Reply #34: this is getting ugly

[warrens]

I happen to write about food and the USDA guy went OFF when I called him. The meat industry is circling the wagons, screaming it's all politics. But the truth is, they are starting to privatize food inspection. They don't want to give more authority to the inspectors; the administration believes in self-regulation. When you have a smart company, it works. Purity of food is their only protection. But for the scamsters and thugs that inhabit every industry, it is a license to do whatever the fuck they want.

I think this story is going to have legs. The guy at the union, Stan, is a bit of a character, but his point is not really refutable.

If you want the technical point, it is that MOST plants have multiple ways to establish age of animals. Over 30 months, their brains and spinal cord and other offal cannot be put into the food chain in any way. It has to be removed and destroyed. We are putting in an Animal ID system within the next year or two, and at that point every animal will have a "birth certificate." Meanwhile, though, in many cases the only way to determine a cow's age is by examining its teeth and bones. In the case of bones, it would obviously be too late. So teeth it is, and it is fairly accurate.

Inspectors do not do age verification. But a lot of them know how to do it, and they are catching cattle going through the line that are identified as under 30 months that are clearly older. At least five reports have been filed, maybe more, of just coincidentally discovered mistakes.

This is going to be a nasty, ugly fight, and the meat people and USDA will probably lose. There is no excuse for not confirming the age of animals when it is easy to do. If you leave it to some random plant employee, who may or may not know what the hell he is doing (there are no training requirements for the job), you are begging for mistakes.

Large players in the industry don't want written requirements for the job. And they don't want inspectors doing it either. They don't like the inspectors as a rule and they certainly don't want them to have more power.

The nut in this case is that at least five reports have been filed and USDA had to have seen them. Bush has made it impossible to get documents on FOIA in less than a year or two. But there are other ways...the USDA and American Meat Institute are basically screaming PROVE IT. And the proof is coming in the next couple of days.

To me, this is not really about food safety. It's about destroying the infrastructure that produces food safety. Even if we have a few mad cows floating around, which is likely, it is not a dire threat to the American people.

Like the air traffic controllers, the FDA pharmaceutical group, and any other federal agency you can think of, they want to reduce all power and turn the employees into Wal-mart drones. They are over-reaching and they are going to fuck up bigtime sooner or later. The FDA fuckup is just the tip of the iceberg.