Guest post by Matt Ridley
My article in Wired in August called “Apocalypse Not” (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/08/ff_apocalypsenot/) attracted a huge number of comments, many of which were constructive and interesting. It also led to critical responses at other sites. Here is my response to some of those responses. Wired asked me to respond, but then concluded that there was not space on their website to carry the response.
Philip Bump wrote an article in Grist attacking what he calls my “conceit” on climate change and calling my argument “bullshit”: http://grist.org/news/apocalypse-or-bust-how-wireds-climate-optimism-doesnt-add-up/. Leaving aside the insults, what was the substance of his criticism?
Mr Bump’s first point is that I am wrong that malaria will continue to decline because “comparing our relative recent success in combating malaria to the haphazard and poorly funded efforts from last century doesn’t provide much insight into how we’ll fare against more widespread malaria using existing tools”. He is entitled to this opinion but it flies in the face of published evidence on three counts. First, the retreat of malaria during the twentieth century was far from haphazard. As a chart published in Nature by Dr Peter Gething of Oxford University (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/images/nature09098-f1.2.jpg) shows, malaria vanished in the twentieth century from large parts of Asia, Europe and North America and became dramatically rarer in South America and South-east Asia. It also declined in Africa.
Second, the acceleration of this decline of malaria since 2000 (25% reduction in ten years) has indeed been aided by the work and funds of the Gates Foundation and others, but with new funds and new techniques it is not clear why Mr Bump thinks “it’s unlikely, though, that additional investment will continue to get the same rate of return” since he provides no evidence for this statement. Third, the “more widespread malaria” the he forecasts is largely a myth. In most of the world malaria is not limited by climate. In Africa there a few high-altitude areas – less than 3% of the continent – that might become more malaria friendly if global warming accelerates as the IPCC predicts. Surely it will continue to make sense to combat malaria itself rather than trying to fight it by combating climate change? Why should we focus on preventing that 3% increase rather than diminishing the existing 100% of malaria? As Dr Gething has written: “widespread claims that rising mean temperatures have already led to increases in worldwide malaria morbidity and mortality are largely at odds with observed decreasing global trends in both its endemicity and geographic extent” and “proposed future effects of rising temperatures on endemicity are at least one order of magnitude smaller than changes observed since about 1900 and up to two orders of magnitude smaller than those that can be achieved by the effective scale-up of key control measures.”[1]
Incidentally, the persistence of the myth that malaria would worsen in a warming world was quite unnecessary, because a world expert on the topic tried in vain to correct the myth at an early stage. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute, made the case within the IPCC that malaria’s range was shrinking and was limited by factors other than temperature, but was ignored and (in his words) “After much effort and many fruitless discussions I…resigned from the IPCC project [but] found that my name was still listed. I requested its removal, but was told it would remain because ‘I had contributed.’ It was only after strong insistence that I succeeded in having it removed.”[2]
Mr Bump’s second charge is that if I am right that the threat of increased malaria as a result of global warming was greatly exaggerated, this does not prove that other aspects of climate change are exaggerated: “Even if the malaria argument held up, it would still only represent one ancillary concern stemming from global warming!” Given the prominence of the malaria-from-warming threat in the early IPCC reports and in the media, and the long battle Dr Reiter had to get the IPCC to see sense on the issue, the issue was hardly ancillary. None the less, let me take up Mr Bump’s challenge and consider some of the other threats promised in the name of climate change. For reasons of space I chose to focus on malaria but there is a long list of threats that have been downgraded as more knowledge of climate change accumulates. My first draft included two paragraphs of other examples that were left on the cutting room floor when my article was published. I reproduce them here:
“Likewise, the prediction that global warming could turn off the Gulf Stream, an idea that featured in the film The Day After Tomorrow. The fear was taken seriously in the 1990s, with the respected Nature magazine publishing a computer-model calculation that showed “a permanent shutdown” of the Atlantic “thermohaline circulation”, which drives the Gulf Stream, within a century if carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise[3]. This, commented a senior scientist, posed a risk “that no nation bordering the North Atlantic would willingly take.”[4] Such a threat has now been abandoned as highly unlikely, one scientist commenting: “I think the notion of telling the public to prepare for both global warming and an ice age at the same [time] creates a real public relations problem for us.”[5]
“In other words, some of the subplots of climate change have already proved exaggerated.
