fiyah pon misgiving day

**Wendy** · 11-23-2011, 03:25 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

Happy ThanksGiving BLu

If yuh need a place fi eat ..cawl mi yuh hear pumpkin pie

**blugiant** · 11-23-2011, 03:47 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: WeNdY_PeNdY</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Happy ThanksGiving BLu

If yuh need a place fi eat ..cawl mi yuh hear pumpkin pie </div></div>

funnee yu mentiom punkin pie yu knoo itt wass dem indigenous natives wey introduced dem starvinn oyinbo to pumpkinn ann yu saw de outcum. sufferarinn suckertash. yu remind mii aff annaddar ting fe bunn fiyah pon oyinbo

relatives inna mii oouse cookinn food cah mii affii drive dem tree hours to annadar relative oouse tammarraw fe dinnar.

mii tinkinn aff wat family drama fe chatt bout fe tart chubble. yu knoo ask sum aff de ole peeps sintinn ann lett dem spill sum family secrets

doan eat too much turkey

**blugiant** · 11-23-2011, 03:50 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

Or What They Didn't Teach You in Their His-story Books!

Should Blacks Celebrate Misgiving Day?
(You be the judge)
By Dr. Jack Felder

July 30, 1621, was the day set aside for the celebration of the survival of the English colonialists through the first bitter winter that destroyed more than half their numbers. In the autumn of 1621, Governor Bradford of Massachusetts issued a proclamation calling for a Thanksgiving Celebration Feast to commemorate the gathering of the first harvest. This celebration lasted three days, during which time the half-starved white English Pilgrims and the Indians feasted on wild turkey and deer (venison). The Indians, of course, supplied the turkey and venison.

African American people and African people in general either tend to FORGET or DONT WANT TO REMEMBER the TRUE history of their encounter with white western people.

African American people have been established in these United States under white rule, since 1619. They have been joining in with the descendants of the same white western European murderers who enslaved them and systematically all but DESTROYED the Native Americans (called Indians) in feasting and giving thanks to the god of the white western world for the "opportunity" to have been enslaved, segregated, discriminated against, lynched, murdered, assassinated and raped in these United SNAKES of AmeriKKKa.

Black people celebrating Thanksgiving Day is like the white European Americans celebrating the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Jews celebrating Hitlers birthday or the Black South Africans celebrating the anniversary of the arrival of the white racist ruling class to their native land.

Several years ago some white officials of New York State invited Indians to a big Thanksgiving dinner. The Indians said, "Hell, no! That would be like our "Last Supper."

Let us look at the actual FACTS of the white English settlers; attempts to establish money-making enterprises on the continent of North America.

Many Blacks are not aware that English people had made three attempts in North America before the November, 1620 landing of the English Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock in what is now Massachusetts.
The first attempts by the English to set up colonies in the New World were made by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh. Gilbert started a colony in New Foundland, but it failed because of cold weather, hunger, and sickness. Raleigh made two attempts to start settlements on Roanoke Island near the coast of what is now North Carolina. The first attempt in 1585 did not succeed. The group returned to England. In the second attempt to start the colony in 1587, the group was exterminated by the local Indians.

It seems as if the Indians in North Carolina had better sense than the Indians in Virginia or Massachusetts. The London Company sent the first group of white English profit-seeking colonists in December, 1606. They brought with them tools, cloth and household goods. Their charter allowed them to settle in somebody else's country, what is now Virginia and North Carolina. In April 1607, they entered Chesapeake Bay. A few days later they found a river that
they named the James after their ruler King James. They set foot on a small peninsula and formed the first permanent white English settlement in America. Located in the area now known as Virginia, the new settlement was named Jamestown. These white greedy English colonists suffered
terribly for the first few years. If the native American Indians had nothelped them, all would have perished.

Listen to this Black America. This is how you got into these United Snakes of AmeriKKKa. The lazy white English settlers didn't want to work, so they imported Black African slaves to work as free labor. They made contact
with the Dutch slave traders and in 1619, a Dutch ship brought 20 Africans to Jamestown, Va. This was the beginning of the Black African people's never-ending racial nightmare in present day U.S.A. My people, the Black African people's Day of Infamy in the U.S.A. was in August, 1619 in Jamestown, Va. It is a day you should never forget!

