Public Interest Groups Get it Wrong on Egg Recall

photo credit: kthread

Local Foods are the Answer Not Government Agencies

by Alyce Ortuzar

It is obvious from this egg recall that neither the FDA nor the USDA
has any understanding of nutrition or food safety. So they should not
be telling Americans what to eat, what is nutritious, or what is safe.

The industrial farm operations with one million chickens where the
contaminated eggs come from would never pass an inspection, nor should
they. So the idea that any additional laws would protect the public,
short of shutting these inhumane, toxic waste dumpsites down, borders
on the absurd.

The fact that these facilities and their feed suppliers have been
fined, shows the clout the FDA (and state and local health
departments) and the USDA have but do not use, such as going to court
or to Congress to shut these facilities down. On the contrary, the
USDA constantly tells us that these contaminated products unfit for
consumption are “the safest foods in the world.” The USDA also insists
that our food should be “cheap.” This is one instance where we get
what we pay for, although the very low prices do not reflect the
taxpayer subsidies, the environmental clean-up costs, or the health
care costs from eating nutrient-deficient products from stressed-out,
abused, contaminated animals being paraded as food.

The FDA’s solution is pasteurization, which destroys nutrients. In
this case, the FDA will try to destroy the only eggs that contain
nutrients–eggs from small ecological farms, which are easy targets
for these fraudulent agencies. In Maryland, there has been a nasty and
aggressive campaign by the state and local health departments to raid
farmers’ markets and prevent the farmers from handing out free
samples, which obviously increase their sales and profits. I call
these campaigns “Keeping Maryland Residents Safe from Farm Fresh
Food.” Give these abusive agencies more power? They are all (including
the FDA) too allied with agribusiness and the chemical industry to
even mention shutting these operations down.

Groups such as U.S. Pirg should be advising the public to buy and eat
from small, local, ecological farms and farmers’ markets and natural
food stores that sell these products, where the animals are treated
humanely and are healthy because they live outdoors in healthy pasture
and sunlight, pursuing their normal behaviors.

Shame on these groups for not holding the FDA and USDA responsible for
promoting these harmful and disgusting operations and practices
instead of shutting these factories down, which the American Public
Health Association has been calling for (apha.org).

Local, state, and federal health departments are silent about the
widespread use of toxic chemicals in our foods, on our crops, and on
lawns and yards. So these agencies also need to come under criticism
and scrutiny for profound failures to protect the public from all of
these preventable, manufactured harms and deserve nothing more than a
complete lack of credibility. The last thing these corrupt agencies
need is more power to use against the small ecological farms that
remain our only source of safe and nutritious food.

Efforts to adulterate eggs the way the FDA has adulterated milk will
only make Americans sicker and more malnourished. The FDA tried not to
let consumers know that bovine growth hormone is in their conventional
dairy products, in addition to a host of toxic chemicals the FDA also
has no problem with.

What this recall shows is how adulterated so much food in this country
is, and how these agencies cannot be trusted to determine what is and
is not safe or nutritious.

Alyce Ortuzar
Well Mind Association of Greater Washington
Montgomery County, MD
farmparity@gmail.com

Note from Kimberly: This commentary is available for reprint in any news publication that would like to show another side of the issue. See also, The Bovine Blog, Egg Recall, The End of Real Food?, for more information.

Alyce Ortuzar is a Medical and Social Science Researcher and Writer for the Well Mind Association of Greater Washington, and a member of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The Well Mind Association was founded in 1967 as a holistic medicine information clearinghouse focusing on environmental and nutritional influences on mental and physical well-being. They maintain a national database of holistic health practitioners, and provide free referral service to the public. Their mission is enable people to access the safest and most effective treatment, practitioners, and research and outcome data. Contact them at P.O. Box 312, Ashton, MD 20861 (301.774.6617).