Panel challenges Gulf seafood safety all-clear

[cal04]

Source: MSNBC

'It is unethical to experiment with the health of the U.S. population or military members,' toxicologist says

A New Orleans law firm is challenging government assurances that Gulf Coast seafood is safe to eat in the wake of the BP oil spill, saying it poses “a significant danger to public health.”

It’s a high-stakes tug-of-war that will almost certainly end up in the courts, with two armies of scientists arguing over technical findings that could have real-world impact for seafood consumers and producers.

Citing what the law firm calls a state-of-the-art laboratory analysis, toxicologists, chemists and marine biologists retained by the firm of environmental attorney Stuart Smith contend that the government seafood testing program, which has focused on ensuring the seafood was free of the cancer-causing components of crude oil, has overlooked other harmful elements. And they say that their own testing — examining fewer samples but more comprehensively — shows high levels of hydrocarbons from the BP spill that are associated with liver damage.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40494122/ns/us_news-environment/

[Blacksheep214]

1. Trust Us!

When these reliable sources are shown having a family banquet ala Thanksgiving with Gulf seafood, then maybe I will believe them. Show us your babies and children being fed the food you call safe.

Hell, you can't even guarantee lettuce and spinach much less something which has ingested complex hydrocarbons.

Eat up! :puke:

[social_critic]

2. Ambulance Chasers

They geared up to take a bite out of the $20 billion fund set up by BP. Bought their scientists, and are now using the media to create momentum. The colateral damage will be caused to the communities of fishermen and people who work in seafood restaurants. This is why Shakespeare said "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". :-)

[drm604]

18. That's not why Shakespeare said that.

The line "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" is from King Henry VI and is spoken during a conversation by two villains who are describing what to them would be a perfect world.

You're willing to blindly accept the pronouncements of the government as to the safety of that seafood? If there is legitimate disagreement as to the science then it's needs to be argued out. What Shakespeare did or didn't say and what he did or didn't mean by it isn't really relevant.

Are you comfortable with ignoring those tests that show high levels of damaging hydrocarbons? Shouldn't this be looked at closer and shouldn't these studies be replicated by some neutral third party?

Are you willing to feed that seafood to your children?

[social_critic]

34. First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers

It's still a pretty good line, isn't it?

I haven't seen the tests which show high levels of damaging hydrocarbons. I do know the post was given a title with a misleading line "Panel". There was no panel. A law firm hired people to perform tests, and their intent is clear, to show that food is tainted so they can sue somebody. It is possible this firm is also financed by Republican agents who want to undermine the Obama administration.

The statement isn't issued by a "panel", it is issued by Attorney Stuart H. Smith, Smith Stag LLC, representing the United Commercial Fishermen’s Association, the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, and other commercial, governmental and non-profit entities in states along the Gulf Coast. In other words, the guy has a lot of skin in this game - it's in his interest to show the food is tainted so he can collect - I bet he has an agreement with clients to collect up to 30 % of plaintiff's gains.

[TheEuclideanOne]

36. Can I send some seafood to you and your family?

For somebody who tries to speak with authority, you sure do have alot of unknowns in your post...."I haven't seen the tests"...."I bet he has an agreement"

Why don't you and your family enjoy a nice dinner with me. I will fly down there, make a detour to this laboratory and pick up some seafood, and stop by your house to cook some nice Gulf seafood. Mmmmmm. None for me, please, I will just watch. Is it a date?

[Kermitt Gribble]

39. So anytime the seafood is tested with negative results

it must be financed by republicans with the intent to "undermine" the Obama administration? How convenient... Who cares if people are eating poison as long as the Obama administration doesn't look bad, right?

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Downwinder]

4. The Government is so good about taking care of those

harmed by their actions.

:sarcasm:

[liberalmike27]

16. It's just an extension of our Corporate Fascism

Keeping the status quo, business as usual, is far more important than the safety of our population. Hell, if they managed to kill off a few of us, so much the better.

If there is one thing we know, it is to not trust our government, and to make decisions for ourselves as to what is dangerous or not. The same thing goes for jobs, as sometimes our bosses ask us to do things that are far too dangerous, with improper equipment. The only person who watches out for you in life is you, and you are more important than any job. If you're dead you can't be unemployed.