The Pilgrims didn't want religious freedom, they wanted WEALTH. The white English capitalists who had created the Virginia Company for exploiting the wealth of the New World made them an offer they could not refuse.

This information is available in British historical documents. The Virginia Company gave white English pilgrims ships and supplies. In return for this help, the Pilgrims sent crops, ANIMAL SKINS and FURS to the company as well as any GOLD they were able to find. The white English colonists came to America because of GREED, not religious needs.

In September 1620, the crew and 101 passengers set sail for America in a little ship called the Mayflower. Everybody had "gold fever." It took ten weeks to cross the Atlantic Ocean in their little boat.

**blugiant** · 11-23-2011, 04:01 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

Give Thanks No More:
It&#65533;s Time for a National Day of Atonement
by Robert Jensen

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world&#65533;s great powers achieved &#65533;greatness&#65533; through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It&#65533;s now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it&#65533;s also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians&#65533; land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving &#65533;wild beasts&#65533; from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, &#65533;both being beasts of prey, tho&#65533; they differ in shape.&#65533; Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the &#65533;merciless Indian Savages&#65533; -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn&#65533;t stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, &#65533;[W]e shall destroy all of them.&#65533;

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process &#65533;due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.&#65533; Roosevelt also once said, &#65533;I don&#65533;t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn&#65533;t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.&#65533;

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here&#65533;s how &#65533;respectable&#65533; politicians, pundits, and professors play the game:

When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations&#65533; lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who &#65533;settled&#65533; the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, &#65533;Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?&#65533;

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn&#65533;t spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn&#65533;t of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America&#65533;s much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to &#65533;humble our proud nation&#65533; and &#65533;undermine young people&#65533;s faith in our country.&#65533;

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact. Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony.

History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won&#65533;t set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day&#65533;s mythology on our minds.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center, http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at: [email protected].

**blugiant** · 11-23-2011, 04:10 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

Raining on the Thanksgiving Day Parade

“Redefining” the Holiday Is a Failed Project

After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.

I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common commitment to this country’s distorted self-image that supports the triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was surprised by the resistance from liberals — even some on the left, including a considerable number of my friends.

The most common argument went something like this: OK, it’s true that the Thanksgiving Day mythology is rooted in a fraudulent story — about the European invaders coming in peace to the “New World,” eager to cooperate with indigenous people — which conveniently ignores the reality of European barbarism in the conquest of the continent. But we can reject the culture’s self-congratulatory attempts to rewrite history, I have been told, and come together on Thanksgiving to celebrate the love and connections among family and friends.

The argument that we can ignore the collective cultural definition of Thanksgiving and create our own meaning in private has always struck me as odd. This commitment to Thanksgiving puts these left/radical critics in the position of internalizing one of the central messages promoted by the ideologues of capitalism — that individual behavior in private is more important than collective action in public. The claim that through private action we can create our own reality is one of the key tenets of a predatory corporate capitalism that naturalizes unjust hierarchy, a part of the overall project of discouraging political struggle and encouraging us to retreat into a private realm where life is defined by consumption.

So this November, rather than mount another attack on the national mythology around Thanksgiving — a mythology that amounts to a kind of holocaust denial, and which has been critiqued for many years by many people — I want to explore why so many who understand and accept this critique still celebrate Thanksgiving, and why rejecting such celebrations sparks such controversy.

Once we know, what do we do?

At this point in history, anyone who wants to know this reality of U.S. history — that the extermination of indigenous peoples was, both in a technical legal sense and in common usage, genocide — can easily find the resources to know. If this idea is new, I would recommend two books, David E. Stannard’s American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World and Ward Churchill’s A Little Matter of Genocide. While the concept of genocide, which is defined as the deliberate attempt “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” came into existence after World War II, it accurately describes the program that Europeans and their descendants pursued to acquire the territory that would become the United States of America.

