#no company has ever voluntarily improved worker or consumer safety

[frankenmouse]

Prior to 1900 ingredients in food and medication didn’t need to be disclosed in the label or packaging. As a result, “medicines” that contained stuff like opium, laudanum, cocaine, alcohol, marijuana, arsenic, mercury, etc. were common place and marketed primarily to the poor, who couldn’t afford actual medical treatment.

An example is Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup for babies. It was meant to treat colic and various childhood complaints. It contained enough morphine and alcohol that many small children, especially babies, were given this “medication” and never woke up. This particular product was widespread and advertised in the national newspapers of the time.

In 1905, Collier’s magazine published a series on how patent medicines were killing people. This sparked public protests and outcry. In 1906 the Pure Food and Drug Act was passed, establishing the FDA and requiring that all food and medicine labels to contain a list of ingredients (and in medication the amount of active ingredient).

Regulations are written in blood.

[notifychill4-blog]

Can the Midterm Elections Actually Fix Broken Restaurant Wages?

Entering the feverish final weeks leading up to the November midterm elections, just about every candidate and measure feels reduced to a tribal partisan battle. Yet, one issue seems to increasingly be crossing party lines: minimum wage. This fall, voters in two states — Missouri and Arkansas — will decide whether or not to raise their respective state minimum wages. Voters in other states like Massachusetts and Michigan approved similar measures, only to be blocked or circumvented by their respective representatives.

But across the country, ballot initiatives and campaigns leading into the midterms could mean sweeping changes for hourly workers, including many in the restaurant industry.

Two state minimum wage measures make the ballot

Voters in Missouri and Arkansas will vote on minimum wage measures November 6. Missouri Proposition B would gradually increase the state’s standard minimum wage from $7.85 per hour to $12 per hour by 2023. Arkansas Issue 5 aims to increase wages from $8.50 an hour to $11 an hour by 2021. Neither proposals will affect tipped workers, though the issues could have a significant impact on restaurant owners with non-tipped, hourly employees.

The growing support for raising the minimum wage in two traditionally red states might seem surprising to some, but it’s perhaps more indicative of the public’s growing concerns about wage stagnation. In spite of the country’s positive economic outlook, workers aren’t necessarily earning more money; in some cases, accounting for inflation, they’re earning significantly less.

That makes the wage issue more important to American workers, regardless of party. “With your average voters, we see it as a nonpartisan issue that has got support across the board from people from all different kinds of political ideology,” says Kristin Foster, campaign manager for Arkansans for a Fair Wage. While one group Arkansans for a Strong Economy has come out against Issue 5, Foster says the campaign gathered more than 84,000 voter signatures for the petition, and has experienced growing support from local businesses such as Trio’s Restaurant in Little Rock.

In the Missouri fight, organizers have rallied the support of more than 450 local businesses, including outspoken companies from the food and beverage industry: 4 Hands Brewing Co. in St. Louis, the Rieger in Kansas City, Bambino’s Cafe in Springfield, and Mokaska Coffee Company in St. Joseph.

Alissa Barron-Menza, vice president for the non-partisan group Businesses for a Fair Minimum Wage, says there’s a “strong business and economic case for raising the state’s minimum wage.” Business leaders, Barron-Menza says, see higher wages as an opportunity to increase consumer spending in the state and reduce employee turnover, a notorious problem in the hospitality industry.

In the restaurant industry, advocates also believe that gradually raising the minimum wage will boost productivity, improve customer service, and help level the the playing field between companies that don’t offer living wages and those that do. “If [businesses] are already voluntarily going above the minimum wage and trying to pay a more livable wage, but they’re subsidizing their low-paying competitors through the taxpayer-funded social safety net, they’re paying twice,” Barron-Menza says. “It’s bad for business when folks aren’t making enough to make ends meet.”

Hard-fought battles with mixed results

Throughout 2018, organizations like non-profit labor group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Fairness Project, and the National Employment Law Project have kept minimum wage and tipped minimum wage increases on the minds of many American voters. This year, the ROC sponsored “One Fair Wage” ballot measures — which advocate for raising the standard minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage — in Michigan, Washington D.C., and New York. States like Massachusetts and Hawaii debated their own bills and proposals on hourly wages. Officials in St. Paul, Minnesota are also considering a $15 minimum wage proposal; whether the tipped credit will also be phased out is still under discussion.

