USDA privatizing meat inspections with program that allowed ‘chunks’ of feces

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) is planning to roll out a meat inspection program nationwide that will allow pork plants to use their own inspectors, but it has a history of producing contaminated meat at American and foreign plants. The Washington Post reported on Monday that documents and interviews showed that a plan to allow hog plants to replace federal USDA inspectors with their own private employees had produced “serious lapses that included failing to remove fecal matter from meat” in three of the five plants that had participated in a pilot program for more than a decade. And plants using the same procedure in Australia and Canada also ran into problems. In one case, a Canadian company had to recall 8.8 million pounds of beef products for E. coli contamination. Most recently, New Zealand had been given permission to export meat to the United States from plants using the inspection procedure. But government inspectors in New Zealand have already warned that the meat produced at those plants is contaminated at times. “Tremendous amounts of fecal matter remain on the carcasses,” Ian Baldick, an inspectors union representative, told the Post. “Not small bits, but chunks.” In 1997, the USDA allowed five pork plants to participate in the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-based Inspection Models Project (HIMP), which industry lobbyists claimed would accelerate processing times while cutting down on the number of government meat inspectors. After 15 years, a USDA inspector general report found last spring that three of the five plants in the program were some of the worst in the country. A separate Government Accountability Office (GAO) report last month said that it would be difficult to recommend rolling out the plan nationwide. The USDA is moving forward with rolling out the new meat inspection procedures after the evaluation is complete in the spring of 2014. A similar plan for chicken and turkey plants is expected to be finalized later this year. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/09/usda-privatizing-meat-inspections-with-program-that-allowed-chunks-of-feces/

When GM pollen blows into a non-GM farmer's fields and irreversibly contaminates his crop with 'biopollution,' who does the law side with? Historically, Monsanto. Also, it's not called 'economic sabotage' but rather 'copyright infringement,' and the victim not the aggressor is threatened with economic ruin.

When Monsanto's unapproved and therefore illegal GM wheat is found years after open field trials growing freely in an Oregon wheat field, the entire state crop's export fate is held in limbo, jeopardizing the present and future living of thousands of farmers and their dependents, with Monsanto receiving little more than a reprimand, followed by rapid USDA assurance that despite a lack of approval their GM wheat is "safe."

Given the unfair rules of the game, no wonder some folks in Oregon, having been treated much like feudal peasants lately, are taking things quite literally into their own hands.

So, when the FBI investigates the destruction of genetically modified sugar beets from two fields in Southern Oregon's Jackson County this month, the act is immediately labeled "economic sabotage," presumably against the multinational corporation who owned the plants.

How fitting an FBI description, considering that Monsanto already planted these 'evil seeds' of doubt by suggesting their unapproved GM wheat in Oregon was a result of sabotage, and not negligence (or intentional contamination) on their part.

According to the Spokesman Review, "The agency [FBI] said in a statement Thursday that about 1,000 sugar beet plants were destroyed on June 8, and more than 5,000 plants were destroyed on a different plot three nights later."  

The article went on to explain that the plants were owned by the Swiss-based biotech company Sygenta, and that the FBI spokewoman, Beth Anne Steele, would not comment on the manner in which the crops were destroyed "...because we don't want to encourage copycats."  However, an article published on OregonLive.com demystified the FBI's account, quoting Paul Minehart, head of corporate communications in North America for Syngenta: "It doesn't look like a vehicle was used. It looks like people entered the field and destroyed the plants by hand."

When multinational corporations like Monsanto have already succeeded in genetically modifying the political system, splicing in their ex-executives and ex-lawyers into positions of great power within the government [see image above], how can folks rely on these Monsanto, Dow and Sygenta-influenced regulatory agencies, and the enforcement arms within their control, to make decisions in the interest of their health or basic civil rights?
Some resort to pulling up, burning and otherwise destroying the plants themselves. Are they terrorists or freedom fighters? And if you answer affirmatively to the latter definition, will you yourself be defined as sympathizers to these "economic saboteurs," or terrorists?

Sayer Ji