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Public Citizen reports via Common Dreams
[The decision on December 7 by the] World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling against the U.S. country-of-origin meat labels (COOL) that consumers rely on to make informed choices about their food, provides a glaring example of how trade agreements can undermine U.S. public interest policies, [said Public Citizen]. How the Obama administration responds to the WTO ruling will have a significant impact on its efforts to build congressional and public support for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
In his May 2015 speech at Nike headquarters, President Barack Obama said that critics' warnings that the TPP could "undermine American regulation--food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations" was "just not true". [Obama] said: "They're making this stuff up. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws."
"Today's ruling makes clear that trade agreements can--and do--threaten even the most favored U.S. consumer protections", said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. "We hope that President Obama stands by his claim that 'no trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws', but in fact rolling back U.S. consumer and environmental safeguards has been exactly what past presidents have done after previous retrograde trade pact rulings."
In response to previous WTO rulings, the United States has rolled back U.S. Clean Air Act regulations on gasoline cleanliness rules successfully challenged by Venezuela and Mexico and Endangered Species Act rules relating to shrimping techniques that kill sea turtles after a successful challenge by Malaysia and other nations. The U.S. also altered auto fuel efficiency (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards that were successfully challenged by the European Union. After the final WTO ruling against the policy in May, Obama's Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also contradicted Obama's claim, announcing: "Congress has got to fix this problem. They either have to repeal or modify and amend it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 11 2015, @06:50AM
It's not a problem that your farms have shit. That's normal. What the heck do you expect farms with lots of animals to smell of? Roses? It's not like those animals get and use flush toilets.
The real hygiene/safety problem is your slaughterhouses/processing plants get too much shit into your meat/milk/etc and your gov pushes the problem to the consumers by telling them the solution is to "cook it properly".
Think about why the heck e coli can be in your minced meat and burgers. That sort of bacteria does not normally live in flesh or fat - they live in intestines. If you skin, slaughter and butcher an animal the "classic way" its shit wouldn't be all over your meat. But it's more expensive to do it that way. There are cheaper ways to get rid of the shit of course, but probably still more expensive than leaving the shit in and say it's the customer's problem. You got sick? It's your fault for not cooking your burger with shit in it for long enough.
Dead chickens are soaked in the same water thus spreading contamination: https://www.cspinet.org/reports/polt.html [cspinet.org]
USDA allows poultry carcasses to be placed in hot water baths, called scalders, to loosen feathers and then chilled in large vats of water, a process known as immersion chilling. This allows contaminated poultry carcasses to infect clean carcasses.
Based on a policy change in 1978 allowing "reprocessing," the USDA decided that, instead of condemning contaminated carcasses, the industry can simply wash the contamination off with chlorinated water. This resulted in condemnation rates for poultry dropping dramatically, which means that consumers are eating more of this once-contaminated poultry. While some plants can reprocess poultry and produce a product at least equivalent to one that wasn't initially contaminated, other plants show large jumps in the percent of reprocessed carcasses that are contaminated with Salmonella.
USDA allows skin to be added to ground poultry products. Since skin harbors bacteria in its pores and folds, it can be the most highly contaminated part of the carcass. By permitting the addition of skin into ground product, USDA is allowing much higher levels of certain harmful bacteria in ground poultry products than in ground beef products, which are not allowed to contain skin.
Despite what American consumers have come to expect, contaminated chicken is not inevitable. In fact, Sweden has largely eradicated Salmonella contamination in chicken. Although the federal government oversees and regulates poultry slaughterhouses, for many years it has tolerated widespread contamination in poultry products produced in the United States.
So guess why salmonella is a problem in the USA. Oh it's not a problem if you cook your chicken properly... rollseyes...
Then your people and farms use too much antibiotics. So guess what happens when those resistant bacteria from the shit end up making you people ill? Many in the media even try to make it look like India is to blame for much of the antibiotic resistance (not going to link to the articles). India uses less antibiotics per capita than the USA. Not saying India is doing things right, they aren't but it's a fair bit of misdirection isn't it? Look at the shit in India, China etc, don't think about the real reasons why there's shit in your food.