We must learn from responses to such epidemics in the past if we are to succeed today. Such lessons will be difficult to craft, requiring expertise in culture as well as medicine, but need to be integral parts of our global response.
We must protest the USDA decision to expand meat consumption in schools. It is in youth that one develops eating habits and we dare not set our children off on a path toward uninformed consumption, disease and worse.
The industry's response to years of evidence of egregious, and often criminal, animal cruelty and of diseased and adulterated meat entering the market is to attempt to outlaw undercover investigations.
The entire pink slime affair should be viewed as a huge wake-up call to the harsh realities of our industrialized meat supply. But Beef Products Inc.'s case against ABC News could scare the media and others out of speaking out against the meat industry.
