Full traceback coming because of too many Recalls

[PORKER]

Lawmaker Pushes System to Trace Food to Source
Posted on: Tuesday, 26 August 2008, 03:00 CDT

WASHINGTON - The food industry must drop any remaining opposition to electronic record-keeping and back an effective system for tracing contaminated food to its source, a lawmaker investigating food safety said Friday.

"It is my hope that the food industry will drop its opposition to these commonsense safeguards and move forward with implementation," said Rep. Bart Stupak, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative subcommittee.

Mr. Stupak, D-Mich., has been conducting an investigation since January 2007 into the Food and Drug Administration's ability to protect the nation's food and drug supply. He will lead a hearing next week on the current outbreak of salmonella.

"This latest salmonella outbreak has shown us that it is necessary to have electronic record-keeping and trace-back systems in order to quickly detect the source of food-borne illnesses," Mr. Stupak said.

The food industry is seeing the truth of the adage, "Be careful what you wish for because you might get it."

The industry pressured the Bush administration years ago to limit the paperwork companies would have to keep to help U.S. health investigators quickly trace produce that sicken consumers, according to interviews and government reports reviewed by The Associated Press.

The White House also killed a plan to require the industry to maintain electronic tracking records. Companies complained the proposals were too burdensome and costly, and warned they could disrupt the availability of consumers' favorite foods - especially fresh produce.

More recently, parts of the industry said they would support a more effecting tracing system, but insisted that businesses in the food chain - not the government - should devise the method that works.

The chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said the industry has brought on its own troubles.

"The food industry is learning the hard way that having a strong FDA and common-sense regulation makes good financial sense," he said.

"FDA's inability to pinpoint the source of the recent salmonella outbreak has resulted in devastating illnesses across the country, caused a financial blow to American growers and producers, and highlighted the need for strong food safety legislation."

The apparent but unintended consequences of the lobbying success: a paper record-keeping system that has slowed investigators, with estimated business losses of $250 million. So far, nearly 1,300 people in 43 states, the District of Columbia and Canada have been sickened by salmonella since April.

Originally published by Associated Press.

(c) 2008 Augusta Chronicle, The. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.

 

[nenmrancher]

Can you say HELLO Manditory ID and premise ID and more than likely a law that will end up putting the burden on the producer instead of the processor. Everyone that has been doing their best to kill it had better watch out, this thing is about to get a bunch of lawmakers, with good intentions, to fix everything.

 

[PORKER]

The COOL law is a Traceback Law . On page 45108 of the Federal Register vol 73 No.149 it states that products must contain sufficient supplier information to allow USDA to traceback the product to the supplier initiating the claim. Its Food Safety and Country of Origin together.

nenmrancher, you are right but without NAIS regs as COOL can't use a mandatory government tracking system.

 

[PORKER]

Lettuce Leads to E. Coli Outbreak

Last Update: 11:10 am

(WXYZ) Michigan health officials might be closing in on the source of an E. coli outbreak that sicked 26 people.

The Department of Community Health issued a public health alert yesterday as a precaution. It says the recent E. coli illnesses are thought to be associated with bagged, industrial-sized packages of iceberg lettuce sold to restaurants and institutions.
<br><br>
Some of the people who got sick ate lettuce supplied by Detroit-based Aunt Mid's Produce Company. There is no evidence that bagged lettuce sold at grocery stores is affected.
Some of the E. coli cases occurring this month are at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and the Lenawee County Jail.

Lansing – As a precautionary measure, the Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) is issuing a public health alert due to illnesses from the 26 cases of E. coli strain O157:H7 that are thought to be associated with bagged, industrial-sized packages of iceberg lettuce sold through wholesale venues to restaurants and institutions.

There is no evidence that the bagged lettuce at grocery stores is affected.

Some of the 26 Michigan cases consumed shredded or chopped iceberg lettuce in restaurants or institutions purchased from Aunt Mid's Produce Company, a Detroit-based wholesale distributor; and other distributing outlets could be identified. Product trace back and additional tests results are still in progress.

"Our top priority at the Michigan Department of Community Health is to protect the public," said Dr. Gregory Holzman, chief medical executive for MDCH. "We appreciate all of the assistance from Aunt Mid's. They have been very helpful in this investigation. We want to ensure that the public's health and well-being is protected. Even though the investigation is ongoing, available evidence is strongly pointing to iceberg lettuce."

The 26 genetically linked cases are present in eight Michigan counties including seven at Michigan State University (Ingham County), five inmates at the Lenawee County Jail, three students at the University of Michigan (Washtenaw County), four in Macomb County, three each in Wayne, two in Kent counties, and one each in St. Clair and Oakland counties. Of the E. coli O157:H7 cases that are genetically linked, 10 have been hospitalized. These linked cases range in age from
11 to 81 years old. Symptoms of these confirmed genetically linked E. coli patients began on Sept. 8. More confirmed cases could surface as the investigation continues.

The symptoms of E. coli O157:H7 may include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody), and vomiting. If there is fever, it usually is not very high (less than 101˚F/less than 38.5˚C). Most people get better within 5–7 days. Some infections are very mild, but others are severe or even life-threatening.

In connection with the E. coli outbreak, Detroit based produce company Aunt Mid's released this statement:


Friday, September 26, 2008

The Michigan Department of Community Health has recently issued a public health alert in connection with 26 cases in Michigan of e coli contamination related to iceberg lettuce. The health alert has identified Aunt Mid's as one of the wholesale processors who sold institutional-sized iceberg lettuce product to the establishments which served the affected persons. It is expected that other wholesale suppliers will also be identified as and when product traceback measures are finalized.

Aunt Mid's is cooperating fully with the State's efforts to actually identify the source of contamination and has already voluntarily initiated testing procedures by an independent laboratory of its processing facility and processing methods. The initial test results have indicated no contamination and Aunt Mid's is conducting ongoing testing to confirm those initial results.

Once those testing procedures are completed, Aunt Mid's will provide an update of the results. In the meantime, Aunt Mid's is voluntarily suspending any processing and sale of its iceberg lettuce product line.

 

[PORKER]

Could Traceback stop this ?

We know a fair amount about Clostridium difficile in the health-care environment, and we know it has been found on meat and in livestock, but there are a lot of dots and pieces between these facts that are still blank." She noted that studies have found similar strains of C. diff – "some of them indistinguishable from each other" – in humans and food animals, but the microbiologist, who has worked and published with Dr. Songer and who attended this week's meeting, quickly added: "While it's very interesting that Clostridium difficile has been found in meat, there's no evidence that it's foodborne. To the best of our knowledge, it's not a foodborne disease."

There is some urgency, though, to filling in the blank spaces. In recent years an especially virulent strain of the pathogen, which is thought to be responsible for thousands of deaths, mostly among the elderly, in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain, has taken up residence in the health-care environment. Severe infections result in colitis and extreme abdominal pain. Moreover, treatment with antibiotics, which disrupt the natural flora of the gastrointestinal system, can actually make matters worse by causing an overgrowth of C. difficile cells.

Dr. Songer's testing for C. diff in retail meats in Arizona found up to 40 percent positives of the new strain in products made from ground meat, including sausages such as chorizo and braunschweiger. Dr. Weese's work in Canada revealed a lesser level of positives, 18 percent, and none of them were the virulent strain. Both Songer and Weese have found C. diff in cattle and hogs. However, there's the possibility, Weese told MEATPOULTRY.com, that the pathogen, which other studies have shown to be almost ubiquitous in the natural environment, simply uses meat and livestock as a means of transportation without necessarily causing any ill-effects.

CDC's Dr. Limbago, who will address a meeting of animal scientists in March of this year on the topic of C. difficile, says the best attitude for the meat industry to take with regard to the pathogen is concern. "What we know is that it's pretty much everywhere," she said. Human-to-human contact has already been proven to be an effective vector for C. diff, which is why it's such a problem in health care. "What we can't say yet for certain is that we know the reasons for C. difficile's presence in food and meat."

 

[PORKER]

Study shows crops absorb antibiotics from livestock
Officials worry that antibiotic-laced meats, veggies, and milk can potentially create resistant strains of bacteria in food and the environment.


By PlentyMag.com
Mon, Mar 09 2009 at 3:04 PM EST
Read more: FARMING & AGRICULTURE



Environmentalists and health-conscious consumers are always voicing their worries about antibiotics in meat and milk. But now these folks have even more reason to be concerned: A new study shows that antibiotics can also show up in crops like corn, lettuce, potatoes, and onions.

