California Raw Almonds Must be Treated, Judge Rules
March 10th, 2009Mmm hmm. Oh, just wait for HR 875. Your clone burger with genetically engineered freedom fries and synthetic pHood perfumes—to hide the rancid smells—will be A-OK. But raw, whole foods that haven’t been saturated in carcinogens, cooked or irradiated… to render them “safe”… This is enemy combatant stuff.
Via: McClatchy:
A federal judge Monday upheld requirements that raw California almonds be treated to protect consumers from salmonella poisoning.
In a blow to organic almond producers and handlers, the Washington, D.C.-based judge rejected challenges to pasteurization requirements designed by the Almond Board of California. The Agriculture Department formally imposed the rules in March 2007, setting off sparks.
The ruling issued by U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvell did not directly address the merits of the almond pasteurization standards. Instead, Huvell dismissed largely on technical grounds the complaint filed by Fresno-based farmer Nick Koretoff, Livington-based farmer Cynthia Lashbrook and others.
Huvell determined the farmers had failed to exhaust potential administrative remedies. Moreover, the judge said farmers might not have legal recourse even if they could prove the safety rules would cause economic injury.
“Their fundamental concern is with the impact of the treatment regulation on their ability to sell their almonds in a niche organic market at a premium,” Huvelle noted, adding that “the Supreme Court (has) specifically recognized that not every loss would qualify as a deprivation of a definite personal right of the producer.”
Almond Board and Agriculture Department officials were unfamiliar with the judge’s decision and offered no comment on it.
But while rather technical in nature, the 11-page ruling promises real-world consequences in the San Joaquin Valley, which dominates U.S. almond production. Among other things, the Agriculture Department estimates anti-salmonella treatments will add somewhere between two cents and seven cents per pound to the cost of almonds.
The 10-member almond board, based in Modesto, administers the federal marketing order by which the $2.5 billion-a-year industry regulates quality control, research and advertising. The board recommended new safety rules in 2006 following incidents of salmonella contamination in 2001 and 2004, and the Agriculture Department subsequently put them in place.
The new rules required almond handlers to achieve a stricter reduction in salmonella bacteria count, by pasteurizing the nuts before shipping. Pasteurization methods range from blanching and steam treatments to use of chemicals.
“While contamination in almonds is not common, the industry determined that aggressive measures were necessary to prevent any other occurrences,” the almond board stated at the time the rules were imposed.
Organic almond growers, though, claimed in their lawsuit filed in September that the new requirements “functionally shut them out of the organic market.” The growers stated that “substantial amounts” of their almonds could not be sold in the last two years.
“(Organic almond) handlers have built their businesses, in part, by marketing raw almonds to customers interested in buying food that is minimally processed, free from the use of chemicals, and not exposed to heat treatments, roasting, or other processes,” the lawsuit stated.
Raw almonds could be sold for up to 40 percent more than treated almonds, the unhappy growers noted.
The 2001 salmonella outbreak first identified in Canada was traced back to bulk raw almonds. A second salmonella outbreak in 2004 resulted in the recall of 15 million pounds of almonds. Consumer confidence falls with every food scare, industry leaders note.
The sheeple are already used to every other kind of atrocity — from wars everywhere, to incredibly high baseline cancer rates, to the highest prison population on earth; if cancer rates go up a few more percentage points, no one will notice (or care), and the medical-industrial complex will become that much richer. Win-win, right?
Here’s some fun reading: http://www.gene.com/gene/products/information/immunological/rituxan/
(Be sure to check out the warnings, like “FATAL INFUSION REACTIONS, TUMOR LYSIS SYNDROME (TLS), SEVERE MUCOCUTANEOUS REACTIONS, and PROGRESSIVE MULTIFOCAL LEUKOENCEPHALOPATHY (PML)”. Gold star to anybody that can find hard numbers on exactly HOW MANY people experienced the above. They’ve got detailed stats on how “good” it is, but not on these marginal inconveniences.)