Once we know that, what do we do? The moral response — that is, the response that would be consistent with the moral values around justice and equality that most of us claim to hold — would be a truth-and-reconciliation process that would not only correct the historical record but also redistribute land and wealth. In the white-supremacist and patriarchal society in which we live, operating within the parameters set by a greed-based capitalist system, such a process is hard to imagine in the short term. So, the question for left/radical people is: What political activity can we engage in to keep alive this kind of critique until a time when social conditions might make a truly progressive politics possible?

In short: Once we know, what do we do in a world that is not yet ready to know, or knows but will not deal with the consequences of that knowledge?

The general answer to that question is simple, though often difficult to put into practice: We must keep speaking honestly, as often as possible, in as many venues as possible. We must resist the conventional wisdom. We must reject the cultural amnesia. We must refuse to be polite when politeness means capitulation to lies.

I have not always been strong enough to meet even these basic moral obligations. Most of us in positions of unearned privilege and power would be wise to avoid pontificating about our moral superiority and political courage, given our routine failures. Can any of us not point to moments when we went along to get along? Have any of us done enough to bring our lives in line with the values we claim to hold?

Still, we need to help each other tell the truth, even when the truth is not welcome.

The illusion of redefining Thanksgiving

Imagine that Germany won World War II and that a Nazi regime endured for some decades, eventually giving way to a more liberal state with a softer version of German-supremacist ideology. Imagine that a century later, Germans celebrated a holiday offering a whitewashed version of German/Jewish history that ignored that holocaust and the deep anti-Semitism of the culture. Imagine that the holiday provided a welcomed time for families and friends to gather and enjoy food and conversation. Imagine that businesses, schools and government offices closed on this day.

What would we say about such a holiday? Would we not question the distortions woven into such a celebration? Would we not demand a more accurate historical account? Would we not, in fact, denounce such a holiday as grotesque?

Now, imagine that left/liberal Germans — those who were critical of the power structure that created that distorted history and who in other settings would challenge the political uses of those distortions — put aside their critique and celebrated the holiday with their fellow citizens, claiming to ignore the meaning of the holiday created by the dominant culture.

What would we say about such people? Would we not question their commitment to the principles they claim to hold? Would we not demand a more courageous politics?

Comparisons to the Nazis are routinely overused and typically hyperbolic, but this is directly analogous. These are fair, albeit painful, questions for all of us.

Left/liberals who want to claim they are rejecting that European-supremacist and racist use of Thanksgiving and “redefining” the holiday in private clearly avoid the obvious: We don’t define holidays individually — the idea of a holiday is rooted in its collective, shared meaning. When the dominant culture defines a holiday in a certain fashion, one can’t pretend to redefine it in private. One either accepts the dominant definition or resists it, publicly and privately.

Of course people often struggle for control over the meaning of symbols and holidays, but typically we engage in such battles when we believe there is some positive aspect of the symbol or holiday worth fighting for. For example, Christians — some of whom believe that Christmas should focus on the values of universal love and world peace rather than on orgiastic consumption — may resist that commercialization and argue in public and private for a different approach to the holiday. Those people typically continue to celebrate Christmas, but in ways consistent with those values. In that case, people are trying to recover and/or reinforce something that they believe is positive because of values rooted in a historical tradition. Those folks struggle over the meaning of Christmas because they believe the core of Christianity is experienced through the people we touch, not the products we purchase. In that endeavor, Christians are arguing the culture has gone astray and lost the positive historical grounding of the holiday.

But what is positive in the historical events that define Thanksgiving? What tradition are we trying to return to? I have no quarrel with designating a day (or days) that would allow people to take a break from our often manic work routines and appreciate the importance of community, encouraging all of us to be grateful for what we have. But if that is the goal, why yoke it to Thanksgiving Day and a history of celebrating European/white dominance and conquest? Trying to transform Thanksgiving Day into a true day of thanksgiving, it seems to me, is possible only by letting go of this holiday, not by remaining rooted in it. If there were a major shift in the culture and a majority of people could confront these historical realities, perhaps the last Thursday in November could be so transformed. But that shift and transformation are, to say the least, not yet here.

