DOD Is Worried That Obama’s Young Dreamers Will Bring Ebola Into The US

Posted on October 9, 2014 by Tony Heller

This is a particularly possible scenario if the disease gets to Haiti or Central America, he said. If the disease gets to countries like Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, it will cause a panic and people will flee the region, the general said.

“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.”

Also, transnational criminal networks smuggle people and those people can be carrying Ebola, the general said. Kelly spoke of visiting the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua with U.S. embassy personnel. At that time, a group of men “were waiting in line to pass into Nicaragua and then on their way north,” he recalled.

Defense.gov News Article: Kelly: Southcom Keeps Watch on Ebola Situation

h/t to tom0mason

About Tony Heller

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26 Responses to DOD Is Worried That Obama’s Young Dreamers Will Bring Ebola Into The US

  1. mredchanskiy says:
    October 9, 2014 at 3:58 am

    Our government is so fucked up….

    Reply
  2. there is no substitute for victory says:
    October 9, 2014 at 4:16 am

    Well at least we now know what President Obama’s vision of Climate Justice looks like. He wants to give the US as many or maybe more Third World diseases than the Third World has.

    Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 9, 2014 at 11:19 am

      Actually that was Bush Sr. and Reagan and Bush Jr and Clinton’s vision.
      Everyone forgets about the changes made that lead up to the problems. They only see the current problems.

      So here is the story behind the story:
      ………….
      The leading actor in the whole play was Dan Amstutz. Amstutz was a VP of Cargill and then President and CEO of Cargill Investor Services. He later became VP at Goldman Sachs when they went looking for someone to provide direction about ways to operate in commodity futures….

      How Goldman Gambled on Starvation
      Speculators set up a casino where the chips were the stomachs of millions.
      (wwwDOT)commondreams.org/views/2010/07/02/how-goldman-gambled-starvation

      How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
      there’s another reason why food across the world has become so expensive: Wall Street greed.

      It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there’s value, there’s money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers, led by their prescient president Gary Cohn, came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element, blended and commingled the parts into sums, then reduced what had been a complicated collection of real things into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI).

      For just under a decade, the GSCI remained a relatively static investment vehicle, as bankers remained more interested in risk and collateralized debt than in anything that could be literally sowed or reaped. Then, in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets.

      [MY NOTE G.C.]
      Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on December 21, 2000 after passing a lame-duck session in Congress.
      SEE: Read the Bill: The Commodity Futures Modernization Act
      More info – See WIKI article on Brooksley Born who lobbied Congress and the President Clinton to give the CFTC (her department) oversight of off-exchange markets for derivatives, despite thls Congress passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 prohibiting her agency from regulating derivatives. This lead not only to the 2008 food crisis and food riots but to the US mortgage Forclosure crisis and the bailout of AIG.

      All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked, an opportunity that had, since the Great Depression, only been available to those who actually had something to do with the production of our food.
      Change was coming to the great grain exchanges of Chicago, Minneapolis, and Kansas City — which for 150 years had helped to moderate the peaks and valleys of global food prices….
      (wwwDOT)foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_food_crisis?page=0,1

      But that was not the only havoc Amstutz helped create.

      Amstutz served in several positions in the U.S. government. From 1983 to 1987, he was Under Secretary of Agriculture for International Affairs and Commodity Programs. From 1987 to 1989 served as Ambassador and Chief Negotiator for Agriculture during the Uruguay Round of General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade talks. During his time in the US government he is credited with writing two documents that changed the face of Agriculture in the USA and around the world.

      The first was the Freedom to Farm Bill written under Reagan and finally made law under Clinton. One Congressman testimony on the Freedom to Fail Farm Law.
      The law had two changes that were advantagous to Cargill and the other grain traders. First the law did away with the US strategic Grain supply that after the Great Depression helped smooth out the peaks in food prices created by a bad harvest and the depressed prices paid to farmers during bountiful years. The second change was the bill did away with the Land Bank created under FDR. This put formerly fallow land back into production.

