As long as Bush is in the White House and Republicans control the government, you should cook all pre-processed meat thoroughly.
The industry doesn't want you to know it, but "ready-to-eat" meat is not ready to eat. A USDA website warns that ready-to-eat meats--cold cuts--if not thoroughly cooked, are a risk to pregnant women, the young, the old, cancer patients, anyone whose immune system is suppressed. The industry has successfully fought to keep that warning off packaging labels and grocery market coolers….Some of the people who eat it die: five hundred a year in the United States.

Late in his second term Bill Clinton responded to a deadly outbreak of listeriosis in the Midwest by starting the slow process of writing rules to require USDA testing in all plants that process ready-to-eat deli meats…Clinton's Listeria regs were ready to be..put on the books--when George Bush moved into the White House in January 2001. The Listeria regs were immediately put on hold by Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card.

Tom Harkin…the ranking Democrat on the Senate ag committee…has been pushing two bills that would allow the USDA to conduct microbial inspections of meat and poultry plants and to allow for mandatory recalls. The government can…not [recall] tainted beef, said a member of Harkin's staff. That authority was removed by a court decision in Texas [that] stripped government testing of beef for Salmonella. The decision was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court--on of the most conservative appeals benches in the country, which Bush has set out to move even farther to the right with his appointments of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen.

In the 2000 election, the corporate food production combines donated $59 million…73 percent of it to Republicans.
Source: Bushwacked by Molly Ivins & Lou Dubose





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Here's a thought on meat: don't eat it. Ever. Linda
Denton
10/14/2004

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