“Enjoy food. Not too much. Then get some exercise.” (Inspiration here.)
 
“There’s nothing wrong with eating animals. Most of them do it too.”
 
“Don’t be afraid to eat anything your mother once served you.”
 
“It’s not the cupcake’s fault.”
 
“Don’t eat out of a dumpster. Even if it’s free and vegan.”
 
"One cheeseburger won’t make you fat, and one salad won’t make you thin."
 
“Don’t be a prude: Eat promiscuously.” (Inspiration here.) 
 
“Life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.” (Anthony Bourdain)
 
“In spite of food fads, fitness programs, and health concerns, we must never lose sight of a beautifully conceived meal.” (Julia Child)
 
“Life is too short for self-hatred and celery sticks.” (Marilyn Wann)

If something says organic on it, it means the government is regulating it and there are certain very strict standards for organic foods. And in many cases organic foods are safer, they’re more nutritious, and they’re always better for the environment.

News flash: All food sold in the United States is regulated by one government agency or another. Sometimes several. And the U.S. Department of Agriculture has repeatedly said its own Organic label is a “marketing program” that only specifies how food is processed, and says nothing about food safety or nutrition.
Here’s a further reading list for Freeman, from the Center for Consumer Freedom’s recent clipping files:

Major UK government report: Organic farming is “no better for the environment.”
Top Irish food scientist: Organic nutrition claims are “fiction.”
England’s Food Standards Agency: “The weight of scientific evidence does not support claims that organic food is more nutritious or safer than conventionally produced food.”
University of Maryland nutrition professor: “The idea that somehow eating organic foods is going to make you healthier, I think is just wishful thinking. There is no health advantage … There really isn’t any major difference in contamination between organically grown produce and conventional produce. It’s not really isn’t an issue.”
British Environment Secretary: “[Eating organic is] a lifestyle choice that people can make. There isn’t any conclusive evidence either way.”
Canadian Research Institute for Food Safety Director, following organic baby-food recall: “I think the perception is that organic is safer. In my opinion, it’s only a perception.” 

Does all of this mean that organic-labeled foods are dangerous? Absolutely not. But they’re also no safer to eat than conventionally raised food. And the same goes for meat. Freeman doesn’t get this. She claimed on “TODAY” that U.S. consumers should always pay extra money for organic meats on food-safety grounds: 

It means that they’re not going to be fed any toxins, no slaughterhouse waste which can cause mad cow disease. It’s better for the environment. It’s safer for your health. You’re not going to get mad cow disease eating organic. 

First of all, you’re not going to contract “mad cow” disease from conventional beef either. The odds are microscopically slim — on the order of winning the Powerball lotto and being struck by lightning on the same day. And those odds don’t get any slimmer by eating organic beef. 
During the first great U.S. mad-cow panic in December 2003, we learned that Germany’s first case of the disease (in 2001) was discovered in a small slaughterhouse that catered exclusively to organic growers. We also learned that during the peak of its own mad-cow crisis, Great Britain identified at least 215 cases of the disease on thirty-six different organic farms. 
It may be time for Lisa Freeman to return to rating toasters, test-driving minivans, and protecting her fellow citizens from unscrupulous vacuum-cleaner warrantees. Let’s leave food safety to the experts, shall we?

I can say unequivocally that we never suggested in any way – in fact, we encouraged the HSUS to cooperate with, provide information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture … [and] we had some difficulty in preparing criminal charges, because of delays in setting up any interview with the Humane Society investigator at which USDA officers would be present.

Read that last sentence again.  Not only did HSUS withhold vital public health information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for its own reasons, but the group actually impeded a criminal investigation into animal cruelty because it wanted to keep the USDA in the dark.
Because of HSUS’s preference for sensationalism over protecting the public’s health, millions of Americans (including countless children) may have been exposed to meat that wasn’t fit for human consumption. HSUS clearly shares responsibility for this whole sorry episode. We’re looking forward to helping Congress hold them accountable.

A minute’s research on Google Scholar will reveal a published study by Wells, et al. — the very researcher cited by Pacelle — concluding that BSE [mad cow disease] is not transmitted to pigs, either. This study, "Studies of the transmissibility of the agent of bovine spongiform encephalopathy to pigs," was published in the Journal of General Virology in 2003.

