Public outcry brings proposed change to the rules for the slaughter of food. Lets hope this new rule is approved.
See our previous articles on this issue here:
Clinton and 2007 Food Safety Plan
Warning, You WILL think about this next time you eat Beef!
How safe is our food supply? Things you need to know!
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) today [27 Aug 2008] announced a proposed rule to amend the Federal meat inspection regulations to initiate a complete ban on the slaughter of cattle that become non-ambulatory after initial inspection by Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspection program personnel.
This proposed rule follows the 20 May 2008 announcement by secretary of agriculture Ed Schafer to remove the provision that states that the FSIS inspection program will determine the disposition of cattle that become non-ambulatory and disabled after they have passed ante-mortem before slaughter inspection on a case-by-case basis. Under the proposed rule, all cattle that are non-ambulatory and disabled at any time prior to slaughter, including those that become non-ambulatory disabled after passing ante-mortem inspection, will be condemned and properly disposed of.
“To maintain consumer confidence in the food supply, eliminate further misunderstanding of the rule and, ultimately, to make a positive impact on the humane handling of cattle, I believe it is sound policy to simplify this matter by initiating a complete ban on the slaughter of downer cattle,” said agriculture secretary Ed Schafer.
On 13 Jul 2007, FSIS published the final rule, “Prohibition of the Use of Specified Risk Materials for Human Food and Requirements for the Disposition of Non-Ambulatory Disabled Cattle; Prohibition of the Use of Certain Stunning Devices Used To Immobilize Cattle During Slaughter,” (SRM final rule). The SRM final rule allowed a case-by-case re-inspection of cattle to address the rare situations where an animal that is deemed by FSIS as fit for human food at ante-mortem inspection subsequently suffers an acute injury.
Under the proposed rule, cattle that become non-ambulatory disabled from an acute injury after ante-mortem inspection will no longer be eligible to proceed to slaughter as “US Suspects.” Instead, FSIS inspectors will tag these cattle as “US condemned” and prohibit these animals from proceeding to slaughter. Establishments will be required to notify FSIS personnel when cattle become disabled after passing ante-mortem inspection.
Of the nearly 34 million cattle that were slaughtered in 2007, less than 1000 cattle that were re-inspected were actually approved by the veterinarian for slaughter. This represents less than 0.003 per cent of cattle slaughtered annually.
Comments on this proposed rule must be received on or before 29 Sep 2008. Comments can be sent to Docket Clerk, US Department of Agriculture, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Room 2534 South Agriculture Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW, Washington, DC 20250; emailed to <fsis.regulationscomments@fsis.usda.gov>, or submitted through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <http://www.regulations.gov>. All submissions received by mail or electronic mail must reference the Food Safety and Inspection Service and include the docket number FSIS-2008-0022.
For further technical information on the proposed rule, contact Dr Daniel Engeljohn, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Policy and Program Development, at (202) 205 0495 or by fax at (202) 720 2025.
Source: US Department of Agriculture [edited]
<http://www.regulations.gov>
Matt Yglesias recently highlighted a good idea from one of his commenters, who suggested that a mainstream outlet might make a comparison between the tax breaks Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama might receive under their own tax plan (since they are both wealthy), versus the tax break an average American would see. This would be illustrative of the taxation priorities of each candidate, on high incomes versus lower ones, in easy-to-understand terms.
Well, CNN got the drift — er, kinda. They just left off that whole average-American part. Yesterday, on The Situation Room, there was a chart showing the effect of McCain and Obama’s tax plans on four different income brackets:
* Over $2.9 million
* $603,000 and up
* $227,000-$603,000
* $161,000-$227,000
Does CNN have some really strange market research we’re not aware of? Because that seems like an extremely small slice of Americans. Actually, Think Progress notes it’s the top five percent of earners.
Aiming to inform viewers, CNN ended up being very, very misleading — one sees a greater tax cut in each of these brackets under McCain’s plan, creating the illusion he is offering more tax relief. Not shown, of course, are the other 95 percent of earners, who start to see a bigger benefit under Obama. (Again, see Think Progress.) So as a piece of journalism, this is highly misleading.
