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Otherwords / Op-Ed
Published: Sunday 22 April 2012
“An alarming percentage of the fish found in creeks contaminated by J.R. Simplot’s phosphate mining operations in Idaho are grossly deformed.”
Two Heads Aren’t Always Better than One
The corporate propensity for rationalizing the irrational in the pursuit of profit appears to be boundless.
Consider J.R. Simplot, a giant agribusiness conglomerate whose phosphate mining operations in Idaho have grossly polluted creeks with selenium, a highly toxic metal. Simplot's scientists rationalized the corporation's dirty deed with a 1,200-page study asserting that even though the selenium contamination of creeks was well above levels allowed by environmental law, the water remained "safe" for fish.
Tucked back in the appendix of Simplot's own "study," however, were a few photographs that vividly depicted the screaming irrationality of the corporation's safety claims. The most stunning photo was of a two-headed baby trout produced by Simplot's pollution of area creeks. It wasn't the only sickening deformity caused by the selenium. Other trout had facial, fin, and egg disfigurements.
These grotesque mutations led to calls for an independent agency to conduct a full scientific review of Simplot's study. At the request of Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the Fish and Wildlife Service complied, issuing a scathing report in January that bluntly branded the corporate study "biased."
Simplot systemically understated the deformity rate of baby fish in the creeks, the agency found. It's not 20 percent that are deformed, as the company stated, but 70 percent.
Asked about this huge discrepancy, a Simplot vice-president could only grump that the Fish and Wildlife review was "totally outside the regulatory process." Well thank goodness for that! As another independent toxicology expert says, "I have seen lots of malformed baby fish, but never one with two heads. We need to be careful here."
Yes, let's. In fact, let's stop swallowing any irrational rationalizations by corporations that pollute for profit.
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ABOUT Jim Hightower
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
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By Robert Jensen
11 comments on "Two Heads Aren’t Always Better than One"
April 24, 2012 3:18pm
Kevin: and an extraordinary finding by the premier authority in the field, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is NOT to your "standards?" Then what on Earth WOULD be?
The tag that the company reported a 20 % mutation rate, when the reality was 70 %, ought to be enough for most thinking people. But if you DON'T think before responding, there is no help for you.
Evidently, you still trust a greed-driven Corporation to tell you the truth about their practices, but you won't trust an independent, citizen-approved agency to do so?
Are you SICK?
April 24, 2012 10:24am
In nature, such frequent occurrences of deformities depletes the number in that particular population because in nature, it is not usually pollution that causes the deformity, but a genetic defect. Because of this reproductive non-viability, those defects are usually non present or minimal because the deformed second generation become easy prey for other animals. All of these animals in this study are probably genetically viable, but reproductively unviable, but that occurring only AFTER fertilization of the eggs. In these numbers there are too many for other animals to completely consume, so to find a 70% occurrence is highly miraculous.....and not in a good way. Control populations occur in any lake in that region not affected by that level of pollution.
April 24, 2012 8:30am
Hey Kevin:70% deformity. You don't need a control to know that something is terribly wrong here.
April 24, 2012 5:19am
I can't let my grass grow, or HoA has the cops/city issue some unconstitutional fine. You get punished for letting wildlife grow on your own property, but get rewarded for poisoning public water/land. What a world.
April 24, 2012 5:18am
I can't let my grass grow, or HoA has the cops/city issue some unconstitutional fine. You get punished for letting wildlife grow on your own property, but get rewarded for poisoning public water/land. What a world.
April 23, 2012 2:54pm
Asked about this huge discrepancy, a Simplot vice-president could only grump that the Fish and Wildlife review was "totally outside the regulatory process."
Simplot VP's world must be shattered because his bounded world of bought regulation is broken and the true nature of corporate environmental impact is revealed. Well done Fish and Wildlife! Finally some teeth, given by Sen. B. Boxer, a champion of corporate regulation and shrinking the military industrial complex expansion.
Gainesville, FL
April 23, 2012 1:33pm
What is the natural occurrence of polycephaly in trout? What is the control for this survey? Here's the major problem. In order to make a compelling argument one way or the other you have to measure appropriate controls.
April 24, 2012 8:43am
when the result is singular (as in unique) to talk of "controls" as if you were looking for statistical differentiation is silly. there are no "controls" for this result. it is what it is and it's awful.
April 23, 2012 12:35pm
Fortune 500 corporations employ environmental and workplace safety specialists to make sure that things like this happen wherever they are in business and to deny that they are responsible for it.
Maximize Profits and Executive Bonuses -- to Hell with the workers and the environment. Be a "team player".
April 23, 2012 12:06pm
LOL, they should start executing the GOP good ol boy network, and all the evil that is tied to them. Texas is a big state, with some of the dumbest individuals ever. I had the lousy luck of living in Houston and just getting out alive was all I could ask for. No one there knows how to drive, they all have guns in their trucks, will kill you if you mention you are NOT christian and force religion down the throats of one an all.
April 23, 2012 11:28am
This is a sad case of life imitating art, harking back to a Simpson's episode with Monty Burns losing the election via slow-motion snapshots of him spitting a piece of nuclear-plant-deformed 3-eyed fish fed to him by Marge at a dinner with so-called "regular folks".
We, the real regular folks, may only hope that all of our alleged representatives, as well as the Not-So-Supreme Court are force-fed nothing but these actual mutated versions of that same 3-eyed "Blinky" in lieu of their daily consumption of taxpayer-funded caviar washed down with Dom Perignon. This must be shown to every taxpaying American as mandatory viewing on all media networks including C-SPAN, in the place of State of the Union speeches. Let's see just how "regular" Mitt and Companies really are.
Unfortunately, our corporate media conglomerate will avoid facts that will make people feel irate enough to stop buying their products, so they'll show feel-good fluff instead.
"Hey! Look over there! Dog on skateboard! Or is that Doggon' Skateboard? Find out tonight at 11:00!"