USDA to meatpacker: Don't test your beef for mad cow disease or we'll sue

It's sad that our credulity, as consumers, has formed a callus. It takes a lot more to strain that credulity these days, particularly when the news comes from the federal governmental agencies designed to and charged with protecting consumers. Today, let's talk about the USDA. It's fairly common knowledge that the USDA tests a tiny, tiny percentage of cows raised for meat for deadly diseases like mad cow disease. We don't have enough inspectors, they claim. A sad truth, perhaps. Hard to argue.

However, this argument now appears disingeous, specious, and downright duplicitous because the USDA has taken a small meatpacking plants, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, to court to stop the company from testing all of its beef. Creekstone wants to ensure the total safety of its supply, and told the USDA it wanted to test every single one of its cows. The USDA said no, and proceeded to take this small outfit to court. The first court ruled in Creekstone's favor. The federal appeals court overturned it, saying that regulating testing of cows fell under USDA dominion, and the agency could say yea or nay to any such testing.

Why would the USDA, which is charged with the safety of this country's meat supply and which has complained for years of understaffing, stand in the way of a company taking it upon itself to ensure the safety of its own supply? Easy. The larger meatpackers and suppliers are fearful that if Creekstone implements comprehensive safety mechanisms for its meat supply, it can advertise its meat as safe, forcing the larger plants to adopt the same quality assurance procedures. This is expensive. They don't want to do it. They pressure the USDA with the collective force of their clout, and the USDA caves, for reasons that remain totally unclear to me.

This is disgusting, in far more ways than one. It is yet another example of federal regulatory agencies doing nothing in their power to protect the consumers who rely on them for guidance and safety. The alphabet city of regulatory agencies that have failed American citizens--the EPA, FDA, USDA, CSPC--is a crumbling slum, and someone (and I pray it is the next administration) must do something to shore it up, or raze it to the ground in order to build anew.

In the meantime, here is a link to Creekstone Farms Premium Meats. I have also added a link to my link list. They sell their beef online as well. If the company takes safety as seriously as it seems to, it would make a lot of sense to purchase your meat products from them if they are available in your area or even online if that is feasible for you.

The story about this from the Kansas City Star.

Important recall: Simplicity Inc.'s Close Sleeper/Bedside Sleeper

PLEASE SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST.
This is a bit far afield from science-related news, but I feel compelled to draw your attention to it because of the corporate recklessness that is behind it. Simplicity Inc., the maker of the Simplicity Close-Sleeper/Bedside Sleeper, was purchased by a corporation called SFCA, Inc. The bassinet in question has been the cause of the death of two infants. The CSPC wants it recalled. SFCA refuses to do this, saying it is not responsible for products made by the company they just purchased.

From the Chicago Tribune: "The commission said it issued the alert because SFCA Inc., a former Simplicity creditor that purchased Simplicity's assets in May "has refused to cooperate with the government and recall the products."

SFCA countered by saying Simplicity products are not its responsibility. "The products in question were manufactured and distributed by Simplicity Inc., a company that is no longer in business," SFCA said in a written statement. "SFCA purchased Simplicity's assets at auction after Simplicity Inc. went out of business and has no legal liability for any products distributed previously by Simplicity."

But one of the deadly bassinets the Tribune purchased Thursday carried a shipping label with the name "SFCA Inc." This seemed to contradict the written statement SFCA issued Thursday: "The CPSC product alert does not involve any product manufactured and distributed by SFCA Inc."

SFCA is a children's furniture manufacturer. The address is below. I urge you to write them a letter telling them you will not buy any of their products until they comply with this recall. My letter goes out today. In the meantime, check out the story about this matter from The Consumerist and let all the moms and dads (and moms and dads-to-be) know about this product.

For now, I can tell you that SFCA, Inc.'s chairman is a man named Ric Miller.
Address: 501 S 9th Street, Reading, PA 19602

UPDATE: Here is the letter I have sent to SFCA. You can use it as a template if you like, minus, of course, the details pertaining to me.

