Sewage Sludge - Too Insanely Disgusting To Be True?

Every time you flush your toilet or clean a paintbrush in your sink, you may be unwittingly contributing fertilizer used to grow the food in your pantry.

Beginning in the early 1990's, millions of tons of potentially-toxic sewage sludge have been applied to millions of acres of America's farmland as food crop fertilizer. Selling sewage sludge to farmers for use on cropland has been a favored government program for disposing of the unwanted byproducts from municipal wastewater treatment plants. But sewage sludge is anything but the benign fertilizer the Environmental Protection Agency says it is.

Sewage sludge includes anything that is flushed, poured, or dumped into our nation's wastewater system -- a vast, toxic mix of wastes collected from countless sources, from homes to chemical industries to hospitals. The sludge being spread on our crop fields is a dangerous stew of heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive material. In fact, hundreds of people have fallen ill after being exposed to sewage sludge fertilizer -- suffering such symptoms as respiratory distress, headaches, nausea, rashes, reproductive complications, cysts, and tumors.

The compounds added and formed during the sewage treatment process create an unknown and unpredictable product, one that should fall under the category of hazardous waste. Monitoring and regulating the content of these dangerous combinations has fallen terrifyingly short of protecting public health and the environment. Currently, no records are kept on the date or location of these lethal land applications, allowing these toxins to enter the soil of our nation's cropland untraced.

Despite the apparent danger of using sludge in food production, federal regulations are woefully lax. The EPA monitors only nine of the thousands of pathogens commonly found in sludge; the agency rarely performs site inspections of sewage treatment plants; and it almost never inspects the farms that use sludge fertilizer. Regulations governing the use and disposal of sewage sludge have been criticized by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Research Council, as well as numerous medical professionals, engineers, and activists.

The Center for Food Safety seeks to end the use of sewage sludge as an agricultural fertilizer -- first through an immediate moratorium on its application to croplands. CFS strongly suggests that the government launch an independent investigation into all specific claims that sludge has caused harm to people, animals, and the environment.

Genetically Engineered Food

The genetic engineering of plants and animals is looming as one of the greatest and most intractable environmental challenges of the 21st Century. Already, this novel technology has invaded our grocery stores and our kitchen pantries by fundamentally altering some of our most important staple food crops.

By being able to take the genetic material from one organism and insert it into the permanent genetic code of another, biotechnologists have engineered numerous novel creations, such as potatoes with bacteria genes, "super" pigs with human growth genes, fish with cattle growth genes, tomatoes with flounder genes, and thousands of other plants, animals and insects. At an alarming rate, these creations are now being patented and released into the environment.

Currently, up to 45 percent of U.S. corn is genetically engineered as is 85 percent of soybeans. It has been estimated that 70-75 percent of processed foods on supermarket shelves--from soda to soup, crackers to condiments--contain genetically engineered ingredients.

A number of studies over the past decade have revealed that genetically engineered foods can pose serious risks to humans, domesticated animals, wildlife and the environment. Human health effects can include higher risks of toxicity, allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, immune-suppression and cancer. As for environmental impacts, the use of genetic engineering in agriculture
could lead to uncontrolled biological pollution, threatening numerous microbial, plant and animal species with extinction, and the potential contamination of non-genetically engineered life forms with novel and possibly hazardous genetic material.

Despite these long-term and wide-ranging risks, Congress has yet to pass a single law intended to manage them responsibly. This despite the fact that our regulatory agencies have failed to adequately address the human health or environmental impacts of genetic engineering. On the federal level, eight agencies attempt to regulate biotechnology using 12 different statutes or laws that were written long before genetically engineered food, animals and insects became a reality. The result has been a regulatory tangle, where any regulation even exists, as existing laws are grossly manipulated to manage threats they were never intended to regulate. Among many bizarre examples of these regulatory anomalies is the current attempt by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate genetically engineered fish as "new animal drugs."

The haphazard and negligent agency regulation of biotechnology has had serious consequences for consumers and the environment. Unsuspecting consumers by the tens of millions are being allowed to purchase and consume unlabeled genetically engineered foods, despite a finding by FDA scientists that these foods could pose serious risks. And new genetically engineered crops are being approved by federal agencies despite admissions that they will contaminate native and conventional plants and pose other significant new environmental threats. In short, there has been a complete abdication of any responsible legislative or regulatory oversight of genetically engineered foods. Clearly, now is a critical time to challenge the government's negligence in managing the human health and environmental threats from biotechnology.

The Center for Food Safety seeks to prevent the approval, commercialization or release of any new genetically engineered crops until they have been thoroughly tested and found safe for human health and the environment. CFS maintains that any foods that already contain genetically engineered ingredients must be clearly labeled.

Tell FDA to Rescind its Approval for Irradiated Ground Beef

The FDA has overlooked substantial evidence that irradiated food may not be safe for human consumption. The Center for Food Safety has informed the FDA that more than one-third of the studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that looked at the question of genetic damage caused by consuming irradiated food actually showed genetic damage in animals, humans or cell cultures. Tell me more

While I personally don't usually sign or endorse petitions, I will pass this one on.

Subject: Citizen Petition No. 4Z4752 on irradiated
Dear Commissioner,

I am writing in support of Citizen Petition No. 4Z4752 to revoke the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of irradiation to treat ground beef. I urge the agency to rescind its approval of irradiation for ground beef for the following reasons:

The 1997 FDA approval for irradiation of ground beef was flawed since the agency based its decision on deficient scientific studies.

The FDA failed to test for the toxicity of unique chemicals formed when ground beef is irradiated.

While the FDA knew of the existence of these chemicals as early as 1972, the agency failed to test for their potential to cause harm to humans.

Recent research from Germany and France indicates that some of these chemicals are harmful to laboratory animals.

In addition, the research indicates that there are questions about how these chemicals are metabolized in the body -- an issue that deserves continued research.

The consumer groups Public Citizen and Center for Food Safety have demonstrated the existence of these potentially harmful chemicals in irradiated ground beef that is currently being sold in the United States.

The FDA failed to apply its own protocols when evaluating the safety of the chemicals produced when foods are irradiated.

The FDA approval has led to irradiated ground beef being marketed in some 5000 supermarkets across the country. While that meat is required to be labeled so that consumers can make an informed choice, it is disturbing to me that some chain restaurants are offering irradiated ground beef to unwitting customers since information about food prepared with irradiated ingredients does not have to be divulged.

The FDA approval has also led the United States Department of Agriculture to remove its prohibition on purchasing irradiated ground beef for the National School Lunch Program -- thus setting up the potential for our school children to become the largest group of consumers of irradiated ground beef without having complete scientific assurances of its safety.

For all of these reasons, I strongly urge you to rescind your approval of irradiation for ground beef.

Sincerely,
[Your name]
[Your address]