      The results were inevitable. Subsidized American grain became much cheaper than local grain in third world countries. In Mexico for example (Thanks to NAFTA tariff agreements) 75% of the local farmers were bankrupted. Then the cheap US grain ran out in 2008 when the US strategic grain reserve finally ran dry and Goldman Sachs, the speculators and the grain traders jacked up the prices resulting in riots around the world. [M]ore than 60 food riots occurred worldwide [58] in 30 different countries [59], 10 of which resulted in multiple deaths.

      …According to a study by Jose Romero and Alicia Puyana carried out for the federal government of Mexico, between 1992 and 2002, the number of agricultural households fell an astounding 75% – from 2.3 million to 575, 000[19].

      There has been a significant increase in migration out of rural areas as livelihoods are lost and farms have been abandoned. The hope was that this migration out of low-productivity agriculture would be absorbed into higher-productivity non-agrarian urban employment. But anemic employment growth in the post-NAFTA period, particularly in manufacturing[20], put paid to that. And what little employment there has been has largely been in the informal sector. As a result there has been a change in the pattern of rural out-migration. In the 1980s the likelihood of migrating to urban Mexico was higher than that of migrating to the USA. Today, as a result of anemic employment growth, the likelihood of migrating to the USA is significantly higher[21].

      The World Bank estimates that between 2000-05, 400,000 Mexicans migrated to the USA annually[22]. According to other estimates this number is closer to 500,000[23]. 300,000 of these are from rural Mexico and again mostly small, marginal farmers and agricultural labour[24]. To put this in context between 1994 and 2004, Mexico’s labour force grew by approximately 1 million annually[25]. So effectively today Mexico imports food from the USA and exports farmers and agricultural labour.
      http://www.countercurrents.org/mohanty230608.htm

      So there is the circumstances that lead to an increase in of illegals crossing the US border.
      Most of these illegals are coming from very primitive areas and electricity, running water and toilets are unknown. (One farmer here in N.C. complained he had to teach the use of a flush toilet to his migrant workers every year.)

      The second problem is Mexico is HOLLOW. We are talking incredibly massive cave systems. This means the sink hole that is used as a toilet in one village is directly connected to the spring where water is drawn from in another without ground filtration (200ft to ‘clean water’) or sunlight to disinfect. No wonder travelers are told DON’T DRINK THE WATER.

      Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 9, 2014 at 12:33 pm

      I know this is long but I am talking about the safety of the food YOU EAT so pay attention. I could really write a book on this subject so keeping it reasonable is tough especially when I get called a Conspiracy Theorist (like yesterday) if I do keep it short.
      ……………………………..

      Dan Amstutz was responsible for another route for disease to enter the USA as well. Food and Live cattle.

      Amstutz wrote the draft for the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (WTO AoA.)

      This agreement had two critical points. It substituted “tracability’ for testing and effectively eliminated quarantine as food safety measures. This case highlights some of the legal ramifications of the WTO AoA. Perhaps the most telling sentence is “The U.S. government policy carefully follows the industry line…” Seems I am not the only one who sees industry runs the US government.

      The U.S. Threats Against Europe’s GMO Policy and The WTO SPS Agreement

      …This case poses the specter of public will and its democratic enactment in Europe being undermined by a tribunal of three trade experts meeting behind closed doors at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters….

      The agreement provides strict limits governing countries’ permissible food safety policy goals and the means by which nations can pursue even the permitted goals. 1 The WTO rules empower member countries to challenge each other’s policies and regulations as exceeding these limits.

      No country’s SPS measure challenged in the WTO has ever been upheld. In past cases, WTO panels consistently have interpreted WTO member countries’ food and quarantine measures to be barriers to trade that must be weakened or eliminated, rather than as public health safeguards or prudent measures aimed at avoiding the spread of pests or plant or animal disease….