– The Himalayan glaciers are not melting in a hurry and even if they were, 96% of the water in the Ganges comes from rain, not melting ice[6].
– A gigantic methane belch when the Arctic ocean reaches some warm tipping point turns out to be implausible[7].
– The world’s coral reefs recover quickly and fully from bleaching episodes caused by sudden warming[8].
– Runaway warming is now widely agreed to be impossible[9].
– The United Nations was wrong in 2005 to predict (and map the whereabouts of) 50 million future environmental refugees by 2010[10]. And so on.
Maybe these sideshows were always mistakes. Or just maybe the main event is being exaggerated too.”
I look forward to Mr Bump’s response on each of these points, few of which are ancillary. I also draw his attention to the deceleration of sea level rise, in sharp contrast to predictions, a measure that is about as central to the climate change threat as you can get. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/13/sea-level-acceleration-not-so-fast-recently/
Another critique of my article appeared under Lloyd Alter’s byline here: http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/wired-magazine-tells-us-dont-worry-be-happy-about-climate-population-resources-pandemics.html. Mr Alter accuses me of being pie-in-the sky and head-in-the-sand and objects specifically to my conclusion about the ozone hole that “the predicted recovery of the ozone layer never happened: The hole stopped growing before the ban took effect, then failed to shrink afterward. The ozone hole still grows every Antarctic spring, to roughly the same extent each year. Nobody quite knows why. Some scientists think it is simply taking longer than expected for the chemicals to disintegrate; a few believe that the cause of the hole was misdiagnosed in the first place. Either way, the ozone hole cannot yet be claimed as a looming catastrophe, let alone one averted by political action.”
Mr Alter claims that the long residence time of chloroflurocarbons in the atmosphere explains the failure of the ozone hole to shrink. He may be right, in which case he falls in the category I cited – “Some scientists think it is simply taking longer than expected for the chemicals to disintegrate” – but that hardly disproves my last statement that the ozone hole cannot yet be called a crisis that was definitely averted. Here’s a graph, from NASA (http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/meteorology/annual_data.html) , showing the stubborn persistence of the ozone hole:
Among the emails received at Wired was one from David Gasper of Dayton, Ohio, arguing “many situations are avoided because we listened to the alarmists and PREVENTED the extremes from happening.” Sure, and I acknowledged this in my piece. However, Mr Gasper gives two poor examples to support his case. The first is the Y2k computer bug. A huge amount of expensive work was indeed done to avert the breakdown of computers on 31 December 2012, but that does not in itself prove that the threats were not exaggerated.
Indeed the absolute lack of any major problems the next day, even in countries whose efforts were threadbare and patchy (such as Italy and South Korea and much of Africa), rather argues that they were exaggerated. Remember my argument is not that there was no threat of problems, but that the threat was overblown. Can anybody really think, in retrospect, that Senator Christopher J. Dodd, (D-CT), speaking at the first hearings of the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem on June 12, 1998 was not overegging the scare when he said: “I think we’re no longer at the point of asking whether or not there will be any power disruptions, but we are now forced to ask how severe the disruptions are going to be…. If the critical industries and government agencies don’t start to pick up the pace of dealing with this problem right now, Congress and the Clinton Administration are going to have to…deal with a true national emergency.”[11]
Mr Gasper’s other example is DDT, saying that I downplay the importance of DDT and bird populations and he points out that bald eagles and other predatory birds now thrive in his part of Ohio. He’s right and hawks and falcons now thrive where I live also. In both cases the removal of DDT was, I am convinced, crucial in the recovery of raptor populations, because DDT became concentrated as it moved up the food chain till it reached levels that did harm by thinning eggshells. However, my critique of the Rachel Carson/Paul Ehrlich scare was not about this phenomenon, but about the claim that DDT, together with other chemicals, caused cancer in human beings and would result in a severe shortening of human lifespan.
