Whenever possible, I try to get local food. Because these behemoth agri firms are impossible to inspect with the decimated USDA resources we have (thanks, deregulation and self-reporting!). Eating this food is like playing Russian roulette, but many of us are too poor and too distant from other options. Who would think so many years later that we’d be reliving Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” again, a book written in 1906? These huge companies send out beef to so many places, who in turn sell it to many other places, that we consumers have no idea where it is:
California-based Rancho Food Corp. has recalled over 8.7 million pounds of beef products — including oxtail, liver, tongue, and cow carcasses — because the animals they came from were diseased and never inspected by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That’s equivalent to a full year’s worth of beef that gets processed by the company. The FDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which has been investigating Rancho Food, classified it as a Class I recall out of fears that the uninspected meat may cause serious medical harm to consumers.
The massive recall comes just one month after Rancho Food Corp. had to recall another 40,000 pounds worth of meat that hadn’t been inspected. There have been no reported illnesses linked with the products to date.
Food recalls are alarmingly common in America. Foodborne illnesses cost the U.S. about $152 billion per year, sickens 48 million Americans annually, and kills 3,000 people ever year. The proliferation of massive, national food companies such as Cargill Beef also makes recalls tricky, since products from a tainted batch may be shipped all across the country.
Unfortunately, food safety inspections are stymied by a significant lack of funding and insufficient staff. Although President Obama signed the largest overhaul of America’s food safety regimen in 70 years into law in 2010, officials are concerned that the planned changes won’t become a reality without more appropriations.
“Simply put, we cannot achieve our objective of a safer food supply without a significant increase in resources,” warned the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, Michael Taylor, in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week. “We will continue our efforts to make the best use of the resources we have, but I can say with absolute certainty that we cannot do all that is asked of us without additional resources.”
Funding cuts to food safety agencies have continued despite the fact that the number of foodborne illnesses has actually increased over the last several years. Cuts included in the federal budget sequester are expected to reduce the number of food inspectors at meat and poultry plants by about 600 people.
You can bet your sweet a** that the 1% has all of it’s meat(s) closely inspected. Take Democratic Rep. Barrow of Ga. and Matheson of Utah both of whom voted against raising the debt ceiling yesterday. Just because you call yourself a Democrat doesn’t mean that you are. These Blue-dogs have probably voted to kill funding for the FDA in the past. If you don’t like government and what government should do to protect the health and well being of the 99%, than you should become a Republican or quit Congress.
This is probably part of the the Hurry Up and Die plan for the hoi polloi.
We are considered unnecessary abd even useless by the One Percenters. The fewer of us who survive, as they see it, the better.
So, if food kills off a few of us, the plan is working.
We used to think the Hurry Up and Die folks were just Repubs, but, it’s becoming more and more clear that it’s really all the Corporatists’ minions who think that way. A Democrat is not really a Democrat unless he or she votes as one, as most Dems used to do.
We are so fucked.