August 30, 2008

Ric Miller
SFCA, Inc.
501 S 9th Street, Reading, PA 19602

Dear Mr. Miller,
It has come to my attention that your company has refused to comply with the CSPC’s recall of the Simplicity close-sleeper/bedside sleeper bassinet that Simplicity, a company you recently acquired, manufactured. You claim that you have no legal liability for products made by Simplicity before you acquired it. This may be true. However, your callous and reckless decision on this matter is unconscionable. It seems remarkable to me that you believe you can win the trust and the business of parents by choosing not to comply with the recall of a product that has taken the lives of two helpless infants. You are, in fact, losing customers every single day that passes that you do not comply with this recall. The company name SFCA, Inc. will be burned on the brain of every parent who reads the countless news stories about your noncompliance. I can say with great certainty that none of these parents will every buy an SFCA product again.
As a journalist who covers corporations, I have grown used to corporate misdeeds, but as a parent, I am particularly appalled by your misdeed. You can rest assured that neither I nor any of the parents I know personally or who read my blog on consumer issues (www.scienceforsale.com) will ever buy an SFCA product, not unless you comply immediately with the CSPC recall of the Simplicity bassinet. Should you do this, I will be the first to report on it. Should you not comply, I will continue to cover the story.
I look forward to hearing news of your immediate compliance with the recall.

Regards,

Ashley Shelby

From The Consumerist:

The CPSC has issued a consumer alert, urging you to stop using Simplicity Inc.'s "close-sleeper/bedside sleeper” bassinets after two infants died after being strangled by the product's metal bars. The company is refusing to cooperate with the CPSC and will not recall the product.

"The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is urging parents and caregivers to stop using convertible “close-sleeper/bedside sleeper” bassinets manufactured by Simplicity Inc., of Reading, Pa. CPSC has learned that on August 21, 2008, a 5-month-old girl from Shawnee, Kan. was strangled to death when she became entrapped between the bassinet’s metal bars. This is the second strangulation death CPSC has learned of in the co-sleeper bassinets. On September 29, 2007, a 4-month-old girl from Noel, Mo. became entrapped in the metal bars of the bassinet and died.

CPSC is issuing this safety alert because SFCA Inc., the company which purchased all of Simplicity Inc.’s assets at public auction in April 2008, has refused to cooperate with the government and recall the products. SFCA maintains that it is not responsible for products previously manufactured by Simplicity Inc.

The Simplicity 3-in-1 and 4-in-1 convertible bassinets contain metal bars spaced farther apart than 2 3/8 inches, which is the maximum distance allowed under the federal crib safety standard. The metal bars are covered by an adjustable fabric flap which is attached by velcro. The fabric is folded down when the bassinet is converted into a bed-side co-sleeping position. If the velcro is not properly re-secured when the flap is adjusted, an infant can slip through the opening and become entrapped in the metal bars and suffocate.

UPDATE: Some extremely interesting and welcome news out of Toys R' Us: the huge retailer is taking matters into its own hands regarding the safety of baby products it sells, namely cribs. Crib manufacturers that don't follow the retailer's own safety standards will not be able to sell its products in the store. Period.
From the Chicago Tribune:

Asserting that government and industry safety rules don't protect children from the hazard, Toys "R" Us is dictating stricter tests and design standards that cribmakers have balked at for years. The company, which also owns Babies "R" Us, has the clout to do so because it sells so many cribs—hundreds of thousands annually.

Toys "R" Us is specifying the trees its suppliers can use, the way they attach spindles to crib railings and even the type of glue. Manufacturers that don't follow the new rules can't sell cribs in its stores.

The move by Toys "R" Us shows that major retailers, responding to parents' concerns, are using their purchasing power to redefine the safety of children's products—more quickly and more stringently than government regulators and groups that set standards for the industry.

This is a wonderful move on the part of Toys R' Us. They have started carrying BPA-free bottles (a large variety), Seventh Generation chlorine-free diaper wipes and diapers, Burt's Bees baby products, BPA-free sippy cups and eating utensils, etc. That they have extended this to cribs is such welcome news. Only the big guys have this kind of clout, and they use it far too infrequently. And parents who complain and boycott will get results like this. Take a look at the Chicago Tribune article about this for more information:
Story in the Chicago Tribune about Toys R Us' tough stand.

