Food and Product Safety Recalls, the ones you don't hear about.

What the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't advertise.

One time I had a Professor from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz's College of Business tell me I should go into consumer protection. Then George Bush Senior told everyone they should do volunteer work.

Soooo, I chose clean water resource advocacy and working with local watershed associations. Then I started signing up for government food and product recalls.

I wondered why these food and product recalls were not in the news. I emailed Sue Shellenbarger at the Wall Street Journal and told her that I thought every newspaper in the country should have a small section everyday about the U.S Food And Drug Administration's almost daily email alerts about recalled food and products. I told her that it was as important as protecting citizens against terrorists. We were being invaded by unsafe food and consumer goods!

So I started posting the recalls on Tree Hugger hoping people would notice.

Then, the big story hit. The dog food in our country was killing pets and it had slipped through our country's safety net.

Todays news is that your pet toys are not tested for lead or other toxins whatsoever. And just for fun, Hartz Mountain's Vitamin Care for Cats was recalled in March.

I wonder if it's still on the shelves? Save This Page

Okay, Commercial Break: Alida also sells Organic T-shirts and a Myriad of Products From Totes To Clothes

I know I need to get more designs up, but give me some time, please? I am saving the world also.

Alida Cornelius (that's me ) who calls her website Art By Alida never learned computer graphics. so her work is hand drawn pen and ink. Sometimes Old dogs just can't learn new tricks.

And anyway, I love the old style of Andy Warhol's screenprinting. So, even though my items are not silk screened, at least most of the process is still done by hand without any Photoshop or computers making it look any better than I can do.

Wise People Plant Trees Tote Bag

Pen & Ink Original Drawings about how wise people are environmentally aware and plant trees under whose shade they know they shall never sit. Sold in stores, now available here. Art By Alida

Price: 18.79

Frankenfoods, Clean Water, Food and Consumer Goods Safety and All Those Recalls.

Protecting our country against frankenfoods, and unsafe foods and consumer goods.

Okay, some people say I have General Anxiety Disorder. However, I have always considered it to just be "Always Be Prepared" as in the Boy Scout motto.

After all, I was the only one who thought to take toilet paper to the Woodstock Music Festival in high school. (Toilet paper runs out very fast in music festival port-a-potties.)

That professor with a PhD in Psychology and one in Marketing at University of Pittsburgh told me I should go into consumer protection, since I worried about everything all the time. He said my anxiety disorder would make me perfect for a career in that field.

(So, all you people out there with General Anxiety Disorder, just know you CAN use it to be good at something.)

However, being a stay at home mom was more important to me and I worked part time from home at various things, including selling my hand-painted clothing in galleries and boutiques for some extra spending money. And I also became a volunteer in our local watershed and helped to develop the Pennsylvania Land Use Plan to protect the State's rich water resources from the corporations who were coming into the state to drill for water just like oil.

Today, I attempt to sell simple pen and ink drawings from my website Art By Alida and I write a blog called T-shirts,Talk,and Time on My Hands, but my volunteer work is still in watershed protection and also I developed an interest in food and consumer goods safety after signing up for the U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) email alerts on recalled food and consumer good products.

Why wasn't this stuff in the news I wondered? Why worry about terrorists when there were almost daily recalls of dangerous products and no one was hearing about them?

I started posting the recalls on Tree Hugger forums hoping someone may take notice or I could perhaps get a job writing for them alerting people in the U.S. about the dangers in our daily lives, and many people read my posts.

Then, the huge scandal of the tainted dog food came out with the toxic ingredients in them from China and I knew I was on to something,

I started researching these drug companies in China, only to find out that these unregulated suppliers were already responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of children in India and the Philippines with over the counter cough medicine.

I also read that it almost happened in the U.S. but because of an alert person in the FDA, the cough medicine ingredient did not make it onto our store shelves.

So, in order to continue my concern of the safety of our people, and probably a great deal to do with my anxiety disorder ("Always Be Prepared"), I will continue to pass on the information I receive in government emails, alerting the public on recalled food and consumer goods, of which never makes the news.

