Someone just sent me an ABC news article about seafood. I don't know how long the link will stay up, so I will give a brief synopsis:
According to the article, around 80% of the seafood consumed in the US is imported, but the FDA tests less than 1% of it. The state of Alabama has it's own comprehensive testing program, rather than relying on the federal government to safeguard its consumers. They reject 50-60% of imported fish due to the presence of banned chemicals, such as antibiotics and malachite (which is used as a fungicide and has been shown to cause cancer and birth defects). The state's agriculture commissioner has visited foreign fish farms and seen that some of the fish are raised in sewage.
Fortunately, there is talk this week of strengthening the FDA's ability to test, conduct recalls, and visit sites where food is produced. It may take some time for the bill to be written and passed.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
More About Seafood
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1 comment:
Yet another example of a toothless federal agency completely ineffective at safeguarding the public. The FDA is so weakened by lobbying and small-government forces it's pretty much useless; functioning at best as a rubber stamp for corporate interests.
When will people wake up to stuff like this? Why are so many people willing to leave our food supply (and prescription drugs) more or less without oversight? The only health an unregulated market cares about is it's own (because the only thing that matters is the bottom line.) It could care less about what you're ingesting, so long as you pay handsomely in one way or another.
Anyway, that's all a sidenote to the real message of this post, which is: the world's seafood is mostly poison. Whatever fish you are eating, it's likely contaminated somehow.
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