Squadron Sponsors Anti-Salmonella Bill

By on August 30, 2010 11:34 pm in Government, Health

State Senator Daniel Squadron, whose 25th Senate district includes Brooklyn Heights, is sponsoring a bill that, if enacted, would require all hens laying eggs for sale in New York State to be vaccinated against salmonella. This is in response to the recent outbreak of salmonella infections traced to eggs produced on farms in the Midwest, but sold in many other states. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration responded to this with new rules, but they do not include a vaccination requirement.

New York Daily News: “Requiring salmonella vaccination should be a no-brainer, and if the FDA is unwilling to take the lead, we should start here in New York,” said state Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Manhattan, Brooklyn), who himself had a brush with salmonella in college.

“We believe it was from an undercooked omelet,” said Squadron, who was hospitalized for four days. “It is a terrible, terrible disease.”

So much for the chow at Yale.

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  • my2cents

    What will the powerful pro-salmonella lobby do to stop this?

  • heightsnewbie

    This is unfortunate — my boyfriend manages a farm in the Hudson Valley, among their products are pastured eggs. That is, eggs from hens who live outdoors and hunt around in the grass for bugs to eat. They get supplemental feed when necessary and they have an indoor barn to roost and lay eggs in. This kind of production is really different from the conditions are those mega-barns were appalling (see here: http://www.latimes.com/health/la-fi-eggs-20100831,0,996439.story) and bear no resemblance to the conditions on my partner’s farm upstate. Vaccinating birds against salmonella might reduce the number of cases coming from a filthy laying situation, but it won’t eliminate the issue if producers are too lazy and careless to practice good animal husbandry. In the meantime the cost of vaccination will drive up the prices for “the good stuff” without having a measurable effect on the safety of our product.

    Outrage over the conditions of those barns and stronger legislation against such conditions would be more appropriate than rushing in with a vaccination bill.

  • AEB

    my2, you mean the one clandestinely backed by the brothers Koch?

  • http://www.dishonestapparel.com tarekp

    That is a terrible idea, promotes ‘caged breeding’ and will ultimately lead to other health issues.

    This gentleman gets poisoned with salmonella and becomes blindly passionate about it. If he knew exactly where salmonella comes from, he may encourage a different action…like how the birds are treated in the first place:

    Salmonella – a food borne illness that kills more Americans than any other, is directly related to CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) and to contaminated feed containing blood, slaughterhouse waste, and manure

    Take a couple of minutes to chew on this: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/08/30/salmonella-outbreaks-spur-nationwide-egg-recall.aspx

  • Miky

    Has Squadron ever met a problem he won’t try to legislate away? Tool.

  • T.K. Small

    This morning on NPR there was a segment about Salmonella.

    http://tinyurl.com/24ypxpt

  • Jonny

    I had salmonella last year – absolutely the 2 worst weeks of my life!!!! But while good intentioned I think this bill is short-sighted considering the many ways salmonella can spread. This would be akin to, say, requiring everyone to carry hand sanitizer to prevent the common cold.

  • Monty

    @tarekp, mercola is a quack and his site is crap. Britain mandates salmonella vaccination for hens nationwide and the disease has been nearly eradicated. I support Squadron’s effort, but I wish it were Washington promoting this idea instead of Albany since the vast majority of America’s eggs come from the mid-west and not New York.

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com Claude Scales

    Monty: I believe Squadron’s bill would apply to all eggs sold in New York, whether produced here or elsewhere; i.e. all eggs imported into New York would have to come from vaccinated hens. States are allowed to place barriers to interstate commerce where it can be shown that these barriers are necessary to protect health of people or crops (think of the agricultural inspection stations at the California border).

  • WillowtownCop

    I buy my eggs from the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza. They are from chickens in Red Hook, and they’re the biggest eggs I have ever seen. I also know where they come from and that they’re fresh so I’m not worried about getting sick from them.

  • Ilikebrooklyn

    @Miky

    re: Squadron.

    I disagree.

    He has little interest in protecting the privacy of students. He sits on the Senate Education Committee and when approached (by me) at an event and I tried to talk to him about the problem and hand him a one page synopsis of the problem he told me to Email him.

    Everyone knows Emails to legislators are rarely read.

    He had (still has)/NY has an opportunity to be ahead of the nation on this problem however Squadron is too busy to care. It’s very sad and scary.

    To all parents out there. When papers come home from your children’s schools asking for consent to allow the disclosure of your child’s name, address, phone number, picture, Email address, height, weight, hobbies, interests, awards and dates of attendance — OPT-OUT. The aforementioned personal information is called ‘directory information.’

    If you DON’T opt-out there are NO restrictions on the use and misuse of this information. This information can be sold to information brokers at which point your children are profiled and their ‘personas’ sold.

    That’s the good news. The bad news? There is NOTHING stopping this information from falling into the hands of sexual predators. They know what your child looks like, their phone number, their address, their Email address and if your children remain in school for after-school activities… those who want to harm your children know where to find them.

    OPT-OUT of directory information and protect your children because the federal law (FERPA) and NYS legislators are allowing this practice to continue.