Wolf Blitzer didn’t stop there. He tried to rile up some anger among affected voters — namely, former NBA superstar and multi-millionaire Charles Barkley:
BLITZER: If Obama has his way, you would spend another $701,885 in taxes. $700,000 above and beyond — you pay a lot of taxes right now if you’re making millions of dollars a year as you are. How do you feel about that?
(Barkley notably said he didn’t care, and basically that it was fair.) Anyhow, this kind of tax reporting from Blitzer is in step with questions from many other mainstream media folks, like Charlie Gibson pestering candidates during the primaries about capital gains taxes, or suggesting the average American income is $200,000. It maybe be important to Gibson and Wolf, but it ain’t to most all of us.
Fox News and Jerome Corsi, living in the past
by Eric Boehlert
It sure felt like déjà vu all over again, didn’t it?
No election watcher could forget the summer of 2004, when Fox News repeatedly invited Swift Boat author John O’Neill onto cable prime time and allowed him to air his scurrilous allegations about Sen. John Kerry’s Vietnam War record. Even before the partisan Swift Boat Veterans for Truth group unveiled its infamous television ads, it was on Fox News where the controversy was birthed. It was Fox News that allowed O’Neill a mostly unobstructed platform on August 10, 17, 19, and 24, 2004, to libel Kerry and to gin up a controversy that eventually swamped the Democratic candidate for most of that crucial summer month.
Then, almost exactly four years later to the dates (on July 31, August 3, 12, and 14), Fox News presented its White House campaign sequel. It welcomed O’Neill’s Swift Boat writing partner, Jerome Corsi, to publicize his new attack book, The Obama Nation. Laying out his fever-swamp allegations about Obama’s drug use and his supposed connections to Islam, Corsi enjoyed the type of national exposure, courtesy of Fox News, that every author craves.
It was an audience that helped propel The Obama Nation to No. 1 on the bestsellers list, which then ignited wide-scale mainstream coverage for Corsi and his book.
In other words, everything was going according to plan. The sequel had been set up — had been marketed — just like the Swift Boat predecessor, and now all conservatives had to do was sit back and watch the fun, as the Obama campaign became engulfed in Corsi-led controversy.
Right?
It hasn’t worked that way. The Obama Nation‘s allegations, as slight and flimsy as they are, have taken a back seat to questions about Corsi’s own credibility. In fact, journalists have likely spent more time dissecting the errors in Obama Nation and highlighting Corsi’s controversial path, including the hateful, bigoted items he used to post in online forums, than they have focusing on the allegations Corsi wanted to broadcast.
As the conservative National Review Online noted with frustration, “The media narrative thus becomes ‘Corsi refuted’ rather than ‘Obama embattled.’ ”
Add in the fact that some conservatives have stepped forward to publically denounce Corsi and his brand of slime, beseeching the movement to divorce itself from Corsi’s unsubstantiated attacks, and suddenly the sequel is in real distress.
Oh sure, it’s selling. (Thanks in part to bulk sales, a right-wing marketing staple.) But in terms of affecting the race, in terms of gumming up the works for the Obama campaign, the book has so far been a bust.
What happened? How did a sure-fire follow-up hit turn into such a trouble-plagued production? And why isn’t Fox News’ Swift Boat formula working?
Simple. Both Corsi and the Fox News team are living in the past and failed to realize how dramatically the media landscape has shifted since the shady Swift Boat accusers were able to deftly use the media to spread their lies.
First and foremost, the progressive movement has spent the last four years bulking up its infrastructure, and specifically readying itself to respond to media-driven attacks from the right; the way Media Matters for America immediately blanketed The Obama Nation and documented its egregious errors (often floated on Fox News) and also raised doubts about the author’s veracity and integrity. And thanks to the larger Netroots community, Corsi hasn’t had any breathing room to spread his misinformation.