The website Carbon Commentary carried a piece by Chris Goodall (http://www.carboncommentary.com/2012/08/23/2449) arguing that skin cancer was getting worse because of ozone loss, that food and metal prices were rising and that he had read a similar article in the Economist in 1997.
Mr Goodall’s piece had many errors, starting with the repeated misspelling of “Ehrlich”.
He attempted to combat my assertion that melanoma is not increasing with the following remark: “increasing skin cancer incidence has been linked to rising UV-B radiation for several decades.” He gave no source. (My article has over 75 source links at my website: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not.aspx.) Is Mr Goodall unaware that most skin cancer is not melanoma? That the increase in other skin cancers is caused, most medical scientists think, by an increase in holidays in low latitudes, not a reduction in ozone in high latitudes?
There were plenty more in the way of egregious mistakes in the piece that would never have got past the fact-checkers at Wired. His price graphs took no account of inflation! Minerals and cancers were cherry picked. For the true picture on commodities prices and the Simon-Ehrlich bet, see this chart:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_otfwl2zc6Qc/S4AmqnxCqXI/AAAAAAAAM1A/eYRQcCkYlcc/s1600-h/commodities.jpg
and Mark Perry’s conclusion about it:
“If Simon’s position was that natural resources and commodities become generally more abundant over long periods time, reflected in falling real prices, I think he was more right than lucky, as the graph above demonstrates.
Stated differently, if Simon was really betting that inflation-adjusted prices of a basket of commodity prices have a significantly negative slope over long periods of time, and Ehrlich was betting that the slope of that line was significantly positive, I think Simon wins the bet.”
As for food prices, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/08/peak-oil-climate-change-and-the-threat-to-food-security/#more-48870
How anybody from the climate-alarm camp can argue that the recent spike in food prices might be evidence of running out of food, when we turned 40% (!!) of US grain into motor fuel last year to satisfy green campaigners, baffles me.
And the similarity of some parts of the Wired article to some parts of the Economist article in 1997 is because I wrote them both.
Finally, there was an anonymous article on a blog called Skeptical Science, which purported to correct my claims about the possibility of a “lukewarm” climate outcome that would be less damaging than some of the measures being taken to combat climate change such as biofuels. The article focused on two points, first that Greenland’s ice loss, while currently less than 1% per century as I claimed, is in fact accelerating. However, recent revisions to the data show that the true rate of ice loss is even lower, less than 0.5% per century (http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n9/full/ngeo938.html) and even this comes from far too short a period to be called a trend. (It is interesting how quick some climate alarmists are to dismiss the standstill in global temperatures of the last 15 years as “too short” while accepting nine years of Greenland satellite data as a trend!)
In fact the latest work, by Kurt Kjaer of the University of Copenhagen (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6094/569.abstract?sid=822b555a-638b-4a49-a021-3dab84f17457), using aerial photographs to extend the history of Greenland’s ice cap backwards in time “challenges predictions about the future response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to increasing global temperatures” by concluding that the spurts of ice loss from Greenland in 1985-1993 and in 2005-2010 were short-lived events rather than indicative of a general trend.
Skeptical Science’s other criticism was that the evidence supports a strong positive water-vapour feedback amplification of carbon-dioxide induced warming. I am glad to have confirmation that this feedback is necessary to turn CO2-induced warming into a major danger, as I argued, but I disagree that the current evidence overwhelmingly supports this. There are studies that find evidence for net positive feedbacks and studies that do not. Here’s one very recent one (http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011GL050226.shtml) that makes “relatively low projections of 21st-century warming”. And here is a recent critique of high-sensitivity studies (http://judithcurry.com/2012/06/25/questioning-the-forest-et-al-2006-sensitivity-study/). My point, remember, is not that climate change will definitely be benign, but that the possibility that it will be real but not a catastrophe is far from small and yet is usually ignored. It is surely premature to rule out the possibility of such a lukewarm future and Skeptical Science produces very threadbare evidence to support such a dogmatic conclusion.
