Green Eggs and Ham

Despite its popularity as one of Dr. Seuss’s most popular books, the idea of green eggs and ham has never sounded appealing to me, except when the only other option is salmonella eggs from Iowa. Over the weekend, two farms in Iowa recalled over half a billion eggs after over 1,200 people had become sickened by Salmonella during the past few months. The two high-production commercial farms were Wright County Egg (380 million eggs recalled) and Hillandale Farms (170 million eggs recalled). For Hillandale Farms, this was their first recall in their 45-year history. Wright County Egg in Galt, Iowa, however, has two decades of legal problems with millions paid out in fines. Some of the more recent fines were for animal cruelty.

The eggs were shipped to a total of 17 states across the country: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin.

Hillandale Farms said it shared “a number of common suppliers” with Wright County Egg, including a company called Quality Egg, which provided feed and young birds. Both Wright County and Quality Egg are owned by the DeCoster family, which has a string of agribusiness interests in the Midwest and Northeast.

“From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.” – Dr. Seuss

The head of the Food and Drug Administration says the DeCoster farms in Iowa were not operating safely before a salmonella outbreak that led to the recall of more than half a billion eggs.

“There’s no question that these farms that are involved in the recall were not operating with the standards of practice that we consider responsible,” FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told CNN Sunday night.

Hamburg did not elaborate on the problems that FDA investigators have found, but agency officials said last week that the outbreak could have been prevented if regulations that took effect July 9 had been in place earlier. The regulations include testing, sanitation and refrigeration requirements for egg operations and allow the FDA to start inspecting farms for compliance.

…and why wasn’t this testing being done? The regulations for testing are only “suggested” guidelines. Violations only occur if people get sick. So much for the FDA’s mission statement of promoting and safeguarding the public health.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”  – Dr. Seuss

The eggs in question were sold between May 16th and Aug. 13th. On Aug.14th, Wright County Egg announced its recall. Eggs affected carry Julian dates from 136 to 225 (May16th to Aug 13th) and the Plant numbers: P-1026, P-1413, and P-1943. The Julian date follows the plant# on the carton – P-1026 136 (plant#1026, day 136 of the year – May16th).

Stores and companies that have sold and private labeled these eggs include:

• Albertson’s
• Ralph’s
• Lucerne
• Mountain Dairy
• Boomsma’s
• Sunshine
• Hillandale
• Trafficanda
• Farm Fresh
• Shoreland, Lund
• Dutch Farms
• Kemp

The CDC says that 200 cases (36,000 eggs) of salmonella eggs were reported weekly in recent months around the country.

A good question to ask would be why is this only now being reported, if it has been occurring for months? Certainly, 1200 people and their attorneys will be asking the same question.  (http://www.marlerclark.com/) (http://www.pritzkerlaw.com/salmonella/). How many thousands of others were sickened by these mass-produced eggs, but dismissed their illness as something else?

Although the chance of an egg containing Salmonella Enteritidis is rare in the United States, at mass-production facilities like Wright County Egg, the odds increase dramatically to the recent high of 36,000 eggs per week.

“When you think things are bad, when you feel sour and blue, when you start to get mad… You should do what I do.”  – Dr. Seuss

Solutions:

Shop locally. Buy organic, farm fresh, free-range eggs. Good sources are Farmer’s Markets and Co-ops. Chances are that you’ll be eating an egg that was laid today, as opposed to 3 weeks ago.

http://www.localharvest.org/

http://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose.”  – Dr. Seuss

“You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you will be the guy who’ll decide where you’ll go. Oh the places you’ll go.”  – Dr. Seuss

A Toxic World?

 

Some people think that detoxification is a “new age” idea. For me it isn’t, but I decided to at least look and see what shows up. First stop, PubMed, an Internet site put out by the U.S. National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health. Entering detoxification into their site search brings up 15,823 citations of studies done on detoxification. Pretty impressive. Next stop, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. A quick look brings up 981 citations of studies involving detoxification. Not as impressive, but still noteworthy. Last stop, the World Health Organization’s website. A quick search here brings up 1250 citations. All-in-all, detoxification seems to be a worldwide concern.

 

So, is detoxification an issue? If detoxification were not an issue, then we could eat all of the mercury laden fish that we wanted to. We could breathe polluted air without consideration. We could smoke 10 packs of cigarettes each day for a life time and not suffer as a result. We could dump all the waste that we wanted to into the oceans, rivers, and streams. We could do away with water filtration plants, waste recycling, and all the controls surrounding pollution. We wouldn’t need life-saving antioxidants in hospital and clinical settings. I think that it is self-evident that detoxification is an issue. It is a primary function of all cells, tissues, and organs in the human body and all other living organisms, as well as the planet itself.

 

Detoxification is a necessity for life on the planet to go on existing. Without detoxification, we would suffer and die in our own wastes. The largest organ in the body is a detoxification organ, the skin. The next largest organs – the liver, lungs, large intestine, and kidneys – also deal heavily with detoxification. Detoxification sites and pathways are everywhere in our body’s tissues. As an organism, we come armed for detoxification.

 

Some people think that the body is adequately equipped for detoxification, but if it were, we wouldn’t have words like carcinogen, teratogens, reproductive toxicants, and endocrine disruptors. These are chemicals that create disease and dysfunction in the body because the body isn’t able to remove them. The human body was not made to handle the toxic load that it has to handle in today’s environment, and the environment wasn’t made to handle the toxic load that humans have dumped upon it. Of the 100,000+ chemicals in use worldwide, some 5000 of them are produced in high volumes in excess of 1 million pounds per year. Only a small percentage of these have been tested for environmental and human impact.

 

The human body is like a sponge that soaks up hundreds, perhaps thousands of chemicals. In testing done on babies, the number of toxins present at birth has been shown to be around 200-300. Scientists estimate that everyone alive today has a toxic load of at least 700 contaminants. Chemicals that have been outlawed years ago can still show up in the body’s tissues decades later. What goes in, doesn’t necessarily come out.

 

How we manage the toxic load of the body can have a great impact on our health and the health of our children. Reducing exposure to toxins is a great place to start. The home should be a safe place for us to retreat to and renew ourselves. We should eliminate, or greatly reduce, our exposure to chemicals through the foods we eat, the beverages we drink, and the air we breathe. Lotions, shampoos, conditioners, detergents, and household cleaners should be organic or biodegradable. Our water and air should be filtered whenever possible. Food should be our medicine. Routine sweating via saunas and hot baths is an established practice in many cultures that makes use of the skin and its detoxification abilities.

 

One can work with healthcare practitioners to investigate ways to assist the body in reducing its toxic burden. Nutrients can be useful in boosting the body’s resources for antioxidants. A supplement like N-acetyl-cysteine helps to replenish the stores of one of the body’s most abundant antioxidants, glutathione. Glutathione help to decrease the oxidative stress created by the toxic load we carry and expose ourselves to continuously.

 

So, perhaps detoxification is a “new age” concept, but more importantly, I believe that it should be a part of a new age of personal responsibility for our health and how our choices play a role in determining the quality of the life we live.