But there were also key marketplace changes within the cable news industry that affected the Corsi coverage, I think. Because remember that in 2004, Fox News drove the Swift Boat saga; it was practically a co-sponsor of the anti-Kerry crusade, devoting endless hours to promoting the Vietnam-era allegations. By sheer force of repetition, Fox News, then the dominant player in cable news, forced its competitors to not only acknowledge the Swift Boat story, but to go all in as well. And soon all the cable news outlets were treating the Swift Boat saga with Fox News-like breathlessness. (CNN aired nearly 300 segments referencing the topic.)
And just like Fox, they weren’t asking the tough questions. Instead, they gave the Swift Boat accusers the same free ride that Fox News did. They became media enablers, too.
Not this time around. With Fox News no longer the dominant cable news king — and with Fox News no longer driving the campaign narratives — its competitors opted for a much different approach to covering Corsi. And I think the coverage from the competitors sent a subtle, yet simple, message: We no longer take our cues from Fox News’ lead, because they no longer dictate campaign coverage. Instead, we’re going to exult in our role as a counterbalance, as a fact-checker, to the Fox News-produced Corsi attack campaign. In fact, we’re gonna help pull the curtain back on Corsi.
Just look at how MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer greeted Corsi, as he ventured for the first time beyond the friendly TV confines of Rupert World:
BREWER: You say it’s a comprehensive look, and yet there are already online bloggers that are going through this book page by page and picking apart what they see as factual errors. … If they’re going through, and they’re finding all of these factual errors in your book, why should we give you the credibility?
CNN’s Campbell Brown introduced a prime-time report by announcing, “Obama Nation is riddled with pretty much every unsubstantiated rumor you ever heard about Obama.”
And on Larry King Live, Corsi was forced to face off against Media Matters Senior Fellow Paul Waldman, who refused to let the author spread his misinformation uncontested.
All the above represented precisely what the press, and most especially the cable outfits, should have done — but mostly refused to do — in 2004.
They refused to allow articulate, independent critics onto the national stage to debunk the patently false Swift Boat charges. Instead, the press most often treated the Swift Boat story as a political one, which meant amplifying the partisan charges and then going to the Kerry campaign for a quote, or inviting a Kerry campaign surrogate on the air to debate a Swift Boat liar.
Rather than forcefully labeling the Swift Boat attacks a charade and IDing the attackers as pranksters, and instead of holding the Swift Boat accusers accountable, the press played dumb and abandoned its traditional campaign role.
As Greg Mitchell at Editor & Publisher noted, “The mainstream press gave the charges — carried in ads, in books and articles, and in major TV appearances — a free ride for a spell, then a respectful airing mixed with critique, before in many cases finally attempting to shoot them down as overwhelmingly exaggerated or false.”
In the infamous words of former Washington Post executive editor Len Downie, upon being pressed about the paper’s Swift Boat coverage in August 2004: “We are not judging the credibility of Kerry or the [Swift Boat] Veterans, we just print the facts.”
Talk about abdicating your role as journalists. During the Swift Boat hoax, Downie and his team at the Post essentially walked off the field, refusing to officiate the smear campaign. Wasn’t judging the credibility of the previously unknown Swift Boat accusers precisely what the Post and the rest of the press should have been doing in August 2004?
Thankfully, that kind of cowardice has been replaced by actual journalism when dealing with the Corsi sequel. And on TV, I’d suggest that about-face has been fueled by Fox News’ fall from ratings grace, as its competitors, flush with confidence, realize they no longer have to follow.
Instead, they can lead.
Of course, the fact that Corsi won’t admit or correct obvious errors in his book has only emboldened the press to pose tough questions. His often loopy logic has also not helped him, like suggesting we cannot believe Obama when he said he stopped taking drugs in college because, according to the author, “self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable.”
When Corsi stumbled down that twisted path on CNN’s Larry King Live last week, Media Matters‘ Waldman was waiting to pounce:
WALDMAN: You put up on right-wing websites a whole series of bigoted and hateful posts in 2002 and 2003 that you later had to admit to when you got found out — all kinds of really vile, malicious stuff.