For too long, I ignored these troubling questions. To get along, I went along. I buried my concerns to avoid making trouble. But in recent years that has become more difficult. So, this year I want to acknowledge my past failures to raise these issues and commit not only to renouncing Thanksgiving publicly but also to refusing to participate in any celebration of it privately.

The choices: Make people comfortable by engaging or by disengaging

Obviously there are people in the United States — indigenous and otherwise — who do not celebrate Thanksgiving or who mark it, in private and/or in public, as a day of mourning.

Also obvious is that there are people who may not have a family or community with which they celebrate such holidays; it’s important to remember that there are people on such holidays who are alone and/or lonely, and to them these political questions may seem irrelevant.

But for those of us who do get invited to traditional Thanksgiving Day dinners, how do we remain true to our stated political and moral principles? I think we have two choices.

We can go to the Thanksgiving gatherings put on by friends and family, determined to raise these issues and willing to take the risk of alienating those who want to enjoy the day without politics. Or, we can refuse to go to such a gathering and make it known why we’re not attending, which means taking the risk of alienating those who want to enjoy the day without politics.

This year, I’ve decided to disengage and explain why to the people who invited me. These are people I love, yet who have made a different decision. My love for them has not diminished, and I trust the conversation with them about this and other political/moral questions will continue.

Once I make that decision, of course I also have the option of participating in a public event that resists Thanksgiving. I’m not aware of one happening in my community, and because of commitments to other political projects I didn’t feel I could organize an effective event in time for this Thanksgiving Day. But on the assumption that others may feel this way, I have started thinking about what kind of public gathering could make such a political statement effectively, and in the future I hope to find others who are interested in such an event locally.

So, what will I do on Thanksgiving Day this year? I’ll probably spend part of the day alone. Maybe I’ll take a long walk and think about all this. I’ll try to be kind and decent to the people I bump into during the day. I’ll miss the company of friends and family who are gathering, and I’ll try to reflect on why I’ve made this choice and why this question matters to me. I’ll think about why others made the choices they made.

But this year, whatever I do, I won’t celebrate Thanksgiving. I’m going to let that parade pass me by.

Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Citizens of Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity and Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007). His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, published by Soft Skull Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

**blugiant** · 11-23-2011, 04:22 PM

turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

So far, 2011 has not been a great year for turkey producers. In May, an article in Clinical Infectious Diseases reported that half of U.S. meat from major grocery chains–turkey, beef, chicken and pork–harbors antibiotic resistant staph germs commonly called MRSA. Turkey had twice and even three times the MRSA of all other meats, in another study.

In June, Pfizer announced it was ending arsenic-containing chicken feed which no one realized they were eating anyway but its arsenic-containing Histostat, fed to turkeys, continues. Poultry growers use inorganic arsenic, a recognized carcinogen, for “growth promotion, feed efficiency and improved pigmentation,” says the FDA. Yum.

And in August, Cargill Value Added Meats, the nation’s third-largest turkey processor, recalled 36 million pounds of ground turkey because of a salmonella outbreak, linked to one death and 107 illnesses in 31 states. Even as it closed its Springdale, Arkansas plant, steam cleaned its machinery and added “two additional anti-bacterial washes” to its processing operations, 185,000 more pounds were recalled the next month from the same plant.

Since the mad cow and Chinese melamine scandals of the mid 2000&#8242;s, a lot more people think about the food their food ate than before. But fewer people think about the drugs their food ingested. Food animal drugs seldom rate Capitol Hill hearings which is just fine with Big Pharma animals divisions since if people knew the antibiotics, heavy metals, growth promotants, vaccines, anti-parasite drugs and feed additives used on the farm, they would lose their appetite. Besides, people aren’t Animal Pharma’s primary customers anyway and the long term safety of animals drugs isn’t an issue, since patients are supposed to die.

One of the late Sen.Ted Kennedy’s last legislative fights was about the overuse of livestock antibiotics. “It seems scarcely believable that these precious medications could be fed by the ton to chickens and pigs,” he wrote in a bill called the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act of 2007 (PAMTA) which has yet to pass. “These precious drugs aren’t even used to treat sick animals. They are used to fatten pigs and speed the growth of chickens. The result of this rampant overuse is clear: meat contaminated with drug-resistant bacteria sits on supermarket shelves all over America,” said Kennedy.

