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By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually
there would be no wars and no poverty.
I have made myself personally responsible
for the fate of every human being
who has come my way.
-- Anais Nin
Environmental regulations that govern human, animal, and ecosystem health are necessary to keep industry and government accountable for the vast amounts of chemicals that are released every day and for the safety of our food supply. Such regulations are vital to our survival, yet they often suffer from two fatal flaws.
First, they are usually less stringent than they need to be for fear of impeding the progress of business, and second, they are often created and enforced by people who are the least qualified to understand the issues. This second concern may be putting our health and the health of our planet seriously at risk.
Elected representatives in Colorado (Photo courtesy NREL)
Complex issues of science, politics, values and ethics are decided, most of the time, by administrators with no background in the field. Judges often have the last word in deciding complicated ecological and environmental health issues.
While they claim to rely on expert testimony, those "experts" sometimes have a background working within the industry they are called upon to review and may retain a vested interest, or a biased interest in the matters before them.
A particularly egregious example of this phenomena occurred in December 2001 when a three judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the U.S. Department of Agriculture cannot require meat processors to adhere to limits on the amount of salmonella contamination present on the meat.
Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) said that this decision "is clearly taking the harness off the ground meat industry by allowing meat that can be highly contaminated with salmonella to be sold to the public."
Salmonella bacteria sicken thousands each year, many of whom die from the exposure, especially the young, the old and those with challenged immune systems. In Australia, where food positioning is becoming a national problem, one in 50 people get sick from the bacteria. Toddlers and pre-schoolers are most at risk.
Severe diarrhea is the most common symptom of salmonella poisoning, but to a very young or very old person, this can be deadly.
Conditions ripe for salmonella in an egg production factory (Photo courtesy Farm Sanctuary)
Karen Davis, Ph.D., director of United Poultry Concerns, Inc., a non-profit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl, said, "Salmonella poisoning, or Salmonellosis, is a bacterial infection of the intestinal tract causing nausea, vomiting, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, fever, chills, weakness, and exhaustion. If the bacteria penetrate the intestinal tissue and enter the blood, Salmonella can colonize other tissues, causing septicemia (blood poisoning), meningitis, osteomyelitis, and even death. Like Campylobacter, Shigella, or Yersinia, Salmonella can cause chronic joint diseases, such as arthritis." Her remarks appear in the Spring/Summer 1998 issue of "The Poultry Press."
Dr. Katrina Watson, a gastroenterologist and chair of the Digestive Health Foundation in Australia, says her country has not seen some of the worst crises in food contamination that occur in the United States and Europe, where a large and increasing percentage of food is imported from lesser developed nations without strict hygiene rules. Some food imported into the U.S. had been grown in soil fertilized with human sewage, she said.
A person with AIDS is 300 times more likely to become ill if exposed to certain food borne bacteria. Another at risk population is chemotherapy patients and those using anti-rejection drugs after organ transplants. They are very vulnerable to contaminated food.
http://ens-news.com/ens/dec2001/
2001L-12-14g.html
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