Here we go.
I’ve had Christmas gifts I’ve liked less.
Tag: fda
The Democrats’ Clown War On Science: FDA caught snooping on its own scientists.
A fish rots from the head down.
Most transparent administration EVAR, my eye:
A wide-ranging surveillance operation by the Food and Drug Administration against a group of its own scientists used an enemies list of sorts as it secretly captured thousands of e-mails that the disgruntled scientists sent privately to members of Congress, lawyers, labor officials, journalists and even President Obama, previously undisclosed records show.
What began as a narrow investigation into the possible leaking of confidential agency information by five scientists quickly grew in mid-2010 into a much broader campaign to counter outside critics of the agency’s medical review process, according to the cache of more than 80,000 pages of computer documents generated by the surveillance effort.
Continue reading The Democrats’ Clown War On Science: FDA caught snooping on its own scientists.
#rsrh This carp-jumping-in-boat video has international implications.
Specifically, implications re: the Chinese.
Apparently, it all has to do with the fact that those are wild carp jumping into the boat, there. Wild carp – which in America are imported pests that the federal government is trying to get rid off (with good reason*) – is a delicacy in the People’s Republic of China. An expensive delicacy, given that the PRC has precisely the sort of endemic pollution that one should expect from Commie regimes. 40% of their waterways don’t meet the Chi-Com’s own standards; by ours the Chinese local environment is something out of a cyberpunk novel. How bad is it, in fact? Well, let me put it this way: it’s roughly ten times or so worse than the agitprop released about the USA to drum up donations for Big Green. Hence the wistful looks abroad at all those tasty, tasty fish, just jumping into the boat… Continue reading #rsrh This carp-jumping-in-boat video has international implications.
The War on Salt… Crystallized.
This administration is kind of anti-choice, isn’t it?
This article (H/T: The New Ledger) says absolutely everything that you need to know about the messianic zealots assailing the Food and Drug Administration right now. Quick context: somebody in North Carolina (quick, North Carolinian voters: how does your legislator feel about wrecking the taste of your bacon?) noticed that the FDA is gearing up a set of rules on sodium levels that might have an adverse effect on North Carolinian foodstuffs, like country hams. And by ‘adverse’ I mean ‘endangers consumers’:
Candace Cansler, director of the National Country Ham Association, said U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations require country hams to have at least 4 percent salt content. Any less and the meat is subject to microbial contamination.
DeWitt said the FDA probably wouldn’t write a rule contradicting the USDA’s 4 percent minimum rule, but it might set a salt content maximum at 6 or 7 percent.
Bolding mine. Here is a hint for Christina Dewitt of the Institute of Medicine and [Oklahoma State University; my apologies for the error]: when somebody informs you that there needs to be a minimum level of a particular food additive present to prevent people from becoming infected, saying that the rule ‘probably’ won’t be changed is not very… smart, really. It suggests a certain sort of close-minded, theocratic fanaticism that is no less worrisome for not being violent. After all, the problem here is not that Christina Dewitt wants to eat ham that is less sodium-enriched; she wants me to eat ham like that, too – whether I want to, or not. And her definition of acceptable risk is broader than mine. And her sect has some say in setting FDA standards, apparently.
Put another way: I don’t particularly care one way or another about the Institute of Medicine’s religious beliefs. But I do care if they’re trying to turn said religious beliefs into public policy, particularly when doing so raises a health risk.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
FDA hassling Amish over raw milk.
Interstate commerce strikes again!
There is no such thing as a libertarian Democrat.
“They came in the dark, shining bright flashlights while my family was asleep, keeping me from milking my cows, from my family, from breakfast with my family and from our morning devotions, and alarming my children enough so that the first question they asked my wife was, ‘Is Daddy going to jail?’”
That’s how Amish farmer Dan Allgyer described an early morning visit last week from two FDA agents, two U.S. Marshals, and a Pennsylvania state trooper. Apparently, investigating a single farmer for possibly trafficking raw milk across state lines requires a show of force.
(via The DC Trawler) Pretty much by definition. You can have libertarian Republicans – and, as libertarians are no doubt eager to point out, you can certainly have hypocritical ‘libertarian’ Republicans – but the Democrats are a liberal-run political party these days, and liberals like to expand the state. That’s what liberals do. This can be disconcerting to counter-culture types that are not on the Left’s list of protected lifestyle choices. Continue reading FDA hassling Amish over raw milk.
The Democrats’ War on Bacon.
Salt, too.
Let me just add my name to the list of people visibly itching to bounce a salt shaker off of the FDA’s collective forehead:
The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.
…because, of course, the FDA has nothing better to do with its time. Look, I understand that the nanny-state Left doesn’t trust its own judgment and ability to make informed decisions, and that’s fine. In fact, I agree with them: I don’t trust their judgment or ability to make informed decisions, either. But why do they insist on trying to interfere with my judgment or ability to make informed decisions? – Aside from them generally being annoying neo-Puritan gloom-magnets, of course.
At any rate, I can’t wait to see the FDA explain to the American people why they can’t have proper bacon anymore…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Cheerios are a drug.
No, really: just ask the FDA. At least, this FDA:
The FDA warned General Mills that it was, in effect, marketing its Cheerios breakfast cereal as a drug, because the cereal’s familiar yellow boxes carry unapproved claims about lowering cholesterol and reducing the risks of heart disease.
(Via the Corner, via Instapundit)
I guess that this is what “’embarking on an aggressive and proactive approach’ to improve oversight of the U.S. food supply” looks like: an unflinching, resolute crusade against the terrible dangers of breakfast cereal advertising. And they wonder why state governments are putting their own food-safety regulatory systems in place. More money’s nice, but money doesn’t cure dumb.
Crossposted to RedState.