Trump administration to slash USDA pork inspections, including tests for salmonella, E. coli
I used to like bacon and “the other white meat” in general. But minus food safety measures? No thanks. I have to agree with the commentators who are comparing this move with airplane regulators regulating themselves, resulting in a 737 design that sets the controls for the center of the Earth, killing everyone aboard in a flaming crash. Only now it is to be mass outbreaks! Yay, deregulation!
Krugman has a more generalized take: Donald Trump is Trying to Kill You
I wouldn’t mind hearing from the pro-poisoned food camp, but I’m putting this in the pit where people can treat infected pork the way it deserves.
What’s the problem? Cuts down on Federal overreach, which is good for reasons.
And the pork industry will do their utmost best to insure comprehensive inspections are taking place, and will only allow meat that has passed their own rigorous internal inspection to be shipped out. They definitely won’t cut any corners, ignore any regulations, or send any bad meat just to save a couple of bucks because of reasons.
“the responsibility for identifying diseased and contaminated pork would be shared with plant employees, whose training would be at the discretion of plant owners.”
The Boeing 737 Max is a good example of the consequences of insufficient regulatory oversight. The quest for profit and competitive advantage led to design decisions so egregiously flawed under the “self-certification” regime that the FAA and Congress itself are now being implicated. So it’s no surprise that the Trumpsters (motto: “everything we do is stupidly and exactly wrong”) are now clamoring for more of the same.
And Boeing is, relatively speaking, the epitome of responsible management compared, say, to those in the business of slaughtering pigs for profit.
Also don’t touch it with your bare hands, or let it touch any of your kitchen implements, unless you sanitize them before using them again. There’s the risk of bacterial contamination that leaves behind toxins that aren’t removed by cooking.
What happens if Trump gets a bad case of the trots from his McD’s Cheesy Bacon Fries? My bet is the admin quickly reverses itself and reinstates pork inspections.
I’ve never heard of beef bacon. I guess there is still turkey bacon, and tofu bacon, but pork bacon is at once slimy, salty, greasy, meaty and also wiggly. I am going to miss it.
Don’t we already do all that for chicken?
Now, let’s see, I need to go sanitize my counters. I’m pretty sure there’s germs and contaminated matter laying around waiting to kill me. Argh!
I was expecting to be able to endorse the OP, but when I went looking for something non-partisan, I found this:
The first basically says that everything’s either the same or better (particularly if you include observations from similar programs in Canada).
The latter does point out that there aren’t the training regimens being established that other countries have used, but that’s a theoretical concern more than a real one given the actual results.
If worse, it doesn’t seem like it’s extremely so.
Something about it seems to free up government workers to do more useful tasks, in terms of ensuring safety, and allow the workers to do a better job of spreading the menial labor of safety all the way through the system. It sounds like there’s a genuine fix for a problem that was requiring Federal workers to do all the safety, while not actually being stationed at those locations or having the staffing to spend enough time at the locations to oversee everything.
So while there may be negatives, it is counterbalanced for the most part and could in theory become a better system if training standards were set.