EPA sued for failing to respond to National Resource Defense Council's FOIA

The news out of the FDA-EPA clusterfuck just keeps getting worse. This news today about the effect of newly-approved pesticides on honeybee populations. (For those of you who don't know, this country has been experiencing massive and unexplained honeybee die-offs to the tune of 30-90% of beekeepers' colonies. Bees are needed for honey, yes, but we rely upon them even more heavily to pollinate food.) Seems the EPA approved a new pesticide from Bayer CropScience sans research on the pesticide's effect on honeybees. The EPA did ask for that research, but it has either never arrived or the EPA has received it but never made it public. The Freedom of Information Act request by the NRDC for this material has been ignored, prompting this legal action.

From Beyond Pesticides:

(Beyond Pesticides, August 20, 2008) The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit on Monday to uncover critical information that the U.S. government is withholding about the risks posed by pesticides to honey bees. NRDC legal experts and a leading bee researcher are convinced that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has evidence of connections between pesticides and the mysterious honey bee die-offs reported across the country. The phenomenon has come to be called “colony collapse disorder,” or CCD, and it is already proving to have disastrous consequences for American agriculture and the $15 billion worth of crops pollinated by bees every year.

EPA has failed to respond to NRDC’s Freedom of Information Act request for agency records concerning the toxicity of pesticides to bees, forcing the legal action.

“Recently approved pesticides have been implicated in massive bee die-offs and are the focus of increasing scientific scrutiny,” said NRDC Senior Attorney Aaron Colangelo. “EPA should be evaluating the risks to bees before approving new pesticides, but now refuses to tell the public what it knows. Pesticide restrictions might be at the heart of the solution to this growing crisis, so why hide the information they should be using to make those decisions?”

In 2003, EPA granted a registration to a new pesticide manufactured by Bayer CropScience under the condition that Bayer submits studies about its product’s impact on bees. EPA has refused to disclose the results of these studies, or if the studies have even been submitted. Bayer CropScience was required to submit studies on chronic exposure to honeybees, including a complete worker bee lifecycle study, as well as an evaluation of exposure and effects to the queen. The pesticide in question, clothianidin, recently was banned in Germany due to concerns about its impact on bees. A similar insecticide, imidacloprid, was banned in France for the same reason a couple of years before. These chemicals still are in use despite a growing consensus among bee specialists that pesticides, including clothianidin and its chemical cousins, may contribute to CCD. EPA’s factsheet states that clothianidin has the “potential for toxic chronic exposure to honey bees, as well as other non target pollinators, through the translocation of residues in nectar and pollen.”

In the past two years, some American beekeepers have reported unexplained losses of 30-90% of the bees in their hives. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), bees pollinate $15 billion worth of crops grown in America. USDA also claims that one out of every three mouthfuls of food in the typical American diet has a connection to bee pollination. As the die-offs worsen, Americans will see their food costs increase.

Despite bees’ critical role for farmers, consumers, and the environment, the federal government has been slow to address the die-off since the alarm bells started in 2006. (See previous Daily News of June 19, 2007 and July 19, 2007.) In recent Congressional hearings, USDA was unable to account for the $20 million that Congress has allocated to the department for fighting CCD in the last two years.

In the new book A Spring Without Bees, author Michael Schacker ties CCD to a historical pattern of EPA-issued emergency use permits (Section 18 under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) for agricultural use of imidicloprid across the U.S. Mr. Schacker shows a direct correlation between states with CCD and the emergency imidicloprid uses permits. States without the use did not show the problem, with one exception.

“This is a real mystery right now,” said Gabriela Chavarria, PhD, director of NRDC’s Science Center. “EPA needs to help shed some light so that researchers can get to work on this problem. This isn’t just an issue for farmers — this is an issue that concerns us all. Just try to imagine a pizza without the contribution of bees! No tomatoes. No cheese. No peppers. If you eat apples, cucumbers, broccoli, onions, squash, carrots, avocados, or cherries, you need to be concerned.” Dr. Chavarria has spent more than 20 years studying bees, and has published a number of academic papers on the taxonomy, behavior and distribution of native bees.

NRDC filed the lawsuit yesterday in federal court in Washington DC. In documents to be filed next month, NRDC will ask for a court order directing EPA to disclose its information about pesticides and bee toxicity.