Because antibiotics make animals use feed more efficiently so they eat less and control disease in confinement farming’s packed conditions at the same time, they are practically the fifth food group. On a turkey farm with five million hens, antibiotics would save almost 2,000 tons of feed a year says an article in a poultry journal.

And when the FDA tried to ban cephalosporins in 2008, one type of antibiotic crucial for treating salmonella in children, it became apparent just what Kennedy was up against. Two months after the FDA announced a hearing about a cephalosporin “Order of Prohibition” in agriculture, the regulatory action had morphed into a “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry” thanks to lobbyists from the egg, chicken, turkey, milk, pork and cattle industries.

“Order of Prohibition”… “Hearing to Review the Advances In Animal Health Within The Livestock Industry,” same idea, right?

At the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry hearings, the National Turkey Federation’s Michael Rybolt defended antibiotics as a cost savings to consumers. “The increased costs to raise turkeys without antibiotics is real,” he said. “Today at retail outlets here in the D.C. market, a conventionally raised turkey costs $1.29 per pound. A similar whole turkey that was produced without antibiotics costs $2.29 per pound. With the average consumer purchasing a 15 pound whole turkey, that would mean there would be $15 tacked on to their grocery bill.”

Conventionally grown turkeys are even a better deal when you consider the cost of antibiotics!

And antibiotic-based turkey farming is downright green, said Rybolt, calling 227 acre turkey operations, “small family farms.” Without them, more land would be needed to grow crops and house the animals because of the “decrease in density.” And, with 175,550 more tons of feed needed, there would be “an increase in manure.”

When the FDA capitulated to industry and turned the cephalosporin prohibition into a salute to animal “advances,” former Kansas governor and former dairyman John Carlin, asked, “What changed in less than five months? Certainly the problem hasn’t gone away.”

This month, the FDA also rejected petitions to ban human antibiotics like penicillins, tetracyclines and sulfonamides in livestock filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, Environmental Defense, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Public Health Association, Food Animal Concerns Trust (FACT), and the Union of Concerned scientists, some filed over 12 years ago. Why? “FDA cannot withdraw approval of a new animal drug until the legally-mandated process,” said an FDA spokesman. The process includes an “evidentiary hearing,” perhaps like the cephalosporin advances.

Of course. germs in turkey and other meat, even antibiotic resistant germs, are neutralized by cooking–but drug residues are not. A report last year from the USDA’s inspector general accuses U.S. slaughter houses of releasing products to the public with excessive drug levels in them and charges that, “The effects of these residues on human beings who consume such meat are a growing concern.”

Nor are the antibiotics just in the meat! Scientists at the University of Minnesota found antibiotic residues in corn, green onions and cabbage after growing them on soil fertilized with livestock manure. The drugs siphoned right up from the soil in just six weeks.

A quick look at the Code of Federal Regulations for turkey drugs does not whet you appetite for Thanksgiving. There are several arsenic turkey drugs approved to provide an, “increased rate of weight gain and improved feed efficiency,” say the official guidelines. But they are also “dangerous for ducks, geese, and dogs,” and must be discontinued, “5 days before slaughtering animals for human consumption to allow elimination of the drug from edible tissues.” Whew.

Halofuginone, another drug given to turkeys to kill pathogens, “is toxic to fish and aquatic life” and “an irritant to eyes and skin,” says the Federal Code. “Avoid contact with skin, eyes, or clothing” and “Keep out of lakes, ponds, and streams.” Bon appetit.

Drug-based farming has cut the time to “grow” an animal almost in half while doubling the market size of the animal itself. For example, chickens were once slaughtered at fourteen weeks, weighing two pounds and are now slaughtered at seven weeks, weighing four and six pounds.

But the brave new food techniques come at a price because the animals’ organs can not always keep up with the metabolic frenzy. Birds “fed and managed in such a way that they are growing rapidly,” are at risk of sudden death from cardiac problems and aortic rupture, say poultry scientists.

