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Empty Ag offices, including food safety, raise concerns

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Empty Agriculture offices, including food safety, raise concerns
By Jerry Hagstrom CongressDaily January 12, 2010

Almost a full year after President Obama took office, the Agriculture Department still has vacancies in five key leadership positions, including the high-profile job of undersecretary for food safety.

Despite several outbreaks of food-borne illness in 2009 and the appointment of an interagency panel on food safety, Obama has not nominated anyone for the top food-safety position at USDA.

House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., has repeatedly called on the president to make an appointment. Late last month, after 21 people in 16 states had become infected with E. coli and National Steak and Poultry recalled 248,000 pounds of beef products, DeLauro said the problem was caused by practices that USDA could easily regulate if it had an appointee to make decisions.

"This position has been vacant for far too long and it is preventing the department from acting on critical food safety issues such as this one," DeLauro said.

Administration officials have acknowledged they have had trouble filling the slot because the White House does not want to nominate a candidate who has been a lobbyist for either food companies or consumer groups. When asked about the vacancy, Caleb Weaver, a USDA spokesman said in an e-mail, "Until there are zero illnesses and deaths due to food-borne illness, there is work to be done, which is why Secretary Tom Vilsack has made this a top priority."

Weaver went on to cite examples of USDA efforts, including a joint initiative with the FDA to improve product traceability throughout the food supply chain.

Obama has also failed to nominate a general counsel at USDA. Vilsack has said he wants to make civil rights and the settlement of discrimination cases a top priority, but there has been no resolution of any cases so far.

The position of chief financial officer is also vacant. The Senate confirmed businessman Evan Segal to the position in July, but he quit after Vilsack required the CFO to report to Assistant Secretary for Administration Pearlie Reed. According to a report in Government Executive, Segal objected to the change, citing a law requiring CFOs to report directly to agency secretaries.

The job of undersecretary for research, education and economics also has been vacant since Rajiv Shah became administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development last week. Molly Jahn, the deputy undersecretary who came on board Nov. 9, is running the agency, but Jahn agreed to take the deputy slot for only one year.

The position of administrator of the Foreign Agricultural Service has been vacant since December when Vilsack reassigned Michael Michener to the U.S. embassy to the United Nations food agencies in Rome. FAS Associate Administrator John Brewer is running FAS, and USDA sources say Brewer told FAS employees last week that he expects Vilsack to name a new administrator soon.

Vilsack has the authority to name a new FAS administrator, but President Obama must nominate the two undersecretaries and the general counsel and send them to the Senate for confirmation. "The president remains committed to filling these positions with the most qualified persons for those posts," a White House spokesman said in an e-mail on Monday.

http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0110/011210cdam2.htm?oref=todaysnews
 

PORKER

Well-known member
And THIS TOO!;

FDA’s food safety blogger doesn’t think meat safety is a problem 1
12 Jan 2010 2:35 PM
by Tom Laskawy Author Feed

Politics, Food Read More About
FDA, food, health, politics, USDA The WaPo and the NYT are now reporting that Michael Taylor has been officially named deputy commissioner for foods at the FDA. What remains fascinating is that both articles, like Taylor’s blog post at the Atlantic, continue to ignore meat safety. It’s only mentioned in passing in the context of Taylor’s past stint as head of USDA food safety during the Clinton administration.

The WaPo’s piece even implies that Taylor all but solved problems with meat safety some 10 years ago. Meanwhile the NYT claims that this move plus new legislation that gives more power to the FDA represents the administration’s attempts to repair our “fractured” food safety system. And yet neither paper observes that Taylor’s appointment gives him no power over meat and poultry and that the food safety legislation has been stripped of any provisions that affect the meat industry. In other words, system not repaired! Very very strange. The American Meat Institute must be doing cartwheels this morning.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Taylor, the FDA’s special adviser for food safety and one of the administration’s most public food safety officials, now blogs at the Atlantic. He hasn’t said much to date. But today he tried to get us all psyched for a big year for food safety:

