US Government Protecting Us From Too Much Information
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 06.23.08
We noted earlier that the American government is fighting testing for Mad Cow Disease, saying "more widespread testing does not guarantee food safety and could result in a false positive that scares consumers." Now it appears that in their courageous battle to protect us from information overload, the US Department of Agriculture has cancelled the annual publication of the Agricultural Chemical Usage Report, which lists the kinds and amounts of pesticides applied to crops.
"If you don't know what's being used, then you don't know what to look for," said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center, a nonprofit in Enterprise, Ore to AP. "In the absence of information, people can be lulled into thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in this country."
http://greenbiz.com/node/24713
Useful Information Used By Environmentalists
The EPA used the report to monitor pesticides and determine which to regulate; environmental groups used it to look at chemicals that might turn up in water; the Natural Resources Defense Council used it to sue the EPA over pollution in Chesapeake Bay. Too much information.
Don Lipton, the American Farm Bureau spokesman, told the AP: "Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea."
::Celsias and ::GreenBiz
See Also:
Bush Government Sues To Make Testing Meat Illegal
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Hide the corpses and the war doesn't look so bad.
Cancel the census and iillegal immigration problem goes away!
Cut emission reporting requirements (a.k.a.Toxic Release Inventory) and even the worst industrial offenders can claim "green-ness."
On and on.
I clearly must have missed something. What is more important than telling me what crazy shit Monsanto wants to put in my food? If they're really this broke, why exactly can't another agency give them the money for this?
What is more important than telling me what crazy shit Monsanto wants to put in my food?
That's easy: Monsanto is more important. The ACUR data showed that, for example, Monsanto biotech crops got more crap sprayed on them (not less).
That conflicts with certain policy directives by the govt (aimed at encouraging GMO crops).
The solution, therefore, is to remove the problematic data. It's only a question of money insofar as Monsanto's ability to make money is concerned.
Can we sue the government to get this information released? It was collected and compiled using our tax dollars and should be public information, whether they want to release it or not. Any lawyers ready for some pro bono work?
I see this as a good thing. After all, what you don't know can't hurt you. Right? ... Right?
la la la
It's SOP for the Bush-administration; suppress the data, remove the data, redact the data and it doesn't exist. Why give the people the truth when we can just spoon feed them our line of BS?
Thank the gods it is almost over. Then we can start all over again getting lied to from a different administration ;-)
'American government is fighting testing for Mad Cow Disease'...
A criminal dereliction of duty.