      Because plaintiffs almost always win WTO challenges, mere threats of challenges often result in the challenged country changing its policy. A U.S. calculation in this case is that if the U.S. succeeds in the EU case, mere threats against other countries might suffice. Already, mere threats of WTO action under the SPS Agreement have resulted in Japan and South Korea lowering food standards….

      So how does WTO AoA actually effect the USA?

      WTO was ratified in 2005 and the FDA and USDA put in place (without Congressional approval) the international HACCP regs. This shifted the responsibility of doing testing and food safety from government inspectors to the corporation. The government inspectors instead of inspecting food now inspected paperwork.

      I already covered John Munsell, HACCP and the e-coli mess in Behaving Like An Adult

      Texas being next to the Mexico border has a real interest in foreign disease and pests so I will start with:

      TEXAS ANIMAL HEALTH COMMISSION: 2009 – 2013 AGENCY STRATEGIC PLAN, June 27, 2008 It had a lot of information but it is 99 pages so I will condense it.
      (wwwDOT)tahc.state.tx.us/agency/TAHC_Strategic_Plan_2009-2013.pdf
      (Text may have changed from the original that I copied.)

      This shows the way it used to be done.

      Surveillance
      The surveillance element or function is the most intensive of the six functions with respect to resources and personnel. Surveillance includes all activities designed and implemented to identify and locate any possible focus of infection or exposure to diseases of animal/poultry health significance in the livestock, poultry and exotic animal population. TAHC surveys animal populations for possible disease problems by collecting blood samples at livestock markets, on farms or ranches, and at slaughter plants. TAHC also analyzes private-paid test samples and specimens, identifies animals back to their herds of origin in various movement channels, and inspects the animals and/or samples collected for testing. Other surveillance activities such as testing in high incidence areas, collecting milk samples at dairy processing plants, collecting tissue samples at the time of slaughter, and working closely with commercial poultry operators who routinely perform disease surveillance and testing, all contribute to a strong surveillance element. Routine visual inspections and collections of external parasite specimens from livestock in concentration points are important for early detection of an intrusion of a foreign animal disease or pest. Additionally, TAHC foreign animal disease diagnosticians investigate all reports of potential foreign animal diseases in order to achieve early diagnosis of a foreign animal disease, should it be introduced into the state. TAHC maintains a 24/7 “on call” phone service to support effective and rapid disease surveillance and detection within the state…..Of the approximately `2.7 million tests performed by the four state-federal labs in fiscal year 2007, approximately 2.4 million were for Texas….

      USDA bribes

      …the USDA has provided several million dollars per year in indirect support that does not flow through the agency’s budget. This includes items provided directly to TAHC such as supplies, telephone service, equipment maintenance, and express mail service. Any reduction in federal direct or indirect funding would result in a shortfall in funds for brucellosis surveillance, diagnosis, and disease eradication efforts.

      Evidence of USDA’s intention of abandoning surveillance
      From another source: Congress blasts FDA’s plan to close 7 labs

      Agency’s ‘ill conceived’ tactic raises fears of negative impacts on food safety.

      Importers have learned to evade close federal scrutiny of the food they ship into the United States, putting consumers at increasing risk, congressional investigators said Tuesday. Lawmakers also criticized the Food and Drug Administration’s plan to close half of its laboratories. They called that idea misguided and questioned whether it would save money and enhance the agency’s ability to target unsafe food….

      (Remember the government Lab closings I will get back to it later in another comment.)

      Importers don’t have to ‘evade’ federal scrutiny the USDA opened the door wide and gestured them in!

      Cattle crossing facilities on the U.S. side of the border are operated primarily by private firms… at Santa Teresa, NM, Chihuahuan cattle producers [Mexican] operate both sides of the cattle port-of-entry
      (wwwDOT)ers.usda.gov/publications/Agoutlook/june2001/AO282d.pdf

      back to TEXAS ANIMAL HEALTH COMMISSION REPORT
      This point is critical in containing disease

      USDA is moving toward supporting fewer labs nationwide, with the remaining labs serving as regional labs and supporting larger geographic areas….. If this funding is not maintained, this lab will be closed and the out-of-state samples will not be processed by remaining TAHC laboratories….