It’s the medicine my father’s happy little oncologist put him on, and to hear my father tell it (when he first started treatment), it was like manna from heaven. When I told him that my wife (who was also diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, about 2 years after he was) wouldn’t even consider it, and that I was in full agreement with her, he thought we were insane. He died less than 5 years after his initial diagnosis, struggling, at the end, to get oxygen into his tumor-filled lungs. Which, according to the geniuses at GenenTech, was a great success. My biggest fear is that one of my kids will get cancer and, being under 18, won’t be able to legally make the decision themselves not to undergo the perverted treatments currently called “health care”; then the do-gooders from “child services” step in with all their righteous ignorance and kill my kid — for his own good, of course.
You know, if people in the FDA or the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or for that matter the Center for Disease Control had an OUNCE OF COMMON SENSE, well, then, I would think if a salmonella poisoning broke out, you would do the investigating to find the source, do the recalls, and then either levy heavy fines and penalties on the SOURCE of the outbreak, or just SHUT THE PLACE DOWN. OR BOTH.
But to penalize every cider maker, almond grower, peanut producer, tomato grower, spinach grower, scallion grower, spinach grower, kosher meat producer WHATEVER (i think I’ve named all the food poisoning issues that I can think of) is just PLAIN WRONG and STUPID as a matter of public policy.
But NO. We must use the BLANKET approach. One person gets sick from apple cider, so now ALL CIDER must be pasture-ized. Similarly with all these other outbreaks of disease. And now almonds. Its NUTS. (HAHAHA)
Seriously, if I were the plaintiffs in this case, I would (if I had deep pockets) appeal this decision and go after the regulators that “say” unto us, “that all almonds must be pasturized.” Give me the law that says so and challenge that regulation. But then again, I’m not an attorney.
If this BLANKET approach regarding contamination of food continues here in the U.S., well then, I guess we’re not going to be allowed to grow our own. Whatever it is.
@Anothernut,
My father, and cousin Jerry both died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. So did Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and similarly Mario Lemieux, a famous hockey player was diagnosed with that disease. One theory is that the disease is caused by continued exposure to environmental toxins. Dad grew up on a street one block from a steel mill, Jerry worked in an auto plant, and Jackie used black hair dye (nasty stuff) for most of her life. As a little kid, I used to help my Dad spray the orchard with methalion (sp). I remember the fine misty spray that smelled like skunk getting all over me.
I don’t know what I would do if I were diagnosed with cancer tomorrow. Both my sister and father “chose” the chemo and radiation treatments.
Kudos to your wife for declining.
All I know is that I’m learning to keep my liver cleaned and detoxed, so if I do get cancer, that liver of mine will be all toned and healthy and ready for a fight.
Hmph. Bastards.
my father had non-Hodgkin?s lymphoma.
the second course of chemo killed him.
very painful and undignified way to die.
the cancer would have got him, but i think morphine would be better than chemo.
he worked with chemically treated timber for a long time, as a builder.
@Eileen: good deal! the liver is the main “target” organ at the Hippocrates Institute, which is where my wife and I went. Their philosophy is — hope you’re sitting down, it’s awfully radical! — that if we clean out all the God-forsaken toxins that have accumulated in our bodies over the years thanks to the Nutritional-Industrial Complex, our bodies will — here it comes! — heal themselves. Which is of course 180 degrees away from mainstream medical science that posits 1) the human body is a frail piece of shit, just looking for an opportunity to fail; 2) what you eat, breath, and drink make no difference (really) to your health; and therefore 3) only high-tech, perfectly unnatural (and extremely profitable) solutions will do the trick.
Humans are just another commodity to the sociopaths at the top of the food chain. Which includes the sociopaths/egomaniacs at the top of the so-called “medical community”. Fuck ’em if they’re too ignorant or arrogant to see the truth (probably the former due to the latter), and do what you gotta do — it’s your life or their egos.