These consumer products may be in flea markets, yard sales, second hand stores, and even in Goodwill and Salvation Army Stores, and they are still out there.

I say, lets send them back to the manufacturer C.O.D.!!!!

And together, let's get manufacturers to be more responsible, because unfortunately, our government is already overloaded and underfunded and we all must be made aware of the dangers we face in our simple daily lives for the sake of our children and their future. Save This Page

Okay, Ebay's fun.

However, the only thing I have ever bought on ebay were autoharps.

So, I hope this takes you to musical instruments. The prices are usually the same as in pawn shops or stores, only you have to choose between shipping and the high price of gasoline to buy them.

Today, most of the pawn shops get on ebay to see what the musical instruments are selling for and put that price on them.

I love my autoharp. And my mandolin. AND my concertina.
Autoharps are EASY to play and since I love bluegrass music, it's the perfect instrument for me to jam with.

Fetching new data from eBay now... please stand by

Have any horror food poisoning stories?

Do you report it to the FDA when you get food poisoning?

Lensmaster

Graceonline wrote...

I second that welcome to Squidoo. I clicked through to TreeHugger and hunted for your alerts, but didn't find them in the two minutes I spent there. May I suggest you start your own blog on food recalls and link from here? It could become THE place to check. I know I'd bookmark it.

Posted June 15, 2008

Lensmaster

Laurie wrote

I've been wearing Alida's T-shirts for over twenty years. They're "First Class" and fabulous!

Posted May 29, 2008

Lensmaster

enslavedbyfaeries wrote...

Welcome to Squidoo! Very nice lens, I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Posted May 19, 2008

Netflix Movies are great if you like foreign films with subtitles. "Kandahar" is enlightening for our times.

MY favorite films are foreign films from far-off remote places. Can't rent those at Blockbuster.

If you want to see how other people live in far-off lands, I can recommend signing up for Netflix. The best films I have ever seen are independent films, the sort you would see at the Cannes film festival. And I love Hindi movies because they have lots of dancing and singing without the sex and violence.
You can travel the world watching foreign films from Netflix. However, no matter how I try to list great foreign sub-titled films here, I can't get them to show up...Just KNOW you can rent them. I love Netflix.

001- Juno: Facing an unplanned pregnancy, teenage Juno (Ellen Page) devises a plan to locate the proverbial per...
002- Garden State: Andrew Largeman (Zach Braff, who also directed) returns to his hometown in New Jersey after a decade...
003- Friends with Money: Set in Los Angeles, Nicole Holofcener's bittersweet tale examines the evolving lives of four women f...
004- Secretary: Recently released from a mental hospital after treatment for self-mutilating tendencies, a young wom...
005- The Darjeeling Limited: Following the death of their father, three brothers (Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman...
006- Once: In this charming contemporary musical helmed by John Carney, a street musician (Glen Hansard) in Dub...
007- The Station Agent: When his only friend dies, a young dwarf named Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) relocates to an aband...
008- In the Bedroom: Set in a tranquil town on the Maine coast, In the Bedroom tells the story of a couple (Sissy Spacek...
009- The Squid and the Whale: Jeff Daniels makes for a haunting Brooklyn professor who's well past his prime, and Laura Linney is...
010- Broken Flowers: After being dumped by yet another girlfriend (Julie Delpy), Don Johnston (Bill Murray) vows he'll be...
011- Junebug: When Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz), a big-city art dealer from Chicago, makes a trip to North Carolina...
012- Happy Endings: Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Laura Dern and Jason Ritter star in this unusual comedy, written and...
013- Smart People: An unexpected romance with a charming former student (Sarah Jessica Parker) and a surprise visit fro...
014- The Good Girl: Justine (Jennifer Aniston) longs to start a family, but she and loving husband Phil (John C. Reilly)...
015- American Splendor: Harvey Pekar (Paul Giamatti) was a working-class stiff, a file clerk who found an outlet for his cre...
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