Target selling desk made of formaldehyde-free plywood

Considering the bad news coming out of the FDA, we were due for some good news. Target Stores has begun selling a line of desks made of formaldehyde-free, 100% birch plywood, finished with a nontoxic stain (I haven't gotten the VOC numbers yet). You can find the desks online at Target.com. If you are in the market for a desk, please consider buying from Target. Let's encourage big retailers to adopt these kind of practices and products.

Hurray for Target!

From the "Of Course They Did" Files: FDA calls BPA "safe"

It's hardly a surprise, given the fact that FDA uses industry-funded and industry-provided research to make decisions about whether or not products are safe. And yet, one could have hoped for better, considering what is at stake with BPA. Instead, doing what it always does, the FDA utilized industry studies, ignored or picked apart and dismissed numerous studies provided by the National Institutes of Health, and declared BPA no threat to infants and children. The FDA brushed aside recent, and highly-publicized, studies of BPA's effects documented in a draft report from the National Toxicology Program in April. That report, based on the NTP's review of numerous animal studies on the chemical, asserted that low doses of BPA can cause behavior and neurological changes, as well as reduce survival and birth weight in fetuses. It will be interesting to see what happens in September, when the NTP releases its final findings.Canada's government decided BPA was toxic, and banned its use. This news from the FDA comes just a few weeks before California votes on its BPA ban legislation.

So what did the FDA use to make this very important decision, affecting the well-being of millions of infants and children? Two studies funded by the American Plastics Council.

I have documented in great detail on this blog the sad machinations of the FDA. Political appointments to top positions within the agency and the use (and often exclusive use) of industry research studies on their own products to determine whether or not a product is safe is par for the course. It is remarkable that the agency charged with determining the safety of products, such as pharmaceuticals and plastics, would take industry's word for those products' safety, especially given industry's track record in massaging, obscuring, or inventing the science in their research. The FDA protests that it is too underfunded to do independent research and must, out of necessity, rely on industry research. If that's true, then why has the FDA ignored or chosen not to review research on BPA that has been done by our own National Institutes of Health? And what about the more than 100 government and university-funded studies on BPA that shows it to be unsafe? Why make such a momenteous decision, one that flies in the face of thousands of pages of research coming from disinterested scientists with nothing to gain besides tenure, and rely on two industry studies completed by scientists for hire. The hiring parties? The plastics industry. You know, those guys who make baby bottles that contain BPA? I'm sure their science is completely reliable.Based on what I know of chemical, plastics, and oil industry, I knew that the tenor of the lobbying in Washington following Canada's ban and California's announcement of possible legislation regulating BPA would be high-pitched and fierce. It seems to me as if the lobbying paid off and the industry research paid off. And it came at the expense of our country's infants and children.

I try hard not to come off as angry when I write my blog postings. It's hard, admittedly. So much of this stuff is absolutely maddening. And it has been, for me, a rude awakening these last few years, realizing that our regulatory agencies, even the most important ones like the FDA and the EPA, do very little, in fact, to protect us. But this news is nauseating to me, and I can't hide my anger. What gives me comfort is the intelligence of the American consumer (yes, I hold the contrarian opinion that American consumers are intelligent when they have the facts). Let the FDA proclaim that BPA is safe; sales of BPA-free baby bottles will continue to skyrocket. If there's one thing you don't screw with, it's people's kids.

In the meantime, someone shut down the FDA. Below here is a link to the FDA's draft report on BPA.

I've linked to several BPA-free bottle-makers under Links but here is a short list:
BornFree BPA-Free Bottles
Green to Grow BPA-Free Bottles
Adiri BPA-Free Bottles

NOTE: I've seen on some other blogs that mothers are saying "if you'd just breastfeed your child, you wouldn't need to worry about this." First of all, we need to worry about it for the sake of all children, but second of all, bottles are a necessity to all mothers, regardless of how they feed their infants. I breastfed my child exclusively. But there are times when a mother must pump milk so she can leave the baby with Grandma or so she can take a trip requiring airplane travel. Bottles are used by nearly all mothers, breastfeeding or formula-feeding.