      The first-point testing program is the “early warning system” for the brucellosis program, enabling detection of infection prior to sale of cattle within the state. With the discontinuation of first-point testing, slaughter testing will become the primary method for brucellosis surveillance. There is a key difference between first-point testing and slaughter testing. An animal identified through first-point testing as possibly infected is alive. This allows the agency to collect additional samples (blood, milk and tissue) and conduct additional diagnostic serologic and culture tests to determine if the animal is in fact infected with Brucella abortus. An animal identified through slaughter testing as possibly infected is no longer living and therefore additional testing of that animal is not possible. As a result, the process to be followed requires the identification of the herd the animal came from and conducting a whole herd test to determine whether or not infection is present in the herd. The traceability back to the original owner or farm of origin is also much higher in a first-point test positive versus a slaughter positive, because the animals are individually identified with permanent identification devices, are identified to an owner at the time of testing and market records improve traceability of the animals. …

      USDA’s threats

      ..All states are expected to collaboratively participate in cooperative disease control and eradication programs or face significant animal movement restrictions from USDA and other states. Movement restrictions would significantly reduce the marketability of Texas animals and increase the cost of market access…

      NAFTA and WTO trade agreements impact

      …New national disease control programs, emergency management responsibilities, and trade agreements with foreign countries have a significant impact on TAHC. These new or expanded programs continue to stretch TAHC’s already stressed resources to their limits.

      Foreign diseases  imported due to trade agreements  and  the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures

      …The responsibilities of TAHC have significantly increased as programs for disease control and surveillance have expanded, animal and premises identification systems have been initiated, and participation in emergency planning and response activities impacting animal health require more agency resources. Additionally, new disease challenges are emerging. Some are domestic diseases that are increasing in significance. Others are foreign diseases that may be imported as result of the exponential increases in international importations of animals and animal products. Our industries and our economy are threatened by diseases and pests that heretofore we only read about in disease text books or heard about in lectures….

      Since 1999, there have been seven foreign animal diseases diagnosed within the United States (West Nile Virus, Exotic Newcastle Disease, High Pathogenic Avian Influenza, Hemorrhagic Disease of Rabbits, Monkey Pox, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, and Wildebeest Associated Malignant Catarrhal Fever). Unfortunately, there does not appear to be an end in sight for outbreaks of foreign or domestic diseases and these diverse activities related to disease control and eradication…

      Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 9, 2014 at 12:49 pm

      This is a look at JUST disease and Cattle and the effects of WTO AoA and the international HACCP regs.

      I have five pages of notes this is just the first page:
      Bovine Tuberculosis Testing over last Decade (as of 2008)

      …While I believe a meaningful, uniform, universal ID system for all livestock with adequate tracking will evolve, as a state animal health official, I would be less than responsible if I did not encourage industry and government to move quickly to get a handle on our ability to traceback animals today for diseases such as brucellosis, tuberculosis, and others that present risks of exacerbation and the extreme costs associated with such…” Dr. Sam Holland, State Veterinarian, South Dakota from REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON LIVESTOCK IDENTIFICATION – 2005

      This is an example of the USDA’s response to one disease.The chart shows how USDA cut back testing after WTO was created in 1995.
      Note the significant drop in testing!

      Summary of Tuberculosis Surveillance in California Cattle

      # of Cattle
      Tested…………1995…..1996…..1997…….1998…….1999……2000…..2001
      Health dept…10,576…5,100…..2,861 …..3,530…..1,425 ….1,967…..2,500
      Private Vet…15,921…17,100…19,930…18,189…22,863…19,930…19,587
      Slaughter………..39………58 ………64……….39………..58………64………385
      (wwwDOT)vetmed.ucdavis.edu/vetext/INF-BE_cca/INF-BE_cca02/INF-BE_cca0207-08.html

      Remember the USDA has allowed Mexican Cattlemen to operate the port of entry at Santa Teresa, NM.