For those who are interested in the sources I used for my original article, I have reprinted it with many live links at www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not.aspx.
[1] http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/full/nature09098.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter
[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/climate/stories/sci120197.htm
[4] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/climate/stories/sci120197.htm
[6] http://www.mtnforum.org/sites/default/files/pub/1294.pdf and http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/himalayan-glaciers-not-melting
[7] http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/more-views-on-global-warmin-and-arctic-methane/?src=tp
[8] http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090423100817.htm and http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2010/09/13/coral-bleaching/
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#cite_note-10
[10] http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,757713,00.html
[11] http://www.co-intelligence.org/y2k_quotes.html
outtheback says:
November 22, 2012 at 9:58 am
Gail Combs says:
November 22, 2012 at 6:55 am
Do you really believe that paper trading caused the food prices to rise?…
________________________________
It was one of several different policies that caused the problem.
1) 1995 Clinton signed the WTO treaty. Dan Amstutz VP of Cargill, the grain traders, wrote the Agreememt on Ag. (He also worked for Goldman Sachs)
2) 1996 Amstutz wrote the Freedom to Farm Act later known as the Freedom to Fail act bankrupting the independent US farmer. link 1 and link 2 and link 3
3) The US farm policy (and subsidies) combined with WTO drives third world farmers bankrupt. link also Food Supremacy: America’s Other War and How to manufacture a global food crisis : lessons from the World Bank, IMF, and WTO
4) Clinton even apologizes 2008: Bill Clinton said at the UN that, “we all blew it, including me as president” by treating food crops as commodity rather than a right of the poor.” and 2010: “We Made a Devil’s Bargain”: Fmr. President Clinton Apologizes for Trade Policies that Destroyed Haitian Rice Farming
5) and finally on to the grain and commodity traders:
Food shortfalls predicted: 2008
July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush
5/2/2008 …says USDA Undersecretary Mark Keenum, “Our cupboard is bare.” U.S. government food surpluses have evaporated…
September 21 2012: How to fight a food crisis
So the US Federal Government followed the advice of the Grain Traders as seen in the letter above.
The Grain Traders say this about Amstutz: “Throughout his very successful career Dan Amstutz represented and championed the ideas and goals of NAEGA membership “ (North American Export Grain Association) Dan Amstutz did not represent the interests of farmers or consumers when he wrote that draft, he represented the interests of the Transnational Grain Traders. Keep in mind that four privately owned grain traders control 90% of the grain. They are Cargill, Louis Dreyfus, Andre, and Bunge. link
Africa Focus: Seed Sharing or Biopiracy
Animal Patents: http://www.icar.org/%5Cpages%5Cpsas.htm
As I said it is not just biofuel but a number of factors designed to move wealth from the poor into the rich man’s pocket. The food crisis of 2008 happened by DESIGN as shown above.
ADM (and Monsanto) were the ones who really made out on the biofuel scam as I wrote in an earlier comment this year.
Gail Combs says:
November 22, 2012 at 2:58 pm
Is that the same Cargill that is one of the largest biofuel producers in Europe and pretty much joined at the hip to Koch Industries?
DaveE.
David A. Evans says: A November 22, 2012 at 7:21 pm
Is that the same Cargill that is one of the largest biofuel producers in Europe…
_______________________________________
It is these guys link And yes they are into ethanol Biofuel in the EU link.
The European Market for Biofuel Plants
That is a bit misleading since it is a German branch of an American company.
Source Watch
And yes they are the same company link leads to link
The Koch Industries, Inc connection
There may be a lot more connections since they are both privately held and can pretty much do what they darn well please without much public knowledge.