There have been varying degrees of success. In the cases of Michigan and Massachusetts, supporters collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to get the issues onto the November ballot, only to see them adopted by state legislatures in a way that circumvented voters. In Massachusetts, the state legislature quickly pushed through a “grand bargain” bill that will gradually increase the standard minimum wage to $15 over by 2023, but fell short of eliminating the tipped minimum wage for servers — one of the main goals of organizers Raise Up Massachusetts. The legislative compromise did include a wage increase from $3.75 to $6.75 for tipped workers over the same amount of time, but still fell short of the ballot measure’s call for $9 per hour. In Michigan, the Republican-held state legislature took up the minimum wage proposal as part of what is widely believed to be a effort to “gut” the bill through amendments in a lame duck session.

Meanwhile, D.C. voters narrowly approved a tipped minimum wage measure known as Initiative 77 in June, but then witnessed the new rule get struck down by the D.C. City Council on October 16. New York’s incumbent gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo is reportedly still mulling over whether to eliminate the tipped credit in his state, though representatives for the ROC tell Eater they’re expecting a decision soon.

The road ahead for minimum wage fights

For ROC cofounder and director Saru Jayaraman, the fight for more equitable restaurant employee pay is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. The ROC began introducing One Fair Wage legislation in multiple states beginning in 2014, addressing both the standard minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage with varied success.

Within the past year, Jayaraman says the organization has also received more support and attention than ever for One Fair Wage as a result of the #Metoo and Time’s Up movements. More frequent attention from media lead to more public discussions about tip culture’s connection with high rates of sexual harassment. (Approximately 37 percent of all complaints made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involve restaurants, and according to the ROC, roughly 78 percent of restaurant workers have been harassed at one time.)

But there have been major setbacks in recent months. One year after Maine voters approved One Fair Wage, the state legislature reinstated tipping due in part to pushback from an alleged astroturf group funded by restaurant lobbyists called the Restaurant Workers of America. Opposition from the RWA and the powerful National Restaurant Association lobby were effective in fueling resistance from legislators. “We are up against the most well-funded opposition on the key issue they care about the most, which is their ability to not pay their own workers,” Jayaraman says of the NRA.

In Michigan, where a Republican-dominated legislature pre-empted the minimum wage ballot measure in September, the ROC is still hopeful that the state could begin to eliminate tipping. State Republicans prevented voters from making the decision in November by taking up the measure — a move that is viewed partially as an effort to stymie an issue that might fuel higher Democratic voter turnout in the short term.

“Why did they adopt a law? Not because they actually want to raise the minimum wage; because they know it will win and they know it will drive people to the polls,” Jayaraman says. In the long term, analysts believe the legislature will move to strip the Michigan wage bill of one of its key components: the gradual elimination of the tipped minimum wage. “Tea Party Republicans tripled wages for waitresses, passed One Fair Wage in the state of Michigan, making Michigan ahead of New York the eighth state to eliminate the sub minimum wage,” Jayaraman says. “And, of course, there’s going to be an attempt to gut it, but we have a really good, solid both legal case and campaign to make sure that they don’t.”

Throughout the recent wage fights, the ROC has been learning and getting better at delivering its message about the need to end tip credits. “The lesson [from recent campaigns] is, this is an overwhelmingly popular issue when you take it to the public and educate the public and educate workers on these issues, they’re overwhelmingly, universally in favor of it,” Jayaraman says. The work on increasing wages for tipped and non-tipped minimum wages workers across the nation will continue even after the midterms: ROC plans to introduce new legislation in a dozen states in 2019.

Brenna Houck is the editor of Eater Detroit and an Eater.com reporter. Jay Bendt is an editorial and book illustrator based out of the Midwest. Editor: Erin DeJesus

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/25/18014436/2018-midterm-elections-minimum-wage-increases-restaurant-industry

[lisacongo2-blog]

Can the Midterm Elections Actually Fix Broken Restaurant Wages?

Entering the feverish final weeks leading up to the November midterm elections, just about every candidate and measure feels reduced to a tribal partisan battle. Yet, one issue seems to increasingly be crossing party lines: minimum wage. This fall, voters in two states — Missouri and Arkansas — will decide whether or not to raise their respective state minimum wages. Voters in other states like Massachusetts and Michigan approved similar measures, only to be blocked or circumvented by their respective representatives.

But across the country, ballot initiatives and campaigns leading into the midterms could mean sweeping changes for hourly workers, including many in the restaurant industry.

Two state minimum wage measures make the ballot

Voters in Missouri and Arkansas will vote on minimum wage measures November 6. Missouri Proposition B would gradually increase the state’s standard minimum wage from $7.85 per hour to $12 per hour by 2023. Arkansas Issue 5 aims to increase wages from $8.50 an hour to $11 an hour by 2021. Neither proposals will affect tipped workers, though the issues could have a significant impact on restaurant owners with non-tipped, hourly employees.

