This originally was a comment to a diary by Deep Harm last night http://www.dailykos.com/... and several folks encouraged me to make it a diary.
Please see below the fold. I may not have been successful in linking, but I do encourage to read Deep Harm's diary even if I was unable to point you to it correctly.
I was a rather high level FDA official several years ago, and had access to information that, to my knowledge never was released to the public. It had to do with extremely high levels of dioxin in mineral supplements mainly for livestock, but also in the aquaculture industry, and make no mistake, any agriculture in the US is industrial unless your are growing your own or in a coop. I digress.
Bottom line is that a brass recycling company was taking its to be reclaimed materials, melting then down, and producing reclaimed brass. It turns out that zinc, around 30% of brass, is volatile and thus "boils off" the the molten mixture, reacts with oxygen in air, and becomes zinc oxide flue deposits ("flue sweepings"). Not really a problem yet, since the copper in the brass is less volatile and thus not too much of a contaminant.
Where things went wrong is that the firm would dump salvaged copper wire into the melting vat, without bothering to strip off the insulation first. Chemists out there may see where I am going, but to explain to those not versed in the black arts, most electrical wiring is insulated with polyvinyl chloride (PVC) polymer. When PVC is pyrolyzed (the technical term for heating to decomposition), PVC pyrolyzes, especially in the presence of heavy metals, to dioxin.
This dioxin condensed in the flue with the zinc oxide, and was present in the flue sweepings. No one ever thought to analyze for it. The zinc oxide, contaminated with dioxin, was sold to several feed supplement formulators and blended with other minerals to provide a concentrate to be sold to feed mills to be blended into feed for livestock and fish. It is like a chain reaction, where one initial supplier (source zero) sells products to formulators (secondary providers) to feed mills (tertiary suppliers), then to the consumers. There can be hundreds to thousands of tertiary suppliers, and tens of thousands of consumers.
Levels of dioxin in the flue sweepings were tens of thousands in excess of "allowed" levels, in the concentrate up to 5000 in excess, and in the final feed ten to 100 in excess. As I was leaving the agency, it was not yet determined as to the levels in the food products.
I bet you have not heard this one before, because I am one of the very few to have first hand experience with it. We were told the keep it very "close hold" so as not to cause economic harm the the industry. Interesting, W was president then and that weasel Mark McClellan (brother of Scottie Mc, former White House spokesman, son of Carole Strayhorn, former Texas comptroller under W) was Commissioner. He is now with Brookings Institute, or was the last time I looked.
My point is precisely this: no one knows much at all about how the executive branch works, what it knows, or what it will do. I grow my own vegetables insofar as possible with as little chemical assistance as possible. Folks who can should.
In conclusion, I recommend that everyone put pressure on their Congresscritters to do two things: fund FDA and USDA at levels that will allow them to do their jobs, and get the politics out of watchdog agencies. Horrible and more "sexy" as it is, I do not care as much if DoJ goes after political enemies as I do that FDA and others are starved for funding and then told to keep quiet about real issues affecting many people who pay, through taxes, for protection. End of rant.
Warmest regards, Doc
And to think that I usually blog about wild food and gardening. I guess there is a connection.