Bad news for Ben & Jerry’s?
Cattlework.com reports,
…Last fall the EPA set a preliminary “safe” threshold level of 0.7 picograms of dioxin per kilogram of body weight per day. That means a person weighing 100 pounds should not consume more than 32 picograms of dioxin per day. A pictogram is one trillionth of a gram.
Food and ag groups are concerned because the “safe” number proposed by EPA is far more stringent than current international science-based standards. In a letter sent to the Obama Administration in early December, a coalition of ag and food groups said, “EPA is proposing to create a situation in which most U.S. agricultural products could arbitrarily be classified as unfit for consumption. The implications of this action are chilling.”
Steve Kopperud, coordinator for the Food Industry Dioxin Working Group, told Dairy Herd Management last week that when food groups analyzed EPA’s proposed safe number, “what we discovered was that the average consumer would exceed the reference dose.”
And that’s why this issue leaves the food industry in a pickle – oppose EPA’s guidelines and industry seems insensitive to the dangers of dioxin; accept the stringent “safe” number and virtually no food will be deemed safe.
The letter sent to the Obama Administration stated the EPA proposal “sets a dioxin exposure threshold lower than any government entity in the world, including the European Union.” In fact, Kopperud says the EPA standard would be three times more stringent than the European Union standard, and, the EU is “one of the most precautionary governments on the planet.”
We found that a single scoop of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream contained 84 picograms of dioxin.
Debbie Mac: Dioxin is a ubiquitous contaminant (defined as “present in damn near all things”), it is not some functional additive food companies sprinkle into their foods for their customers to consume.
So with this newfound knowledge, perhaps you can answer a few questions for the readers:
1) How do you define “ZERO” levels of dioxin?
2) Are there analytical techniques that can measure this “ZERO” level you have defined?
3) If not, should there be?
4) If there are not but you believe there should be, why haven’t chemists developed this analytical technique yet?
5) How much $$$ should we spend making sure our foods have “ZERO” levels of dioxins (and all other “toxic” chemicals for that matter)?
6) Most importantly, are 9 question marks more effective than 4?
I highly recommend taking some time to read up on the basics of chemistry and toxicology. It will serve you well.
ZERO should be the allowed levels!!!! And why use it if it is TOXIC???? Why use it at all????????? And here in the US we don’t give a f*ck what other countries are doing or think about our rules so you know where you can go!
Not a game a “chicken” I want to play!
AAA
You know, if you guys in the US let the EPA do this, then we’ll end up retaliating here in Europe… If you go for a ‘safe’ limit three times more stringent than the EU, you can bet on the fact that the eco-fascists of the EU will respond by saying ‘look, we’re behind the US, therefore we need to go even lower…’