A trade deal with America may be really important from an economic point of view but it is also going to be a bad thing for the health of British people. If you have not experienced the American way of doing business first hand you would not understand it. It is not pleasant in so many ways.
This is just one example of the way business is conducted in America. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists conducted an investigation into breast implants, which then led onto other reports being made public. This is the first few paragraphs of their latest report on medical implants, which you can read in full HERE.
“Records of millions of cases of patient harm and product malfunctions previously kept hidden from the public could soon be released following a major policy change by the key United States regulator.
In a major advance for medical device transparency, the U. S. Food and Drug Administration has pledged to disclose information kept buried for nearly two decades under a program known as “alternative summary reporting.”
The program allowed manufacturers of about 100 devices to submit quarterly reports summarizing large numbers of incidents to the FDA without the data being revealed to the public.
FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced the policy change on Twitter two days after the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists reported that hundreds of thousands of incidents related to breast implants had been kept out of public sight under the summary reporting program.”
Subsequent to that a March 7 report by Kaiser Health News revealed that more than 1.1 million incidents since 2016 had been kept from public view because of ‘alternative summary reporting’.
We have no idea of the health implications or damage it may have caused overall. However, when it came to breast implants alone, thousands of women across the USA suffered debilitating illnesses, including a rare form of cancer, after receiving them. Medical professionals and surgeons simply had no idea just how dangerous some of these devices could be to their patients because there was no data made available to them in the first place.
‘Summary Reporting’ is a tool devised to mislead the public about the scope and severity of harm to people caused by the medical industry. This is not to say that all medical devices are harmful, only that data existed of those that did cause harm and it was withheld – courtesy of the US government. The health of their own citizens clearly meant nothing.
ICIJ reported last November that thousands of breast implant patients worldwide were experiencing serious ailments and injuries as part of its global Implant Files investigation and a scandal then emerged forcing the data out into the open.
This one example only goes to show just how deceitful the American government and American corporations can be in pursuit of profit.
Other examples are food additives that are scientifically proven beyond any doubt to cause cancer still being used by food manufacturers in America due to a deliberately designed loophole in the law. These same additives are banned in the EU and subsequently in the UK – for now. This list of additives does not include growth hormones and GMO products, which is another matter completely.
Another example is that of cosmetics. The EU has banned 1328 chemicals from cosmetics because they are known carcinogens but the US has banned only 30 of them. HERE is the official journal of the EU and the list of chemicals that are banned. It’s lengthy document says – “Given the hazardous properties of substances classified as carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic, category 1A, 1B and 2, pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures their use in cosmetic products should be prohibited.”
As a US/UK trade deal gets closer to being announced, all British citizens will soon be in a position of having to ask questions about the products they buy for the sake of their health.
I have had a number of years exposure to American style legislation when it comes to public protective measures and by and large it is dire. There are many examples I could give such as American fruit being packaged in a French style with French wording and images giving the impression of their products have not been exposed to GMO production techniques or covered in banned pesticides. Not that they need say so even if they were. Another is Greek yoghurt or specialist European cheese manufactured by American corporations in the USA and then packaged to give the impression of European goods.
In fact, even in American organic food today, there are dozens and dozens of synthetic ingredients that can be included in organic products, for no other reason than there is no organic equivalent to the chemical synthetic replacement being used. In other words – they would not qualify for organic food in the EU or in Britain currently.
The consequence is that everything you buy has to be scrutinised if you worry about what you are consuming. In my case, there was a simple rule, don’t buy it if it’s an American product, which can be restricting in product ranges where they have market dominance.
It should not be forgotten, that Britain has one of the safest food chain systems in the world – America is listed as the 7th worst in the world.
Still not convinced? Read – BREXIT: Appalling US food standards will add £1billion to NHS to combat serious food poisoning
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Featured image is from TP