Unlike the European Union, which banned the use of antibiotics in animal feed in 2006, US farmers frequently feed their pigs, cattle, and chickens antibiotics in order to fend off infections and disease. When manure from these animals is used to fertilize plants, the crops themselves can absorb antibiotics excreted by livestock.

From Environmental Health News:

"Minnesota researchers planted corn, green onion, and cabbage in manure-treated soil in 2005 to evaluate the environmental impacts of feeding antibiotics to livestock. Six weeks later, the crops were analyzed and found to absorb chlortetracycline, a drug widely used to treat diseases in livestock. In another study in 2007, corn, lettuce and potato were planted in soil treated with liquid hog manure. They, too accumulated concentrations of an antibiotic, named Sulfamethazine, also commonly used in livestock.

As the amount of antibiotics in the soil increased, so too did the levels taken up by the corn, potatoes and other plants.

'Around 90 percent of these drugs that are administered to animals end up being excreted either as urine or manure,' said Holly Dolliver, a member of the Minnesota research team and now a professor of crop and soil sciences at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. 'A vast majority of that manure is then used as an important input for 9.2 million hectares of (US) agricultural land.'"

Although the health implications from antibiotics in foods we eat haven't been proven, officials worry that antibiotic-laced meats, veggies, and milk can create resistant strains of bacteria in food and the environment. Once resistant strains develop, it can reduce the effectiveness of human antibiotics. Some scientists also attribute antibiotics to the rise in rates of childhood allergies and asthma.

And if you think eating organic means you'll avoid drug-laden foods, think again: Although antibiotics are banned from meat and milk that's certified organic, manure isn't regulated, so antibiotics could end up in organic crops, especially leafy greens and root vegetables.

This study highlights yet another flaw in the organic labeling system: It wasn't until recently that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) closed a loophole in organic milk regulations and required farmers to put their cows out to pasture where they could eat fresh grass. Before that, many cows were indoors in large feedlots. And in November, the USDA cleared the way to label some farmed fish as organic, a move that angered environmentalists, who argued that the concept of farmed fish goes against the ideals of the organic movement.

These are all issues Tom Vilsack will face as head of the USDA. Whether or not Vilsack will beef up organic standards—and whether that's even a part of his agenda—remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared in "Plenty" in January 2009.

Copyright Environ Press 2009

 

[CattleCo]

WASHINGTON - The food industry must drop any remaining opposition to electronic record-keeping and back an effective system for tracing contaminated food to its source, a lawmaker investigating food safety said Friday.

"It is my hope that the food industry will drop its opposition to these commonsense safeguards and move forward with implementation," said Rep. Bart Stupak, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative subcommittee.
Porker, you have only your self interest at heart!
The real reason we will have trace back is pure political. We have a Muslim, Socialist as President, with a democrat conress and senate that are totally brain dead!. They want ID so they can tax the food animal industry even more. As for individual ID that is BS. All they need is a metal tag in the ear that ID's the premise of origin. We have "bleeped" away more money on this individual ID BS!! Individual ID is total BS as for trace back. This whole food animal thing is going to South America anyway so why are we hangin on? We have a President and Congress that have no idea this country was built on sound AG Principles.....were screwed! :roll:

 

[Anonymous]

WASHINGTON - The food industry must drop any remaining opposition to electronic record-keeping and back an effective system for tracing contaminated food to its source, a lawmaker investigating food safety said Friday.

"It is my hope that the food industry will drop its opposition to these commonsense safeguards and move forward with implementation," said Rep. Bart Stupak, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's investigative subcommittee.
Porker, you have only your self interest at heart!
The real reason we will have trace back is pure political. We have a Muslim, Socialist as President, with a democrat conress and senate that are totally brain dead!. They want ID so they can tax the food animal industry even more. As for individual ID that is BS. All they need is a metal tag in the ear that ID's the premise of origin. We have "bleeped" away more money on this individual ID BS!! Individual ID is total BS as for trace back. This whole food animal thing is going to South America anyway so why are we hangin on? We have a President and Congress that have no idea this country was built on sound AG Principles.....were screwed! :roll:

HMMMMM- I seem to remember it was a USDA several years ago that came up with this idea- and put out their timeline- and tried to mandate it- along with working with NCBA who was trying to profiteer by getting a monopoly on the national data base---- until the people raised such an uproar- that NCBA fell back to just taking a partnership with a tag company to profiteer off the producers - and USDA started calling it "voluntary" while coming out with more situations daily that it was mandated for..... The handwriting that Mandatory ID and traceback was here and not going away has been clear for years....

