Voices From the Gulf: Do Not Eat Our Food (pt. 4)Dave Hodges The Government Will Not Protect You The measures that the government is taking to ensure Gulf food safety would be laughable and provide the fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit, if it were not for the growing number of victims resulting from the BP event coupled with the impotent governmental response. The current method for detecting oil and Corexit contamination in Gulf seafood is a simple sniff test, in which FDA inspectors hold a bag of fish up to their nose and if the inspector does not detect any strange odors, the fish passes the food safety inspection test and is eligible to be processed and subsequently sold to the public. The FDA says smell tests are the only way to detect chemical dispersants, as scientists have yet to develop an effective tissue test. The sniff test doesnt satisfy food industry workers and the obvious lack of scientific rigor is a de facto admission that the government cannot protect you. Similar warnings regarding the regions food safety are appearing up and down the local Gulf Coast media on such stations as WLOX TV in Gulfport, MS. Yet, Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, etc., have not run one credible story on the dangers of food toxicity in the Gulfs food chain. Although it is a different topic, which will be covered in part five in this series, the reader would be correct in assuming that a tightly interwoven, interlocking and overlapping corporate leadership as well as a multitude of common business interests exists between the national media, the oil companies and their Wall Street investors. And in this paradigm, the safety of the food consuming public does not matter. Harriet Perry, a research biologist with the University of Southern Mississippis Gulf Coast Research Laboratory and Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans have independently discovered that the crab larvae has been infected with both oil and the toxic dispersant, Corexit. These independent discoveries are an ominous sign that the Gulfs vast food web has been seriously impacted thus imperiling food safety for years to come. Thomas further stated that oil and dispersant toxicity has reached the level of where it is moving up the food chain as opposed to just hanging out in the water. Thomas further concluded that something likely will eat those oiled larvae and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on. Scientists at The University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University have echoed Thomas and Perrys findings which found oil in the post-larvae of blue crabs entering coastal marshes along the Gulf Coast signaling that oil is entering estuarine food chains. Dr. Perry observed that I have never seen anything like this. Scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab shows oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster has made its way into the Gulf food chain as well. These particular scientists have found signs of an oil-and-dispersant mix under the shells of tiny blue crab larvae in the Gulf of Mexico which is a clear indication that the unprecedented use of dispersants in the BP oil spill has broken up the oil into toxic droplets so tiny that they have easily entered the food chain. In the first peer-reviewed challenge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administrations (FDAs) safe levels for cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a new study says they were overestimated in Gulf seafood following the BP oil spill by up to 10,000 times. Published in the journal Environmental Health Perspective, the study by authors Miriam Rotkin-Ellman and Gina Solomon both from the National Resources Defense Council offers evidence that FDA is tolerating too much contamination and is failing to identify risks for pregnant women and children. Instead of saying it was safe for everyone to eat, pregnant women and children should have been warned and advised to reduce their Gulf shellfish consumption, Ellman says. And now it is likely that 100% of the shrimp in the Gulf are tainted. Corexit Is the Main Culprit It is mind boggling that Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527 would be used in cleaning up the largest environmental danger in the history of the United States. According to the EPA, both forms of Corexit are the most ineffective available agents in treating oil spills and, simultaneously, both Corexit agents also pose the most toxic risk to various aquatic life forms. My fellow Republic Broadcasting Network colleague, Darren Weeks, found evidence from the EPA files that Corexit has the highest toxicity to Menindia fish of all 18 EPA tested dispersants. Just a very small amount of Corexit 9500 is required to kill 50% of fish within four days. When compared to another EPA approved dispersant, Nokomis 3-F4, Corexit 9500 is 38 times more poisonous to Menindia fish and 17 times more deadly to shrimp. Why not just use Nokomis 3-F4? The answer is simple, Goldman Sachs does not have any financial interests in Nokomis 3-F4. NALCO, the manufacturer of Corexit, was a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Also, Goldman Sachs and Halliburtons complicity in the oil spill figures prominently in this investigation and will be detailed in later parts of this series. There is no end in sight for this ecological crisis, as new reports of an oil leak in the Gulf were reported in the national media on August 17, 2011. What was not reported were the additional 13 oil sheens spotted off the coast of Louisiana. This development has profound implications leaving scientists to wonder if the crisis will ever end. And, of course, BP quickly denied responsibility. And as of December 13, 2012, the Gulf is still leaking oil, which has profound implications for the long-term safety of the water, food and air. The Russian report proved prophetic. Oil and Corexit, even when combined, are a liquid base and as a result are subject to the normal hydrological cycle of evaporation and becoming a part of the rain cycle. As early as the 1970s, scientists referred to this process, when it involved pollutants, as toxic rain. And as the Russian report predicted, there are multiple reports of toxic rain, related to the Gulf disaster as far as away Memphis, TN. WREG TV in Memphis reported that local farmers are alarmed at the toxic substances (i.e., Corexit) raining down upon and destroying the local crop base. And while we are speaking about Corexit and oil based toxic rain, wouldnt this toxic rain be present in the farms and be negatively impacting the grass that cows and other farm animals consume? Dont cows eat grass which is being laced with this poisonous toxicity? Common Sense would seem to dictate that the beef and dairy grown in the region is tainted and these dangers are being visited upon the rest of the country? Who Is Watching the Watchers? It Will Never Be Over These events make one wonder who is watching out for the welfare of the American consumer? A better question would be who, if anybody is watching the watchers? What did Barack Obama and then-EPA chief, Lisa Jackson do? Or, more importantly, what did they not do to safeguard the public from obvious contamination of our food supplies resulting in large part from the reckless disbursement of Corexit? With the entire regions food supply at risk, along with the collective health of 40 million Americans, the straightforward answer is that they did nothing. Everyone has to make their own choices regarding what they eat and what they consider safe. For myself, the data is strongly suggestive of the fact that one should not be eating any seafood from the Gulf. Dave is an award winning psychology, statistics and research professor, a college basketball coach, a mental health counselor, a political activist and writer who has published dozens of editorials and articles in several publications such as Freedoms Phoenix, News With Viewsand The Arizona Republic. The Common Sense Show features a wide variety of important topics that range from the loss of constitutional liberties, to the subsequent implementation of a police state under world governance, to exploring the limits of human potential. The primary purpose of The Common Sense Show is to provide Americans with the tools necessary to reclaim both our individual and national sovereignty. linkwithin_text=Related Articles: 