[Vinca]

3. While I sympathize greatly with the shrimpers and fishermen of the Gulf,

there is no way I would eat their seafood . . . tests or no tests. Mother Nature is a wonderful force, but she doesn't repair damage like what was done in a matter of months.

[FedUpWithIt All]

12. Truth is, the fisherment, themselves, have been loudest opponents of selling contaminated seafood

Gulf seafood is declared safe to eat; fishermen aren't so sure
Monday, August 02, 2010
http://www.syracuse.com/have-you-heard/index.ssf/2010/08/gulf_seafood_is_declared_safe.html

Gulf Fisherman Refusing to Fish
Oil, Dispersant Toxicity Concern Fisherman, Shrimpers
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
http://www.greenchipstocks.com/articles/gulf-fisherman-refusing-to-fish/1079

Fisherman worried Gulf seafood is not safe to eat
September 22, 2010
http://www.wlox.com/Global/story.asp?S=13185468

Is the Gulf of Mexico safe?
Experts, fishermen and residents disagree with federal agencies' claims that the Gulf and its seafood are safe.
November 5, 2010

Emphasis my own.

Karen Hopkins, who works for the seafood distributor Dean Blanchard Seafood, in Grand Isle, Louisiana, told Al Jazeera: "I will never again eat any seafood that comes from the Gulf of Mexico."

Clifford Troxler, also from Louisiana, worked in the seafood distribution business for 25 years, and told Al Jazeera: "You couldn’t force feed me a shrimp from the Gulf."

Hopkins is also concerned about what she sees as an attempt by the federal government to shift responsibility of seafood safety "away from BP and the feds and placing it square on the shoulders of fishermen and distributors".

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/11/201011465847225269.html

[fatbuckel]

15. I`m done with seafood.

[MadLinguist]

20. thank you, FedUp, for posting those links!

I have had lots of conversations with people in South East Louisiana who are furious at the "all clear" signal, precisely because they are terrified that it is going to boomerang back on them. It is a horrible situation to be in. But it is nice to see these objections publicaly made and documentable.

[FedUpWithIt All]

40. Sure.

:hi:

[no_hypocrisy]

5. And * EPA head Christie Todd Whitman said the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe.

Sure . . . . .

[Downwinder]

6. According to the AEC (now DOE), radiation from the NV bomb testing

was not hazardous.

[tavalon]

8. As a fellow downwinder

I share your healthy skepticism. Many of the downwinders don't anymore, though. But they're dead, so I don't think we need to poll them.

[Downwinder]

9. Some of them are detailed in Carol Gallagher's book:

"American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War."

An excellent read on the subject.

[tavalon]

10. It might be more of an excellent read if I didn't worry about whether I was going to

lose the nuclear health lottery. I realized a few years ago that it might just have been a blessing that my mother didn't breastfeed me. And that we moved away when I was 6 months old.

[Downwinder]

11. My older brother (deceased) brought home a geiger counter.

We were going to be rich, everything was radioactive. Couldn't get the background noise below the test strip. On assay, no uranium.

[tavalon]

37. I'm sorry to hear about your brother

I'm guessing he died of some sort of cancer?

[Downwinder]

38. Bingo, on the first guess.

Lung, never smoked, lived in Hawaii with the trade winds and ate health foods. But, that was 30 years ago. I, on the other hand, do all the bad things. I seem to have come out of it with an immune system that will kill anything, including myself. Mutations are strange.

[DWinNJ]

13. Never

trust a governor from New Jersey named Christie

[Raksha]

21. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the topic heading...

"the air at Ground Zero is safe to breathe." Yeah, right...tell it to the first responders--the ones that are still alive anyway.

[louis-t]

31. I believe it was not Whitman that said that.

From what I remember, the bush gang removed the warnings about the safety of the air from her report because they wanted the financial markets to stay open.

And by the way, we have not heard anyone (including our own Rachel and Keith) mention this fact since the 'first responders health issues' have been in the news lately.

[tavalon]

7. We really need a "Duh" forum

But this is really important information to hammer home. Even though our short attention spans have moved on (unless we live on the Gulf), the disaster is ongoing and huge.

[BonnieJW]

14. The government can issue

all the assurances it wants; I'm not buying any seafood from the Gulf. I only purchase fish from the West Coast or reputable farms. Every day there is a report of oil surfacing in the water, on the beaches or in the wetlands. It's going to be that way for several years.