Growth drugs in turkeys may also “result in leg weakness or paralysis,” says the Federal Code, a side effect that a turkey slaughter house worker reports firsthand. Many turkeys arrive at the House of Raeford, in Raeford, NC with legs broken or dislocated, he told me in an interview and, “When you try to remove them from their crates, their legs twist completely around, limp and offering no resistance.” The turkeys, “must have been in a lot of pain,” says the worker, but they don’t cry out. “In fact the only sound as you hang them, he says, is the “trucks being washed out to go back and get a new load.”

The undercover employee’s reports of the “live hanger” culture at the House of Raeford, in which workers pulled the heads and legs off turkeys when they were stuck in crates and worse, led to Denny’s suspending its business from Raeford, the nation’s seventh largest turkey producer. The slaughter house is also infamous for a chlorine spill that killed a worker in 2003, an ammonia spill that evacuated two towns the next year and a murdered worker in 2006.

Still, the mother of all turkey drugs is the asthma-like drug ractopamine, marketed as the “Medicated Tom Turkey Feed” Topmax. Approved for turkeys only two years ago, figures for Topmax use in turkeys are not yet available but the same drug is now used in 45 percent of U.S. pigs and 30 percent of ration-fed cattle.

There are two reasons ractopamine has raised safety questions. One is that its label reads:

WARNING: The active ingredient in Topmax, ractopamine hydrochloride, is a beta-adrenergic agonist. Individuals with cardiovascular disease should exercise special caution to avoid exposure. Not for use in humans. Keep out of the reach of children. The Topmax 9 formulation (Type A Medicated Article) poses a low dust potential under usual conditions of handling and mixing. When mixing and handling Topmax, use protective clothing, impervious gloves, protective eye wear, and a NIOSH-approved dust mask. Operators should wash thoroughly with soap and water after handling. If accidental eye contact occurs, immediately rinse eyes thoroughly with water. If irritation persists, seek medical attention. The material safety data sheet contains more detailed occupational safety information. To report adverse effects, access medical information, or obtain additional product information, call 1-800-428-4441.

The other reason is that ractopamine is not withdrawn at slaughter. In fact, it is begun as the animals near slaughter and started during turkeys’ last 14 days. It is actually pumping through their systems as they arrive on the killing floor.

Like antibiotics and arsenic, ractopamine is given to turkeys to make them grow faster. It is similar to clenbuterol, a performance enhancing sports drug that is banned in the US, for both humans and livestock, and elsewhere. But ractopamine is also banned in Europe, Taiwan and China, where 1,700 ractopamine “poisonings” were reported and ractopamine-produced pork was seized in 2007. (You have to worry when China calls a food unsafe.)

Ractopamine caused actual riots in Taiwan in 2007 when 3,500 Tawainese pig farmers, some carrying pigs, threw dung and rotten eggs at police and military soldiers over the rumor that a ractopamine ban would be lifted. “Get out, USA pork” and “We refuse to eat pork that contains poisonous ractopamine,” they chanted for hours according to Taiwan News.

Reports of ractopamine’s lack of safety are not hard to find. In 2009, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) termed ractopamine a cardiac stimulator. Ractopamine residues “represent a genuine risk to consumers,” wrote a medical journal article, citing “long plasma half-lives, and relatively slow rates of elimination.” And a report from Ottawa’s Bureau of Veterinary Drugs says that rats fed ractopamine developed a constellation of birth defects like cleft palate, protruding tongue, short limbs, missing digits, open eyelids and enlarged heart.

The FDA is well aware of ractopamine’s downside. In 2003, three years after the drug was approved for use in U.S. pigs, the FDA accused its manufacturer, Elanco, of withholding information about ractopamine’s “safety and effectiveness” and “adverse animal drug experiences” in a fourteen-page warning letter.

Elanco, said the FDA, failed to report furious pig farmers phoning the company about “dying animals,” “downer pigs,” animals “down and shaking,” “hyperactivity” and “vomiting after eating feed with Paylean,” and also suppressed clinical trial information. But, thanks to same probable lobbying that reversed the cephalosporin ban, the FDA approved ractopamine for cattle the following year and for use in turkeys in 2009! Last year, the FDA enlarged the approval for cattle.