      Bovine TB was confirmed in three dairy herds during 2002-2003.[California] ….Although the source of the infections was not confirmed, the investigations indicate TB was most likely imported in infected cattle…. (wwwDOT)cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/Animal_Health/pdfs/Tb_in_California_2006.pdf

      The high prevalence of bovine tuberculosis in Mexican cattle was discussed. A multiagency investigation in New York city identified 35 cases of human M. bovis infection. Fresh cheese from Mexico was identified as the likely source of infection” (Winters et al., 2005). (wwwDOT)nzfsa.govt.nz/science/riskprofiles/FW0320_Mbovis_in_meat_final_May_2006.pdf

      …in April 2001, the USDA’s Veterinary Services published an interim rule requiring Mexican feeder steers to originate from herds that had recently been tested for TB. The USDA then agreed to grant waivers to the whole-herd testing.
      For Mexican Feeder Cattle in Effect April 1, 2002… Dr. Logan… said, the disease is extremely rare in U.S. herds. How ever, more TB-lesioned cattle are being detected at slaughter, and ear tags indicate that many of these animals are of Mexican origin. http://www.tahc.state.tx.us/news/pr/2002/302TBMx.pdf

      This is why the US Government is cracking down on Raw Milk Dairies. They KNOW US food is no longer as safe as it was and they do not want people (or Congress) to follow the dots.

      Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 9, 2014 at 2:01 pm

      Remember at the beginning of my long ramble, I mentioned the new HACCP regs shifted testing from the government TO INDUSTRY?

      Well it seems that only applies to the industry giants who actually run the USDA

      When a little guy tried to do 100% inspection to grab a high price niche market the USDA stomped on him but good and the Bush admin backed them up.
      Again from my old notes:
      TESTING OF MAD COW DISEASE! (BSE)
      The saga of Mad Cow Disease and the failure of government is disgusting.

      This commenter does a decent job of providing links to the rot within the USDA: http://www.ranchers.net/forum/about29636.html (link still good)

      Other stories I read stated the USDA was worried about “Consumer Confidence” in beef products and that was the reason they wanted NO Testing. BFD, so do the intelligent thing, require Creekstone to freeze samples and if there is a case of positive results notify the USDA to come and preform a second test. It is done in drug testing all the time and the procedure is ALREADY codified in DOT regs.

      Instead the USDA BANNED Creekstone from doing the testing AFTER they had built the lab and geared up to do 100% testing on their beef. The USDA then backed the ban up in court and Creekstone lost.

      Again the history of the consistent behavior of the US Congress is what is note worthy. Requiring low flow toilets or twisty bulbs is an annoyance but when our food system becomes fair game and the number of food borne illnesses (CDC stats) skyrocket as a result then it passes from fraud to murder IMHO. (Yes people have died -horribly and the USDA/FDA did nothing http://www.whistleblower.org/storage/documents/Shielding_the_Giant_Final_PDF.pdf )

      The Food and Drug Administration planned to close seven of 13 field laboratories but there was enough of a grass roots out cry that they have remained open. (GO TEAM!)

      From the beginning

      Britain imposed a ban on using meat and bone meal (MBM) made from slaughtered cows in cattle feed in July 1988. Three months earlier government animal health experts had realised that feed made from bovine MBM was responsible for the rapid spread of BSE in Britain. But for eight more years contaminated feed was exported worldwide with what critics say was woefully inadequate warnings on the product.

      Before the BSE crisis about 350,000 tons of MBM feed was sold in Britain a year, and relatively little was exported. After the ban the UK government did inform the EU, but there was a surge in exports to Europe. Then, as European states – informed of the danger – banned British feed, exporters opened up new markets, including North America, the Middle East and Asia.

