Feds Shut Down Organic Peanut Processing Plant; First Case Under Food Safety Modernization Act

Concerns recently cited by WMD Center Director Randall Larsen concerning the vulnerability of peanut processing plants have turned out to be eerily prophetic. As of yesterday, the FDA shut down a large organic peanut processing plant in New Mexico, citing health concerns.

But it wasn’t the terrorists which hit the Sunland peanut processing plant. According to the FDA, the plant had sloppy health practices which resulted in eleven batches over a twelve-year time span testing positive for salmonella. A recent outbreak of Salmonella Bredeney, which reportedly sickened 41 people across 20 states was linked to the peanut butter processed at the Sunland facility, states the FDA.

The FDA website reports:

This was the FDA’s first use of its registration suspension authority, under the Food Safety Modernization Act. This new authority enables the agency to take this action when food manufactured, processed, packed, received, or held by a facility has a reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, and other conditions are met. (Source)

One wonders, however, at the selectivity of the FDA in its choices of targets. For example, the pharmaceutical company Baxter last year recalled 300,000 doses of Preflucel influenza vaccine due to what it says is an excessive number of adverse events.

This was not the first problem with Baxter, however. According to LifeGen.de:

Baxter International Inc. in Austria ‘unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease’. Austria, Germany, Slovenia and the Czech Republic – these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic. (Source)

Baxter is not the only pharmaceutical company which has come under scrutiny. Concerns have emerged about the safety of AIDS vaccines developed by Aventis Pasteur as well as by the flagship for Big Pharma, Bayer. It was Bayer which also came under scrutiny for selling an AIDS-infected drug to several countries after it already had been banned in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

In their curious tendency for selective myopia, the feds keep finding ways to shut down organic enterprises, raiding food co-ops and raw milk distributors, while averting their eyes from the major corporate pharmaceutical companies. This selectivity encompasses natural medicine as well as natural foods.

The passage of ‘Obamacare’ resulted in a surgical removal of natural cures from its list of covered treatments. And on November 21, the FDA granted approval for yet another Baxter vaccine:

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/NewsEvents/ucm130961.html

So while those in power obsess about peanuts, I have another proposition:

Could our watchdog agencies shift their meticulous attention to the military/industrial/pharmaceutical complex and investigate how our medicine is being weaponized?

Now, that would be a raid worthy of the size and scope of our law enforcement agencies.

Janet Phelan is an investigative journalist whose articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, The San Bernardino County Sentinel, The Santa Monica Daily Press, The Long Beach Press Telegram, Oui Magazine and other regional and national publications. Janet specializes in issues pertaining to legal corruption and addresses the heated subject of adult conservatorship, revealing shocking information about the relationships between courts and shady financial consultants. She also covers issues relating to international bioweapons treaties. Her poetry has been published in Gambit, Libera, Applezaba Review, Nausea One and other magazines. Her first book, The Hitler Poems, was published in 2005. She currently resides abroad. You may browse through her articles (and poetry) at janetphelan.com