Turkey meat produced with ractopamine is not the same as normal meat by Elanco’s own admission! “Alterations” in muscle were seen in turkeys fed ractopamine like an increase in “mononuclear cell infiltrate and myofiber degeneration,” says its 2008 new drug application documents. There was “an increase in the incidence of cysts,” and differences, some “significant,” in the weight of organs like hearts, kidneys and livers. (“Enlarged hearts” had been seen in test rats feed ractopamine in the Canadian studies.)

Still, ractopamine, like antibiotics, is being hailed as “green” and for lowering the carbon footprint. It has “positive environmental benefits for livestock producers in terms of decreased nitrogen and phosphorus excretions,” extols one journal article. It results in a “reduced amount of total animal waste,” unless, of course, you count the manure coming from Big Pharma.

Martha Rosenberg is a columnist/cartoonist who writes about public health. Her first book, tentatively titled Born with a Fritos Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health, will be published by Amherst, New York-based Prometheus Books next year.She can be reached at: [email protected]

**jah_yout** · 11-23-2011, 04:25 PM

Re: turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

yu seet...

New World Order haffi get bun out

what's needed is a True World Order...

that's why man seh everyday is thanksgiving...everyday is mother's day, father's day, valentine's day, etc.

babylon holiday ting a mind control

**RichD** · 11-23-2011, 04:32 PM

Re: turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

yuh si you should move to canada up here thanksgiving nuh have nuttin to do wid pilgrims or indians..its just about the end of the harvest season

**jah_yout** · 11-23-2011, 04:38 PM

Re: turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

di misses did claim wah day seh har ole man have house out deh fi gi wi...

and him is a ras who always a bun fire pon merkkka....

mek mi wonda wha kkkanada have fi offer

**RichD** · 11-23-2011, 04:40 PM

Re: turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">di misses did claim wah day seh har ole man have house out deh fi gi wi...

and him is a ras who always a bun fire pon merkkka....

mek mi wonda wha kkkanada have fi offer </div></div> we have nuff snow

all the cold weather yuh can deal wid

good indian food

and di best patties

plus low university tuition and universal healthcare

**SmoothOperator** · 11-23-2011, 11:40 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

I have nothing planned this year. New job and family thousands of miles away - I did a big trip over the summer and decided to stay local this year. But probably because I did not grow up with Thanksgiving it does not feel like that big a deal to me, though hearing everybody at work this week talking about their plans made me wonder if maybe I should have bit the bullet and done something. Ah well too late for that now.

**Cultcha** · 11-23-2011, 11:53 PM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

Even doh mi live nawt a di bawdah mi gwoin celebrate yankee haleedeh.

Mi tek di ress af di week aff an mi a go sit dung an watch yankee football pon di TV. Nyam pizza an chickin wing an drink mi Molson Kyanadian an check wha gowaan on jamaicans.com.

Edited to add. .......

**blugiant** · 11-24-2011, 01:35 AM

turkeys wid arsenic, antibiotic asthma drugs

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">di misses did claim wah day seh har ole man have house out deh fi gi wi...

and him is a ras who always a bun fire pon merkkka....

mek mi wonda wha kkkanada have fi offer </div></div>

yu kno kkkanada iss da unaaffical 51 state

**blugiant** · 11-24-2011, 01:40 AM

Re: fiyah pon misgiving day

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: TreyJ</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I have nothing planned this year. New job and family thousands of miles away - I did a big trip over the summer and decided to stay local this year. But probably because I did not grow up with Thanksgiving it does not feel like that big a deal to me, though hearing everybody at work this week talking about their plans made me wonder if maybe I should have bit the bullet and done something. Ah well too late for that now. </div></div>

sah wan aff dem ooman pon yah wood ave invite yu fe dinnar iff yu didd ask?

sum aff mii relative dunn a yaawd a tell mii bout misgiving day ann dem wish dem wass upp ear fii blakk friday fe shapp. yaawd gitt real merikkanize

fiyah pon misgiving day

fiyah pon misgiving day

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