      Dr Stephen Dealler, a microbiologist and BSE expert, said: “It was a terrible mistake… Look at the controls they are now trying to apply to stop BSE in France and other EU countries. It is going to be much harder in African and Middle Eastern countries.”
      Evidence to the British BSE inquiry headed by Lord Phillips shows that British officials washed their hands of moral responsibility over the dangers of MBM spreading BSE to infection-free countries, the approach was to inform international bodies, leaving it to member states to decide whether to import UK feed and prevent it being fed to cattle.

      British shipments reached 30,000 tons a year in 1993 and went on until 1996, when an EU directive banned all UK exports. The feed went to countries including Czech Republic, Nigeria, Thailand, South Africa, Kenya, Turkey, Indonesia, Hungary, Malaysia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, USA, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Sri Lanka.

      The Phillips inquiry reveals astonishing memos between British officials over the sale of MBM. In the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff), John Gummer, then an Agriculture minister, is reported in minutes as having said the UK had a “moral obligation to ensure that importing countries were aware we did not permit the feeding of these products to ruminants”. (wwwDOT)ndependent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/exports-of-bsecontaminated-cattle-feed-continued-for-eight-years-after-uk-ban-626507.html

      In other words the USA officials were WARNED about BSE in the imported feed AND DID NOTHING!

      The UK did not stop export until 1996 and the FDA rules on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy > Ruminant Feed Inspections ” became effective on August 4, 1997.” Remember this is a reg written by the FDA and not a law passed by Congress. Talk about closing the barn door AFTER the cows have been fed contaminated feed.

      Please remember, the last two mad cows documented in the USA I.e. Alabama and Texas, both were of the ‘atypical’ BSE strain, and immediately after that, the USDA dropped the testing from 470,000 to 40,000 in the U.S. in 2007. This is the number of tests run on about 35 million cattle slaughtered per year.

      Also, science is showing that some of these atypical cases are more virulent to humans than the typical UK BSE strain. ***Atypical forms of BSE have emerged which, although rare, appear to be more virulent than the classical BSE that causes vCJD.***
      neurotalk(DOT)psychcentral.com/archive/index.php/t-72274.html

      Risk Assessment

      There is a small chance that mad cow disease.. (BSE), is already in this country, according to a risk assessment released today by Harvard University. The risk assessment concluded that even if BSE had entered this country, it wouldn’t become a major public health problem, although human illnesses could occur” — Harvard Risk Assessment 12/3/2001

      http://regulations.justia.com/regulations/fedreg/2006/07/12/E6-10928.html

      This is the “scientific basis” (based on MODELS) behind the USDA ban on 100% BSE testing at Creekstone Farms and mandating “less than 1 percent [40000 per year] of slaughtered cattle to be tested for BSE. The agency contends that “more comprehensive testing doesn’t guarantee food safety and may produce a false positive that alarms consumers.” ….Of course if you do not test you will not find the disease…. QC101

      After disease detectives in Great Britain determined that mad cow (BSE), was spread by feeding cattle infected meal, British officials banned the practice. But they didn’t ban the export of feed, spreading BSE to continental Europe and Japan…At the height of the BSE epidemic, the UK exported 500,000 tons, including 168,000 metric tons of MBM (meat and bone meal) between 1990 and 1996. It also exported 3.2 million cattle to 36 countries. A Harvard study said that the exact amount sent to the U.S. was unknown, but it noted that at least 69 tons of “mammalian meal and flour” and 334 cattle were shipped here during the period. (wwwDOT)organicconsumers.org/madcow/danger6102.cfm

      Creestone won in the first court battle but lost on appeal. This is no longer on the net so I wil reproduce it here:

      Creekstone Farms defends right to test for BSE
      By Tom Johnston on 5/12/2008 for Meatingplace.com (closed forum)

      Lawyers representing Creekstone Farms Premium Beef told a federal appeals court on Friday that USDA has no authority to keep the company from testing slaughtered cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

      The Arkansas City, Kan.-based processor appeared before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington D.C. circuit as the government continues to try to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed the company to more thoroughly test for BSE among its slaughtered cattle to reassure overseas customers in Asia. (See USDA reviewing federal court’s ruling on BSE testing on Meatingplace.com, March 30, 2007.)

