?I’m trying to imagine the meeting at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Wednesday where the matter of “adjusting” the agency’s Facebook page came up. Presumably three or four assistant commissioners met with the resident geek, and the conversation went something like this:
Joe (Assistant commissioner 1): Listen, I know you’ve all been to at least five meetings today, as you were yesterday, and the day before, but the commissioner asked me to call this meeting because we have a problem with our Facebook page. All these foodies are being highly critical of us, especially about this undercover investigation we ran of the Maryland buying club. The first question the commish wants asked is this: Whose bright idea was it to put up an FDA Facebook page in the first place?
Bill (Assistant commissioner 2): I thought the idea was for us to be able to have a pulse on what the public is thinking about. Isn’t the word they use out there “transparency”?
Jim (Assistant commissioner 3): Bill, you use words like “transparency” around here, and you’ll find yourself in the Topeka office faster than you can say FDA. Better be careful.
Bill: Good point, Jim. I’ll try to watch it. But weren’t we trying to be more open?
Jim: Open? That’s an even more dangerous word than transparency. We open doors. We open windows. Open is a verb. We don’t use it as a modifier. Your mother and father may be open to what you think. Or your partner. Or maybe a bartender. But we here at the FDA are not open.
Bill: But aren’t we trying to communicate better with the public, give taxpayers a better feeling about us? We get criticized all over the place for being in bed with the drug companies and Big Ag.
Jim: I don’t think you’re hearing me, Bill. We’re not about transparency, or being open, or communicating better. We tell companies and farmers what to do. We tell the public what food is safe and what food isn’t safe. We ignore criticism. If you want to call that “communicating,” then fine.
Bill: Okay, I think I’m getting the message. I just thought maybe here and there we want to make it look like we’re listening.
Jim: There you go again, Bill. Using words that we don’t use around here. Listening isn’t something we do here. Your gardener or maid listen to you, but we don’t listen to you if you don’t work here.
Joe: Okay guys. This isn’t being terribly productive. The question we have to figure out here is what do we do about all these insulting comments from all our friends on Facebook. Just listen to some of them:
“SHAME ON YOU FDA. Stop raiding the poor Amish farmers! I want healthy RAW MILK for my family! Raw milk from grassfed cows is the only kind of milk that does not make my child and husband violently ill. Pasteurized milk make them SICK and break out into rashes…”
Geez, they’re typing in capital letters.
And this: “FDA, we supply your paychecks. You work for us. Guess who’s getting a pink slip real soon?”
Gizzmo (the resident geek): Hey, this isn’t very complicated. We’ll just change the default view.
Jim: What the hell is “default view.” Gizzmo, you know better than to use your high-fangled techie talk around me.
Gizzmo: Okay, the default view is the way the page shows up to the casual viewer. We’ll make that show just FDA announcements, and hide all the bad comments. If someone wants to see those, they have to click on the “most recent” at the top of the page, or on a specific announcement, but lots of people won’t know that, so they’ll think the page has changed, and the bad comments have gone away, and we’re back to good news FDA.
Jim: Why Gizzmo, that’s brilliant. We should make you the commissioner. So, how will you state that on the page?
Gizzmo: Simple, I just typed it out as you were talking. It says, “We have changed the default view of our fan page to make it easier for people to find FDA information. Thanks for all your feedback!”
Bill: But haven’t we really made it harder?
Jim: There you go again, Bill. What is the matter with you? I’m seeing Topeka in your future.
I'm going to a meeting to protest the expansion of factory farm in Rock County WI (just south of Madison) next week. Will also be putting in a word for raw milk. CAFO's can't proudce safe raw milk, only family farms can!
http://grccw.wordpress.com/
CAFOs are coming into Wisconsin.
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations are threatening our water.
We need your help. We need you to come together for a protest against CAFOs early Monday evening, May 9, at the Craig Center of the Rock County Fairgrounds in Janesville.
Wisconsins Department of Natural Resources is holding a hearing, starting at 4 p.m., on a waste pollution elimination discharge permit to a CAFO owner from Nebraska. The Tuls dairy with more than 5,000 cows will be its third.
The public hearing on the permit is a cruel hoax. The industrial dairy is so assured of getting its permit from the state that it is already beginning to build this massive industrial operation.
State agencies arent listening to us. Politicians arent listening to us. Lawmakers and governors arent listening to us. Trade groups and lobbies have their ear. Only money talks in ways that make them listen.
Power is in the pocketbook. Power is in protest. Were calling for a boycott against CAFO milk and CAFO milk products.
Help us draw a line in the fertile Rock Prairie soil at the state line. Help us take the message for water protections to the people, to consumers, to the streets. We need our cities to help save our countryside.
If CAFOs begin to proliferate in Wisconsin, we wont be the dairy state. Well be the manure state. We wont be the pristine, scenic playground of water parks and lakes. Well be the land of 10,000 manure lagoons.
Wisconsins highest nitrate pollution ever recorded more than 20 times a level EPA calls dangerous and unfit to drink was tested at Norwegian Creek in Rock County.
Scientists took these tests from the water just after the creek crossed farmland where a CAFO was spreading millions of gallons of liquid manure. The field tiles were polluted. Area wells were polluted.
Dont let this happen again. Help us send a message to the people, a message to consumers. Help us boycott CAFO milk. Help us keep CAFOs out of Wisconsin.
Nitrate pollution for Nebraska! Water protections for Wisconsin!
Tell Tuls CAFO no!
Support the more than 12,000 Wisconsin dairy farms whose average herd size is still about 100 cows. Stop the CAFOs with thousands of cows from flooding markets with milk and depressing prices.
In the human bloodstream, nitrate can do to our brains and vital organs what it does to aquatic and marine life in water. It starves the body of oxygen and damages or impairs health. It can kill.
High nitrate levels in water and feed lead to reduced vitality and increased stillbirth, low birth weight, and slow weight gain in livestock. Nitrate water pollution has been linked to types of cancer. Nitrate concentration is monitored in municipal water supplies worldwide, and in foodstuffs, to prevent exposure of populations to harmful or toxic levels.
Yet in our countryside, in our well waters, in our creeks, streams and rivers, nitrate levels are rising. For children, for health and safety, we must protect our water. No substance is as vitally important as clean water.
On the evening of Monday, May, 9, come stand with us at the old fairgrounds near Janesvilles downtown. Stand with us to protect Wisconsins water.
Green Rock Citizens for Clean Water and Green Rock Audubon Society
The county reps are still angry at us. We tried to change a law and were only moderately successful, we challenged a law and lost in the district and state supreme court. Next is probably a petition to put a law on the ballot to be able to refer zoning laws.
There are some south of our town, the area stinks for miles and the river is dead.
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
I think we are stronger standing together than divided against one another. The public union stuff is hardly a sideshow — it is an opportunity to build cross-connections between different movements for social justice.
Personally, I'm proud to say that Wisconsin was the state in which working people dared to stand up against the attacks. The exact same measure was proposed in numerous other states, but didn't meet nearly the degree of resistance. I hope we can continue the trend of organized peaceful resistance to corporate domination.