You went to the supermarket, looking for some fresh hamburger. You picked a package that had meat with a nice red color to it, thinking it must be fresher than the slightly brown hamburger you see sitting next to it. Unfortunately for you, there’s a good chance the meat you chose may have been rotten, but thanks to a gaseous technology approved by Bush’s Agriculture Department and the FDA in 2004 it merely looked fresher. That’s because, despite indications that this method of keeping meat looking redder longer (through the use of carbon monoxide) wasn’t necessarily safe, your BushCo Ag Department approved it anyway at the request of two of the largest meat producers in the country:
The Agriculture Department in 2004 gave the green light to using carbon monoxide gas to keep older cuts of meat looking red and fresh, even though scientists at the two companies promoting the technology had questioned the validity of their own safety tests, congressional investigators revealed yesterday.
The tests, conducted by Cargill and Hormel Foods, both of Minnesota, were part of a joint effort to persuade federal regulators to allow use of the gas without going through a public approval process. Inexplicably, however, the tests found that microbial counts on meat that had been left under-refrigerated went down over time instead of up, as expected, even as other indicators of spoilage increased, suggesting the possibility of some kind of error. […]
Yet Agriculture Department scientists did not question the data when they reviewed them a few weeks later, and then relied upon them to reverse the agency’s earlier decision to oppose the technology . . . In July 2004, acting on USDA’s recommendation, the Food and Drug Administration gave the technology final approval.
In another surprise at yesterday’s hearing, the chief executives of Cargill and Hormel said for the first time that their companies are willing to put labels on their carbon monoxide-treated meats that would say, “Color is not an accurate indicator of freshness.”
That concession, made before a combative Stupak and other lawmakers, was the latest victory for those who oppose use of the gas on meat and say that consumers are being deceived into thinking meat is fresher than it is. Packages of ground beef more than two years old were on display at the hearing looking red and fresh.
Imagine that. Two year old packages of ground beef looking red and fresh! Makes me glad I stopped eating hamburgers. How much of this “gassed meat” was sold to an unsuspecting public over the last 3 years? How much tainted meat was ingested by Americans unaware they might be eating old, spoiled meat? How many packages of e coli contaminated meat passed muster because they looked fresh thanks to a dose of carbon monoxide? Who knows? Not our industry friendly BushCo FDA and USDA, that’s for sure.
This is what you get when you cut back on so-called unnecessary regulations (unnecessary to Republicans that is) that protect the safety of the food we eat. This is what the food industry got for all its campaign contributions to President Bush and other Republicans. Lots of red meat that looked good lying there in the meat department of your local grocery store, but which should never have been sold to the public, at least not without a warning label. Meat I wouldn’t have fed to my dog.
But then what’s a little consumer fraud among friends (i.e., Agribusiness lobbyists and the Bush administration). I’m sure that this practice of keeping spoiled meat looking red in order to deceive the ordinary Jane and Joe consumer was quite profitable, and in Bush’s America, isn’t that all that matters?
There’s an old Latin saying that applies here: Caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware. Never has that adage been more appropriate than in the Age of Bush, whether we are talking food safety, drug safety, toy safety, water safety — hell, safety for Americans, in general. Government used to be in the business of protecting the consumer from fraud and unsafe products. Now, it’s in the racket of protecting the sellers so that they can deceive buyers into purchasing their unsafe wares. Just one more legacy of Republican ideology run amok.
