Wednesday, August 23, 2006

America Food Supply Vulnerable?


Since I'm on a fear/conspiracy theory/what in hell is the world coming to kick today, I wanted to throw this story into the mix.

Once again, alarms are sounding about the vulnerability of the US food supply. "Experts" are throwing up (no pun intended) scenarios of botulinumum toxin/milk cocktails and poisoned grains.

Of course, there's a big government funded half billion dollar bio/agro defense facility hanging in the balance. What better way to secure funding than scaring the bejeezus out of people?

Quite frankly, I'm wondering if terrorists would be as effective as the food industry.

According to the World Health Organization, the US suffers through 76 million foodborne illnesses which result in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths annually. With problems such as listeria, salmonella, e-coli, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in our food supply, this is an annual cost in the tens of billions of dollars.

Maybe, we could use that half billion dollars for a problem which exists now...instead of playing fund-the-bogeyman. One more thing. Why should we fund yet another pork barrel project when the government has yet to catch the anthrax terrorists?

0 comments:

 
Template by suckmylolly.com - background image by elmer.0