Hold the MSG Please!
March 29, 2007
As a growing number of dead cats and dogs amply proves...the Department of Homeland Security will not keep you safe. It will: create a burgeoning federal bureaucracy; give the Democrats a fertile field for unionization and even create the illusion of security. But...it is reactively defensive and it will not keep you safe.
If the U.S. doesn’t stop worrying more about ways to protect the “rights” of potential terrorists than it does about actually killing terrorists...it will be raining more than the dead bodies of cats and dogs on American soil in the future. Have you forgotten about the American bodies raining from the Twin Towers....
With more foresight than our government security bureaucracy, Jason Pate and Gavin Cameron wrote the discussion paper, Covert Biological Weapons Attacks against Agricultural Targets, in August of 2001...just one month before 9-11.
They stated that, “U.S. agriculture is vulnerable to attack using biological (and chemical) weapons, and arguably this vulnerability, as well as the theoreticalease of carrying out such attacks covertly, makes agricultural targets particularly appealing to Terrorists”.
Ironically, “In the mid-1990s, a farmer in China used rat poison to kill twelve of his neighbors’ water buffalo, along with four of his neighbors....”
This brings us back to the dead cats and dogs.
Recently, American pets have been killed from eating rodenticide-laced pet food produced under contract by financially troubled Menu Foods of Canada for such well known brands as Eukanuba, Iams, Nutro, Ol'Roy and about 90 others.
As the AP reported it, “A type of rat poison has been found in tainted pet food...Substantial levels of aminopterin...were found in a cat food sample at the state Food Laboratory on Thursday. The poison is not legal for killing rodents in the United States but is still used against rats in some other countries.”
That’s the beauty of “free trade”...we have environmental laws and they don’t; we have labor laws and they have 10-year-old slaves; we have regulation and they have greedy autocratic dictators.
And speaking of “free trade”, “ABC News...learned that Menu Foods bought wheat gluten, the only ingredient changed in its plants, from China.” (I really hope that this isn’t a case of envy (i.e. if we can’t have your pets for dinner, etc, etc....)
The real question here is how did the rat poison get into the wheat gluten?
The NYT’s reported that, “Bob Rosenberg, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Pest Management Association, said it would be unusual for the wheat to be tainted.”
“'It would make no sense to spray a crop itself with rodenticide,'' Rosenberg said.
So ya think so?
From the China Daily News, we are told that, “Rats across China eat 50 billion kilograms of grain annually, equivalent to the consumption of 100 million people.”
Duh...ipso facto, if you eat or slaughter all of the cats, the rats run wild.
In response to this rodent infestation, China’s People’s Daily reported that, “In the past two years, more than 30 million hectares (74,131,614 acres) of farmland were applied with...rat poison, helping save 7 billion kilograms of grain.”
Just stop and think.
All of these fancy pet food brands contract production out to the lowest bidder. That bidder, in turn, contracts with the lowest cost supplier which, in this case, happens to be from China.
Poisonous wheat gluten enters Canada from China and then slips across the U.S. border where it enters a pet food can in Emporia, Kansas shortly before entering your pet’s digestive system. Don’t they grow wheat in Kansas?
All of this is relatively unregulated. Even if FDA inspectors were on-site at Menu Foods it is highly unlikely they would have tested for something as obscure as aminopterin.
And considering the fact that Homeland Security is too busy pilfering your luggage to stop the flow of at least 500,000 illegal aliens into this country annually...it’s not like they are going to intercept any poison unless it’s inside a Paris Hilton wristwatch.
Wheat gluten, which is used as a thickening agent in the pet food, is also used as: a thickening agent in human food; an additive in breakfast cereals; an additive in the baking of bread and as a meat alternative for vegetarian cuisine.
Now...I’m certain that the ethical Chinese suppliers only sold this stuff to companies that produce pet food...or maybe not so certain.
This poison slipped into the U.S. right under the noses of the FDA and Homeland Security.
It probably is more a case of careless and callous business practices and lazy bureaucrats than of deliberate terrorism...this time.
But what about the future?
In their paper, Pate and Cameron conclude that, “The economic impact of such (chemical and biological agricultural) attacks is, potentially, enormous: within the United States, agriculture is an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars and, directly or indirectly, employing millions of people.”
Can you imagine what would happen to the U.S. economy and society if people started dying from eating bread? Will the next bite of your Big Mac be fatal?
These are the benefits of a One World Economy, Open Borders and Free Trade.
Homeland Security will continue to be nothing but a feel-good metaphor for style before substance until America’s borders are secured and trade is put on a level playing field. Banning a poison domestically while allowing products contaminated with that same poison to be imported is as silly as not returning terrorist fire coming from a mosque because it is a holy place.
Could our government really be that silly?
Ya think so....
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