The growing support for raising the minimum wage in two traditionally red states might seem surprising to some, but it’s perhaps more indicative of the public’s growing concerns about wage stagnation. In spite of the country’s positive economic outlook, workers aren’t necessarily earning more money; in some cases, accounting for inflation, they’re earning significantly less.

That makes the wage issue more important to American workers, regardless of party. “With your average voters, we see it as a nonpartisan issue that has got support across the board from people from all different kinds of political ideology,” says Kristin Foster, campaign manager for Arkansans for a Fair Wage. While one group Arkansans for a Strong Economy has come out against Issue 5, Foster says the campaign gathered more than 84,000 voter signatures for the petition, and has experienced growing support from local businesses such as Trio’s Restaurant in Little Rock.

In the Missouri fight, organizers have rallied the support of more than 450 local businesses, including outspoken companies from the food and beverage industry: 4 Hands Brewing Co. in St. Louis, the Rieger in Kansas City, Bambino’s Cafe in Springfield, and Mokaska Coffee Company in St. Joseph.

Alissa Barron-Menza, vice president for the non-partisan group Businesses for a Fair Minimum Wage, says there’s a “strong business and economic case for raising the state’s minimum wage.” Business leaders, Barron-Menza says, see higher wages as an opportunity to increase consumer spending in the state and reduce employee turnover, a notorious problem in the hospitality industry.

In the restaurant industry, advocates also believe that gradually raising the minimum wage will boost productivity, improve customer service, and help level the the playing field between companies that don’t offer living wages and those that do. “If [businesses] are already voluntarily going above the minimum wage and trying to pay a more livable wage, but they’re subsidizing their low-paying competitors through the taxpayer-funded social safety net, they’re paying twice,” Barron-Menza says. “It’s bad for business when folks aren’t making enough to make ends meet.”

Hard-fought battles with mixed results

Throughout 2018, organizations like non-profit labor group Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Fairness Project, and the National Employment Law Project have kept minimum wage and tipped minimum wage increases on the minds of many American voters. This year, the ROC sponsored “One Fair Wage” ballot measures — which advocate for raising the standard minimum wage and eliminating the tipped minimum wage — in Michigan, Washington D.C., and New York. States like Massachusetts and Hawaii debated their own bills and proposals on hourly wages. Officials in St. Paul, Minnesota are also considering a $15 minimum wage proposal; whether the tipped credit will also be phased out is still under discussion.

There have been varying degrees of success. In the cases of Michigan and Massachusetts, supporters collected hundreds of thousands of signatures to get the issues onto the November ballot, only to see them adopted by state legislatures in a way that circumvented voters. In Massachusetts, the state legislature quickly pushed through a “grand bargain” bill that will gradually increase the standard minimum wage to $15 over by 2023, but fell short of eliminating the tipped minimum wage for servers — one of the main goals of organizers Raise Up Massachusetts. The legislative compromise did include a wage increase from $3.75 to $6.75 for tipped workers over the same amount of time, but still fell short of the ballot measure’s call for $9 per hour. In Michigan, the Republican-held state legislature took up the minimum wage proposal as part of what is widely believed to be a effort to “gut” the bill through amendments in a lame duck session.

Meanwhile, D.C. voters narrowly approved a tipped minimum wage measure known as Initiative 77 in June, but then witnessed the new rule get struck down by the D.C. City Council on October 16. New York’s incumbent gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo is reportedly still mulling over whether to eliminate the tipped credit in his state, though representatives for the ROC tell Eater they’re expecting a decision soon.

The road ahead for minimum wage fights

For ROC cofounder and director Saru Jayaraman, the fight for more equitable restaurant employee pay is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. The ROC began introducing One Fair Wage legislation in multiple states beginning in 2014, addressing both the standard minimum wage and the tipped minimum wage with varied success.

Within the past year, Jayaraman says the organization has also received more support and attention than ever for One Fair Wage as a result of the #Metoo and Time’s Up movements. More frequent attention from media lead to more public discussions about tip culture’s connection with high rates of sexual harassment. (Approximately 37 percent of all complaints made to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission involve restaurants, and according to the ROC, roughly 78 percent of restaurant workers have been harassed at one time.)

But there have been major setbacks in recent months. One year after Maine voters approved One Fair Wage, the state legislature reinstated tipping due in part to pushback from an alleged astroturf group funded by restaurant lobbyists called the Restaurant Workers of America. Opposition from the RWA and the powerful National Restaurant Association lobby were effective in fueling resistance from legislators. “We are up against the most well-funded opposition on the key issue they care about the most, which is their ability to not pay their own workers,” Jayaraman says of the NRA.