CORSI: OK. If you —
WALDMAN: Now, you say that you’ve stopped that. You say that you’ve stopped that and you don’t put up those kinds of vile, bigoted, malicious, hateful posts on right-wing websites. But all we have is your word. I mean, do — can we really trust you? People who do that kind of thing, well, you know, they’re not really very trustworthy.
CORSI: We have —
WALDMAN: So can we trust you? Are you still doing that?
CORSI: You have more than my word. You’ve got the record of everything I’ve written since then.
WALDMAN: Can you prove that you’re not doing it anonymously? Can you prove it?
I’m hard-pressed to recall the last time I saw an author get so thoroughly discredited on national television the way Corsi was at the hands of Waldman. (The encounter simply confirmed why conservatives often refuse to go head-to-head with reps from Media Matters in public settings.)
That undressing proved infectious within the mainstream media, as it began to spell out, fairly and accurately, what Corsi and his book were about. The Associated Press’ Nedra Pickler reported, “Corsi suggests, without a shred of proof, that Obama may be using drugs today. Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine as a teenager but says he quit when he went to college and hasn’t used drugs since.”
The New York Times’ political blog, The Caucus, set aside space to detail Corsi’s touting of radical 9-11 theories that suggest explosives detonated inside the Twin Towers were also responsible for the destruction, not just the terrorist-piloted jumbo jets. And Politico noted how Corsi had “left a trail of wild theories, vitriol and dogma that have called into question his credibility.”
Is it some sort of collective penance journalists are serving for the media’s Swift Boat failures of 2004? Who knows? But it’s exactly what journalists ought to be doing when mischief-makers like Corsi climb onto the national stage (ladder, courtesy of Simon & Schuster), and start making unsubstantiated charges about presidential contenders.
Conservatives now whine about the press taking sides, that it’s teaming up on Corsi. In fact, the press is simply doing exactly what it should have done in 2004, and that’s vet the accuser. Period.
The game has changed. But somebody forgot to tell Corsi and his friends at Fox News.
Source: The New York Times [edited]
8-12-08 On Wednesday [6 Aug 2008], the United States Justice Department revealed its evidence that Dr. Bruce E. Ivins, on his own, committed the worst act of bio-terrorism in the country’s history. This 18-year veteran scientist of the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md., is accused of killing 5 people and sickening 17 others in the fall of 2001. Dr. Ivins died on 29 Jul 2008 of an apparent suicide without a chance to give his side of the story.
After reading the affidavits and listening to the Justice Department briefing, I was both disheartened and perplexed by the lack of physical evidence supporting a conviction Dr. Ivins was a friend and colleague of mine for nearly 16 years. We worked together at Fort Detrick. He was a senior scientist, and I was, first, a bench scientist and, from 1999 to 2003, the chief of the bacteriology division.
The Justice Department has presented different types of evidence to support its argument that Dr. Ivins was the person who mailed anthrax to Tom Brokaw, Tom Daschle and others in September and October of 2001. Much of this evidence is outside the realm of science: Dr. Ivins’s alleged fixation with a sorority; strange comments in excerpts from his e-mail messages; a connection to a Greendale school that might or might not explain the fictitious return address on anthrax mailings. I will not address these points beyond noting that they are highly circumstantial. As a scientist, however, I feel compelled to comment on what should have been the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s strongest link between Dr. Ivins and the terrible crime: deadly anthrax spores. In the summary of its findings, the FBI states that investigators used 4 different genetic techniques to match the anthrax-laced attack letters to a unique DNA footprint of a single anthrax spore preparation in one flask that had been in Dr. Ivins’s custody….read more of this revealing story and why questions remain
Seymour Hersh recently reported that Vice President Dick Cheney and his staffers once discussed having Navy SEALs dress up as Iranian sailors and then attack American ships. Behold the massive press coverage.
Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh — a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker — revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.
In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,’” according to one of Hersh’s sources.
During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:
HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.
Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.
Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.
“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”
Voice of Freedom's Weblog 