Gail, I was with you until your last sentence. Cargill bought a feed mill from Koch, and now they have secret connections between them? It makes as much sense as me saying
You see the problem? You are casting aspersions on people without a scrap of evidence. That makes you look bad, not Koch or Cargill … it is a low-down technique. It’s like me saying:
I hope you are getting the picture. What you are doing is a scurvy, slimy kind of attack, all nudge-nudge-wink-wink, full of nasty innuendo and indirection, a whispering campaign.
w.
PS—By the way, Gail, I read somewhere that you might be a serial child molester, and not only that, I read that you have never denied it …
You see the problem now?
REPLY: Careful, Willis – Anthony
Matt Ridley says:
November 21, 2012 at 3:12 pm
“Thanks, Willis. For the record, Jeff, I wrote one book during my 3.5 years as part-time chairman of Northern Rock: my very short biography of Francis Crick. I made mistakes in that job but inattention to the advice of regulators and experts (let alone modelers) was not one of them. Rather, I should have been more contrarian.”
If only you had previously written a book on financial bubbles, eh?
Willis Eschenbach says:
November 22, 2012 at 9:40 pm
Gail, I was with you until your last sentence. Cargill bought a feed mill from Koch, and now they have secret connections between them? It makes as much sense as me saying…
_________________________________
No I am say they are both private companies and therefore if there are other connections it would be very hard to find.
As far as Cargill goes, a guy who worked for a start up company as a middleman in the international grain selling business said they pulled a really nasty trick, bankrupting the company and then had him told just what they did as a first warning to get the heck out of THEIR business turf and stay out.
That is the only type of glimpse you will get and it is unsubstantiated since he was not wearing a tape recorder at the time of the warn-off. However it is also standard business practice for large businesses to intentionally bankrupt small companies in price wars.
Gail Combs says:
November 23, 2012 at 3:54 am
Yes, and I am saying that Gail Combs is a private individual and therefore if she is a child molester, it would be very hard to find out.
As far as molesting children goes, a guy who worked for a cousin of my wife’s hairdresser said Gail Combs was seen with a bunch of children, and more than once.
That is the only type of glimpse you will get of a possible child molester and it is unsubstantiated since he was not wearing a tape recorder at the time.
Gail, do you see the problem yet? You are accusing without accusing, just as I have done in the paragraphs above. Note that nowhere have I made an actual accusation, I have just repeated hearsay and unverified rumors, and planted the seed by repeating the words “child molestation” over and over.
Making unsubstantiated accusations such as those is totally unethical. You have no more knowledge of secret connections between Koch and Cargill than I have knowledge of your relationship with children.
But to say that for all I know you could be a child molester is not, as you claim, some kind of neutral statement. It is not simple speculation. It is no more a neutral statement than is your statement about Koch and Cargill, despite your disavowals that it was merely comments.
Because after all … why should we believe disavowals from someone who might be a child molester?
w.
Willis Eschenbach says:
November 23, 2012 at 10:03 am
……Making unsubstantiated accusations such as those is totally unethical. You have no more knowledge of secret connections between Koch and Cargill than I have knowledge of your relationship with children…..
_________________________________
Willis I am ANSWERING a direct question from David Evan who is the one who brought up the Koch – Cargill connection not me (first I ever heard of it) and I am replying I DO NO KNOW and it is near impossible to find out because they are PRIVATE companies PERIOD.
There is nothing unethical about saying.
1. They are private.
2. Most information is off the radar.
3. Someone told me about their interaction with Cargill which I was careful to point out is UNSUBSTANTIATED. I would not have even brought it up except in a reply to your accusations.
Do I dislike Cargill? Yes,
Why? Because in 2008 with food riots in more than thirty countries, Cargill had record breaking profits as did Monsanto and others. http://documents.foodandwaterwatch.org/doc/cargill-europe.pdf
Cargill’s VP Dan Amstutz is also responsible for the WTO Agreement on Ag. I checked the Center of Disease Control figure for the three years before WTO was ratified and giving 2 years for ramp up, for three years after. The food borne disease rate in the USA DOUBLED!
