Did You Think I Was Done With The Beef Issue?

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Update On The Recent Meat Scandal

Folks, here are some excerpts from recent articles bringing it right here, home to us. First, check out the scope of what is going on as it relates to the food on your plate:

More than a third of the 143 million pounds of California beef recalled last week went to school lunch programs, with at least 20 million pounds consumed, officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday.

About 50 million pounds of the meat went to schools, said Eric Steiner, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service's special nutrition programs.

The plant produces about a fifth of all the meat in the federal school lunch programs, said Bill Sessions, associate deputy administrator for livestock and seed Programs with USDA's agriculture marketing service.

Now, let's just think about what these statements mean to us. First, on average, every fifth bite of beef your child eats from the school cafeteria comes from this plant. Second, if 50 million pounds went into the school lunch program, where did the other 93 million pounds go? How about McDonalds, Jack In The Box, Burger King, Taco Bell?

Then there's this:

Texas school districts that have been storing recalled beef were told Thursday by the Texas agriculture commissioner to dispose of it.

The districts have shelved more than 765,000 pounds of recalled beef as part of the nation's largest beef recall, Commissioner Todd Staples said.

Tarrant County school districts -- including Azle, Castleberry, Everman, Keller, Mansfield, Grapevine-Colleyville and Birdville -- were affected by Sunday's recall.

Close enough to home for you?

And finally:

Sometimes, government inspectors responsible for examining slaughterhouse cattle for mad cow disease and other ills are so short-staffed that they find themselves peering down from catwalks at hundreds of animals at once, looking for such telltale signs as droopy ears, stumbling gait and facial paralysis.

The ranks of inspectors are so thin that slaughterhouse workers often figure out when "surprise" visits are about to take place, and make sure they are on their best behavior.

USDA numbers show anywhere between 10 and 12 percent of inspector and veterinarian positions at poultry, beef and pork slaughterhouses nationwide were vacant between October 2006 and September 2007. In some regions, including Colorado and Texas, a major beef-producing state, the rate hovered around 15 percent. In New York, vacancy rates hit nearly 22 percent last July.

Felicia Nestor, a policy analyst with Washington-based Food and Water Watch, said the food supply may be at risk.

"I have talked to so many inspectors who used to work for the industry, and part of the training is how to get around the inspection. They've got walkies-talkies to alert each other to where the inspector is, they double-team the inspector," she said.

At two packing houses in Nebraska, veterinarians monitor up to 700 head of cattle at a time for signs of illness - just enough to make sure all the cows are standing, said one veteran inspector who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of losing his job.

The inspector has worked for 15 years as an inspector at two plants in Lexington and Grand Island, Neb. One-quarter of the inspection positions at one of his plants have been vacant now for two years, he said.

Really, is this a system you can trust?

Potential New Moon Siting Dates For 2008

Year	Month	Day	Weekday	Lag (Min) MC6	Ill (%) MC6	Potential Visbility	Hebrew Month (if Aviv is found by March 8)	Hebrew Month (if Aviv is NOT found by March 8)
2008	2	8	Friday	86	2.59	Yes
2008	3	8	Saturday	57	1.23	Yes	1st	13th
2008	4	7	Monday	106	3.51	Yes	2nd	1st
2008	5	6	Tuesday	90	2.31	Yes	3rd	2nd
2008	6	4	Wednesday	68	1.36	Yes	4th	3rd
2008	7	4	Friday	83	3.72	Yes	5th	4th
2008	8	2	Saturday	44	2.13	Yes	6th	5th
2008	9	1	Monday	44	4.02	Yes	7th	6th
2008	9	30	Tuesday	20	1.96	Pending Sighting	8th	7th
2008	10	30	Thursday	37	2.78	Pending Sighting	9th	8th
2008	11	29	Saturday	70	3.33	Yes	10th	9th
2008	12	28	Sunday	47	1.1	Pending Sighting	11th	10th
2009	1	27	Tuesday	68	1.61	Yes	12th	11th
2009	2	26	Thursday	88	2.76	Yes	13th	12th
2009	3	27	Friday	60	1.36	Yes		13th
2009	4	26	Sunday	107	3.36	Yes

A Meditation For The Sabbath

This is long, but since we are forgoing services today you might want to dwell here (remember that this article was written in 1999)...

