Food May Be Safe, Ice Can Be Risky

Food May Be Safe; Ice Can Be Risky
Editor, Times-Dispatch: I read David Martosko's Op/Ed column, "Nudging Us to Better Food Choices," in which he speaks about food safety. Recently we've had peanuts, tomatoes, sprouts, and ground beef in the news because of food safety issues. Funny that when it comes to water in a frozen state -- ice -- it is sold with no sanitary concerns.

In our good commonwealth, frozen water can be packaged and sold and there is no testing or any safeguards comparable to those for bottled water. Anyone can (and they do) package ice for resale. There is no quarterly testing, no mandatory cleaning and sanitizing of equipment. Why is it that one can purchase a bag of ice with fecal matter or other bodily contaminants in it in stores? When one speaks to the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Markets, or the state legislature, everyone wants to know the numbers sickened or the morbidity rates before anyone gets interested.

When people get sick from a meal, do they ever think: "Was it the ice?" People generally blame their ills on the fish, the chicken, or the mayo -- they rarely think of the ice.

So, when I read stories about food safety or food manufacturers not wanting regulation, neither is very clear to me. I am a food manufacturer (water or ice is food) who would like to see more regulation to protect the public. I don't want fecal matter, urine, or any other bodily fluid in my drink, on the can I will drink from, or even on the fish which I will cook and eat. Mark Resnick, President, City Ice Company.


Chester.

Founders Favored Reason, Not Stasis
Editor, Times-Dispatch: Cordel Faulk's dismissal of Supreme Court Justice David Souter's outstanding career reveals a common, but hardly excusable, misunderstanding of the court's role in American constitutional jurisprudence. For all its high-profile proponents, "originalism" is an entirely modern doctrine with no foundation in historical context -- a doctrine no more intellectually defensible than a biblical literalism espoused by preachers with little Hebrew and less Greek.

The Founders drew heavily upon the tradition of the English common law, in which judges "found" new law by analogy, applying ancient precedents to novel situations. The Founders understood that their new Constitution was a mere outline, with details to be filled in by all three branches, including the courts, as new circumstances arose.

Moreover, the Founders, as products of Enlightenment "natural law" philosophy, held that human rights pre-existed, and served as the foundation for, all lawful government. Knowing firsthand that the Constitution they had drafted was a bundle of compromises necessary to launch a national government, they would have been shocked to think that their descendants would treat it -- and not natural law -- as the fons et origo of our rights.

To sum up, the Founders took the Constitution seriously, but they reserved their reverence for Reason, which, they hoped, would guide humanity's evolving understanding of the unwritten law of nature. Their "original intent" was that their Constitution would live and grow.

Faulk should consider boning up on the British Enlightenment and the Revolutionary and Federal periods of American history.

Rick Gray.
Chester.

What's next -- are we going to commemorate the Beltway snipers and their ilk?

Let us not forget there is a generation of youngsters in our city who have never heard of these animals. Let them be buried in the bowels of your archives. Our youngsters have enough problems to deal within these difficult times.

Herbert Wiesinger.
Glen Allen.