Guess what? Lobb is right. In 2003, thirteen years after they first speculated that mad cow disease might affect pigs, Drs. Wells, Dawson, and seven other scientists updated their findings. (If Pacelle had updated his, he might not have misled Congress.) Instead of injecting diseased materials into the pigs’ brains — not exactly a real-world test — they gave the animals infected feed similar to what can transmit the disease from one cow to another.
Wells and his team found "no evidence of transmission" of mad cow disease to pigs after they were exposed to massive doses of infected material in their food. (Note to HSUS: Click here to download the full study.) This result, the researchers added, probably explains "why repeated primary exposures of commercial pigs to BSE, together with the considerable potential for pig-to-pig recycling of infection (until April 1996), has not resulted in natural cases [of mad cow-like diseases] in pigs."
As we’ve seen many times before, phony claims about science tend to be outed by scientists. And in some cases, a minute’s research on the Internet may be enough to keep even the most opportunistic animal-rights activists honest. Just maybe.

Despite the continuing drumbeat of activist fear, these mad-cow cases may not, in fact, be evidence that government safeguards have failed us. Rather, they could merely indicate our improved technological ability to diagnose biological anomalies that have always been there. Professor Colin Masters from Melbourne University puts this point best: “So far [mad cow cases] are very rare and they’ve only been found because of this massively increased surveillance.”

Anti-consumer activist
John Stauber ushered in the mad-cow scare in the late 1990s with a reckless book hinting at a beef-based Holocaust to come. This morning Stauber is also taking credit for “predicting” this atypical mad-cow strain, while conveniently ignoring the possibility that Mother Nature — not infected cattle feed — might cause it.

A scientific investigation into the two cases of mad cow in American-born cattle tells a very different story. Researchers are now informing the public that the “two cases of mad cow disease in Texas and Alabama seem to have resulted from a mysterious strain that could appear spontaneously in cattle.” [emphasis added]

Medical experts tell us that garden-variety Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a progressive neurological disorder found in humans, occurs randomly in about one out of a million people each year. If the science emerging from London is on-target, mad cow disease (which is in the same class of diseases as CJD) behaves in a similar fashion. So whether a calf is raised on an organic farm, fed only exotic grasses, or finished in a conventional feedlot, it may have a roughly equal (yet infinitesimally small) risk of developing the disease.

Why so little hoopla? It seems like the public is finally catching on to the concept of risk, including the fact that the size of a threat is modified by its likelihood. So what’s the threat? Last week Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns told reporters that “the prevalence of BSE in the United States is less than one case per 1 million adult cattle.” As The Vancouver Sun said of Canada’s recent discovery:

[T]he world has become more mature in its attitude toward the disease, and for good reason. After all, while we can’t entirely eradicate all diseases in cows, we do know how to prevent the beef from those cows from going to market.

With infinitesimal risks made even tinier by safeguards much more advanced than when the disease was discovered a decade ago, mad cow is finally reaching its proper place in the public consciousness. Activists with a variety of agendas are still trying to inflate the threat (both Reuters and the Canadian Press used Michael Hansen to provide the obligatory “scare quote” in the articles referred to above), but the public seems to have realized that the risk is mostly nonexistent.

We’re still in the frenzy stage with bird flu (be sure to check out next Sunday’s hysterical TV movie on the subject), but the science suggests it’ll end up like mad cow. Once the public understands how over-hyped the problem is, activists will have to find something else to scare us about.

Last month the European Food Safety Authority did something that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has yet to do: It proclaimed that “there is no evidence to suggest to date that avian influenza can be transmitted to humans through consumption of food, notably poultry and eggs.” Dr. Hugh Pennington, president of the UK’s renowned Society for General Microbiology, made an even stronger statement to the BBC: “The virus is transmitted by live birds. It’s not in the poultry meat and it’s certainly not in eggs.“

How many Americans have regular contact — or any contact — with live chickens? We’re betting the number is tiny. But as with the similarly tiny U.S. mad-cow risk, an unhealthy paranoia may already be gripping us. Only 177 people worldwide have contracted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the mad-cow strain found in humans. And not one has acquired the disease by eating U.S. beef. As for bird flu, no cases have reached the U.S., and no U.S. poultry have been implicated.

So why are 47 percent of us worried that a bird-flu virus might lurk in our next chicken nugget, drumstick, or fajita? Aside from the nonstop drumbeat of fear (with little effort on the part of authorities to let people know that eating chicken is perfectly safe), animal rights activism may play a role.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is loudly squawking that “Eating Meat Threatens Millions With Bird Flu.” And according to a November 2 e-mail from PETA, the group promises another in its series of “naked” protests tomorrow afternoon, this one aiming to further flack false flu fears:

PETA is going to be in DC next Wednesday, and I wanted to see if you’d be available to come out and join us! We are bringing our “Bird Flu Coffin Demonstration” to the USDA Headquarters … In light of the bird flu scare, PETA is encouraging people to go vegetarian to help fight this potential pandemic. At this demonstration, “naked” activists will lie in coffins with flowers and fake blood on them while activists, two of them in chicken and turkey costumes, will hand out leaflets.