Protect Food and Health: Divest FDA/USDA of Food Regulation
Divest FDA of Food Regulation
FDA and USFA have shown themselves to be incapable of regulating both food and drugs. Defying the will of the People of the United States, the FDA prevents any labeling of genetically modified foods while refusing to examine their lack of safety and clearly demonstrable dangers. It even forbids truthful "GMO Free" labeling! The Corrupt and conflict-of-interest FDA permits a host of dangerous chemicals (such as potentially lethal melamine) in food for the profit and convenience of industry despite clear evidence that there is no safe level for this toxic adulterant. The USDA routinely degrades organic standards, has lost control of the industrial and pharmaceutical genetically modified "foods" industry. Both allow dangerous practices, contaminents and unscientific distortions of data, along with personal conflict of interest, to blind them to their responsibilities and to damage the American people, sometimes lethally.
Congress has had to step in repeatedly to respond to the failures of the FDA and USDA. The safety of consumers was removed from the FDA because of its total inadequacy to protect consumers. The Consumer Product Safety Commission was created in 1972. The ability of the FDA to regulate environmental poisons like pesticides was so compromised that its regulatory authority in this area was removed and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created instead in 1970. Similarly, controlled substances were put into the hands of the DEA when the FDA prooved incapable of handling the responsiblity. Organic standards and control of dangerous technologies like genetically mofidified organism contamination are not contstrained or determined by scientific standards or public health considerations. Instead, financial pressures are the determining factor for regulator outcomes.
The FDA supports food and health hostile practices such as irradiation of foods despite the clear dangers of this process for health and the environment, endorses and supports the use of antibiotics in animals, pesticides, fluoride, fumigants, high fructose corn syrup, cloned meat and milk and heavy metals in our food supply in the face of overwhelming evidence of their dangers or lack of information proving their safety. Other examples of deadly regulations abound. The USDA routinely supports agricultual practices which contribute significantly to the degredation of the American food supply.
Food and supplements, especially high potency ones, are the most significant economic competitors to drugs. The Standard American Diet, or aptly named 'SAD', is now conclusively linked with the underlying under nutritional which the WHO identifies as the principle cause of death and disease in the United States and elsewhere. This diet of processed, degraded and contaminated food is only possible because the USDA and FDA allow industry-friendly alterations in food, food production, preparation and preservation.
The FDA's other, and very lucrative, mission is the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry. Given that healthy food and high potency supplements are the major competitor to the profits of the drug industry, and that the drug industry's users fees supply a major portion of the FDA's operating budget, it comes as no surprise that the FDA down regulates food at the expense of the consumer's health, quality of life and life-expectancy. The USDA, while charged with protecting and promoting wholesome foods and food production practices, in reality, does the opposit.
Please take a moment to urge your Members of Congress to hold hearings into divesting the FDA and USDA of their food regulatory responsibility; we need new food guardians whose oversight includes a preponderance of consumer advocates.
