Creepy...ban on private toxic sampling

[Kat Kanning]

NYC Ban Private Toxic Sampling?
Friday, January 18, 2008 - FreeMarketNews.com

We are writing you with great urgency in opposition to Intro 650, a bill introduced into the New York City Council at the request of the mayor and with the support of the Speaker of the City Council. We believe this bill poses a grave threat to university programs, academic research, and unions, environmental, and community-based organizations that conduct independent chemical, biological and radiological environmental sampling. We ask you to join us in opposing this legislation.

Intro 650 will require permits for the possession or use of any instruments which monitor chemical, biological or radiological contamination. The NYC Police Department has testified that the impetus for the bill came from the Department of Homeland Security. Intro 650 will give NYPD the power to authorize, deny, or delay any workplace or environmental sampling. NYPD has testified that the Department of Homeland Security intends to use this legislation, if enacted, as a model for other cities throughout the country. We believe the bill, if enacted, will restrict, and could prevent altogether, independent environmental monitoring by unions, community organizations, and others, including university programs. We believe this would pose a significant threat to our civil liberties.

The stated purposed of the bill is to "reduce excessive false alarms and unwarranted anxiety." However, the bill's proponents have presented no data to support the claim of "excessive false alarms," nor have they identified the types of alarms that are presumed to be excessive. No evidence has been presented to document "unwarranted anxiety." It is likely that no such data exist.

An initial hearing on the bill was held January 8. Strong opposition was raised by numerous speakers representing a broad range of groups. At the hearing, Council Member John Liu noted the bill's potential for restricting the collection of independent environmental data. He said the bill would give NYPD a "blank check" with no restrictions.

Had such legislation been in place on and after 9/11, the independent testing done by unions and community-based organizations could not have been legally conducted and what we now know about the contamination of Lower Manhattan would be limited. This same concern was addressed by other speakers at the hearing.

The bill is being opposed by a wide range of organizations including the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the New York City Central Labor Council, the United Federation of Teachers, Healthy Schools Network, West Harlem Environmental Action, and NYCOSH. We have been told that the leadership of the City Council is committed to passage of this legislation and wants the bill to be enacted by the end of this month.

In solidarity, Joe Shufro, William Henning

Executive Director,
NYCOSH Chair, NYCOSH

http://www.nycosh.org/

[yonder]

So DHS's response to false terror alarms is to treat real danger like one might treat the ravenous bugblatter beast of Traal.

[Jim Johnson]

That is creepy.
If anything, one would think that a coordination of the information would be far more helpful than a ban.
Unless one needs to cover up nefarious activity, then a ban would be perfect.

[PattyLee loves dogs]

If anything, one would think that a coordination of the information would be far more helpful than a ban.

If one's purpose were to protect civil society, yes.

But remember, this is the same government whose USDA forcibly stopped a Texas (I think... anyway it was someplace that sold mostly to Japanese. I would look it up but I'm temporarily on @#$% dial-up) slaughterhouse from testing every cow for BSE. They FORCED them to reduce their safety testing to the USDA-approved minimal sampling.

[Pat McCotter]

Why does a private company require permission to be more strict than government testing?!?!?!?!?!?

Meatpacker sparks mad cow testing fight
USDA refuses company's request for 100 percent testing
updated 10:23 p.m. ET, Wed., March. 22, 2006

WASHINGTON - A Kansas meatpacker has sparked an industry fight by proposing testing all the company's cattle for mad cow disease.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to look for the disease in every animal it processes. The Agriculture Department has said no. Creekstone says it intends to sue the department.

"Our customers, particularly our Asian customers, have requested it over and over again," chief executive John Stewart said in an interview Wednesday. "We feel strongly that if customers are asking for tested beef, we should be allowed to provide that."

Creekstone planned a news conference Thursday in Washington to discuss the lawsuit.

The department and larger meat companies oppose comprehensive testing, saying it cannot assure food safety. Testing rarely detects the disease in younger animals, the source of most meat.

"There isn't any nation in the world that requires 100 percent testing," department spokesman Ed Loyd said Wednesday.

Larger companies worry that Japanese buyers would insist on costly testing and that a suspect result might scare consumers away from eating beef.

Japan was the most lucrative foreign market for American beef until the first U.S. case of mad cow disease prompted a ban in 2003. The ban cost Creekstone nearly one-third of its sales and led the company to slash production and lay off about 150 people, Stewart said.

When Japan reopened its market late last year, Creekstone resumed shipments. Japan has halted shipments again, after finding American veal cuts with backbone. These cuts are eaten in the U.S. but are banned in Japan.

Stewart said that when trade resumes with Japan, Creekstone is in a position to rehire the laid-off workers and then some.

Creekstone would need government certification for its plan to test each animal at its Arkansas City, Kan., plant. The department refused the license request in 2004.

The U.S. has been testing around 1 percent of the 35 million head of cattle slaughtered each year, although officials have been planning to scale back that level of testing.

An industry official said the U.S. testing program should reassure customers inside and outside the United States.

"The U.S. risk of BSE is miniscule and declining, our proactive prevention strategies have worked and the safety of American beef is assured," said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute.

He was referring to the formal name for mad cow disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

While individual companies in Japan may want comprehensive testing, Japan's government is not asking for it.

Japan does have lingering questions about the shipment of prohibited veal, even after the U.S. sent a lengthy report to Tokyo explaining the mistake was an isolated incident. The report blamed the company, Brooklyn-based Atlantic Veal & Lamb, and a government inspector for misunderstanding new rules for selling beef to Japan.

Japan's agriculture minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, said Wednesday that further talks are needed.

"We do want to keep going back and forth with the U.S. over this issue," he said. "We want the U.S. side to squarely answer our questions."

The Agriculture Department announced Wednesday evening it will send a team led by Acting Under Secretary Chuck Lambert to Tokyo next week for talks.

The U.S. has had three cases of mad cow disease. The first appeared in December 2003 in a Washington state cow that had been imported from Canada. The second was confirmed last June in a Texas-born cow, and the third was confirmed last week in an Alabama cow.

Japan has had two dozen cases of BSE.

Mad cow disease is a brain-wasting ailment in cattle. In people, eating meat products contaminated with BSE is linked to more than 150 deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain, from a deadly human nerve disorder, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

[J’raxis 270145]

Since the EPA, USDA, FDA, &c., have been so thoroughly captured by the industries they were intended to monitor, it makes perfect sense that the government would now try to make sure people can only get safety information about such things from said agencies.

[srqrebel]

In a Free Market society, private monitoring and/or certification agencies would compete freely on the open market, and any corrupt ones would be quickly spotted and blown out the water by the competition.

That is not possible under the Authoritarian Model, because they operate as a monopoly.  They maintain popular support for the enforcement of their monopoly by fraudulently promoting the illusion of external authority.

Dissolve this illusion, and freedom and prosperity ensues.

Of course, I'm mostly preaching to the choir   I only point this out for the benefit of anyone here who may be new these ideas.

[David]

Unless one needs to cover up nefarious activity, then a ban would be perfect.

Yup.

[John Edward Mercier]

If they chose to enact these measures unilaterally, what is the cost?

[David]

The gov't is the largest single polluter in the country, specifically the military and the nuclear agencies.  banning private toxic sampling would be a boon for the large polluters.  It takes away the ability of people to protect themselves.    

[John Edward Mercier]

Before you get all excited this is the NYC mayor working through the NYC council. But again, what is the cost? Things have reasons.