A political thread i think we can all agree on

[Yanick]

I don't know much about politics so i'm not gonna start blaming any specific person or administration here but clearly, something must be done.

I'm posting this up to be thought of from the perspective of the degree of harm that steroids and foodborne illnesses cause the general population and the amount of time and energy spent, by our Government, to resolve these two 'serious' problems.

This is quoted from an article (fully referenced, but is a bit difficult to get the references, i'm waiting on an answer from them as of this moment) entitled, Food Gone Bad written by Connie C. Chettle, RN, MS, MPH, CIC, COHN-S (thats a lot of letter after her name, i don't know what half of them mean lol) in the January 14th issue of the Nursing Spectrum. Here we go.

"...the FDA and the Department of Agriculture, have been issuing warnings about food contaminated with E. Coli 0157:H7, Salmonella, Listeria and Campylobacter. Just in the past twelve months, such warnings have resulted in United Food Group's recalling 5.7 million pounds (about 2,585 tons) of E. Coli 0157:H7 contaminated ground beef."

It then lists several statistics about recent outbreaks such as:

Peter Pan and Great Value peanut butter was contaminated with Salmonella and resulted in 628 illnesses in 47 states.

E. Coli 0157:H7 contaminated bagged spinach resulted in 199 illnesses across 26 states. Of these people, 102 were hospitalized, 31 developed acute renal failure and 3 died from Hemolytic-Uremic Syndrome (HUS).

It has more but i'm not typing them all out, i'm bored but still lazy

So now we get to the interesting part, and the part that aggravates me the most.

"In 2006, 130 countries, led by Canada, Mexico, and China, shipped $60 billion of food into the US, double the amount imported five years ago. And while the number of imports doubled, the number of inspections decreased because of funding shortfalls. Last year only, 20,662 of the 8.9 millions shipments of food that arrived in the US ports were examined. The FDA, which is responsible for monitoring 80% of the US food suply, inspects less than 1% of the food shipments that enter the US, and between 2003 and 2006, FDA food safety inspections dropped 47% as the results of funding cuts."

"Each [microbacterium] causes an acute illness that is generally self-limiting and short of duration. However, 2-3% of patients (more than 2 million people each year) who contract one of these illnesses will develop secondary long-term illnesses and complications, called Chronic Sequellae. Examples include Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS) after Campylobacter infections, reactive athritis (ReA) after infections with Salmonella and Campylobacter, HUS after E. Coli 0157:H7 and mental retardation after Listeria congenital infections"

For the not so good Mathematicians out there, its 2-3% of 2 million which is 40,000-60,000 people per year.

So we're talking millions of people getting sick and thousands developing life long complications from food. Something we pay the Government to keep safe and something that we can all agree is very important to the public at large. Everyone has to eat. What i see is the Government spending time and money policing steroids, first in athletics, now in Pop Culture icons.

My quick overview and then i'll shut up and let those smarter than me speak.

Steroids: Personal choice, usually aware of consequences and takes the negative with the positive (IE half a billion dollars over ten-twenty years for small nuts and a bald head) but if not, is a douche who deserves what they get, IMO. Is there a single case of death from steroid use...I'm talking about direct cause not all the suicide stuff because there are more factors than steroids at work on more than one level.

Food: No choice, we need to eat. We trust our Government to oversee our food supply, especially the food supply imported from foreign countries. People suffer life long complications needlessly, not aware of the dangers or maybe not capable of avoiding/dealing with the dangers etc. All these people wanted was a chicken sandwich.

That is all, it took me forever to type this goddamn post so you fuckers better put in your .02 cause i didn't do all this work to have my thread die a slow and agonizing death.

[MeatZatk]

I disagree....wait, what does it say?

[tallcall]

The whole steroid issue to me is just media propaganda.

We (the media) are supposed to be family friendly - which means we are going along with the "compassionate Conservative" mode of thinking and absolutely cannot show people dying or being tortured in other countries (which our people may or may not have anything to do with - not saying we're bad guys).

We just over-react to a lot of these stupid little things. All you have to do to change the programming is write letters to the station and FCC (threaten their broadcast license) and just stop watching. Nothing makes things change faster than threatening to have the place shut down and threatening their advertising dollars. The power IS in the hands of the people, so use it.

[maniclion]

Don't forget the number of people addicted to food versus the number addicted to steroids. Obesity, diabetes, bulimia, anorexia all food related....the food doesn't even have to be tainted to cause serious conditions. Also look at how many children are hurt by each, KEFE is the only kid I know using roids but millions of American kids shove thousands of empty calories in their mouths each day, it's reached epidemic proportions yet they say lets focus on healthy athletes who are boosting performance with steroids, make it well known to all.....bring it way out front so our kids who thought they wanted to grow up and beat their sports heros records will think they'll need steroids to get there.....where as had we kept our mouthss shut and not blown it up so much to the congressional level they may have thought it was achievable through hard work and perseverance....