In Michigan, where a Republican-dominated legislature pre-empted the minimum wage ballot measure in September, the ROC is still hopeful that the state could begin to eliminate tipping. State Republicans prevented voters from making the decision in November by taking up the measure — a move that is viewed partially as an effort to stymie an issue that might fuel higher Democratic voter turnout in the short term.

“Why did they adopt a law? Not because they actually want to raise the minimum wage; because they know it will win and they know it will drive people to the polls,” Jayaraman says. In the long term, analysts believe the legislature will move to strip the Michigan wage bill of one of its key components: the gradual elimination of the tipped minimum wage. “Tea Party Republicans tripled wages for waitresses, passed One Fair Wage in the state of Michigan, making Michigan ahead of New York the eighth state to eliminate the sub minimum wage,” Jayaraman says. “And, of course, there’s going to be an attempt to gut it, but we have a really good, solid both legal case and campaign to make sure that they don’t.”

Throughout the recent wage fights, the ROC has been learning and getting better at delivering its message about the need to end tip credits. “The lesson [from recent campaigns] is, this is an overwhelmingly popular issue when you take it to the public and educate the public and educate workers on these issues, they’re overwhelmingly, universally in favor of it,” Jayaraman says. The work on increasing wages for tipped and non-tipped minimum wages workers across the nation will continue even after the midterms: ROC plans to introduce new legislation in a dozen states in 2019.

Brenna Houck is the editor of Eater Detroit and an Eater.com reporter. Jay Bendt is an editorial and book illustrator based out of the Midwest. Editor: Erin DeJesus

Eater.com

The freshest news from the food world every day

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Source: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/25/18014436/2018-midterm-elections-minimum-wage-increases-restaurant-industry

[biofunmy]

