Saturday, September 16, 2006

Reserving judgement

Some recent communiques with friends has gotten me thinking about the subject of reserving judgement. I'll use some recent events to illustrate my thinking.

The FDA has approved a viral spray to control bacteria on meat. CNN and several other sources have been in a tizzy over this with an assortment of biased statements and some sound bites from carefully selected on the street interviews. Of course they don't show anyone of understanding who thinks its a good idea, just people who display the correct amount of revulsion. At the same time there has been an outbreak of e.coli on certain packaged spinach products. This is getting only a cursory mention from the same news feed that spends 3-4 minutes on the viral spray.

"Aha!" the suspicious mind says "it's a conspiracy to promote this new viral spray product" regardless of the fact that the spray is intended for use on meat and the e.coli on the spinach certainly came from animal sources such as animal manure used to fertilize the spinach fields (suddenly I'm very glad I use green plant-based manures and synthetic fertilizers on our farm)

It is reprehensible to me that these consumers and media types so quickly passed judgement on the viral spray. I mean, come on, how ignorant can you be? There are thousands of viruses which cannot infect humans. Almost any plant matter you might consume will certainly contain at least a few of these. How is that any different than the spray approved by the FDA which only kills bacteria, not people?

While a bunch of vegetarians are puking out their guts from their "organic" spinach I'll be gladly munching on my virally protected hot dog, thank you very much.

And as Lubos likes to say, "that's the memo"

2 comments:

Rae Ann said...

Absolutely! I don't watch cnn as much as fox, and fox has really been talking about the e coli but not the viral spray. In fact, this is the first I've heard of it at all. (I've been watching movies lately and not the news as much, if that makes any difference.) My suspicious mind wonders if this is some kind of terrorist attack on our food supply. The illegal farm workers could have been 'sleeper cells' or something. But who knows?

Rae Ann said...

I thought of something else. Those anti-genetic engineering types who are so against developing beneficial viruses and improved foods are most likely the very same people getting freakin' botox injected into their faces.