      At present, less than 1 percent of slaughtered cattle are tested for BSE under USDA rules. The agency contends that more comprehensive testing doesn’t guarantee food safety and may produce a false positive that alarms consumers.

      “They want to create false assurances,” Justice Department attorney Eric Flesig-Greene told the judges, according to the Associated Press.

      But Creekstone’s legal counsel argued that USDA’s own regulations regarding treatment of domestic animals do not prohibit individual companies from testing for BSE, noting the test is conducted only after an animal is slaughtered. He reiterated the agency has no authority to prevent companies from conducting such testing. “This is the government telling consumers, ‘You’re not entitled to this information,'” attorney Russell Frye said.

      Chief Judge David B. Sentelle indicated agreement with Creekstone. “All [Creekstone wants] to do is create information,” he said, adding that consumers can then decide how to interpret it.
      USDA Closes Only Mad Cow Testing Lab in Northwest (wwwDOT).hemophilia.org/NHFWeb/MainPgs/MainNHF.aspx?menuid=122&contentid=852&rptname=news

      One of the driving forces behind the Food Safety Modernization Act was to make farmers liable for poor slaughter practices that contaminate meat with feces and for the lack of testing documented above. Feces contamination includes problems with e coli and salmonella and who knows what else like the antibacterial resistant strains showing in China’s waste treatment that is then spread as ‘treated’ on crop fields.

      Conference to address food-borne illness litigation
      (wwwDOT)meatingplace.com/MembersOnly/webNews/details.aspx?item=10369
      “The conference will cover topics such as aligning damage assessments/expectations with the outcomes from recent resolved litigation; managing an outbreak effectively to minimize shareholder and reputational risk afterwards as quickly as possible; and how to measure and prove actual control of various players in the movement of contaminated food to accurately assess apportionment of liability.

      Reply
      • Jtom says:
        October 9, 2014 at 11:54 pm

        Welll, since cattle and pigs can carry the Ebola virus, safety of our food will continue to deteriorate. Perhaps ut’s time to become vegetarians and grow our own food.

        Trouble is, if enough of us did that, it would affect the profits of the big boys. A 1942 US Supreme Court decision declared that the government can restrict what and how much you can grow for home consumption on the grounds that it affects interstate commerce. Just google Wickard v. Filburn. Very few people know this. I have no idea what restrictions governments in other countries can place on growing your own food.

        Reply
  3. tom0mason says:
    October 9, 2014 at 5:06 am

    Contrast what General Kelly says to what Kerry says

    KERRY ON RESPONSE TO EBOLA DEATH: ‘WE NEED BORDERS TO REMAIN OPEN’
    https://grabien.com/story.php?id=15603&order=date

    “— are frankly urgent to be able to quickly move to contain the spread of Ebola. We need airlines to continue to operate in West Africa, and we need borders to remain open. And we need to strengthen the medivac capacity. We need countries to contribute for Ebola treatment centers and we need other African countries with the capacity to send responders to join the effort and we need to make sure the health-care workers who go properly trained, ……..

    Reply
  4. Eliza says:
    October 9, 2014 at 5:27 am

    No you need to close all borders, airports. No travel in our out of USA until Crisis is over. The world is doing all the wrong things at this time and spreading it all over the place. USA, Europe and now maybe Australia great what a bunch of buffons.

    Reply
    • Jtom says:
      October 9, 2014 at 11:58 pm

      Well, at the risk of echoing a warminista, is worse than you orobably think.
      Introducing a deadly virus into a new ecology is just asking for a disaster. We know dogs, pigs, and cattle can become infected (say goodbye to your family pet, pork, beef, and milk). We don’t even know how it will affect horses, deer, raccoons, possums, or bears. We DO know, though, that rodents – mice, rats, squirrels – can carry ebola. Once it is in our environment it is here to stay. Then we, too, can have random outbreaks of Ebola. And when one infected person begins a new outbreak by throwing up on a NY subway, we’ll get to see a massive outbreak and panic.