New York Identifies Hospitals and Nursing Homes With Deadly Fungus

There once was a man named Albert Alexander. He was a policeman — “[American accent] Hey.” — in England. “[British accent] Hello.” One day on patrol, he cut his cheek — “Ouch!” — which led to a terrible infection. See, this was back in 1941, before patients had antibiotics. These were the days when a little scratch could kill you. “Or you got an ear infection and you died. A cat bite and you died. Or you stepped on a stick and you died. All of a sudden, antibiotics come along and bang.” The antibiotic era had begun. Soon a slow and painful death became a seven-day course of antibiotics and a $10 copay. And Albert? Albert was the first patient in the world to receive the antibiotic — penicillin. And it worked. “We just came up with a lifesaving, life-extending drug, one of the greatest developments in human history. Except not.” That’s Matt Richtel, a science reporter for The New York Times. For the past year, Matt’s been talking to health experts to find out if we are reaching the end of the antibiotic era. Modern medicine depends on the antibiotic. “And having used it so much, we’re now putting it at risk. Is our fate sealed?” “First off, I don’t think people respect bacteria enough.” This is Ellen Silbergeld, one of the leading scientists studying antibiotic resistance. “Bacteria rule the world. We are just a platform for bacteria. Within the human body, there are more bacterial cells than there are human cells. So we are, in fact, mostly bacteria.” “Alexander Fleming —” the man who discovered penicillin “— in his Nobel speech said, hang on, be aware. When you start killing this stuff off, it’s going to fight back.” “Did we pay any attention to that? No.” “The C.D.C. got our attention today with a warning about what it calls ‘nightmare bacteria.’” “These are bacteria that are resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics.” When we take antibiotics to kill infections, some bacteria survive. It used to be they’d replicate, and eventually resistance would grow. But now, they’re way more efficient and share drug-resistant genes among themselves. So every time we take an antibiotic, we risk creating stronger, more resistant bacteria. And stronger, more resistant bacteria means less and less effective antibiotics. And this is a problem because we take lots of antibiotics. “Money gets made over the sale of antibiotics.” Big money. Globally, the antibiotics market is valued at $40 billion. And in the U.S., the C.D.C. estimates that about 30 percent of all prescribed antibiotics are not needed at all. That’s 47 million excess prescriptions. And in many places outside of the U.S., you don’t even need a prescription. “You can walk into a pharmacy. A pharmacist will diagnose you and give you antibiotics. I tend to think of it as a story of Darwinian forces multiplied by the pace and scale of global capitalism. In an interconnected world — travel, import, export — we’re moving the bugs with us.” “I can go to a meeting in China or Vietnam or some place —” This is Lance Price, the director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center. “I can become colonized by untreatable E. coli. And I might not have any symptoms. But you can get colonized. And you can become this sort of long-term host.” So you could be healthy and still spreading bad bacteria without even knowing it. “Drug-resistant bacteria have never been able to travel the world as fast as they do today.” And that’s just part of the problem. “You should know that about 80 percent of antibiotic production in this country goes into agriculture.” “Why on earth did somebody think putting antibiotics in agriculture was a great idea?” “We’ve said, hey, look, cram these animals together. Don’t worry too much about hygiene or trying to keep them healthy. Just give them antibiotics. And then in a couple weeks, you’re going to have full-grown animals that you can chop up and eat. Right? And you can make money off of that.” “Nobody was making the connection between feeding animals antibiotics and the fact that the food would be carrying drug-resistant bacteria.” So Ellen did a study. She compared different kinds of store-bought chicken. And she found that poultry raised with antibiotics had nine times as much drug-resistant bacteria on it. “Now, let’s talk about the vegetarians. I just want you to understand, you’re not safe. You know all these outbreaks that take place among the lettuce and the things like that. Have you ever wondered how that happened? It’s because animal manure is used in raising crops. Organic agriculture lauds the use of animal manure.” “Unless you’re just a complete, ‘I’m a vegan, and I only hang out with vegans, and I eat sterilized vegetables,’ you know, it’s very likely that you’re picking up the same bacteria.” Resistant bacteria seep into the groundwater, fly off the back of livestock trucks and hitch a ride home on the hands of farm workers, all of which makes trying to pinpoint exactly where resistant bacteria is originating extremely difficult. And even when it seems like there is a clear source, things still aren’t so simple. “No one wants to be seen as a hub of an epidemic.” Say your grandmother makes you a rump roast. And then that rump roast makes you sick. Well, if you live in France, or Ireland, or pretty much anywhere in the E.U., packaged meat has a tracking label. You can figure out exactly what farm that meat came from. But in the U.S., not even the top public health officials can do that. “Most countries have animal ID laws. We don’t.” Pat Basu, former chief veterinarian for the U.S.D.A.’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, basically one of the top veterinarians in the country. “Let me start at the beginning. We got a case where we had resistant bacteria causing illness in people. There were sick people that C.D.C. identified.” “More than 50 people in eight counties have gotten an unusual strain of salmonella linked to pork.” “This is not your grandmother’s pathogen anymore. This is a new bug.” Health officials traced the outbreak back to the slaughterhouse and identified six potential farms where the outbreak could have come from. But then the investigation shut down. “The individual farmers have to agree voluntarily to share the data with these investigators who go out. We couldn’t go any further back. It was a dead end.” 192 people sick, 30 hospitalizations and zero access for health officials to investigate the farms. “The secrecy is maintained because there are big economic forces behind it. Farms are scared of losing their ability to get antibiotics. Hospitals are scared of driving away patients.” “Well, as a physician, I do get very upset. I get very upset, as a patient, that information is being withheld.” This is Kevin Kavanagh, a doctor and a consumer advocate for patients. “Drug-resistant bacteria is a huge problem. If it occurs at a restaurant, if it occurs in a cruise ship, you know about this immediately —” “A salmonella outbreak —” “within days or hours of an outbreak occurring.” “This morning, Chipotle is keeping dozens of its restaurants in the Pacific Northwest closed —” “But yet, in a hospital, it can take you months or even over a year until this data appears on a governmental website or reported by the C.D.C.” In the U.S., hospitals are under no obligation to inform the public when a bacterial outbreak occurs. “Defend and deny. They are very concerned about the short-term economic benefits, rather than looking at long-term problems.” “There’s always this response like, well, but there’s still a drug, right? Like, this isn’t the end.” Remember Albert Alexander? — “Hello. Ouch!” — the first patient to be given penicillin? Well, his story didn’t end there. Five days after he started recovering, the hospital ran out of the new drug, and Mr. Alexander died. Today, we don’t have to worry about antibiotics running out. We have to worry about using them so much that they stop working altogether. “— want to know why a metro health department didn’t shut down a restaurant —” “It’s a very resistant bacteria —” “We really need to change the way we use antibiotics. Because the way we use antibiotics is destroying them.” “It’s putting at risk the entire system of care that we depend on for lengthening our lives and improving the quality of our lives.” The British government commissioned a study which predicted a worst case scenario where more people will die by 2050 of these infections than will die of cancer. “That’s a generation from now.” “It takes 10 years to identify, develop, test and bring to market a new antibiotic. And it takes a billion dollars.” “This is a common issue for humanity.” “Very similar to global warming.” “You can’t control it as a single company. You can’t control this as a single government.” And because the bacteria are now working together so efficiently — “Unless the world acts consistently together, it doesn’t make a difference.”

Sahred From Source link Science

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