GEE--I didn't know that Obama had so much influence that he was making Bush's policy 8 years ago too :???: :wink: :lol:

 

[PORKER]

National Animal Identification System Under Review by House Agriculture Committee



Hearing will examine progress made by the program.
(3/10/2009)
Jason Vance


On Wednesday the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry will hold a public hearing the National Animal Identification System. USDA has received over $100 million dollars since the program was formed in 2004 and the purpose of the hearing is to see what USDA has done with that money and what they have gotten in return. A senior aide to the House Ag Committee says it will be a general overview looking at how many premises have been registered and if there has been an improvement in the prospect of trace back in the event of a disease outbreak.
Formed in 2004, NAIS was a voluntary program that then-Ag Secretary Ann Veneman proposed move toward a mandatory program. When former Ag Secretary Mike Johanns took office in 2005 he favored keeping it a voluntary program. House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has been a stronger proponent of making the program mandatory, because that is what other industrialized nations involved in animal agriculture engage in.
According to the aide, Peterson has said reviewing the program is one of the Agriculture Committee's top priorities this year and several public hearings will be held on the topic. Although a witness list has not yet been released; in addition to the USDA program manager, the aide expects testimony will be given by livestock industry groups, representatives of states that have mandatory identification programs, and possibly animal health experts.
"It is something the chairman has wanted to look into for awhile, but he said openly over the past couple of years that he had given up on working with the Bush Administration on this and he was going to wait for new people to come in," the aide said. "Although they are still staffing up a lot of the key positions at USDA, he thinks the time is right to at least start a review of what the program has done to this point and how it needs to be changed."

 

[CattleCo]

Hearing will examine progress made by the program.
(3/10/2009)
Jason Vance


On Wednesday the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry will hold a public hearing the National Animal Identification System. USDA has received over $100 million dollars since the program was formed in 2004 and the purpose of the hearing is to see what USDA has done with that money and what they have gotten in return. A senior aide to the House Ag Committee says it will be a general overview looking at how many premises have been registered and if there has been an improvement in the prospect of trace back in the event of a disease outbreak.
Formed in 2004, NAIS was a voluntary program that then-Ag Secretary Ann Veneman proposed move toward a mandatory program. When former Ag Secretary Mike Johanns took office in 2005 he favored keeping it a voluntary program. House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn., has been a stronger proponent of making the program mandatory, because that is what other industrialized nations involved in animal agriculture engage in.
According to the aide, Peterson has said reviewing the program is one of the Agriculture Committee's top priorities this year and several public hearings will be held on the topic. Although a witness list has not yet been released; in addition to the USDA program manager, the aide expects testimony will be given by livestock industry groups, representatives of states that have mandatory identification programs, and possibly animal health experts.
"It is something the chairman has wanted to look into for awhile, but he said openly over the past couple of years that he had given up on working with the Bush Administration on this and he was going to wait for new people to come in," the aide said. "Although they are still staffing up a lot of the key positions at USDA, he thinks the time is right to at least start a review of what the program has done to this point and how it needs to be changed."

Good information Porker.......what happened to ALL the public hearings we had in the past???? We have beaten this ID thing like a rented mule! Unfortunatley, we will have ID of some shape and form. It will create a few jobs for those that have not a clue about food animal agriculture and put more pressure on state vets, brand inspectors, etc. It is all going to Brazil or a large portion of it. Deal with it! We have exported most or all our other industries..............do you think Production Agriculture will be any different? I hope I am WRONG, but look at the past! :roll:

 

[Tex]

I'm not going to comment on whether live animal traceback is adequately handled currently or not, but you should know that traceback is a much larger issue in the overall food safety area. Food safety and traceback as one part of preventing food-borne illnesses is getting more attention.