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3/8/99

Voice in the wilderness

Simcha Pearlmutter does not tilt at windmills anymore.
For 35 years this diminutive man rankled the establishment, but as mightily as it huffed and puffed, he did not blow away.
It is amazing how much fuss one man can generate, especially if you meet him in his environment. He is a city unto himself, the entire population -- together with his wife -- of the tiniest community in the country.
Ir Ovot (pop.: 2) has fewer residents than there are highway signs leading to it. They could have left him alone to evaporate in this godforsaken place in the Arava desert, and very possibly he might never have been heard from.
The tempest he weathered was unrelenting for 30 of those years, involving just about the entire national force: the immigration authorities, religious establishment, Lands Administration, the courts, the water company, Bezeq, not to mention pretty much everyone living in the region.
It started even before he and Rahel got there: it started in Miami, when they applied to make aliya. Simcha Pearlmutter was deemed a menace to the Jewish State because he believed in the prophecies. He believed in the Messiah, in resurrection. He believed -- they claimed -- in Jesus Christ. And there is no room in this country, not even in the uninhabited desert, for people like that.
Simcha flicks away the controversy like a pesky fly. The Messiah, he now says, could be called David or Bob or anything. Yet he used to attribute a specific name, and that name was Yeshua, and that is what earned him the Mark of Cain.
That, and the murmurs that he was practising bigamy; but that, too, he dismisses, pointing out that if he was, he would have been jailed.
For a long time he was not registered as a Jew, the settlement he founded was not recognized, the water he thirsted for was not provided, and, and, and...
Everything changed, in one sudden moment, five years ago.

HE IS a man of immense magnetic allure, but tender, emotional. You want to lean over and hug him.
He is 64. His face is wonderfully craggy with deep furrows of pain and character; his eyes, sky-blue but red-rimmed. He's built like a fire hydrant, compact and muscular; he wears a kipa, trim beard, and a few strands of peyot.
"I am the example of the perfect failure in Israel," Simcha says.
His success would be measured by how many lives he has touched, by how much his hardy struggles have spread inspiration.
But he has failed, he says, if you judge him by what he has created. There were numerous ventures that flourished for a while: farming, a trucking company, a toy factory, a health spa. His ultimate vision was to create a haven for Russian immigrants. But all that remains -- the legacy of his 35 years in the desert -- is a house where two people live, and next to it, a tiny green patch surrounding the four graves of Ir Ovot cemetery.
He goes there, blows a shofar, weeps, and waits. He waits for that tattered stranger to come over the nearby Mountains of Edom -- the Messiah, who will raise the dead.
Resurrection was always a foundation of his beliefs. Now, he says, it's an obsession, his only reason for living. "The phone rang, and Rahel answered. It was Ari, and he said, 'Mom, I'm at the bus stop. Everything is ok.' Then he said, 'I have to leave now, here comes the bus. I love you. I'll call you later.'
"Those were his last words."
It was 5 years ago, in Hadera. Bus bombing. Five dead. Ari Pearlmutter was not yet 20.
Simcha's voice chokes.
"You begin to wonder, where was God?
"I didn't question whether I believed in God. I just didn't know if I liked him anymore. It's even worse. That's a crisis, when you know He's there, and you say 'I'm not denying You, I just don't want anything more to do with You.' "
And so, alone in the wilderness, he waits.
"I get up every morning, at three, and I run five kilometers, and I look at the Mountains of Edom. Oh, it's so beautiful, you can't imagine! Then I can say with certainty, 'I lift up my eyes unto the mountains from whence my help will come.' I keep running, and I recite, 'My help will come from Hashem,' and I scream it in my mind. God said the Mashiach is coming from over these mountains! I know, I know, that one morning...."
He has already witnessed the fulfilment of prophecies. "Out of the Arava, water will leap up from the ground": he once worked for Mekorot, digging water wells, and yea, the water leaped up. Simcha reels off scriptural sound bytes with ease. "In the Talmud it says, 'in the days of the Mashiach the water will flow freely as it did in Ovot.' " Today, it does.
"Prophecies are written about the ancient cities: when the time is ripe for the coming of the Mashiach, those cities will be uncovered. Like Tamar, a city built by King Solomon 3,500 years ago." And here's where it gets eerie. Simcha rambles on about a sense that he couldn't shake, about hearing voices from the ground where he