[bvar22]

19. Farm Raised Fish could be worse than Gulf Seafood:

"The study, published in Science and by far the largest and most comprehensive done to date, concluded that concentrations of several cancer-causing substances in particular are high enough to suggest that consumers should consider severely restricting their consumption of farmed salmon."

http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/pressrelease.html

Factory Fish are raised in confined ponds that concentrate waste and other toxins.
The fish are then fed high levels of antibiotics to counter disease.

[sulphurdunn]

17. Remember, the EPA

issued as a report on 9/18/2001 saying the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe, which was later attributed to White House pressure.

http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2003/WTC_report_20030821.pdf

[Whoa_Nelly]

25. Exactly! It was all about commerce, corporation

never about people or actual safety

[spin]

22. The important thing is BP. Our government must kiss their ass.

Five or ten years from now we will have people dying from liver failure caused by contaminated sea food, but that's OK. Government experts will tell us that the oil spill had nothing to do with the deaths and sickness and will continue denying it for the next 20 years.

BP is too big to fail. American citizens who die because of BP's failure to conduct their drilling in a responsible and safe manner are just collateral damage.

[Lorien]

23. Plus, of course, BP won't have to compensate thousands of people in the seafood

industry if they con everyone into believing the toxic crud is safe. What's a few thousand lives when BP's stock value is at stake?

[spin]

26. The sad part is that if BP and Big Oil didn't contribute to congressmen ...

we might, as citizens, actually get some representation from those we elect.

BP’s donations to Congress are more worrying than its donations to Obama
by Jonathan Hiskes

5 May 2010 3:33 PM

The Sunlight Foundation reports on the slick of BP money that's already spread far and wide through the American political system. The oil and gas giant is a major campaign contributor, giving more than $6 million to federal candidates over the past 20 years.

President Obama has received the most -- $77,051 -- which might seem surprising at first blush. But presidential candidates receive a lot more than everybody else, and most major donors, including energy companies, spread their donations between Republicans and Democrats. So it's not shocking that Obama's among the very top recipients, although I would've expected McCain or Bush to have received more.

But more oil money goes to Congress as a whole than to presidential candidates. Sunlight, an advocate for government transparency, lists the 10 biggest recipients of BP cash who are currently serving in Congress:

* Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) -- $73,300
* Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) -- $44,899
* Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) -- $41,400
* Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) -- $31,000
* Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) -- $28,200
* Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) -- $27,350
* Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) -- $22,300
* Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) -- $22,000
* Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) -- $20,950
* Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) -- $19,500

***snip***

Point being, if you want to fault Obama for taking Big Oil money, go for it. If you think it may have influenced his decision to expand offshore drilling, fine. But he wants to sign a decent clean-energy bill, according to everything we've seen him do and heard him say.

The Senate is where the bill is stalled out. That's where oil money is doing the most damage.
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-05-05-bps-donations-to-congress-more-worrying-than-donations-to-obama/

[felix_numinous]

24. Private industry's tolerance for collateral damage

is stunning. I think they calculate their profits against the human toll, I bet they have a name for it.

I live in one of the towns identified with hexavalent chromium in the water, and have telling everyone I know to purify their water. Only some people are listening.

This country is about to have an epidemic of cancers and illnesses caused by hydraulic fracturing, gulf of mexico fallout, and I bet they will try to cover it up with some other bullshit story. Watch.

[mrdmk]

30. The name you are looking for is 'cost analysis'

[earth mom]

28. Fuck BP!

:grr:

[Kingofalldems]

29. K and R for diversion boy

[savannah43]

32. The favorite food of my cats was seafood.

Since about two or three months after the BP negligence, my cats refuse to touch any cat food with fish in it. I trust their judgment.

[truedelphi]

33. That makes a lot of sense.

Cats and other animals understand through very well developed and unaltered sense of smell, what is good for them, and what is not good for them.

And we know that whatever meats are deemed unacceptable for humans in the USA - our corporations either send that stuff to relief efforts in places like Haiti, (for the charitable tax write off), or else the corporations sell it to the companies making pet food.

[kath]

35. Whoa - that's really interesting!

Cats do have a highly developed sense of smell. Might be interesting to have them smell a plate of shrimp or fish known to be from the Gulf, versus one from northern waters... They could function like the king's taster used to, many moons ago.