ISSUE IN-DEPTH: FOOD SAFETY: Broken system demands inspectors, standards

By Ken Foskett

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sunday, March 01, 2009

Americans eat food imported from 150 foreign countries and processed in 189,000 plants scattered from China to Fiji.

In 2007, the Food and Drug Administration inspected 96 of those plants.

Here in the United States, FDA inspectors visit every food processor about once every 10 years, a record that makes its recent inspection of the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely something of a coup.

The FDA had last been to Blakely in 2001; when it returned in January in response to a crisis, it found salmonella on plant surfaces, peanuts stored under water leaks, dead roaches and unidentified "slimy, black-brown residue." By that time, authorities had already identified the Peanut Corp. plant as the likely source of salmonella-contaminated peanut butter that so far has killed nine Americans and sickened more than 660.

The FDA's inspection record underscores the need for more regular, comprehensive food inspections. But it also speaks to the importance of prevention and transparency, not crisis management, in protecting the safety of our food supply.

An efficient safety network prevents contamination before food products are shipped to schools, senior centers and grocery stores. An efficient system also tracks illness outbreaks quickly and recalls tainted products with equal speed.

Today, the U.S. food-safety network does not meet those standards, and Americans are literally dying as a result.

Lou Tousignant's father, a decorated Korean War veteran, died in a nursing home after eating contaminated peanut butter from Georgia.

"How can we live in the United States of America where a man literally gave his blood, sweat and tears for his country?" his son asked U.S. House members this month. "How can we live in a country that … let him down?"

The breakdowns at Peanut Corp.'s Georgia plant illustrate the failures of an entire system. The plant's food-safety protocol, drafted by the company, was so haphazard that the equipment used to make peanut butter wasn't cleaned even after company tests found salmonella.

Company officials repeatedly shipped peanuts that they knew were contaminated by salmonella and didn't tell anyone. Under the law, they didn't have to.

Once shipped, the contaminated peanuts circulated for weeks before regulators could identify products implicated, a list now numbering 2,100 and growing. Ultimately, FDA inspectors had to invoke bioterrorism laws to gain access to Peanut Corp.'s records, and under the law it had to ask the company's permission to seek a recall of its tainted products.

No other industry, especially one that so directly affects health and wellness, operates under so many voluntary safety standards. Apart from basic sanitary procedures, FDA safety standards for most food products are voluntary, the result of food companies demanding the flexibility to pick and choose protocols that work best for them.

The fallacy of this argument, as the Peanut Corp. fiasco clearly shows, is that some companies will pick and choose to do nothing at all.

In the past, the food industry has fended off calls for tougher mandatory standards by arguing that it's unfair to penalize the good players because of the mistakes of the bad.

But many good companies have been seriously harmed by the Peanut Corp. scandal. For those firms that used Peanut Corp. products and counted on the company to ensure safety —- companies such as Kellogg, the maker of Keebler cookies, and Publix, which used Peanut Corp. products for its store-brand snack bars —- that damage is direct. For the peanut industry as a whole, the damage to public confidence in its product is indirect but no doubt longer-lasting.

Congress must give the FDA the authority to mandate uniform safety standards for all types of food. In certain industries, the FDA must also go a step further and require companies to implement HACCP protocols for high-risk foods.

HACCP, or Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, is a proven safety protocol that requires processors to analyze potential contamination risks, develop a safety plan and regularly document how its processes are working, including periodic testing.

As Georgia and FDA regulators point out, inspections show only how safely a plant is operating on the inspection day. HACCP procedures generate regular reports on how equipment is functioning —- is the peanut roaster hot enough to kill germs, for example. Inspectors can then review those documents for the preceding six months, giving them a peek into plant operations over the long haul, not just that day.

At a minimum, the FDA should require HACCP procedures for fresh produce, which accounts for the greatest number of food-borne illnesses behind seafood.

The FDA must also step up efforts to trace food, particularly raw foods such as peanuts and produce that get blended in the food supply and become difficult to trace back to their point of origin.

Even though the list of brands contaminated by Peanut Corp. peanuts is now widely known, for example, regulators can't say with certainty that all of them have been taken off shelves. We bar-code meats; why not peanut lots and lettuce?

