri and Estrella Family Creamery in Washington -- because of the presence of the pathogen listeria in some cheese samples or on the premises. Now, you might say, isn't this just an example of the FDA doing its job by protecting us from pathogens?

It might be a positive thing except for two problems. First, neither of these cheese producers has made anyone ill in many years of operations, including the last few months, since the presence of the pathogens was discovered. Indeed, scientists are divided about the danger of listeria in trace amounts, and some have advised the FDA to change from a zero-tolerance approach to something more realistic, given the ubiquitous presence of listeria.

Second, the FDA almost never shuts companies down for the simple presence of pathogens. It gives them opportunities to clean things up. Indeed, it rarely shuts companies down even after people get sick. The Iowa factory farms that sent out salmonella-tainted eggs that sickened upwards of 1,200 people last summer are a prime example. They recalled about 500 million eggs, but were never forced by the FDA to shut down their operations. It wasn't until mid-October that one of the culprits, DeCoster's Quality Egg LLC, even received a warning letter, which is typically the first step leading to more severe FDA actions.

The FDA has said any number of times that it needs the new food-safety legislation to provide it with the authority to go after producers like the big egg companies. Yet the agency's dairy division, responsible for both eggs and cheese, had no trouble initiating or encouraging tough court and regulatory action against a couple of tiny cheese producers. Why is it unable to do the same to large egg producers actually making many people very sick?

The fact is, the FDA has a long history of going after small food producers for seemingly minor problems, and leaving the big ones to do their thing, no matter how serious their transgressions. Perhaps that's why the doubts about the food safety legislation are expanding. It could be that more legislators are coming to appreciate that giving the FDA expanded authority will do more to hurt small food producers than it will to reduce food safety problems.

David Gumpert is the author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights (Chelsea Green, 2009). He is also a journalist who specializes in covering the intersection of health and business. His popular blog has chronicled the increasingly unsettling battles over raw milk. He has authored or coauthored seven books on various aspects of entrepreneurship and business and previously been a reporter and editor with the Wall Street Journal, Inc. magazine, and the Harvard Business Review.


www.grist.org/article/2010-10-30-the-fd ... aises-more




Personally I don't trust the FDA or any other governmental agency we see how well they all work for us!!!! To me giving the Fox total control of the hen house is dumb...but that is my feeling...

Kathyet

I think we should have the right to dring raw milk if we want. I have goats and we drink the milk. RAW MILK and it is good and I think better than cows milk. I know what my goats eat and the milk is sweet. I wish we could have a government that only governed part time. That way they won't have so much time to think up things to control and govern. I could not believe that the lame duck session was wasting time on some football coach. IS that really the function of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT? If they didn't have so much time governing, maybe they would get down to what is really important. When they are thru getting their agenda thru, what else have they to do but thingk up more things to make them look like they are going SOMETHING. They have to keep thinking up things to keep them busy and relevent.