House Passes Pork and Tainted Spinach Bill

Of course supporting Democrats and left leaning outlets are focusing on the timetable angle for troops exiting Iraq - yet few are mentioning the pork associated - namely $25 million for E Coli spinach farmers from California to recoup their losses.

And just over an hour ago - additional reports and information have traced the source, once again - to a specific California grower found here:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1602390,00.html?xid=rss-nation

For those not familiar with the E Coli issue, though over 5 outbreaks occurred last year alone that actually made the news - the FDA asks for "voluntary" food safety measures to be put into place , not mandatory concerning vegetables. I won't even go into the gory details of how unaccountable the meat industry is, who also do not have mandatory laws for point of origin producer's.

But as I mentioned in yesterday's post - California farmers will be rewarded with up to $25 million to recoup their losses. I am no lawyer - but isn't that the exact opposite of what we would expect from our elected officials? To actually hold them accountable for the safety of our food supply?

Rep. Sam Farr (D - Cal) is another culprit in the tainted spinach farmer "lotto". He represents one of the largest food producing regions in California, known as the "salad bowl" and was interviewed earlier by one of the few media outlets willing to uncover the pork laden bill - CNN's Joe John's, in a video found here: http://www.cnn.com/video/player/player.html?url=/video/politics/2007/03/23/johns.iraq.pork.bill.cnn

Rep. Farr expresses the need as an "emergency relief" to these farmers and states they have "no recourse, no commodities support for them and no insurance". Wow.

Republican Oregon activist, Darryl Howard, is interviewed and tells the story of his mother dying from tainted E Coli spinach and in my opinion is exactly right when he is shocked that these farmers are being rewarded. Three people died and over 200 were sickened from tainted E Coli spinach.

It's clear House Speaker Pelosi, along with Rep. Farr and others are more concerned with pet projects in their back yard, regardless of the promises to "end pork expenditures", upon swearing the new Congress in on Jan. 4 2007. And it is clear they do not want to hold those accountable for killing people.

Hypocrite's with no conscience. Politics as usual. And we shouldn't allow it.