Congress also needs to give the FDA more money for inspectors. In the 1970s, the FDA inspected 35,000 plants a year, each one about every other year. Today, with staff reductions and more facilities to monitor, it gets to each plant every decade or so.

The FDA also counts heavily on 30,000 inspectors working for state and local governments, whose qualifications vary widely. To address the training gap, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is launching a National Food Protection Center in Michigan to offer the same type of career-spanning training that peace officers receive at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. Congress should support such initiatives.

In Georgia, quick action is needed on Senate legislation requiring food processors to test their products regularly and notify regulators immediately when "finished" food products test positive for a contaminant. Processors can follow a testing regimen mandated by the state or submit their own food-safety plan for state approval.

However, it's uncertain how long it would take agriculture officials to approve thousands of new food safety plans or where the agency will get the resources to do it.

As they address those and similar questions, members of Congress and the state Legislature should reread Lou Tousignant's congressional testimony about his father, reprinted below. No nation should fail its citizens the way the United States failed his father.

Reader, I agree there needs to be trace back for diseases. The question is not whether there is a trace back system, but whether the industries that control our agriculture (the bottlenecks) will be allowed to use the trace back systems for their own purposes.

Already I have read reports where the Poultry Working Group recommended that big companies like Tyson would be allowed one premise ID to trace back their large lots of chickens while making small producers put individual tags on their chickens.

This is not about trace back, but about controlling the food supply and giving competitive advantages to large producers while straddling the small ones with costs like tagging each individual chickens. The same could be done for pigs and cattle in their own individual methods.

All poultry in these big processing plants is already identified to the plant by their trailer load numbers from the farm. The USDA already does not check out the disease problems when it is brought to their attention if it interferes with their large agribusiness clients.

Trace back is not the issue. It can already be done if the Feds will just watch the borders and require paperwork on sellers, which already happens. It is about controlling the food supply in the name of "trace back" or other worthy sounding goals. We already have an agriculture department that thinks that big agriculture is their client. Giving them more power over the economics of production when they can't handle the issues that are there now is just plain stupid and falls into the goals of big Ag. controlling agriculture even more.

It is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

 

[Tex]

Thank Tex. Of the appointees, I felt that Vilsack was more big business oriented, but we'll see. The problem as you know is that the food safety advocates are well intentioned but may not understand the big picture. What do you think about Vilsack's deputy?

I think she was a better pick than Vilsack but I don't know a whole lot about her. She does have some of the right groups behind her but she will need much more support from other appointees to change the USDA's poor groupthink decisions that were pro big biz and not pro diversified agriculture they have made in the last 8 years. We will know when she actually has some policy decisions. The dept. is big and the little big biz cronies in the dept. that have to be dealt with are entrenched.

 

[PORKER]

Don't hear much from the NCBA ers' that had offices in Washington.

 

[flounder]

i don't understand the big deal about traceability $

everything we have is traceable, from your car, your boat, guns, t.v., land, your phones are tapped at will, what's the big deal about a cow ?

if it will sell more cows, then why not ?

i don't understand. ...tss

 

[Anonymous]

i don't understand the big deal about traceability $

everything we have is traceable, from your car, your boat, guns, t.v., land, your phones are tapped at will, what's the big deal about a cow ?

if it will sell more cows, then why not ?

i don't understand. ...tss

The system/technology they currently have is not technologichally workable under normal commerce/marketing situations for some areas of the country- especially in areas of severe weather extremes- and can/will be a major product/equipment/labor cost for many producers/markets while the industry/packers/buyers/markets have not put up the money to balance that cost/capital outlay cost off.....

 

[Tex]

i don't understand the big deal about traceability $

everything we have is traceable, from your car, your boat, guns, t.v., land, your phones are tapped at will, what's the big deal about a cow ?

if it will sell more cows, then why not ?

i don't understand. ...tss

flounder, it is the extra money and cost that can be imposed to on the meats industry to get the "little" guys out and concentrate the industry into the hands of the few instead of having a competitive market, not traceback.

As you said, you can trace animals back already. Why give the govt. biz cronies the ability to concentrate the industry for themselves with the help of govt. policy with this excuse?