Done Deal: Phthalate and Lead Bill Signed into Law

Consumer action works. This news out of Washington yesterday proves it. Note: earlier this year, the Minnesota State Legislature passed a similar bill. Our Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, vetoed for reasons that are unclear and, frankly, asinine: the science isn't definitive yet. So now, I ask the governor of my state: if the science is good enough for George W. Bush, is it good enough for you yet? It doesn't matter. The law is federal. It's not often that the federal government works more quickly and effectively for citizens than their own state governments do, but that's exactly what happened in this case. I have included the NY Times piece on this.

On another topic: Please note the extensive update on my Vanicream posting from months ago (search for Vanicream at the top of the blog). New research that was released today by the Journal for Investigative Dermatology has linked this paraben-free, phthalate-free, formaldehyde-free lotion to increased tumors in mice previously exposed to UV rays. Much more detail can be found on my Vanicream Cure posting.

From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush on Thursday signed consumer-safety legislation that bans lead from children's toys, imposing the toughest standard in the world.

The new law prohibits lead, beyond minute levels, in products for children 12 or younger. Lead paint was a major factor in the recall of 45 million toys and children's items last year, many from China.

Both houses of Congress approved the bill by overwhelming margins two weeks ago.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates there are about 28,000 deaths each year linked to unsafe products, including toys, in the United States. More than 33 million people were injured last year by consumer products.

The bill also bans a chemical called phthalates that is widely used to make plastic products softer and more flexible.

And the legislation bolsters the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which took the brunt of criticism last year over the massive recalls and the government's failure to monitor toy imports before they reach store shelves.

The bill would double the agency's budget, to $136 million by 2014, and give it new authority to oversee testing procedures and to penalize violators.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the measure will give the regulating agencies the money they need to enforce the law. ''This has become an increasingly difficult and complex job as more imports from more nations are now sold in the United States than ever before,'' he said.

The Problem with EWG's Skin Deep (Safe Cosmetics Database)

UPDATE: With regret, I have decided to remove my link to Environmental Working Group because I feel the organization's SkinDeep Database, which is designed to give cosmetics a safety rating, is unreliable. I have heard these complaints before, most notably in the Suki Kramer debate. However, my experience with EWG's staff in regards to the situation below has completely erased my confidence in its cosmetics safety database. As of today (9/17/08) they refuse to change the rating for the products I mention below, despite the fact that the toxic ingredients are listed on the label of the products. An e-mail to EWG's president Ken Cook went unanswered.

I still think EWG does good work. But its response to the concern about Arbonne's products is unacceptable and I cannot in good conscience send readers to the database for reliable information when the ingredients are incorrect or out of date and, most alarmingly, will not correct the errors even when those errors are as clear as the label in front of their faces...

I am a fan of Environmental Working Group. I should say this up front. I am impressed by its work, its dedication, and by its ability to make complicated scientific issues comprehensible to the general public.

That being said, I have a problem with its Skin Deep Safe Cosmetics Database. Some of you may remember the beef between EGW and Suki Kramer, owner of the eponymous cosmetics line. She took issue with EWG's toxicity standards (it assigns elevated toxicity levels to ingredients that have not yet been shown to have a definitive link or even a probable link to hormone/endocrine disruptors, reproductive toxicity, cancer, etc.)The result was that her professed safe, nontoxic products were assigned a high toxicity rating. Some people see this as the precautionary principle in practice. Others see it as scaremongering. I like to take the middle road. I am a huge advocate of the precautionary princple but I also like reasonable and calm action rather than knee-jerk reaction to spotty science.

But EWG has let me down. In a big way. And in such a way that I'm not sure I can, in good conscience, cite to my readers the database as a reliable resource for product toxicity. It all depends, I guess, on how quickly they remedy this problem. I have been searching for some time for a safe facial toner and acne lotion. I finally found that Arbonne's Clear Advantage Refining Toner and Clear Advantage Acne Lotion both received a surprising rating of O (zero) on EWG's Safe Cosmetics Database. Based on EWG's listing for this product, none of its ingredients posed a problem. Upon reviewing the ingredient list myself (provided by EWG), I agreed. I bought this not-inexpensive product. When I received them, I was shocked and, frankly, extremely aggravated to find that not only do they both contain methylparaben, but they also contain Diazolidinyl urea. Diazolidinyl urea isn't your run-of-the-mill nasty additive. It is a formaldehyde releaser that the Interational Agency for Research on Cancer as classified to its highest toxicity class (IARC 1), which means it is a known human carcinogen. Even our sleepy EPA calls it a probable human carcinogen and has reams of research showing formaldehyde causes nasopharayngeal cancer in humans.

