Infants.

 

          If there was any doubt that capitalism kills, perhaps the following will convince you that it does, and we must kill capitalism before it kills us. What sort of society would tolerate companies that attempt to thwart legislation that could help prevent babies from infection. After all selling products to families that are intended to be fed to infant babies, must surely have the most stringent safety regulations and any producer of these products should welcome all safety regulations that can protect their customers. However, that is not how capitalism works. First and foremost, profit is paramount, shareholders bonuses are sacred and the governing policy will always be to increase those bonuses. Not the basis for an ethical system and a dangerous one when it comes to food for children and infants.  

The following extract from The Intercept: 

    

The Abbott Nutrition facility in Sturgis, Michigan, which produces much of the U.S. supply of baby formula, shut down in February, bringing production lines to a grinding halt. Following a voluntary recall and investigation by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the stoppage stemmed from a bacterial outbreak whose effects would be felt months later. Starting last September, five babies who had consumed the plant’s formula contracted bacterial infections. Two of them died.

           The production pause is now contributing to a national shortage of formula, a crisis that experts believe will continue for months. Abbott, however, disputes that there is any link between its formula and the infant illnesses.

         Questions are now swirling about alleged problems at the Abbott-owned factory, which produces popular brands such as Similac, Alimentum, and EleCare. A recently disclosed whistleblower document claims that managers at the Sturgis plant falsified reports, released untested infant formula, and concealed crucial safety information from federal inspectors.

           But eight years earlier, the formula industry rejected an opportunity to take a more proactive approach — not only for increasing supply capacity, but also for preventing a potential outbreak. Records show that the industry successfully mobilized against a 2014 proposal from the FDA to increase regular safety inspections of plants used to manufacture baby formula.

           At the time, the FDA had proposed rules to prevent the adulteration of baby formula in any step of the process in order to prevent contamination from salmonella and Cronobacter sakazakii, which led to this year’s Sturgis plant shutdown.

          The largest infant formula manufacturers quickly stepped up to delay the safety proposals. The International Formula Council, now known as the Infant Nutrition Council of America, is the lobby group that represents Abbott Nutrition (owned by Abbott Laboratories), Gerber (owned by Nestlé), Perrigo Co., and Reckitt Benckiser Group, the companies that control 89 percent of the baby formula market in the U.S.

Read the full article HERE:

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Dare To Criticise Israel??

       I have always known that the USA is not the democratic paradise it spouts to the world at large, but I didn't know that several states make it obligatory to sign a pro-Israeli certificate before you can work for any state funded institution!!!

This from an article by The Intercept: 

       A children’s speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.

      The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in evaluations for young children with language difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her own.
    Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with the Pflugerville Independent School District, which includes Austin, to provide assessments and support for school children from the county’s growing Arabic-speaking immigrant community. The children with whom she has worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since her work for the school district began in 2009, her contract was renewed each year with no controversy or problem.
      But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the school district once again offered to extend her contract for another year by sending her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has received and signed at the end of each year since 2009.
      She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition: a certification she was required to sign pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,” that she “will not boycott Israel during the term of the contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action “that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory.”

        The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian — or McCarthyite — self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading:

        That language would bar Amawi not only from refraining from buying goods from companies located within Israel, but also from any Israeli companies operating in the occupied West Bank (“an Israeli-controlled territory”). The oath given to Amawi would also likely prohibit her even from advocating such a boycott given that such speech could be seen as “intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel.”

    
         There are currently 26 states where this legislation is now law and 13 where the legislation is pending, that would cover well over half the states in America. It would seem that in America you can advocate boycotts of all manner of things in your own country but dare not speak to harm Israel, strange?

Read the full article HERE:  

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk