Re: OT - Re: Program templates as Object Classes

From: Robert Wagner (spamblocker-robert_at_wagner.net)
Date: 12/08/04 

Date: Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:58:03 GMT

On 7 Dec 2004 12:36:46 -0800, "Richard" <riplin@Azonic.co.nz> wrote:

>> One third of energy consumed in the US is used to produce meat.
>
>That seems to be another of your tin-foil hat theories.
>
>All of 'residential and commercial' consumption is around one third,
>all of 'industrial' is around one third (a bit more), all of
>transportation is around 'one third' (a bit less).
>
>There doesn't seem to be another 'one third' available.

Agriculture is the major component in industrial. In addition, meat
consumes small amounts under transportation and residential.

>In New Zealand meat production consumes almost _no_ energy. We do not
>raise animals on land irrigated by anything other than rain or diverted
>water sytems. There is no energy consumed at all.

That would be true if beef cattle fed on grass. The problem comes when
they are raised in feedlots, where energy is consumed indirectly
producing feed grains -- for irrigation, fertilizer and processing.

"The net contribution of irrigation to GDP at the farmgate is
estimated to be in the order of $920 million in 2002/03. This is over
and above GDP that would have been produced at the farmgate without
irrigation."
http://www.maf.govt.nz/mafnet/rural-nz/sustainable-resource-use/irrigation/the-economic-value-of-irrigation/economic-value02.htm

I don't know what percentage of NZ beef (by weight) comes from feedlot
vs. grass. It's definitely lower than the US. In the US, Europe and
China, well over 50% of beef comes from feedlots. Poultry and pork ALL
comes from the equivalent of feedlots. In addition, one third of US
corn feeds Asian cattle. That has to be included in meat production.

>Certainly the farmer drives a tractor (or rides a horse), and a truck
>will be used to take them to market, but so is a truck used to cart
>carrots around.

That's trivial. The big energy consumer is feed. To produce one pound
of usable meat, it takes 18 pounds of feed. Producing 18 points of
feed requires 2,000 gallons of water.

>I suspect that your 'information' comes from looneys who would
>calculate how much energy from the sun is used to grow the grass and
>then add that in as 'consumption'.

Economics are abstract to most people. Let's talk about cleanliness.
This is from sources who are not looneys.

        Supreme Beef v. USDA

In December 2001, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision
that some believe dealt a serious blow to the food safety reforms
instituted by the USDA in the wake of the 1993 West Coast E. coli
outbreak. The appeals court upheld a lower court ruling that the
Agriculture Department does not have the authority to shut down a
meat-processing plant that repeatedly failed tests for salmonella
contamination.

In 1998, the government unveiled a radically redesigned system of meat
inspection called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Systems
(HACCP). Rather than relying on USDA inspectors to ensure that meat
and poultry coming out of the plants was safe to eat, the new system
required meat-processing plants to develop and implement their own
systems of controlling the levels of harmful bacteria in their plants.
As a way to determine whether the companies' plans were working, HACCP
regulations required microbial testing of salmonella levels in the
finished meat and poultry coming out of the plants. If a plant's
products repeatedly exceeded the salmonella limits imposed by the
regulations, the USDA could shut the plant down.

Supreme Beef Processors Inc. is a Texas-based meat processor and
grinder that at one point supplied millions of pounds of ground beef
to the public school system. In December 1999, a Supreme Beef plant
failed the USDA's salmonella tests three times in eight months; in one
test 47 percent of ground beef samples in the plant were contaminated
with salmonella. Pursuant to the HACCP regulations, the USDA notified
the company that it would pull federal inspectors out of the plant, an
action tantamount to shutting it down. The company immediately filed
suit against the USDA in federal district court. The same day, the
court granted a temporary restraining order forbidding the government
to remove the inspectors.

In the lawsuit, Supreme Beef claimed that the USDA did not have the
authority to set limits on the allowable levels of salmonella bacteria
in meat. They argued that because the bacteria is naturally occurring,
it is not an "adulterant" substance subject to regulation by the
government. Since beef may contain salmonella bacteria when it arrives
at the packing plant from the slaughterhouse, the company argued, the
level of salmonella in the finished, processed meat is not an adequate
indicator of the whether the pathogen control procedures employed in
the plant are being properly implemented. They also pointed out that
since salmonella bacteria is killed and rendered harmless when meat is
cooked properly, the presence of salmonella in the meat does not pose
a significant risk and struck down salmonella testing regulations.

The USDA appealed the case to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which upheld the lower court decision. The court also allowed the
National Meat Association to intervene in the case, as representative
of the interests of other meat industry members.

The appeals court rejected the USDA's argument that the salmonella
tests could serve as a proxy measure for other contaminants because
measures taken to control salmonella would also likely reduce other
pathogens. The court found that since the presence of salmonella alone
does not render the product "injurious to health," the performance
standards were not within the USDA's enforcement authority.

The decision prompted vociferous protest from food-safety advocates
who believe that the elimination of the salmonella testing takes away
an important enforcement tool from the government. Carol Tucker
Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America says, "It is hard to
overrate the importance of the Supreme Beef decision. It could be
interpreted as saying there is no amount of disease causing bacteria
in raw meat or poultry that would ... violate the law." Without
objective testing standards, she fears, the new meat-inspection system
will have no teeth. And former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman told
FRONTLINE that he believes the decision was "a serious blow" to food
safety.

Others disagree, however. The USDA has said that it has no plans to
appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, and USDA Undersecretary
for Food Safety Elsa Murano denies that the decision diminishes the
power of USDA inspectors to ensure clean meat factories. She points
out that the USDA continues to test for salmonella, and uses the
results of the tests as indicators that there may be a problem in the
plant that needs investigation. All that has changed is the ability to
shut down a meat plant based solely on results of the salmonella
tests. "The Supreme Beef decision is one that, when we looked at it,
did not take away our authority to enforce our regulations," Murano
told FRONTLINE. "We still can shut down plants, and we have been since
the decision came out in December. ... We continue to test for
salmonella. But we use those results to point us to what we may have
to do in order to see what the plant may be missing in their
implementation of HACCP."

The battle over the salmonella testing is now turned over to Congress.
In March 2002, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate
Agriculture Committee, introduced legislation he intended to undo some
of the damage he thinks the Supreme Beef decision wrought. His
proposed legislation would clarify the USDA's authority to shut down
plants based on failed salmonella tests. When introducing the
legislation, he voiced his concerns that the meat industry was trying
to undercut the USDA's power: "We have an industry that appears dead
set on striking down USDA's authority to enforce meat and poultry
pathogen standards. And sadly, we are now at the point where the
food-safety reforms USDA enacted in 1996 are on life support."

The American Meat Institute will oppose the proposed legislation.
"Senator Harkin's bill is a political effort to legislate what science
and the judicial system do not support and what Congress has rejected
twice before," said the AMI's J. Patrick Boyle in a statement.

Observers on Capitol Hill think the possibility for passage of the
Harkin legislation is slim.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/evaluating/supremebeef.html

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