The circus continues

Just to catch you up on some of the latest goings on...

It looks like the U.S. beef imports circus is going to continue. After a dancing donkey and poodle act, it appears the issue will go to a referendum. The only thing more ridiculous than letting the beef industry sway U.S. foreign policy, is the idea that the average Taiwanese person is informed enough to decide Taiwan's domestic policy. While the ruling KMT has used the beef debacle to give a thorough demonstration of their ineptness, the opposition DPP has proven to be merely vacuous and opportunistic. Along with pushing for the referendum and the cost and distraction it would entail, they were quick to point out that it should be held during other elections to ensure the minimum turnout is achieved. In other words, they know nobody cares enough about this issue to actually turn up and vote on it.

On the other side of the coin, the New York Times recently published an article exposing the questionable practices used by the U.S. beef industry in hamburger processing. In recent years processed hamburger has included a product that is created from 'fatty trimmings' that in the past were not considered safe enough to be allowed for human consumption and were only used in pet foods. This 'jelly' is created from the eyes, tonsils, ganglia and other undesirable parts of the cow. These 'trimmings' are highly prone to ecoli and salmonella contamination. A company called Beef Products inc. came up with a novel method whereby the jelly created from these parts is gassed with ammonia to kill the bacteria. The USDA allowed this product to be included in hamburger based only on the findings of studies funded by the company in question. For some reason, ammonia is not listed as an ingredient, despite the fact that handlers of this product have detected a strong odor of ammonia emanating from the jelly even when frozen and have returned the product as unfit for consumption. On top of this, contamination has been detected on several occasions in their product and large-scale outbreaks of food poisoning have been linked to it as well. Several scientists working for the USDA were in disagreement of their employer's decision to approve the product.

Carl S. Custer, a former U.S.D.A. microbiologist, said he and other scientists were concerned that the department had approved the treated beef for sale without obtaining independent validation of the potential safety risk. Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef "pink slime" in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

This product is used in the hamburger of fast food chains like McDonald's and Burger King. It is also used in the school lunch program in the U.S. as it reduces their hamburger budget by a million dollars a year.

And while we happen to be on the issue of the U.S. school lunch program. This article from Washington Monthly outlines the kind of questionable practices that are carried out by this program under the approval of the USDA. KFC and Subway are allowed to set up shop in schools throughout the country, while the quality of meals produced by the program itself is equally unhealthy. Revenue from soda and junk food vending machines now provides a vital portion of funding for most schools. State governments also benefit from the sale of these products in schools as most have now instituted a tax on sugared beverages based on the logic that they are unhealthy. The Donkey went on a rant about this obvious hypocritical conflict of interest in an earlier post.

But to return to the circus in Taiwan, the U.S. government has recently shown they will not let offal interfere with their geopolitical agenda by approving the sale of 'Patriot' missiles to Taiwan by Lockheed Martin. The missiles could theoretically be used to shoot down short-range missiles launched against Taiwan by China. I guess we should be thankful that the interests of Lockheed Martin balance out the interests of Beef Products Inc. in the U.S. Congress. I feel safer already.