Posted on 12/05/2012 6:11:04 AM PST by Kaslin
With America's "fiscal cliff" approaching, pundits wring their hands over the supposed catastrophe that government spending cuts will bring. A scare newsletter called "Food Poisoning Bulletin" warns that if government reduces food inspections, "food will be less safe ... (because) marginal companies ... (will) cut corners."
We're going to die!
Most people believe that without government meat inspection, food would be filthy. We read "The Jungle," Upton Sinclair's depiction of the meatpacking business, and assume that the FDA and the Food Safety and Inspection Service are all that stand between us and E. coli. Meatpacking conditions were disgusting. Government intervened. Now, we're safe! A happy ending to a story of callous greed.
The scheming lawyers behind the "Food Poisoning Bulletin" argue that without regulation companies will "cut corners." After all, they say, sanitation costs money, so lack of regulation "creates a competitive disadvantage for companies that want to produce quality products."
But that's bunk. It's not government that keeps E. coli to a minimum. It's competition. Tyson Foods, Perdue and McDonald's have brands to maintain -- and customers to lose. Ask Jack in the Box. It lost millions after a food-poisoning scandal.
Fear of getting a bad reputation makes food producers even more careful than government requires. Since the Eisenhower administration, our stodgy government has paid an army of union inspectors to eyeball chickens in every single processing plant. But bacteria are invisible!
Fortunately, food producers run much more sophisticated tests on their own. One employs 2,000 more safety inspectors than government requires: "To kill pathogens, beef carcasses are treated with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum," an executive told me. She also asked that I not reveal the name of her company -- it fears retaliation from regulators.
"Production facilities are checked for sanitation with microbiological testing. If anything is detected ... we re-clean the equipment. ... Equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab-tested."
None of that is required by government. Government regulation may help a little, but we are safe mostly because of competitive markets. Competition protects us better than politicians.
But people don't trust companies. So it is easy to scare people about food. And the news media know that finding "problems" makes reporters look like crusading journalists. Earlier this year, my old employer, ABC News, "alerted" the public to a new threat, ground beef made with "pink slime."
It sounds awful! ABC's reporting frightened most school systems so much that they stopped using that form of meat. The food company lost 80 percent of its business.
But the scare is bunk. What ABC calls "pink slime" is just as appetizing as other food.
"Bunk is the polite word," Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center says. "ABC went on a crusade. Three nights in a row back in March, they pounded on this."
Well, why shouldn't they, if there's something called "pink slime" in beef?
"Because it's not pink slime. It's ground beef."
Then how did this all get started?
"A couple activists who used to work for the FDA didn't like this really cool scientific process that separates the beef trimming so you get the remaining ground beef. So they coined this term deliberately to try to hurt this company."
The company, Beef Products Inc., does something unique. It takes the last bit of trim meat off the bone by heating it slightly. That saves money and arguably helps the environment -- not using that meat would waste 5,000 cows a day. In 20 years, there is no record of anybody being hurt by what ABC and its activists call "pink slime" -- what the industry just calls "lean beef trimmings" or "finely textured beef."
"Everybody constantly says, 'You should eat leaner beef.' So when we try to eat the leaner beef, then they take that away from us, too," Gainor said. "The company ... has received awards for how good a job they do for consumer safety. It was just one constant hit job."
An effective one. After ABC's reports, Beef Products Inc. closed three out of its four plants. Seven hundred workers lost jobs.
Scientifically illiterate, business-hating media will always do scare stories. Don't believe them.
Most of them, anyway.
If bad press does not kill an unscrupulous modern food company, lawsuits will, and usually both, before the government inspectors there ever become aware of any problem to stop. This issue at the last ought to be amenable to some sort of scientific study and it cannot be taken as a foregone conclusion that more regulation is better. The more little chicken-feed rules that a regulated entity has to dance to, the less attention it has left to pay to true dangers.
last=>least
When public schools teach about the native American, they always emphasize the nobility and environmental responsibility the Indian exhibited because they would, "use every part of the animal."
Apparently the theory that applies in the classroom is somehow not applicable in the cafeteria just down the hall.
"Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. You'd better get it straight that it's not a bunch of boy scouts you're up against . . . We're after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you'd better get wise to it. There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively - and you create a nation of law-breakers - and then you cash in on guilt. Now that's the system, Mr. Rearden, and once you understand it, you'll be much easier to deal with."
-- Dr. Ferris, “Atlas Shrugged”
Apparently the theory that applies in the classroom is somehow not applicable in the cafeteria just down the hall.
No, no, no. The goal is to turn the little consumers into vegans for the sake of a sustainable environment. Every bite a member of Homo sapiens doesn't eat is anywhere from ten to a million bites for creatures with four or six legs.
It's only fair, you know.
Unique to a company.....maybe, but my family has been cookin' hambone & beans for generations.
I know what an air ejector is on a steam boiler.
I have no idea what a 185-degree steam vacuum is.
No bean is worth eating without pork fat. And I usually use a ham hock. Bacon grease if no ham hocks are available.
I think a lot of people are catching on.
The price of ham hocks are going up.
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