The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to be our government watchdog protecting us from poisons and bad practices, yet we continue to have problems with e coli, botulism and other deadly manifestations in food that is grown in this country (20 cases of e coli in 10 years in the Salinas Valley) and imported from abroad (India and China the most notable offenders). Yet the FDA spends money like crazy giving $36,000 bonuses to political appointees who run the program, yet manage to cut the amount of testing we do each year.
And while Congress passes COO (Country of Origin labeling) legislation, the Bush Administration refuses to support the concept, wishing not to offend China or India, while not letting Americans know where their fish or grains are imported from.
We see numerous scams rising in drug distribution, especially in expensive, single dose treatments like those used for HIV where the Federal government’s Medicaid program gets billed for thousand-dollar injections of what is only saline solution, but less than a fraction of 1% of the Medicaid budget is used for inspection… again, this is under the umbrella of the FDA.
And yet the Bushies want to privatize all medicine, privatize all food inspection under corporate control…
Wouldn’t it be great to get a government back that really protected the people?