Cargill is not a lily white company and they have a major hold on our food supply and also on world politics. It would take a book to explore all the ins and outs of the Cargill/WTO/USDA connections and the international food system. You can also search [Cargill Fines.]
Am I a whack job because of my dislike for Cargill? Why don’t you go read what Purdue University has to say about price fixing in the Ag market: http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/staff/connor/papers/index.asp
There is even a link to a Special Issue of Agricultural Economics on the World Food Crisis of 2007-08: http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/ae/food_crisis.htm
This whole conversation started with someone using the simplistic explanation that biofuels were the cause of the 2008 food crisis which is not the case.
Here is the origin of this mess:
Gail Combs says:
November 23, 2012 at 11:20 am
I don’t care if you are replying to a question, or questing off on your own. Making unsubstantiated accusations is not good, no matter what the conditions might be.
If you believe that, then you must also believe that there is nothing unethical about saying that:
1. You are private
2. Most information about you is off the radar.
3. Therefore, it is quite possible that you are a child molester.
Still think it is not unethical to make these kinds of vague, unsubstantiated accusations? Man, from as hard as you are fighting this, I’m starting to think that you might actually be a child molester.
Still think it is not unethical to make these kinds of vague, unsubstantiated statements? Sounds to me like you are defending your right to molest children.
Still think it is not unethical to make these kinds of vague, unsubstantiated statements? Because I can go on with examples.
Gail, I don’t care if you said three times that the accusations are UNSUBSTANTIATED, to use your capital letter terminology. If they are unsubstantiated, then DON’T REPEAT THEM. When you repeat them, you are being nothing but a common gossip and fishwife, and I suspect that you are much better than that.
My advice?
If you can’t cite it … don’t write it.
w.
PS—For those not following the story, no, I absolutely do not think that Gail is a child molester. I am trying to dramatize for her what it is to be the target of a nasty, unsubstantiated whispering campaign of the type that Gail is aiming at Cargill and Koch.
PPS—I don’t know either Cargill or the Koch brothers, I’ve never had dealings with either one. They may be sinners or saints, I don’t know … I just don’t like uncited, unsubstantiated backhand allegations.
Gail, let me add that I forgot to thank you for the links and the information on Cargill. They are interesting.
You say:
I tried to find the CDC data you mention on foodborne illness, but I haven’t been able to find it. Do you have a source for your statement about the change in foodborne illness after passage of WTO? I can’t find any annual foodborne illness data at the CDC that goes back that far. Could you please provide a citation for that?
You also say:
I said nothing about you being a whack job. I said nothing about Cargill. So I’m in mystery about your statement. I do not think you are a “whack job” of any type for any reason. You appear to be as sane as I am … although in fairness that’s not a real high standard.
Let me also say that I am no fan of either agribusiness giants or the WTO.
My issue was with your backhanded implication that there was some unholy alliance between Cargill and the Koch brothers.
All the best,
w.
Malaria was endemic across Siberia. How could that be due to heat? The cause was that people depended for water on open barrels, and left open troughs of water for their animals and did not have screens on their windows. The fact that malaria is now a tropical disease is only because that is where poverty has prevented its elimination.
The link of DDT to bird eggs is dubious. The reason raptors became endangered was that when America had lots of farmers the raptors were viewed as predators of chickens, and shot whenever seen. Other people shot them for trophies.
Willis Eschenbach said @ur momisugly November 23, 2012 at 1:49 pm
A report at CDC on food-borne disease rates is here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5714a2.htm
Figure 2 indicates most monitored food-borne disease rates have declined after 1995.
Craig Loehle said @ur momisugly November 23, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Have you not heard of the Siberian Hotspot?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918164236.htm
Another instance of causation backwards in time?
Willis Eschenbach says: @ur momisugly November 23, 2012 at 1:49 pm
______________________
…I tried to find the CDC data you mention on foodborne illness, but I haven’t been able to find it. Do you have a source for your statement about the change in foodborne illness after passage of WTO?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is another long story.