This nation is at an historic tipping point when it comes to food safety. Congress is on the verge of passing legislation to usher in a new era of food safety in this country, with the fundamental goal of preventing food contamination and illness. The president, the public, and the industry have united in support for a stronger FDA. And our commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, has created a new Office of Foods to help unify and be accountable for all FDA foods efforts.
Awesome, right?! One problem—neither the FDA nor the pending food safety bill have anything to do with ensuring the safety of what is turning out to be our most dangerous foods: meat and poultry. That aspect of food safety is controlled by the USDA. And to paraphrase Obamafoodorama’s tweet of the other week, the USDA (and the country) has been without a head of food safety for 1 year and 25 days. Meanwhile, the revelations mount. USDA presumptions about the safety of common meat products prove horribly wrong. The tough policy decisions pile up. And yet, USDA chief Tom Vilsack refuses to put someone in charge—nor has he stepped into the breach with any meaningful reform proposals of his own.
To be clear, nowhere in Taylor’s post, which purports to be a description of food safety priorities for the entire administration, are the following words mentioned: meat, poultry, USDA, school lunches, ground beef. Even his litany of last year’s failures that will not be repeated includes only the vegetarian’s delight of peanut better, sprouts, and cookie dough. The hundreds of thousands of pounds of recalled contaminated meat go unmentioned. It’s as if meat simply is not on Michael Taylor’s menu radar.

In fact, the main priorities he discusses are all process-oriented: better communication, cooperation, preparedness, and data analysis. That’s all well and good, but are those really the greatest shortcomings for food safety in this country? Or is it rather that—thanks in large part to lax, underfunded and outdated regulations—a surprising number of corporations don’t seem to have any qualms about releasing contaminated food into the system? Let’s do something about that, shall we?

I, for one, had a theory about all this. My theory was that Taylor, being himself a former Under Secretary of Food Safety, was pulling the strings at USDA on food safety—and possibly even positioning himself to be named to the post again. But reading his blog post, now I’m not so sure. Now I’m worried that the lack of progress at USDA regarding food safety will continue—and thus continue to present a very real danger to the food system and to us. So, apologies Mike if I’m not so psyched about what 2010 will bring on food safety. I’ve had more than enough paralysis and inaction already.
 

Tex

Well-known member
Micheal Taylor:

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2590&name=Michael-Taylo

"Attorney for Monsanto who rewrote the "regulations" for Genetically Modified foods. His brilliant addition is the "substantial equivalence" measure which says if the nutrition measures are the same for the GMO as the natural food it is nobody's business what the chemical companies add. They add a lot. "

Who will decide if Monsanto's genetically altered genes in grains is harmful and if Monsanto's research is to be believed over independent research or even if the FDA will research on its own without political interference trumping the science?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html


It seems the revolving door just never ends.

Money+power-ethics=corruption. It is an equation that proves true in almost every situation.

Tex
 

TSR

Well-known member
Tex said:
Micheal Taylor:

http://www.politicalfriendster.com/showPerson.php?id=2590&name=Michael-Taylo

"Attorney for Monsanto who rewrote the "regulations" for Genetically Modified foods. His brilliant addition is the "substantial equivalence" measure which says if the nutrition measures are the same for the GMO as the natural food it is nobody's business what the chemical companies add. They add a lot. "

Who will decide if Monsanto's genetically altered genes in grains is harmful and if Monsanto's research is to be believed over independent research or even if the FDA will research on its own without political interference trumping the science?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html


It seems the revolving door just never ends.

Money+power-ethics=corruption. It is an equation that proves true in almost every situation.

Tex

Trouble is Tex how do we change it? Is there anything such as an honest politician especially a rich honest politician? Just like the old saying "If he ain't a crook, he will be after he gets elected".
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
All the honest politicians seem to be stupid, at least that's what the Dems say about Palin.

But she's trustworthy, maybe that's why they don't want her around DC.
 

Tex

Well-known member
hypocritexposer said:
All the honest politicians seem to be stupid, at least that's what the Dems say about Palin.

But she's trustworthy, maybe that's why they don't want her around DC.

It is a sad thing when our choices are reduced to incompetence or corruption. I think the two major parties have let us down.

Tex
 

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