 

[PORKER]

ScoringAG Becomes One Strategic Alliance Partner in BaxTek Solutions' Food Traceability Campaign
Published on: April 17th, 2009 12:04am by: trcutler


(OPENPRESS) April 17, 2009 -- Wayne Baxter, President of the firm noted, "BaxTek Solutions offers complete "Farm to Fork" traceability answers: from monitoring irrigated fields where livestock feed; to continuous monitoring of product through processing to finished goods; to monitoring ambient product temperature during transport to the consumer market. BaxTek Solutions has formed a Strategic Alliance of seasoned professionals in the dairy, grain, meat, and vegetable food production industries. Our group can guide your operation to full regulatory compliance, including HACCP/SSOP Procedures, the FDA Bioterrorism Act and COOL Labeling Requirements. One of these strategic alliance partners is ScoringAG."

BaxTek Solutions represents all the major Auto ID Hardware and Printer Manufacturers. Our diverse suite of products also includes RFID Readers, RF Terminals, Asset Tagging and Location Media, Barcode Labels and Printing Ribbons, OSHA Signage and more.

BaxTek Solutions provides the trace-up and trace-back information for any product in the supply chain and ensures continuous compliance, attribute tracking, and in the event of one, provide recall management to minimize cost and brand damage.

BaxTek Solutions is one of the leading Systems Integrators in the barcode verification, data collection, and supply chain industry that offers a diverse suite of products including RFID, RF Terminals, Printers, Wireless Access Points, Software, Remote Portable Terminal and Printer Management and Repair Services. The company specializes in traceability and tracking solutions for the food industry from "farm to fork."

BaxTek Solutions represents all major Auto ID hardware manufactures (including LXE, Zebra, Motorola, Datamax, Intermec, Vocollect, Alien, Cisco, Unitech, Datalogic, Honeywell, and Sato.) Software solutions include Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), asset tracking, inventory tracking, custom, and mobile applications such as, DSD (direct store delivery) and field service. BaxTek Solutions' diverse customer base includes manufacturers, distributors, as well as firms involved in logistics, mobility, and government projects. BaxTek Solutions' team of project managers and engineers take a partnership approach to every project, achieving a rapid return on investment for clients.

BaxTek Solutions
www.baxtek.com
Tina Nagaitis
Marketing Manager
[email protected]
866 722 9835

 

[burnt]

Are there any Canadians who have a problem with the traceability system that has been set up in Canada? It is hard to overlook the apparent paranoia that inevitably accompanies the standard American protest to source identification.

Why wouldn't the American producers take a proactive stance and establish their own traceability system instead of doing nothing about it and then stubbornly dragging their feet while resisting the government's determined push to put it in place?

It would seem to me that you would be better off in taking control of the situation rather than doing nothing and then screaming bloody murder (and sedition!) when you are forced, unwilling, into the inevitable.

 

[MoGal]

I suspect the reason most Canadians don't mind traceback is because most of them DO NOT own their land, as they rent it from the government. They already have a "premise" .......... this is an interesting link.... says the Queen Elizabeth II owns ALL of canada.

http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/new_world_order/news.php?q=1239065933

he value of her land holding. £17,600,000,000,000 (approx).

This makes her the richest individual on earth. However, there is no way easily to value her real estate. There is no current market in the land of entire countries. At a rough estimate of $5,000 an acre, and based on the sale of Alaska to the USA by the Tsar, and of Louisiana to the USA by France, the Queen's land holding is worth a notional $33,000,000,000,000 (Thirty three trillion dollars or about £17,600,000,000,000). Her holding is based on the laws of the countries she owns and her land title is valid in all the countries she owns. Her main holdings are Canada, the 2nd largest country on earth, with 2,467 million acres, Australia, the 7th largest country on earth with 1,900 million acres, the Papua New Guinea with114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres and the UK with 60 million acres.

She is the world's largest landowner by a significant margin. The next largest landowner is the Russian state, with an overall ownership of 4,219 million acres, and a direct ownership comparable with the Queen's land holding of 2,447 million acres. The 3rd largest landowner is the Chinese state, which claims all of Chinese land, about 2,365 million acres. The 4th largest landowner on earth is the Federal Government of the United States, which owns about one third of the land of the USA, 760 million acres. The fifth largest landowner on earth is the King of Saudi Arabia with 553 million acres

 

[burnt]

What a crock of bull!