I'm not a person who likes to always dwell on the negative. In 2007, in my estimation, Marsh did have the best produce departments among Indianapolis grocers I was shopping.
But I thought Marsh's rejection of what I was trying to explain to them was slightly perverse. In other words, I thought that they needed to take my work into account for their second slogan to be fully valid.
The public wants food of the best quality possible and even the best slogans sometimes aren’t good enough. I have the relevant academic background and have been listed five times in Marquis Who’s Who in America. If there's something I don't know, which is always possible, I have the academic contacts to nail any questions down in the best fashion possible.
I should have been a credible source of information.
And I would have been happy to cooperate with them. Instead, perhaps for some business reasons, of which I wasn’t aware, Marsh chose to treat me as part of their competition.
That choice was always theirs, rather than mine.
As with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, one incident, by itself, wasn’t enough to cause the decline and fall of Marsh Supermarkets management. The sale of Marsh was, no doubt, due to a number of factors. The incident with irradiated meat was nevertheless unfortunate from their business point of view.
And it was unfortunate from a broader perspective that my thesis regarding biochemical heterogeneity hadn't had more of a positive effect. It has the potential to improve food quality and provide a competitive advantage for a company willing to make use of it in a constructive fashion.
Instead: it's thus far helped to provide an unintended media surprise in the 1992 presidential election--as well as a number of unpleasant corporate surprises. Information about some of those unpleasant corporate events may be viewed by clicking at left.
To see what happened in 1992, the reader may also click at left to read the text of my first newsletter regarding heterotoxicity.
But to summarize briefly: my humble ideas about biochemistry accidently helped derail Dan Quayle's reelection plans. I've provided a scanned image of the original newsletter which did that job.
Although SureBeam went bankrupt and the public wasn't eating irradiated meat as of spring 2007, federal employees were handling irradiated mail every day. They were being exposed to a health risk of an unknown magnitude. It’s quite possible that they were abusing their immune systems in a manner similar to smoking one pack per day of cigarettes.
Irradiation of the mail of many government employees was instituted following an anthrax scare early in the administration of George W Bush.
I thought there might have been a better way to handle that. I was also in favor of experimental reserch regarding "heterotoxicity."
I sent hundreds of e-mails to the congressional staffers who, I imagined, may have been some of the same people who were handling the irradiated mail. The idea was that perhaps some of them would think:
"Here's a problem affecting, not only me, but others as well. Perhaps I should try to take some initiative to try to help solve it."
That didn't really materialize. One result that I thought I did notice--when sending a later round of e-mails to congressional staffers--was that many recipients of previous e-mails had quit their jobs. That was the indication I got when I tried to send a second e-mail to the same people. I received a reply, in a surprising number of cases indicating that a given party was no longer there and that observation was consistent with later published staff listings. Those e-mails are still in my computer system and availlable for inspection.
Something else that happened that was striking was that Sen. Mark Dayton closed down his Washington office for a period of time. Dayton cited safety or security as a reason. He also announced that he wouldn't seek reelection.
But nobody, including Dayton, wanted to talk to me.
I'm not their type. You see, in Washington, one doesn't acquire power by solving problems. Solving a problem is too risky, because it might ruffle feathers. One acquires power by avoiding problems. Thus power in Washington is the inability to do anything real. Power in Washington, in other words, is powerlessness.
But it's indoor work and you get to wear an upscale wardrobe.
In April 2007 the FDA posted a proposed rule change that would have allowed companies to sell irradiated meat without labeling it as such.
That was an extremely bad idea.
Meat, comsumed in moderation, is a very nourishing substance. While meat labels talk mostly about protein and fat in meat, other nutrients are present as well. My own ancestors, the Huns, lived entirely on a diet of raw meat and they were healthy, robust, and ingenious enough to cause havoc over much of Europe.
Perhaps it's for that historical reason that my friends at Marsh were a bit wary of me. The women who worked in Marsh stores seemed to know about my ancestry; they would say things to me such as, "We can help you in Asile 4, Hun."
But, kidding aside as we say, irradiation will destroy many of the nutrients in meat. It will also increase cancer risks. Americans need to eat a diet in which there's a little less meat, but in which the meat is of better quality. The idea of irradiated meat is the other way around: the idea there is to enable the nation's gluttony by providing more and more cheaper meat--but meat of lower quality.
I know there are E. Coli outbreaks from time to time and that meat has to be recalled as a result. But I also know from personal experience that companies such as Marsh and Kroger are resistant to new thinking about preservation. Another thing I notice is that some smaller meat companies are able to produce a safe, high-quality product--by, I imagine, being careful and taking pride in what they are trying to do. At a big operation, where all the real work is being relegated to temps and illegal aliens, the resulting product may not be very good. But irrradiated meat isn't the answer to that. One answer is better organization of work. Poor corporate organization is a topic discussed on this site (see link at left). Another answer is for food companies that don't take food quality seriously to go bankrupt.
When Procter & Gamble first introduced its disgraceful Olean® products I was among those objecting. One of the points I made was that because Olean was hetrogeneous, it would act as a preservative. Procter & Gamble and/or its partner in crime, Frito-Lay apparently accepted my opinion about that. At least that's what their product labeling seemed to be saying. Although potato chips packages without olean specified "no preservatives," product packages with olean didn't have that label.
That history came to mind in 2007 when I noted that ground beef sold at Kroger contained trans fats. Such fats aren't in the beef as it comes from the animal but must be added. This is probably for preservation purposes. While there may be no connection to my earlier observation regarding oldean, Kroger and Procter & Gamble are commercial allies. A Kroger spokeswoman, Megan Glynn, didn't return my call regarding this matter.
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Attila lives!
(Corporate Surprises)
