picking some shit up for lunch:
with Uncle Procrustes
As you may recall, I’ve occasionally ranted about Republican willingness to allow Americans to eat feces tainted meat in order to save their corporate johns a few bucks. The problem, besides the yuck factor, is that this tolerance also means we’re eating live listeria bacteria; which can (and occasionally do) kill us. It’s not like banning fecal listeria from food won’t work; the EU allows 0 live listeria per test sample, and it works fine for them. The Republicans simply refuse to do it; so we allow up to 4 live bacteria per sample. It’s a filthy business. But now it’s changed a bit…
The FDA, we hear, has finally decided to deal with Listeria. Will they roll back the meat handling rules to pre-Reagan days? Replace all the fired meat inspectors? Uniformly enforce food safety rules? In fine, re-ban raw feces in cold cuts? Not exactly. Our Republican brethren in the FDA have just authorized the spraying of live viruses onto cured meat products, in order to kill some of the live bacteria that same FDA tolerates on said meat products. Now leaving aside any other consideration, what kind of idiot would trust a political party, which tolerates live fecal bacteria in the U.S. meat supply, with ensuring the purity of this viral treatment?
You might like to keep in mind that only a small percentage of food is ever tested, and that the plants are warned ahead of time.
And what does listeria cause?
fever, chills, and other flu-like symptoms; headache; nausea; vomiting; diarrhea; infections of the blood (septicemia); inflammation of the brain (encephalitis) or membranes of the brain or spinal cord (meningitis); spontaneous abortion or stillbirth
and how bad is it? Well, the column headed “How soon it ends” offers this advice: “get treatment immediately.” Others with the same prescription include e.coli, Clostridium botulinum, and Vibrio vulnificus. These others are somewhat harder to come by (eating raw shellfish is not something one does by accident).
Listeria can come from some of my favorite foods (soft-ripened or blue cheeses) but I’ve either been lucky or the concentrations, if any, have been within my body’s tolerance. But for our alleged government to opt for weaker standards, with a body of evidence about the health risks, is irresponsible. Not that that’s breaking news . . .
