bushgang gags/ruins meatpacker for blowing whistle

[donsu]

(well, they tried to gag him)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/hellraiser/2003/11/ma_573_01.html

Bad Meat made an activist out of John Munsell. Before the tainted beef arrived -- USDA-approved and vacuum-sealed -- at Montana Quality Foods, Munsell's family-run packing plant, this die-hard Republican had no reason to doubt the integrity of the food-safety system. But that changed after the meat he ground for hamburger tested positive for E. coli 0157:H7, a potentially deadly pathogen found in cattle feces that sickens thousands every year.

Instead of tracking the contaminated meat back to its source, the USDA launched an investigation of Munsell's own operation in Miles City, Montana. Never mind that the local federal inspector had seen the beef go straight from the package into a clean grinder -- a USDA spokesman called that testimony "hearsay." By February 2002, three more tests of meat Munsell was grinding straight from the package came back positive in USDA tests for E. coli. This time, as he would later testify in a government hearing, he had paperwork documenting that the beef came from a single source: ConAgra's massive Greeley, Colorado, facility, which kills as many cows in three hours as Montana Quality Foods handles in a year.

Munsell fired off an angry email to the district USDA manager, warning of a potential public-health emergency, and adding that if no one tracked down the rest of the bad meat, "both of us should share a cell in Alcatraz." The agency moved immediately and aggressively -- not to recall meat from Greeley, but to shut down Munsell's grinding operation, a punishment that lasted four months.

-snip-

"I want the world to know what the real policies are," says Munsell, driving through Miles City, a ranching town on Montana's eastern plain where the casinos compete with saddle shops on Main Street and the men don't take their hats off for much. "The real policies imperil the consumer," he says. "The USDA doesn't want that out."
-snip-
------------------------

this year Munsell had to put the business up for sale. It was started by his father in 1946.

[drdigi420]

1. Use this example the next time

some freeper starts complaining about government regulations of industry.

[truthseeker1]

2. Thank you for this link!

I'm sending it to my freeper parents and brother in Bozeman, Montana. Maybe a story this close to home will make an impact.

I'm learning to communicate in terms of actual examples/situations rather than use the language of "environmental regulation" - as soon as they hear that, they shut everything out and just think "tree hugger, money-wasting liberal."

[peacetalksforall]

3. Sad, so sad

I like to hear the other side of the story, but when it involves our government-for-sale-to-the-highest-corporation world, you practically don't have to hear the defense.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. No surprises here

Wonder if the Admin is already suffering from mad cow disease? They certainly labor under the delusion that they are helping the American public.

[FloridaPat]

5. Think how easy it will be for mad cow to get throug to the public.

ConAgra wants to the be sole hamburger supplier in the US. They are buying up packing houses as fast as they can. My local grocer has trouble getting meat to grind up for hamburger, so they have a lot of ConAgras stuff. All this beef goes into a big "pot", is mixed and shipped out.

I stopped eating hamburger two years ago because of this. It would be so easy to get mad cow all over the country.

Doctors are re-autopsying people that died with Alheimers. 5-14% were misdiagnosed - they had mad cow. It think we're in real big trouble here folks.

[FlaGranny]

6. Do you have a link for

that FloridaPat? I'd really be interested in reading about it - the 5-14% misdiagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Thanks.

As an aside, I can remember CJD cases from 35-40 years ago.

[truthseeker1]

7. Michael Moore and/or Eric Schlosser

I think it was either Michael Moore who brought up this research in "Stupid White Men" or it was Eric Schlosser in "Fast Food Nation,"
possibly even both. Does anyone else recall?

[Cocoa]

8. the Bush administration is a RACKET

the Sept. 11 widow that chose to sue under RICO was using an appropriate law, and the people that call Rove a consigliere are using the right word.