Saturday, January 24, 2009

Good Morning, this frigid Saturday.  It isn't as bad as it has been.  Our temps did not go as low as the weather people forecast.  I got out to the library Thursday and saw numerous little mountains of snow everywhere.  Those will be with us well into Spring unless we get a long string of 60+ days.  Hope we don't because the flooding will be something else again.  A slow melt would be so much better but I am not taking any bets on what we will get.  Weird weather has been a by word for the better part of the last two decades.

The list of peanut containing products under recall keeps growing.  According to MSNBC this morning some 125 products are now listed, including some dog food.  I, for one, find the amount mind boggling--31 million pounds.  And according to the article the company, Peanut Corp., isn't one of the industry giants.  More evidence, as if we needed it, of the dis-economies of scale.  Before anyone realizes there is a problem it has spread to every corner of the country.  I wonder how many breathed a sigh of relief when the problem of melamine-tainted products was limited to pet food or to products only sold for human consumption in Asia?  I don't think we had all that much to be relieved about.

Barefoot In The Garden has an interesting and funny comment on our current situation.  Obama inherited something already so broken he can't do any more damage to it.  In spite of all of the dyed-in-the-wool conservative Republicans bleating about free markets and small government (where HAVE they been over the last eight years?),  there is little system left to conserve.  The situation can get worse thanks to the momentum of events created by those same free market conservatives who forgot that greed is one of the seven deadly sins.


2 comments:

donna said...

The salmonella problem has been growing along with the growth of these mega farms and factory farms. Remember when you were a kid and liked the cookie dough or cake batter right out of the bowl? Nobody worried about this stuff then.

I'm fairly certain this outbreak traces back to a Tyson or Purdue chicken factory farm releasing salmonella into the ground water where the peanuts are grown or tainted chicken manure being used as fertilizer. May not ever be shown or proved, this problem being in Georgia, but it would be my guess.

I don't buy Tyson or Smithfield products because of things like this. I wish others would understand the problems in buying mass-produced factory farmed products. I hope this creates some awareness, but doubt it will.

Kay Dennison said...

Well said! Been meaning to ask you how you stand MSNBC. They get on the nerve that Fox new -- the comedy division of the media -- doesn't.