      Welcome to your new world.

      Reply
  5. Windsong says:
    October 9, 2014 at 5:57 am

    John Kerry might be on the phone to Chuck Hagel right now. When the State Department spokesbabe, Jen Psaki, provides the assembled media a “What the General means” statement tomorrow, it should be interesting.

    (Apologies to the USAF officers in Vietnam, c. 1966, who taped “What the Captain means.”)

    Reply
  6. TomC says:
    October 9, 2014 at 7:10 am

    Why can’t they go to Cuba. I don’t seem to understand. I keep hearing from the WHO, Democrats, Leftists and their ilk that our healthcare system sucks and should be more equitable, like Venezuela or Cuba, where the best medicine in the world is practiced. Why would they come here if we’re racist and discriminate who receives healthcare based on their accent. Do these third-world citizens know something Democrats don’t? I thought there were none brighter.

    Reply
  9. Another Ian says:
    October 9, 2014 at 9:47 am

    From outside the paddock, but seems

    Right now mass immigration might not be a good idea?

    Was this on Obamacare’s horizon?

    Reply
    • Jtom says:
      October 10, 2014 at 12:02 am

      If anyone in South America, Central America, or Mexico is diagnosed with Ebola, that rumbling sound you hear will be the stampede of people coming across our southern border.

      Reply
  10. Jason Calley says:
    October 9, 2014 at 11:17 am

    A nation without borders is like a ship without watertight bulkheads. Everything works great… until it doesn’t.

    At least we have the satisfaction of knowing that no matter what happens, Glorious Leader and his friends will be well protected.

    Reply
  11. lance says:
    October 9, 2014 at 1:09 pm

    I thought Kerry said Climate Change was the biggest threat…snort…

    Reply
  12. Gail Combs says:
    October 9, 2014 at 2:15 pm

    Hey guys, not closing the borders and then doing a CYA worked just great on the open border policy for Mad Cow Disease and Bovine Tuberculosis didn’t it? (SEE comments above)

    Reply
  13. Andyj says:
    October 9, 2014 at 4:47 pm

    Not forgetting open borders UK with its free health service to all non contributing incomers.
    It sounds like a conspiracy theory but maybe one should read about agenda21.

    Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 9, 2014 at 6:06 pm

      “…maybe one should read about agenda21”
      Don’t make me sick just after lunch.

      Reply
    • Gail Combs says:
      October 10, 2014 at 1:17 pm

      Seems the UK now has a problem with possible Ebola too.
      A few of the news reports.

      21.40 Sources in the Macedonian government say the British man who died in Skopje had hemorrhagic fever but likely not to be Ebola. A second man has been admitted to hospital, however neither have visited Africa recently.

      21.25 A Spanish nurse who is the first person known to have been infected with Ebola outside Africa is at “serious risk” of dying after her condition worsened Thursday, officials have said.

      20.46 A Public Health Center vehicle is parked in front of the Macedonia hotel where a 58-year-old man, reported to be British, was taken to hospital and died of severe internal bleeding from what may have been Ebola, in Skopje:

      19:08 About 200 cabin cleaners at New York’s LaGuardia Airport have gone on strike partly because of fears about the risk of Ebola, saying they were not receiving the proper equipment or training.

      “The workers are really worried because they tend to be exposed to bodily fluids, including by cleaning out bathrooms on airplanes,” said Amity Paye, a union spokesman.

      The union is holding its own training sessions, saying that the airlines are not preparing for a possible infection. [Good for them!]
      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/ebola/11152472/Briton-dies-of-Ebola-in-Macedonia-live.html

      Reply
  14. philjourdan says:
    October 10, 2014 at 12:16 am

    That would be dreamer Abdullah Mohammed and dreamer Mohammed Abdullah.

    Reply
  15. gator69 says:
    October 10, 2014 at 12:57 pm

    And now for a public service announcement…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p7A-T7D-sg

    Reply

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