Where’s the Beef?!
Feb 21st, 2008 | By Lene Johansen | Category: MediaWhat a week! The USDA beef recall has derailed some of my writing plans this week as I have done 13 radio appearances about the issue so far, and I still got a couple to go. Here are radio clips from a couple of the appearances I have done this week.
The skinny is that the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company voluntary recalled 143 million pounds of beef after the Humane Society went in with a hidden camera and found discrepancies in the health safety procedures mandated by the USDA. This is the largest recall in US history, but it is a Class 2 recall, which means that there is a “remote chance for adverce health effects if consumed.” A lot of people had a food scare for no good reason other than spin for Humane Society and the USDA, because there where no health concerns behind the recall. Politicians are already calling for more regulation, food prices are already up, and this will make food even more expensive. The doubling of food prices the last three years are already squeezing poor people into poorer nutrition choices.
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Against the Grain with Gardner Goldsmith, WTPL 107.7 FM/ Libertyconspiracy.com
“Then check out ELGGRANDE as he chats with Lene Johansen, the Warren Brookes fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. She and Gard talk about the uselessness of the USDA, and how the existence of unconstitutional and anti-economic, immoral federal bureaucracies that are founded to supposedly “protect us” from our own choices, consistently and continually erode individual initiative to police our own lives and choices.”
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Roger Hedgecock Show, KOGO 600 AM
Talked to Jimmy Valentine about the Humane Society going for maximum shock value and maximum price with the expose that lead to the beef recall earlier this week.
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Thom Hartman, Air America and Sirius RadioÂ
Thom Hartman was a sweetie and pitched me up against Paul Shapiro from the Humane Society of the United States. Neither of them expected me to suggest that HSUS should make a side business of inspecting plants, because they seem to have a good talent for it. Free market solutions are better than government solutions, so why not?
It could be that there are microbes living / hitchin’ a ride on chocolate, and upon consumption, colonize a person’s GI tract. One could grind up some nice, dark chocolate, extract DNA from it, and check for prokaryotic 16S rRNA sequences, and then compare those sequences to 16s rRNA sequences in people’s guts who have injested chocolate. Sounds like a waste of good chocolate, no? My chocolate-loving bacteria made me say that, I swear!
Alternatively, it could be that upon eating chocolate, you are selecting for enhanced growth of bacteria that are already in your GI system. The same principal is used during toxic waste (i.e. oil spills, heavy metal contamination) reduction in contaminated sites. Pump in some limiting nutrients into a waste site (to encourage bacterial growth), and there will be some sort of bacteria in the natural environment that will fill the niche and metabolize the waste. However, what a terrible analogy. My chocolate-loving bacteria are displeased with me.
I am outraged the way you people defend the reprehensible behavior of
the disgusting beef industry. I was HORRIFIED to find out how they
treat the animals and even more HORRIFIED to hear you people defend
their RIGHT to DO SO and your attack on The Human Society. Are you
NUTS??? Grow a conscious already. The only good thing that will come
from the unspeakable torture and suffering of these poor animals is
that it will turn many people away from eating meat in the future.
I’m over it completely now. The thought of eating beef makes me want
to vomit. And further more, the idea of the bottom line mattering
more than the humane treatment of LIVING CREATURES makes my head
explode!!!! Screw the government and their inability to protect us,
where is your moral compass??? How dare you NOT be as outraged as I
am. But you’re just all about business, aren’t you. The bottom line
is your God. I hate you and everyone like you. And I was especially
disturbed to hear a WOMAN defending this abominable everyday practice
in the beef industry. I half expect it from a cold hearted man but it
is especially disturbing coming from a woman. She is foul. How do you
monsters sleep at night? I suppose you would have no problem jabbing
sick cows with a fork lift or poking their eyes out or shooting fire
hoses up their noses. You should all rot in hell right along with the
sadist bastards in the cattle industry.
Have a horrible day.
M. Cooper
[...] example of specific digestive bacteria is the bacteria that cause chocolate cravings, which I wrote about [...]