I relied on EWG's Skin Deep Safe Cosmetics Database in choosing these products after much deliberation. When I realized that it was, in fact, a product with considerable toxicity, I wasn't even angry at Arbonne--I was furious with EWG. So many people rely on EWG's database to make decisions about cosmetics and personal products. It's one thing for the information to be debatable; it's a whole other ballgame when the information is flat-out wrong, by omission, and when it leads people to buy a product that is the opposite of non-toxic. I am also sick about the fact that I did business with a company that uses such additives, and plan to write a letter to them, just so they know that consumers are starting to catch on to these chemical shortcuts. (Diazolidinyl urea is used for moisture rentention.) But what troubles me more is not that a cosmetics company would use such a harmful additive (it sort of goes without saying) but that EWG would miss the boat in such a big way on this one. These ingredients weren't recently added to the product; they've been there all along. Yet they are omitted from EWG's entry for this product, just these two. How does that happen?

Please consider visiting EWG's Safe Cosmetics Database and writing them an e-mail asking them to reclassify Arbonne's Clear Advantage Refining Toner and its Clear Advantage Acne Lotion. The database is a noble effort, and I applaud it. But in taking on such an ambitious project, with so much at stake, it is crucial that information contained in it is reliable. Assigning a higher toxicity level than warranted to a product isn't cool, but isn't harmful to the consumer. Assigning a lower toxicity level to one that contains something as noxious as known human carcinogen is reckless.

America the Beautiful Media Blackout

I got a very interesting e-mail from one of my father's colleagues at the local CBS affiliate here in the Twin Cities. A man named Darryl Roberts spent the last five years of his life laboring on a documentary called America the Beautiful, about our standards of beauty. There is apparently a section in the film (it hasn't opened in wide release yet) on the use of phthalates by cosmetic companies.

The e-mail has to do with the director's belief that there has been an unexpected media blackout of his film, not to mention a bizarrely hostile review in the New York Times by a no-name reviewer. Skeptical, I checked this out. It is indeed the most hostile, clumsily written movie review I have ever seen in the paper of record. So bizarre, in fact, that it seemed to be suspicious. ( Read it here)

The review seems a bit too angry to be legitimate, especially one about a documentary. Then I read the e-mail from the director. It is below:

As you probably know "America the Beautiful," opened this past Friday August 1st. 2 weeks ago I did about 14 print interviews with Kirsten Haglund, the 2008 Miss America. All of them were supposed to come out a few days before the film opened on August 1st in an effort to create massive awareness.

Lo and behold, what do you know, it's Sunday August 3rd as I write this and 90% of the interviews "mysteriously" never ran. I have no idea what happened, (well of course I do, but the legal system doesn't permit me to say). What I can legally point out is that a couple of people in the beauty industry are trying to run me out of NY. About 2 months ago, someone from a cosmetics company told me "all you have to do is take the part out of your film about the phthalates in cosmetics and you'll be fine."

California Govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill recently banning phthalates in children's products. In the article the Govenor's office admits that phthalates are linked to cancer and he says we have to protect our children. What I want to know is who's protecting our women? Read the story here:

http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSN1443724320071015

I want to send a message to the industry here in NY that we've had enough and aren't taking it anymore. If phthalates being elimated is good enough for Arnold, then it's good enough for me. We have to show the industry that our grass roots prowess is as powerful as their machine.

It's an interesting argument. Mr. Thompson doesn't identify any of the magazines that killed coverage about the film, but it seems likely that the magazines were beauty magazines that get most of their quickly-dwindling ad revenue from the very cosmetics companies the film indicts for use of 600 chemicals that are already banned by the EU.

This kind of thing is usually written off as hysterics, but I have seem corporations work this way too many times before to be instantly dismissive. More to come.