my rant of the day: bogus FDA "protection"

The FDA really gets on my nerves very often. They try to act like they are there to protect us, yet all they really look out for is their pockets. Their entire agenda is dictated by the almighty dollar & who they stand to profit the most from. And who do they stand to profit from the most? Well whoever is willing to pay them off to get whatever they want--so that would be big companies with deep pockets most of the time. Whoever is in their way of making a profit they are going to try to make look really bad & try to convince the public are really bad.

They also don't enforce all sorts of stuff & look the other way all the time & then if something goes wrong they will certainly make sure they are not at fault, they will make sure someone else takes the fall for it. NEVER will you see the FDA looking like the bad guy, they are very good & very clever when it comes to this sort of thing.

Case #1 on my mind recently: this whole salmonella-tainted peanut butter deal. Now I don't know specifics for peanuts per se, but I do know with the beef industry the FDA doesn't want a lot of safety testing done, & they were actually fining a guy who wanted to test EVERY SINGLE COW for mad cow disease a while back. Why should the FDA care at all if this guy wants to spend his own money paying to have every single cow tested? This clearly tells me that they know mad cow disease is already here in America & the risk is huge & real, but until they are forced to deal with it they don't want to (cuz a lot of people will stand to lose a lot of money & most of those people are paying off the FDA to make sure they don't enforce a lot of testing, etc.). And of course mad cow disease won't show itself for many years & then there's also the chance of them making sure it doesn't get diagnosed as such when it does initially appear, which will further prolong the issue. But I have wandered off the peanut topic--I would bet some serious money that the FDA was well aware of the lack of testing & all the other stuff going on. You see--the FDA doesn't really care if peanut butter tainted with salmonella is being sold SO LONG AS NO ONE GETS SICK OR DIES & IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL IN THE EYES OF THE MEDIA. And now that people have actually died & it is a big deal the FDA is gonna make sure they don't take the fall. And that's exactly what been's going on.

Case #2 on my mind recently--raw milk. This whole issue reminds me very much of the whole herb issue. No one stands to make a big profit off of natural remedies, such as herbs. So the FDA likes to make them seem really risky & potentially dangerous, pushing people to trust medications more than natural stuff. Medications are patented, so someone stands to make a lot of money on them--natural stuff cannot be patented & little money stands to be made becasue of that. And those pharmaceutical companies have very deep pockets that dump plenty into the FDA's pockets. It's a similar case for raw milk. I have done a lot of research in this area lately & find it absolutely fascinating. There are people who want to consume raw milk & the FDA is trying it's best to prevent this. Why, you may ask? Because more profit stands to be made from pasteurized milk & the big industrial farms. And those big industrial farms are paying off the FDA to get whatever they want--to put the small farms out of business. They make all their claims about how dangerous raw milk is, etc to try to scare people away from it. But I must admit the more I look at the facts the more it makes me wonder. The pro-raw milk side is claiming how much more nutritional value there stands to be gained from raw milk, nutrients that are killed when milk is heated at such high temperatures for pasteuriztion--makes perfect sense to me. The most shocking part of all this is the fact that they have actually BANNED (made illegal) the sale of raw milk in many states. California is one of the few states that it is still legal in & even here it can be challenging at times to get it. Not only have they made that law, but they are actually enforcing it in full force. Even here in California I have read stories of them arresting people for selling raw milk--you have to have a special license to do so & they often arrest & detain people until they have made sure they have the right license. I just have a really hard time with this--they are willing to legally sell cigarettes, alcohol, & tons of other stuff that is proven harmful to us. They are willing to approve medical marijuana even. But not raw milk????? This is just sooooooo wrong & sooooo bizarre to me. Why not just make them put a disclaimer on it when they sell it (like with cigarettes & alcohol). With all the salmonella & e. coli tainted stuff that they are supposed to be regulating, how much riskier can raw milk really be????? As a side note I've even read articles on how they are arresting all sorts of small farmers for selling (& even for giving away for free) eggs & other such goods--I have read that they often have to set up some sort of deal where the people who want their goods have to be a partner in ownership of the farm or something like that in order to do so legally. I'm sorry, but I feel we have much bigger issues & certainly more dangerous issues at hand to be spending money paying officials to deal with than these sort of issues. So I'm assuming you're asking yourself WHY this goes on? Of course it comes back to the almighty dollar & the payoffs they get from the big industrial farms.

I'm sure most people reading this won't care at all, but I needed a good "rant", it REALLY pisses me off.