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AND WHY DOESN'T ANYBODY KNOW?
SHIT HAPPENS. DID IT HAPPEN ON OUR TOMATOES?
The Real Question Is, How Can FOUR U.S. Gov't. Agcy's STILL Not Know, After Almost A Week? The Politics Of Food Safety:
CDC
Division of Foodborne, Bacterial and Mycotic Diseases
Salmonellosis
"Salmonella live in the intestinal tracts of humans and other animals, including birds. Salmonella are usually transmitted to humans by eating foods contaminated with animal feces. "
We all know that big business and their lackeys in the Republican Administration don't give a shit about public health. These are the people who mass-marketed you tobacco, alcohol, sugar-water, fast food, polyunsaturated fats, and even baby food with no food in it at all, just chemicals. And babies were their business, their only business.
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So, when these same assholes decided to go with mega-doses of cancerous chemical fertilizers, pesticides & herbicides, growth hormones, animals eating their own kind, secretly genetically engineered franken-foods, gigantic anti-family factory farms and food from God knows where in the Third World, did anybody think they would exercise proper precautions? Why would they suddenly start giving a shit about us? We're like ants to them.
Still, fascists are at least supposed to make the trains run on time, right? Efficiency and control, above all. Everything is computerized and you can track anything anywhere, right? Whenever there's a bad batch of burgers now, they publish lists of the manufacturers and batch numbers, retailers and sale dates, within hours. OK, maybe some people die before they actually bother to recall the rotten, shit-covered, poisonous meat. But they do catch it, eventually.
Now, we have an entire tomato crop tainted with salmonella bacteria. How come they can't even narrow down the source of these infected tomatoes to one State? They put out a list of the States whose tomatoes are NOT poison. How can they say that without knowing which States tomatoes ARE poison? They act like they don't have a clue. They say they won't have a clue for quite a while. Just stop eating the shit, they say. Eat those other tomatoes, they haven't killed anybody yet. Don't worry, be happy, move along, nothing to see here, fuggeddaboutit. Not!
FDA
Food Protection Plan
Update On The Outbreak
"The Food and Drug Administration is alerting consumers nationwide that a salmonellosis outbreak appears to be linked to consumption of certain types of raw red tomatoes and products containing raw red tomatoes. The bacteria causing the illnesses are Salmonella serotype Saintpaul, an uncommon type of Salmonella.
FDA recommends consuming raw red plum, raw red Roma, or raw round red tomatoes grown and harvested only from the following areas that HAVE NOT BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE OUTBREAK: (list)"
You'd think the industry would want to get this over with: Find the sources of the poison tomatoes and shut it down, clean it up, lock somebody up, whatever. They're losing a fortune as people everywhere just quit eating all tomatoes. Most people will probably avoid the love-apples for quite a while; many may never touch the fruit again. So why isn't the tomato biz getting to the bottom of this?
Are they THAT incompetent? Then they shouldn't be allowed to TOUCH our food. Are they covering something up? Then they should be imprisoned, and banned forever from the food business. People have died here.
USDA
Food Safety & Inspection Service
USDA News Releases
Nothing about tomatoes.
But the scariest thing is that the FDA, the Dept of Agriculture, even the CDC can't figure out how tomato A got to supermarket X on truck B from farm Y. Why is that? We're talking millions of tomatoes here, all over the country. Is there no common factor? Or are tomatoes just poisonous naturally, all of a sudden? How come these stores don't know where there produce is coming from? If the Gov. can't track and identify something as big as a fucking tomato, how can they ever be trusted to protect us from deadly little microscopic molds, fungi, bacteria and viruses? This is just a natural occurrence, or an accident of some kind, right? What is the big deal?
If they can't follow the trail of a tomato, how can they follow the trail of a terrorist? Were these veggies delivered by an army of black-ops commando's, driving hundreds of stealth produce trucks in the dead of night? Was this a veggie-terror attack? Then where is Homeland Security? Why can't ANYONE tell us where these goddamned things come from? Are they that incompetent? Or is there a cover-up here?
DHS
Office of Health Affairs
National Center for Food Protection and Defense
A talk shop & pork barrel.
Is NAFTA to blame? Did these tomatoes come from outside the US? Is Bushco hiding this for McCain's benefit? Did the Bushies let them in on Mexican trucks? (Notice Belgium is on the list of safe tomato-sources; so is Canada, and Guatemala. But not Mexico.) Did his food inspectors and customs agents give them a free pass? Notice that previous poisoned tomato outbreaks started in Eastern Florida and Virginia. They're not on the clean list, either. And they're both "battleground States" in this election. Coincidence? HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW???!!!
What the fuck is going on? What are FOUR Federal Agencies. each charged with food safety, doing about this? Why aren't the media asking these questions? How long can it take before we get some answers? Is our food in good, clean hands, or has it all gone to shit under the Republicans?
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