I first ran across it about a decade ago on the Organic Consumers website. It vanished from there even though I had the link so I went directly to the CDC.
The CDC says they went to an “enhanced surveillance system” this means the reports were not sent by snail mail, instead they were sent by e-mail and the CDC confirmed them. The CDC attributed the increase to this “enhanced reporting” although I can’t see how the data was sent has anything to do with the situation. The other factors are a change in how inspection is done: critique of HACCP This was introduced in 1996-1997 and hands on government inspection was stopped and reduced to inspecting paperwork not food. (Government testing labs were closed) Also see: Shielding the Giant: USDA’s “Don’t Look, Don’t Know” Policy for Beef Inspection
The CDC says about the discontinuity
There is also this: http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/3/4/97-0409_article.htm
I used the numbers given for bacteria, beef, pork, poultry, & seafood and totaled them.
Other information on the changes in food safety:
Stanley Painter, Chairman of the National Food Inspection Unions, stated in his testimony at the congressional hearing on the Hallmark Dower Cows:
From an e-mag I get: American Vegetable Grower
An Article in the New York Times: “The Safety Gap” by Gardiner Harris
I have a lot more data on the changes connected to WTO that increased food borne illness so the change in reporting seems to be covering up a multitude of sins. The goal was to get the public screaming for the Food Safety Modernization Act but that is another book. Untangling lobbying and politics is not as clean as science data.
The Pompous Git says: @ur momisugly November 23, 2012 at 2:37 pm
….A report at CDC on food-borne disease rates is here:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5714a2.htm
Figure 2 indicates most monitored food-borne disease rates have declined after 1995.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Now that is really interesting.
In 1997 Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman stated “Today, America has the safest food in the world.” http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/1997/08/0284 Yet we in the USA have been inundated with food safety headlines screaming about unsafe food and the need for a updating the law for the past decade.
These are the numbers I have from the report I looked at several years ago. I only looked at meat. (There maybe some copy errors)
Number of reported foodborne-disease outbreaks
YEAR…Bacteria…Beef…Pork…Poultry…Seafood…..TOTAL
1993……..135………16…….3……….6………….31………….489
1994……..148………22…….7………16…………47………….653
1995……..155………14…….5……….9………….43………….628
1996……..112………..7…….6………..9…………29…………..477
1997……..105………..7…….7……….12…………37………….504
1998……..258………26……29……….62………107…………1314
1999……..217……….62…..26……….74………..92…………1343
2000……..247……….43…..27………..61……….88………….1417
2001……..235……….33……30……….73………108…………1243
2002………227………44……26……….75………..93………….1330
Do you think we are seeing the Urban Heat Island Effect in action? The supporting evidence below does not support a fall in foodborne disease incidents over the period in question. After HACCP was introduced I noticed PERDUE® chicken had pin feathers and even whole feathers as well as blood in the joints indicating a possible line speed increase. If the gov’t inspectors are no longer checking the actual carcasses for disease you can speed up the processing.
What WTO did to USA and world food safety was get rid of quarantine and testing at borders.
current link http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/sps_e/spsund_e.htm (wording may have changed the rest of the links are old)
From International Organization OIE (Office International des Épizooties) we have:
This is the result:
In 2008? the USA exported 700,000 tons of quality beef while importing 1,500,000 tons from countries with: Naegleria fowler, Encephalitis, vesicular stomatitis viruses, Leptospirosis, Trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease), and foot and mouth disease. The US imports 2.5 million live cattle from Canada with BSE (now found in USA) and from Mexico with tuberculosis (now found in USA), brucellosis (now found in USA) cattle tick fever, (now found in USA) Trypanosoma cruz,, (now found in USA), Bluetongue (now found in USA), and Vesicular stomatitis.
From the state of Texas Stategic Plan
Oh, I should mention that I forwarded my graphs on the CDC numbers and the other information (plus links of course) to a group going after the USDA several years ago.