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The Meat Business By Gregory Bloom
Gregory Bloom shares over 26 years of industry experience working in six USDA inspected meat plants - buying and selling meat, working with chefs and restaurants and teaching COP classes. He is the CEO and owner of U.S. Protein.

How “The Big Fat Surprise” has exposed the big fat shutdown on science

(The views and opinions expressed in this blog are strictly those of the author.)

I hope you read the Meatingplace article about the state of affairs with dietary guidelines and the panel discussion that took place this week without Nina Teicholz, who was invited, then disinvited when other invited panelists for the National Food Policy conference took issue with having Teicholz on the panel.

This even included the USDA member of the panel, Angie Tagtow, who along with two other members insisted that they would not be part of any discussion with Teicholz in the room.

Despite over 4,000 signatures collected to re-invite Teicholz to the panel, she was not asked to participate.  She was snubbed for asking the questions they don’t want anyone to ask, especially by a non-industry related independent thinker who has sound science to back her questions. Teicholz even gave names of others that would be good to have on the panel to round out the scientific discussion, if she herself was the big obstacle to the panels objections, but none of the scientists she suggested where ever contacted about participation on the panel.

So what we have here is the entrenched guard of the plant based, anti-animal based diet shutting down the discussion about nutrition that doesn’t fit with their antiquated and biased model.  And even worse, our federal government is allowing this to happen. 

The battle this week is won, but the war is not over.

This week, Teicholz told me enthusiastically, “This is a great fight and a good chance to get behind the science.  It’s not about me, it’s about the science.   It’s about the alternative views having a chance to speak.”

I believe all of us should engage in this war on sound science and this shutdown of communication.  We cannot sit idly by and waste this opportunity for a discussion that our country has needed to have for decades.  I know we are terribly busy with problems of our own, but we need to do all we can to stand up to this bullying by our elected officials and government run nutrition programs. 

What needs to happen this year is for a group like the Bipartisan Policy Center to step up and sponsor a scientific debate with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Nina Teicholz on a panel.  It was Michael Jacobson's CSPI that called for a retraction of Teicholz’s BMJ article, that was by the way, was never retracted by the BMJ. I wonder why?  Likely because the peer reviewed BMJ article holds water. 

What is the entrenched guard afraid of?

What are the CSPI, the Nutrition Policy Panel, the USDA, FDA and HHS afraid of?  Is it that the science will show that the anti-saturated fat diet doesn’t work and can’t stand up to the current set of scientific facts?  Yes it is.  But they know this.  This is why they won’t have this debate and want to shut down anyone who can challenge their entrenched position.

This is a conversation that they want us to all forget about.   We can’t let them.

To members of the entrenched guard: the party is over.  The anti-fat, anti-animal production, high-carb, low-fat, plant-based diet doesn’t work.  You don’t have the science or three decades of your nonsense diet to support your agenda.  So lets see you have an open, honest debate about it.   Let the science speak for itself.  Put up or shut up, but stop your bullying.

4/7/2016

 
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